Dying to Live

[Caesar]

Ask Me If I’m Lying, I Say Really Really

January 2016

A group of young men stood out on the curb in the shadow of Terrebonne Parish’s well-known High Rise apartment building. The streetlights that hadn’t been shot out flickered in and out as they tried to shine whatever light they could on the pavement below. The sounds of people further up the street at a local corner store wafted on the night air and provided a bit of background noise whenever one Kevin Gates song gave way to another.

Nearby two young boys threw a football between one another. Most of the passes were well short and the catches were even worse, but they both thought they were Cam Newton so it didn’t make much of a difference to them.

“Hey, Ro,” one of the older boys called to one of the kids. The taller of the two ran over and bent over somewhat out of breath. “Go in the house and tell Rana to give you that box off top the refrigerator and bring it to me.”

“Alright,” the boy said, running toward one of the nearby houses.

He burst through the door, causing the dogs at the next house over to start barking uncontrollably inside. He dodged between the dining room table and an old, tattered sofa, pretending that he was still the NFL’s most valuable player and was running for a touchdown in the upcoming Super Bowl between the Panthers and the Broncos.

He pictured himself juking defenders. He stiff armed the wall in the hallway for good measure, causing a picture to shake a little. Then, he skidded to a stop at his sister Rana’s room. She was sitting on the edge of her bed doing his younger sister Roni’s hair. Roni sat quietly watching TV except for the occasional sharp inhale when Rana was a little too rough with her hair and scalp.

“Stop running in the damn house, Royce,” she said as she looked up.

“Sorry,” he said under his breath. He knew he was in trouble when anyone in his family called him Royce instead of Ro.

“What you want?”

“Reg said to get you to give me the box off the top of the refrigerator so I can bring it to him outside,” Royce said in a hurried, jumbled mess in an attempt to get the whole sentence out before Rana told him to “carry his tail to bed as stay his ass in the damn house” as she was prone to do.

She sucked her teeth. “You ain’t got no damn business being outside with them anyway. Tell Reg to come get the damn box himself. Mama at work if he want someone to be waiting on him hand and foot.”

“I could just get a chair and get it myself.”

Rana stood up abruptly, barely missing hitting Roni in the head with her knee. She brushed passed her younger brother and stalked toward the kitchen. She snatched box from the top of the refrigerator and opened it.

Royce tried to stand on the tips of his toes to get a peek inside of the box, but Rana pulled it away.

“Get back,” she said, swatting at him with her hand. She closed the box again and held it out to him. “Don’t your little bad ass look in this fucking box either. Just bring it to him and then both you and Romeo need to bring y’all asses in this damn house.”

“Okay, okay,” Royce said, taking the box from her.

“Hanging out on the fucking corner at night like they little tails got a job or something,” Rana said to herself as she retreated back down the hall.

Royce ran to the front door and opened it but stopped in the threshold. He looked over his shoulder and slightly opened the box. He expected to see something interesting inside, but instead it was just a few cigarillos and a Ziploc bag of weed.

He didn’t know why Rana didn’t want him to see that there was weed in the box. Reg, or Reginald, had taught him how to roll a blunt a few summers ago, and no one said anything whenever Reg would go sit out on the porch and smoke.

Sighing, he jogged out to the street and held the box up to his older brother.

Reg took the box from him. “Thanks, Ro. Rome!”

Royce’s twin brother Romeo looked up from where he was spinning the football on the pavement, pretending that he’d scored a touchdown and was celebrating in front of a crowd of cheering fans.

“Both of y’all go in the house. It’s damn near midnight,” Reg said.

“Aw, c’mon,” Royce said in protest.

“Yeah, it’s not that late,” Romeo said, looking at his wrist as if he was wearing a watch.

“Rana gonna kick y’all ass if y’all don’t go inside. And I’m just gonna watch and laugh,” Reg said, drawing some laughter from his friends.

