“You blowing me with this whole ‘me and Ace’ thing. He’s cool—that’s it.” I drop my hand from my face. “Why you not telling me what you tell Chelsea about Marcus’ blockheaded tail?”
Ace and Marcus are the types of dudes she tells me and Chelsea to fuck with when we’re mature and can handle grown-man problems—and according to the news, Ace hasplentyof grown-man problems.
“Because Chelsea don’t got a mama like yours or a mama like Ace had.”
“She don’t have a mama at all.”
“No, but she’s got Lenola, who’s got a clean bill of health at sixty.”
“Please, don’t go there today.” I blink away the burn in my tear ducts. “I held his hand—so what? You treat him like he’s made of gold.”
“Angie used to tell me he was.” She shrugs. “You don’t find many men like him. The kind that’ll wipe they Mama’s face with a smile after she throws up all the good food he tried to cook, or fly all the way from LA to Houston every week just to carry her from the bed to the wheelchair and then roll her into the nail shop so she can feel like a woman again even though that’s the only time she leaves the house anymore.”
Fuck, I hate being conjoined with Mama sometimes.
That ugly burning in my tear ducts overflows and wetness dots the inner corners of my eyes until Mama’s puffy face gets blurry.
She gurgles out another cough and reaches for her ice water on her nightstand like she didn’t fill in all the missing pieces of Ace and Angie’s history he left out. The only thing that stops the hot tears from overflowing is loud jiggling at the front door.
“Open the door!” Marcus yells.
“I told you to stop leaving your fu—freaking key in the house!” I shout back, crawling out of Mama’s bed with my thumbs on fire because I have too many vague tweets loaded into the chamber in my head, ready for me to fire out on my walk to the front door.
@babyphat04
You ever ask God why certain shit happens? Like, would changing shit in the past have any effect on the present?
@babyphat04
Like if they wouldn’t have found that tumor that summer, would things be different or would they just have found it another summer and certain shit just happens no matter what?
@babyphat04
Or if I would’ve just kept my mouth shut, I wouldn’t be obsessing over somebody I shouldn’t obsess over, or maybe my obsession would’ve happened in another way even if I kept it shut?
@babyphat04
Anyways. It’s complicated.
As soon as I curl my fingers around the lock on the front door, Chelsea’s already in my inbox.
@Chelsea_Paige
First things first, kiss Mama CeCe for me. Okay, that’s out of the way. Who are we obsessing over?
I roll my eyes while flinging the door open and finding Bryson standing behind it instead of Marcus.
He smiles and pushes a strawberry cool cup toward my chest. “The cool cup lady had strawberry today. I know that’s your favorite.”
Sometimes a test of loyalty is as simple as a cool cup and Bryson knows that because he’s just like thelil’ perroAce described him as. He’s always searching for different ways to make sure our loyalty stays intact, especially when he’s trying so hard to be a boy that gives me hives.
Marcus pushes between both of us, sucking his teeth. “You better eat it, too. That was the last damn one.”
I take the cool cup with a grin while Chelsea waits in my inbox, but waiting’s never been easy for her, so when my phone vibrates I already know it’s her.
I push the phone against my ear, peeling the lid off the cool cup as Bryson bounces on his toes like I’m going to kiss him for finding the most obscure flavor the cool cup lady has.
“Girl, what?”
