“Maybe, but I’m here, right?” I tilted my head to the side.
“But you can’t tell me for how long or if it’s for good.”
“Because I don’t even know that, Pops. Can’t we just exist in the fact that I’m here now?”
He shook his head. “Until you have kids, you’ll never know how nervous that makes me. How nervous I am when I don’t hear from you for over a month or how fucked up it was when you showed up here beat up, bruised, and shot after six months. You’ll never know until you have kids of your own, and even then, I pray you never experience this.”
I felt bad because he was right.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m working through my own stuff right now, but I have no intention of disappearing on you all in the near future.”
He searched my eyes for a moment then nodded. “I’ll take that answer.”
ISO
EASTER
Technically, I rose a couple weeks before he did, but I damn sure wasn’t asking for a fucking holiday and an egg hunt. Nah, instead here I sat, on the pier with a four-pack of coconut water, wondering what my son was doing. Knowing my mama, she hadhim all greased up in one-color, sitting in IBS Baptist while the pastor preached about Jesus rising. Glad I was missing that, but damn I missed my family. I was missing crucial moments in my son’s life for what? To protect him from a life nobody prepared me for. Nah, I couldn’t go out like that. Maybe this was protection, but it was more than that. Before everything happened, I was getting out of the streets, moving towards legitimacy and not looking over my shoulder with every turn. I wanted more out of life than to be like every hood rich nigga who perished. I wanted to live and give my son what I never had. Too bad I was doing just that, parentlessness and enough trauma to bill a therapist in his adult years.
“My father said you could have come over instead of having him meet you here to give you this.”
I jumped hard as fuck, grabbing my piece in the process before I looked at her. She wasn’t looking at me, but out at the water. Even from the side she was so fucking beautiful. She stood about five-seven with somewhat of an athletic physique and the thickest frame. She wasn’t compact, but everything was proportioned in the right spaces.
“Damn, you don’t know how to make noise when you walk up? Could’ve just shot your pretty ass.”
She laughed. “Yeah, alright.” Then she extended the file I had requested from Lee.
I accepted it. “And my bad for interrupting your Easter. Thought his old ass was coming to meet me.”
She shook her head. “Trust me, you didn’t interrupt. This run just saved me from watching egg hunts and cheesy ass costumes. Thank you.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “You don’t fuck with any of that?”
“Nope. I don’t like the holidays.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have any reason. I just don’t. They’re a constant reminder of those who aren’t here anymore.”
I nodded, understanding her reasoning.
A brief silence filled the space before she spoke again.
“I’m nosy. Why are you sitting out here and not somewhere with your family?”
“Because I’m dead, shorty. I’m pretty sure you already knew that, right?” I glanced back at the water, feeling her eyes on me.
“Nope. I didn’t. I exist in a sorta ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ type of space myself; so I don’t often poke my nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Yet you just asked why I’m here?”
She chuckled. “Yeah, because you’re sitting on the pier by yourself with a four-pack of coconut water like you don’t belong anywhere.”
That earned a laugh outta me. “At this point, I don’t. You're gonna join me?” I then lifted an unopened coconut water for her.
She shook her head. “I’ll join you, but no, I don’t want that nasty shit. It doesn’t even have proper temperature control. You drink it and it’s warm and cold at the same damn time.”
I laughed at her expression. “It’s good hydration.”