The twins glanced at each other then ran in the house, the threat of drawing the ire of the eldest sibling in the family being enough to kick them into gear.

~~~~~~~~~~

January 2022

Royce pulled the disposal medical mask from his face and tossed it on the ground outside of Terrebonne High School’s stadium as he and his twin brother Romeo walked toward the student parking lot. The two of them wore the letterman’s jackets that they’d just received a couple weeks before when the spring semester started.

The jackets were scarce as far as patches went, however, despite their one season playing for the Tigers’ football team. It wasn’t a great season by any means with Terrebonne posting a 1-7 record during a season hampered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“You talk to Rana? She said she was going to Venmo us some money to put on the car payment,” Romeo said as he flicked through TikTok.

“No. Not since a couple weeks ago. She only call you whenever she want to talk to one of us,” Royce said.

He took a set of keys out of his pocket to unlock the doors of a Honda Accord that was parked on the outside of the parking lot. It was a 2008 and had probably been flooded a few times over between hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Ida.

But their older sister Rana had promised that he would help the two of them get a car when they turned 16 and that she would help them with the payments and the insurance. Royce felt it was the least she could do after she packed up her and their youngest sister Roni’s things and moved to Baton Rouge just before the pandemic started.

“Let me drive, bruh,” Romeo said, holding his hand out for the keys. “You always driving.”

Royce sucked his teeth. “Because you don’t have your fucking license, nigga, now move. Ain’t nobody trying to end up in Gray behind your ass.”

“We twins. All you gotta do is give me your license if we get pulled over. They won’t know the difference. Acting like cops got Ph.D’s or something.”

As much as he wanted to argue, Royce couldn’t deny that the two of them pushed the extremes of being identical twins. There were some differences between them when they were younger, but as they grew up, they began to look more and more alike.

Now as teenagers, they looked alike, dressed alike, sounded alike, had a similar style and even both sported a little hair in the middle of their chin in what they tried to convince people was the beginnings of goatees.

Outside of a little extra muscle that Royce had, no one would be able to tell the difference – especially not a cop that was taking a five second glance at the person that had handed them a license.

“C’mon, Ro. You being a lil’ bitch. It’s not like I can’t drive. They just keep telling me that I need to take another one of them classes. We just going down the fucking road.”

“Fine,” Royce said, handing his brother the keys. “But we not going down the road. We gotta go pick up Reg from Ashland.”

“Why I didn’t know Reg was at Ashland?”

Royce walked around the passenger side of the car. “Reg always in fucking Ashland. Ask me when that nigga not in there.”

…

Royce, Romeo and Reg walked out of the parish’s jail, the sound of a heavy metal door slamming shut behind them. Reg carried a garbage bag full of the belongings that he’d been arrested with and wore tattered clothes courtesy of a police dog that’d chased him down.

No words were exchanged between the three of them as they walked to the car, got in and Romeo pulled out of the parking spot. He drove up to the massive gate that surrounded the levee that wrapped around the jail like a reverse medieval moat. He pressed the button on the intercom to be let out and waited for the gate to open.

Reg was the first to break the silence from the backseat. “Hey, either of y’all got a few dollars so I can get me a nick from Doodoo on East Street? You know the Jakes take all your shit when you get caught. Talking about my money from drug offenses.”

Romeo looked at Royce who only shrugged as he tapped his fingers on his knee, wondering why the gate was taking so long to open.

“Yeah, I got you,” Romeo said. “You gonna pay me back?”

“It’s $5, bruh. You can’t hook me up with $5? What you gonna do with it? Use it to buy some rubbers for that white girl you been fucking? You better be wrapping up to fuck her, too. Mama gonna kick your ass if you knock her up.”

“She ain’t white. She’s light skin,” Romeo said, feeling a little defensive.

“She kinda white, bruh,” Royce said under his breath. “And her name is Britni spelled B-r-i-t-n-i. Only way she could be whiter is if her name was Mackaleighlee.”

The name Royce came up with caused him and Reg to laugh at Romeo’s expense.

He waved his hand in their direction. “Man, fuck both of y’all.”

The gate finally started to slide open, and Romeo pulled out onto the street as his brothers continued to come up with names that were worse than Britni.

[Soapy]

[Soapy]

August almost here, loc

[Caesar]

Family All We Got



Under the bright glow of streetlights, Royce leaned against his car as he scrolled through TikTok. He could hear the sound of men shooting dice nearby, some gambling away what little money they had and others throwing away money they didn’t need. Music played in the background and a few of them tried their hand at freestyling over a Youngboy beat with proclamations that they were going to be the next big artist out of Louisiana.

