Losing Romeo Read online

  LOSING ROMEO

  LOSING ROMEO

  A.J. Byrd

  To my BFFs

  Kathy Alba and Elliott Goins.

  Thanks for always having my back and keeping me grounded.

  Acknowledgments

  To my family and friends, thanks for all the support and love that you’ve given me. Again to my editor, Evette Porter, thanks for lovin’ my stories and being so patient with me on this project. To my wonderful fans and readers, thank you for allowing me to do what I do. It’s always a pleasure to entertain you. The fan letters have been wonderful and have encouraged me to continue writing this series.

  I wish you all the best of love.

  Contents

  BFF Rule #7

  prologue

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  BFF Rule #8

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  BFF Rule #9

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  BFF Rule #10

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter twenty

  Chapter twenty-one

  Chapter twenty-two

  Chapter twenty-three

  Chapter twenty-four

  Chapter twenty-five

  Chapter twenty-six

  Chapter twenty-seven

  Chapter twenty-eight

  Chapter twenty-nine

  Chapter thirty

  Chapter thirty-one

  Chapter thirty-two

  Chapter thirty-three

  BFF Rule #11

  Chapter thirty-four

  Chapter thirty-five

  Chapter thirty-six

  Chapter thirty-seven

  Questions for Discussion

  BFF Rule #7

  Always do what you say you’re going to do.

  prologue

  Romeo—Teenage Dad

  “What did you just say?” I ask, convinced that I heard my ex-girlfriend wrong. When she pulled me into a back room in the middle of my boy Shadiq’s party, I had no way of anticipating this bomb being dropped on me. In fact, my new girlfriend, Anjenai, is outside waiting for me to return.

  Phoenix sweeps her blond hair back from her face and takes a deep breath. “I said I’m pregnant.”

  “By who?”

  She rolls her eyes up at me and crosses her arms. “Don’t even play me. You know that you’re the only one I’ve ever been with.”

  “I don’t know no such thing. You’re always rubbing up and flirting with some damn body.”

  “That was always just to make you jealous—keep you interested. You are the only one I’ve ever slept with.”

  I step away from the door and her. “Naw. Naw,” I say. “This is just another one of your games. You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying, Romeo. I’ve had morning sickness since school started. It was so bad yesterday that I stayed home. I’m pregnant.” She opens the small string purse on her shoulder and hands me some kind of stick.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a pregnancy test. Read it.”

  I don’t take the stick, but I glance down and see the word pregnant on a digital screen. “What? That’s supposed to be proof? That just means you got a pregnant girl to piss on that thing. I didn’t see you take the test.”

  She goes back into her purse and removes a slim object wrapped in foil. “Would you like for me to pee on it right now?”

  I swallow, but nod my head. This bedroom has an adjoining bathroom. I follow her to it and watch her do the test. Less than three minutes later I’m looking at a duplicate stick with the word pregnant printed on it. “Oh, shit.”

  Phoenix flushes the toilet and washes her hands. “Satisfied?”

  “Oh, shit,” I say again.

  “We’re going to have a baby,” she states the obvious. “Oh, shit.”

  “Now do you understand why I came here tonight? We have to get back together. I’m not raising this baby alone.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Will you please stop saying that?”

  “I can’t! Oh, shit!” I pace the floor and then stop. “We can’t have a baby.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “We’re fifteen,” I shout.

  “That didn’t stop us from having sex, now, did it?”

  “Why weren’t you on the pill?”

  “Why didn’t you use a condom?” she yells back.

  My mind draws a blank as I plop down on the corner of the bed. My entire short life flashes before my eyes. “My father is going to kill me when he finds out. And that’s if I’m lucky. My father’s dreams for me are high, and he doesn’t take to disappointment well.”

  “Don’t look like that,” Phoenix says. “It’s not like we’ll be broke and living off welfare. Our parents will help us.”

  I glance up at her and try to imagine being tied to her for God knows how many years while raising a baby. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Phoenix walks over to the bed and sits down next to me. “The first thing you need to do is break it off with your new girlfriend. Now.”

  My mind reels back to Anjenai. Sweet, smart and—importantly—drama-free Anjenai. The past few weeks I’ve been really getting to know her while also helping her make the girls’ basketball team. And quite frankly I’ve been really feeling her, thinking that we’d make a great team. Now this.

  “What?” Phoenix’s hazel eyes tend to turn more green when she’s angry and right now they look like glowing kryptonite. “I know you’re not thinking about running out on your responsibilities.”

  I don’t say anything—I can’t.

  Phoenix’s voice starts rising. “Romeo, I didn’t get pregnant by myself!”

  “I know that!” I explode off the bed and start pacing again.

  “Then what’s the problem?” she asks, folding her arms and staring me down.

