**MATURE CONTENT AHEAD**

A few days had gone by before I saw Tiana again. I really didn't even have time to look for her, but I was checking in with mama and Charity one day when God just decided to throw me a bone. She was right there.

Right there.

My stomach flipped upside down as soon as I saw her, but I didn't show it.

Of course she was at mama's.

That's where she always was.

            "Hey." I knocked on Charity's door one time, like I always did before walking in, and stopped dead in my tracks. There she was, sitting on Charity's bed and taking Charity's braids out, chopping it up about boys like she and I hadn't just done the grown folks like three days before. I gave her an upward gangsta nod. "Waddup."

            She gave me one back and grinned, but didn't say anything. She probably didn't want to give herself away. Tiana's fingers never stopped flipping through Charity's hair, but I could tell she was shocked as shit to see me. It had been a while since I had been home. I wanted to talk to Tiana alone so bad, but business first.

            "Hey sis...let me holla at you for a minute."

            Charity sucked her teeth, rolled her eyes and sighed extra loud, but she also got up and came over to me.

            "What Kenney? Can't you see I'm busy?"

            "Hey," I put my hand gently on her arm to soothe her nerves before she could start popping off at the mouth. "You straight, Charity? Need anything?"

            "No..." I could tell she did. "Well..." She looked over at Tiana and then pulled me further out into the hall like she was embarrassed to talk in front of her. "We need some groceries, Kenney." I peeled $200 off and handed it to her. "And..." her hand went up to her head and she looked back over at Tiana. I know Tee peeped me handing my sister money, but she acted like she didn't see anything. Tiana knew what was up, though. She had been around us long enough. "I...want to get my hair done, too..." Charity looked at me like I wasn't going to give her the money.

            Trippin'.

I always gave her whatever she asked for, because she never asked for much.

            I peeled off another $100 and handed it to her. "That enough?"

            "It's...$150. Plus the hair..." She folded up the $300 that I had already given her and put it in her pocket.

            "Bullshit."

            "It is Kenney. They're micro braids." I looked into her eyes and knew that she was telling the truth. I knew how self-conscious Charity was about her looks, even though she was beautiful to me. She and Sammy looked just like mama and Aunt Jazz. They also had enough hair to not need fake hair, but I stayed out of women's business. Me getting in that couldn't go anywhere but wrong...

            I gave her $400 more. "Get mama's hair done, too. And Tiana's. Anything else?"

            "No..." her eyes shifted. "We're good..." She was keeping something from me that she wanted me to know.

            "What, Charity?"

            She looked back at Tiana again, and then walked further down the hall.

            "What?" I repeated, following after her. When she still didn't say anything, I helped her out, since I already knew what was up. I always knew what was going on with them. I had all kinds of eyes on mama and Charity. At all times. They just never knew that I was keeping tabs on them like that. "So...I heard mama got a new dude."

            Charity nodded and looked down at the ground.

            "He nice?"

            She looked at me and smiled a real smile. I hadn't seen that in a while. "Yeah, he's real nice. You'll like him."

            I nodded and kept direct eye contact with my sister. "Good. So...he doesn't hurt her?" I was thinking of Jazz and Rico. Charity shook her head no. "And...he doesn't hurt you? Or...try anything...?" She shook her head no again. "So you're comfortable with him in the house?"

            She nodded and looked directly at me. "Yes, very." She knew for sure that if she had given me any other answer, his ass would have been...not a problem anymore. I may have been just twelve years old to them, but to the rest of the block, I was a grown ass man. "Yes," she nodded again. "He's really good. To both of us."

            I maintained eye contact with her. "If he's so good to you, why do you need groceries from me?" I was thinking of Tiana's stepfather, and how he always ate all their food and gave her mama drugs, and never restocked their kitchen.

            Charity looked down again and wouldn't look back up at me. "You know how mama is. She won't tell him when we need things. She would never tell anyone but you." She looked back up at me and her eyes glistened.

            Fuck was this dude? Stupid? He couldn't take one look at the house and tell that they needed shit? You couldn't tell it by looking at them, I made sure of that. But I knew he had been over to the house a few times. Mama must have only kept him in the living room.

            "I'll talk to him."

            "Will you?" She looked hopeful.

            I gave her a smile that let her know everything would be alright. "Of course, sis."

            "Thanks, Kenney." She hugged me and then walked back towards her room. I followed. There was no way that I was leaving without at least getting Tiana's number.

            Tiana looked up when we walked in like she had been totally preoccupied with whatever the hell she was looking at, but I knew she had heard it all. She wouldn't say anything, though. She was good people. I had known her my whole life, and she had never been anything but good.

            "What's up witchya?" I swatted her leg playfully as I walked past and sat in a chair next to the window. She blushed and smiled, but didn't say anything.