Romeo opened the passenger door and swung his feet out onto the pavement. He held his phone out and moved it in a wide arc.

“See, I told you I’m just with my brother and we waiting for our cousins to come out the house. I don’t know why you always tripping,” he said to a girl he was on a FaceTime with.

Royce glanced over at his brother and then the girl and raised an eyebrow before shaking his head. Britni was fine. He couldn’t lie about that, but she wasn’t his type. She lived down the bayou with the rich folks in Bourg, and Romeo was rarely invited over for family dinners.

It didn’t help matters that was one paranoid chick, either.

“Well, you said you were going to a party and they got bitches at parties, don’t they?” she asked, sucking her teeth at the end of the question.

“Yeah, but I told you I’m going with Ro and my cousins,” he said before getting out of the car and moving the phone so that both of the brothers were in the shot. “He standing right here. You know I ain’t got a license to be driving nowhere anyway.”

“Royce don’t even like me!” Britni shouted.

A bark of a laugh escaped Royce’s mouth prompting Romeo to shove him away, but not before Britni shouted a “fuck both of y’all” and hung up.

“Why you always gotta mess with her man?” Romeo asked his brother.

“She ain’t wrong. I don’t like her ass. Only black person in the whole parish going to South Terrebonne. Can’t trust no one who would be comfortable down there with them rednecks and coonasses,” Royce said.

“Nigga, her pussy good and you gonna fuck it up for me.”

Royce shrugged as he walked around to the driver side of the car. “Just go find some chick in Southdown West to fuck on. Ain’t like it’s going to be all that different from what you doing with her. Shit. It might even be better.”

Leaning into the window, Royce slammed his hand down on the horn. The sound caused a number of dogs to start barking, adding to the noise on the street. A moment later, three teenagers came out of a nearby house and headed in the brothers’ direction.

“My mama gonna kick your ass honking that horn like that when she in there trying to sleep,” one of the three, a girl that was all of five-foot-nothing, said.

“Tee Cal love me so I don’t know about all that. I’m going to just say that was you slamming on the horn like that.”

The trio were Royce and Romeo’s cousins. The smallest, but oldest, of the bunch was Arianna. A year older than Royce and Romeo, she’d always tried to treat them as her “little” cousins but given she needed shoes to reach five feet tall and the twins were a foot taller, it didn’t work.

Her brother Mike was with her, probably too young to be tagging along to a party at only 14, but he tagged along to wherever the twins went whenever possible. It helped that, unlike his sister, Mike was nearly as tall as Royce and Romeo and had already started growing a beard and mustache, making most people skeptical of his young age.

Rounding out the group was their cousin, Toni. No one had ever been quite sure how she was related to them, but she’d lived with their grandmother for as long as they could remember, and no one questioned it – on orders of Ma Beulah. Royce always suspected, given her lighter complexion, that she was the love child of one of his uncles who was now up the river at Angola or Dixon, or dead.

The rarely spoken family gossip was that she wasn’t related to them at all. The aunts and uncles of the family could probably piece together the truth, but all they would say is that one day Ma Beulah showed up with an infant, said her name was Toni and that was that.

Sixteen years later, she was just their cousin Toni.

“Where we going again?” Mike asked as he dapped up Romeo.

Royce gestured to his brother as he pushed off the car to walk around to the driver’s side. “Spend time with his kind of people.”

“You the one that got the address for this,” Romeo shot back. “I don’t even know Derrick like that. That’s your friends.”

“Aren’t you still fucking that girl who go to ST? You sure it ain’t your kind of people?” Arianna asked, shoving Romeo out of the way to get to the passenger seat.

Royce looked at his brother and held his hands out before shrugging.

The group got into the car. Royce driving with Arianna in the passenger seat and Romeo, Toni and Mike squeezed into the backseat.

“Say, put that new Snug on,” Mike said from the backseat.

“Put that new Snug on,” Royce said in a mocking tone. “Shut your young ass up. You get music privileges when your nuts drop, lil’ nigga.”

Arianna glanced toward the backseat. “Toni, you drinking tonight?”

“What you think? I didn’t get up out of bed to go home sober,” she said, but didn’t look up from her phone as she scrolled through Instagram.

“Damn, I was hoping you’d drive us back.”

“You know I can’t drive.”

Romeo looked over at her. “Why you lying like you ain’t got a car sitting at home? You could’ve just said no.”

“Sound like you jealous,” she shot back. “Better get you a little job at Rouses to get you a car so you can get out of Ro’s car. But then you’d have to stop failing the driver’s license test. They gonna ban you from taking it after ten more times, you know?”

“Oh, you got jokes?”

Despite Romeo’s comment, everyone in the car started ragging on his lack of a vehicle and a driver’s license at his big age.

