Their eyes shoot daggers at each other and damn if it don’t seem like I’m in the middle of two lovers fighting. She drops his arm and stalks toward his bedroom, with me following behind her.
When she pushes inside, she stands back.
“Look...” I hold up my hands, surrendering to their weird friendship. “I don’t know where it is.”
Her face softens, and she chokes out a quiet giggle, shaking her head. “It’s here...”
She walks over to the nightstand on the side of his bed and squats in front of it.
I stay by the door because I know how Marcus is about these types of things. I’ve been his sister for eighteen years and I ain’t never taken it upon myself to dig through his wallet.
She tugs the drawer open. “Come see.”
“Nah, just get what you need.”
“Phat… it’s not that serious.”
A glass clanks in the kitchen, and she narrows her eyes at the bedroom door. Their silences, lingering stares, and secret arguing reminds me I’m not one of them no matter how many expensive gowns I put on.
“C’mon. Get away from the door.”
I move next to her as Ace’s phone rings from the kitchen.
“Anything he thinks is important is in here,” she mutters while he talks.
“Uh-okay.”
The drawer’s full of loose papers, wads of cash, a passport, and a picture of Angie. She doesn’t look like the Angie from the pictures Mama has stashed away in her bedroom closet. This Angie is frail, with a balding head and her lips against Ace’s face. There’s an ocean behind them.
Cree’s fingers brush against their faces. She’s touching everything but the money.
She slams the drawer closed and looks up at me. “Take care of my brother tonight.”
He’s brother now—notpapiorhomie. The word even sounds different coming out of her mouth.
“What you mean? He seems fine to me.”
Besides being kind of drunk, kind of high, and a little unsteady.
“That’s the biggest lie we tell ourselves about the people we care about,” she replies. “He still thinks it’s him against the world… and sometimes it is, but Uncle Ason can’t see that.”
A ball of nerves gets caught in my throat.
I nod with my mouth open. “You—you’re not going to take the money?”
“Nah, I can’t take money from a man like Ace. He already gives too much of himself to people that don’t deserve him.” She pops up from the floor. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a flight he wants me to catch.”
* * *
“Boy,you smell like dope, Savauge, and liqu—babygirl?”
That’s how Coach Williams greets me after doing a double-take when Ace helps me climb into Gus’ backseat.
I force out a smile.
The only people that have ever called me babygirl were Marcus and Mama because of Marshall. I know I smell like dope, Savauge, and liquor too, because Ace keeps finding my stomach and kneading it in his hands like he needs to touch merightthere to function.
“I—I didn’t know you were coming with us tonight,” he stutters out while Ace climbs in behind me and slams us into the truck.