  “The problem is that this is a whole lot to just be dumping on me right now.” I start rubbing my hand along my jaw while I try to decide whether to yell or throw something. What the hell am I going to do with a kid at fifteen? Bump that—what the hell are my parents going to do when they find out? I have no problem picturing my father straight losing his mind. Phoenix may think our parents will help, but I think they’ll kill us.

  “You’re not the only one who’s scared here,” she tells me. “I’m going to get fat!”

  She says this shit with a straight face, and I’m left just staring at her. Phoenix and I have dated off and on since sixth grade. In a lot of ways it was sort of expected. We were the It couple of our class. The pretty cheerleader and the school jock—we played right into the stereotype. But things haven’t been right between us for a while—a long while, if we were honest with one another. The main reason is because Phoenix likes to play too many head games. We broke up just before school started. She didn’t take the break-up seriously and clearly thought that I’d boomerang back like I’ve done countless times before.

  “I need a drink,” I finally tell her and then rush out of the back room and try to shove my way through a thicket of laughing and dancing kids from school.

  “Romeo, wait!” Phoenix shouts from behind me, but I don’t slow up until I reach one of the high chairs in front of the breakfast bar where all the bottles of hard liquor are lined up. I pick up the bottle of Grey Goose, unscrew the top and take that sucker to the head like it is a bottle
of water.

  “Damn, man,” some miscellaneous dude says beside me. “Is it like that?”

  “You just don’t know.” I turn up the bottle again. I can’t get drunk fast enough.

  Phoenix reaches over my shoulder, grabs a shot glass and shoves it toward me. “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Fine.” I pour myself a shot instead. “Happy?”

  “Romeo?”

  I close my eyes and pretend that her sweet voice isn’t like a switchblade stabbing me in between my ribs. “Yeah?” I don’t bother to even turn around.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Phoenix turns around. “What does it look like? He’s enjoying the party with his real girlfriend.”

  That catches everyone’s attention.

  “Romeo, what the hell is she talking about?” There’s pain in her voice, and yet I still can’t turn around. I just sit ramrod straight while my Adam’s apple bobs up and down.

  “Look,” Phoenix says. “It’s over. Romeo loves me. You had your fun. Now run along back to the hood and play with your pet rats or whatever the hell it is you poor people do.”

  I slam my eyes closed and imagine wrapping my hands around Phoenix’s neck.

  “Romeo.” Anjenai flips the script, and the tough girl from Oak Hill starts seeping into her voice. “What is this bitch talking about?” I can hear her shifting from one foot to the other behind me. “What? You’re going to let this bitch speak for you? You ain’t going to man up and tell me the deal?”

  It’s stone cold silent in here now. Everybody is waiting to see what I’m going to do. A baby. I’m about to be a father. Slowly, I turn my head and lift my gaze to her angry face. The face I was just beginning to fall in love with. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? Damn right you’re sorry. A sorry piece of shit, if you ask me,” says Anjenai.

  She shoves my arm hard and I nearly topple off the stool.

  Phoenix jumps her skinny ass in front of me. “Leave him alone, bitch. And clean the wax out of your ears. It’s OVER!”

  “Bitch, I oughta…” Anjenai says, before she lunges straight at Phoenix and grabs two handfuls of her blond extensions.

  Phoenix screams.

  I jump out of my seat. “Anjenai, stop. Let her go. She’s pregnant!”

  There’s a collective gasp inside the cottage. I pull Anjenai off Phoenix, but I must’ve done it with more strength than I thought because the next thing I know she’s falling backwards and hitting her head on the edge of a table.

  “Oh, hell, naw!” To my surprise, Tyler jumps into the mix, swinging at my head. I go down, and Phoenix jumps on top of her.

  Then Anjenai’s other best friend, Kierra, springs from nowhere.

  Then Phoenix’s girlfriends jump into the mix and then, at last, Anjenai. No doubt about it, come Monday morning we’re going to be the talk of the entire school. I’m ashamed to say that I’m getting my clock cleaned by Anjenai’s fiercest friend, Tyler Jamison. In the short time since school has started, the young freshman has developed quite the reputation of being willing to fight anyone at any time, boys included. I’m trying my best not to hit a girl, but damn, she’s making it hard.

  It takes my boys Chris and Shadiq to step in and help a brother out. By the time I stand up from the bottom of the pile, other brothers from the football team have stepped in and are helping Shadiq drag Anjenai and her BFFs off his property.

  “Anjenai.” I start forward, only to have Phoenix place a restraining hand on my arm.

  “Let her go,” she whispers.

  I shrug her hand off of me and hiss, “I, at least, owe her an explanation.”

  Phoenix’s eyes narrow as she folds her arms. “Yeah. I’m sure you knocking me up is going to make her feel a whole lot better.”

  I don’t think I can hate this girl any more than I do right now. “Excuse me,” I say and storm away. I ignore all snickering and finger pointing as I jog to catch up with Anjenai. “Wait! Hold up!”

