Free A Sticky Situation by Kiki Swinson

can set her up in a nice spot.”
    “Yeah, I know. She gon’ be happy as hell, too. All she keeps talking about is how she can’t wait until we can be together again. But it’s gon’ be really hard, ’cause the chick I’m fucking with now is the type that would do some underhanded shit if she found out Samantha was home and that we was back together.”
    “Look, dawg: don’t ever let a bitch get the upper hand on you! It’s too many hoes out here to be putting up with dumb shit! Look at me; I got my wife, Lacy, and two side chicks. So, if one starts giving me a motherfucking headache, I’ll dip on her ass in a minute and go be with the other one. It’s that simple! And I ain’t gon’ have it no other way,” Mike said. “You see how I be handling Melody in there? I don’t let her get away with shit. I come here and make my money, get some pussy, and before I go, I’ll hit her off with some dough. That’s the extent of it. See, she knows about Lacy and my other chick Trina, but she also knows that she can’t question me about them, either. And if anyone of them ever stopped by here to see me, she knows she better not open up her motherfucking mouth about shit that goes on in this house. If she ever tried that, she knows I would shut her down.”
    “Damn, nigga. You ain’t playing, huh?”
    “Hell nah, I ain’t playing! I got too much shit invested out here to be letting a chick come in and fuck everything up because she’s caught up in her feelings. I promise you that I ain’t gon’ have it!”
    Once Mike touched on every issue concerning the business venture and how he wanted shit to run around there, I sealed the deal with a handshake. Before I realized what I had done, he reminded me by saying, “Nigga, you are about to be the third richest hustler in the Tidewater area!”
    I laughed. “I take it you and Jay got the number one and the number two slots?”
    “You sure learn quickly,” he said, patting me on my shoulder before he left.
    After Mike left me in Melody’s bedroom, all I could do was stand there with a smile on my face and daydream about that brand new Bentley coupe I was going to be pushing in the next thirty days. I also pictured buying myself a whole new wardrobe and going into a jewelry store to cop a couple of custom-made diamond pieces. I was going to make sure Samantha was all right, too. I couldn’t have her struggling like I did when I first came home. Nah, I couldn’t have that. She was still my shorty, and I loved her to death. I didn’t know what I was going to do for Maxine, other than give her the start-up money for her business, because she seemed to have everything. She was the most independent and controlling chick I’d ever dealt with, and most of the time we butted heads because of it. The shit I went through with her, I never had to go through any of it with Samantha. Sam was a sweetheart and would do anything I asked her to do. She’d been down for me since the first day we met, which was over seven years ago. But for the first two years of our relationship, shit was beautiful. We got money together and we lived together. We practically did everything together, so when the heat fell down on us five years ago, she had no problem going down for the cause. She stayed true to a nigga, so I was going to do the same for her. That was my word!
    Mike hung out at the spot with me and Melody for the rest of the night. While he was there, he recruited a handful of thoroughbred cats from around the way. Most of them were young boys around the age of seventeen and eighteen. They were known around Portsmouth for having heart, and that’s what we needed for this mission. They got hired on the spot. After everybody got into position, Mike and I ended up raking in over twenty grand, and were happy because of it.
    Before the young boys left, Mike hit them each off with a couple hundred dollars and promised them that he was going to arm a couple of them with burners, just in