season 5, episode 6

"What If...?"

•

K-Ci quickly jogged into a breakfast place with Dalvin, Tanai, JoJo, and DeVante following suit.

"It's so damn cold outside I could feel my nipples gettin' hard!"

JoJo cringed. "We ain't need to know that."

The five of them all decided to sit in a booth that was in the middle of the diner, which was pretty much vacant since it had just opened about 15 minutes ago.

"I ain't tryna alarm nobody, but that waitress at the front been eyein' us since we walked in," DeVante said discreetly. "Don't look."

Dalvin looked around anyway, spotting the waitress and pointing at her. "Who? Her?"

This caught the woman's attention. She sauntered over, shyly bowing her head and clearing her throat.

"Good Morning, my name's Crystal, and I'll be serving you today. Now before I take your orders, I would just like to ask....aren't y'all famous?" She placed complimentary glasses of water and orange juice around the table.

"You must be a fan," K-Ci chuckled, leaning back. "Yeah baby, we famous."

The shy act Crystal had before suddenly disappeared as she jumped up and down, letting out an ear-piercing scream which alarmed the celebrities, as well as the fellow people who worked at the diner.

"I knew it! You're Tanai Campbell and you're Jodeci!" Crystal scanned the booth. "I love all of y'all with all my heart! K-Ci, you my husband but you just don't know it! Let me calm myself down....okay, y'all gon' get every breakfast food we got back there and everything is on the house!" She told them, running off to the back.

Tanai smiled. "She seems nice."

"And everything is free so we ain't gotta pay for nothing!" K-Ci cheered.

JoJo faced him. "Is everything always about money to you?"

"Nah, but if it's free best believe imma take the offer," K-Ci responded. "That's one of the benefits of being known. You get cherished by people you ain't even ever met before."

"I love our fans. We're really blessed," Dalvin sipped his orange juice.

"Imagine what it'd be like if we never got famous," Tanai pondered.

"I wonder what that'd be like," K-Ci played with a salt packet.

•

"Case dismissed!"

Dalvin let out a defeated sigh as his unsatisfied client mugged him. He gathered up his briefcase and walked out of the courtroom to see DeVante and Tanai standing on the wall, waiting for him.

"So how'd your case go?" Tanai asked.

Dalvin shook his head. "I don't wanna talk about it."

"Don't be too down about it. Better luck next time," DeVante tried to encourage. "Let's go to the church and get K-Ci so we can hit up JoJo's."

Dalvin sighed, beginning to sulk in disappointment. DeVante and Tanai noticed this, so they threw their arms around him and made him pick up the pace with comforting smiles on their faces. Dalvin tried not to smile, but he did anyway.

The three of them soon reached the church around ten minutes later. They stood in the back, patiently waiting for the service to be over.

"Close yo' eyes and pray! Speak to God and tell him what you need to get off ya' chest! Just let everything go!" K-Ci told everyone as they closed their eyes and began to pray. Once he was sure no one was looking, he dug in a few people's pockets and snatched money out.

Just before he reached the last person and was about to pick pocket them, the person opened their eyes. Startled, K-Ci leaped back.

"Band! Take us home!"

The sounds of an oregon, tambourine, and a few other instruments came into play as K-Ci began prancing around, clapping and stomping. The people in the church egged him on for a few seconds before finally clearing out.

Dalvin, DeVante, and Tanai approached him with smug looks on their faces.

"Mm, mm, mm," Dalvin shook his head disapprovingly.

DeVante looked him up and down. "You ain't sh—"

"Don't you use foul language in the Lord's house!" K-Ci cut him off, placing a ten dollar bill over his lips. "Anyway, y'all ready to head to JoJo's? I'm payin'."

"With the money that you stole," Tanai pointed out.

"It's not money that I stole, my young black sista!" K-Ci denied. "All the people that come to this church are apart of the community, and the community is giving. So if anything, these people willingly give me their money and I gladly accept! Sharing is caring."

DeVante pushed K-Ci slightly. "Care yo' ass on outta here so we can go eat."

K-Ci bucked at him slightly before leading everyone out the church. "You better stop rushin' me 'fore I shove a nickel down yo' throat wit' yo' Saved By The Bell dressin' ass!"

All of them soon made it to the restaurant approximately eleven minutes later. Once spotted sitting near a large ficus potted plant, JoJo leaped over one of the booths and squeezed in between Dalvin and K-Ci.

"My favorite people!"

Everyone else at the booth greeted him in response.

"Let us get the Wednesday night special," K-Ci told him, placing his menu to the side.

JoJo nodded and yelled to one of his employees who was somewhat close by. "Aye, Jamal! I need the fried chicken, fried fish, fried shrimp combo with collard greens, macaroni, and yams as the sides over here at table 3! And five ginger ales! Make it snappy!"

Jamal held up a thumbs up before going to the back. "You got it!"

"You had a case today, right Dal?" JoJo asked. "How'd it go?"

Dalvin awkwardly laughed. "Funny that you ask because it went absolutely terrible."

"Oh...." JoJo trailed off, putting his attention on DeVante. "Anyway....what exciting musical adventures did you go on today?"

