And this is where you all have a simultaneous heart attack, because I actually updated within a week of posting the last chapter.
Oh dear Lawd, what is happening to me?! X)
I just so wanted to write this chapter:) the ending of the last one had me so excited to write more…I'm not sure how many of you will ike this, 'cos it's more of a filler (I think…) but I still liked writing it:) and I don't think it's too bad^^; Just maybe a little…surprising. Either way:) Thank you so much for reading, and here come the reviews:D
Taydo-the-potato: yeah, it kinda was, right?^^; you bet she can't:/ it's cool dude, I get your point:) Thank you so so so much for reviewing, it means the world:)
DaeImagines: And so I have!:D aw, thanks man:) (and thanks for the lovely review too!) Yeah, she doesn't deserve much:P
2000msluna: aww, man you cried?:( *hands over tissues* sorry man:( thank you so so much for the review though!
BananaMilkshake97: haha you bet she can'tX) thank you so much hunnie!:D
Janiyah: Sorry girl:/ haha, you bet they're notX) who knows?:P thank you so much for the review!
MissG2020: I'm so sorry girl._. I didn't realise it would happen till it did:/ (aunt cookie's dead too._. I'm so cruel…) I know, right? Poor boy:'( thank you so much for the review, you're such an angel; very luckily I don't actually live in America:) but thank you so much, you're so lovely:) (I do know a few people that were affected by Sandy- hopefully yor prayer helped them!:))
Bunnybabe247: thanks for the review:)
DeLorean Hedgehog: Never!:D Aw, man, thanks:) Haha, you bet she isX) (as if this isn't bad enough already) thank you so much for the lovely review! You're too kind:)
. : Oh my gosh, thank you so much for the bajillions of reviews, girl! I practically adore you right now- everything you've said is so wonderful and positive, thank you so much for actually bothering to review each chapter!
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Oh my freaking goodness. Thank you all so, so much, you absolutely gorgeous people. I love you guys so much, your feedback really helps me:) I appreciate it so much more than you can imagine; I really hope you enjoy this next chapter and, however you feel about it, please tell me!
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I still don't own the Boondocks;)
For mid March, the weather was doing surprisingly well. The budding trees were showering the groups with cherry blossom as the people slumped along the gravelled path in a single trail, the cold sun slapping their backs. Flowers were sprouting up beneath the gnarled tree trunks, snowdrops and bluebells threaded between the woven blades of grass. A sweeping formation of birds soared through the water colour sky, and he wished away anything to be with them now, blessed with no worries. Freedom. It sounded nice.
He was surprised that so many people turned up; he hadn't realised how popular his grandfather had been. They greeted him and his brother with equally deep words, deep looks and deep confessions, but he didn't care. He knew that all the while they were talking, they were really feeling relieved; relieved that they weren't in his situation. He couldn't blame them.
Turning away from the gathering crowd, he peered to look at the church spire that peaked into the distance, an ornate mess of gargoyles and stone carvings. He wasn't really one for religion, but after all, it hadn't been his decision.
"Boy, when I die, I ain't goin' no shit way. You gotta do it proper, with a church and a priest…and bitches. Yeah, lots of bitches."
"Granddad, I ain't gonna let you die for a long time."
"Pssh, whatever boy. Now move away; Real Compton Housewives is coming on!"
He'd failed. He'd promised to look after his grandfather no matter what it cost him; he took one selfish afternoon to himself, and now look what had happened. It was all his fault. All of it. He tugged at his black tie, suffocating, ripping open the top button of his shirt. The feeling was still there; claustrophobia. He watched his brother and their friends move onwards, and he wasn't sure he could do this anymore.
"Hey."
The soft voice was barely a whisper, and he almost mistook it for the whistle of the new leaves in the wind. Glancing to his right, he stared at the girl he definitely shouldn't be seen with, his hands deep in his pockets. Jazmine Dubois looked beautiful, as always, even though she did seem to have been crying. From the way she and her parents had arrived, he wasn't sure it was to do with his grandfather.
Her cinnamon hair was free in its natural style, foaming about her head and shoulders like a halo, several wisps tamed just so. Her pretty face held only little makeup, though she probably wiped some of it off with her tears, and her emerald eyes were ringed with red. Her slender, elegant frame was clothed in a simple black dress; a fitted, folded torso that cinched in at the waist before springing out gently, the pleated skirt coming to just above her tanned knees. Her shoes were sequined black flats to match the slide in her hair, and she looked at him pitifully from beneath the shade of the tree.
He just nodded in reply; he hadn't been able to open his mouth all day without choking up, and he had to quickly check there was no one nearby before walking towards her.
"Huey, I'm so sorry about your granddad," Jazmine desperately strained for eye contact, her hand reaching for his, "I wish I could do something to help…"
Huey shook his head, swallowing roughly before watching the rest of the congregation take place at the site. His heart sank even further than before.