~~~~~~~~~~

As sunlight filtered through the curtains, Royce awoke to the intrusive blare of an alarm. He sat up quickly before dropping back down on the bed with a pounding headache. Bleary-eyed, he fumbled for the source in the sheets but couldn’t find his phone. He heard the heavy sound of footsteps walking down the hall and shutting the alarm off, realizing it was in another room.

He rolled over and hair pricked at his face. Reaching a hand out with his eyes still closed, he felt the back of someone’s head. He squeezed his hand closed in confusion, his eyebrows furrowing.

Then he sat up again and looked around the room that was very much not his and very much that of the girl sleeping in the bed next him. The fog in his head cleared almost immediately as he sprung up and grabbed his pants off the floor and his shirt from a nearby chair.

Just as he was about to pull on his clothes, the door swung open.

He froze.

“Jessi – what the fuck?! Who are you?!”

Royce and the man who now stood in the door stared at one another for a moment, both with deer in the headlights looks on their face.

The girl sat up. “What’s all that fucking noise?”

That sprung the man into action as he lunged at Royce, but he backed out of the way of the man’s grasp and then leapt over the bed. The girl started screaming for her father to stop, but none of that mattered to Royce as he ran out into the hall.

He saw a door that looked like it led outside at the end of the hall and full-on sprinted toward it as the sound of the man stumbling out into the hall, fussing and cursing, filled the house. Royce made it to the door, fumbled with the lock and swung it open.

Only to find he was in the backyard.

“Fuck,” he mumbled to himself as he picked a direction.

Tossing his clothes over the fence first, he ran back to the center of the yard as the man exited the house. He ran at the fence, planted a foot on a crossbeam and cleared it with a practiced ease.

But experience told him, you don’t stop after one fence.

He gathered up his clothes and jumped over the next fence, and the next.

Then he stopped to pull his clothes on. He fished his phone out of his pocket and called Romeo, but it went straight to voicemail. He cursed at his brother, assuming that he’d somehow found his way to Bourg last night.

He started to climb, more leisurely this time, over the next fence. But before he could drop down to the ground, two Rottweilers came running to greet him. He quickly went back the way he came, not wanting to tango with two demon dogs.

Instead, he went to the fence at the back of that yard and climbed over. He casually walked to the gate and exited out on the side of the house, and on the opposite street.

A couple jogged by, waving at him but giving him an awkward look all the same.

