You wouldn’t know how it feels. You wouldn’t want to. Never in my life, could I wish internal pain like this for my worst enemy. My own brother can’t even have the balls to tell me how it is. To tell me what it is.
I had only been inside for two years yet only a fool would think it started then. I’m no fool, alright? But I guess everyone is a fool for love, eh?
Pops used to tell me there was no difference between love and chickenpox. I guess he was right. No matter how you play life, they’re both going to inevitably grab you. The longer it takes, the harder it fall. Life is basically a criminal disguised as a teacher. The one class you never signed up but thank for the lessons anyways.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t let my son go down like that. He was only a small age. My 14 year old boy couldn’t be punished for a body count that was not his to have, and if I could do it all again, you know I would.
I met his mother when I was 19. She used to hang with the family a lot. Her excuse was because she couldn’t stand her own but deep down I knew she was just feeling me. I was feeling her too. She was dangerously contagious. In a good way though. Her smile could give life to a blind man, but her eyes were my biggest weakness. I guess I wasn’t the only one though. But I already knew that.
Yet, she was still mine and that’s all that mattered. I know all the guys know that there is something about having a woman that everyone wants. It made you feel powerful or something. I can’t put the word together to describe that feeling but I know you can relate. Aura isn’t something you describe. Your either born with it or your not and having a girl as beautiful as July was undeniably a representation of that. I mean, pree the name. Not everyone is going to have a girl called July.
She was an only child to parents who would do anything to protect her even if it meant jeopardising the things she loved. I didn’t blame them though. I wasn’t exactly the best example of a corporate dude they wanted her to get involved with. You can guess that I was the exact opposite. Yet, she still chose me, and that’s all that mattered. But one thing I learned is that in this life, you’ll always have choice, right or wrong it’s still yours to make.
I grew up in the streets, emotionally groomed by a father who was emotionally groomed by his. We didn’t no know Citibank corridor or no cubicle. We knew how to flip it. And how to flip it again. We dealt with the purest kind. But the minute I met her, I knew that what I did in my life did not define the man I am. But the man I thought I was? Yeah that cost me. Perceived dominance can do a thing or two to you. It hinders the learning, keeps you blind to growth just because you think your the man. A n*gga couldn’t have been so wrong for such a long time. That’s what a good woman would do to you. A bad one too.
Being the oldest of three boys, it’s only natural that my emotions resorted to reactions aggressively. Whatever you do, you never let the young g’s know you ain’t doing too good. Even if it concerns them. July slotted in with the family seamlessly. Not only did she show me a different type of light to the life I was living, she glowed around everyone else too. Everyone except for my mother.
My mother never said much about July. She didn’t have to. There was a particular way she’d leave the room when July entered it. Not dramatic. Not obvious. Just a quiet exit, like a woman who already knew how the film ended and didn’t want to watch it again. I used to think it was jealousy. Mothers and their sons, you know how it goes. But my mother wasn’t that type of woman. She was the type that had already lived three lives before we were even born. The type that recognised things she wished she didn’t. She told me once that some things reveal themselves when they’re ready, not when you are. I didn’t know she was talking about July. I didn’t know she was talking about all of it.
Troy and Romeo, my two younger brothers and closest friends. The pair of dumb and dumber have always looked up to me ever since my father got lost trying to pick himself up after he lost his father. He hasn’t been the easiest to interpret while the smell of booze started to hang out on the wrinkles of his lips while he spoke. The boys turned to me when it came to trying to solve their internal battles in their adolescent years. Troy always opened up to me about the little things. Romeo didn’t think they mattered. He rather watch how I step than hear about it, and I have to admit, Romeo had that blackspeare swag about him. The type of swag that could get a good girl in trouble. Romeo has always been a curious guy. A tester of faith. A sway that even made risk fear his actions. But I’ve always been pretty sure that blood had always been thicker than thoughts. But just because it’s pretty doesn’t mean it’s true. Romeo liked what I liked and being the big brother that I am, that was a blessed feeling. Right until I noticed he also liked July.
