College Fiend [A$AP Rocky]

Thirty-one

(A/N: Final chapter. No sequel. More info will be posted in The Information Book.)

March, 2004

Last week, I saw in the LA Times that Regina Brice, my own mother, had died. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Just like Quincy’s mother, although this seemed like an accident, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a suicide. What did she have to live for, anyway? Nick was dead, my father was travelling the world with Shirley and ignoring any contact I tried to make with him, and I didn’t have any business with her. She was dead to all of us, as harsh as that may seem. The only reason it made me kind of down was that she didn’t live to see me marry.

Maybe she would have, if Quincy and I hadn’t postponed our wedding.

It’s been ten months since he proposed to me, since I told him I was pregnant. It’s been nine months since he and I packed our things and moved away from Alabama, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and Vermont, and came to Los Angeles. Quincy claimed that he’d always dreamed of living here. I didn’t mind, since Travis and Hunter were here too.

Travis was one of the most influential rappers out right now. He had a huge fan base, to the point that just a simple picture he with me holding Isis made me almost famous.

Isis Leanne Martin—that was my daughter’s name. Quincy thought of the first name, and I came up with the middle name. She looked like a perfect mixture of us in an eerie and adorable way. She was born February 6th and seven pounds, four ounces, on a Friday night. She was born HIV negative, fortunately, and didn't need any medication for the virus. I was in the flower shop I’d opened up in Fairfax, called “Bean’s Flower Outlet”, when my water broke. I was alone and scared.

Quincy didn’t take too long to come to my rescue, doing everything in a rush and snapping at the people around him louder than I did. It was all a blur, and all I could remember was the look in his eyes as he held that chubby, soft-haired, round-eyed baby in his arms. This was something of his own, something he had to be proud of. His life. Isis and I were his most prized possessions, I was realizing slowly. It felt good to be somebody’s life.

Whenever Isis would wake up in the middle of the night crying and I was too tired to attend to her, Quincy would go in her room, rock her in his arms, and tell her the tales of our lives. He’d tell her things about his life, about my life, how we met, and what happened after we met. Sometimes I even heard him tell her things that he never told me, little details about his mother or people he met in high school.

One thing he never, ever told her though, was how at first we thought Wayne was her father.

Speaking of Wayne, he was going to be one of the best men at our wedding. We’d been planning for it since we moved to California. Sarah and Wayne’s sister, Ciara, were the only two girls I had for bridesmaids, so they would have to do. Quincy had Travis, Hunter, and Wayne for best men. We also made a list of people we’d invite to our wedding (Neffie and Flo not included), and the flower girl would be either Isis (if she was up for it, since she was a really fussy baby), or my niece back in Wisconsin. Everything was planned out except for the date.

It wasn’t any time soon.

“Should we do it next year, or sooner than that?” I asked Quincy. He was standing on the balcony of our new home while I was sitting at one of the tables on the balcony, making plans on my laptop.

“We should do it after Isis is walking. That way she can be the flower girl,” He proposed. He didn’t bother to look at me, just kept sipping on his lemonade. It was a nippy winter morning, but it was sunny enough to enjoy a summery drink.