As soon as I’m back in Bryson’s face, his mouth runs again.
“You a weak ass nigga. You was bragging about holding her down but she ever tell you how long we been friends?”
Today, he finally gets that it was never about basketball and always about Phat. I just hate it’s on a day where I can feel all my senses.
“For twelve years.”
I feel the desperation in his tone. I hear his hot breath. I smell the epiphany he had over the weekend. I taste the good shit between me and Phat I can toss in his face.
“You know how many fights we had?” he asks. “She always forgives me, eventually. You should ask her how she felt about you before you moved here. She ain’t into rapists, my nigga.”
I square up and dribble again with him in my ear.
He snickers. “I was here before you and I’ll be here after you. She’ll do anything for me.”
Thosewords aren’t like the ones he spat at me in the locker room.
He belted that shit out like somebody told him all my trigger words and he went and practiced it in the mirror for the day I had to face him with nothing in my system.
I don’t care about the hoop anymore. I charge him and throw my shoulder into his chest so hard he stumbles back. His feet tangle together, and he falls, sliding across the slick court with a nasty squeak that makes everybody pause.
“Hey! Hey! That’s enough! Williams!” Pops shouts.
I crouch, holding my arm for him to take while Pops hollers in the background like we’re squabbling for real.
Bryson stares at my arm like it’s a speck of dirt until I force my hand into his and yank him up from the court.
I see the tension in Pops’ shoulders out of the corner of my eye when I pull him in. He looks like he’s holding his breath.
I press my mouth near Bryson’s ear. “I hope you talk this good when you finally go apologize to my baby for ruining her rep she cares so much about.”
He pushes out of my grip while I stare up at Pops, smiling.
I slap his back. “Good defense, Sanchez.”
* * *
Blake Harvey: Tick Tock. My reporter has a deadline to meet. How about me, you, and babygirl have a nightcap? Let me talk with her—with your permission, of course. Maybe I can get her on board. Rockets v. Lakers. Tip off @ 7. Let’s talk business.
I thinkthe thing Pops hates most about me is how much my addictions control me. It doesn’t matter if my life is existing on deadlines and threats of exposure—I still make time for all of them.
I shove my phone into my short’s pocket and stare at Phat behind the register in the back of the bookstore.
I’m still covered with sweat and replaying Bryson’s words in my head when I stagger inside, grip a handful of Dum-Dums and dump them in the middle of the magazine she has her head buried in.
“Uh, excuse yo—”
She swallows the rest when she flings her head up and finds me staring at her with red eyes, flared nostrils, and bunched eyebrows.
“You got me?” I ask, nodding toward the candy.
She nods with the same little smile she has when I’m inside her and pushes her hand into her back pocket. When she pulls out the credit card with her name embossed on the front, my heart starts pitter pattering in my chest like I guzzled a shot of caffeine.
She twists the credit card machine toward her while popping her gum and sticking the card inside with a grin. “But I’m always in trouble for spending money on H-E-B and Uber Eats. I’m surprised you don’t got a mouthful of cavities.”
I can’t hold back anymore, so I wrap my hand around her cheeks while she’s running her mouth.
She tugs her face out of my grip, snatching the card out when the machine dings. “What you got going on? Your smile missing.”