Troy caught me outside one evening while Romeo was still inside with July and the baby. He had that look on his face he’d get when something was sitting on his chest. The one where his jaw tightened but his eyes went soft. I knew that look better than he did.
“Lon.” He only called me that when it was serious.
“Talk to me.”
He looked back at the door. Then at me. Then at his hands like they were going to finish his sentence for him.
“You ever feel like the people closest to you are the ones you should be watching the most?”
I laughed. I actually laughed. Told him he’d been watching too many of those late night conspiracy documentaries. He smiled but it didn’t reach anywhere near his eyes. He nodded slow, the way people do when they’ve accepted that the moment has passed.
“Yeah. Yeah you’re right.”
He went back inside. I stood there for a second, felt something move through me that I couldn’t name, then followed him in. Romeo had Blaze on his lap. July was laughing at something he said. I remember thinking how good everything looked.
I should have let Troy finish his sentence.
I’ve noticed. I’ve been building cases on this notice for a long time. It was not until I went in that my cases produced the kind of evidence that hearsay couldn’t convince me of otherwise. Romeo saw her eyes just the way I did. He didn’t do a good job hiding it either. Every-time she’d walk through that door, he became a different person. He started to talk better, stand taller. He tried to send a message he didn’t mean to almost like he was butt dialling it. He tried to compete with me for what was already mine. But I didn’t pay no mind to it. Why would I? He’s my brother. My good friend.
But I did pay mind to it. Not until July did. At first, it was the jokes.
“Alonso, check your little brother. He thinks he’s you when he talks to me.”
I laughed it off the first time. I laughed it off the second and third time too. What am I supposed to do? Slap him? Nah, that would only mean that whatever the void was trying to tell me is true. Thing is, the void was trying to tell me something different. Something crazy. Something that my mother seen a long time ago.
I couldn’t let it consume me. Not while knowing that we were about to give birth to the joy of my life. But the void started to eat at me more and more ever since I had my baby boy. How and why didn’t make sense anymore. I got a job over at the local gas station the minute Blaze was born because I swore to myself I wouldn’t sell another pack even if my life depended on it. Literally. I took on more hours than Blaze needed, and I knew July couldn’t do it all on her own. So, just like I’ve been there for my brothers, my brothers were there for me. Willingly.
Romeo never asked for anything in return. That was the thing about him. He’d be there before you even knew you needed him. The morning I picked up my first shift at the station he was already at the door, coffee in hand, telling me he had it covered. I remember looking at my brother and feeling something close to pride. Like I’d raised him right. Like everything I had sacrificed for those boys had produced exactly the man I needed him to be. I hugged him at that door like he was saving my life. He was. Just not in the way I thought.
Romeo was there when I left for work in the morning and there when I got back. He was still doing the devil’s work so it was easier for him to check up on July and the baby every so often, being there when she needed someone most. We had made Romeo the Godfather of Blaze and he took that role seriously. Blaze basically had two fathers up until the age of 14. The minute I went in confirmed what I had been feeling all along. I was never a father in the first place.
Troy was the one who finally couldn’t take it anymore. I know that now. He had been sitting on the truth the way a man sits on a grenade, waiting for the right moment that never comes. He found them. In my house. The house I had just bought July as a push present. The home I built with every hour I clocked at that station, every deal I closed, every version of myself I buried to become something worth coming home to.
From what I pieced together, Troy pushed her aside and called it what it was. He told Romeo it was done. That he was going to tell me everything. Romeo did what Romeo always did. He talked. He reasoned. He told Troy that what a man doesn’t know can’t break him. But Troy had watched me break slowly for years without even knowing I was broken. He was done watching.
They got physical. Troy was always underestimated. He got the better of Romeo in front of July, which I imagine was the most humiliating thing a man like Romeo could experience. Losing in front of the woman he had built his whole secret life around. That’s when the mask came off. He found my gun. The one I had kept in that house that only family knew about. He used it on the only person in that house who actually loved me.