  “Yo, man. Let ’em go!” Chris says, marching back toward the party while the girls continue their steady march off the property. Without looking back, Anjenai jets her middle finger high in the air. Her BFFs follow suit. “Sounds like we got a lot to talk about—daddy!”

  I groan and watch the best thing that has ever happened to me march away from me.

  one

  Phoenix—By Any Means Necessary

  I have my man back. At least in theory. It’s been two weeks since I dropped the news that he’s about to become a father, and most times he looks at me as if he wishes that I’d never been born. I’m still sure that once he gets adjusted to the idea of becoming a father, things will go back to how they used to be. At least I hope so.

  I just wish that Romeo hadn’t blabbed it out to everyone when that hood rat, Anjenai, came at me. I could’ve handled her ass. Pregnant or not. Now all the kids at the school are tossing their two cents into our business, and I’m starting to feel more and more like I just announced I have an STD or something. Pregnancy is not contagious, I want to shout at their ignorant asses. But is Romeo catching hell about knocking me up? Hell no.

  In fact, his boys elevated his ass to playa status and keep referring to me as his future baby mama. Baby mama? I ain’t having that shit. Romeo is going to put a ring on this. Believe that. So he might as well wipe off that long face of his and just get with the program.

  At exactly five-thirty my alarm clock starts to blare my ear off, and I quickly reach over and smack the snooze button for a few more minutes. I don’t know why. It’s not like I got any sleep last night—or any night for the past few weeks, for that matter. Between morning sickness, stress and nerves, the last thing I’ve been able to do is turn my brain off and catch some Zs.

  The number one thing that keeps circling in my mind? Anjenai. Lord knows I can’t stand the bitch. Her or that pathetic crew she rolls with, which includes my traitorous half sister, Nicole. But clearly, in the short amount of time Anjenai and Romeo have been creeping together, she’s managed to get inside of Romeo’s head and undo years of my hard work. What happened to the Romeo who used to hang on to my every word? The Romeo who used to blow my phone up five or six times a day or offer to pick me up and drive me home from school? I swear, sometimes I don’t even recognize the boy I’m dealing with now.

  It’s going to get better.

  The minute that affirmation whispers from that small voice in the back of my head, my heart fills with doubt. Mainly because I’m too afraid to call what I see flowing between Anjenai and Romeo by its name: love. Tears burn the backs of my eyes, but I close them and the tears go away before they roll down and burn a hole in my pillow.

  The alarm goes off for a second time and of course I hit the snooze button again. Maybe I shouldn’t even bother going to school today. I’m not really in the mood to put up with all the BS people are shoveling my way. That includes from my own two best friends, Raven and Bianca. The three of us are known as the Redbones at school. Contrary to popular opinion, it wasn’t a name that we selected, but one that was thrust on us by a bunch of haters who, deep down, wanted to be like us: beautiful.

  But here’s something that most of those wannabes don’t know about my clique. The last people we trust is each other. For all the years that we’ve been friends, I know for a fact those heifers aren’t any better than those project hoes spilling out of Oak Hill. At the first opportunity, either one of them will stab me in the back if it means that she can be on top—which is why I don’t tell them everything.

  They learned about the pregnancy the same time everyone at the party did. That didn’t go over so well, and now they have about as much of an attitude as Romeo. Whatever. They can all just kiss my ass.

  Now they think I don’t notice that every time I walk up on them they stop whispering and just flash me those robotic smiles. I’m not dumb. I taught them that slick-ass move. Whatever. If need be they can take a time-out and stay the hell up out of my face like the rest of
the school’s haters. All that matters is that I got my man back.

  Another wave of tears threatens to spill just as my alarm clock goes off for the third time. I finally turn the alarm off and find the strength to climb out of bed. The moment I do, this unbelievable sharp pain first hits me in my lower back but then quickly wraps around my entire abdomen. “Aah.”

  I reach over and grab hold of my chest of drawers because my knees are, like, two seconds from buckling and dropping me to the floor. “What the…?”

  There’s a knock on my door before I hear my mother’s chipper voice, “Phoenix, honey. It’s time to get up.”

  I can barely breathe, but somehow I manage to croak out, “I’m up,” in order to make her get away from my door. Panting profusely I wait for her to walk away. When she does, it’s just a small measure of relief because this pain is now making me see a mobile of stars circling around my head. I struggle to get to the bathroom, but it’s sort of like an inchworm traveling from Georgia to Texas.

  A couple of lifetimes later, I make it, huffing and puffing. Seconds later, I feel something wet leaking down between my legs. I look down and I’m horrified at the sight of brownish red blood spotting the pink-tiled floor.

  “Oh, my God. No.” Another stab of pain hits, and my mouth drops open but I can’t even manage to get any sound past my lips this time. I’m miscarrying or dying—one or both. Honestly, I’m hoping it’s the latter because losing this baby will throw a big monkey wrench into my plans.