Read Online For the Love of Money by Omar Tyree - Free Book Online

you. I have something important to ask you anyway.”
    It was a setup. I felt like one of Mercedes’ old boyfriends, as if I was about to be used for her personal gain. I had been the same way for a few wild years back in the eighties, so I knew Mercedes as well as I knew myself. However, I let that slide, too.
    â€œOkay,” I told her with a nod. I was ready to head in the house.
    â€œSo we can talk, right?”
    She was trying to twist my arm into promising her something, something that probably had nothing to do with us being girlfriends. You get that a lot when you start making money. Stardom can make you think that everyone is after some of it, and usually, they are, but I didn’t bust my ass to make it big in Hollywood just to become a year-around Santa Claus. I’m sorry, but that was not my damn job!
    I took another calming, deep breath before I got irritated. “Yeah, we can talk.”
    Mercedes said, “I don’t want to make it seem like I’m bothering you or anything.”
    It was too late for that, and I was already bothered.
    â€œJust let me go inside and rest tonight, and we’ll deal with
whatever
when we see each other again,” I told her.
    She gave me one of those deep-eyed looks of hers and nodded. “Okay. That’s cool.”
    Mercedes was as good at reading people as I was. She was probably better at it, but I thought she would have matured past the petty shit, especially if she was supposed to be
helping
other people. Excuse my French, but she was thirty-four fucking years old and still playing head games! Was life still that damn trivial to her? When I thought about her while shooting my movie
Led Astray,
I was only acting, but in real life, Mercedes was obviously still going through the bullshit.
    I walked inside the house with my old key. My mom and dad were nestled on the sofa watching Chris Tucker’s
Rush Hour
on video. I looked at them and just started smiling. They had it good, they just didn’t know it. I was envious.
    â€œTracy, did you ever see this
Rush Hour
movie?” my mother asked me. “That damn Chris Tucker is a
fool!
”
    â€œYeah, I saw it. He’s a big man in Tinseltown. They tried to hold him back but couldn’t.”
    â€œWhy,because they had Will Smith out there already?” my father asked me with a grin. Black men were always suspecting racism. It was as if they had a built-in radar for it. Even my brother Jason was hip to it.
    I smiled back at my dad and said, “You know the game, but right now there are just too many black stars out there for Hollywood to continue working from those strict quotas anymore. And if they did, then
I
could have never broken out, because Halle Berry, Regina King, and Lela Rochon were just snatching up
everything
for a while,” I joked.
    I looked at my parents all snuggled up on the sofa again, and decided that
I
wanted a piece of that. I took my behind right over to the sofa and tried to force my way in between them.
    My mom said, “;Tracy, what are you doing? You go get your own man. You’re not a little girl anymore to squeeze in between us. What’s wrong with you?”
    I ignored her and said, “Mom, stop blocking the love.”
    My father just laughed at us.
    â€œI got two girls fighting over my attention again,” he teased.
    Mom gave him the evil eye. “Well,
she’s
going back out to California in two weeks.”
    I looked at her and said, “Are you trying to get rid of me, Mom. What do you think I came home for? I need some love too. I had a rough day,” I pouted. I was slightly offended by it.
    She said, “Girl, I was just playing with you. You know I love you. I just didn’t expect for you to run up in here and jump in between us.”
    My mother was close to fifty herself and still looked like a thirty-somethinghoney chaser. She had all of the honey that she needed with my father though. He was aging