I choke on the air between us while Mama’s eyes light up. It’s different from the glint. This light is as rare as her laugh. We seldom get both, but like I said, she isn’t stuck today and now I know why Coach Williams can belt out babygirl as easy as they said Marshall could.
“I remember Angie calling me up the morning of her birthday, right when Marsh was getting up to go shoot at the gym on campus. It was about four in the morning. She sounded so light and clear-headed, like she’d been up for hours.” Mama smiles, looking up. “I could barely get a ‘girl’ out before she screams ‘Lourdes!’”
She waves her hands around, hacking out a tiny cough between movements. “She says, ‘that’s babygirl’s name!Lourdes.’”
My heart pumps like I’m there with Mama, listening to Angie scream out a name I never understood.
“Where she get it from? How’d she find that name?”
Mama gets real still and stares at me with her lips inching up.
Her eyes cast a lazy trail from my head to my toes while I grasp the counter to keep myself from falling further into her story.
“Well...it was the little girl’s name—the one Ace had a crush on. Angielovedthat name, but not the idea of him loving some strange girl whose heart she didn’t know. She always told me you’d be the only Lourdes that belonged to him—not some damn girl in LA. It didn’t matter if he was there or if you were in Houston. She always told me that y’all would find each other some way—through basketball, sickness and death. She’d make sure of it because she knewmyheart and she knew what kind of little girl I’d raise.” She lets out a deep sigh. “I told you she was a good woman. It didn’t matter how much money she had, how busy she was, or how far apart our worlds were—she was always my good girlfriend. God knew what he was doing with me and her, and Angie knew what she was doing with you and Ason. She was always ten steps ahead of everybody else.”
You know that deep sense of relief that comes when you finally get something right after getting it wrong for so long? Light shoulders? An instant feeling of gratification? Deep, easy breaths?
“Lourdes,”Ace mumbled against my stomach.“Who gave you that name anyway, baby?”
I hold on to his voice from that day with more annoying fluttering butterflies that just won’t stop.
Mama slaps her thighs with another grin before getting up from the chair. “I love you and Ason, but I’m too young to be a granny and ya’ll aren’t ready to be anybody’s parents. Tell him to use a goddamn condom.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
Ace
When a man says he can’t describe what pussy feels like, it’s true. It’s an impossible thing to do, but I’ll try.
Phat’s pussy feels like the first morning in a while that I didn’t wake up without a shot of 1942 to warm my muscles. She feels like the first time Gus drove me to basketball practice and told me about my personal treasure chest in his head. She feels like Mom’s laughter. Shit, she even makes me feelsoft,so I want to speak first when I see Pops standing on the side of the court before practice.
After fifty missed calls over the course of a week, he looks at me like I’m a ghost floating across the court—like I’m dead right along with Mom.
“Afternoon,Coach,” I say, gliding toward him.
“Williams.”
His voice is emotionless and I’m a sucker for that shit so I offer myself up because thirteen-year-old me still exists in my head sometimes.
“I can work with Sanchez on defense,” I reply.
His eyes get big and then sink back into slits so quick that I wouldn’t have noticed the change if I didn’t know him.
“Alright... alright.” He nods with his squinted eyes on my lips.
There’s a lot of unspoken shit floating between us on this court, but that’s how it’s always been—especially when I go against his controlling beliefs because little did Phat know, Ason Williams Sr. was the original control freak. I guess it’s one of the few worldly things that didn’t revolve around basketball that he taught me.
He sweeps his hand toward the court and I jog there, waiting on Bryson to realize what’s happening while he dribbles around by himself.
The rest of the team hangs around doing their own drills because defense is still Bryson’s weak spot no matter how many times Marcus blows me off to practice it with him and Pops lectures him about it. Pops won’t let him focus on anything butituntil he’s able to defend in his sleep because defense is in the AW starter pack for perfect players. It’s why I knew it so well.
“Sanchez!” Pops yells. “Get with Williams!”
He looks up at Pops with his healing eye.
Now it’s a light shade of purple and his iris isn’t a deep red that makes Marquise cringe every time he walks in the locker room.
He struts across the court with his chin up like Phat forgave him even though I know she didn’t. She told me so when my face was between her legs after another sneaky link up between pickup games with Marcus at their house. I didn’t even have to ask about him by name because another good feeling that pussy produces is enmeshment.
