GRIND (The Silver Nitrate Series Book 1) (5 page)

“Silver, baby, please! I think someone is after me… I can’t go to my apartment. I think they’ve been there.”

“Ain’t nobody tryna kill you, David. You been sayin’ this mess forever. You need to go home and sleep this off. Just when I think you have your shit together, you go and do some mess like this! We’re not gettin’ back together and I’m done fucking you, too, so stop trying to call here and lie, make up excuses to come over.”

“Silver, please! I gotta—”

“Bye, David!”

…And she’d slammed the phone down. Less than twenty-four hours later, he was dead…

According to the coroner, his body had over nine bullets pelted into it that night, and worst of all, he didn’t die right away. He bled to death in that car for Lord knows how long… feeling the pain… feeling the rejection… gripping his cell phone with a battery that had run all the way down.

And now, she suffered in silence. She’d not told a soul how he’d begged her for life, when all she’d done was push him into the arms of death…

“Hey!” Clara beat on the door. “Silver, you takin’ too damn long. We’re going to be late!”

Startled out of her grief, her eyes flew open. In contained movements, she stood straight, then reached for her sponge and bar of Ivory soap. “I’ll be…” She sniffed, corrected her voice, got her damn tone in check. “I’ll be out in a minute!”

“I told you not to start messin’ with that damn bike again. See? You play too much!”

“Clara, you can go by ya damn self, okay? You told me about this band, Gritty Pit, whatever the hell their name is, at the last minute. I’m doing this for
you
, not me, so I suggest you calm the hell down and be patient.” Her lips twisted in annoyance as she debated telling the woman to take her demands and shove them up her ass. “Hell, I could be just as content staying at home tonight. You act like this is a gift to me or somethin’.”

“You never want to go out anymore! You need to do something more than go to work and play video games, Silver. Just hurry up, alright?!” The woman stormed away from the door, finally leaving her unaccompanied.

Left alone with her thoughts, she struggled to get out of the funk she’d drowned in. The man was haunting her, and she knew she deserved the ghost of love-life past. Slowly but surely, she slid the soap along her skin, going over every inch with meticulous precision. She winced when the icky thoughts tried to go on repeat, like heartburn. The shame of it all suddenly made her feel filthy and grimy; it had nothing on the thick, sludgy oil remains embedded under her nails and the obsidian colored dust that coated her hair from toying with that damn bike. She scrubbed and scrubbed, but wasn’t convinced she could wash the humiliation away or admit the truth, even to herself. But she had to, so she did, and right then and there, it stared her in the face.

“David… I’m sorry,” she whispered as she reached for the shower faucet and cut the water short, choking out the words. “I’m
so
sorry.”

She quickly swiped at another budding tear that had the audacity to try and make an appearance, make a fool of her. Stepping out of the tub enclosure, she grabbed a butterscotch towel, wrapped it around her dripping wet body, and flung the door open to be immediately kissed by a brush of cool air. Her bare wet feet left footprints all along the uneven floorboards as she walked to her bedroom, dried off, and put on a fresh pair of panties and bra. The sounds from the living room television reached her. Clara was watching music videos…

The sound of Lauren Hill’s classic, ‘Ex-Factor’, serenaded her as she flipped through her closet and removed a black, long-sleeved shirt from an upper shelf and a pair of newly laundered jeans. Bobbing her head to the heavy bass beat, she dropped to her knees and grabbed her shearling-lined black boots. Still dancing about as she slipped the garments on, she sang the lyrics while moving about, looking here and there for her gold hoop earrings. She swooped them off the dresser, grabbed the keys to her black Kia Optima, and headed up the hall.

“Alright, I’m ready.” She sighed.

Clara turned towards her, her face morphing to an expression of disgust as if she were looking at some scaly reptile stuffed in a pair of pumps.

“No, tha fuck you’re
not
!” She scanned her up and down real fast a few thousand times for good measure. “You ain’t going
no
where with me, looking like that, Silver!”

“What?!” Silver raised her arms and looked down at her shirt and boots, then back into her friend’s eyes. “Why is this a problem? I’m clean.” She did a three-sixty turn. “My clothes are clean, too.”

“Your hair ain’t combed, your face is dry and plain. You know better than this. I’ve seen you dressed better to go pull weeds! What tha hell is going on with you?”

“What the hell is going on with me?” Silver pointed at herself. “You mean what the hell is going on with
you
! I just worked ten hours, Clara, with no lunch break… A woman is tired, okay?! I ain’t been behind a make-up counter like you all day, gigglin’ and telling women how nice they look and they’d look even better if they smeared some pore-clogging shit they can’t afford all over their face.”

“Oh, so now you want to turn this into something personal? I have you know, Silver, I am selling self-esteem, not silliness, and I’m a make-up artist, damn it! I sell the cosmetics to help make ends meet and I’m good at what I do, okay? That was a low blow!”

Silver sighed and looked towards the television. After deliberating a moment or two, she did what she always hated to do…

“Alright, I’m sorry, Clara… but damn, your naggin’ is ridiculous tonight. I’m bushed, okay? Cut me a break. And besides, we’re not going out to see the Queen of England or some shit. It’s a damn club! Who cares?” She shrugged.

