First Kiss
Rico
Plenty of times I’d had bitches in the front seat of my car.
None of them ever felt like the first time Wynter Snow slid to my right.
I was sure the food we’d had earlier was finna come back up, I was so nervous.
And nervous wasn’t something you wanted to be when you were already driving without a license with an unregistered gun in the car.
But I kept my cool. She liked music, so I had one of the playlists I made on my ipod playing from this cassette thing that connected to it.
“So, how old are you?” she asked once we got out of Raleigh Park.
The corner of my mouth pulled. Shorty had no self-preservation. I noted it, knowing if we were gonna chill any more, that was something she’d have to build.
“How old do I look?”
“I’on know,” she shrugged. “You’re driving, so maybe sixteen?”
I chuckled, smoothly guiding us through the nighttime traffic toward Thunder Hills.
“You, what, thirteen? Ty-Ty genius ass skipped a grade.”
“He did?” she asked, her eyes expanding. “But he’s so tall.”
She said it more to herself than me, like she was really going over in her head any signs she missed about my cousin. It was cute how she retreated into herself, and gave me enough time to pull up to a view toward the top of the hills in this bougie ass neighborhood.
I turned the car off and pocketed the keys. “I’m fourteen.”
Snow scoffed. “Yeah right.”
“On baby.”
I thought she would have been horrified or even cursed me out. Thunder Hills was a cool lil’ drive from her crib. Or maybe even call my bluff and say a nigga was lying.
Naw. Wynter Snow, one of one, showed all thirty-two teeth, her braces twinkling in the muted streetlights.
“How’d you learn how to drive like that?”
“Like what?”
“Good.”
We both chuckled as I took off my seatbelt. “I been driving since I was like twelve. Me and my brother. Shit second nature to me now, I could prolly teach you.”
“You’ve never been pulled over?” she asks, taking off her seatbelt and adjusting her seat back.
“Nah. I’m that nigga, so a lot of rules don’t apply to me.”
Shorty laughed out loud like a nigga was joking or something. When she noticed I ain’t even have a smirk on my grill, she laughed harder.
“You swear you somebody.”
“You know I’m somebody, that’s why you right here next to me,” I boasted as my phone started vibrating in my pocket.
“What if I was bored?”
“Don’t matter,” I replied, silencing my shit and my trap phone. “Regardless of the reason, I pulled up and you got in my whip. I’m rockin’ and you rollin’, Snow. Accept it.”
“I’m not Ice Princess no more?”
“Nope. Everybody calling you that. I can tell no one calls you Snow, so that’s my new name for you. Don’t let me hear another nigga calling you that, either.”
“All this and you still haven’t told me your real name.”
Snow folded her arms and turned so her back was on the window.
I thought she’d be shy, like other bitches in our age group, but again, I was mistaken.
Shorty was holding her own, giving as good as she got.
She wasn’t screaming sex appeal like the other hoes I gave time to, but she wasn't no pushover, either.
The back and forth was fun.
I never thought someone as green as her would hold my interest.
“You know, Fredo told me his real name.”
I smiled at the mention of my brother. If he hadn’t had given her the okay, I wouldn’t had even been in the car with Snow.
I never mentioned her at all. But he must have seen us going back and forth, because as soon as we got to the skate park, he told me she was cool.
Muthafuckas thought because Fredo was more talkative, he was the nicer twin. He disarmed people, and usually, they talked themselves right onto his ‘fuck you’ list.
Not Snow.
She passed the test, and got the okay from Fredo in less than an hour. Unheard of.
“You still ain’t earned my government, Snow.”
High beams flashed in the windshield, showing redness on her cheek for a split second. I narrowed my eyes as she rolled hers.
“What I gotta do to earn your first name, Luney?”
“Tell me what the fuck happened to your face.”
Snow flinched at my tone. I ain’t mean for it to come off too hard, but the redness and my anger both caught me off guard. Her face wasn’t red earlier, so what the fuck happened in the hours we were apart?
She averted her eyes, her gaze landing in her lap as she started twisting her fingers.
“Don’t think about lying to me, Snow,” I gritted.
She sighed like I was being unreasonable. Our eyes were locked, hers stretching, asking me to drop it.
She didn’t know me, I had to remind myself. The seconds ticked by before she gave up trying to wait me out.
“I’m way more patient than you are. Go ahead, Snow.”
“Can you keep a secret?” she whispered. Her fingers grazed the mark on her face, before she faced forward.
