I’m in my apartment, in New York, a long fucking way from the Gulf of Aden or Syria. The guns are digital, not mechanical. They can’t hurt me. They can’t hurt my friends.
I blow out a long breath, fogging the bathroom mirror, and unclench my fingers from the counter.
“Max, where’s the Coke?” Ty whines from the kitchen.
“No more soda for you, my man. Water or juice.”
“Aww.”
I grin at the mirror. Tyrone stayed overnight a week ago, when his mother couldn’t be fucking bothered to come home. I watched him steadily chug soda all night, discovered that she doesn’t regulate his soda intake, and that he regularly doesn’t fall asleep until one or two in the morning as a result. I emptied my kitchen of anything carbonated the next day.
When I emerge from the bathroom, I find the kid raiding my ‘fridge even though pizza’s on the way, because thirteen-year-olds are snack-holes. I’ve stocked it for him and he emerges with paper-wrapped, turkey slices from the deli down the street in one hand and string cheese in the other. He grins sheepishly ashe heads through to my office where we usually eat, plonks down in a beanbag chair next to my desk, and starts eating. I grab two bottles of water and follow him, relaxing back into the deep embrace of the second beanbag.
“Any of your cuts need bandaging?” I ask him after I’ve cracked open the water and we’ve both had a long drink.
“I used the kit under the sink,” he says.
I nod. He’s been in enough fights now that he knows how to clean himself up afterwards.
“Gang or girl?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes. “Girls are stupid.”
“No, girls are smart. They’re already interested in the stuff your dumb butt won’t think is important for another five years.”
He snorts. “None of the girls at school are interested in Dutiful. I’ll still be playing in five years. They’re dumb. Except Dakota. She’s okay.”
“Were you fighting over Dakota?”
Tyrone shrugs as he stuffs his face full of turkey. “I usually sit behind her on the bus but Zackary got there first today and he was talkin’ to her and when I said it was my seat, he pushed me and we got into it and he said she was ugly ‘cause she has braces and made her cry and I got thrown off the bus.” He scowls fiercely at the bottle of water. “She’s not ugly.”
“You got a picture of her?”
“No. Ma found a picture of a girl on my phone and she’d be all over my ... butt.” He slants me a guilty glance. I haven’t made any rules about how he behaves in my home, but I don’t swear in front of him, and he’s smart enough to know I don’t want him swearing, either. “But I got her socials. Hold on.”
He pulls a battered smart phone out of the pocket of the dirty shorts he’s folded and left to the side of the bean bag. The screen’s cracked again, probably in today’s fight since I just replaced it last week. I make a mental note to replace it againwhile he fiddles with it until he gets to a picture of a white girl with lots of shiny, brown hair, big, brown eyes, and full, pink lips. She has some growing to do, but there’s no question she’s going to be a beauty when she does.
“Definitely not ugly,” I confirm. “You should ask her out.”
“I don’t like her!”
“Smart man knows what he wants and goes after it,” I say. “She’s not dumb. She’s already pretty but give her a couple of years and she’s gonna be a knockout. You want her on your arm or Zackary’s then?”
He glares at the picture. “She don’t belong with Zackary. He thinks he’s a playa. He’ll hurt her.”
“Then you should ask her out first. I could spring for you to take her to the movies, if something’s out she wants to see.”
“She likes those dumb dragon movies.”
Emily likes those dragon movies, too, and I’ve never envied my friend more than when he cuddles up on the couch with her while she beams and coos over Toothless.
“They’re not so bad,” I tell him so he doesn’t have to pretend to hate them to impress me.
“You’ve seen them?”
I nod. “Watching a movie your girl likes doesn’t make you less of a man.”
Tyrone pretends to be looking around my apartment. “Where’s your girl?”