“It’s a club, but you could at least look the part. You are going out to Club Trexx, not ‘Club Perplexed’!”

Silver rolled her damn eyes.

“I don’t have to dress up like you. You’re sitting there in all that damn leather and a fedora looking lightweight gangsta, like Tweety Bird is starring in the Sopranos or some shit and besides, I don’t even know these people! Not one of those mothafuckas is paying my bills.”

Clara stood up and put her hand on her hip.

“Fine!” Silver marched back to her bedroom, unable to muster the energy to fall further into the rabbit hole of argumentation. She grabbed her wide-toothed comb and raked it through her slightly damp hair until the coiled strands were all gathered together. She slapped a heaping handful of EcoStyler gel into her palms and ran it through her tresses. Looking about, she spotted a rubber band lying on her vanity and placed her thick, massive hair into an updo. “Where the hell is that lip gloss?” she mumbled as she pulled out drawer after drawer until she found the dark mauve lipstick Clara had gifted her, only used a handful of times.

Undoing the top and rolling the stick up, she leaned into the mirror and traced her lips with a steady hand. A few seconds later, her eyelashes sported a thin coating of mascara, and she slid on a ring for good measure, along with a few spritzes of perfume that she no longer recalled the name of.

“Hmmm, that does smell good, actually. I should wear it more often.”

A few moments later, she was marching back up the hall to see her girlfriend who now waited by the front door with a smug look on her face.

“Much better…” She nodded in approval.

“Yeah, whatever.” Silver smirked as she nudged the woman out of the way and they made the short jaunt out to her freshly washed car.

“Silver, I think it might rain tonight. You should bring an umbrella.” The woman opened the passenger side door and slid inside as if she were her date for the evening. Silver closed it and shook her head.

“Is this band you want to see playin’ outside? Concert in the park sort of thing?” She rounded the car and got into the driver’s seat. “I hope so, ’cause then if it rains, we can go home early so I can play Halo 5.”

“Silver, come on now!” The woman chuckled as she snapped her seatbelt on.

“Come on, nothin’… I’m kickin’ mothafucka’s asses on there. You should see me.”

Clara rolled her eyes and stared dreamily out of the window.

“They’re scared when they see me log on. You’re makin’ me miss out,” Silver continued to mumble as she reached for her stereo system and selected her song of choice: Miguel’s ‘Adorn.’ She grinned at the sound, her teeth biting into her lower lip, and bobbed her head to the beat as she pulled away from the curb in a slow, easy fashion. Snapping her fingers with one hand, she turned the steering wheel with the other, now determined to have a good time and drown her sudden surge of David-induced depression in favor of a smile, a hookah break and some good tunes heard by all…

“W
here the hell
am I supposed to set up at? There isn’t any room over here!” Javier screamed at the manager of Club Trexx, the vein on the side of his throat pushing and protruding, pulsing under his beige flesh. His black leather jacket faintly glowed under the overhead stage lights. Zenith shook his head, swallowed a smirk, and grabbed his drumsticks, placing them on top of the snare drum as business as usual commenced. An instrumental of Frank Ocean’s, ‘Novocane’ played in the background. Swirls of cigarette and marijuana smoke wrapped around each other and fucked, gave birth to a new high as they swam about, encompassed the place, letting him know he was right at home.

“And where’s our damn drinks?!” Javier continued on screaming before jumping off the stage like some angry, tiny tick and marching up to the bar like he meant business.

It was the same shit all the time when they set up to perform at any given venue. Javier would walk inside the joint as if he were ten feet tall, like he owned the damn place and had the signed deed right in his back pocket. The man was short as a hair on an ant’s ass and skinny as a loose thread, but his ego filled an entire room in a nanosecond. Infamous for acting like a damn male diva, his mouth had almost cost them several lucrative gigs.

He could sing his dramatic ass off though, and that was what made him such a rare find and his attitude tolerated. The man possessed deep, rich tones and a singing range that didn’t even appear to be coming from a human being. He could sound so soft, mild, timed to perfection in the silkiest of rhythm and blues ballads or scream and strike haunting fear over harsh chords in a rendition of ‘Slither’ from Velvet Revolver. But most importantly, they sounded good together…
damn
good.

The band, “Pure Grit’, comprised friends from high school and one cousin of Javier’s who was an arrogant pain in the ass, but did a decent job on the electric guitar. They did mostly covers, performing in holes in the wall and parks all over New York and New Jersey, earning enough money to pay off some cell phone bills and car notes along the way. The money wasn’t his main motivation, though…

Zenith had played the drums since he was six years old. This was his damn therapy. Music vibrated through his body, infused in his bones, and turned him into a zombie of the beat at an early age. He was deemed a serious and exceptional talent, and took his love for playing the drums seriously. He created intoxicating beats, practiced in the privacy of his own home—much to the chagrin of his neighbors—and lived and died for music in his first and last breath. Beating the tom-toms and cymbals made his spirit take flight, drift into a newly formed world no one had ever seen before. He created peace with each stroke of the wooden rod against the rack-mounted toms.