My eyebrows dipped as I pondered her question. I didn’t keep shit from my brother. It wasn’t how I was built. And depending on her answer, I knew he’d wanna ride out with me to handle it.
But Snow needed to know she could trust me. So I gave that to her.
“Yup.”
Snow licked her lips. “I wasn’t supposed to exist.”
My head jerked back. That wasn’t nowhere near what the fuck I thought she was gonna say. It threw me off so bad I lost what I was gonna say.
“I had an older sister, but she had cancer. My parents heard that having savior siblings would make her better, so that’s how me and my sister came about. We’re twins, too. I’m oldest.”
We grinned at each other, like she knew I was the older out of me and Fredo.
“She still ended up dying. Not my twin; my older sister. We were born to be spare parts, but God has a sense of humor, Luney. Auty, my sister, was like a blood match. But I look just like her. So yeah, my sister's job is done, since she’s dead. But now my job is to take Summer’s place.
And I guess getting hit is a part of the job.”
Snow shrugged it off, smiling to herself as she picked at her hands. My molars hurt from clenching my jaw so hard, and I only took my eyes off of her to silence my phone again.
“I know my sister’s gone, and she loved her a lot, but I couldn’t just keep getting hit. I fought back tonight, Luney. I told her if she put her hands on me again, I’d cut her.”
“Your twin?” My eyes stretched. I didn’t know any other twins, but I couldn’t imagine them not fucking with each other. Fredo and I were one.
“No, my mom, silly,” she simpered. She shook her head like I was the one saying some crazy shit.
Ma had her faults. Depression was beating her down more and more every day.
But I could never imagine her raising a hand to either one of us.
Even when we’d be on some complete bullshit, Ma was more than gentle with us.
Even after we got word my aunt passed, she ain’t let that turn her for the worse.
Even when she gave up trying to steer us away from the clutches of the BBs, she didn’t turn bitter or angry.
I just couldn’t imagine it.
And even with a mark on her face, and confiding in a nigga she just met that her mama be hitting her, and even saying some shit like she shouldn’t even be living, Snow still had a smile on her face. She still decided to hop in my whip and spend the last night before school started with a nigga.
I felt the same way I felt when I caught my first body.
There was something exhilarating about a girl like Snow trusting a nigga like me.
It didn’t matter how easy it seemed, us being at the view that night, I knew she didn’t give that shit freely.
I bet her sister didn’t even know the bullshit her mama was pulling.
And if she didn’t know, then nobody knew.
Nobody but me.
That wouldn’t be the only time I pulled up on her. It wouldn’t be the only time she gave me a secret of hers to hold. I needed more, way more from her. And I knew to get that, I had to give her something, too.
“My Ma was on the finest of drugs when she named me and my brother,” I chuckled. When Snow brought her attention back to me, and I saw the curiosity in her eyes, I pushed forward.
“Rico… well, Richard Ayaan Alvarez. And then Fredo is Frederick Asaan Alvarez. We like three different countries in one name.”
“Alvarez? Y’all Blaxican?”
A laugh erupted from my chest, making her smile broader. She couldn’t have been thinking before she spoke.
“My daddy side is Belizean. I can speak Spanish, though.”
“Oh, yeah? Say something,” she said, shifting in her seat.
“Eres única de especie, Nieve,” I blurted without thinking.
“Okay,” she drawled. “What does that mean?”
I grinned. “You ain’t earn that yet. You hungry?” I for sure wasn’t going to tell her I said she was one of a kind. It didn’t matter how she had me feeling, the fact of the matter was I just met her, and I could never show my hand like that.
“I thought we were friends, Rico?”
“We best friends, Snow,” I confirmed. “You still gotta earn it.”
I ended up taking Snow to this taco spot in South East and got us a tray of different tacos before going back to the view.
We hopped in the backseat and ate, before I threw away the trash in one of the residential trashcans and got back inside with her.
The street was quiet, and from the back, we could see the twinkling lights of the city.
I took out my phone again and finally sifted through the different messages muthafuckas was leaving on my instant messenger.
“How you get the new iPhone?” she squealed, snatching it from my hands. She exited out the instant messaging app, not caring about what anyone was telling me, and started playing with the home screen.
“Why? You want one?”
She froze briefly, before her head slowly craned toward me. “Stop playing, Rico.”
“I told you, Snow. I’m rockin’, and you rollin’. Say you want one and I’ll get you one.”
She shook her head before handing my phone back to me. “You are not a normal fourteen year-old.”
