Page 107 of Lau Ahi
“Xerx, are you well?” I glanced around Midas’ office thinking I would get someone else agreeing with me but their faces showed they were on his side.
Let niggas blow up a church, and they automatically side with you.
He was unbothered by my annoyance; his languid movements a reflection of how unhurried he was to answer my damn question. I started to get keyed up waiting but I knew he wasn’t about to speak until he wanted to.
“I am.”
I leaned back looking around at my brothers who seemed too amused by this back and forth for my liking. “Who do I trust outside of this room?”
“How quickly we forget.”
“Are you about to wax philosophical and turn all poetic or are you going to answer the question?” Xerxes’ brow rose arrogantly as he tried not to smile but my question was answered before he could.
“He’s talking about your fiancée, dumbass.” Yacouba looked like he wanted to pop me in the back of the head but then we would’ve been wrestling around in this muthafucka the same way we did when we were kids.
I swiped at my nose in frustration hating the way they were constantly trying to make me feel things I didn’t have time for. Or didn’t want to admit was actually there. “Yacouba—”
His face was hard and screamed,nigga lie to yourself. “Don’tYacoubame. You know you trust that fucking girl so stop playing.”
“It’s an arrangement.”
Yacouba’s laugh triggered everyone else’s and now I was ready to swing on the entire room. “You can try that lie with somebody else but that shit won’t work with me. Hell, not with any of us. Why you think your grandfather was looking at you like you were crazy with his mean ass?”
“Pappy ain’t mean—”
“The fuck he isn’t. That’s like saying you’re not mean. Too ornery ass peas in a pod.” I had to laugh at Yacouba because he acted like he was any better. Nobody was gonna call his ass happy-go-lucky unless he was talking to his wife or his son. He had balls calling somebody ornery.
“They have a point.”
Jahmir's tone was calm and normally I took him as the voice of reason but I didn’t want to hear it. “‘Mir, you think everybody has a point.”
“Am I ever wrong?”
He shut me up in that quiet way of his and I glanced around at my brothers, trying to find another way to avoid this damn conversation.
“Shut the fuck up.”
They all burst out laughing because they knew I didn’t have shit else to say and not a damn thing to rebut the facts they’d laid out.
“You can be mad all you want to but the fact remains that you trust that girl. Because if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have agreed to any of this.”
“You should have seen how his eyes lit up when he realized who it was he was set to marry.”
“You carrying tales now, Xerx? About private meetings? Is this what we do? I’m over here putting in work for you and your wife and you're playing with me?” I couldn’t blame them for thinking that we were going to have some type of connection after all this time but I was still fighting it.
“When you’re sitting here making stupid mistakes zat we have to save you from zhen yes, zis is what we do. We are family. I will step in along wiz our brozers to save you from your own stupidity so zat for once in your fuckin’ life you can be happy!” Xerxes never raised his voice. It was about as foreign as Mir doing it. His ass was pissed enough that I could see how his skinwas flushed through the neat cornrows Vanya had put in his head.
“You think I’m not?” I was looking around at their faces trying to discern if that was how they truly saw me. What I saw was that they’d had these conversations or at least these thoughts before.
Damn, they must think my life is sad as shit.
“When was the last time yoo smiled, Ori? When you do it, it almost looks painful. Like the muscle yoo need has atrophied away. Or forgotten the motion.” Liam cast his happy-go-lucky two cents into this shit when I was hoping he would just shut up. Before he got Francesca back he was as mean as I was. But the last two years he’d been living the dream because they’d gotten married, found out they were having another kid and then reconciled. In that order.
Damn, none of us really had normal weddings or the beginnings to our relationships.
“We got the wedding photos back and he’s blank-faced in almost all of them.” Xerxes was speaking up yet again and as I battled with how I was feeling I wasn’t in the mood to have proof of shit I wasn’t ready to discern thrust in my face.
Jahmir’s face perked up at the teasing way Xerxes was speaking. “Almost?”
