Bristol’s laugh hooks me from across the yard, drawing my attention from the abysmal hand of cards I’m holding. If you’re playing Spades and all your cards are red, that’s not good. These cards are bleeding, but at least Bristol is still having fun. It’s amazing the wonders food and alcohol can work. With a full belly and a bottle of beer, she’s seated in a circle of lawn chairs, shoes off, hair tumbled from the knot she had it in earlier. She throws her head back, the muscles in her throat contracting to push out the sound that takes over everything else, at least for me.

She’s sitting with Shon and several of the girls I’ve known all my life. Once they realized Bristol knows everyone in the music business and manages many of its hottest stars, she became really popular. They wanted all the gossip she could divulge. Talk of music quickly shifted to her shoes, her bag collection, where we’ll be living in New York, all the details of our so-called glamorous life. Bristol isn’t one of those women who has lots of friends. Over the years, she has handpicked a tight circle of people she trusts and would do anything for. Under the prickliness, and when she sets her mind to it, she’s all charm. She has my lifelong friends eating from her hand and hanging on her every word.

Bristol was nervous and stiff at first, and I can’t blame her. This isn’t an easy group to jump into. Some are territorial, many mistrusting, and a few just downright racist when it comes to white women. But, they’re also the most loving, supportive, give-you-the-clothes-off-their-back people you’ll ever meet. They’re my family, with or without blood. I know some of them don’t like or understand that I’ve chosen to spend my life with Bristol, but that’s all based on shit assumptions. I’ve seen too much good in their hearts to believe they’ll hold on to those notions once they see how much I love her and how good she is for me, once they see how much she loves me, and that is one thing Bristol can’t hide. My dick twitches when I remember her confessing her possessiveness in the kitchen. This party is for me, but I’m wondering how soon we can be out. I leave tomorrow for New York, and Bristol won’t be able to join me there for at least the next week or so. With Kai’s debut album dropping Tuesday, Bristol can’t and won’t leave her side.

So, I’m thinking we should probably fuck a lot before I leave.

“Man, it’s getting late.” I lay my awful hand of cards face down on the table. “You guys still into this game or you wanna call it?”

Please call it so I can take Bris home.

“Oh, no. We’re finishing this, ese.” Mateo, my friend since elementary school, wrinkles the folds of skin above his brows into a frown. “You always trying to get ghost when you have a sorry hand. I know you.”

I roll my eyes and, resigned to finishing this crappy game, pick up the blood-red cards.

“Maybe if you concentrate on the game,” Mateo says, never looking up from his hand, steadily shifting cards around, “instead of drooling over your girl, you and your partner wouldn’t be in the hole.”

“I’m focused,” I say, distracted again when Bristol gets up and crosses the yard toward us.

“I meant focused on the game. I give you a pass, though.” Mateo turns his stare on Bristol, too. “’Cause your girl’s fine as hell, Marl.”

He’s one of the few who never took to calling me Grip, which always irritated me, but not nearly as much as the fact that he’s still looking.

“Matty.” I lean forward to snap my fingers in his face. “Eyes on the cards and off my girl.”

“Awww, you skeered I’ll take her from you?” The bastard blows me an air kiss.

Mateo, half black, half Mexican, hair loose and hanging down to his waist, is a good four hundred pounds. I have nothing to worry about, but his remark does make me crack a smile. We both laugh, but when she gets closer and his eyes drift over her long, tanned legs, the laugh clogs in my throat.

“For real, Matty, I’m gonna fuck you up you keep looking at her like that.”

Our eyes connect again and I can’t even hold on to my ire, not with him. Second to Amir, he’s been my ace boom since diaper days. I’d trust him with my life. Growing up in these streets, I’ve had to more than once.

Bristol reaches us at the table and stands beside me. I capture her hand and bring it to my lips.

“You wanna sit?” I ask her.

She looks at the full card table, smiling at the other three guys playing Spades with me.

“There’s nowhere to sit.”

“As long as I got a lap,” I say, patting my leg, “you got a place to sit.”

She laughs, flashing the guys a self-conscious smile, but settles onto my lap and rests her back against my chest. Once she’s seated, I introduce the other two guys at the table and leave Matty for last.

“Babe, did you meet Mateo?”

“No.” She smiles. “Nice to meet you, Mateo.”

Matty inclines his head, grinning at Bristol over the splay of his cards.

“He grew up with Amir and me here in the neighborhood.”

“One street over,” Matty says. “Just opened my business here.”

“What do you do?” Bristol asks.

“I own a tattoo shop right up the street.”

“He’s done every tat I have,” I say. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”

“Really? You do great work. Yours are beautiful, too,” she adds, nodding to his arms, brightly painted with everything from the Virgin Mary to Snoop Dogg.

“Thank you. I don’t see any ink on that pretty skin of yours.” Matty gives her an outlandish wink. “But maybe you’re hiding it.”

Bristol’s shoulders shake into my chest when she chuckles.

“Nope.” She stretches her arms out. “Virgin skin.”

