Chapter 8 #3
“I like your overalls,” he said to me in a way that made me feel like he didn’t actually like them at all.
In fact, I was pretty sure he was poking fun at me.
I’d gotten dressed this morning without intending on seeing anyone but my dad.
Now I felt like my overall shorts and floral shirt made me look like a dork.
“Leave her alone, Jay,” Marlon advised.
“What?” he replied defensively, turning to me, “If we’re gonna be friends, you might have to let me clown you once in a while.” His eyebrows climbed to the top of his forehead. “You good, Overalls?”
“Lauren,” I corrected, not wanting this nickname. “At least I can say I’m dressed for the weather.”
Marlon chuckled. “He’s thinks that if he wears more clothes, we might not notice that he’s fat. Newsflash, nigga, we know.”
“You always have to take it there…” Jay shook his head. “Let me get you one of my Human Nutrition textbooks so you can stop talkin’ all that that shit. I ain’t fat. I have bulky bones. Full of fuckin’ calcium!”
I tried to picture Kain in the center of these two bickering and suppressed a smile.
“I’m Jay, by the way,” he finally introduced himself. “My momma named me Javon, but no one calls me that except for her and my lady.”
“Who no one’s ever seen,” Marlon quipped.
“Nigga!” Jay gave Marlon a look of irritation, genuinely offended. “We long distance.”
There was a hard knock at Marlon’s front door.
“That should be Amir,” Jay guessed. Well, damn, how many people were coming? “I saw his ass on the expressway on my way over.”
Nobody went to open the door and the knocker simply let himself in.
A man about Kain’s height stepped in wearing a form fitting three-piece suit.
He had a deep, dark complexion. The type of flawless blackness that you could tell had come straight out of the motherland.
His long dreadlocks we’re pulled up in a bun tied tight atop his head, his hairline sharply manicured.
Amir looked like something out of GQ Magazine.
I looked at the three men in front of me, factoring in an absent Kain, and tried to picture this group as real friends, hanging out. Clearly they had to be close. Kain had called them and it appeared like they’d all dropped whatever they were doing.
“Who’s BMW outside?” Amir asked Marlon and Jay. Both of the men nodded towards me and Amir’s eyes followed. Again, for the third time today, I was given the once over.
“Ahh,” Amir made a sound of understanding. “You must be Lauren.”
That’s the best friend, I immediately gathered.
“Why does it seem like he’s always the first to know everything?” Jay asked Marlon, light irritation in his question. Yup, definitely the best friend.
Amir laughed at the question, sidestepping around us and grabbing an apple from a bowl on Marlon’s kitchen counter. “Because you two gossip like hos,” he said, biting into the Granny Smith.
“So did he tell you why Big Sy wants her dead?”
I flinched at the blunt way in which Marlon presented that information.
“Silas doesn’t really want her dead. He wants her prosecutor Pops dead.
More than anything, Big Sy wants that case the state is bringing against him to die.
” Amir took another casual bite into the green apple.
“But she’ll do, I guess,” he said with a shrug.
“I guess a dead kid does put a damper on a work schedule.”
“I am literally standing right here,” I muttered.
Jay sniggered. “If you’re gonna be with Kain you might have to get used to niggas tryin’ to kill you,” he told me.
“I’m not with anyone,” I announced. They all got the same amused look on their faces at once, as if they’d rehearsed it. I wanted to know what was so funny. “What?”
Before anyone could elaborate, the front door opened again behind me. I turned my head, half expecting yet another clown for the circus, only to be surprised by who I found walking through the threshold. The pure relief I felt upon seeing Kain was unexpected, but at the same time, it felt natural.
The relief must’ve been clearly visible on my face because, from behind, I heard Jay mutter, “I’m not with anyone, my ass.”
Kain greeted me first before acknowledging anyone else in the room.
“Hey.” His eyes flickered above my head, glancing at the three men behind me briefly before his attention was back on me. “They didn’t mess with you, did they?”
At least he knew his friends.
“Well aside from this one,” I pointed at Amir, “casually talking about my imminent death, and this one,” I gestured toward Jay, “making fun of my overalls even though he’s dressed for a New York winter, I’m good.” I looked at Kain’s last friend. “Marlon’s good people. He gave my sister a D once.”
“Bruh, you fucked her sister?” Jay sounded impressed. Everyone in the room let out an annoyed sigh, exchanging looks with one another. If that was Jay’s attempt at a joke, no one was amused.
“D grade,” I clarified, although I got the sense Jay was perfectly aware what I meant. Kain shook his head, his eyes almost apologizing for his less than perfect friends. I bit back a smile, vaguely entertained by the dynamic between the four of them.
Separately, they all seemed like very random parts, but still, they seemed to fit together just fine.
I could almost picture the four of them meeting in Kindergarten, or something, and having each other’s backs till now.
There was an undeclared sense of teamwork between them; like they had become a highly efficient group of people a very long time ago.
I got the sense that these were the type of men who could put their minds together and make anything happen.
Amir was the first to speak.
“So what’s the plan?”