Bishop: A True Lover's Story

“Hey, Edison.”

Edison groaned quietly, taking his time to pull his bag from the back seat and securing his breakfast. Skylar’s voice was not what he wanted to hear first thing this morning. The handsome, six-foot-tall, walking ego sauntered up to him with a humorous tilt on his slim lips. “Did you buy up all the goodies at Mickey D’s, pal? That bag looks kinda heavy.” Edison felt a hard palm land in the center of his back, making him want to jerk away. Instead, he rolled his shoulders. “I thought you were dieting… this week.”

Edison slammed his car door and began walking through the parking lot, towards the building, leaving Skylar to follow. Technically, he was Skylar's boss, but Skylar didn’t act as if that was the case. It was as if he despised Edison being his superior. Skylar was only thirty-one and he was already a senior paralegal for one of the senior partners. But he didn’t have a corner office in the executive wing beside the owner, Presley Alfred, like Edison did, and he believed it got under Skylar’s collar. So, he threw little jabs and potshots when he wanted to make himself feel better.

“Hey, wait up,” Skylar called out and fell in stride beside him.

Edison checked Skylar’s appearance out of the corner of his eye. Of course, he was impeccably dressed. His suit was designer and tailored, his socks trendy, and his shoes so fashionable they looked uncomfortable. Edison didn’t dress like a slouch. He had a few shops that catered to the regular-sized man, and that knew how to fit his suits properly. While they weren’t Armani and Stefano Ricci, he was still proud of his Ralph Laurens and Kenneth Coles. He hoped the compliments he got were genuine and not suck-ups because he was the boss. It didn’t matter. He’d take it either way.

Chapter Two

Bishop

Bishop had his elbows propped on his knees and his head braced in his hands. The sound of the cell doors sliding open, then clanging shut continued to pound between his ears. How the fuck am I back in the damn Breaks again? He glanced over at his best friend Trent who was rocking in the corner, murmuring something he couldn’t make out. He sighed and leaned back against the cold concrete, the roughness digging into his sore muscles. It was almost six in the morning and he was tired as shit. He’d been up all night and he still had to be to work in two hours for manual labor.

The fifth guard passed through on his heavy rotation, glancing between the cells lining the narrow walkway with a scowl he’d managed to keep in place all night. Bishop held the man’s beady eyes with his own annoyed glare. In his mind, he flipped the officer off, then told him to get fucked twenty times. But in reality, he clenched his fist and tightened his mouth into a firm line, just wanting to be let out.

He and Trent were stuck in the Breaks together just like old rotten times. The sheriff’s department called it twenty-four-hour lock-up, or the drunk tank. In the city of Norfolk, Virginia, there was so much rowdy behavior on any given day that the police department didn’t have the capacity to arrest everyone. Jails were already overcrowded with serious offenders. However, they often removed the disorderly from the streets and tossed them in a holding cell until they sobered, began to act rationally, or kept their mouths closed long enough. So far, none of them had been released.

“Yo man! When the fuck you letting us outta here?” one of the rival gang members asked from the cell across from him.

Bishop gritted his teeth.

The guard stopped short. He slowly rotated his thick neck, his bald head glistening even in the dim lighting. His thin lips executed a perfect sneer. “Well, I was about to say let’s go but since you had to talk shit, how about we wait one more hour.”

Fuck. The groans and curses were probably like music to the guard’s ears as he strutted away with his head high while being called every name in the book. Trent pushed off the wall and spun to glower at the members of the Digg's Park gang, and none of them hesitated to shoot daggers back at him. Bishop’s head pounded harder.

“What the fuck are you staring at, Trent?” A big tatted-up bear named Jessup, with fists the size of cinderblocks, advanced across his cell space until his nose was almost touching the steel bars.

Bishop knew Jessup. He was well known for not only his harsh words but also for his no-mercy policy. Trent didn’t answer, but he held Jessup’s challenging gaze. Thank goodness, the guards had sense enough to keep rival members, or ones picked up for fighting, in opposite tanks. It prevented them from trying to kill each other, but it didn’t stop them from talking trash though.