Page 110 of Falling Into Gravity

Malik laughed, for real this time. Deep and hard, holding his ribs. “Cuh, you stupid.”

“Yea,” Pharoah said. “And you still dumb as hell if you don’t get what I’m sayin’. You ain’t built for the grave, Malik. You built to get out. You just gotta believe it.”

He tapped his chest with two fingers. “Stop tryna survive for the block and start livin’ for the people who love you.”

Malik acquiesced. His eyes drifted to his phone on the armrest.

He picked it up, opened her thread.

Typed slow, honest…no mask this time.

I love you, Dorothy.

The Wiz was all a lie—just some fuckin’ smoke and mirrors. Click your heels and come get me. Bring me home.

A double text always.

Pharoah watched him with a small smile. “You tell her?”

“Yea,” Malik murmured.

“She love you back?”

“I think so.”

“Good,” Pharoah exhaled, leaning his head against the back of his chair. “Then maybe one of us still gets to walk down the aisle.”

Malik laughed again. “Nigga, you ain’t invited if you ain’t lettin’ me push your chair down the aisle.”

Pharoah lifted his vape like a toast. “On the dead homies.”

Aku stared at the text like it was a spell. Like it cracked open something soft in her she’d been trying to stitch back together. She didn’t text back. She didn’t need to.

She just drove.

No makeup, no cute outfit - just hoodie too big and her heart too damn loud. By the time she knocked on his front door, her breath was shaky and her lashes were wet from crying in the car. Malik opened it slow - shirtless, chainless…but that look in his eyes?

Still hers.

Aku didn’t say anything. She just stood in the doorway, lips quivering.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Malik murmured.

“I almost didn’t,” she whispered. “I told myself I was done. That I was too good for this… for you.”

He nodded. “I believe you.”

“But then you said that shit like you meant it. ‘I love you, Dorothy’?” She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “You really been watchin’ the Wiz without me?”

Malik laughed under his breath. “That’s what you caught outta that whole text?”

She grinned through her tears. “I had to laugh before I cried harder.” And then she cracked. “I can’t keep doing this, Malik.”

Aku needed him to understand she wasn’t the back and forth kind of girl. She wasn’t built for halfway. Aku was either all in or all out. No in-between. No gray areas. No lukewarm love.

He looked up slow, eyes tired. “Doing what?”

“This.” She pointed between them. “Loving you through your chaos. Waiting for you to decide if you wanna be whole or just hurt in peace.”

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