There’s a certain sense of rightness seeing Jade in the studio, not the way she used to come, her eyes lit with a hidden jealousy for my success, a nurtured resentment that the shot I got—the scholarship to a performing arts school—could have been hers. She has her own shot now, and I love seeing her take full advantage of it.

The ever-present Raiders cap is on the floor by her feet. Her head, hair sectioned into cornrows, is bent over a notepad. The guy she’s talking to, Skeet, an old friend who needs other people’s lyrics, notices me at the door before Jade does.

“What’s up, superstar?” He crosses over, daps me up, and surveys me thoroughly. I know what he sees. My clothes are casual in that deliberate, understated way you have to pay a lot of money for. We started from the bottom together, but I kept rising, and he keeps slipping. I hope Jade’s clever flow can help him.

“What’s good, Skeet?” I ask, wishing I didn’t know him well enough to recognize the calculating light in his eyes.

“You on the come up.” His laugh is a prelude to the question I see coming a mile off. “When you gon’ put me on? Let me spit on a track. I need some of that Top 40, double platinum love.”

“We’ll see.” My smile is super-glued in place, not slipping a millimeter. “I’m not really recording right now, at least not for myself.”

“Oh yeah. I heard you and Qwest in the booth again.” Calculation becomes speculation. “I saw that panel Angie Black put on, by the way. That was messed up, man.”

I shrug, unwilling to give him anything more to work with and tired of talking about it.

“Nothing I haven’t heard before. Won’t be the last time somebody comes at me with ignorant shit like that.”

My eyes find Jade, who sits on the couch across from the sound board, tossing her cap from hand to hand. She knows I’m here to see her, and she’s just waiting for Skeet to figure it out.

“A’ight, bruh,” I say, patting his back. “I need to holla at Jade for a minute. You mind?”

“Nah. We were just going over some notes before the engineers get here for the track we’re recording tonight.” He grabs a bag of weed from the sound board and heads for the door. “I’mma go burn one. Take your time.”

He turns at the door, smiling at Jade.

“And thanks for hooking me up with your cousin,” he says. “Her shit’s the bomb.”

He leaves behind a silence thick with my displeasure and Jade’s curiosity.

“Yo, what’s good, cuz?” She pounds my fist, scooting over so I can sit on the couch beside her. “Thought you were still in New York.”

“I was, but I came to get Bristol. We’re flying back tonight.”

Irritation flashes across her face before she can hide it. I really thought we were gaining ground, but I realize now she believes Bristol is an itch that, once scratched, will be gone. She’s just been biding her time.

“I’m glad to see you working with Skeet.” I slouch into the cushy leather worn to buttery softness during many late-night recording sessions. “He needs the help.”

“Yeah, his stuff was whack.” Jade keeps a straight face for a few seconds before sharing a grin with me. It makes her look younger, carefree, and I glimpse that girl who used to ride bikes with me until the streetlights came on. It’s for that girl that I want to be gentle.

“I need you to try with Bristol, J.” I cut the small talk and get right to it, my voice soft enough to persuade, but firm enough to insist.

“And what’d Miss Run Tell Dat say?” She twists her lips into a grimace. “I knew she couldn’t keep her mouth—”

“She didn’t.” I’m losing patience the more Jade lets her resentment show. “I had to drag it out of her, what was bothering her.”

“And it was me?” Jade touches her chest. “I’m what’s bothering her when I haven’t even talked to her?”

“Not since my going away party, right? She finally told me about the conversation you had in the kitchen.”

“I didn’t tell her anything Angie Black didn’t say in front of the whole world,” Jade snaps. “When you gonna realize Bristol is not for you? You have an opportunity to make a difference, and being with her is ruining it.”

“Ruining it how?”

“How much can black lives really matter when you fucking a snowflake?” A disparaging puff of air coasts past her lips. “We supposed to respect that? Just get rid of her and find someone like Qwest, that’s all I’m saying.”

That’s all? Jade says it easily, like it should be self-evident, like giving up Bristol shouldn’t break me, when it would. How can she think she knows me and not realize that losing Bristol would crush me?

“You still think she’s a trophy or a phase I’ll grow out of, don’t you?” I lean forward to study her face in case it tells me something different than her words do.

She just looks at me, the damn right so clear on her face, she doesn’t bother voicing it. I reach into the pocket of my leather jacket.

“Does this look like a phase to you?” I open my palm, exposing the large square canary yellow diamond I picked up before I went to the set of Luke’s show. Jade glares at the ring like the lights bouncing off the facets taunt her.

“You really doing this?” she grits out. “Wait’ll Aunt Mittie sees that.”

“Oh, she saw it.” I slip the ring back into the safety of my pocket. “When she helped me pick it out. Now all she talks about is swirl grandbabies.”

“You’re gonna have kids with her?” Disgust wrinkles the smooth surface of Jade’s face.

Now she’s pissing me the hell off.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have kids with her,” I snap. “As many as she’ll give me. And fuck you for making it sound like some kind of violation. I found somebody I love and want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“Oh, everybody says forever in the beginning.”

“We’ve been through this before, Jade. It is forever with us.”

Jade rolls her eyes and shoves the Raiders cap over her cornrows, resignation wrestling with protest in her expression.

“Listen to me.” I take both her hands in mine and look at her until she looks back at me. “I will choose her over you.”

Her lashes drop and blink several times, a frown drawing her brows together.

“And if you can’t get over this bigoted shit, you won’t be in our lives.”

Her eyes fly to my face, widen and then narrow.

“I love you, Jade. You know that, but you need to understand something: anyone who wants to hurt Bristol has to go through me to get to her.”

I pause meaningfully before finishing.

“And they will not get to her,” I warn. “Keep showing your ass when she comes around, and you won’t be around. I’m not tolerating the toxic.”

An unexpected smile quirks her mouth. She reaches into the pocket of her baggy jeans for lip balm and slides the stick over her lips.

“Alliteration,” she murmurs.

“What?” I exhale a frustrated breath. “Are you hearing me?”

“Yeah, ‘tolerating the toxic’—it’s alliteration.” Her smile reminisces. “You came home one day from school. We were in like the sixth grade or something. You learned alliteration that day and couldn’t stop talking about it, giving me examples, making me come up with some. You were the smartest boy I knew.”

She shakes her head, something close to pride creeping into her eyes.

“You still are. Even on that panel, you stood out. You’re the best of us, Grip, and I wanted you . . .”

Her rueful sigh says it: she wanted what she thinks is best for me, namely, for me to choose a black woman. I hook an elbow around her neck, pulling her into me.

“You know what?” I touch our heads together. “Even though I dated all over the place, every ethnicity, I think somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I would settle down with someone just like Ma. Maybe I assumed that meant she’d be black. I never gave it much thought, but that’s not what it meant. Bris is strong and determined and loyal and as ride or die as they come, just like Ma. I didn’t see this coming, but she is exactly what I need.”

I kiss Jade’s forehead and stand, looking down at her.

“I’m not giving her up, J,” I tell her. “Not even for you.”

She doesn’t reply, but fixes her eyes on the floor, offering no more words. I don’t wait for her to say anything, just head out the door. My words should be the last because they’re the only ones that count.