17. Trigga
Trigga
By the time I made it back to my apartment, the sun was already gone and was replaced with the moon.
I didn’t bother turning the television on.
I just walked straight into my bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.
The silence was loud. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard Ms. Gia’s voice.
Giovani has the same father you do. I rubbed both hands over my face before letting out a slow breath.
“I still can’t believe this shit.”
Being at Mali’s house was a distraction that I didn’t know I needed.
After dinner, we played family games and listened to music.
The last thing on my mind was this bullshit.
But now, I was back at my place where I had nothing but silence to face the problem head-on.
My eyes wandered around the room until they landed on an old storage tote tucked away in the corner of my closet.
I hadn’t opened it in years. Curiosity got the best of me.
A few minutes later, I sat cross-legged on the floor with old photo albums spread out around me.
There were pictures from birthdays. Park cookouts, little league games, and school award ceremonies.
I turned another page and then stopped. It was taken at a fair that had come to town.
Ghost looked about ten. I couldn’t have been older than nine.
The three of us stood in front of the Ferris wheel.
Me, Ghost, and Pops. All three of us wore matching Karl Kani T-shirts.
I stared at the picture for a long time.
My dad… I mean, our dad had one arm resting across my shoulders.
His other arm was wrapped around Ghost. The pose wasn’t awkward either.
It wasn’t like he was posing with some little boy from the neighborhood.
His stance was natural, and he looked comfortable.
It was like he’d done it a thousand times before.
My thumb brushed across the edge of the photograph.
Back then, I thought Pops bought Ghost the same shirt because he didn’t want him feeling left out.
That’s just the kind of man I believed he was.
Now, I realized he’d bought three matching shirts because, in his mind, we weren’t two little boys.
We were his sons. I swallowed hard. The picture hadn’t changed.
The people in it hadn’t changed. Only the truth had.
I stared at the picture for what felt like forever before carefully laying it back inside the album. Then I closed it slowly.
Like somehow closing the album would quiet everything running through my head.
It didn’t. I pushed myself off the floor and started pacing my bedroom. One lap. Then another.
Everywhere I looked, I saw my father. I saw his smile. I heard his laugh and his voice.
“Take Giovani with you.”
“Make sure Giovani’s got something to eat.”
“Don’t leave that boy behind.”
I used to think my father just had a soft spot for him.
Now I knew he wasn’t looking after somebody else’s child. He was trying to make sure his own was loved.
“Damn.”
I dragged both hands over my face. Everything felt different.
Ghost wasn’t just the boy I’d grown up fighting beside.
He wasn’t just my best friend. He wasn’t just the person I called my brother.
He was… my brother. Like for real. And somehow that made everything hurt worse.
Because while I was sitting here trying to figure out what the hell to do with the truth…
He didn’t even know it existed. My chest tightened. I reached into my pocket and pulled my phone back out.
Ghost
My thumb hovered over his name. One phone call, that’s all it’d take. One phone call and his life would never be the same again. One phone call and he would be stuck how I am. I couldn’t do it, not yet.
I locked the screen and shoved the phone back into my pocket.
“Man…”
Frustration hit me so fast I couldn’t stop it. My fist crashed into the wall beside my bedroom door. The drywall cracked beneath my knuckles and pain shot through my hand, but I barely felt it.
“What the fuck!”
My voice echoed through the apartment before silence swallowed it whole again.
I rested my forehead against the wall. My chest was rising and falling with every uneven breath.
How was I supposed to look at him now? How was I supposed to sit across from him knowing what I knew?
I had to tell him. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Ms. Gia had trusted me with the biggest secret of her life, and now I was carrying it too.
I let out a slow breath and looked back toward the photo album lying open on my closet floor.
Yesterday, it was just a picture. Today, it was a memory that was hard proof that we were indeed brothers.
This big-ass secret had been circling us our entire life, and I still had no idea what I was supposed to do with it.
MJ
Three Months Later…
If somebody would’ve told me the highlight of my first semester of college would’ve been takeout and studying, I would’ve laughed in their face.
Yet here we were. Penelope sat on the long end of my sectional with three different textbooks spread out around her.
She’d stolen one of my Miami-Dade hoodies weeks ago and, at this point, I wasn’t expecting to get it back.
