* * *
“Marcus still not back?”Mama asks, stifling a yawn.
I shake my head and stare at Ace through the open blinds in our kitchen. “Nah. I called and he ain’t answer.”
“That knucklehead. He making us look bad. Got Ason outside by himself.”
“It’s nothing new. He ain’t been home all week. Why you so concerned about how we look to this boy, anyway?”
The street light casts a glow on the glass of Hennessy in his hand. I roll my eyes at him dribbling Marcus’ basketball against the driveway. By now, I’ve lost count of how many drinks he’s snuck inside and poured himself while I cleaned the kitchen. They don’t stop him from sinking a shot with his teeth digging into his bottom lip though.
“His daddy is a good man,” Mama replies. “And Angie was a good lady.”
“So, that’s it? We supposed to treat him like he the president because his people is good peoples?”
“Yes.”
“I guess.” My eyes roll down to the soapy dishwater.
It’s cloudy with Mama’s tulip glass sitting at the bottom.
I swipe the dishrag against it for the hundredth time. “What about what he did?”
“What about it?”
“It was fuc—messed up. Don’t you think? What does that say about us? Grinning with this boy that did something like that?”
Her sandals scrape against the floor behind me as I hurry and look away from him taking another swig out of his glass.
She bumps her frail body against mine, but I don’t budge. “It says that we human just like he is. You should be kind to him because I didn’t raise you to be hateful.”
“I’m not being hateful. I’m being real.”
“Were you at UCLA with the boy?”
“No, but I—”
“But nothing. You don’t know shit about what happened.” She swats my ass. “Stop making assumptions about people.”
“Mama!”
“Mama my ass. Angie didn’t raise a perfect man, but she raised a man with some sense.”
The soap suds evaporate.
“What happened with his mama, anyway?” I ask, glancing back at Ace dribbling around in a circle under the moonlight. “How’d she pass? Don’t seem like the world ever got an answer because of what… happened with him. Shoot, nobody even had time to grieve her.”
A nasty leak of year-old police documents overshadowed the announcement of her death. Nobody cared to know what happened to Angie Williams anymore after that day—even if she was the originalitblack basketball wife our generation was obsessed with before the others came. Mama always said she walked so Savannah James could run.
“Why don’t you stop staring and go talk to him? Maybe if you talk to him enough, he’ll tell you.”
I hold in a groan because Mama thinks she’s Miss Cleo sometimes. If she finds out Ace gives me hives, she’ll know about the secret in my panties.
“Whatever.” I pluck the tulip glass from the bottom of the sink and rinse it off before walking out of the kitchen.
When I get to the front door, I hang behind it to steal a few more peeks before I get outside and things gets awkward. I don’t have Bryson to talk for me or Mama as a buffer, and my head is still fucked up from all the times I heard Ace’s voice throughout dinner.
“This glass not even clean!” Mama yells, making my stomach jump.
