Chapter 41
Vincent
The sky is on fire again.
It doesn’t happen all the time, but every now and then, the sun spreads the prettiest colors when it sets.
Ari loves this shit. The deep orange bleeding into pink, then purple, all melting down into the water.
“It’s so beautiful,” she gushes. “It’s even prettier than the last one.”
“Looks the same to me.”
She swats my shoulder. “Admit it. It’s beautiful.”
“It is. And it looks the same as the last one.”
“Shut up.”
I grab her thigh and kiss the inside. We’re out on the beach tonight, skin still damp from our baths. Ari’s sitting on a log, and I’m sitting between her legs getting my hair cornrowed.
“Do you miss rapping?”
“Where that come from?”
She hums I don’t know.
“I guess,” I say. “I ain’t had a chance to think about it.”
“I’ll be honest, babe. I only know like two of your songs, and that’s because of my nieces.”
“How old are they?”
“Twelve and fourteen.”
I turn to make a face at her. “They shouldn’t be listenin’ to my shit.”
“Thank you!” she says, laughing. “I told my sister that. But anyway, is all your music about sex, drugs, and murder, or just the ones I heard?”
“I don’t know which ones you heard,” I say with a little defensive edge creeping into my voice. “But most of ‘em, yeah. That’s what the people want.”
“So you rap about your past? How you grew up?”
“Honestly…nah. I mean, I grew up hard, but not the way most people think. My shit was rough emotionally. I lived in a house though. In the suburbs.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it?” I say. “I don’t think so.” She pushes my head forward. “Most rappers rap about shit they ain’t never lived.”
“Do you ever feel fake? Or guilty?”
“Nah.” I don’t even have to think about it. “Rap is just like anything else. It’s entertainment. People don’t assume actors live all the movie roles they play, right? You ain’t gotta be a murderer to play a murderer.”
“That’s different," she says.
“How?”
“I don’t think impressionable black kids like my nieces differentiate between real and acting for musicians.”
I think about that for a moment.
“Well if it makes you feel any better,” I say, “I’ve fucked every bitch and done every drug I rap about.”
She slaps the back of my head, and that shit hurts this time.
“Aye! Be easy.”
She’s quiet for a while before she says, “What about our baby?”
“What about her?”
“First of all, you keep saying her. We don’t know yet.”
“Just a feeling.”
“Well, let’s say her, then,” she says. “Would you want her to get it out the mud like you rap about?”
“Fuck, no. She goin’ to private school. Whole life on easy mode. Fuck you mean.”
Ari bursts out laughing. “And you don’t think that’s a little hypocritical?”
I blow out a long sigh. “I guess so. But it is what it is. I can’t go back and change the shit I rapped about.”
“I’m not asking you to,” she says quietly, stilling her fingers. “I just wanted—“
“To bang on me about what I do.”
She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses my cheek from behind. “You mad at me?”
“Nah. You made your point, though.”
“Whew,” she says, laughing in my ear. “Artistic temperament.”
I don’t say anything, just reach over, take her foot, and rub it with both hands. The pads of her feet are rough now, not soft like when I first touched them. But I like that.
“How you feelin’?”
Her fingers are moving in my hair again. “Good,” she says. “Tired, but good.”
I kiss her left calf, then the right. The other foot gets a massage next, then I tilt my head back to look at her, ignoring her irritation.
“You’re so beautiful,” I say. “I know I ain’t bein’ still, but I can’t help it. I love lookin’ at you.”
She smiles. “It’s okay. I love when you look at me. And…I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I’m kinda throwed by how easily that just slipped out my mouth. It’s true, though. I been feeling it for a while. I just didn’t think I’d say it any time soon.
And she just goes back to braiding my hair like we didn’t just declare our love, but then again, maybe it’s not that big a deal for some people.
For me?
It’s everything.