He waved back and started walking toward what looked like the front of the neighborhood. His phone started ringing, and he almost dropped it on the pavement thinking it was the sound of something else.

Arianna’s name flashed on the screen.

“Where you?” she asked as soon as he answered the call.

“I don’t know. The Lakes? Maybe?”

“You don’t know, nigga?”

Royce shook his head even though she couldn’t see him. “It look like the Lakes. Smell like it, too. I don’t know what street this is.”

“Of course you don’t know them white people streets. I’m gonna come pick you up.”

“In who car?”

“Yours, duh,” she said, hanging up.

…

Minutes later, Royce was walking down the highway and Arianna came screeching to a stop just in front of him on the shoulder. The car rattled with the sound of rap music and improperly tuned subwoofers as Arianna sung along to a Meg thee Stallion song.

Royce walked to the driver’s side, but his cousin locked the door and pointed for him to get in on the passenger side.

He sucked his teeth but did so all the same.

As soon as he sat in the seat, Arianna slammed on the gas and pulled back into traffic. The seat was still leaned back to where Royce would usually keep it, so she had to all but stand up to reach the pedals. She didn’t seem interested in moving it forward as she sped down the road, hands coming off the wheel to provide emphasis to the lyrics.

“Why you got my car?” Royce asked, shouting over the music.

“You gave me the keys last night when you snuck off with that white girl. Then Romeo left with that high yella girl. They was arguing and shit and you know I can’t stand that. Ain’t no nigga worth all that drama. Even y’all and y’all my people,” she said before stopping to sing along to the beginning of another song. “So I brought Mike-Mike and Toni home when that party got lame.”

“You ain’t go all the way back up the bayou. You got here too fast. Where were you at?”

Arianna laughed. “I got a white boy on my roster.”

Royce shook his head as he leaned back in the seat, partially because he was still tired and partially because Arianna’s erratic driving was beginning to make him feel sick and he’d rather not see the wreck that she was going to get them in coming.

“I’m going to tell Tee Cal on your ass. You know what she say about fucking with them Pilgrims.”

“You sound like Ma Beulah with that Pilgrims shit,” Arianna said, laughing. “Besides, Tee Rash be saying the same shit so when you go talk to my mama just know I’m gonna be up at y’all house talking to your mama about the same shit.”

Royce’s phone dinged with a text. He glanced down at it and shook his head.

“Britni kicked Romeo out. We gotta go get him from down the bayou,” he said.

“I’m going to charge y’all for these Uber rides.”

He looked at his cousin. “This is my fucking car.”

She only laughed and turned the music up louder than it already was. Royce closed his eyes, hoping to get a bit of sleep and praying Arianna wouldn’t kill them.

[Captain Canada]

That's an update update, but I was rocking with it

[Caesar]

One and a Possible



The smell of boiling crawfish filled the yard while the music of the 80s and 90s hung in the air. Royce leaned against his grandmother’s car, watching the game of spades happening in front of him. Ma Beulah had gathered her entire family, minus a few who no longer paid taxes for one reason or another, at her house for a crawfish boil.

Entire except for Rana and Roni, that was.

Royce snorted a laugh as he watched his brother try to figure out how many books he had. Romeo was their Uncle Earl’s partner against their cousins, and Earl’s sons, Sheldon, better known as Doodoo, and Mitchell.

It wasn’t looking good for Uncle Earl and Romeo.

“I think I got two? No, three. No, no. Hold on. I got three and a possible,” Romeo said as he flicked through the cards in his hand.

“Yo, get this nigga off the table. Who taught your young ass how to play spades?” Uncle Earl said before reaching over the snatch the cards out of Romeo’s hands. “Nigga related to us and don’t even know how to fucking play spades.”

“Ain’t nobody ever taught me how to play. I just know what I know,” Romeo shot back.

“Get off the fucking table and go over there with the women and Mike Mike. Go stir them crawfish or something. Make yourself useful. Ro, I know you know how to play.”

