Exhale

8

"I miss you, Booga. How's school?" she pouted, with a twinge of sadness in her voice.

"I miss you too, Nunu. School is...hard as shit. But nothing ya' boy can't handle. Naomi been helping me with studying and all that," he mentioned, making his sister smile.

"She must really like your ashy ass if she helping you study all the way from Spelman," Morgan laughed, causing Elijah to suck his teeth.

"Man leave me alone, I got juice, you knew this. How are you though?" he asked, leaning back against his headboard, running his hand over his hair.

"I'm doing good, actually. Really good. I'm really excited to graduate, finally. I'm gonna go see daddy that day, probably. I think I'm gonna take Samir," mentioned, causing her brother's eyes to go wide.

"Oh really? You like him a lot, huh?" he inquired, with a smile on his face. He knew it was hard for his sister to trust people enough to even let them know her dad was in jail, let alone take them to see him in there. All of her friends have been to see him at least one time with Morgan, because they were like family.

"Yeah, I do," she blushed. As he was about to tease her, Samir entered the room, kneeling on the bed, kissing Morgan on the lips, causing Elijah to gag. Morgan laughed at him, that was something the either one of them constantly did whenever their sibling displayed affection in front of them.

"Baby, my mama said we should come around 4:30, and I gotta go to the store for her. I'm not rushing you or nothing, but I just wanted to tell you," he informed her, walking toward his closet to find something else to wear.

"Okay, lemme say bye to my ugly brother and I'm coming," she said, making him laugh and call out a hello to Elijah.

"Wassup bro," he replied back. "Aight, lemme let you go, Mo. I love you," he said with a smile.

"I love you too, Elijah. Behave yourself, I'll call you later on," she replied, and they parted ways.

"You really miss him huh?" Samir asked, pulling out a shirt to wear as Morgan maneuvered around him to get to her duffel bag.

"Yeah, that's my baby. He's like my kid, lowkey. I been taking care of that boy since I was fourteen, I was a whole mother," she chuckled, bitterly. He looked back at her, noticing her sudden change of expression and hoped she would continue.

She never talked much about her family or anything in regards to her mother, and he wanted to learn everything he could about her. Even when they were in the first stages of liking one another she never revealed too much.

"My mom..." she started, with her back still turned to him. "She's uh, she's and addict. She's always been a drinker, from what I can recall. But when my daddy went to jail, she spiraled out of control yknow? She started doing drugs to cope, I assume. At first she would just smoke a hell of a lot of weed and be completely lax so I had to keep an eye on Boog. But then it was crack, but she didn't stay on that long once she started buying heroine. It was like she was an entirely different person," she continued.

He could tell she was trying to occupy herself to distract from her actual emotions. He slipped his shirt over his head and walked over to her, lightly wrapping his arm around her comfortingly, encouraging her to keep going.

"She-she was always high, all the time. She wouldn't wake me up for school anymore, she'd be knocked out al morning and she couldn't drive me. I had to walk Elijah to school every morning, I had to drop my after school activities so he wouldn't have to walk home alone," she inhaled deeply and wiped her face as she continued to express herself to him.