I parked wrong in the hospital lot and didn’t care at all. I walked straight through the emergency entrance and told the woman at the desk my brother’s name and she pointed me down a corridor. I found the waiting area and Melo was already there.
He stood up when he saw me come in and his face confirmed everything I already suspected.
He knew.
Not about tonight. But he knew something had been going on with Mazi and he had been sitting on it. That much was written all over him before he even opened his mouth.
I stopped in front of him and looked at him straight.
“How long,” I said.
He opened his mouth.
“Don’t lie to me Melo. How long has he been in the streets.”
He looked at the floor and then back up at me. “A few months. I found out right before summer break and I told him to stop, he said he would and I thought—”
“You thought.” I stepped closer and kept my voice low because this was a hospital and I was already holding something in my chest that wanted to come out. “You knew your brother was out there and you sat on it. You didn’t call me. So he was doing this shit at school too? Willing to lose every fuckin thing that we worked hard for? And you ain’t say shit? Where is he getting it from Melo?”
“He made me promise Street. He said he just needed to stack a little and he’d be done. I didn’t want to, but you know how it is. I don’t know where he got it from, but he said you used to work for dude, and that you trust him. He’s been secretly coming down here for months, getting work and taking it back to campus.”
“You didn’t want to what? Get him in trouble?” I looked at him and felt something in me that was past anger. Something older and deeper than anger. “Melo I have been bleeding in cages, courtrooms and streets since you were fifteen years old so that neither one of you ever had to know what that felt like. You understand that? Everything I did was so that y’all wouldn’t have to make the choices I made.” I stepped back because I needed the space. “And you sat there and watched your brother walk toward it and said nothing. You know damn well, he ain’t working for nobody I trust because anybody I trust wouldn’t give my little brother no muthafuckin drugs to sell! Nigga!” I barked. I never talked to my brothers like this, and I immediately regretted it.
Melo didn’t say anything. He just stood there and took it because there was nothing to say back to it.
I sat down in one of the waiting room chairs and put my face in my hands and stayed there for a minute.
The doctor came out twenty minutes later and told me Mazi was going to be fine. The bullet had grazed his left arm, tore through the skin, nothing structural, nothing permanent. They had cleaned it, stitched it, he was stable and resting and I could see him shortly. I thanked the doctor and sat back down. Melo sat across from me and we didn’t talk.
I was going to deal with Mazi when I saw him. That conversation wasn’t going to be short and it wasn’t going to be soft but it was going to happen face to face and it was going to happen tonight.
I pulled out my phone and looked at it for the first time since I had been here. Fourteen missed calls. Promoters, my manager, the broadcast team, numbers I didn’t recognize that were probably media. A text from Legal that just said call me when you can. A text from Coach Ray that said take care of your family first everything else can wait and that was why I respected that man the way I did.
I put my phone back in my pocket and leaned my head against the wall then I closed my eyes for a second.
Then I heard the doors.
I knew before I looked up. Something in the air changed the way it always changed when she walked into a room. I had been feeling that since I was thirteen years old and it had never once stopped working on me no matter how much time passed or how much distance I put between us.
I opened my eyes.
Brielle walked through the waiting room doors with her hand in somebody else’s.
She looked different than the last time I had seen her almost four years ago. Not different bad. Just different in the way that women got when life was treating them well. That look that said they were settled into womanhood and shit. Her hair was different. She was dressed simple,the way she always dressed.
She was still beautiful the way she had always been beautiful without trying and none of that had changed in four years or any amount of time in between.
The nigga beside her was tall. Broad through the shoulders, dressed well, the kind of dude that was well put together and I knew that came from money. Light skinned, maybe thirty, thirtyone. He had his hand in hers and he moved through the room like he belonged wherever he decided to put himself.
She saw me at the same time I saw her and something moved across her face that she pulled back before it fully settled.
Melo stood up, hugged her and said something low. She nodded and then she looked at me again. At my fight shorts and my wrapped hands and the cut above my eye and whatever was sitting on my face right now that I wasn’t doing a good enough job of hiding.
“Street.” She said my name quiet.
“Bri.” I stood up because sitting down felt wrong. “How’d you know.”
“Melo called me.” She glanced at Melo and back at me. “I’m sorry about Mazi. Is he okay?”
