Free I'll Be Down for You: A Bay Area Saga by Xuri Foxx

back to my bed, I grabbed my uncle’s spare off the stand near my walk-in closet, and held it up. “You recognize this phone?”
    He tilted his head to the side and gave me a look that said, ‘ Really ?’ “You’re not serious. That’s a damn iPhone that nine out of ten muthafuckas are walking around with. That’s what you got up to lock the damn door for?” he laughed. “You sure you okay?”
    “Whatever,” I replied, plopping back down on my bed. “This is DJ’s phone. A spare phone apparently. I found it earlier in his desk drawer in his office. There were a bunch of text messages on it and then it started to ring and…then I answered it.”
    “So, you found that phone in DJ’s office, it rings with a call from a stranger and you take yo’ ass to meet the person not knowing who the fuck it was? See, that’s that bullshit that I was talkin’ about. You’re really telling me right now that you went to meet a muthafuckin’ stranger in the middle of us tryin’ to figure shit out?”
    And when he put it like that, I felt stupid all of a sudden. I had acted on impulse and at the time I didn’t see anything wrong with it. “Yeah…” I slowly responded.
    “You heard how stupid that shit sounded even rolling off your tongue, huh?” he shot. “All the shit going on and you—”
    “Stop gettin’ all bent, Khalil. Just let me tell you. Her name is Danielle—Dani for short.”
    “That name don’t sound familiar to me. Who is she?”
    “She said that she was Uncle’s woman. Said he bought her a house in Castro Valley and that…you ready?”
    “Yeah.”
    “…that they lived there together, was about to live together full time.”
    “ Hellll naw,” he said. “Real talk? And you met this female?”
    “Yeah, earlier. She was devastated. Like for real hurt. She didn’t know what happened and said she had been trying to reach Uncle for the past week. She broke down when I told her that we buried him today. I won’t even lie, at first I flashed on her hard because it just seemed suspect to me. I mean, shit, you know…he’s with Eva . I know my uncle had his player ways and shit, but to have a whole other bitch with a whole house and shit in a whole other city?”
    “Shit,” Khalil remarked, just as stunned as I was initially. He inhaled a deep breath, then exhaled. “That nigga didn’t tell me shit about this girl. And then he bought property for her? I gotta look into that. You said you have her number?”
    “Yep. I told her that I would be in touch. I don’t know what for now since Uncle ain’t here, but I told her I would check in on her from time to time.”

10
Khalil
     
     
    Two days later when I rode up to the house in Castro Valley, I didn’t know what to expect. In all the time that I’d been rocking with DJ, this Danielle woman hadn’t ever been mentioned; it was weird because I thought we pretty much told each other everything.
    The street was pristine, and lined with what I knew to be million dollar homes. Immaculate ass houses, with lawns that looked like they hadn’t ever been walked on, and so fuckin’ elite that you could see through everybody’s house. I could definitely see DJ living like this, so if this was his chick, I could see why he’d set her up in something as nice. But she had to be real special for that shit.
    At the top of an incline, the street came to a dead end and rounded into a cul-de-sac. The address that I had in my GPS told me it was the house that sat right in the center at the tip of that island. I pulled into the driveway next to a newer model SUV Rover. Shit , unless this girl is paid on her own, DJ was in deep!
    I cut my engine, hopped out my whip and accessed the alarm—like I even needed to in this damn neighborhood. But shit , white people steal too! I chuckled to myself. Instinctively, I turned around to look behind me because this was one of those neighborhoods where they probably got alarmed if they saw more than one black person.