20. MJ
MJ
Four people had a key to my apartment. Me.
My parents. And somehow… Penelope. I still wasn’t exactly sure how that happened.
One minute she was coming over to study every now and then.
The next, she was texting me that she was outside because she had left her charger.
Or she was asking if I wanted something to eat because she was already picking up dinner for herself.
Somewhere through this all, my apartment had quietly become our spot.
I pushed the door open after leaving the gym and immediately noticed her backpack sitting beside the couch.
“Penn?”
“In here.”
Her voice came from the kitchen. I rounded the corner to find her standing on a step stool, reaching into one of my upper cabinets. I leaned against the doorway.
“What exactly are you doing?”
Without looking back, she answered.
“Looking for the popcorn.”
“It’s in the pantry,” I directed her.
She stopped reaching and slowly turned to look at me over the top of her glasses.
“You just watched me struggle for a whole minute.”
“I was curious to see how committed you were.”
She climbed down from the stool and walked past me with a small huff before opening the pantry.
“There it is.”
She grabbed two bags before closing the pantry.
“I was going to make popcorn, and maybe we can watch a movie,” she said in an excited tone.
“So, you already made plans for my evening?” I asked with a smile.
“You can leave if you want,” she said with a smirk.
As if we were not standing in my damn kitchen. I chuckled a bit before dropping my gym bag by the front door.
“Nah. I’ll stay.”
She looked at me over the top of her glasses.
“I figured.”
She walked over to the microwave and tossed one of the bags inside before pressing a few buttons.
I leaned against the counter as I watched her.
She moved around my apartment like she’d lived there longer than I had.
She knew where I kept the bowls. Which cabinet had the cups.
Even which blanket was the softest whenever we watched movies.
“Ima go jump in the shower, get everything set up.”
She nodded as she grabbed this big bowl we used for popcorn and put the first bag in it before popping the second bag into the microwave.
Quickly, I washed because I didn’t want to keep her waiting.
The crazy part was none of this felt strange anymore.
It felt normal. I’d gotten used to her being here.
I wasn’t sure when that happened. I just knew that I didn’t mind her company one bit.
Although I was dressed in pajamas, I was still using my towel to dry my head.
She smiled in my direction and then turned her attention back to the television.
I plopped down beside her and then tossed my towel in the chair that was in the corner.
She handed me some of the blanket she was using and then placed the big bowl of popcorn in between us.
She was so into the Christmas movie that she had put on.
We had about two more holidays until Christmas, and still she put this on.
Her eyes were glued to the screen, and I tried to do the same, but my mind had already wandered somewhere else.
I really hate Christmas. Most people heard that word and thought about lights, gifts, and family traditions.
I thought about flashing blue lights, shattered glass, and the smell of gasoline.
The week before Christmas was the worst time of my life.
I was still young, but there were some things you never forgot.
The scar resting just beneath my hairline had faded over the years, but it was still there.
It was a constant reminder of the worst night of my life.
Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw it.
And every Christmas season, I think about it.
I reached up without thinking and brushed my fingers across the scar on my forehead.
It wasn’t much to look at anymore, it was just a thin line, but it carried a lifetime of memories.
“Are you okay?”
Penelope’s voice pulled me back. I dropped my hand from my forehead and then looked over at her.
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
I forced a small smile.
“Yeah.”
She studied me for a second like she wanted to ask another question. Instead, she handed me the bowl of popcorn, and I took it from her.
“Thanks.”
She nodded and turned back toward the movie. For some reason, I was grateful she didn’t press me. About halfway through the movie, a thought crossed my mind.
“You know, I still don’t understand how people can watch movies like this and then act surprised when the two main characters end up together.”
Usually, she would have had something witty to say, but she was quiet.
“Penn?”
Still nothing. I turned a little farther toward her and couldn’t help but laugh. She was asleep.
Somewhere between the small-town Christmas festival and the fake snow, she had completely knocked out. Her glasses had slipped slightly down her nose, and the bowl of popcorn rested in her lap, tilted just enough that one wrong move would’ve sent it crashing onto the floor.
I carefully lifted the bowl from her lap and sat it on the coffee table before reaching over to slide her glasses off. She stirred for half a second.
“Mmm…”
“It’s okay,” I whispered, “you ain’t missing much.”
She settled right back down. I shook my head, smiling to myself as I pulled the blanket a little higher over her shoulder.
“I should’ve known. You fall asleep every movie.”
She didn’t hear a word I said, or maybe she did. Either way, she never opened her eyes.
I leaned back into my corner of the sectional and turned the volume down a couple of clicks before looking over at her one more time.
She looked so peaceful and comfortable. Knowing that she felt comfortable in my apartment made something in my chest feel a little lighter.
I looked back at the television, but I wasn’t paying attention anymore.
The movie kept playing, and the popcorn sat untouched on the coffee table.
Between the cheesy Christmas music and Penelope’s soft, steady breathing, I realized this was something that I had gotten used to.
I don’t know when I was going to muster up the courage to tell this girl that I liked her, but I knew that I had to.
Especially before one of these other niggas in our school tried to get at her.
GHOST
Three Weeks Later
Some things got easier with time. This wasn’t one of them.
Three weeks had passed since I slammed the door in Trigga’s face, and I still hadn’t picked up the phone.