"I ain't do anything exciting today," DeVante answered. "All I did was go and get Mr. Rogers Nelson a cup of coffee, then I had to take it back cause he said there wasn't enough cream. So when I came back with the new and improved cup of coffee for Mr. Rogers Nelson, he told me he wasn't thirsty anymore, and I had to go pick up his purple jumpsuit from the dry cleaners. So I called the place and asked if they had Mr. Rogers Nelson's jumpsuit ready—"

"Why don't you just say Prince?" K-Ci interrupted. "Why you keep callin' him Mr. Rogers Nelson?"

"Cause Mr. Rogers Nelson said since I'm his intern and he's above me, I'm not allowed to call him by his first name so I decided to stick with Mr. Rogers Nelson."

"Poor baby," Tanai caressed the right side of DeVante's face with the back of her left manicured hand. "But JoJo, my boss said I had to come up with a new article that has to do with anything going on in the city that has to be turned in by the end of next week and I was wondering if you had anything crazy that's been happening in the restaurant that I could write about?"

JoJo shrugged lightly. "Wish I could help you but don't nothing happen up in here. I ain't got no stories."

"You should have some stories, considering that you're about to go outta business," K-Ci said.

JoJo shot him an unamused glare which prompted K-Ci to throw his hands up.

"Don't look at me like that, I'm tellin' the truth! It's this new Italian restaurant two blocks away called Renniano's that opened up a few days ago. It's been packed."

"Well I ain't worried 'bout no rivalry place," JoJo stated calmly. "I done had my place for three years and I ain't never worried 'bout anything before so why start now?"

•

K-Ci smacked on his food obnoxiously. "I ain't never had no omelette like this before!"

"Don't talk with your mouth full!" Dalvin hypocritically said while smacking on his pancakes.

"I'm glad you all enjoy!" Crystal beamed, rubbing on K-Ci's shoulders as he ate before strolling away.

"Anyway...what were we talkin' about?" Dalvin questioned without realizing that DeVante had stole two strips of bacon off his plate.

"We were talking about how life would have turned out for us if we didn't end up famous," Tanai reminded.

Dalvin snapped. "Oh yeah!"

•

It was another simple afternoon at JoJo's restaurant and K-Ci walked in to see Dalvin and Tanai clinking glasses together with gleeful facial expressions.

"What's the celebration for?" K-Ci asked once he made it over to the table.

"Go first, Nai," Dalvin allowed.

Tanai took a sip of her champagne before explaining. "So I finally found a story that I plan to turn in tomorrow for The New York Times that I think my boss will love! I found out that the mayor was cheating on his wife with some upper-class executive undercover hooker, so I wrote about it. I feel like this'll be my best story and it'll get me a raise!"

"And I'm in a good mood cause I have a big self-defense murder case tomorrow and I have a feeling that my client will actually win the case—because I had a dream that we'd win," Dalvin said afterwards.

"You know what? The health inspector is comin' by here tomorrow too! He might give me another certificate so Imma drink to that!" JoJo poured himself a glass and clinked glasses with Tanai and Dalvin.

"I ain't got nothing to be excited about but I could use a drink so," K-Ci shrugged, grabbing the whole bottle of champagne and clinking it along with the other three glasses.

They slowly averted their eyes over to DeVante, awaiting for them to join their celebration.

He finally got the message, picking up the last glass that sat in the center of the table as K-Ci poured some of the liquid into it. The five of them clinked glasses for the last time before taking simultaneous sips.

The next day had rolled around and unfortunately, things did not work out in everyone's favor. The gang all heavy-heartedly sat outside of JoJo's now closed restaurant.

"So I guess I'm not the only one who had a bad day?" Dalvin asked, everyone nodding their heads. "JoJo, go first."

"Well apparently, since everybody stopped coming to my place and started going to that new Italian place, I had to get condemned." JoJo told the crew.

"Damn," A bruised K-Ci shook his head before explaining his story. "Everyone at the church found out I was takin' their money outta their pockets, so here we are."

Tanai was next down the line. "Well see, it turns out that the upper-class executive undercover woman the mayor was having an affair with was my boss so—"

"De?" Dalvin looked at his brother.

DeVante sighed. "Prince and I got in an argument cause I told him I wanted to be respected and get paid more. Long story short, I threw a chair at him and he fired me."

"What happened with you?" Joel asked Dalvin.

"I lost my job cause every client that I've ever had has never won a case and my business firm told me they had to cut me loose and I should find a new hobby."

The five of them shook their heads and sighed in defeat.

Soon coming out of their imaginations and coming back to the present a few seconds later, they cringed.

"I wish I would let Prince disrespect me," DeVante mumbled, taking a sip of his water.

Crystal walked over to them, placing a pen on the table. "I know I keep comin' over here botherin' y'all, but can y'all do me a favor and give me autographs from each one of you?"

They all obliged and wrote their signatures along a clean napkin.

"See you," K-Ci bid a farewell to her, sliding out the booth and leaving the diner as everyone else followed suite.

Crystal picked up the same fork that K-Ci had and happily ran her tongue along the back of it before collecting the rest of the dirty dishes and taking them to the back.

•

not a fan of this chapter but at least I updated. 🤩🤩 I missed y'all, & imma see y'all in the new year!!
- daBronco. 💗