For The Love Of A Goon 2: A Miami Hood Love Tale by Lady J Page A

with.
    “After we eat, can we stop by the hospital to see Ro? I miss her, man.”
    Her mind fell on Roshel as soon as she closed out her text box and she saw the picture of Ro she had saved as her screen saver. On the picture she was sitting in her wheelchair, smiling, just as happy as ever. It was her birthday that day, she had a stack of wrinkled up dollar bills pinned to her shirt. Carmen remembered herself and Moe pushing Ro around the projects that day making damn near every nigga in the hood pin money on her. They got so drunk that night that they nearly dropped Ro from her chair trying to get her up the steps of Carmen’s apartment building. Ro cursed them out so bad that night when they finally got her up the stairs, then she looked at them and laughed because she was just as wasted as they were.
    “Yeah, we can do that,” Meek replied. “Where y’all want to eat at?”
    “Anywhere is fine, bae,” Moe said as she sat up and checked her reflection in the sun visor mirror. “Umm, what’s wrong with you?” she asked, noticing the look on Carmen’s face in the backseat. “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah, I’m good, Moe,” she lied.
    There was no way she was going to steal her friend’s joy on her day with all of her problems. She wanted to tell her that she had decided to move forward with her plan of having an abortion, and that her and Trent were in the middle of a very heated argument about it that had her feeling down at the moment. Instead, she played it off as if everything was just fine and that his words didn’t have her so upset.
    “You sure? You look like you’re mad as hell back there.” She turned around in the front seat to face her. Extending her hand, she grabbed Carmen’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Everything is going to be okay, Carmen. Just be strong, we all have to be,” she said, cutting her eyes over at Meek on the driver’s side.
    When she turned to face Carmen again, tears had begun to fill her eyes. Moe searched the center console of the car then handed her a napkin to dry her tears. Seeing her like that made her want to cry too, but Moe was already all cried out. She watched Carmen as she dried her tears then stared out the window at the bright Miami sun.
    When the car came to a stop, she turned around in her seat, grabbed her purse, and hopped out the car. She opened Carmen’s door to let her out then walked around to meet Meek and slid her arm underneath his. On their way into the breakfast restaurant, Carmen dragged a few feet behind them.
    The three sat down and ordered their food. They held a long conversation about how the game was all fucked up and these niggas was only out for self these days. As the conversation got deeper, Meek realized he was about to go away without having a plan for his wife. He couldn’t just leave her for all those years and not know how she was going to eat and survive. He had a couple hundred dollars in his pocket, but that would be gone by the end of the week. After that, he had no idea where his next dollar was going to come from, but Meek was determined to make something shake. Even if he had to turn into a stick up kid, he would, just so his lady wouldn’t have to go broke.
    He knew what he had to do, and with nothing left to lose, he was about to go back to the only thing he was known to do, hustle. It had been how he’d kept them fed, and the only way he knew they would eat. He had about a good month and two full weeks before he would be sentenced for the trafficking case he was charged with, so that meant he only had a month and a half to get his money up.
    Luckily, his mother had kept a life insurance policy paid up on both of her sons because she knew they were so heavily involved in the streets. And we all know there’s only two ways out, death or prison. Meek’s mother now had one son she was preparing bury, and another who was possibly going off to prison. He thought about the very last time he had spoken with his mother and