“I can’t be angry now that you telling me to.”
“Why not?” He cocks his head to the side. “I thought I taught you how to play follow the leader the other night. I thought you was smart, kid?”
My stomach jumps from the giggles I let out between hiccups and his thumb grazes my bottom lip to swipe the wetness he’s always imagining there.
“You a fucked up leader,” I mutter around his thumb. “Your ideologies make no sense. Life on Planet Ace must be wild.”
My face heats after I blurt out another thing he’s not supposed to know about me—that I gave his brain a name.
His face relaxes into an expression I can’t dissect with glowering eyes and flared nostrils. It’s just like the one he gave me in front of Marcus when I forgot about his rules and tried to be the leader on Planet Ace.
His thumb falls from my lips. “You still hungry?”
I nod in a hazy-eyed daze as he pushes the cup back to my lips and his free hand crawls underneath my braids to that annoying welt.
Two warm fingers glide across it in slow strokes. “Go get dressed. Marcus got something to take care of, so he asked me to drop you and Mom off at your appointments.”
I move before he can drop his hand and rush off to my bathroom. It’s something about hearing “go” come out his mouth that sends my body surging. It’s another way he’s got me and Brandy conditioned.
Our house is so small that I can hear his and Mama’s muffled voices from the shower when I cut the water off to shave my legs. I drag a razor against my shin while fighting to make out their words.
“What happened to your lip?” she asks.
“Took a elbow in a pickup game. Ain’t nothing for you to fuss over.”
“You still playing pickup games with random boys? Angie hated when you did that. Tell Phat to ice it for you.” She sighs. “Did she eat?”
“Yeah… I told you I’d take care of it. Now it’s the queen of the castle’s turn.”
“She ain’t tell you I already ate?”
The razor slips across my skin.
“Shit,” I hiss, reaching over the side of the tub and fumbling with the roll of toilet paper.
“You ain’t got to lie to me, Mom.”
They laugh together. I can’t even roll my eyes because at least she’s laughing with somebody today—even if it’s not me.
“You know I had my friend send me some stuff from back home that’ll have you eating all the fire shit you ain’t had in a minute.”
I snicker at the Los Angeles dripping out his mouth as I press the tissue into my skin. He must’ve taken another sip of that drink.
Mama gasps. “What you got, boy?”
“Shit, some Blueberry Dream, some Moondrop Grape, but you a special lady, Mom, so you deserve that OG Kush.”
“Boyyyy. You gon' have me into it with Phat. I can’t smoke no more.”
“Nah, that’s why you eat it.”
They laugh even harder together and I smile at Ace’s deep voice bouncing against our thin walls.
“But nah for real,” he rumbles. “I brought you something for that stomach of yours. How that sound?”
“What is it?”
“Ensure—”
