“Who was that guy with your uncle?” he asks.
Aunt Pam ain’t got one soda up in here. Juice, water, and sparkling water. I bet Nana has a stash of Sprite and Coke in her room though. “DeVante,” I say, grabbing two apple juice boxes. “He got caught up in some King Lord stuff, and Daddy brought him to live with Uncle Carlos.”
“Why was he looking at me like that?”
“Get over it, Maverick. He’s white!” Momma shouts on the patio. “White, white, white!”
Chris blushes. And blushes, and blushes, and blushes.
I hand him a juice box. “That’s why DeVante was looking at you that way. You’re white.”
“Okay?” he asks more than says. “Is this one of those black things I won’t understand?”
“Okay, babe, real talk? If you were somebody else I’d side-eye the shit out of you for calling it that.”
“Calling it what? A black thing?”
“Yeah.”
“But isn’t that what it is?”
“Not really,” I say. “It’s not like this kinda stuff is exclusive to black people, you know? The reasoning may be different, but that’s about it. Your parents don’t have a problem with us dating?”
“I wouldn’t call it a problem,” Chris says, “but we did talk about it.”
“So it’s not just a black thing then, huh?”
“Point made.”
We sit at the counter, and I listen to his play-by-play of school today. Nobody walked out because the police were there, waiting for any drama.
“Hailey and Maya asked about you,” he says. “I told them you were sick.”
“They could’ve texted me and asked themselves.”
“I think they feel guilty about yesterday. Especially Hailey. White guilt.” He winks.
I crack up. My white boyfriend talking about white guilt.
Momma yells, “And I love how you insist on getting somebody else’s child out of Garden Heights, but you want ours to stay in that hellhole!”
“You want them in the suburbs with all this fake shit?” Daddy says.
“If this is fake, baby, I’ll take it over real any day. I’m sick of this! The kids go to school out here, I take them to church out here, their friends are out here. We can afford to move. But you wanna stay in that mess!”
“’Cause at least in Garden Heights people ain’t gonna treat them like shit.”
“They already do! And wait until King can’t find DeVante. Who do you think he’s gonna look at? Us!”
“I told you I’ll handle that,” Daddy says. “We ain’t moving. It ain’t even up for discussion.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really.”
Chris gives me a bit of a smile. “This is awkward.”
My cheeks are hot, and I’m glad I’m too brown for it to show. “Yeah. Awkward.”
He takes my hand and taps his fingertips against my fingertips, one at a time. He laces his fingers through mine, and we let our arms swing together in the space between us.
Daddy comes in and slams the door behind him. He zeroes straight in on our joined hands. Chris doesn’t let go. Point for my boyfriend.
“We’ll talk later, Starr.” Daddy marches out.
“If this were a rom-com,” Chris says, “you’d be Zoe Saldana and I’d be Ashton Kutcher.”
“Huh?”
He sips his juice. “This old movie, Guess Who. I caught it when I had the flu a few weeks ago. Zoe Saldana dated Ashton Kutcher. Her dad didn’t like that she was seeing a white guy. That’s us.”
“Except this isn’t funny,” I say.
“It can be.”
“Nah. What’s funny though is that you watched a rom-com.”
“Hey!” he cries. “It was hilarious. More of a comedy than a rom-com. Bernie Mac was her dad. That guy was hilarious, one of the Kings of Comedy. I don’t think it can be called a rom-com simply because he was in it.”
“Okay, you get points for knowing Bernie Mac and that he was a King of Comedy—”
“Everyone should know that.”
“True, but you don’t get a pass. It was still a rom-com. I won’t tell anyone though.”
I lean over to kiss his cheek, but he moves his head, giving me no choice but to kiss him on the mouth. Soon we’re making out, right there in my uncle’s kitchen.
“Hem-hem!” Somebody clears their throat. Chris and I separate so fast.
I thought embarrassment was having my boyfriend hear my parents argue. Nope. Embarrassment is having my mom walk in on me and Chris making out. Again.
“Don’t y’all think y’all should let each other breathe?” she says.
Chris blushes down to his Adam’s apple. “I should go.”
He leaves with a quick good-bye to Momma.
She raises her eyebrows at me. “Are you taking your birth control pills?”
“Mommy!”
“Answer my question. Are you?”
“Yeeees,” I groan, putting my face on the countertop.
“When was your last cycle?”
Oh. My. Lord. I lift my head and flash the fakest of fake smiles. “We’re fine. Promise.”
“Y’all got some nerve. Your daddy was barely out the driveway, and y’all slobbering all over each other. You know how Maverick is.”
“Are we staying out here tonight?”
The question catches her off guard. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you and Daddy—”
“Had a disagreement, that’s all.”
“A disagreement the whole neighborhood heard.” Plus one the other night.
“Starr, we’re okay. Don’t worry about it. Your father’s being . . . your father.”
Outside, somebody honks his car horn a bunch of times.
Momma rolls her eyes. “Speaking of your father, I guess Mr. I’m-Gonna-Slam-Doors needs me to move my car so he can leave.” She shakes her head and heads toward the front.
I throw Chris’s juice away and search the cabinets. Aunt Pam may be picky when it comes to drinks, but she always buys good snacks, and my stomach is talking. I get some graham crackers and slather peanut butter on them. So good.
DeVante comes in the kitchen. “Can’t believe you dating a white boy.” He sits next to me and steals a graham cracker sandwich. “A wigga at that.”
“Excuse you?” I say with a mouth full of peanut butter. “He is not a wigga.”
“Please! Dude wearing J’s. White boys wear Converse and Vans, not no J’s unless they trying to be black.”
Really? “My bad. I didn’t know shoes determined somebody’s race.”
He can’t say anything to that. Like I thought. “What you see in him anyway? For real? All them dudes in Garden Heights who would get with you in a second, and you looking at Justin Bieber?”
I point in his face. “Don’t call him that. And what dudes? Nobody in Garden Heights is checking for me. Hardly anybody knows my name. Hell, even you called me Big Mav’s daughter who work in the store.”
“’Cause you don’t come around,” he says. “I ain’t never seen you at a party, nothing.”
Without thinking, I say, “You mean parties where people get shot at?” And as soon as it leaves my mouth, I feel like shit. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He stares at the countertop. “It’s cool. Don’t worry about it.”
We quietly nibble on graham crackers.
“Um . . .” I say. The silence is brutal. “Uncle Carlos and Aunt Pam are cool. I think you’ll like it here.”
He bites another graham cracker.
“They can be corny sometimes, but they’re sweet. They’ll look out for you. Knowing Aunt Pam, she’ll treat you like Ava and Daniel. Uncle Carlos will probably be tougher. If you follow the rules, you’ll be okay.”
“Khalil talked ’bout you sometimes,” DeVante says.
“Huh?”
“You said nobody knows you, but Khalil talked ’bout you. I ain’t know you was Big Mav’s daughter who—I ain’t know that was you,” he says. “But he talked ’bout his friend Starr. He said you were the coolest girl he knew.”
Some peanut butter gets stuck in my throat, but it’s not the only reason I swallow. “How did you know—oh. Yeah. Both of y’all were King Lords.”
I swear to God whenever I think about Khalil falling into that life, it’s like watching him die all over again. Yeah, Khalil matters and not the stuff he did, but I can’t lie and say it doesn’t bother me or it’s not disappointing. He knew better.
DeVante says, “Khalil wasn’t a King Lord, Starr.”