I let out a deep breath like I’m seven again and she had snuck out of the house and found me hiding from the storm underneath Senior’s truck.
“I been calling you…Daddy’s been calling you,” she says, pulling her hood over her head.
“Yeah…I…I been busy today.”
She glances behind me at Jazzy’s, then holds out her hand. “Gimme your keys.”
I stagger forward, dropping them in her palm.
She presses the key fob, unlocking my truck, and pointing at it. “Get in.”
I shuffle past her, pulling the passenger door open and climbing in while she rounds the truck and gets into the driver’s seat. As soon as she closes the door, she starts the engine.
Cool air blows out of the vents, soothing my hot face, and soft R&B flows from the radio because I haven’t changed the station since the night I brought Slim back to Chantilly.
Me and Arnez stare at the raindrops pattering against the windshield.
I feel even further away from her than I did during that first month after Jamari died. Back then, she couldn’t even look at me. Senior said it was grief. He said experiencing grief was a lot like learning how to fight. You didn’t go from balling up your fist to walking men down in just one night.
“One day you’re balling up your fist wondering if you’re even doing it right, then the next day you’re crying because it hurts so bad when you finally land a half-decent punch and then the day after that you experience all these crazy ass feelings at once—uncertainty, pain, confusion, and anger because shit just won’t click in your head as fast as you want it to. The thing about grief is that you can’t master it like you can master fighting, though.”
I drop my head against the headrest and close my eyes. “How’d you know where I was?”
“You’re my brother. Sometimes I know you better than you know yourself. I know how you are about the rain.”
I pinch my eyes tighter.
“I guess you too grown for me to hold your scary ass, huh?” She snorts.
I sputter out a sloppy laugh and open my eyes. “After all that clowning we did outside Lucky’s on Sunday, you still wanna do that?”
“I’m still the same big sister that fought Chris for pushing you off my Barbie bike you stole from me when we were eight.”
“And I’m still the same baby brother that double-backed and beat his ass for fighting you. I don’t know who the fuck he was feeling like.”
We look at each other, then burst into the type of laughter I thought we had forgotten about. We laugh so hard that my body shakes and the windows fog. Her laugh sounds like a time I never knew I wanted to get back to until this moment. She sounds like a little girl again.
“Oh my God…” Her laugh trails off.
She stares out of the front windshield with a sad smile on her face. It disappears before I can even tell her how long I think it’s been since I’ve seen her smile.
Her soft face balls into a frown, then a deep sob explodes out of her, making her body shake. She gasps for air, and I feel her desperation in my tight chest.
“We’re…we’re all fucked up. This issofucked up.” She breathes out, swiping her wet face and red nose.
“Nez—”
“You don’t understand. Sometimes my heart hurts so bad I think I’m dying.” She gasps again, trying her best to inhale, but she chokes instead.
I curl my fingers into the palm of my hand even though I wanna touch her and pull her close to me like I used to when Senior hurt her feelings.
“I know you didn’t like him, but…but nothing’s been the same since he’s been gone.I’mnot the same.”
Jamari’s ghost hovers between us.
She sniffles. “I don’t know what to do with myself or with this shit I’m carrying. It’s like I have a boulder sitting on my shoulders. I enrolled in school to get my mind on something else. I moved. I even tried praying like Faye taught us to do when we were little, but it won’t go away.Hewon’t go away.”
Her red eyes widen. “No matter how you saw him, he was mine, Pup. And you took him away from me. I know what he did to me wasn’t right, but you didn’t even give me a chance to work through it or to…to recognize that maybe I deserved better. You just did it. You just took him. What do I do with the anger, the resentment, and the love that I still have for you and him? How do I move on knowing that I know the truth while his mama walks around clueless? I lose sleep at night knowing that I walked y’all both into a fucked-up situation.”