Royce shrugged. “Yeah, but I don’t know if I’m playing with y’all. I already know Doodoo and Mitchell be cheating they ass off. I know hustling ass niggas when I see them.”

“Scared money don’t make money, cuzzo,” Mitchell said, laughing.

Romeo reached across the table and took his cards back from his uncle before taking the other three hands as well and starting to shuffle the cards again.

“I got this. I’m gonna show y’all something,” Romeo said.

“We should put some money on this,” Sheldon said, rubbing his hands together.

Uncle Earl smacked him in the back of the head. “How you gonna suggest putting money on something and you ain’t got no fucking job? Banks don’t accept pocket lint and neither do I.”

Royce snorted a laugh. He looked around the yard as Reg walked out of their grandmother’s house with a tray of potatoes, followed by Toni, their aunt Katrina, and their cousin Tami. They walked over to where Ma Beulah sat with Royce’s mother, Rashida, Arianna and his aunt Cal.

The Williams family dynamic was always an interesting one to Royce. Grandpa Williams died before he was born in an accident working offshore. That left Uncle Earl as the man of the house after the oldest son of the family, Isaiah, was sentenced to life in prison back in the 90s for murder.

Royce had never met his Uncle Isaiah, and like the secret of if Toni was their cousin or not, no one talked about him.

Despite that, there was no lack of men in the family these days between himself, Romeo, Reg, Michael, Sheldon and Mitchell.

Even if only he and his brother were likely to make something of themselves.

“Come here, Royce!” his mother shouted from across the yard.

He sighed and pushed away from the car.

“Check on that crawfish for me and see if it’s pepper,” Uncle Earl said as he walked away.

“Apparently, I’m the fucking errand boy now,” Royce muttered under his breath as he walked the short distance to where his mother was sitting.

She shook an empty package of Pall Malls at him as soon as he was close enough to be able to see what was in her hand.

“Go run up the street and get me some cigarettes,” she said.

“Send Reg.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m sending you.”

“Give me the money then,” he said, holding his hand out.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled five dollar bill, slapping it into his hand before turning back to a conversation with the others.

Royce held up the bill. “This ain’t enough.”

“That little Asian girl that work there like you. Just bat your eyes at her and tell her to scan something else for it,” his mother threw over her shoulder.

Sucking his teeth, he stuffed the bill into his pocket and started toward his car.

“Rome! You wanna run to the corner store with me?” he shouted.

“Yeah, hold on!”

“Royce, go get my damn cigarettes and stop bothering your brothers,” his mother said.

He looked at Romeo who only shrugged before returning to his game of spades. Shaking his head, Royce walked to his car.

…

Royce walked down the candy aisle at the corner store, browsing the options while bobbing his head to the Boosie song being played through an iPhone somewhere in the store.

He picked up a Snickers bar before deciding against it and putting it back instead opting for a cookies and cream bar. He grabbed a bag of Hot Cheetos for Arianna, who’d texted him after he left, as he walked toward the cash register.

“Hey, Royce,” the cashier said as he dropped the candy bar and chips on the counter.

“What’s up, Veronica? Let me get a pack of Pall Malls, too. The 100s,” he said, nodding to the wall of cigarettes behind her before reaching into his pocket to get the money to pay for everything.

“Now, you know you not old enough to be smoking.”

Despite the admonishing in her words, the small smile playing at her lips was telling a different story. The two of them had had this same conversation numerous times over the years since Royce had become the go-to cigarette buyer over Reg.

Mostly because Reg would use the money for Black and Milds instead.

“I won’t tell no one if you don’t. It can be our little secret,” Royce said, winking at her.

“You bad, yeah,” she said, shaking her head, but still turning around to grab the pack of cigarettes from the shelf.

Royce took a moment to admire her ass as she did. Like their conversation about his not being old enough to buy cigarettes, that was something he did often as well. She had a nice shape, and he wasn’t ashamed to look.

