If Only You Knew

Coming Down

Zay's POV

"Yo girl ain't got no friends?" Kell questioned as he passed me the wood.

"Hell nah." I coughed out, squinting from the smoke in my eye.

I continued to cough up a lung covering my mouth with my fist as I heard my dad's heavy footsteps coming down the basement stairs. Me and my brother gave him our attention once his tall frame made its way down to the last step.

"My boys!" He expressed with a huge smile.

"Wassup, pops?" Kell stood giving him dap before taking a seat back on the red sectional.

I stayed seated but gave my pop dap and watched as he sat on the couch exhaling a breath. "I'm thinking of moving out the country."

"What?" Me and Kell spoke at the same time.

He laughed. "Look at you lil muthafuckers, man. Y'all look like you rey shit yourselves!" He held his stomach as he leaned back letting out a deep cackle.

"Quit playing old man." Markell waved him off.

"I'm serious, I wanna get a house in Europe somewhere."

"Here he go." He rolled his eyes as he took a fat pull of the wood before passing it back to me.

"Ight, nigga." He warned pointing his finger towards him. "Don't make me pop you."

"You ain't gone shoot me, old man."

"Why not?"

"Cause he the only one who keeping yo business up." I interjected.

"Who?" His eyes bulged as he turned to me. "This lil nigga? He weighs ninety pounds!"

We all laughed as we thought about how my lil bro was a lanky ass nigga. Kell was 6'3 and couldn't weigh over 140. He was a lil nigga but still, people knew not to fuck with him. At 20 he's made a big name for himself in these streets from his ties to my dad and from being such a reckless hothead. He kept a pole and wasn't afraid to use it, but he had hands too. I remember watching him whoop some nigga from his school until he began seizing, he was only a freshman.

"Watch yo mouth, dawg." Kell tried to defend himself through his laughter. "You know my body."

"I'm joking don't shoot me." Pops held his hands up as he continued to laugh.

"Why you always getting on me and not this mutt?" He pointed towards me.

"What you call me?" I sat up.

"You heard me, puta." He joked.

Nigga was always tryna joke about me being mixed when if anything I was more of a real nigga than him. He just mad that my mama wasn't some black ugly bitch like his. Yea, my mom is Mexican, but I don't know a lick of Spanish and I've never met my family from that side, at least I can't remember meeting them.

"Aye, pops?"

"Yea?" He questioned wiping the tear from his eye.

"How you met my mom?"

"You still talking to that bitch?" He mugged me as he sat back resting his arm on the back of the couch.

I nodded. I'd seen my mom two times since Christmas, and the last time I went alone. She refused to tell me anything about before she got pregnant but she tells me how I was the light of her life and all this other shit. I still can't believe it and the fact that she won't tell me shit about her past is making it harder to trust anything she says.

"What you wanna know?"

"Everything. How y'all met and shit, and why she left."

He sat staring into space as me and Markell awaited his response, listening to the deafening silence.