Here We Go Again Epilogue: Miss Me

Back in New Orleans, Chevy clutched on the wheel driving through Downtown New Orleans, while Raven held the weed in her lap, attempting to roll it up. Chevy smiled smugly, "I don't know why you tryin' to roll. You know if you need me to roll up, I'm a professional. I can roll and drive at the same." He said laughing.
She laughed right back at him, making sure he knew that he was no competition. "Boy boom, you ain't outrolling me, no!" She placed her hand on her heart while breaking the weed down with one hand and placing it inside of the cigar with that same hand. "I promise you baby, I been doin' this a long time, yeah, so you talking bout professional, I should be getting paid by the hour just so you rookies can see what a veteran look like."
Chevy loved the way she talked smack. He hadn't heard a female speak her mind since...Bailey. He laughed and shook his head as the lyrics of the old song Raven had blasting out of the speakers began to flow into his mind. Hearing lyrics about the hardships of growing up fatherless and being a good father made him think about his own past. Again the memory of Bailey, his absentee father, her loving father, and the child he would have given anything to see take a single breath wandered into his mind. He would have stayed in that mind-state had it not been for Raven interrupting his train thought with a braggadocios gesture. "See?" She lifted the perfectly pearled blunt in the air to let the moonlight catch a glimpse of perfection as she deemed it.
He held his fingers out with a enough space to where she could place the blunt perfectly between his fingers. She gave it to him and with a quick glance he looked at it and decided he was going to light it. She was so distracted by looking for something to listen to that she didn't even notice, that is until she smelled the smoke.
She pushed the CD and looked up too see Chevy admiring the blunt. Even he had to admit, it looked and tasted wonderful. He looked up at the road to make sure he wasn't about to hit nobody, then he looked at her. When he had fell into her eyes, he wished he hadn't glanced at her at all. He could tell by her cocky stare that she knew she had won his heart with her rolling skills. "See, I tried told ya I can roll."
The sweet seduction of her voice coaxed his hurt pride. He could only smile, "Yee."
They shared the blunt driving through Downtown New Orleans, and once again Chevy found himself entranced by the music she had playing in her car. He looked at her, surprised that somebody else besides Brody played music that was well over a hundred years old. He recognized the songstress playing immediately as the once beautiful, soulful Sade and he asked, "What you know about this, sweetie?"
She smiled back, blunt in hand, "No, the question is, what you know about it?"
He laughed, "Man, Brody be playing her all the time! I think he slick in love with her. I catch him saying all the time, 'If I was around when she was, she would've been my baby mama'. He be having me laughing on the real."
"Sounds like y'all real good friends."
"That's my brother. He one of the only people in this world
that I completely trust. I mean completely. I tell him everything. He like family to me."
"Must be nice to have friends like that."
He looked at her and hit the blunt again. "You mean you ain't got people like that in the city?"
She shook her head, "No. Not in the city, love. The motto round here still get it how you live. People round chea' be cutthroat, pirates, on the real. Ya gul who you knew since babies can turn around and kill ya over a nigga, and ya boy who you thought you could give ya heart to, he can be the one to earn the price on ya fade, or...." She ran her hand through her kinky twists and replied, "or ya curly twists." Chevy could feel the tension in the air and he knew that he had just stumbled on a sensitive subject. He wanted to change the subject, but before one could come to his mind, she continued to talk, her sexy voice floating over the smooth music blasting from her speakers. "But it's cool, it's cool though, I ain't even tripping cause I know, first chance I get, I'm bouncing out The City. I don't know where I'm gon' go, ya heard me, but I know God gon' lead me somewhere where I can shine, ya heard me, someplace new."
"Yee." She laughed and passed Chevy the blunt. He took a puff of the potent marijuana and asked her, "So what you wanna do? Like do you wanna go to school or work or what?" She looked around, her eyes telling him that she was afraid of having her dream judged or crushed by Chevy's judgment. He smiled, "You don't have to be afraid to tell me. That's one thing I learned from Brody. He said never judge or knock somebody's dream. A dream is something extremely personal and to deny somebody their dream by telling them it would never come true or telling them it's impossible would be like robbing them of their perspective, their opinions, of everything that makes them human, and once you take those things away and a beast comes out of them and destroys you, you can only blame yourself."
Raven formed a face of approval, "Wowwww, ya boy Brody sound real smart."
Chevy smiled, "He is."
Her comfort level rose as they drove the city, anonymous under the dark tint. Before she could tell him her secret dream, his phone rang loudly in his pocket, interrupting her train of thought with the loud rap music coming from his phone. He knew from the ringtone exactly who was calling his phone and from the looks of the celebration he saw at the backstage party, he expected a large amount of belligerence to come through the headset. He answered the phone and the first thing he heard was the loud voice of Brody yelling, "Waaaaaa! Where you at boy!? You missing a crazy party! Toon got bukuu guls out chea' yeah! I'm bout loaded the long way, we got all kind of drank out chea', all kinda dolja, that midnight, dro that is..." The people behind Brody, including Q and Toon, started laughing. "Man you need to come out here, dog! You should see ya' boy Q! He on everything walking, but let me tell you, ain't nothing walking out chea' less then a dime walking round here. They got some ghetto goddesses out here, some suburban angels, some amazons, and they all on us, but you know Kylie ain't goin for all that, but I need you our here dog. Peel some of these guls off me cuz Toon got at least three in the pocket, I'm pretty sure no matter how lame Q is, he gon' leave here wit' two, you need to come out chea' if not for these females, at least to keep Kayla company, celebrate wit' ya brother, wazaam!?"
