A Slum Love Crime. (A$AP Rocky Story)

Part Ventiquattro

I swallowed hard and pulled again, watching the dart fly into the board. I was getting better with every trial (which was surprising, since my mind seemed to be going farther and farther as we went along).

“Why are we doing this again?” I whispered. We couldn’t talk loud, since it was early in the morning and the rest of the guys still had to sleep. Dom and Yams woke me up and brought me down to the basement where Benny had an old dart board and a fake gun filled with darts. I yawned every time I pulled the gun’s trigger; I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

“To make sure you’re not a punk.” Yams replied, sipping on some old wine.

“But she’s not a punk, by the looks of it.” Dom added, examining the darts I shot onto the board. Most of them were spot-on or almost perfect.

“Good. Because if anything happens and you’re the only one left, you have to represent all of us.” Yams nodded as he spoke. I sighed and rolled my eyes at the two. As far as I was concerned, they were taking this way too seriously.

“Well I’m going to get a little more rest. See you guys later.” I waved to them, yawning once again before leaving the basement. Benny was asleep on the couch, looking quite uncomfortable. I wondered why he wasn’t upstairs in his own bedroom.

The door to Rakim’s bedroom was closed. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go in there. I couldn’t deal with facing him right now. The whole situation was still lingering inside of me, and it was probably the same for him. I walked past his room and into Kevon’s.

Jordan was sitting on his bed with headphones in, bobbing his head to some loud song. It wasn’t often that he was home. I closed the door behind me and plopped down onto Kevon’s bed, barely even managing to get the sheets on me before my eyes drifted closed.

“What did you do to my brother?”

My eyes popped back open. I stayed quiet, thinking it was just a dream and no one said anything.

“You heard me, Tremaine. Kevon won’t talk to me, and he has bandages on his face. What did you do to him?” Jordan said. I knew then that it wasn’t a dream. I turned around to look at him, pretending to be half asleep.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just put your headphones in and stop making a big deal out of things.” I snapped. Then I turned back around and closed my eyes again, not caring if Jordan had responded. I was trying hard to forget yesterday. I was trying hard to forget how passionately Rakim defended me.

I was trying to forget the lies I told.

Later on in the day, I realized why Benny was on the couch. Kevon threw him out. He locked himself in Benny’s room all day, refusing to come out.

Two can play at that game, I thought as I stared at the time on the clock. It was nearing three hours now that I hadn’t come outside the room for anything. The strange thing was that Rakim hadn’t come to check on me.

 Maybe it was a blessing, too. Maybe God was finally hearing me, and listened when I wished that Rakim would just ignore me all day. I hated moments like this. Whenever I had a problem with him, it couldn’t last for long. He was the only able to really comfort me.

But I had to stop thinking about him. I felt a tiny tear threatening to drop as I buried myself into the throw pillows on Kevon’s bed.

I lied to Rakim.

It was confusing, though. Did I really lie? I told him that Kevon raped me, which meant he had sex with me by force. It sure felt like he was forcing me into some kind of seductive trap. But if I told Rakim that, I knew he’d have something different to say. Hell, anyone would say that the whole thing was consensual.