She picked up on the third ring. “Hey, what’s up?”
As soon as I heard the sweetness of her voice something in my chest that had been wound tight all night started to loosen.
“I needed to hear your voice.”
She was quiet for a second. A long second. Processing something she didn’t expect and trying to figure out what to do with it.
“Are you okay?” she asked. And her voice was different now. Softer. The sharp edges put away.
“I am now.”
We talked a bit before we ended it.
“Goodnight, Quest.”
“Night, Peach.”
35
GUESS WHO
She gets away with everything. She gets to have everything.
That’s what I keep coming back to. Not just him. Not what he does for her or how he looks at her or the way his whole body shifts when she’s in the room. All of that burns, yes. But what really eats at me is her. Just her. The way she moves through the world collecting things she doesn’t deserve and never paying for any of it.
She walked away from a marriage and nobody came for her. She rebuilt her life and nobody questioned how. She carries weapons and secrets and a past that would bury most people and somehow she’s still standing. Still breathing. Still taking up space that should be mine.
I’ve watched her go to school and come home and go to work and come home and live this little life she’s built for herself and all I can think is how unfair it is. How she gets to start over and I don’t. How she gets to be loved and I don’t. How she gets to walk into rooms full of people who care about her while I sit in the dark and count the ways she’s stolen from me.
And she doesn’t even know I exist. Not really. Not in the way that matters. She has no idea that someone is keeping score.That every good thing that happens to her is a debt she owes me. That every smile on her face is borrowed time.
People think jealousy is about wanting what someone else has. It’s not. Jealousy is about knowing you deserved it first and watching someone else live the life that was supposed to be yours.
She gets away with everything. But not forever. Nobody’s luck lasts forever.
And I’m very, very patient.
36
MEHAR
I had never been to a party where nobody was afraid.
My father’s house had gatherings that looked like celebrations from the outside but felt like performances from the inside. Everyone smiling because they were supposed to. Everyone laughing at the right moments because not laughing meant consequences. Ahmad’s family events were worse. They were filled with silent women serving food to loud men who didn’t acknowledge them.
But this…Rita’s eighty-fifth birthday in a private room at the Banks family casino was something I’d only ever seen in movies. The room was gorgeous. High ceilings, dark wood paneling, ambient lighting that made everything look golden. The casino wasn’t open to the public yet so we had the entire space to ourselves, and the Banks family had turned it into something between a supper club and a house party.
Long tables with white linen and candles. A DJ in the corner playing old school R&B. Frankie Beverly, Maze, the Isley Brothers blasted through the speakers. A bar fully stocked with Banks Reserve everything. Braised short ribs with a red wine reduction, lobster mac and cheese, collard greens with smoked turkey, jalapeño cheddar cornbread, shrimp and grits withandouille sausage, blackened salmon, and lamb chops with a rosemary glaze was on rotation. Rita had requested the menu herself.
Rita sat at the head of the table in a silver sequined dress with a tiara on her head that one of Justice’s daughters had placed there. She couldn’t see it but she could feel it and she hadn’t taken it off all night. She looked like a queen who had earned every jewel in her crown through decades of holding a family together with nothing but love and an iron will and apparently a shotgun she kept in her closet that everyone pretended not to know about.
“This casino is something else,” Rita said, running her hand along the edge of the table. Her cloudy eyes swept the room even though they couldn’t see it clearly anymore. “Your grandfather would’ve lost his mind in here. Alexander loved a good time. He would’ve been at that craps table all night losing money and telling everybody he was winning.”
“That’s where Quest gets it from,” Prime said, and the table laughed.
“Shiiit, I never lose,” Quest said from beside me. His hand was on my thigh under the table and had been there since we sat down. He was so casual and possessive at the same time.
Everyone was there. Prime and Zainab with the twins in matching outfits that Zainab had probably spent an hour coordinating. Justice with his daughters, Storie and Dream. Storie was twelve and already gorgeous and Dream was five and running around the room like it was her personal playground. Mekhi and Zephyr were at the bar doing shots and arguing about something sports-related. A few cousins and family friends I’d been introduced to throughout the night whose names I was trying to remember.
