Page 95 of Falling Into Gravity

“It’s not that deep!”

Malik grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the back room, slamming the door behind them. Pharoah didn’t flinch. He was used to the static.

“You lost your fuckin’ mind,” Malik said, voice shaking with rage. “That’s ababy, Quesha!”

She folded her arms. “Don’t talk to me like I ain’t raised her while you was too busy ‘building an app’ and tryna find yourself. You ain’t even been here like that.”

“I ain’t her daddy, but been givin’ you money every month. I make sure her shit straight. Don’t play with me, like I ain’t trying to right my wrongs.”

Quesha scoffed. “You handed me that little envelope for the bills today like you a savior.”

“Man, fuck that envelope. I’d give you my whole check if it meant she didn’t grow up thinking this gang shit iscute.”

“So, what you want me to do, Malik?” Her voice cracked. “You ain’t here to show her how to really be Blue. You ain’t holdin’ it down no more.”

“She ain’t shit.That’sthe problem!” he yelled, pointing toward the door. “She a baby, and y’all out here raising her to be likeus. That shit ain’t cute, Quesha. That shit trauma with glitter on it.”

Her face twisted. “So now you better than us? ‘Cause you runnin’ round with that rich bitch? She got you wearin’ white tees instead of blue talkin’ like you above the hood?”

“This ain’t about Aku,” he growled, stepping forward. “This about you failing that little girl.”

Quesha’s lip trembled. “You don’t love me no more.”

He blinked. For a second—just one slow, suffocating second—it wasn’t the present he was standing in. It was the past...back when she used to sneak into his Mama’s house through the window with pink lip gloss and a busted phone, back when she still had braces and used to write his name in her notebook like they was gon’ last forever. Before Bren. before the blood…before the hood taught them both that even love came with casualties.

He remembered the night she called him crying.

Whispering.

Begging.

Her voice barely came through the phone, her lip already split, her wrist bruised from the same nigga she swore she was “just using to make him jealous.”

Malik didn’t think twice.

He pulled up barefoot with nothing but basketball shorts on and a black durag tied tight. Dragged dude out the back of his mama’s house and beat him until his own brothers had to pull him off.

Blood-stained Malik’s hands, his chest, even the grass under his feet. One of his homies said he’d never seen him like that. Another said he had the devil in his eyes that night.

And then death came…just like it always did.

The nigga didn’t take the beating lightly. He shot up the block two weeks later. Malik and Pharaoh were chilling the steps while Jules had just walked back from the store.

After that, nothing was the same.

Quesha stopped smiling like she used to.

Malik stopped sleeping.

Pharoah stopped coding.

Jules stopped living.

And Bren grew up loving an uncle that took her daddy away before she was even born.

Malik came back to the moment, his chest rising heavy like the past had punched him in it.

“I did love you,” Malik muttered. “Shit, I loved you so hard I ruined everything around me just to prove it.”

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