He shakes his head like the thought of me having a man is some outrageous thing—like I would live with Mama for the rest of my life.
“Oh, now you wanna know what’s going on with me?” I blurt. “Where you been the last five years? Huh?”
“Don’t. Don’t do this shit with me right now. I just wanna know what’s happening and you would too if you woke up to my name being in everybody’s mouth.”
“What’s happening?” I scoff.
I didn’t even know how to simplify what was happening while he existed somewhere else. It was a mouthful that I couldn’t articulate without falling into a crying, blubbering mess because my non-virginal freshman ass had really encountered a man and he took me through some shit Mama couldn’t even prepare me for.
“I’m raw. I like somebody that the world hates and I feelraw.” I gasp out. “Like somebody just stripped all my clothes off and left me outside for everybody to see. It’s like every time I get covered back up, here somebody else goes, stripping me down again.”
First it was Blake, Cheyenne, and Cree, then it was that article I couldn’t stop reading, and then those pictures of Ace and Blake. Scandal after scandal that Ace wanted me to ignore, like I was born into the same world as him. He didn’t understand that I didn’t have years of experience battling the opinions of strangers.
Marcus sits on the bed next to me. He hasn’t sat in that spot since the day Dr. Evanston told us Mama needed chemo and radiation.
“Then why the fuck he not here covering you up?” he asks, lifting the gun and pulling his car keys out of his basketball shorts.
He tries every morning but I can’t play his drunk voice messages to Marcus. That’s another one of our secrets that’s not supposed to leave home because they’re worse than the late night videos.
“Tell me where you wanna go, baby, so I can make it better. I’ll take you and Mom anywhere in the world. You don’t have to go back to campus if you don’t want and I won’t play ball if you don’t want that either. Mom told me you ain’t getting outta bed. I know it’s hard, but the first step is to just get up. I’ll come pick you up. You want me to do that? I’m sorry ‘bout all this scandalous ass shit. I lo—I just want you home.”
How am I supposed to fight that deep, slurring ass voice waiting in my notifications every morning?
Hot tears cover the rims of my eyes. I swipe at them before they fall.
Marcus raises up with his gun. “Fuck this shit. I’mma pull up on him—”
“No!”
It comes out before I can justify the reasons itshouldn’t. It wasn’t nobody but Ace. He was still being a control-freak when he hadn’t even been in our house in days.
“If you touch him, I swear to God, I willfuckyou up.”
The rest of my words come out between hot breaths because Ace makes me angsty after he does stupid man-shit. He makes me cry for him, want him when I should hate him, and he makes me want to consider giving him a chance to make everything better like he said he always would, but I’m stuck.
“I’m not playing with you, Marcus. Don’t touch him.”
He frowns real deep at every word. I’ve never threatened him—everand there were a million reasons I could have.
His mouth inches up and then settles into a smirk as he lowers the gun. “He said you would be like this.”
“Who? Ace?” I sniffle.
“Yeah.” He smiles bigger. “That dumbass cocky ass nigga.”
I see the inside jokes they’ve created in his smile—all the time they spent together in our driveway without me is in it.
“You talked to him?”
“Nah... not since all this… shit happened.” He waves his arms. “He told me this back when the semester first started.”
“We barely talked back then.” My eyes flicker up to his and I see Marshall in them because shit’s going left at home.
“A man don’t have to have a long drawn out conversation with you to decide if you it for him. Sometimes it just takes a look... and trust.” He nudges my chin and then swipes a wild tear trickling down my cheek. “Guess he got you to trust him, after all.”
“Is that how you got Chelsea so throwed in the head? That’s why she trusts you with her life even if you got a new girlfriend?”
I let out my first laugh in days. It’s raspy and painful, like my vocal cords needed to be reminded of their purpose.
