But I do.
Thanks to Mom, I know she’s a little lady. Not just any little lady, but a perfect one with a perfect name and all the perfect features of a girl that shouldn’t give Bryson or the rest of the clowns on our team a second look.
I know she can’t curse in front of CeCe. I know she never drank until she met me. I know she wears panties—girly flower ones. I know she doesn’t know what it feels like to have any man behind her or in front of her. I know she’s a virgin and when the day comes where she gets curious enough to swallow another man’s seed, I hope she doesn’t do something so precious with a lame clout chasing freshman like Bryson. Her lips are too pretty for that. I know too much aboutLourdesand enough about Bryson to know that I hate him again.
I push up from the bench and grab my backpack from the floor. “You right. I don’t know anything about you.”
“Or her.”
I chuckle. “Shit... thanks to you, I know a lot about her.”
He inches forward and I do, too.
“I know she don’t wear panties.” I raise my eyebrow. “She likes it from the back… and she arched her back so good you didn’t even have to show her how.”
I raise my finger. “Oh... and she swallowed. That was my favorite part.”
His nostrils flare. “So you eavesdrop all the time when you got them headphones on?”
“Only when it matters. Like when lil’ boys find it necessary to cap for clout.”
He laughs. “So what if I told a lil’ white lie so they could get off my back? You ain’t Mr. Perfect. Everybody knows what you did. You don’t have room to judge nobody.”
His words don’t sting like he wants them to. The confused look Phat gives me sometimes hurts more than his weak comeback. I’ve been called worse by disgruntled Bruins fans, Black Twitter, and reporters. Shit, I survived a Lester HoltNightly Newsreport.
I study his face, trying to recognize the parts of him Phat might like. I want to ruin him for her and make his name taste bitter when she yells it out like she does at practice. But I don’t. Pops’ corny ass would call this a teaching moment.
“You just told thirteen niggas how good your girl’s pussy is.” I scoff. “Now they lusting over something that’s supposed to be yours. Tighten up…player.”
His eyebrows furrow, and he twists his mouth to the side.
I leave out the rest like how the teammates he’s so desperate to impress will try to sample what’s between Phat’s legs because she “belonged” to a freshman and how I have this burning in my chest at the thought of them lurking between her legs when I shouldn’t.
* * *
Lourdes
“It’s kindalike when Karrueche got with Chris Brown after Rihanna.” Chelsea rips a piece of skin off the fried drumstick she’s been gnawing on while glancing at Ace and Brandy. “Or—or any bobble-headed heffa that got with Bobby after Whitney.”
Suddenly, my chicken tastes gummy because I catch Brandy running her fingers through Ace’s short curls. They’re bunched together at a round table in the back of the cafe and she likes himrealbad. It’s all on her face like Mama says about Chelsea when she looks at Marcus.
“Or it’s even like Pavlov and his dogs. I swear I saw her drooling on the yard when one of those basketball dudes yelled ‘Hollywood!’ She hears his name, and she’s foaming at the mouth like a damn hyena. He taught her well.”
It’s hump day—my favorite day of the week, thanks to Mrs. Anderson’s chicken and collards and the Kappas shimmying on the yard. It’s also the only other day of the week Lucy has off, so she sits with Mama all day while I run around campus with Chelsea, pretending to be normal and working a late shift at the bookstore.
“Oh crap.” Chelsea gasps, making my heart beat out of my chest. “No, shedidn’tjust offer him a swig of her Big Red. This girl is lost.”
There’s a clump of chicken stuck in my esophagus when I narrow my eyes at Brandy’s dainty hand holding her bottle in front of Ace’s lips. It’s like the summer I discovered Dough and fantasized about his mouth for an entire two months, but I never saw Dough’s lips with a gloss of Hennessy spread across them—only Ace’s. That reoccurring memory keeps me and my fingers up at night after I make sure Mama’s in bed.
“She better not let him do that.” Chelsea fans herself while dry heaving. “Ain’t no telling where his lips been… just nasty. I mean, did you see that girl’s inflated lips he went to prom with that year? It had the Twitter girlies in a whole tizzy. I showed Ms. Esther the picture, and she said they looked like an anu—”
“Girl!”
“What?” she squeals back, shrugging. “Too much?”
A sigh of relief comes out when Ace shakes his head at Brandy with a grimace.
He nudges the bottle away from his mouth as if he hadn’t been slurping my backwash two nights before.
