I was so focused on Gus, Twitter, and everything about Ace that I didn’t realize my innocent hypothetical situation I texted to Chelsea could come to reality at any moment because I washere, at his place. I’ve never been to a guy’s place alone except Bryson’s.
“But you overshare on there like it is.”
“If you don’t want the world to catch on to me and you shooting the shit with subtweets, then just say that.”
He laughs as the elevator shoots up to the fifty-sixth floor. “You got our life all wrong.”
“Here you go with this ‘our’ shit. LikeIsaid, if you don’t want people to know we cool or whatever.” I flick my hands up. “Then I will gladly fall back.”
The small of my back grows warm like I’m in an ambush. When the elevator dings again and I step forward, my t-shirt digs into the skin on my stomach as he yanks me back inside.
“Let me go, Ace—”
“You can keep cappin’ to yourself if it makes you feel better. I don’t care what people think about me or who I talk to.” His palm slams against the elevator’s keypad, forcing the doors closed. “You’re the one that cares.”
I do?
“Shit, it ain’t like I blame you for caring. I’m not exactly Mr. Popular.”
It’s the first time he’s ever hinted at the elephant standing between him and the world. I hear the regret in his voice, just like I heard it in Mama’s while she studied pictures of her and Angie.
“Don’t talk like that,” I blurt.
He flashes a smile full of pity at me and stoops down to my ear. “Don’t tweet our business like that.”
I smell the alcohol on him now. It’s an enticing tart scent because he makes everything alluring—especially grown-man shit.
He tugs harder on my t-shirt, pulling me back into him. “My problem is with you telling the world shit you should only tell me.”
My gut doesn’t sink like it should. I can’t hear all the noise that he carried from Los Angeles to Houston—all the talk about what he did tothat girl. I just hear him.
“‘You ever ask God why certain shit happens? Like, would changing shit in the past have any effect on the present?’” He repeats my week old tweet verbatim.
He doesn’t rehash the others I went back and deleted, but I know he knows them word for word too.
“There’s nothing that can change what’s happening in the present. Everything that happens in this fucked up life is out of our control, but you don’t need to stress over that. Okay?” he says. “I’msupposedto tell you that. Not some fuck nigga on Twitter and not in a lame ass subtweet. So, you can take your L now or later—either way you gon' have to take it, because I’m tired of Twitter right now so we putting it on ice.”
That urge from the nail-shop slams into me at full force.
I tug my t-shirt out of his hold.
I want to throw my arms around his neck and explain myself again, but I’ve learned some shit about Ace in these few weeks we’ve been living on the same planet. My excuses aren’t what he wants right now and maybe,justmaybe, that’s what that girl from Los Angeles didn’t get about him. It’s a fucked up thing to think, but that’s the type of hold I realize he has on girls like me—Pavlov girls. We’re the ones who can still find beauty in a guy like him.
“I understand.” I nod, crossing my arms over my midsection where his hands were. “It’s just some things I can’t talk to my friends about. I guess Twitter is the one place where I can get it off my chest.”
His face softens. “Then get it off and give it to me, not the world.”
“So you want my thoughts and now you want my problems?” I huff. “You’re insane.”
“Don’t you know that’s how things work on Planet Ace? You created the place.” He scoffs and his hand falls from the keypad. “I’m just living there.”
The elevator doors open again.
“Here...” He pushes my cellphone toward me and I grasp it. “That nigga texting you.”
“Wh—”
He grips my t-shirt again and curls it around his fingers, using it to twirl me around into the condo we’ve been arguing outside of—hiscondo.