Neither had he. At first, I kept expecting my phone to ring.
He had to see where the fuck he was wrong in all of this.
When week one had passed, I stopped checking.
I told myself it didn’t matter and that I didn’t care.
If he really was moving this way and wanted to drop me and my mother to be over there with his girl and her family, then fuck him.
It was easier to tell myself that than to admit that the silence between us was bothering me.
I pulled into the gas station on the corner and cut the engine.
My gas light had been on since yesterday, and if I pushed my luck any longer, I was going to end up walking.
I slid my mother’s card into the pump and started filling the tank. That’s when I heard it.
“Nah, son. It goes in like this.”
I glanced over.
At the pump beside mine, a little boy couldn’t have been older than eight stood beside his father with both hands wrapped around the gas nozzle. The man kept one hand over his son’s, showing him how to work the pump without spilling a drop.
“There you go,” he said with a smile.
“I did it!”
“Damn right you did.”
The little boy puffed his chest out like he’d just won a trophy. It was the sweetest thing I had ever seen, yet I looked away.
For the longest time, I’d wondered what something that simple felt like.
I wondered what it was like to have a father teach you and to show you things.
To be proud of you over something as small as pumping gas.
Then I thought about my childhood. Mr. Reynolds had taught me and Trigga how to ride our bikes in the empty church parking lot every Saturday morning for almost a month.
If Trigga fell, he picked him up. And if I fell, he picked me up too.
I used to think he was just a good man. A man who saw a little boy without a father and decided to help.
The reality of the secret that my mother was keeping all my life stung like a muthafucka. I knew better now. He wasn’t being kind, he was being a father. A father who couldn’t claim me. A bitter laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
“Ain’t that some shit.”
The pump clicked, pulling me out of my feelings.
I removed the nozzle from my tank but didn’t get back into my car right away.
Instead, I leaned against the driver’s door and looked out across the parking lot.
The day Trigga came over and told me the truth, my mama had walked through that apartment door a couple hours later.
I let her have it. I asked her why she’d lied to me when I was a little boy and why the fuck, she lied to me again when I was a grown-ass man and asked her the same question.
She cried. She apologized. She said she thought she was protecting me.
Her logic behind it didn’t make any damn sense.
Protecting me from what? The truth? Knowing I had a father?
Knowing I had a brother? The whole shit was stupid.
The only thing that made sense was that everybody around me had spent my whole life making decisions they never gave me a chance to make for myself.
First my father. Then my mother. Then Trigga.
Everybody knew and had time to sit with it but me.
I was the last to fucking know. I climbed back into my Camry and shut the door, but I didn’t put it in drive.
Instead, I sat there staring through the windshield.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.
All this time I’d been beating myself up, wondering what I could’ve done differently between Trigga and me.
After this truth came out, I wondered if I shouldn’t have been angry and reached out to him more.
When I thought about this shit with Ryan, I didn’t have to wonder anymore.
Trigga knew we shared the same blood and knew that I was out here dealing with Ryan by myself, and he still looked me in my face and told me that he couldn’t do anything to help me.
The funniest shit of all is that Ryan wants to know where the bricks came from, and I could give up Maliah’s daddy, but I was trying to stay solid here.
This whole experience showed me a lot. And maybe Trigga never fucked with me the way I thought he did.
Maybe I was the only one calling him brother all of these years because if the situation was flipped and if I found out he was my blood and somebody was after him, there wouldn’t have been a conversation to have.
I would’ve stood beside him. No questions asked.
Instead, he stood beside the nigga who shot him.
The nigga that was the only thing standing in between me and getting the feds off my ass.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.
The more I replayed that conversation in my apartment, the more I realized that he wasn’t choosing peace.
He was choosing them. He was choosing what was best for him, and I had to get with the program and do the same. My jaw clenched.
“If you ain’t with me…”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. I never finished the sentence. I didn’t have to. My phone started vibrating in the cup holder. I looked down at the screen.
Ryan
I let it ring twice. By the third ring, I snatched it up and answered.
“What?”
Ryan chuckled on the other end.
“That’s one hell of a way to answer the phone.”
“What do you want?”
This muthafucka was becoming the bane of my existence.
“I got a simple question.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Then ask it.”
“You ever plan on introducing me to the man you got those bricks from?”
My grip tightened around the steering wheel.
“I told you before, I don’t know him like that.”
“I don’t believe you,” he laughed.
“I really don’t give a damn what you believe.”
The laughter disappeared.
“Well, here’s what I do believe,” his voice dropped an octave, “I believe that you could get me in the same room with him if you really wanted to. I’m giving you until the end of next week. And Giovani, if I don’t have an introduction by then, we got a problem.”
I stared through the windshield at the traffic passing by.
“Are you threatening me?”
My nose was flaring.
“I’m giving you an opportunity.”
He said before the line went dead. I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and leaned my head back against the headrest. I didn’t know what the next move would be. A piece of me missed the times when I could’ve called Tahari.
We would’ve sat in this very car, smoked a blunt, and figured this shit out together like we always did. Now, that wasn’t an option. My brother had made his choice. I hated that it had to come to this, but I knew exactly what I had to do. Everybody had something they loved.
And if my own brother wasn’t willing to stand beside me, then maybe it was time he understood exactly what it felt like to lose something he couldn’t imagine living without.