“Yes ma'am.” I said and then hugged her before she left.
“I see you tried to shine out there today. Four threes.” Xavier said as he lowered his sister to the ground.
“I missed a free throw.” She mumbled.
“It's all good.” Xavier said not wanting to bring up the situation that had occurred with Johnny.
She and Xavier didn’t really look a lot alike but you could tell that they were related mostly because of the features that their mother had passed down to them. They both had thin eyes and round faces but Xavier had more of a caramel complexion while Leigh was darker more along the lines of a Hershey kiss. Because of years of watching and studying her brother play she acted just like him when it came to basketball though. The attitude, the cockiness even down to the compression sleeves and leggings but when she wasn’t on the court she was the complete opposite, extremely girly. It’s like she had an alter ego the second she stepped on the court.
She was small for her age barely five feet and all of eighty pounds but you would never know it the way she hit the court like her brother, powerful and aggressive. She had a sort of natural beauty but was still too young to appreciate her features. I teased Xavier all the time about how beautiful she was going to be when she figured out what to do with it. She looked so much more like her mother than Xavier did owning more of her Asian features than he did. Aside from his curly hair and thin eyes you couldn’t really see it in him but Leigh was Victoria in a smaller, darker version.
“So what's my surprise?” Leigh asked now impatiently grinning from ear to ear.
“You'll see when we get to the Jeep.” He said and playfully yanked one of the French braids that brushed her shoulder.
“Well let's go then.” She grabbed his hand tugging him towards the gym door.
The three of us made our way out the school and to Xavier’s Jeep. Leigh climbed in the back and threw her drawstring gym bag on the seat next to her before she started looking around for any signs of a gift for her. Xavier and I got in the front and he started the Jeep.
“Well?” Leigh asked impatiently.
“Well what?” Xavier teased to purposely wanting to annoy his little sister.
“Zay, come on.” She whined, “What’d you bring me?”
“Hold on let me get this text.” He said and reached into his pocket.
“Zay pleeaassse.” She pleaded.
“Hey how did your phone get in here?” He asked when he pulled his hand out of his pocket holding a brand new IPhone with a pink case on it. He gently tossed it back to her and she caught it in her lap with both of her hands.
“Is this mine?” She screeched “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She yelled after which she sat up, leaned forward until she reached the back of his seat and then wrapped her arms around it. She kissed her brother on the cheek before she fell back and immediately began exploring her new phone.
“You're welcome and you better take care of it.” Xavier said pleased that his surprise met her approval.
“I will. I promise. How did you get it activated without me knowing? I bet this is why mine wasn't working earlier.” Leigh dug through her gym bag searching for her old phone that had been dropped so many times that the screen was being held together for dear life with a screen protector.
“I just called and they did it.”
“You're the best Zay. I love you.”
“You better.” He said jokingly but Leigh ignored him because she was too busy with her new phone.
After we had pizza at Dave and Busters an Adam’s family tradition which always lead to an arcade basketball shootout between the two of them. Xavier drove us back to their aunt’s house so that we could be on our way back to school. When we reached the townhouse we both got out to say our goodbyes to Leigh.
“I’m coming to stay with you soon.” Leigh said to me. “Don’t they let people stay overnight in your dorms?” She asked.
“Yeah just let me know when and I can come get you if big head won’t bring you.”
“I don’t know if you’re ready for college life.” Xavier said to his little sister.
“I got this.” She said sarcastically.
“That’s right, let the girls handle this.” I added.
“I’m the final word so if I say she can’t, then she won’t.” He pulled Leigh towards him as if staking claim to her but she pulled away and rolled her eyes at him.
“Whatever man, don’t worry about him. You just tell me when you want to come and I got you.” I said ignoring his failed attempt at being a parental figure.
“Thanks Ky.” Leigh said and then stuck her tongue out at her brother.
My phone rang so I hugged Leigh before I left the two of them standing there and stepped away but was still close enough to hear them talking.
“Can’t you get an apartment so that I can come stay with you until you finish school?” Leigh asked her brother.
“Maybe next year but you need to stay here. You’ve got school and basketball. You’ll have to find a whole new team if you move and you don’t want that.”
“I know but I’ll be in high school soon and I don’t really wanna be here anymore. I miss you.” She sounded like she was on the verge of breaking out into tears. I glanced at her and could tell that her whole mood changed.
“It’s not that bad and you can see me anytime you want. Just call me and I’ll be here when I can. Besides you don’t want to leave auntie all alone, she would miss you too much.” He lifted her chin to see her face because she was staring at the ground. “Okay?”
“Okay.” She mumbled “Do I have to keep seeing him?”
I thought about how the courts had given custody of the two of them to his aunt but the mandated weekend supervised visits for Johnny. Xavier was twenty now so he didn’t have to see him but Leigh did even though most of the time he didn’t show up and when he did she sat there and refused to talk to him. In her eyes Xavier was her brother, her father and everything else she needed so there was no point in trying with Johnny.
