July 2006
Ididn’t remember how long we had been driving.
The road stretched out in front of us like it didn’t end. All I could see were lines, headlights, and darkness pressing up against the windows. The car felt smaller than it should have. Like the air had been pulled out of it. Zay hadn’t said anything else since he crushed my heart.
But the truth is, Zayden didn’t need to. His words were still sitting between us, heavy and alive.
He got other girls, Channy. Always had. Always will.
I kept my eyes on the window. Not because there was anything to see, but because I couldn’t look at him.
Couldn’t look at the person who just said something that didn’t fit the version of Xavier I knew.
“You don’t know that,” I whispered.
My voice didn’t sound like mine.
Zay exhaled slowly through his nose. Not irritated or defensive. But he looked tired. I could only imagine how he felt knowing his brother would be in prison. Every day I lived with the grief of not seeing Jared and hearing him sound broken on the phone and melancholy through our letters.
“I do know that,” Zayden said quietly.
That was the part that made my chest tighten.
Not what he said. But how sure he was when he said it. I swallowed hard and pressed my forehead against the glass. The feel of the window was cool and grounding. Something solid when everything else felt like it was slipping.
My mind was spinning. Everything was happening too fast.
Where the fuck did Natalie come from? I saw no signs. He never hid his phone; we spent almost every second of every day together. How the fuck did he have time to be with her? King had broken down to me countless times on what it was like to grow up without a father, how could he be a deadbeat ass one? That couldn’t have been the man I knew.
But Zayden’s claim of rumors and babies. Plural had me stuck. The most important person in Zayden’s world was Xavier. For him to tell me the truth must have been hard.
My stomach twisted.
That wasn’t my Xavier. The boy I loved didn’t move like that. He didn’t smile at me like I was the only one in the world, and still belonged to other people. He didn’t say the things he said to me,meanthem, and lie at the same time.
But I remembered what YaYa said on the bus on the night I met him at that party about the babies.
“Look, Channy. I need you to really hear me. He’s older than
you. You’re eighteen. He’s what—twenty, twenty-one, my
age...? That Nigga got girls in rotation. Hell, he
probably got kids.”
Why did it feel like everybody knew something I didn’t?
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“No,” I said under my breath. “That’s not him.”
Zay glanced at me, then back at the road. “Aight.”
That was it. No argument. No pushing.
And somehow, that hurt worse than if he had kept talking. Because he wasn’t trying to convince me. He was letting me sit in it. Letting me figure it out on my own. Tears slid down my cheeks before I even realized I was crying.
“I love him,” I said, barely above a whisper. I wasn’t even talking to Zay anymore. I was saying it out loud so it could still feel true.