"Maybe we should join them," she had noticed his wandering eyes, and began to lead him away, "Riley will be looking for you."
Standing at the gravesite, watching his grandfather's polished coffin levered into the ground to fester and decay by Uncle Ruckus, Huey wondered what was going to happen to him. He was the adult now, he was going to have to look after Riley properly this time round; he was probably going to have to take up another job. Huey was used to being an orphan; he was used to funerals and the people he loved dying, but having no one to fall back on? That was new.
Riley was crying shamelessly at his side, and Huey snuck a protective arm around his brother, wondering why everything he loved left him. He knew life wasn't fair; he had learnt this when he was too young to know what it meant…but he still felt defeated. This wasn't how he had visualised being eighteen.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…"
The priest droned on, sprinkling earth atop their grandfather's grave as Riley broke away from the service entirely, fleeing into the distance with Cindy at his heels, the eyes of the world upon him. Secretly, Huey envied him; he wished he was the younger brother, allowed to express some kind of emotion without being told to grow up and act like the man he was expected to be. Unlike his brother, he stayed every agonizing moment, watching as the mud was piled over the coffin and his grandfather was swallowed into the ground, forever.
Even after the congregation had left, heading back for their cars before going back to the reception at his house, Huey lingered, staring at the flawless spot where his grandfather lay, begging himself not to cry. His hands were balled into fists, nails cutting so deep into his palms that they bled, brow furrowed furiously at the ground, silently screaming for this all to be one horrible joke, waiting for his grandfather to pop around the corner, laughing, "I can't believe you actually fell for it, boy! Ya'll just as much of a nigga as yo' nappy haired brother…"
Eventually, Caesar found him and coaxed him away, a hand on his sleeve,
"They found Riley…going home with the Dubois'…I'll drive you back…no fit state…need to rest."
Huey wasn't really listening.
True to his word, Caesar drove them back in Huey's rundown, rusty old truck, and didn't comment as his best friend stared out of the window in a very un-Huey-like manner. The Brooklyn boy knew his friend had dealt with death before, but he'd never had to come across him when he was grieving. Maybe that was a good thing.
Arriving back to the Freeman residence, where Tom and Sarah Dubois were hiding their differences to host the reception, Caesar parked the car behind Dorothy. Still gleaming from her last wash, Huey gazed at his granddad's beloved car for a while, before clambering out of the passenger seat and heading into the house, a silent nod of thanks to his best friend. Caesar sat in the car a while, watching the mourners sift into the home and wishing there was something he could do.
The house was packed. A sea of black and grey washed about the ground floor, soaking the stairs and flooding the halls. Huey's head was spinning; there were so many people, so many things to do, so much swimming through his mind, he was losing control. Slipping off the constricting tie, he stumbled upstairs, dodging the sympathetic friends and…well. Not family; he and his brother were the only ones left. He practically fell into his bedroom, locking the door tight behind him as he supported himself on the wood.
He slid down the polished surface shakily, collapsing in a heap on the ground, back against the door as he clenched his legs to his chest, face buried in his knees. He threw the tie away (borrowed that morning from his grandfather's wardrobe), hands running through his thick hair, forcing his forehead into his kneecaps. He wanted to scream; to scream at the world and beg for a different life, to throw himself out of a window and never look back. He was so tired; tired of being the sensible one, tired of being the big brother, tired of having to deal with fucking death. Exhausted with having to act like he didn't care.
Caesar was sitting in the living room on the main sofa, Riley and Cindy to his left. They had managed to track Riley down just outside the church, screaming and cursing words that hardly made sense, his speech impaired with tears. Cindy had been able to calm him down, eventually, and he was now simply a raging mess of fury, eyes sore from crying as he glared at the woman that dared to sit in his grandfather's seat.
Cindy was looking as beautiful as ever; Caesar didn't fancy her, not in the slightest, but there had been a childish crush for about a month when he was twelve, and he had never quite got over her looks. Her waist length, golden hair was woven into a practical and yet, gorgeous style, her sapphire eyes dazzling the room as she straightened out her black lycra skirt, matched with a plain black shirt. Her feet were bare beneath the skin-hued tights, and she kept an arm around her fragile boyfriend, both protective and a barrier in case he tried to act on his anger.
Caesar had never fully acknowledged before how lucky he was. His parents had divorced years ago, but at least he still had them both, and his mother mollycoddled him to pieces. He still had all his grandparents, and even though a few of his cousins were in jail, the majority of his aunts and uncle were only a phone call away. In fact, when he really thought about it, he had pretty much all of his family to turn to in a crisis. When Caesar had met Huey, eight years ago, the Chicagoan had no parents, and that seemed perfectly acceptable; Caesar had never fully realised that his best friend would, of course, have had parents at some point.
