“The same thing you were doing.” I nod to the Popeyes bag, closing the door. “The doctor came by yet?”
“Yeah, he ain’t say much though.”
“You didn’t ask questions?”
“Man, as long as this lil’ machine keeps beeping up here next to my head, I ain’t got no questions for these folks.”
“Hm.” I scoff. “It’s a lot you could’ve asked, but I ain’t about to argue with you about it while Mom laid up like this.”
“Yeah... whatever, nigga.”
Brothers are as tricky as little ladies, but they don’t fold the first time they’re tested—they keep standing through beefs, awkward silences, and tug of wars over the ladies they love.
“You gon' sit down or what?” He rolls his eyes, tapping the heel of his boot on the floor. “Got your back to the door like a duck.”
“You gon' leave or what? Thought you needed a break like the buster you are.”
His eyes sink into slits and he eyes me up and down while that beeping he’s so worried about fills the dead space between us. “Fuck you.”
My cheeks tingle when a smirk dances across his lips. Sometimes I wonder if Marshall and Pops talked as much shit as me and Marcus did and if it was normal to feel even closer afterward.
“You survive the night?” I ask, walking to CeCe’s bedside and tugging at the side of the sheet she’s wrapped in.
“It wasn’t like I had a choice.”
“Youhada choice. We all got choices. We don’t always make the best ones, but we all have them.”
“A’ight, Pastor Williams.”
“That didn’t come from no pastor. Mom used to tell me that shit all the time.”
“That’s what she told you when Coach kept putting you in all them grown-man situations?”
Brothers are as confusing as they are tricky creatures. Of all the things going on in our family, that’s the only other thing he took from my dirty hospital rant yesterday, but it felt good. People never listened hard enough to understand that the most simple shit you share is the most painful most of the time.
“Yeah...” I mutter. “That was one of the last few things she told me before the end.”
Those days were a blur. We were enmeshed, and I didn’t want to peel myself apart from her—not even when Pops hopped off his jet from LA and hauled ass to her hospital room just to wave his “husband” privilege around to the staff, demanding shit I had already taken care of.
“It really took him three days to get to her?”
“Three and a half.” I snort. “Shit, not much can come between a coach and his playoff bound team, right? Not even his dying wife.”
“Fuck, man.”
“Mom said he had a point to prove to the world. He needed them to know his name was synonymous with perfection, even with a disappointment for a son and a sick wife.”
Marcus grunts out an “mhm” like I smacked him in the face with the truth about his idol. It didn’t feel as good as my thirteen-year-old self hoped it would. I used to dream about tarnishing dudes’ favorite player.
“You know, I used to be kind of jealous of you,” he says, leaning on the side of CeCe’s bed, staring at her cracked lips. “I was so little when Marshall died that just the thought of you being able to call out for your Pops and him being alive to answer would get me tight. I’d read all his articles and see the pictures of you and him and I used to wonder how it felt for you to not have to talk to your daddy in your head all the time.”
“You wanna know how it feels?” I laugh to myself. “It feels like I can’t breathe sometimes—like I’m a puppet that only exists for him to control in his perfect world. Phat always joking that I live on another planet and I never realized how true it was until I met her. It’s the only place where I can just breathe without the pressure. That’s how it feels to talk to him.”
The vital sign machine beeps louder because I know CeCe hears us. It was the same with Mom. I swore she heard my begging deep down in her shell of a body, but just like that mega-church pastor said at her funeral, her “job on Earth was done and what a good job it was.” There was nothing I could say that was good enough for her to turn back from God. She never believed in keeping him waiting.
“Can you breathe now?” Marcus rasps.
I study CeCe’s thin eyebrows and peaceful expression.