Chevy was surprised that Brody finally stopped talking. He looked at the phone just to make his phone hadn't hung up. He brought it back to his ear, "Damn, you excited ain't ya?"
"Man, yeah man! Where you at, fall?"
Chevy looked at Raven staring at his phone, clearly waiting for his answer, waiting to see if he'd chase skirts or stay with her, because she had made up her mind that she wasn't going into a mansion party only to get embarrassed. Just wasn't happening. "I'm ridin' wit' chick."
"You talkin bout girl who was backstage with us? Slim was fine yeah. Bring her to the party dog, she need to meet Kylie and nem anyways, you know Kylie asked me who she was as soon as y'all left, ha bruh."
"Word."
"Hell yeah, you know the sissys gotta make sho yo' gul kosher or whatever. You know yo sisters get worried bout they big brother."
"Yee."
Chevy smiled, thinking about Kayla and Kylie with crossed arms, trying to cross examine the cool, composed Raven. He thought it was funny. "So you know where we at ha? We in the mansion district of the Big Easy. I would tell you where it's at, but I know you already know."
"Yee."
"Get down here man!"
"Yee."
"Yeah!" They hung up their phones and Chevy drove for a little while in silence. He exchanged a glance with Raven and turned away embarrassed.
Raven blushed and looked back into his face, studying every detail from the long chin hairs to the thin eyes to the mouth that held all his smiles inside of his mouth. He knew she was looking. Everything inside of him told him to play it cool, but he knew he had to ask her the inevitable question. "You tryna go to this party?"
She wanted to say, "No, I would like to spend this night wit' you and just you. I would like to find out more about you in a quiet setting not one where I was surrounded by everyone you knew, especially wit' two girls who were going to try and check me," but what had came out was, "I'm down for whatever you wanna do, baby."
He shook his head, "Such a girl," he thought. It was easy to read between the lines. Her mannerisms gave away how she really felt. The crazy thing about it was that he felt exactly like she did. "Well, how would you feel if I said I ain't wanna go to that party?"
She didn't want to show her excitement, not to him, so she decided to play it cool. "I would have to ask you why, I mean that's yo peoples. I would almost expect you to want to celebrate wit yo peoples, ha?"
He smiled, and with the hand that held the blunt, he placed his index finger in the air, pointing to the cloth on the car's ceiling, and he said with a smug smile, "Another thing Brody be saying all the time. Never let people expect you to do something unless they truly know you, because if they know you then they know the reason behind you doing something, but if somebody don't know you, then they aren't expecting you to do anything, they're assuming, and that ain't cool. I expected Brody to be at a party. He always been the life of a party, just like he knows I'm the type to be ducked off somewhere chilling. He knows I don't be doing that party life like that. I'll go to a club all day, but only under my terms. If I can't leave when I want to, then I ain't goin' straight up. He already know the business. I ain't finna go to that party, but he know later on. I'm probably goin' to have our own private party on the plane on to the next scene."
"Wow, you know the more you talk to me, the more you talk to me, the more I like you and the more I love Brody."
He laughed, "Why you say that?"
"I mean from the sound of him, he seems like the coolest lil' boy ever! Real understanding, real down to earth. He's like the anti-celebrity, ya' know. You don't meet too many stars like that."
"He's had a real life, man, and I was there to watch him grow up for myself."
"You know what? I do wanna go to that party, if that's cool wit' you? I know you don't like to party, but I just want to meet everybody, ya' know, the people who helped influence the man sitting next to me."
At first, he was wary to introducing her to all of his friends, unsure of whether he could trust her or not, and his silence gave away his suspicions. She quickly realized he was sizing her up to make sure that this wasn't a ploy to get closer to his more famous friends. At first, she had felt insulted by the accusation and crossed her arms defiantly while Chevy kept his eyes glued to the road. Then she had an epiphany. She realized that he had to get that often, girls coming on to him just to get closer to Brody or anybody else famous he may know. Maybe that was the reason why his two sisters had to inspect every girl who he had appeared to like. She felt ashamed and when she was just about to apologize, Chevy said something completely unexpected. "Yee, that's cool."
She was so happy that words just came pouring out of her. "You mean it!?I ain't want you to think I was some kind of gold digger or nothing, it's just...I'm really interested in you, and I wanna know everything about you." It's like a shy spell came over her. She grew so bashful that it was cute. "We can leave whenever you want to."
Like an arrogant man, he smiled and said, "Oh, I know."
She returned his arrogance with some of her own. "Oh...you know now?"
He just smiled. "Yee."
She liked the way his rare smiles came across his face whenever she spoke. He made her feel special enough to disregard his arrogance.
They drove until they reached the mansion district. They knew exactly what mansion Toon and Brody were in. It was the only one with like forty cars parked in the front yard. Chevy drove up and parked the car, then asked her, "You ready?"
She shrugged and laughed, "As ready as I'll ever be." They got out the car and walked up to the beautiful, white mansion as the only couple to enter the expansive house, and they felt right as rain crossing that threshold into sin.