There had been a period, just a short one, in which he and Huey had fallen out over something so trivial, he couldn't even remember what it was. He had come home to his mother, complaining furiously, to which she had said,
"Mikey, Huey's had a very different upbringing to you. You're both very similar, but very different at the same time; imagine if one day, me and your father were here, Mikey, and the next, we'd gone. How would it make you feel if we never came back?"
Caesar had tried to imagine that. Tried to imagine how he would feel if his parents really did vanish or were killed, but the idea of living without them was so foreign, so…impossible, to his mind, that he could simply never imagine what it was like have none. It was only now, after eight years, that Caesar was beginning to understand just how much pain his best friend must be in. He had never pushed the topic of Huey's parents, not because he wasn't curious, but because he was a tactful person, and his friend had never chosen to mention them. Not once. As though they never existed.
"Where's Huey gone?"
Caesar chose to break the ice between the three of them, unable to stand their silence amidst the general hum of somber voices.
"I think he went upstairs," Cindy straightened up a little in her seat, eyes narrowing in a particular direction, her tone of voice immediately switching, "an' what da fuck is dat hoe doin' here?"
Craning to one side, Caesar stared as Jazmine entered the room, looking more out of place than ever as she made her way towards them flawlessly, as though the crowd parted for her entrance.
"Da fuck is you doin' here?"
Riley glowered at the mulatto teenager standing just before them, wringing her hands. Jazmine gulped, her legs shaking as though nervous, eyes darting from Caesar, to Riley, to Cindy, and back to Caesar again.
"I wanted to say sorry-"
"I don't care. Get da fuck outta my house; hoes like yous ain't welcome here."
"I wanted to say sorry," Jazmine repeated herself over Riley, the volume higher slightly, eyes directly on Caesar's, "for everything I've done. I didn't mean to hurt anyone even though I know I did, and I know I can't take anything I've done back-"
"Too damn fuckin' right."
"But," her voice pitched over Riley's once again, "I wanted to try. To try and say that I'm sorry and I mean it; I've learnt my lesson, I know I was a bitch. There's been so many problems-"
"Problems?!" Riley was on his feet now, his face mere centimetres from Jazmine's, "You fuckin' bitch! You ain't got a fuckin' clue what having problems is. We all got fuckin' problems, an' yo' ass is one of them! Nobody fucking cares about you, Jazmine. No one."
Jazmine gawped at him, speechless, tears springing to her beautiful eyes, rooted to the spot as she turned to Cindy and Caesar in turn, helpless, begging for support. Cindy glowered at her, as loyal to her boyfriend as ever, and Caesar found he couldn't quite meet her gaze, head bowed to the floor. He had loved Jazmine so, so much, sometimes he believed he still did. But after how she had treated him…what she had done to their relationship. He wasn't sure he could look at her the same way again, let alone ever trust her.
The mulatto gave them a look, a hopeless, pitiful look as if to say, so this is how it is; this is how it's going to always be, before mumbling,
"Where's Huey?"
"Bedroom," Riley muttered, allowing Cindy to pull him back onto the sofa, "why da fuck is you wantin' to see him? He don't care 'bout you neither."
"He cares more than you lot do!" Jazmine cried, turning on her heel to run upstairs, "at least he talks to me! At least he understands!"
Watching her sprint away, Cindy turned to the two boys in pure confusion, eyebrows knitting together,
"I didn't know Huey even acknowledged Jazmine anymore, let alone talked to her."
"Maybe his bitch ass got over her already." Riley only mumbled his words, his voice barely above a whisper, but Caesar was sure he heard them right. Huey? Having a crush on Jazmine? Was that even possible?
"Huey? Can I come in?"
Jazmine's feeble voice quavered under the crack of the door, and Huey sighed gently. He had moved from the ground to his bed, suit thrown on the ground in a very un-Huey-like heap, exchanged for rumpled pyjamas. He considered ignoring her, leaving her to fester in the hall along with the rest of the congregation…but then he heard the sadness in her voice that was more than just pity, and he decided if they both had to be sad…they could at least suffer together.
So, almost silently, he moved to unlock the door before climbing back onto his bed, the noise so soft that it took Jazmine a moment to realise she could enter. She closed the door behind herself, locking it once again, before taking in Huey's disconsolate frame, skinny beneath the baggy clothes that made him seem to have lost a lot of weight in a short period of time. He was in just his pyjamas; a pair of maroon checked bottoms and a plain, faded t-shirt that was more grey than black. He was lying on his unmade bed, back turned towards her, and she wondered how best to approach him.
Gingerly, she edged forwards and clambered up onto the bed beside her once best friend, perching cautiously by his legs.
"Hey, Huey."