“Well if you ever want that cherry popped . . .” The ring piercing Matty’s eyebrow glints when he waggles it suggestively.

“All right,” I cut in. “You ain’t getting anywhere near her cherries.”

We all laugh and turn back to the game and this shitty hand I was just dealt. Bristol falls back to my chest and drops her head to the crook of my neck and shoulder. Her scent, fresh and clean—shampoo, body wash, and just her—drifts up, filling the air around me. My arms frame her slim body as I study my cards, sad to see they’re still just as red. I’m tempted to toss it in and drag Bristol’s good-smelling ass out of here even though the other guys show no signs of stopping. I haven’t seen most of these folks in a long time, though. I can put my dick in check for another hour.

Maybe. If Bristol keeps squirming, maybe not.

“What game are we playing?” she asks.

“Spades.” Mateo looks up from his hand, his smug grin telling me his hand is a lot less red than mine.

Bristol leans back and whispers near my ear, “If it’s Spades, shouldn’t you have some?”

When her “whisper” reaches Mateo’s ears, he snickers, anticipating the ass kicking he’s about to deliver and smiling gleefully. I toss my cards down and push an exasperated sigh into the hair at Bristol’s neck.

“Babe, you just told everyone what’s in my hand.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, but she and Mateo still laugh.

I grab her hips and pull her deeper into my lap until she feels my erection and squirms, rolling her ass over me. I barely catch the groan rattling behind my teeth.

“Keep it up,” I say low enough for only her to hear. “You’re gonna mess around and get yourself fucked in my mama’s bathroom, and we both know you can’t be quiet.”

Her not-so-subtle elbow dig into my ribs has me umph-ing and trying to catch my breath to focus on the game.

“Aw, hell.” Mateo’s partner glances up from his phone, apologizing with a look. “I gotta go. Just got called in to work.”

Fine by me.

“Oh well.” I try to sound disappointed, leaning up, ready to slide Bristol off my lap so we can get the hell out of here and head home. “We’ll call it a draw and finish next time.”

“Let me play.” Bristol turns her head, eyes begging. “I can take his place. I’ve been watching. I think I have the hang of it. I’m really good at card games.”

“You don’t just pick up Spades,” I scoff. We take our Spades seriously.

“From what I’ve seen,” she continues, undeterred, “it’s basically a combination of strategic thinking, risk assessment, intuition, and good old-fashioned luck.”

We stare at her like she’s grown another head.

“Stick to games you can handle, like Crimes Against Humanity,” I say, “ow-ing” slightly when she punches my chest.

“It’s Cards Against Humanity,” she corrects. “And maybe you’re scared I’ll kick your ass.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s it.” I slide her off my lap. “I’ll teach you Spades another time.”

“She would be my partner, right?” Mateo leans back in the poor chair creaking its complaint under his substantial weight.

Bristol pauses, halfway up from my lap.

“Yeah.” She nods eagerly, scrambling over to take the seat Mateo’s partner vacated. “I promise I won’t let you down.”

“This is crazy.” I shuffle the cards into a neat deck. “She’s a beginner.”

“I’ll take her,” Mateo says.

Bristol claps enthusiastically and gives me a triumphant look.

“You have the deck.” She nods her head toward the cards in my hand. “Deal.”

I’ll never truly understand what transpired over the next half hour, but somehow Mateo and my novice girlfriend go on an epic tear that leaves us a hundred points behind in the end. I’m stunned and disgusted as Mateo lifts Bristol clear off the ground and twirls her around. They commence mercilessly rubbing in their unlikely win, and even contrive some weird victory shimmy.

It’s kind of turning me on. Maybe now we can go.

“Partner, you gotta drink to our win.” Mateo proffers a forty ounce to Bristol.

This should be fun—Bristol drinking a forty.

She takes the bottle to her lips and then screws her face up with distaste.

“Oh, my God.” She wipes the excess liquid from her mouth. “Do we have to drink lighter fluid?”

Everyone who has gathered around cracks up. Pink floods her cheeks and she covers her face with both hands. I pry her fingers away, one hand finding her waist and the other caressing her neck.

“Hmmm, I don’t know what your problem is.” I drop a kiss on her lips. “Tastes good to me.”

She scans the circle of people gathered around us, her face lit up and still slightly pink by the time she looks back to me. She hooks her wrists behind my neck.

“Maybe it’s an acquired taste,” she says.

She’s the acquired taste, and I don’t need to ever have another woman for the rest of my life to know she’s the sweetest thing, the only thing that will satisfy me. I’m seduced by her openness, captivated by her willingness to dive into my world and find her place. She fills my vision to the very edge until I can’t focus on anyone but her.

“No fraternizing with the enemy, Bristol,” Mateo says, tugging her into a side hug and taunting me with a smirk.

“Find your own girl.” I chuckle but pull her back to my chest, crossing my arms at her waist. She crosses her arms to hold my elbows and tilts her head into my neck.

“Now that I’m out, I can.” Mateo’s laughter fades, and he looks at me seriously for the first time all day. “I gotta thank you again, Marl.”

