“Bryson...” I push my palm against his chest. “For real. I just got her to relax. I don’t want her getting all hyped back up.”
Another boy that always seemed to beat him to the punch in his own territory had already hyped her up. The noises he overheard were her and Ace talking on Jazmine’s phone. I heard them from my bathroom while shimmying into another expensive piece of fabric he decided we should own because on Planet Ace we’re obsessed with possessive pronouns, Dior, and secrets. He and Mama hadn’t shut up since Mama asked him what he had planned for the night.
“Shit, fix me a drink and watch the Rams whoop up on the Cardinals. How that sound, Mom?”
Lonely—Mama said it sounded like a lonely night for a boy as bright as he was.
I curl my hand in Bryson’s tank. “Please...”
I can’t think of any reason Bryson needs to interrupt him and Mama’s boring conversation about the Rams and the Cardinals.
He shrugs. “Fine. I’ll talk to her when we get back.”
I tug him inside and close the door. “Yeah, do that. Let me go get my bag. I’ll be back.”
I catch him swiping a hand across his springy curls while glancing at my ass before I walk back to my room to grab the only thing Ace hadn’t upgraded—Marshall’s dingy Houston Rockets backpack.
His voice makes my stomach tight when I pass Mama’s room.
“Lourdes left yet?” he asks as I swipe the backpack off the floor beside my bedroom door.
“Sound like Bryson here now. You wanna holler at her before she go?”
“Nah. Maybe if she not having too much fun, she’ll check in on me.”
My stomach gets tighter when I pull the door closed and head towards Mama’s room.
I’m homesick. That’s the only explanation I have for the distance I feel between me and him. There are still some things I don’t know how to say to him out loud without him coaching me to do it, and this feeling is one of them.
I linger outside the door, trying to spend one last second obsessing over him like he does with me.
“A’ight,” he says, brushing against the phone’s receiver. “I just got to my friend’s. I’ll call and check in on you in a few, lady.”
My hand hangs from the doorknob while I listen hard for another girl in the background, because Brandy’s the onlyfriendI can think of since Cree caught that flight back to Los Angeles. Maybe he’s doing shit grown folks do while me and Bryson go suck up the sweat and twerk music at the last party of the summer.
Mama squeals out a raspy laugh. “Boy, I ain’t Phat. Ain’t no need to check in on me like I’m a baby. I know she got you lost tonight.”
“Damn.” He grunts. “Why she do me like that, Mom?”
“Because you got her spoiled—just like your daddy had Angie. Ason used to stay on your grandma’s phone asking ‘bout that girl.”
There’s the faintest sound of a feminine voice in the background, but my homesickness could’ve been making me imagine it.
“Hmph.” He scoffs. “Maybe I do.”
I raise my hand to push on the door.
“Tell me what you want me to tell her. I’ll be the bad guy tonight.”
Mama’s last words and the little giggling voice on his end make me stop. Ididn’timagine that.
“Tell her... tell her no drinking,” he stutters out. “An—and make sure her phone is charged and… oh... and to bring her backpack—”
“Okay, okay. You taking this harder than me now.”
“Oh, it’s like that?”
Jazmine and Mama laugh while I take a deep swallow.
