“Because I got her warmed up for you,” Lennox snaps, jumping to his feet.
“And I owe you a thank you for that,” I say, standing and clapping him on the back. “You wouldn’t believe how good it felt when her cunt clenched up on my tongue. God, she even tastes tight.”
I must be drunk on the taste of her, because Lennox’s fist connects with my nose before I even see him swing. I stumble back a step, but I get my feet under me while my head’s still spinning and clock him in the eye. He tackles me, and we fall to the floor with a thud that shakes the house. Rae screams, but we’re too busy punching the fuck out of each other to stop for her.
A minute later, a sharp, stinging pain goes through me as my mother appears, whacking my back and shoulders with a wooden spoon like she used to when we fought as kids and she couldn’t pull us apart without risking injury to herself. She’s yelling at us, but I can’t hear her over the cursing and shouting and grunting from my brother, whose rage is the only thing making him my equal right now.
At last, Mom gets our ears, and the pain of nearly having our ears ripped from our heads finally ends the fight. She drags us apart, holding us each at the end of one arm to separate us, also like she did when we were kids.
“What’s gotten into you?” she snaps. “And over a girl!”
Rae sits frozen against the wall, my blanket clutched to her chest, her face drained of color.
“No offense,” Mom says to her without even glancing her way.
“It’s fine,” Rae mumbles.
“Now, you’re brothers, so act like it,” Mom snaps at us. “Girls come and go, but you’ll always have each other. So work this out so she doesn’t come between you, or she’ll have to find somewhere else to stay. I’m sorry, Rae, but I can’t have my boys at each other this way.”
“I’m sorry,” Rae says, her voice small.
“Now you boys better work out an apology, and then work out how you’re going to solve this,” Mom says. “I won’t lose one of my sons. I already have to worry about you every goddamn day since you joined that gang, and now this? I won’t lose you to them, and I won’t lose one of you to the other. Never that.”
“I’m not going to kill him,” I grumble, wincing at the pain she’s still inflicting. “Though you might lose me to blood loss if you rip my ear off my head.”
She gives us a shake. “Are you finished?”
“Yes,” I concede.
Lennox waits another second, but he finally breaks and agrees.
“Good,” Mom says, releasing our ears and shoving us apart.
“Now Rae, why don’t you get dressed and come help me with breakfast. Leave these two hot heads to figure out how to get along.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Rae nods, still clutching the blanket to her chest.
Mom turns to us. “And I better not hear any more of this fighting,” she says. “Enough people spill our blood, don’t they? We don’t need to make it easy for them and spill our own.”
three for girls
twenty-five
#1 on the Billboard Chart:
“Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”—Will Smith
Rae West
Things are different after the fight. That morning, I got dressed in silence with both of them watching like they wanted to pounce. Then I went to the kitchen to make breakfast with Valeria while the boys decided not just how they were going to get along, as she said, but my fate.
If they can’t get along, I have to go.
But there haven’t been any more fights since that morning, and no one at school even blinks twice when they show up all bruised. They’re gangsters, after all.
When I ask what they decided, they’re both tightlipped, which is par for the course for Maddox but unusual for Lennox. Despite my best efforts, I can’t get a word out of him. Pretty soon, though, it becomes clear. For the next month, they treat me with respect, keeping their distance. They don’t treat me like a sister, but they act like I’ll erupt if they so much as touch me. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out they came to the agreement that neither can have me.
That’s the opposite of what I want.