Chapter Five Renee’s Opinion
“Wait, wait, wait.” Renee nearly knocked over Mika’s monitor leaning across the desk. “Amir Owens. THE Amir Owens. Was in here. For you.”
“It’s not that deep.”
“Girl, it is exactly that deep, it is the deepest thing that has ever happened at this desk.” Renee’s eyes had gone dark and calculating in a way that made something in Mika’s stomach curdle.
“You know what he’s worth? Deja’s cousin said his last purse was like eighty bands.
Eighty. And that’s before he’s even champion. ”
“I don’t know anything about his money, Renee.”
“Well you should find out.” Renee said it like advice, like she was doing Mika a favor. “Girl like you don’t get a shot like this twice. You better not mess around and be too shy to shoot your shot.”
Girl like you. Mika had heard that phrase from Renee’s mouth a hundred different times over fifteen years of friendship, and it had never once, not once, been about her intelligence or her drive or the fact that she was about to be the first lawyer either of their families had ever produced.
It was always about what she lacked — money, confidence, the right clothes — dressed up as concern.
“I gotta get back to work,” Mika said.
Renee left, already texting Deja, already turning Mika’s private, fragile, brand-new thing into neighborhood news. Mika sat there feeling robbed of something before she’d even had the chance to hold it close.
By the time she got off shift, Deja had already called twice. Mika let it go to voicemail the first time and answered the second, bracing herself.
“Renee said you got a whole boxer sniffing around,” Deja said, no hello, already breathless with it. “Girl, you better not be holding out on us. What’s he look like in person? Is he taller than the pictures? Does he got money money or, like, still-grinding money?”
“I don’t know, Deja. I just met him.”
“Well find out. And don’t be all weird and shy about it either, you know how you get. Some girls would kill for this.”
Mika stood in the parking lot with her keys in her hand, cold seeping through her thin coat, and felt the familiar, exhausting sensation of being asked to perform gratitude for attention she hadn’t asked for and didn’t fully trust yet.
“I’ll let you know,” she said, which meant nothing, and hung up before Deja could ask anything else.
She thought about what Amir had said — come sit with my people — and wondered, for the first time in a long time, what it might feel like to be around people who wanted something for her instead of from her.