Not that I was complaining. She wore it with a pair of black leggings; her glasses rested low on her nose while she highlighted something in one of her books.
Over the past few months, this had become our routine. One of us would pick up food.
The other would complain about whatever assignment was due next.
Then we’d spend hours in my apartment pretending to study while she repeatedly reminded me that English Composition I wasn’t supposed to be this hard.
Unfortunately for me, it was. I looked down at the paper sitting in front of me before letting out a dramatic sigh.
“I don’t even know what my thesis statement is supposed to be anymore.”
Without looking up from her book, Penelope answered.
“That’s because you keep changing your topic every fifteen minutes.”
“I changed it twice,” I said defensively.
“You changed it four times.”
I pointed my pencil at her.
“You keeping count?” I asked with a smirk.
“I have to. You make my eye twitch,” she said in a playfully annoyed tone.
A laugh escaped me.
“So now I stress you out?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You absolutely do.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“We are.”
She reached for her phone before looking over at me.
“You still want Chinese?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s cool.”
She nodded and dialed the number she’d apparently memorized by now. After a couple of rings, somebody answered.
“Hi. Can I place an order for delivery, please?”
I looked back down at my paper while she read everything off.
“One orange chicken combination. One bourbon chicken with vegetable lo mein.”
She paused for a second, I guess to listen.
“Yes. Fried rice with that and oh,” her voice grew a little more serious, “can you make sure there isn’t any shrimp anywhere near the fried rice?”
I looked up as she kept talking.
“He’s allergic. I mean no shrimp touching anything.”
She listened again before nodding.
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
She gave them our address with my apartment number before ending the call. When she looked up, I was already staring at her.
“What?” she asked.
“You remembered.”
She frowned like the answer should’ve been obvious.
“Of course I remembered. You told me shrimp makes your throat close,” she said with a shrug like remembering something like that wasn’t a big deal.
A smile found its way onto my face before I could stop it.
“You know…” I started.
“What?”
“You seem like the type that’ll argue with a waiter over my food.”
She pushed her glasses back up her nose.
“I would.”
I lightly chuckled and watched her for another second before looking back down at my paper. She probably had no idea how much that meant to me. Knowing she’d make sure I was okay made me feel safer than I had any business feeling. About twenty minutes later, a knock echoed through the apartment.
“I got it,” I said while pushing myself off the couch.
I handed him money and then grabbed the bag from the delivery boy before locking the door behind me. When I turned around, Penelope was already headed toward the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting the cups.”
By the time I unpacked the containers and sat everything on the coffee table, she came back balancing two glasses packed with ice and the pitcher of sweet tea.
“You really done made yourself at home.”
She looked at me without missing a beat.
“Are you complaining?”
I looked around my apartment before shrugging.
“I don’t know. You’re moving around here like your name’s on the lease,” I said playfully with a raised eyebrow.
“I just know where the cups are.”
“Today it’s the cups. Tomorrow, you gone be telling me where I can and can’t put things in here.”
She pushed her glasses up with one finger.
“You like when I tell you what you can and can’t do.”
I didn’t even offer her a response because she was right. I liked everything about Pen. Before either of us touched our food, she pulled my container closer. I watched her lift the lid and inspect it.
“No shrimp,” she said out loud before looking a little closer, “no shrimp juice either.”
Only then did she hand it to me.
Once she was satisfied, she opened her own container.
“I think we’re safe.”
I shook my head.
“You really don’t play about that allergy.”
“No,” she picked up her fork, “I don’t.”
For the next twenty minutes, we ate, argued over whether crab rangoon counted as an appetizer or a side dish, and somehow ended up debating whether pineapple belonged on pizza.
“It absolutely does,” I said.
“It absolutely doesn’t,” she countered.
“It brings balance,” I said with a smile.
“It brings disappointment.”
“It brings flavor,” I tried to convince her some more.
“It brings confusion.”
I pointed my fork at her.
“You know what?”
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t even know why I keep inviting you over.”
She stared at me for exactly two seconds before answering.
“Because you’re borderline failing one of your classes…”
Truth be told, I was purposely coasting just so that I could spend more time with her. A laugh burst out of her before she could stop it. It was a real laugh, the kind that filled the apartment.
I couldn’t help but smile. Somewhere between orientation, English composition, ordering takeout, and late-night study sessions, that sound was quickly becoming my favorite part of college.