“You don’t say you hate it when Daddy plays it at home,” Krystle said.
“Wasn’t nobody talking to you, Krystle!” he hissed. “Always in somebody’s business!”
“You gotta have some business for somebody to be in it,” she replied, setting the bags on the card table my pops had set up and putting a hand on her bony hip. Okay, maybe it wasn’t actually all that bony, but she still had those skinny legs.
I shrugged as I unfolded the chairs and set them on either side of the table. “I don’t know. I like the music.”
“That’s ‘cause it’s all your parents play at your house, Ford. We really gotta stay over here, though? We can’t walk around and stuff?” Blake asked, moving closer to me and whispering, “I need a cigarette.”
Yep, this fool was still sneaking cigarettes.
“I can’t help you with that. My daddy said I can’t leave this spot, and I ain’t leaving,” I informed him. Wasn’t nobody trying to get their stuff taken from them. Nobody being me in this case. I had a lot to lose!
Blake rolled his eyes and groaned.
Our moms were outside now, laughing and talking as they placed covered containers of food on the table. I followed Blake back inside the RV and offered, “My folks usually really get into the show and don’t pay much attention to what I’m doing. Maybe you can sneak off later.”
“Okay, thanks for the info, man,” he said, sounding relieved.
“Anything to help you lose the attitude.”
We’d been at the Blues Fest for three hours. Blake and I were sitting in lawn chairs close to the RV and behind the adults taking turns playing Dragon Ball Z on my GameBoy. Krystle sat on the RV steps reading a book. She was always reading or drawing. I was just glad she wasn’t staring at me.
Willie P was onstage in a bright yellow suit and matching fedora singing Caller ID, one of my pops’ favorite songs. I kind of liked it, too, and was really getting into it when Blake tapped my shoulder and held up a cigarette, his eyes darting from me to the adults and back. I didn’t do or say anything. I just watched him sneak away and shook my head. When I realized he’d taken my GameBoy with him, I wanted to groan.
Then Krystle moved to claim Blake’s seat, and I did softly groan. “Why you over here?”
“Where’d my brother go?” was her response.
“I don’t know. Ask him when he comes back.”
“You really like this music?”
“Yeah…so?”
“I guess it’s all right,” she said.
Huh?
“Why you being nice?” I queried.
Rolling her eyes, she smacked her lips, said, “Ain’t nobody being nice to your big head self. I just think the song is okay,” and went back to her seat on the RV steps and her book.
So freakin’ weird!
Five
Ford
Now…
“Whoa! Slow down, Stick! Damn! We got a game in a couple days,” I said, watching as my teammate threw back another shot.
“I need this. I’m stressed. You know…Luda!” my teammate, Leo “Robin Stick”” Bouchard responded. He was the team’s one and only Caucasian player, a stellar goalie. He was also…unique, very unique.
No, I didn’t know, but instead of saying that, I said, “Trouble with Coco? Y’all had a fight?”
His head shot up, his attention on me as he vigorously nodded. “Yes! I apologized, but she still won’t talk to me. I don’t think what I did was that bad.”
“Well,” I replied, taking a swig of my soda which felt weird since we were sitting at the bar in this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, “what happened?”
He sighed. “She basically lives with me now, and I love it—”
“Shidddd, I know you do! Coco almost as thick as Nuri. Coco tall with it, though. Damn.”
“I thought Jones told you to keep his wife’s name out your mouth.”
“He did, but I ain’t scared of Maleek Jones. Plus, he ain’t here. You planning on telling him?” Moving closer, I added, “You a rat, Stick?”
“No! Hand to Tupac!” he screeched.
I nodded slowly. “Good. Anyway, what you do? Pull on her hair while hitting it from the back?”
“How’d you know?”
“Damn, I was joking.”
“She started yelling about how much it cost to get it installed—the wig—and said I ruined the lace? I don’t know. I just know I need her to stop being mad.”
“That’s easy to fix…buy her a new wig, her favorite food, and offer to eat her pussy, but when you eat it, you gotta really eat it. Like, gobble gobble that muhfucka.”
“That’s all I have to do? Seriously?” He looked so…hopeful.
“Yeah, man. You wanna add a little razzle dazzle? Eat her ass, too.”
“Oh, she likes when I do that.”
Damn, Stick was out here eating ass?
My guy!
“Here’s a pro tip I don’t share with everybody…while you in that thang and you on top, grab her foot and suck her toes. That shit’ll drive her crazy,” I told him.
“Wow…okay! I’m going to step out and try to call her. Be right back,” Stick said as he stood from his stool. “Thanks for the advice, Ford! Twenty-one-twenty-one!”
I gave him a salute and turned my attention to the people filling the place. So So Good was one of those places I was sure had failed every health inspection and had a fluctuating menu full of the best food I’d ever tasted in my life. Their hours of operation were mad unpredictable, the customer service sucked, and the drinks were too damn strong. The sweet tea was damn near syrupy. The joint definitely had its flaws, just like the poorly maintained building that housed it, but the cuisine was unmatched, and a bonus was that you were bound to run into someone you knew there. Someone like…your ex-wife.
My ex-wife.
Sitting at a table in the middle of the room with another nigga.
As in, a nigga who wasn’t me!
What in the absolute shit?!
Okay, yeah…we were legally divorced and lived apart and shit. I got all that, but still…
What.
The.
Fuck?!
When did she start dating? Had she been seeing other guys the entirety of our separation? I hadn’t heard about her dating before now, although she was free to as a single woman. Wait, did I really just think that? That she was free to date?
I was losing my mind. Sitting there at the bar, I’d lost my sanity for few seconds, but that was what she did to me, what she’d always done to me—mess with my brain, confuse me.
Nah, bruh. This is on you. You agreed to the divorce. She followed through. She’s not yours anymore.
Those thoughts, those truths, made my heart drop to the floor with a thud. She wasn’t my woman, hadn’t been for three whole years. A lifetime of loving her had been erased with our signatures on a piece of paper.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she smiled and talked to whoever this clown was, and it was beginning to feel stalkerish. So, without waiting for Stick to return, I paid our tab and left.