Comfortable Chaos

Chapter 25

Andre
I don't need her to spoon feed me.

This is kinda strange. Brandi isn't home yet. I'm a little concerned. After all, she is underage. She can't be out there all willy nilly. Something could happen to her. That's why I tried to keep pretty close to her. I think it's the gentlemanly thing to do. I hope nothing happened to her. I try calling her and there is no answer.

The door opens. Finally, she's home. I lean up from the couch and almost fall off it. I've never seen her look like this. Make-up. Heels. Leather pants.

"Where the fuck have you been?" I asked, standing up from the couch and walking over to her like she was an exhibit in a museum.

She bows her head a little, before running her hand over her hair. "I had a little make-over. That's all." She drops her bags on the floor. "Do you like it?

"Uh, yeah. You look good but where did you get this from? What's the name of this place you're working?"

"The Patton Agency. Why?"

"Don't you think it's unusual for a job to buy you clothes?" I feel the material. Shit, this is some expensive stuff. "Really nice clothes."

She yanks my arm away. "They're really nice people, especially the manager. She's the one who bought me these."

"What are you gonna be doing there?"

"Customer service." She picks up her bags and walks to the room.

"I think you should return those clothes."

She drops the bags in the little side room we call a bedroom. "Why?"

"Because...don't you feel funny taking them from people you don't even know? They'll probably take them out of your check. And what type of job has that for a job uniform?" Something is not right.

"An office. For your information, I chose these clothes and not all of them or flashy." She sighs. "They're really nice people. Why can't you be happy for me?" Brandi's voice shakes.

Aww, man. I hate when females play the crying game. They know we don't wanna hear all that sniffing and whining so they cry so we'll leave them alone. It works every time. "I am." I walk over to her.

"I'm sorry. We need the money. I know it's a good job, the people are great and I doubt that I'm working for clothes," she said.

I personally think she's being naïve but, for the time being, I agreed to let it go. She was right about one thing; we did need the money. She also looks pretty good.

"Okay. If you say so."

"I know so. What about you? Has the labor pool called you yet?"

I frown. Why did she have to bring that up? My mind was starting to roam into dirty places and she wants to remind me of getting screwed over. "What does that mean?"

"I'm asking if they've called you about a job yet."

"I would have told you if they had." She better not be getting smart with me. I'm the reason we're doing as well as we're doing right now. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wanna make sure we're finding a way out of this mess. We still don't have any money."

I turn my back on her. I'm gonna go out. The last thing I need is to be nagged by a teenage girl.

"Where are you going?" She starts following me to the door.

"Out," I said, grabbing the keys.

She starts to sound panicked. "Well, don't stay out too late."

I glance back at her, suck my teeth and walk out the door. Of course I'm not leaving permanently but she needs to spend some time without me to see what it'd be like if I wasn't here. I'm the reason we've gotten this far. I don't need her to remind me that I need a job or money. I know that. I think about it all day long. Hopefully, she doesn't think she's better than me because she got this new job and her boss bought her these expensive clothes. Speaking of which, I'm not sure I buy that. What boss does that? The only thing I can think of is that it wasn't a boss. Let me find out she got some other dude buying her shit. All Hell will break loose.