I shrugged, glancing at my trap phone before pulling out my earphones for my iPhone. “I’m one of one.”
After detangling my earphones, I plugged them in and offered her one. She took it eagerly, placing it in her ear closest to me and settling into the backseat.
“Your playlist better be good or I’m judging you.”
“I bet,” I chuckled, scrolling for the perfect song. “You be having songs on your page I’ve never even heard of.”
“I be friending rappers and singers on MyRoom, and they be putting me on–ooh! Good choice, Rico. I approve.”
I smiled in the dark as Nothing Even Matters began to play in our ears. I couldn't find the version I wanted on any of the torrent sites I had for downloading music, so I finally had just went into Ma’s room and got her Lauryn Hill CD.
I didn’t know why that song had been stuck in my head since I first saw Snow. But in the back of my whip, letting D’Angelo and Lauryn serenade us, it fell into place.
I didn’t think females could be as cool as she was.
I had to bite my lips to keep my life story from leaking out.
I wanted to tell her about Ma, and Nan, and Pooh.
I wanted to tell her how I was more afraid of living without Fredo than dying.
Or how the first time I cried this year was after I had a nightmare that Ty-Ty got killed over gang politics after I found out he got put on.
I wanted to press her about Set and his friend Turk. Did they know how cool she was? Was she listening to music with them?
She probably thought I was playing when I called her my best friend. But in that backseat, she did become something to me. Especially when she put her earbud in her other ear to lay on my shoulder.
I closed my eyes to savor the feeling. That was the first time I ever hung out with a female and didn’t have sex with her. I wasn’t on that with her when I asked to pull up, but I didn’t expect sex to be the furthest thing from my mind when she got in my presence.
It actually traded places with the last thing on my mind; peace. Peace took over, and pulled me under, as I grounded myself to the weight of Snow’s head on my arm.
My eyes popped open and scoped the scene.
I was horizontal now, sprawled out on the backseat of my car.
It wasn’t the first or second time I slept there, but my mind was slow as hell, and details of the night before were lost.
When I shifted to grab my trap phone, I heard a groan, and that’s when I realized someone was laying on me.
Intricate red cornrows lay on my chest. Her arms were around me, and tightened when I moved again to grab my phone off the floor.
“Five more minutes,” she mumbled into my shirt.
I glanced at the time before slowly lifting us to a sitting position. “It’s six in the morning, Snow. We both got school.”
“What school you go to?” she asked, sleep still heavy in her voice.
“Grant. I can’t be late when I’m starting high school, right?”
“We can always run away,” she shrugged, finally letting me go to wipe her face. “Who needs school?”
I shook my head as I climbed into the front seat. She got in the passenger after me, and I turned over the engine to warm up the car.
“I’on know, Snow. I need my girl to be smart as hell.”
“So I’m your girl?” she asked, arching her brow and folding her arms.
I smirked at her before pulling the gear into Drive and easing out of the park. “If you earn it.”
She rapped along to every song on the early morning radio as I cruised back to her house. How she knew every song is beyond me, even the older ones, but she did. She was aggressive when it was Mystikal, sweet when it was Eve, and made stank faces when it was Trina.
I turned the radio down when I pulled up in front of her crib. It felt like her energy left with the music, and I almost didn’t wanna leave her there.
“You gon’ be okay with ya mama?” I asked. In the morning light, the red mark was more noticeable on her face.
She still smiled, though, and nodded her head. “Yeah. Have a good first day of school, Rico.”
“You, too.”
She took off her seatbelt and scooted over to wrap her arms around me. I shifted the gear to Park to do the same.
And when she pulled back, I leaned forward, and pressed my lips onto hers.
An electric shock went through us, making her squeal and lurch back.
“Dang, Rico. Way to mess up my first kiss,” she laughed, touching her lips.
They probably stung like mine did, but that didn’t mean it was ruined. Not at all.
Nah, my first kiss with Snow, my first kiss ever, was the opposite of that.
She shook her head again, eyeing me as she slid out my car. I rolled down the window to watch her disappear to the back of her house, and only then did I peel off.
A nigga felt on top of the world. I felt so good, I smiled all the way home.
I sang Nothing Really Matters twice in the shower.
I didn’t complain when it took Set, Ty, and Reem too damn long to come down.
I even stopped and got us all breakfast before I dropped them off at their school, making me and Fredo almost late to ours.
Yeah, Snow made me feel as good as pulling the trigger. I didn’t know how or if she could fit into my life as easily as pulling the trigger did, but I was damn sure gonna try to figure it out.