I saw it coming but I didn’t move. I let him hit me because part of me wanted this fight as bad as he did. His fist caught me on the left side of my jaw and my head snapped to the right and the taste of blood filled my mouth immediately. I came back with a right hand to his ribs and felt it connect solid and he grunted but didn’t fold. He threw another one, caught me above the eye, and I felt the skin split. I grabbed his collar and tried to pull him toward me but he was already ahead of it, broke my grip with one arm and cracked me across the mouth with the other. I swung wild and he slipped it like he’d seen it coming before I even threw it.
That was the thing about fighting Quest. You couldn’t surprise him and you couldn’t outlast him. He was faster, stronger, and meaner when it mattered. He came back with a combination that caught me in the stomach and the jaw and my knees buckled for a second and that was all he needed. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and drove my face into the kitchen counter and I hit the tile floor hard enough to see white.
I tried to get up but he was already over me with his fist cocked back and murder in his eyes. Real murder. Not the business kind we’d done together for twenty years. Personal.This was a man looking down at me deciding whether to end something that couldn’t be unended.
He didn’t swing. He stood up and stepped back. His breathing was heavy but his voice came out steady. Not a mark on him.
“We’re done.”
I rolled onto my side and spit blood onto Mega’s kitchen tile. My eye was swelling shut and my jaw felt like it was hanging wrong. “What, nigga?”
“It means the partnership is over. You’re not cleaning money through my casino anymore. Your transport contracts with Banks Reserve are terminated. Whatever business connects your name to mine, consider it severed. Effective now.”
I sat up slow. Leaned my back against the cabinet under the sink and looked up at this man I’d known since we was kids. This man I’d helped build into what he was. This man whose trucks moved my product and whose casino laundered my cash and whose family I’d protected like my own for two decades.
“Aight,” I said. I spit another mouthful of blood onto the floor. “Cool.”
He looked at me for another second, turned around, and walked out the front door. I heard his car start and pull away and then the house was quiet and I was sitting on a dead man’s kitchen floor bleeding from my face and trying to figure out how I lost my best friend, my brother’s legs, and my entire financial infrastructure in the span of two weeks.
I sat there for a long time. Then I pulled out my phone and called the only person in my life who hadn’t betrayed me or threatened me or cut me off.
“Hey, big bro.” Zephyr’s voice was tired but warm. He was always warm, even from a hospital bed, even after everything. “You aight?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “I’m good. How you feeling?”
“Same as yesterday. Still can’t feel my legs. Still fine as fuck though.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “That’s debatable.”
“You sound funny. What happened?”
“Nothing. Just had a long day.”
“Mekhi. What happened?”
I leaned my head back against the cabinet and closed my eyes and told the truth for the first time all day. “I think I just lost Quest, bro.”
Zephyr was quiet for a minute. Then: “Fuck that nigga. It’s war now.”
17
Mehar
As bad as I tried to keep myself occupied with business plans and Youtube meditations and beauty product research for my eventual spa, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I was upset that he would kill my brother, but my brother made his bed and he had to lie in it.
I just prayed to a God I wasn’t even sure I believed in anymore that he would be honest with Quest and lead him to Mega.
He came through the door after midnight looking like a man who had left pieces of himself on every road between here and DC.
I was on the couch reading one of Mrs. Pak’s handouts on chemical peels because I couldn’t sleep and studying was better than staring at the ceiling wondering where he was and what he was doing and whether he was safe. The fire was still going, low and warm, casting everything in an orange glow that made the living room feel smaller and softer than it actually was.
Quest walked through the door and came straight to me. He didn’t stop at the kitchen or take off his jacket or say a word. Hejust sat on the floor in front of the couch and buried his face in my lap.
I froze for a second because I had never seen this man do anything like this. Quest didn’t fold. Quest didn’t lean on people. Quest carried the weight and walked upright and handled his business and came home looking the same way he left. But the man sitting on the living room floor with his forehead pressed against my thighs and his hands gripping the fabric of my sweatpants was not that man. Something had happened tonight that had cost him more than he wanted to say out loud.
I put my hand on the back of his head and held it there. I wasn’t gonna push him and I wasn’t gonna ask questions. He’d talk when he was ready and if he wasn’t ready, that was fine too. Either way, I was here.
He stayed like that for a few minutes. Then he lifted his head and looked up at me and his eyes were clear but heavy, carrying something behind them that looked like it had been building all day and finally found somewhere to land.
