“Okay. You want me to buy you nine-hundred dollar sandals again?” I grit out. “Fuck it. I’ll buy them. Bring your ass on.”
“Cree let you pay nine-hundred dollars for sandals?”
“Yup. Nine-hundred dollar shoes for you to fuck up, a thousand dollar swimsuit that didn’t even get wet and a six-hundred dollar scarf for you to play around with. What else you want to argue about tonight?”
I frown, pushing my foot into the soft grass. I swat away the humidity, mosquitoes, and annoying satisfaction of Bryson never having the privilege of picking out anything to go on her body. It wasn’t shit but that sneaky 1942 creeping back into my tastebuds to mingle with Phat’s kisses she gave me that she won’t remember tomorrow.
“Nothing,” she mumbles, clawing her fingernails into my shirt and lifting her leg. “We already argued ‘bout everything.”
“Thought you wasn’t getting on?”
“I—I can’t keep my feet on the ground.”
“I’mma kill that nigga,” I mutter, squatting.
“You can’t just be killing niggas... unless it’s on the court. I always su—support you killing niggas on the court. You do that shit effortlessly.” She twists her legs around my waist and curls her arms around my neck like a lazy koala while blurting out the shit she probably always keeps in her head.
I hoist her up while taking wide steps to the back of the field.
“Ason?” she gurgles out.
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“What you sorry for?”
“For this—for real. I should’ve gone to—to the Holy Convocation with Chels. I think you would’ve been okay with me going there.”
“Wasn’t nobody bringing you to no damn holy convention.” I smile, stumbling down paths of cars while pulling her closer into me.
She groans into my neck, rubbing her nose against my hot skin.
“I was just homesick,” she mumbles.
Thatright there really makes me want to give the finger to Splashtown and Bryson, but I yank her legs closer around my waist.
“What you know about being homesick?”
“I know liquor definitely don’t taste the same as it do when I drink it from your cup and you were right—I never want that shit again.”
I bounce her up and down, passing up foggy car windows and arguing couples. “You drank after somebody other than me? That’s nasty.”
“Not on purpose,” she garbles out, sucking in a breath against my hot skin. “I regret that shit.”
“I bet.”
“I don’t understand why you gotsomuch beef with me all the time—‘no Twitter,’ ‘act right,’ ‘don’t give Mom that,’ ‘you trying to control the vibe, Lourdes, ‘no drinking,’” she huffs in a deep voice.
I smile wider. “Yeah, whatever.”
“I’m the one that’s always in trouble.”
“Because you don’t listen.”
“Listen?” She hiccups. “That shit shouldn’t matter when I always give you whatever you want. I gave you my first date, my first real kiss...”
“You don’t know what you talking about—you just talking ‘cause you drunk. You won’t remember none of this tomorrow.”