I shift, tightening my arms around Bristol. I hope he doesn’t make a big deal out of this, especially with everyone gathering around. Bristol glances up at me, the question in her eyes.

“Did he tell you what he did?” Mateo asks Bristol.

She shakes her head and waits for him to go on.

“I got pulled over in Vegas for some shit I didn’t do.” Mateo twists his lips into a grimace. “Wrong place, wrong time. I got caught up in some other nigga’s drama and couldn’t get uncaught.”

“What happened?” Bristol asks, not flinching at his use of the N word. She’s been around enough now that she’s used to it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but it won’t be the last time she’ll hear it while managing a hip-hop artist, and certainly not the last if she’s around my friends.

“I was rotting in a Vegas jail.” Mateo runs his hand over his goatee thoughtfully. “The bail was high enough for nosebleeds. I couldn’t touch it—no one could.” Mateo flashes me a look of chagrin. “Well, no one I wanted to call.”

Surprise is evident on Bristol’s face when she looks up at me.

“You didn’t know?” she asks.

“No.” I tuck my chin deeper into the clean, sweet scent of her neck. “I was on tour, and this knucklehead didn’t call me.”

“I didn’t want to be one of them dudes always needing shit from your homey when he makes it big, expecting stuff,” Mateo says, a frown sketching his disgust. “Grip was the last person I wanted to call.”

“Which is ridiculous.” I roll my eyes at the proud stubbornness he’s always had, even when we were kids. “This was jail, not asking me for a hookup. As soon as Ma let me know what was up, I sent a little something to help.”

“A little something?” Mateo snorts. “A hundred thousand dollars ain’t a little something, Marl. I’d been sitting in that jail for two months.”

Indignation scratches me from the inside when I think of Mateo and thousands of others like him rotting in jail, innocent but unable to make bail.

“It’s a rigged system.” My voice comes out abrasive in the soft mass of Bristol’s hair. “As long as there are people financially benefitting from the imprisonment of others, our justice system can’t be pure. Prison should not be a business.”

I clamp my lips over the other things I would say. It’s not a night for my soapbox, and once I start talking about mass incarceration and the other things that affect black, brown, and poor people disproportionately, I won’t be able to shut up. It’s a party, not a protest.

“And that’s why you’re going to New York,” Ma says, startling me since I didn’t notice her take the spot beside me in the yard. “To learn how you can help our boys, right?”

“Right.” I stretch my arm to bring her to one side, shift Bristol to the other, and lay a kiss on the top of Ma’s head.

“Okay,” she says to change the subject, passing her grin around to everyone in the circle. “We ate. We played. We smoked.”

She points to Mateo in the middle of a long draw on the blunt he pulled from his pocket.

“I hope you brought enough of that for everybody.” She doesn’t pause for the laughter that follows her words. “But I want to say a few things before we go home, before Marlon leaves for New York tomorrow.”

If I could blush, I would—maybe I am under all my melanin.

“Now Marlon thought it was silly to have a going away party since he’ll be back,” she says, “and is only gone for the semester, but I’m just as proud of him for him doing this as I am of his platinum records. I always told him how important education was for everyone, but especially for little black boys.”

The sun has gone down, and tiki lamps around the perimeter cast patches of light in her small back yard. In the half-dark, I search my mother’s face. She’s changed so little in some ways, the skin at her eyes and neck still smooth and taut, but so much in others. Raising a boy in this neighborhood by herself took its toll. She always has a joke, always makes us laugh, but every person here knows the losses she’s endured and the sacrifices she made, mostly for me. She focuses her intense stare on my face with the steady eyes that, for most of my life, shaped what I see.

“I’d come home from working my second job some nights,” she goes on, “and Marlon would be up reading or reciting a poem for school. He was a roughneck, don’t get me wrong.”

My chuckle joins everyone else’s laughter.

“But he was smart.” Ma wears her proud smile like a badge. “This is a hard life, and a hard place to grow up. It’s a rock that too many break themselves on, but you broke the rock, Marlon. You never let a place, a neighborhood, or our circumstances define you. You’re a mold-breaker. You always have been.”

Her eyes drift to Bristol, quiet and still against me, watching my mother as closely as I am.

“You keep living your life exactly as you see fit.” She smiles at Bristol. “Trust your gut. Trust your heart. They haven’t steered you wrong yet, and I’m proud of you.”

I’m unexpectedly moved by her words, by all the support surrounding me. Every face, every smile, every person in this backyard loves me. Some of them didn’t understand when I took a bus every day to another world at the performing arts school. Some of them didn’t understand when I was sweeping studio floors instead of getting a “real” job or going to college right out of high school. Some of them don’t really understand why, with a platinum album and a successful music career, I feel the need to go to NYU at all. Some of them don’t understand why the girl cuddled against my chest, who in most ways is completely foreign to them and to this life, is the center of my world. They don’t understand, but they support, and on the cusp of this new chapter in my life, unsure of what happens next, that’s all I can ask for.