“You can, just not with this nigga.”
“I need you to support me.”
Carson yielded. “If this is what you want, then everything is on me. I love you and I want what’s best for you. I don’t have to like this shit though.”
“Anyway, I need a set list for homecoming, are you going to help me or…”
“I’ll help. I just had to get my piece off. Also, I reached out to the band director, the drum line is yours if you want them,” Carson offered.
“What they need in return, new uniforms?”
“Yeah, I was already writing the check though,” Carson stated.
“Oh, you love me so good,” Emani joked. Carson was her best friend. There wasn’t a question about that. The love he offered her was the purest, most non-romantic love either of them had ever experienced. The way Emani took care of Jahlil and Andrew was the same way she’d taken care of him in college too.
Carson was the middle child in a group of nine. His mother, unfortunately, was forced to have her first child at twelve. By the time she had Carson, there were five kids ahead of him. There was nothing left for him and she had the choice to stop having children but she didn’t. The love she experienced had only come in the form of bearing children for men who didn’t want her enough to keep. Going to OSU was his chance to escape and he took it. A backpack full of clothes and loose-leafed paper. That’s all he had. And by some chance of luck, or as Emani used to say angels find their person, they found each other. If she had food, he had food. If she boosted clothes, they were typically for him. He would never forget how Emani would enter rap battles, collect the money and make sure he had books. Now it was his time to make sure that she was good. There wasn’t anything Carson did that he didn’t include Emani in. Every new deal, restaurant, and other business, he made sure she got a cut.
He refused to ever have his angel be in a position to depend on someone else. There were things about Emani that Carson knew that no one else did. Not even Donnée. Carson was the one who’d picked her bloodied body off the floor. He hid her until the bruises faded and her body healed. Carson was the brother she used to pray for.
“You know I do. Which is why I’m staying out of this you and Jahlil mess,” he shared.
Emani rolled her eyes. “It’s not a mess because it’s nothing. I’m not going to stay at the house either. I’ll rent a place nearby.”
“Aight, E. Whatever you say, baby.”
“It’s always whatever I say.”
4 /JAHLIL
“You gotto come harder than that,” Malik pressed Jahlil, as if he were a match for his power.
Jahlil was six foot nine, two hundred and sixty pounds of speed and muscle. He worked every day to be a beast. Having him run into you was like being hit by a moving train. Malik, at six foot six, was fighting for his life against the small forward.
“That’s all you got? That baby shit right there?” Jahlil asked, before driving straight through him to the hoop. “That’s why I’m here. You can’t stop me.”
Malik quickly recovered, forgetting they were at practice and not in a one on one. “I got something you can’t have though.”
Jahlil stole the ball going back to the hoop. “It’s not game, tell you that. Wilson, cut left.”
Jahlil was a natural leader. The moment he stepped into the locker room, his teammates were drawn to him. Practice had somehow become his and the coaches let it happen. They were watching in Ocean City. They played against him. There was a magic about Jahlil. With the right support, he and the team could reach new heights, so they loosened the reins.
Wilson cut left, ready to receive the ball. Jahlil passed it and moved around Malik. “I got time in and a knowledge of the shit you want so bad. I know ball, my nigga. You know a show.”
Coach blew the whistle and half the team walked off, tired from the extra half hour of play Jahlil said they needed. Still on the court, he bounced the ball, needing to take the edge off. What he wanted to tell Malik was that all it would take to have Emani back by his side was some real shit from the heart but Malik wouldn’t know real if it hit him in his face.
“You not tired?” Kyrie asked from the bench. He’d been sitting there watching for an hour as Jahlil and Malik battled it out. It was a battle that Malik wasn’t going to win. He wasn’t built to fight for Emani. He wasn’t built for her period.
“Nah, I’m aggravated and I’m trying to shake this shit before I go home,” Jahlil admitted, taking a shot.Swoosh. “I didn’t sleep for shit. Between Sanaa kicking me and that damn ring, I was up.”
Kyrie caught the ball off of the backboard and chuckled. “You got yourself to blame for all of this for real.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Aight, then what you want to hear? That she in love with that nigga, that she ain’t leaving him? What you want to hear? That the day your engagement went public, she locked herself in her house for a week. That she ain’t been the same Emani since she got out of that relationship with Tyriq Styles? The thing about leaving your heart behind is that it bleeds out when it has nothing to pump into. Malik is going to suck what’s left of her dry,” Kyrie spoke. “But I won’t say shit about it since you don’t want to hear it.”
“What happened with Tyriq?”
Kyrie shrugged. “You know Carson keeps everyone’s secrets, especially hers. I’ll never know the details but what I do know is that nigga was never no good for her. Emani is a giver, and takers take.”
