I wasn’t going to no hospital. They were gonna tell me what I already knew and charge me for it. I just had to let my body heal on its own. The money I got was worth every minute in that cage though.
Gutta came out right behind me still hyped, still talking, the bag on his shoulder and a grin on his face that wasn’t going nowhere anytime soon.
“Forty thousand dollars my nigga. You know what that do to your name in these circles? Champ ain’t never been put down before tonight. Not one time. And you dropped his ass in five rounds.” He shook his head. “The underground gone be talking about this for years.”
“We need to count that before we do anything else.”
“These niggas know not to play with me mane! The shit you just did to Champ won’t be shit compared to what I’m gone do if I have to come back around here.”
I almost smiled at that. Almost. “You ain’t changed.”
“Why would I?” He dapped me up and we came around toward the front of the building to get to where he’d parked two blocks over.
The crowd was still spilling out the front entrance, people everywhere, conversations loud about what they just witnessed. I kept my head down and moved with purpose because I wasn’t in the mood for the celebration and the people who wanted to be close to the win now that it was over. I had somewhere to be and something to handle. I had forty thousand dollars in a bag, and thirty of it that needed to get to Tavarus before that clock ran out.
But then I heard her voice.
“Xavier.”
I stopped, people knew not to call me by my government.
Nobody called me that. Not out here. Not in these circles. The only people who used my government name were my moms and Brielle. Neither one of them should be standing outside this building right now.
I turned around.
Brielle was leaning against the wall just outside the front exit with Simone standing beside her. When I turned around she pushed off the wall and took a few steps toward me and stopped. She looked different up close than she had from across that basement. Up close I could see that something was heavy on her mind, it was sitting on her face that hadn’t fully settled yet. Like she was still processing something.
Gutta locked in on Simone immediately. I saw it happen in my peripheral. His whole energy shifted in a way that was unusual for this nigga. It was enough that if you didn’t know him you’d miss it completely. But I knew his ass. And he was on her trail bad.
“Simone.” He said her name like he was tasting it. “You looking good as hell standing out here.”
Simone looked at him sideways. “Boy.”
“You know I’m for real. You ain’t had no business leaving the house looking that damn good, unless you planned to leave here with me.”
“Gutta.” I said it without looking at him.
“I’m just making conversation cuz. Damn.” He leaned against the wall next to Simone and said something low that I didn’t hear, and she laughed in spite of herself which meant Gutta was gonna be insufferable about that for the next two weeks.
I looked back at Brielle.
She had her arms crossed, not in a closed off way, more like she was holding something in. She looked at my face — the swelling, the cut, all of it — and something changed in her expression that she pulled back before it fully showed. I knew her, and I knew the look she held was sorry and fear mixed together.
“You good?” she asked.
“I’m standing, so yeah. You can say that.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s what I got right now Bri. I don’t know what you want me to say. You know me, and you know I’m gone always do what I gotta do. This was just some moe shit that I just had to do.”
She nodded slow like she was accepting that even though she didn’t fully want to. Then she was quiet for a second and I let the quiet sit there because I didn’t have anything to say. The street around us was loud with people leaving the fight, cars pulling off, music coming from somewhere down the block. We were standing in the middle of all that noise in our own separate quiet.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” she finally said.
“What you mean?” I asked confused about what she was even talking about.
“I mean—” She stopped and took a breath and started again. “I’ve heard people talk about you for years. Everybody in the town and towns over knows your name and what you do. I mean, I know what they say about your hands. I’ve seen you fight as a kid countless of times. But hearing about it and actually standing in that basement and watching you in that cage as a grown man, it is not the same thing.” She looked at me straight. “I couldn’t move, Street. When that last punch landed and that man hit the floor I literally could not move.”