“One more year. Just hang in there. Your birthday will be here before you know it.” He said and then hugged her.
“Not soon enough, I miss mom.”
“I do too.” He hugged her tighter. “Go ahead inside so that I can get back. Ill text you later, Okay?”
“Okay.” She forced smile and then made her way up the stairs while he watched and when she opened the door she held up her phone and yelled, “Thank’s Zay,” before she disappeared inside the house. I got in the Jeep but he stood there for a minute just watching the door. I could tell he hated leaving her but he also knew that he couldn’t do anything about it at least not right now.
“She Okay?’ I asked when he got in and began to back out the driveway.
“She wants me to get an apartment so that she can come live with me?”
“Your dad?” I asked and he gave me the nastiest look because I said dad instead of Johnny.
It took him a minute but he finally answered. “Yeah.”
“She’ll be alright.”
“I know. It just pisses me off. I don’t have to deal with him but she does and it’s not fair.”
“How much longer?”
“One more year.”
Xavier was quiet and I could tell that he was deep in thought so I just left him alone and listened to the radio until he was ready to talk.
Xavier Lee
I could see Kya watching me out the corner of my eye but I just kept my eyes on the road. I needed a minute to get my head right. I hated leaving my sister because it meant that Johnny had access to her without me there to protect her. As far as I knew he had never put his hands on her but he hand embarrassed her more times than she deserved just like he had done today. I knew from experience that sometimes that hurt worse than anything he could do to her physically. I had been on the receiving end of both and the broken bones and bruise eventfully healed but my friends never seemed to forget the embarrassment that I s
uffered when Jonny was at his best. The memories were like a wound that would never heal because every time I felt like I was over it someone would find it necessary to help me relive it over and over again.
Thinking about it made me miss my mother even more, she always seemed to fix the disasters that Jonny created. It had been almost four years since she died but it still didn’t seem real for me most of the time. There were some days that I felt like I could just pick up the phone and call her. I half expected her to be there on the other end of the line like nothing had ever happened but then it would hit me that she really was really gone. I hated Johnny because it was his fault and that was something that I would never forgive him for. Chronic liver disease, all because she drank way too much to escape her life with him. He hurt me to hurt her and it broke her more than the cheating on her ever could.
Johnny knew that the worse thing he could do to a son was to take away his ability to protect his mother just like the easiest way for him to break her was to abuse her son. He would put his hands on her in a violent rage and then smile at me as if he were daring me to do something about. Every time I tried he would prove to me how weak and useless I was against him and the more he hurt me the more he broke her. I didn’t understand how someone could find so much pleasure in someone else’s pain.
Alcohol was my mother’s therapy, it allowed her to survive if that’s what you can call it. It was funny to me how different they were when the alcohol took over. Johnny was violent and a tyrant while my mother was sullen and depressed. Even as a kid I understood what the alcohol did to both of them which caused me to be angry and bitter. You would think that seeing how it affected their lives would have kept me away from it but oddly enough it made me want it more. Maybe because it was always around me and it just seemed like the thing to do but either way I could drink with the best of them when I wanted to.
After my mother died I felt lost for a while. It was like I couldn’t get it together and everything in my life was spinning out of control. I drank and got high all the time, only went to school enough to be able to play ball and skated through with grades that were just barely passing. In fact the only thing that kept me from totally losing it was Kya and my sister. Leigh needed me, she had lost our mother and I wasn’t going to let her lose me too. She was too young to have to feel so alone.
As for Ky, she refused to let me destroy myself not matter how hard I tried and she put up with way more than she should have. That’s how I knew she loved me because if the tables had been turned I honestly don’t know that I could have dealt with all of the things that I put her through. I looked over at her and she smiled at me the way she always did when she was worried but trying to keep it from me so I just started rambling. I didn’t know why but I just needed to get it out.
“I remember the first time Johnny ever put his hands one me.” I said without turning to look at her. “I was ten years old and goofing off in the house with a basketball. I made the tragic mistake of knocking his brand new bottle of vodka off the counter. It hit the floor, the glass shattered and Vodka spilled everywhere. There was a look of sheer panic in my mother’s face as she grabbed a dish towel and immediately began cleaning it up and when tried to help her she screamed at me to just leave it alone and go to my room. Back then I never understood that she was trying to keep me out of his way. Keeping me from him was the only way that she knew to protect me from him. He immediately came rushing into the kitchen yelling about that damn bottle of Vodka and my mother tried her best to take the blame for it but he saw the basketball and knew that it was my fault. He grabbed me by my shoulders yanked me from the floor and all I remember is hitting the wall. I could hear my mother pleading with him as he went on a rant about how none of us appreciated all the hard work he did for our family and all he wanted was to enjoy a simple drink after work without one of us ruining it for him. We ruined things for him. What a damn joke.”
“I hate what he does to you.” She said barley loud enough for me to hear her. “It makes you so hateful.”
“Hell yeah he makes me hateful and you of all people should know why. You’ve been there Ky, you’ve seen the black eyes and broken bones. How would I not be?”
