Our moon shines brighter.
Our words look like picture perfect sunsets.
I don’t long for white sand beaches in Malibu anymore because Phat feels, tastes, and sounds sweeter when she finally lets go of all the outside opinions from people down on Earth.
Love.
She loves me.
“You think I left you? How? How, when I came running back home because you’re the only person who gets it! I love everything about you—even the fucked up shit. I knowyou, Ason. I knowallof you.”
She knows me.
All of me.
How can something as simple as that statement feel as good as love does?
I’d be lying if I say I know the exact words that come out my mouth after her confession, but she loves them whatever they are. I hear it in the “I know, baby” she coos out.
Afterward, we become tangled together in a way that makes it impossible for her to leave this time. Her back stretches to the ceiling while I pull her hands behind her and grip them between mine.
“Look at me,” I hiss. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
She stares at me, waiting with eyes I can’t forget, no matter how much I drink.
“You’re the only thing I’ve ever triedsofucking hard to do right. I just want to protect you from dumbasses like Blake and stupid reporters that think they can tell our story better than us. I wanna take care of you because I know how grimy bitches can get just because they want what’s yours, and I wanna keep you because I finally found you after searching my whole life. You answered your own questions. You don’t need to know it all because you know me.Me!You trust me enough to follow me to the end no matter what, right?”
I get my answer when she stops sobbing and starts swirling her hips against mine. There’s no direction to our lovemaking. It’s chaotic, boozy and as perfect as she is.
* * *
Lourdes
For the firsttime in my post-virginal life, I wake up angry for no good reason after making love.
I hate the light God shines through Ace’s big ass windows. I hate the jack hammering from the construction on the high-rise next door. Nurse Shelby called to tell us that Mama still wasn’t up and I hated that, too. I hate how much love makes my brain spin and IhateEarth because people there can’t see what I see in a man that’s made of gold. Now I have beef with everybody there—especially the ones closest to him that let so much avoidable shit happen to someone who didn’t deserve it.
“Cree... I’m straight. Get on the plane,” Ace garbles around his toothbrush from in front of the TV. “I got like ten minutes before I have to wake Phat back up and head to the hospital and you wanna spend it being weird because Pops called you on some buster ass shit ’cause I won’t answer his calls.”
He’s the only thing I didn’t wake up hating. How could I? He’s shirtless with tattoos dripping from his skin, and he doesn’t wake up mad at the world even when he should.
He wakes up with bright skin, a gloomy smile and begging to kiss me good morning. It all makes me want to stare at him from under the sheets for as long as he’s on Earth bickering with Cree.
“No, I’m not watchingSportsCenter.” He reaches over and grabs the remote from his dresser, changing the channel right in the middle of Stephen A. Smith’s sentence.
Nobody on ESPN was “speculating to hell” about the Lockwood Lion’s unusual night without their star point guard, despite what Coach Williams thought. The world still went on because Lockwood wasn’t UCLA or the Lakers organization.
“Pops sent you to spy on me? I thought we agreed you’d stop doing that?”
Cree rants on the other end of the phone in Spanish and my body gets tight. I don’t know who has the guiltier conscience—her or Coach Williams. It seeps out in their words.
“Nah... I ain’t drinking nothing. I’m good.”
He was too busy inside of me to drink anything except his name from my lips this morning, and I like it that way.
“Brunch? Didn’t you say you had to be back for—for ole’ girl’s boutique opening or something? What you need to talk to me so bad for? I told you I gotta go check on Phat’s mom.”
“Ole’ girl” is Cheyenne and brunch is Cree’s gateway to assessing Ace since I decided to come back into his life. She wants to make sure I’m taking good care of her “brother” like she does, even though she doesn’t have to. She has other commitments back in Los Angeles that she won’t go tend to, like a future sister-in-law that grins while they sit courtside and a real brother who has the world in his hands by default.She’sthe thing that’s wrong because I think she’s a taker like all the rest of the people that were on that boat with Ace.