Blaze was fourteen. My son. The boy I worked myself to the bone for, the boy I coached to love his father above everything, the boy who never needed to be told who his father really was because he already felt it. He was smart like that. Perceptive in a way that skipped a generation. He knew Romeo was his blood not because anyone sat him down and explained it but because the truth has a frequency that a sharp mind picks up on its own. He loved me anyway. Maybe more because of it. Maybe he thought love was a choice and he was choosing me the way I had always chosen everyone else before myself.
So when it all fell apart in that house, Blaze did what I raised him to do without ever meaning to. He stood in front of the people he loved. Romeo and July let him. They stood behind a fourteen year old boy and said nothing. Did nothing. And I did what I have always done my entire life. I swallowed it. I took it on. I told myself it was for my son not knowing that the son I was protecting had two fathers and only one of them was standing in a courtroom.
The deal in Monaco. The house. The gas station years. All of it was me loving everyone around me into a better life while quietly starving my own. That’s the thing about being the kind of man I am. The love never runs out. But nobody ever thought to pour some back.
It’s been two years. I picked up the skill to draw out of my own thoughts. The more I drew, the more I figured out my mind. The pictures finally labelled the pain I’d been feeling.
I drew a picture of my 19 year old self standing right next to my two brothers, my greatest friends. I drew a picture of July and her most beautiful eyes. I drew a picture of my father and mother holding my son by the hospital bed July gave birth in. I then drew a picture of the times I would see Romeo with his hands hanging around July. Drew a picture of the time he gave her an almost too familiar hug. I finally drew a picture of him kissing her cheek for a picture taken at a family reunion. The blank canvas finally filled itself. It was not until I looked up at the rock ceiling, that I had finally accepted that July was never mine in the first place.
Accepted. Not just realised. Because energy doesn’t lie, people do. July lied to me. Romeo lied to me. But worst of all, I lied to me. I fell in love with the idea of being a fool for love not realising I was being foolish. I had made the choice to accept that as long as she was mine nothing mattered. That Blaze could only be mine, and that I’d only be foolish to believe that Romeo wouldn’t go there. The thing is it takes two, not three. Romeo killed his younger brother because he refused to live a fugazi life any longer. He warned him countless of times to tell me the truth. Romeo didn’t think he owed me that. After everything I had done. Everything I did for my brother and good friend. I lived with the “gooseberry effect” for over a decade for my brother and good friend but he didn’t even think I was worth a life of my own. He thought he deserved mine.
He can have it. The life I never had. Right now, I’ma start my own.
THE HOOD AUTHOR’S NOTE ✍🏾
Most people think the third wheel is the one on the outside looking in. This story is about something far more painful than that. The man who built everything, gave everything, and was performing in a life that was never fully his. The most dangerous third wheel isn’t visible. He’s the one holding it all together without knowing he was never really in it.
A 10 knows the difference between being needed and being chosen. Know which one you actually are in the spaces you give the most to.
Every last Sunday of the month I push out a premium piece completely free. A gift from me to you. This is undoubtedly one of my best. If it sat with you, share it. Share the parts that hit. And if you’ve been riding with IN10MACY without a paid subscription, let this be the piece that changes that. Your support is what keeps this going and the vision is bigger than you know. These stories are destined to become animated series. We’re just getting started.
Stay solid.
#Stay10
— This is your Hood Author, Mr.10
IN10MACY DOES NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE INTIMATE CONVERSATION.
Third-wheeling with friends and a couple is one thing.
Third-wheeling in your life is a whole ‘nother level.
Let me ask you this question.
Have you ever given everything to something or someone only to realise the role you were playing was never the one you thought?
Drop your answer below. 💜🥂
Stirred, frightened and intrigued by the story. Is this the end or will there be more? Of this story?
I loved your story 🫶