He wasn’t sure how old Veronica was, only that she was his age or older. Her family owned the store and she’d worked there since she was old enough to count and see over the counter. Now that she was close enough to being a fully grown adult, she basically ran the store by herself when she worked.

She grabbed the candy bar and bag of Cheetos to scan with the cigarettes. “You never struck me as a cookie and cream and Hot Cheetos type.”

“I’m down with all kinds of swirls. This is just what I got a sweet tooth for right now. Could be something totally different later around the time you get off. You know I stay just down the street. Just let me know when you coming.”

“Or you could drive your ass up MLK and come see me. Fourteen seventy-seven.”

He put a twenty on the counter. “Where you stay up there? The Landing? Ain’t them roach infested?”

She rolled her eyes as she counted out his change and handed it back to him.

“First of all, you know enough about me to know I’m not living anywhere with roaches. I stay at Ainsley, anyway.”

“Well, shit. Give me your number so we can link up.”

She laughed. “See you later, Royce.”

“Oh, now you want to act like you don’t want me. I see how it is. This why you need to switch places with your cousin, Pixie. She don’t do me like this whenever I pass by the nail shop.”

“Oh, honey. You get your nail done?” she asked, putting on an overdone accent.

He pointed at her. “I’m going to remember this next time. Going to come up in here being all rude because you doing me so dirty.”

“Boy, bye,” she said, laughing again.

He shook his head and walked out of the store. He nodded to a couple of older men who were hanging around outside shooting dice.

“You got a quarter so I can get me a loose cig, young blood?” one of them asked.

Shaking the coins out of the bills in his hand, Royce handed all of the change to the man.

“God bless ya, good brother,” he said before heading into the store.

As Royce got into his car to head back to his grandmother’s, a notification dinged on his phone. A DM from Vernoica with her number.

He smiled to himself and started up the car.

…

“I thought you were going to the corner store. You been gone like you drove all the way to the Rouse,” Arianna said as she met Royce at his car to get the bag of chips from him.

He shook his head as he scanned the yard, seeing that many of his relatives were now busy peeling crawfish. He was shocked to see Romeo’s girlfriend Britni sitting next to him. More shocked to see their mom sitting right across from her, laughing it up.

“When she get here?” Royce asked, nodding to Britni.

“Couple minutes ago. I don’t know why your brother so down bad for her. She highkey lame as hell.”

“That’s how he like ‘em, I guess,” he said, shrugging as he walked across the yard.

He held out the cigarettes to his mother, but she remained engaged in a lively conversation with Romeo and Britni. The picture was fairly shocking to Royce considering their mother had never hid her disdain for the girl, thinking she was too stuck up to have anything to do with Romeo.

Of course, that was before she decided to show up to a crawfish boil in the bricks.

He shook the package slightly, moving it forward so it was more in her line of sight. When she still didn’t respond, he moved the package almost completely in front of her.

She snatched the cigarettes out of his hand and sucked her teeth. “God damn, Royce. You see me up here talking.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Boy, if you don’t get out my face with that shit.”

He walked toward the opposite end of the table as she went back to talking to Romeo and Britni. He grabbed a crawfish from Mike’s tray as he passed by.

“C’mon, bruh. Get your own shit,” Mike said, guarding his tray.

“I’m just trying to protect you, bruh. You know that pepper gonna be having your sinuses all open and shit,” Royce said as he opened the lid to the pot and picked up a ladle.

“He already up there all like.” Mitchell imitated rubbing at his nose and snorting up snot, drawing laughter at Mike’s expense.

Royce sat down next to his Uncle Earl and started peeling. “Who won?”

“I had to quit. That nigga kept talking about he got this and a possible. One and a possible and shit. You need to teach that boy to play spades. Even though looking at that sididdy girl he got down there, he playing Pidro,” his uncle said.

Royce glanced down the table. One son and a possible, he thought to himself as he watched his mother and brother having a grand old time.

[James]

What kind of cards these guys playing with?