He looks at me. I breathe in. “I’ll tell you my shit if you tell me yours.”
“We ain’t in middle school, Ki.” He shakes his head again. “Ain’t a game.”
I ignore him. “I don’t know if you seen the news, but I been having sex with cops for money for months and I guess one of them killed himself and named me in his suicide note and now there’s some kind of investigation. I got cops out here following me.”
The look that washes over Marcus is a new one for me, never seen it like that before. I expected him to be a little pissed or ashamed, not wanna deal with my shit. Maybe his left eyebrow would twitch like it does sometimes or his neck would show its veins. Maybe my fingerprint would dance. Instead, Marcus’s face breaks open in the center, eyes looking up.
“Shit.” There’s a moment when neither of us says anything and then he starts looking around the studio like he’s never seen it before. He chokes on his voice as he whispers, “It ain’t gonna happen for me.”
“What you mean?”
He looks so small.
“You were right. None of this shit is real, no record label wants to sign me, I can’t get no gigs, and the only reason I got somewhere to sleep is ’cause Cole and I been hustling. And I didn’t even do what I said I’d do, protecting you and shit. I should’ve been there to keep you safe.”
Marcus looks like he’s drowning in his face and for as long as I hoped he’d say this to me, I wish he didn’t have to. I wish these words could fix it all. I lean in and kiss the top of his head. He wraps his arms around me and I can feel him shaking.
“We still family, Mars.”
He keeps sobbing into my chest and I look over his shoulder to see Tony leaning in the doorway. He turns his grimace into a smile.
“I need you to do something for me now,” I whisper to Marcus. He pulls away from my chest just enough to look at me and nods. “You too, Tony.” Tony nods too, doesn’t even bother pretending he wasn’t listening.
Tony joins us, sitting on the couch, Marcus and I still on the golden rug. The whole studio looks different, everything flashy: new couch, gold carpet with a giant C in the center. Completely new equipment: speakers, soundboard. The low table is now occupied by a keyboard even though none of them can play, so I’m not quite sure why it’s here, resting on the table like someone might sit down and bust out a tune.
I take a breath. “I need your help. Both of you. I told Marcus but I’m in some deep shit and cops are following me. Ain’t safe for me to walk around on my own no more and I don’t got nobody else to ask.”
“Of course,” Marcus says.
I look to Tony.
“You in trouble?” Tony asks.
I didn’t want to tell him about it, have both of them look at me like I’m even more tainted than I already was, but now I don’t have a choice. “The cops investigating me, they ain’t arrested me yet and they say they ain’t gonna, but they brought me in and questioned me and now I got cops following me.”
“Why they investigating you?” Tony asks.
I avert my eyes. “I been helping some of them out. At motels and shit.”
Tony doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s looking at me, imagining what it is I’ve done, trying to forgive me for it.
Marcus sets a hand on my knee and shakes it.
“We still family, Ki.” And I think he means it, beyond words, beyond this moment, beyond the things our parents did to leave us broken.
I nod and, for the first time, I think about what I did, about the panic that sets in when anyone else touches me the way Marcus just did, how many guns have been pressed to my skull, fingers scraping my skin, fists in my hair. In this room, with these golden boys, all the things I’ve done feel vulgar, devastating, like I do not deserve to be loved good again.
“I’ll text Cole and he’ll come pick us up so we can get you home, aight?” Marcus is already collecting himself, pulling his face back in and removing his phone from his pocket.
“I think Cole got a bat or some shit in his garage. I’ll go get it and meet you out front,” Tony says, standing again, and disappearing out of the studio.
Marcus gets up too and pulls me from the floor, hangs an arm around my shoulders. We head back out to the basement, where Shauna is cradling the baby, and walk past her up the stairs and out onto the porch. It takes a couple moments for me to process that I’m back outside, that it’s muggy and hot and someone is still following me.