“What you doing this Thursday?” he asks.
“Helping Chels finish setting up her side of the room before Blythe gets out of band practice.” I flip through anEssencemagazine Iborrowedfrom the magazine rack next to the register. “Then I gotta go home and get Mama to bed for her appointment the next morning.”
I skim over the “Instagram Style Watch” section, admiring a candid shot of Dough, his girlfriend, and her new softer body since he announced her new pregnancy in his last Insta post. She toted around a purse I didn’t even know the name of, but I knew I liked.
I crease the edge of the page, waiting on Bryson to blurt out what he’s been trying to ask ever since we graduated over the summer and my titties finally grew a cup size.
“Why? What’s up?” I sigh, sucking the sugar out of the Bubble Yum I alsoborrowedfrom the candy display.
The question had been dancing at the tip of his tongue, but it wouldn’t come out like he wanted it to. It’s the reason my like-ometer hovered over “like” and veered no further than that. The nigga was too scary,andhe had weak handles.
“Oh, nothing. That’s cool,” he replies. “Mama gon' let you move on campus next semester since she finally let you register for classes?”
I glance up, trying to contain my eye-roll.
Mama always told me as much as I rolled them, they’d get stuck.
“Maybeeee…” I drag out with a tight-lipped smile. “You gon' finally work on your defense this weekend?”
He scoffs, turning away from the counter and leaning against it. “It don’t matter what I work on. That nigga is the coach’s son. He’ll always have the upper-hand. His daddy played with Kobe. He played for the fucking Bruins. Do you really think practicing gon' do me any good?”
See what I mean? I’ll be cross-eyed before I hit thirty.
I slam the magazine shut. “Did I say anything about what happened at practice yesterday? Did I even say anything about that boy?”
Ace is our new sore spot. Ever since he showed up to practice crossing dudes over and putting up one legged threes after a two-year hiatus from playing ball, Bryson gets salty anytime he thinks I might bring him up.
He shakes his head and looks out into the empty store. His leg bounces with all the pent-up energy he should’ve used at practice, but Marcus would get on my ass if I ever said that out loud to him.
I roll my eyes so hard at the back of his head that I see black for at least twenty seconds and when I open them, he’s still pouting like the cry-baby he’s always been.
I stare at the back of his curly mop and smile at the red tint on his bright cheeks. He doesn’t give me hives, but he makes me smile… sometimes. The chain Marcus bought him for his eighteenth birthday dangles from his neck. I think I feel a hint of a butterfly tickling the insides of my stomach, but I’m not sure because boys never give me those.
I start to apologize until I hearhimtalking for the third time since the semester started. I guess he’s on a roll now that the world don’t care what he has to say.
“What’s the deal, Brandy?” Ace asks from somewhere in the store. “What you got for me to snack on today?”
That hint of a butterfly I thought I felt comes back. It flutters at the entrance of the hole it came from as his voice booms from across the store. Suddenly, I’m in California on that beach with my toes in the sand. Bryson smacks his lips somewhere off in the distance and my eyes shoot around, searching for Ace.
When I find him, he’s staring at the candy display with that basketball underneath his arm and Brandy standing next to him. He has the same smile he wore in practice when Coach Williams made him run suicides and when he heard me heckling him from the stands. His teeth are straight, white, and perfect like I imagine all boys in Los Angeles teeth to look.
For the first time since I met her, I realize Brandy talks with her hands. When she laughs, her hand hangs on Ace’s shoulder and when she wants to show him something, she grabs his forearm and pulls him around. I finally understand what they have in common when her eyes sweep over his body from the tip of his soft curls to the Jordans on his feet: They’re the same age.
They’re older, and it shows in the way they’re flirting. She isn’t a lame freshman, and he isn’t an insecure one. They both know what they want, and them prancing around the bookstore is just foreplay. According to Chelsea’s roommate Blythe, Brandy was the first girl on campus brave enough to talk to him but Brandy left that part out of her biology hoe-tales.
“I can’t even talk to my friends in peace without him slithering around,” Bryson mutters, tossing an elbow on the counter.
I want to shush him because I’m trying to hear Ace’s voice again. He tells Brandy that her hair smells like coconuts and asks how long it took her to twist her curls into the little mini-twists she keeps swinging around each time he smiles her way.
“Two hours? That’s dumb long.” He whistles. “Call me next time. I’ll help you out—give your fingers a break and shit.”
I’m sure there’s a sexual innuendo hidden somewhere beneath his last comment, but I don’t have Chelsea here to dissect it with me. My inner thigh itches where the tiniest welt pops up under my black leggings.
“Don’t play.” Brandy giggles, tilting her head to the side and looking up at him.
I don’t hear his reply because I’m too busy thinking about the other welt on my inner wrist. I swipe it across the hard edge of the counter to stop its itching but it doesn’t help and my thighs,fuck, they’re on fire. I shuffle them back and forth against each other, praying I don’t rub a hole in my leggings.
“Yeah… yeah. Phat can ring you up because I’m about to go on break. Hit me up this weekend like you promised.”
