How was that likeable? How in the hell was that likeable? Ugh. She didn’t wanna be liked. She didn’t want anything that niggas had to offer right about now. She had too much shit going on. There was tooo much drama in her life to let a nigga in. Any nigga in. Especially the slow ass sexy kind like Arvon Barker. Nope nope. She did not need that. Didn’t need it a bit.
She wanted it though. She turned her back as a silly smile broke out on her face. The people that had caused the most damage in her life were all living it up, they had their houses and their fancy cars and their picture perfect relationships. And what did she have? A dirty apartment, no car, and no man. Part of her wanted to grab onto this thing with Arvon and ride it till it was dead, just for the fun of it. Just because she wanted to be a stupid teenager for once, and do stuff she shouldn’t do.
But, as always, she was too smart to allow herself to be the stupid teenager. She didn’t have time for it. She had school, she had a job interview tomorrow. She had choirs to sing for and bills to pay. She didn’t have time for boys. But she kept the silly smile on her face, cause it felt good to know that if she chose to go after it, she could have exactly what she wanted.
Arvon wasn’t the type to dwell over things that had already happened. He lived in the present, not the past, or the future. He said what he wanted to say when he wanted to say it and dealt when the consequences when they came, not before.
Brandon, on the other hand, was a pro at dwelling on things that had already happened, or things that were going to happen, or the way things should’ve happened, or could’ve happened. He supposed that’s why the two of them made such a good team. Brandon thought about it and Arvon did it. He thought about that movie Hustle and Flow, where Anthony Anderson had been talking about the two kinds of people, those who did the talking, and those who did the walking. Now those who did the walking generally didn’t do too much talking, seeing as they were busy walking. But those who did the talking generally didn’t do any walking, cus they usually convinced the walkers to do the walking for them.
The smile that had formed on his face went away. No, he didn’t like that. That didn’t fit this situation the way he thought it had. There was no denying Arvon didn’t do a lot of talking, and Brandon did. But that didn’t mean Brandon wasn’t doing any walking. Or that Arvon was doing any of Brandon’s walking for him. It was Brandon who had gone to jail, not Arvon, and he’d served his time, and he’d come home, and he’d gotten his life together. But he did have to admit that he did a lot less talking since he got out of jail.
Too busy walking, a voice in his head said, and he shook it off. He looked at Arvon. Incredulous.
“You told her you liked her?” He asked. Arvon nodded his head. Brandon shook his. Sometimes this nigga really was just stupid.
“Well why’d you go and tell her that. Now she’s gone get all big headed about it, start bossin you around and bein mean to you.” He said. She was nice sometimes, he remembered whistfully, but it was real rare.
“How you figure she gone be like that?” Arvon asked, looking at his cousin in disbelief. Ashley did have a smart mouth, but she’d never been mean to him. She just played a lot is all.
“I dated her remember, I know how she is.” Brandon replied, and he regretted it the instant he said it. Everybody knew Ashley and Brandon had dated but it was such a short amount of time that they often allowed it to slip from their memory. it hadn’t been anything serious. Their getting together had been quiet, their relationship had been quiet, and their breakup had been quiet.
Well, the breakup hadn’t been so much quiet as it had just been overshadowed by Brandon’s arrest and subsequent jail sentence. But she bought him a present for his birthday while he was inside, and made sure his brother, Michael, gave it to him when he got out. And they were still friends he supposed, but not the way normal friends were. They had that weird friendship you could only have with someone you’d dated and broken up with.
“Why did you break up with her?” Arvon asked. And for a second Brandon didn’t know. He thought about the good times, sitting in the car with her talking about what she was gonna get him while she was in California. He thought about how when he didn’t know what something was or how to do something, he could always ask her because she never made him feel stupid about it, she just told him, and moved on. Sometimes he missed it, missed her, how she’d lean on his shoulder and talk real soft, and her voice would change, and she’d always smell so good, and get real shy before she had to tell him something important.
But then he remembered. “She was mean most of the time. Acted like she didn’t even like me. Like if I fell off the face of the planet it wouldn’t bother her not one bit. That wasn’t cool, you know? So I figured if she felt like that I’d just break up with her, let her go find a nigga she really wanted.” Brandon said, shrugging his shoulders.
Arvon’s brow furrowed. That didn’t sound like the Ashley he knew. The Ashley he knew was loud, and random, and slow. She was real shy until she started talking and then you couldn’t get her to shut up. He started to smile, thinking about how she’d started crying watching John Q at his house the week before, the week Jerome had brought up that whole madness about them going to prom together, but he kept it to himself, locked it away in that secret place where he kept all the thoughts that made him smile. He wasn’t the type to just randomly smile, cus then people asked questions, and he definitely was not the type to answer questions.
“Didn’t she say no the first time you asked her out though?” Arvon asked. And Brandon stiffened. She had said no the first time. And she second time. She’d said yes the third time, and she’d sounded pretty exasperated. It’d been Christmas.
“Yea she said no the first time. You sure do have a lotta questions today nigga.” Brandon responded, and then tried to make himself busy doing something or other, but Arvon followed him.
“And how long were yall together?”
“A month.”
“And didn’t you go to jail like right after yall broke up?”
“Yeah, and?” Brandon turned to look at his cousin.
“Nothin’, I’m just sayin maybe she won’t be like that with me. Cus she said yes to me the first time. Maybe she only went out with you to get you to stop asking.” And with that Arvon backed down.
“Boys!” Miss Chris called over to them from the house, “Come on in, foods here.” And like the boys they were, they put all differences aside and raced into the house before the pizza was all gone.