            Charity put in a movie and smiled gratefully at me again, and then sat back down in front of Tiana so they could finish taking the rest of her braids out. Tiana took all damn day doing that shit, too, and the only thing I could do was stare at her and wish I was on that bed with her. I know she was feeling the heat, because every few braids she would look back to see if I was still watching her. Damn straight I was. It was all I could do not to put Charity out her own room and go to work. I knew Tiana would've been wit' it, too.

A man can tell.  

            When Tiana finally took the last braid out, Charity jumped up and said "Y'all want drinks?" We both nodded eagerly, jumping at the chance to be alone for a few.

            "Y'all got popcorn?" I asked innocently, knowing that would take the longest of everything in the kitchen to make.

            "Yeah, Kenney." Charity smiled at me, happy to be able to do something for me, since I was always doing things for her, and then left the room. I watched her go. My sister was mean as hell, but I understood her.

            Smiling faintly, I looked back over at Tiana and stood up. We didn't have much time, so I walked straight to her and went to work. She didn't even fight it, just grabbed me tight and said my name real loud. Too loud.

            "Shhh..." I chuckled and pulled back to look at her face. She was beautiful. So beautiful. I ran my thumb across her bottom lip and kissed her again. Then I pulled her panties to the side and slid up in her. Real easy. Like she had been wet since the minute she seen me walk through the door. It felt so. damn. good. Even better than I remembered. But then damn Charity walked into the room and started screaming like someone broke into the house, scaring the shit out of me. I almost nutted right there in from of my sister.

            I looked down at Tiana, who looked a little embarrassed, but not really, and then pulled out real slow so I wouldn't hurt her. The OGs taught me that. When I was younger and used to be around them, they would pull out real slow for the ladies they liked. With the crackheads they would just bust, pull out and keep it moving. But I loved Tiana, so I went slow for her. I stared into her brown, almost black, eyes a minute longer and wanted to kiss her again. But I knew Charity would shit a brick if I did, just by the way she was screaming.

            "What the fuck Tiana?" Charity was yelling at the top of her lungs. "I'm the only one who never called you a fucking whore you fucking bitch! My little brother? Ew! Ho! I'm the only one left who still sticks up for you! I'm the only reason why they don't fuck with you every day!" Her voice was at a pitch I had never heard before. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Charity pulled me off of Tiana before I even had a chance to stand all the way up and went straight for her throat. "Fucking whore!"

            Charity pushed me out of the way, and I swear she was trying to rip Tiana's beautiful face off. I was in shock, so it took me a minute to figure out what the hell was going on. I couldn't figure out why Charity would trip so hard. Meanwhile, Tiana was getting her face ripped off, so I tried again to step in, and pull my pants up at the same time. Charity was strong as a bull, so it took me a minute to pull her off the girl. When I finally pulled Charity away, she slipped out of my grip and was back on Tiana immediately.

             She was kicking and punching Tiana so hard, I thought we were about to have a body on our hands. Charity was crazy as shit and everyone knew it. Sammy was the same way. So was mama. And everyone knew that, too.

            "Charity..." I put my arms around her again. "Charity, get off her." I finally pulled her off of Tiana, and this time held both of her arms down in a bear hug. "What the fuck, sis?" I didn't understand. I looked over at Tiana and felt so bad because her pretty face was all messed up. Tiana was family. Why would Charity do that to someone we loved?

            "My fucking brother, you whore!" Charity spat at her. "What the fuck is wrong with you? He is only twelve years old!" She spit at Tiana again and tried to get out of my grip. I pulled her out of the room and into the hallway, then I blocked her up against the wall with my body. Charity was tall for a fourteen year old girl, but I still had her by a good two inches.

            "Charity...calm down." I blocked her in more until she had no choice but to chill and look up at me. "Tiana's my girl, Charity. She...that's...we..." I didn't even know how to put what I was feeling into words, but Charity understood what I was trying to say and suddenly put all of her rage into me.

            "What?"

            "She's..." my voice faltered. I didn't want to give my sister one more reason to hate me. "She's...my girl, Charity. I want her...like that..."

I didn't know how else to say it.

            "What the fuck Kenney?" She reached back and, at such close range, punched me right in the jaw. I immediately let her go and backed up. The girl could still pack one hell of a punch. I grabbed my mouth and looked at my hand to see if I was bleeding. "Kenney..." she shook her head and kind of laughed, but not really. "You're dumb as fuck, little brother." Then she pulled back and punched me again in the chest. "You don't even live here. Get the fuck out. Asshole."

            I don't know why, but her words cut me to the bone, and she knew they would before she said them. She was right. I didn't live there. And I hadn't for a very long time.

            Charity stormed down the stairs and I heard the front door slam shut. Then I went back into the room to get Tiana. There was no way I was leaving her there with my crazy ass sister. Charity was a nutty nut for real. Nobody crossed her. Ever. And that was exactly why.