He said nothing, eyes still closed as he breathed in deeply, as though struggling to steady himself. Without really thinking, Jazmine moved to lie down alongside, facing him with her head on the spare pillow, waiting for him to look at her. She tucked one arm in against herself and watched as Huey, finally, stared at him, maroon eyes boring into her own. He didn't seem to know what to do with himself, lying gazing at her as if unable to do anything else.
He didn't look to have been crying; he just seemed emotionless, like a blank canvas. Huey was never one to show emotions, not explicitly like her, but there was always a flicker of something.
"Do you want to talk? Or…"
Jazmine had never seen Huey like this, in all the eight years of knowing him, and this wall of nothing was starting to scare her. Huey always had ideas, he was always the leader, he was the one that kept them all going; what were they meant to do when he couldn't even find the power to talk? He stared at her still, as though frozen, and Jazmine rolled over onto her back, looking up at the plastered ceiling with all her might, slim hands fumbling on her stomach.
"I think my parents are getting a divorce," Still no reply, and Jazmine took a deep breath, "they keep fighting, like, all the time. My mum's been having an affair with this man from her work for the past two years, and she never told any of us about it. My dad thought everything was normal, and then he walks in on them in their bed…"
"But your parents…downstairs..," Huey's voice was weak, hoarse, like one who'd been screaming for a long period time, and he could barely string his words together, "I thought…"
"It's a charade," Jazmine frowned at nothing in particular, "they're still trying to put on the perfect family show. Don't want to become a statistic."
"No one's perfect."
Jazmine glanced at the revolutionary, wondering if he meant more by his words than the obvious reply. For the past four years, she had been a self-centered, superficial bitch, believing that she was the absolute epitome of perfect. She had the "perfect" life, a "perfect" world with her at its "perfect" center; only now could she understand that perfect would be anything but to describe her. Huey joined her in gazing at the ceiling, matching her movements as he too shuffled onto his back, arms behind his head.
"Families are screwed up," Huey glowered at the crack in the ceiling, almost back to his usual self, "one day, everything's normal and perfect, and the next, your dad comes home and shoots your mum on your sixth birthday."
Jazmine stared at Huey, her mouth agape as his eyes flickered over her, wondering how she was meant to react to such a confession. Of course she had always wondered about the teenager's parents; it was only natural to be curious. She had just always imagined the conversation would come about more naturally, probably when they were both in a better frame of mind, rather than on his bed after his grandfather's funeral.
Huey slipped back over onto one side, only just looking at her through his heavy lids, before Jazmine did something completely, probably, unacceptable. She mirrored his actions, though pressing herself against his body, too close to be comfortable, before forcing her lips against his. The Chicagoan's eyes blinked open, wine-hues boring into her jade, as she nudged an arm over his waist and flipped them over, her frame crushed against his.
She ran her hands along his chest, under his shirt, caressing his dark skin and brushing her fingertips over the healed wound near his shoulder-blade. The kiss deepened, the passionate heat burning them up, his hands running though her curls, pulling her closer. Her palms ran beneath his pyjama bottoms, dipping under the hem of his boxers to skim his pelvis.
"What are we doing?"
Huey broke the kiss, his eyes brimming with perplexity as Jazmine bowed her head, capturing his lips as her own once more,
"I don't know."
"Don't you think Jazmine's been gone a while?"
Caesar glanced over Riley at Cindy, who was still struggling to console her distraught boyfriend.
"So what?"
"Well, it's Huey," Caesar frowned, "he doesn't even like Jazmine. If he is in his room, why would it take her so long to come back? I mean, he'll have just ignored her.
Upon hearing this, Riley's scowl grew to match one of a similar intensity to the trademark of his brother's. He'd had a feeling for quite some time that there was something going on between Huey and Jazmine, something he couldn't quite put his finger on, but that he was determined to figure out. Choosing not to wait around for his life to continue any longer, the younger Freeman leapt to his feet and stormed up the wooden stairs, checking with a few of the less sympathetic on his way. Apparently, a young girl with big, strawberry-blonde hair and a very shot black dress (far too inappropriate for a funeral; kids these days…) had gone once into his brother's bedroom, and not returned.
Riley thought he knew his brother. Huey surely, wouldn't possibly have let that cheating, lying bitch into his room over himself, his own brother. There was no way; it had to be a mistake. Upon reaching the bedroom, he pressed his ear to the door, straining for any signs of noise. When none came, he tried knocking, again getting no answer. If his brother was alone, he wouldn't have expected him to come out anyway…but the suggestion of Jazmine being in the same room was niggling a thought in his mind, one that couldn't go away.
If she was in his room, if they were alone and if they had nothing to hide…then why would they have locked the door?
And there we have it for this time:) haha, I so hope it's ok^^; I'm so tired-_-
But, please, please (I am absolutely begging you) please review and tell me how you feel! Otherwise, I have no clue if I should carry on or not! I need to know I'm going in the right direction!
Thank you so much guys!