Page 2 of Book Bae

“Thank y’all for coming out tonight. I appreciate y’all,” I stated, pulling my mother in for a hug and kiss.

“Always, baby. We will always be your first and biggest fans,” my mother, Gabriella Livingstone, professed, cradling my face with her hands and then kissing both my cheeks.

“Keep your head right at all times, Son, and keep it on a swivel. You may be upping the level of the game, but niggas gon’ always be niggas, Black or white. Stay true to your craft, your heart, your family, and your soul. You never know who you can trust around you,” my pops, Thomas Livingstone, stated, dapping me up and giving me a side-armed hug.

I kissed his cheek. “You already know, old man. Take care of pretty woman, and I’ll be chatting y’all up in the morning.”

“Hmph,” Mama muttered, and I knew she was on one. I was going to ignore it, but, of course, my messy baby sister, Tamar, wasn’t.

“What is it, Mama?” Tamar asked, smirking.

“I doubt he’ll be calling anyone in the morning. Anytime that woman gets her claws in him, we don’t hear from him for at least a couple of days,” Mama muttered, slanting her gaze at Arabella.

“Mama, come on. Go easy on Bell,” I retorted.

Mama felt like Arabella was the reason my first marriage failed and that she took advantage of me when I was most vulnerable.

“Go easy? She needs to go easy. That woman is like a raptor once she gets her claws in you. She’s tried to push everyone who means anything to you out of your life, including your friends,” she declared, pointing at Mason, Xavier, and Lance.

“Mama, in all fairness, it was Bell who first believed in him as an agent and got him several big deals and this movie project. If it wasn’t for her, where would Micky be?” my oldest sister, Dawn asked, calling me by my childhood nickname.

“That’s right, Mama. If it weren’t for that vulture, Micky would still be out here working hard like us common folks. Big monaayy!” my big sister Brooke interjected sassily, rolling her eyes at me.

“All right. Keep it up. That same big money bought you the salon of your dreams,” I replied.

“It did. It did. I’ma get back in my own lane. I see what you did there,” Brooke responded, giving me the double finger point after pointing at her eyes.

“Y’all wildin’ up in here tonight. Aye, big money, I’m ’bout to bounce. I’ma get up with you later. I got a little honey waiting for me at her place, and I need to put her to bed,” my little brother, Noah, who was eleven years younger than me, announced as he dapped me up.

“You need to stop sleeping with all those little girls and settle down with a good one,” Dawn chided as I walked my family out of the living room and down the hall to the front door.

“Man, I’m only twenty-seven. What I look like not living my best life right now? I got my whole life ahead of me,” Noah declared.

“Unless you get hooked up with a crazy woman who might decide to slash your tires, put sugar in your tank, douse your clothes with olive oil and garlic, post nude pictures of you anonymously all over social media, and email your manager pictures of you at the ball game, in bed screwing a woman who ain’t your girlfriend, and making it rain at the strip club when you was supposed to be at home sick from work, but at least she didn’t end your life prematurely because you screwed around with her heart,” Tamar warned.

“The fuck?” Mama, Dawn, and Brooke all replied at once.

“Ladies, language.” My father reprimanded my sisters, but not my mother.

“Always looking at things from the wrong angle, Tae,” Noah replied.

“Men always sticking their wanker in the wrong hole, Noah,” Tamar countered.

“Would you two stop arguing? That’s all you ever do,” my middle brother, Joshua, declared.

“It’s all in good fun, big bro,” Tamar declared with a pout.

I hugged and kissed everyone good night and watched as my siblings all climbed in their individual cars, and my parents climbed in the car service I had hired for them for tonight.

I swear I didn’t know how my parents raised all of us under one roof. We were alike yet so different and loud and rambunctious. At forty-two, Dawn was reserved, polite, a wife and mother of three boys, and owned her own consignment shop; Brooke, at thirty-nine, was opinionated but loveable, loud but funny, and she was a married mother of two and owned her own salon. We had just celebrated Josh earlier this year, who at thirty-three, was the more serious one of us, which may have contributed to him becoming a pediatric surgeon. Twenty-seven-year-old Noah was a ladies’ man who loved to party, and he had joined SWAT last year. Tamar, at twenty-three, was the baby, and she had just graduated college. She worked as an aesthetician while she figured out her next stage of life. She was moody sometimes, but a very sweet but spoiled girl, and clearly neurotic based on her comment.

My parents were proud of us, no matter our level of success or chosen career field. After graduating college with my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, I became an adjunct professor at Cherokee Springs University teaching courses in literature and creative writing. While the pay wasn’t much, it gave me time to focus on my literary career.

I submitted my mystery novel, Blood in the Delta, repeatedly for two years at every convention I could attend, from the moment I graduated college, before Arabella finally picked it up. That girl worked magic with what she had been given, and I hadn’t looked back since. That was nine years ago.

I said my goodbyes to everyone else until the last guests had left.

“Well, that was successful,” Arabella stated, curled up on the couch.