“I know you can. But I want to drive. You can’t argue with me on my birthday. I think that’s a law.”
“Is that a control thing or a masculinity thing?”
“It’s a Julian thing.” I held out my keys and made it sound like a joke, because the truth was harder to admit. She’d taken the planning, the paying, the surprise, and letting her drive me around on top of it felt like lying down in the middle of a road. I needed one thing in my own two hands.
She sucked her teeth. “Fine. Run up and change into something comfortable and meet back here.Vámonos.”
I stoodin my penthouse closet and decided on dark denim, a black tee, the low-tops I’d never worn, and a chain thatusually lived under a collar, then went back down to Alyssa’s floor. She answered and her eyes did a slow trip from my face down and back up.
“What,” I said.
“You clean up casual, Mr. Wade. Looking good.”
She was also in dark jeans, a faded Wu-Tang tour tee knotted at the waist, red kicks, and gold hoops.
“Raschad just left with Micah. Let’s roll.”
The drive went easy.She commandeered the aux and ran me through her own rotation, and somewhere around the halfway mark I realized I was driving to a concert I hadn’t scheduled, vetted, or turned into a business opportunity, and that I couldn’t remember the last time that had been true.
The arena was packed with grown folks who knew every word and weren’t shy about proving it. I’d been to more shows than I could count and spent most of them doing math: who to greet, which exec had clocked me, what the merch line said about the tour. Down on the floor, dead center, a body’s length from the lip of the stage, there was no math to do. There was just the noise and the lights and the bass coming up through the soles of my feet, and Alyssa beside me already lit from the inside.
Big Daddy Kane opened, and when the beat hit forAin’t No Half-Steppin’the floor came apart. Alyssa was in her element, rapping along with both hands up, head back. I found myself watching her more than the stage. The way she knew every word, how her whole face lit up during LL’sMama Said Knock You Out.When he went intoAround The Way Girlshe was gone.
And then I was gone too. I rapped along, loud, no edit, hands moving. Now and then she’d catch me and her smile would go wide and delighted, and instead of watching the stage she’d turn and watchme, mouthing the words back. The look on her face was worth more than the floor seats.
The crowd surged when Busta Rhymes came out toGimme Some Morethen transitioned toBreak Ya Neckwith the frenzied wall-of-energy he’s famous for. The floor pushed in tight around us. I felt her get jostled, a shoulder catching her from behind, and before I’d decided anything my hands were on her waist and I’d pulled her in front of me, her back to my chest, my forearm a loose bar across the crowd at her shoulder. She glanced up at me.
“Just keeping you off the ground.”
She settled back into the space I’d made and let me hold the crowd off her, and for a few songs we moved like that, her hands up, mine bracketing her body, both of us shouting along close enough that I could feel her laugh more than hear it.
Busta clocked the front row mid-verse duringTouch It, pointed his mic straight at us, and the whole section had to throw the hook back at him. Alyssa screamed it. I came in right under her, and Busta caught us knowing every word, grinned, and pointed again like he’d found his people. She turned her head and looked up at me, delighted, and I just shrugged and kept going.
When Scarface came out withI Seen A Man Diethe room shifted with that Houston gravel settling over the floor. The crowd swayed instead of jumped. Alyssa had gone quiet in front of me, her head tipped back near my shoulder, and at some point her hand found mine where it rested at her side and laced through it. It was nothing. It was just a hand, but it felt more intimate than anything I’d let near me in years. I couldn’t tell you the last time something that small had gone through me like that.
Then Eric B. and Rakim with the first notes ofPaid in Fullrolling across the floor, a song I played during almost every morning run. She twisted in my arms to face me and smiled. I smiled back, answering with the whole verse, every syllable still wired into me. She rapped it right back at me, the two of us shouting poetry at a stage, grinning like teenagers.
After the lights came up I pulled a quiet flex, flashing my industry credentials, walking us backstage, and we ended up dapping up and taking pictures with men I’d grown up a fan of.
At one point, someone from an entourage clocked the two of us. “She with you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said without hesitation. “She is.”
Alyssa raised an eyebrow at me and mimicked, “She with you?”
“Did I stutter?”
She rubbed her lips together, looking away, trying not to smile.
She wasinsufferable on the walk to the car. “Julian Wade gotspoiledtonight and there was nothing he could do about it! Say it: ‘Alyssa, you got me. You won.’”
“I’m not saying that.”
“You haven’t stopped smiling, though.”
I hadn’t stopped. Our buzz carried us out of the parking lot and onto the highway, and then it started to thin somewhere in the first fifteen minutes when she went quiet. I glanced over and she’d tipped against the window, lips parted, gone. Asleep before we hit the county line.
I drove the rest of the way with the radio low and her soft snore, and I let myself think about what the whole night had been circling.
