Andrew rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like Sanaa.”
“Yeah, like Sanaa. The difference between me and you is fourteen years, bruh. I’ve done it, lived it, and I’m telling you what I know. You’re not ready. Having sex comes with daddies ready to kill behind their daughters. I’m one of ‘em. And I’m your daddy too and I ain’t having the shit, feel me?”
Andrew huffed. “Feel you. I’m in trouble?”
“Hell yeah,” Jahlil stated, standing up and unplugging the gaming console. “We talked about it and you still did it. That trust meter dropped and I don’t like that shit. I like trusting you. I like knowing you’re going to keep your word. Your word is all you got, without it, you ain’t shit. Where’s the phone?”
Andrew stood and picked it up and handed it over. “How long?”
“Until you get on my nerves. Get dressed, you’re going to my training session. Hydrate. I’m gon’ run your ass.”
Andrew groaned and dragged his feet to his closet where there were mountains of clothes. Jahlil peeped it and groaned.
“Hell nah! You told me you hung that shit up. Yeah, get dressed. I’m about to show your ass something.”
Andrew huffed and got dressed while Jahlil went to put the items up. Meeting Jahlil in the garage, he watched as the SUV backed out of the space. “You not going to let me in?”
“Nope, meet me at the bottom of the hill. Knees to chest, little nigga. You got seventy seconds or you’re running to the front of the neighborhood,” Jahlil spoke out the car window before taking off.
Andrew sprinted behind the SUV, almost out running Jahlil at seventeen miles an hour.
“All that speed and you in your room being fresh. Get in,” Jahlil fussed. He waited until they were twenty minutes away from the house to look over at Andrew. “You’re too bright to get caught up in something. I won’t let you do the shit I did.”
“You turned out fine,” Andrew argued.
Jahlil shook his head. “I had angels along the way looking out for my dumbass. I had to man up because I had you. I was seventeen with a three year old. You get that? I did some shit to make sure you ate and we had a place to sleep. Even thought I got a girl pregnant. Scared the shit out of me.”
Andrew’s eyes popped out. “Was it Emani?”
Jahlil swayed his head. Had Emani not been as smart as she was or if he’d gotten her pregnant, she would have kept it. The thought burned him before he shook it off. “Nah, some little girl from the block. We were two ghetto ass kids with no supervision. Who do you think I’d be if I had really gotten her pregnant? Not a pro baller, not here to take care of you. When you ready for real, I’ll make sure you have what you need. Right now, be a kid. Life comes hard and fast, have something to look back at. Something happy. I don’t have that, for real. I want you to have that, I want Sanaa to have that.”
“I hear you. Sorry I didn’t keep my word.”
“Mmhmm,” Jahlil grunted. “Words and actions. Show me, don’t tell me.”
“Sounds like some advice you can take of your own,” Andrew muttered. “With Emani.”
Jahlil cut his eyes at him. “Who told you, Aunt V?”
“Nah, I got ears and Emani raps really good,” Andrew said, snapping his fingers. “What was it? Oh, yeah. Gave that nigga all of me, for a nigga to take all from me. Love is a bitch, can’t rest in it comfortably.”
“That shit wasn’t about me,” Jahlil huffed.
“It was,” Andrew assured, syncing his phone to the car to play the song. “Wait for it.”
“When your heart is broken in a million pieces. You pray for something to cut the lease. Ownership and protection had me believing all this shit was temporary. Maybe he’d wake up and make me primary. Too late love lost, that nigga got a whole baby. Gave that nigga all of me, for that nigga to take all from me. Love is a bitch can’t rest in that shit comfortably. I put my heart behind bars so I can’t feel nothing. Be standing in the fire wishing to feel something. Just take my heart so I won’t feel,” Emani’s bars flowed through the speakers and Andrew didn’t take his eyes off of his brother.
“What were you saying again?”
“Aight, you got me,” Jahlil grumbled, tapping the screen to replace Emani’s voice with the radio.
“I should get time off my punishment or something,” Andrew countered.
“If anything, I should take your door off the damn hinges. You’re on my side. You my blood.”
“Okay and what, nigga? I’m not a man man, yet but I’m a little man and you got to fix it. Like today. Word is she’s marrying your teammate,” Andrew curled his lip as Jahlil turned the radio up. “Oh, struck a nerve, huh?”
Jahlil’s answer was his middle finger pointed up in the air.