            "Hey...Tee...let's go..."

             My voice trailed off. Tiana was just sitting there on the bed, staring at me with her huge brown eyes. She was licking the blood off of her bottom lip. I could tell she had been crying, but was done by the time I walked back into the room. The way she was licking her lip made me want to lick it, too. I guess Tiana couldn't hear everything that we were saying out in the hallway, because by the time I came back in the room, she was looking at me like she expected me to be thinking the same way about her that my sister did.

            "Why?" she asked, still seductively licking her lip. "She just left the house, right?" Tiana sat back further onto the bed and kind of opened her legs like she was waiting for me to get back in between them.

            I thought about it.

            But I knew my sister well enough to know that I had to get Tiana out of there before Charity came back inside.

            I ran a hand tiredly over my face and looked back toward the door. "Tee..."

            "Kenney...?" she asked softly. When I looked back over at her, she inched her hand down between her legs, and licked her lips again. "You let those crackhead bitches suck you?"

            I was shocked out of whatever fantasy I was keeping to myself. "Huh?" My voice cracked. Tiana chuckled, then gave me that serious but sweet face again.

            "When they can't pay. You let them suck you off, right?"

            "Um..." I gulped. The hell was she bringing that shit up for?

            Her face kind of changed, but then went right back, like she thought maybe I wasn't how she thought I was, but she had gone too far with it to go back now.

            "Let me."

            I looked back at the door again. Charity was gonna fuck us both up if she came back in and we were still there. She may have even left to get the rest of her girls to jump Tiana.

            I had to get Tee out of there.

            Fast.

           "What?"

I was losing my patience. What kind of bullshit was Tiana on right now? She fingered herself again. She was pissing me off and making me want to fuck her at the same time.

"Let me do it. I can do it even better than them, Kenney. Let me show you..."

I had to blink a few times before I could finally get my mind right. It was like Charity had knocked Tiana into another personality. True, I hadn't been around them in a while, but this wasn't the girl I knew. At all. It was like Charity had ripped Tiana's first face off, the face that I knew and loved, so that I could see some other face that I never even knew was back there. And it was like as soon as Tiana realized or thought that other face was the one I was looking at, she was just like fuck it. Let me show him the rest of me, too.

The thing is, I wasn't buying it. And I didn't want that. It felt like she was forcing herself to be this way in front of me and I couldn't figure out why. Like that's what she thought I wanted. I guess maybe she thought that's what would keep me from turning on her, too. It was almost like she forgot who I was. Maybe in her mind, I had just become the average nigga that she had to put on a show for. But she didn't have to do all that standard ho shit for me. She already had me.

Since day one.

And she should have known that by now.

She was making me uncomfortable.

Real uncomfortable. I loved and trusted Tiana, and I didn't want her to all of a sudden be somebody that I had never met before. I didn't like when people switched up personalities on me. I never had.

Quickly, I put on the same mask of patience and kindness that I had seen mama wear so many times before, when people asked her one too many questions about daddy. It was the same mask that Aunt Jazz wore all the time, even if nobody was talking to her at all. Even when I knew that was nowhere near what Aunt Jazz was feeling, she made sure that was the only thing that I saw.

I watched Tiana closely.

I was confused.

And frustrated.

But I smiled directly into Tiana's eyes anyway, because I knew that's what she liked, and what she was hoping that I would do.

She smiled back at me, and kind of went back to normal. Then she looked embarrassed. She didn't need to feel that way. I knew she had just gotten the sense knocked out of her. She was probably confused as shit about what had just happened, just like I was. I flashed her more dimples, to let her know that she was safe and everything was still cool between us.

She smiled even wider, probably because that's what she was afraid of.

That she wasn't safe.

And we weren't cool.

I loved it when Tiana smiled at me, I always had.

We both seemed to disarm each other at the same time. 

Still smiling directly into her eyes, I said "Some other time, maybe."

This seemed to satisfy her enough to make her move on. She giggled nervously and stood up.

"Count on it." Then she walked right up to me and tongue kissed me until my knees felt weak.

I just stared down at her, and then followed her out of the room and down the stairs. This was definitely something...that I had never dealt with before.

Looking at my watch, I cursed out loud and realized that I was almost late for my post. With my uncle, there was no such thing as late. And I had seen once or twice exactly what he meant by "no such thing."

That wasn't about to be me.

I kissed Tiana one more time after I made sure that she made it safely out of the house. I wanted to walk her home, but there wasn't time. After she started walking in the opposite direction, I jogged up the street toward the long ass night that I knew I had ahead of me. I wasn't in the mood to deal with that crackhead bullshit right then, but until mama's new boyfriend got his own stuff together, I knew mama and Charity wouldn't eat without me.