19. Ghost
Ghost
The knock came about an hour or so after we got off the phone.
I already knew who it was, but I looked through the peephole anyway.
Trigga stood on the other side with his hands shoved into the pockets of his white jeans.
I’d seen on his Instagram story earlier that he was at his girl’s folks’ gender reveal, and he still had on the same all-white outfit.
I unlocked the door and stared at him for a bit.
“You gone let me in?”
“I guess.” I stepped back a bit to give him room to get in.
He walked past me, and I shut the door behind him.
The apartment immediately fell quiet. That alone told me something was wrong.
Normally, when Trigga came over, one of us would’ve already been talking trash before the door even closed.
Instead, he stood there looking around the apartment like he’d forgotten why he came.
“You good?” I asked finally to break the silence.
“Yeah,” he nodded.
I studied him for another second before shaking my head.
“I don’t believe you.”
A tired smile crossed his face, but it disappeared almost as quickly as it came. He looked around before settling his eyes back on me.
“I need you to hear me out before you say anything.”
“Aight, what is it?”
He took a slow breath and then looked me straight in the eyes.
“A couple months ago, Ms. Gia asked me to take her to lunch.”
“My mama?”
He nodded.
“Yeah.”
“I thought she wanted to talk about you and me not speaking.”
“Okay, so what happened?”
He let out a slow breath.
“She started talking about my daddy. Then she told me something I never saw coming.”
“What?”
His eyes never left mine.
“She told me that your father and my father… are the same man.”
I stared at him and then fixed my face in disbelief before opening my mouth.
“What?”
“We got the same father, Ghost.”
I laughed once. It was a dry, confused laugh.
“Nah,” I shook my head, “you got this all fucked up.”
“I don’t. Ms. Gia told me herself.”
My heart started pounding. I searched his face for any sign that he was playing, and there wasn’t one. I turned away from him and rubbed both hands over my face.
“So,” I spoke without looking back, “you’re telling me your daddy… was my daddy too?”
“Yeah.”
I closed my eyes. This shit was unbelievable.
Like, was this a Tyler Perry play or fucking what?
I tried to gather my thoughts. I was silent for a while because I remember asking my mother over the years who the fuck my daddy was.
Hell, I just asked my mother recently when I had that flashback after handling Bashar.
After a long moment, I finally looked back at him.
“How long you known?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“About two months.”
My head snapped up.
“You been sitting on something like this for two months?”
“I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. I was trying to figure out how to tell you.”
Neither one of us spoke. Everything I’d believed about my life had just changed with one conversation. I just stood there staring at Tahari, trying to wrap my head around everything he’d just told me.
Finally, I let out a slow breath.
“So…” I looked him dead in the eyes. “We’re real brothers?”
“Yeah,” he nodded.
I wasn’t about to sit in this shit and be emotional about it. Trigga’s daddy… I mean, our daddy was dead and fucking gone. I had problems right now that I was facing. Problems that I needed my brother for.
“Aight, cool.”
“Cool?” He was looking at me with this skeptical glare.
“Yeah. Knowing this actually makes this next part easier.”
“What next part?” Trigga was confused as hell.
“I need my real fucking brother. Trigga, hear me out. This Ryan shit is getting out of control. I need you.”
His expression changed immediately. I already knew what was coming before he opened his mouth.
“Ghost… I can’t.”
“You can’t?” I stepped closer to him with a face of disgust.
“No,” he sounded sad, like this was a hard decision for him to make.
To me, it wasn’t shit hard about it. Family stuck the fuck together.
“So even after finding out we got the same blood, it’s still no?” I asked.
“It ain’t about that. I’m trying to change my life.”
“You keep saying that shit, but for fucking who?” I was growing agitated.
“For me.”
I stared at him for a second before laughing in his fucking face. He was a joke.
“Nah. It ain’t for you. It’s for that girl.
It’s for her daddy. It’s for all of them people over there.
They ain’t your family!” I felt my voice rising before I could stop it.
“My mama and me been there for you since you ain’t have nobody.
When the muthafucka that spit us both out his ball sack died, who was there?
” I pointed at my chest, “I was. We’ve been your family.
Before I even knew we shared blood, I always chose you. ”
Trigga sat quietly until I finished. Then he looked up at me.
“I ain’t forgetting none of that.”
“It sure feels like it. I think you trying to fit into that little family over there.”
“It ain’t about them,” he quickly defended.
“The hell it ain’t,” I pointed toward him.
“You got a job working for that man and you dating his fucking daughter. Mind you… this is the same nigga that shot you! I just watched your Instagram story and you over there smiling at their gender reveal like you’ve been a part of that family your whole life. ”
“They’ve been good to me.”
“AND WE FUCKING HAVEN’T?” I was yelling.
He stood up and took a couple steps toward me. I was so damn mad that my heart was beating out of my chest as it rose up and down in anger.
“Ghost, I’m not choosing them over you. I’m choosing myself.”
“Na,” I shook my head, “You’re choosing a bitch.”
“Watch your mouth.”
I could see the anger all over him. This was the same kind of argument that started that fight in the alleyway. He looked like he wanted to hit me, and I was hoping that he would because with the amount of anger that I was feeling right now, I would have beat the shit out of him.
I looked him up and down before laughing. This nigga was pussy whipped, and I don’t even know if he even got the chance to smell it yet. I walked over to the front door, unlocked it, and pulled it open.
“Get the fuck out.”
At first, he didn’t move.