“I know, I’m not saying you don’t deserve to be.”
“You’re damn right. For Christmas one year I got a broken rib because the stores were closed and he ran out of Vodka, my freshman year he broke my jaw, my sophomore year he broke two of my fingers. I’d say that’s more than enough reason for me to be hateful.” I could that tell I was raising my voice and I didn’t mean too but she was right about one thing and that was Johnny truly did make me hateful. Just thinking about him was causing me to lose control.
“I know that Xavier, I just think you give him so much power over your life. It’s like he controls a small part of you and you don’t even know it. Look at you right now, you’re so angry that you can barely control it. I just hate what that does to you. That’s all I’m saying.” Her voice was shaky like she was struggling to get the words out.
“Fuck him!” I yelled so loud that I was sure it startled her. I could tell that she didn’t know what to say so she didn’t say anything at all for the rest of the ride back to her dorms. I was angry and didn’t want to take it out on her so I just left things like they were. For the first time ever I saw fear in her eyes when she looked at me and as much as it killed me to be the cause of it, I just couldn’t let go of the anger. I didn’t know how.
Chapter 6
Kya Renee
“What's up girl?” Toni asked as she did a belly flop onto my bed “You've been MIA lately.”
I was sitting at my desk typing a paper for my Literature class.
“Uh no sweetie, that's you. I've been here. What's up with you?” I asked checking out Toni's new look. She had removed her weave and was rocking her own hair. Her jet black bangs fell across her left eye.
“Ethan.”
“Ethan what?” I asked now intrigued. I twisted in my chair so that I could look at her.
“He saw my license picture and said he liked my natural look better so I decided to rock with it for a minute.”
“Wow.” I said with a huge grin.
“What?” Toni asked and then laughed.
“You know what?” I said. “Changing for a man, who are you and what have you done with my best friend.”
“Shut up, I like him. So what.” Toni said and threw my stuffed turtle at me.
“This is not the Toni I know.” I said and threw the turtle back at her. “You never care what anyone thinks and especially not some random dude.”
“Okay so maybe it's a little more than like.” Toni said. She was smiling so hard that I was worried that she might break her face. “Ky, I swear I don't know what happened. He is nothing like the guys I usually deal with but there is something about him. He’s just…. I don't know addicting.”
“Addicting? Wow, that's interesting.” I said and laughed. “I know I haven't seen you much in the past three weeks but dang I must have missed a lot.”
“Girl you have no idea.” Toni said.
“I'm not going there with you.”
“Get your mind out the gutter boo. We haven't gone there yet.” Toni said with a frown.
“See there you go. I wasn't thinking about that. You get your mind out of the gutter and you did say yet.” I laughed.
“Anyway, so what's up with ya boy? I haven't seen him in a minute. Y'all fighting again?”
“I don't know what we are. You know how he his.”
“You two are always doing the most.” Toni said sarcastically.
“No he does the most.”
“What happened to Mr. Uncomplicated?”
I had forgotten all about the random guy that I met at Xavier’s dorm a few weeks ago.
“Nothing happened. I'm not calling that guy.”
“Why not? Clearly he's interested and he's hot.”
“Because I don't know him.”
“I k
now it's been a minute boo, but that's the purpose of calling him so that you can get to know him.”
“I already have one headache I don't need another.”
“What you have is a on again off again waste of time and besides he said call him when you wanted something less complicated.” Toni grinned at me.
“What I need is to finish this paper for Lit.”
“Oh my god, there's no hope for you. Just go ahead and marry Zay and have half fro, half twist headed, complicated babies.”
I laughed “You're so dumb. Please leave my room so that I can finish this paper.”
“Fine, I have a date anyway.” Toni said and then stood up to leave. “Don't ever say I didn't try to help.” Toni winked at me and then left my room.
I really hadn’t given much thought to Mr. Uncomplicated but I also had been so wrapped up in Xavier that I hadn't really had a chance to. The thought of moving on was something I did not want to deal with and besides Xavier had asked for another chance to work on us so I felt like I needed to see where that went but honestly I needed to figure out what was up with him. I hadn’t really seen or talk to him much lately but that was normal with it being basketball season so I tried not to stress over it too much.
A few hours later I was just about done with my paper and was in desperate need of a break. The café was already closed so I decided to go on a food run. I grabbed my keys and locked my bedroom door since Toni had already left with Ethan but I decided to leave our main door unlocked because I had planned on coming right back. The dorm was loud as usual, and I could hear someone's TV and radio blasting. “What's up Ky, where you going?” I turned when she heard Kelly's voice and she was standing in her doorway dressed in plaid dorm pants and a tank top.
“Heading out for a minute, not sure where.” I lied. I didn't want to get stuck with her. Kelly was the queen of mooch. It would start with a ride to the store that turned into a stop at her friend’s house, the weave store, chasing some dude she just met and drive by on her ex to see if he was with a new chick. I had learned my lesson about Kelly real fast.
Kya & Xavier: It's Always Been You (Life As We Know It Book 1) Page 8