“I said get the fuck out.”
I pointed outside.
“Go be with them. Go eat Sunday dinner with them. Go to their little family functions. And go be the extra son that nigga always wanted.”
When he walked past me, a smirk pulled at his lip.
“You need to heal that heart of yours,” he said as he made his exit.
When he stepped outside, I slammed the door so hard the pictures on my wall rattled.
My chest heaved as I stood there staring at the door.
Then I grabbed my phone. When I opened Instagram, the first thing that popped up was a picture from the gender reveal.
It was Trigga and Maliah’s whole family standing there smiling like life was perfect. I clenched my jaw until it hurt.
“Man…” I threw my phone across the apartment. “Fuck all of ‘em.”
TRIGGA
By the time I pulled into my apartment complex, all I wanted to do was take a shower and clear my head.
The conversation with Ghost had been playing on a loop ever since he slammed the door in my face.
I let out a tired breath as I unlocked my front door.
The second I stepped inside, I stopped. The apartment smelled like baked chicken.
“What the…”
I kicked the door shut behind me and followed the smell into the kitchen. Maliah stood at the stove with one of my oversized T-shirts on over a pair of biker shorts. Her curls were piled on top of her head while she stirred a pot of mashed potatoes.
On the counter sat a pan of baked chicken and a bowl of broccoli. She looked over her shoulder and smiled.
“There you are.”
I couldn’t help but smile back.
“You put your key to use.”
She laughed softly.
“I did.”
I walked over and kissed her forehead before looking around the kitchen.
“When did you get here?” I asked.
“A little while ago.”
She put on oven mitts, reached into the oven, and pulled out a pan of corn bread.
“After you left from my parents’ gender reveal, I figured you were probably going to need two things.”
“What’s that?” I asked as I kissed the nape of her neck.
“A hot meal and somebody willing to listen.”
I backed away from her and leaned against the counter while shaking my head.
“You know me too well.”
“I try.”
For a few minutes, the only sounds in the apartment were the clinking of plates and silverware as she finished fixing our food. She handed me one of the plates before carrying hers over to the table. I sat across from her, but before either of us picked up our forks, she looked at me.
“So, how did it go?”
I already knew what she meant. I stared down at my plate for a second before answering.
“He didn’t take it well.”
Her shoulders dropped.
“I’m sorry.”
I nodded.
“I figured it wasn’t going to be easy, but I don’t think either one of us was ready for how hard it actually was.”
She reached across the table and rested her hand over mine.
“What happens now?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. I told him the truth. The rest is up to him.”
I purposely left out the part where Ghost showed his animosity. I’m sure that would make anyone feel uneasy. She squeezed my hand gently.
“Families don’t always know how to love each other the right way at first.”
I looked up at her, and she continued.
“My daddy and Uncle Ty used to argue so much when they were teenagers that my Papa Julian would slap them both upside the head.”
A small smile tugged at my lips.
“For real?”
She laughed.
“For real. They’d be at each other’s throats one minute and outside, then outside together doing God knows what the next, like nothing ever happened. My dad always says blood doesn’t stop people from disagreeing. It just gives them another reason to figure it out.”
I sat there for a moment, letting her words sink in.
“I hope that’s true.”
She offered me a smile, and then she pointed her fork toward my plate.
“Now eat before your food gets cold.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I gathered some mash and a scoop of chicken onto my fork before taking a bite.
“That’s more like it.”
After dinner, I gathered our plates and carried them into the kitchen.
“I’ll wash,” Maliah said eagerly.
“I’ll dry.”
She filled one side of the sink with warm water before adding a couple of squirts of dish soap. Within seconds, thick white bubbles covered the top of the water.
“I don’t know why people act like washing dishes is so bad,” she said, dropping the first plate into the sink.
“Because it is.”
She rolled her eyes as she scrubbed the plate clean before handing it to me. For a few minutes, we worked in comfortable silence. She washed while I was drying. Every now and then our hands brushed when she passed me another dish.
I looked over just in time to see her elbow-deep in the dishwater.
An idea crossed my mind. I dipped two fingers into the bubbles floating on top and scooped up a little foam.
Before she could look over, I gently tapped it right on the end of her nose.
She froze, and her eyes crossed as she tried to look at it.
I couldn’t hold it together anymore. I laughed.
She reached up, wiped the bubbles off her nose, and looked down at the sink. A smile slowly spread across her face.
“So that’s how we playing?”
Before I could answer, she flicked a handful of warm dishwater right at me. Drops splashed across my shirt. I looked down, and when I looked back up at her, she was already laughing.
“You think that’s funny?” I said, laughing myself.
“I know it’s funny.”
I reached into the sink and sent another splash in her direction. She squealed, throwing both hands up as the water dotted the front of her shirt.
“Tahari!”
“You started it.”
She laughed harder before splashing me again.
Within seconds, neither one of us cared about the dishes anymore.
We stood in the middle of the kitchen laughing and throwing little splashes of water back and forth until we were both breathing hard.
Finally, I caught her wrists before she could splash me again.
“Aight… I quit.”
“You better.”
She was still smiling when I pulled her against me. Without saying anything, I wrapped my arms around her and held her close. The laughter slowly faded until the kitchen was quiet again. I kissed the top of her head.
“Thank you.”
She tilted her head back to look at me.
“For what?” she asked.
“For being here.”
She smiled before wrapping her arms a little tighter around my waist.
“There ain’t nowhere else I’d rather be.”