Читать книгу Both Sides of the Fence 2: - M.T. Pope - Страница 11

My Life

October 28^th, 2018, 10:03 P.M.

I slowly eased my key into the door and waved my ride off. It was about ten o’clock at night. I didn’t see my father’s car, and I was sure my mom was asleep by this time. I had been out on a date with Tony again tonight. We had made a trip to Inner Harbor just to sit and chill again this week. It was so cool just hanging out, just the two of us. We walked hand in hand, and sometimes we would stop and kiss. People would stop and stare at us like we were crazy or something was wrong. But we didn’t care about what people thought about us.

Yes, Tony was much older than me, but was it a crime to date someone older? Well, maybe it was, because I was sixteen and Tony was forty. I just acted older when we went to different places, so I wouldn’t seem so out of place, but people still stared at us like we were aliens.

My parents had no clue we were dating, or that I was “getting mine.” My mom and dad pretty much had no friends, so I knew I didn’t have to worry about running into anyone they knew. My mother, Mona Black, was a homemaker type, and my father, Shawn Black, was this big-shot lawyer. He was in court all the time and slept most of the time when he was off. My mother was busy all the time with my little sister Diana and my socially weird brother Alex, with his football practices and all that.

Alex and I were twins, but we were so different. He was older by ten minutes. He was a hermit and never got into any trouble, while I was more outgoing and popular.

We attended the same school, Randallstown High School, but I didn’t see him that much, since we had totally different class schedules. I saw him enough at home anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him, but sometimes he could be such a boy—goofy, always on his computer, and never got tired of football.

I was talking to a girl from my economics class the other day, another pretty girl Alex had turned down, and she was asking about him. “Hey, yo, Ash. Why yo brotha be actin’ so different than you? Is he gay or something?”

I looked at her for a sec. She was so ghetto-acting. We were standing at the lockers in the hallway getting books out of our lockers for the next class.

Alex was a good-looking guy from a sister/brother point of view, but I wasn’t really paying attention to his dating habits, or if he even liked girls. I had my own social life to secure.

“I don’t know, Jasmine.”

“Gurl, what you mean, you don’t know?” Her face frowned up. “He’s your brotha. Your twin at that. If anybody should know, it should be you.”

Okay, this chick is about to pluck my last nerve. “Ummm, Jasmine, why you so curious about my brother? I mean, what, you trying to get at him or something?” I had a hint of attitude in my voice.

“Well, maybe. He is a football player, and he is chocolaty-cute.”

She smiled hard. She had a crush on him, I could tell.

“I was just wondering, why he got to be playing hard to get? He turned a sister down like I was one of them dirty chicks or something.”

“Again, I don’t know why he acts the way he does.”

I really didn’t know why he was the way he was. I mean, we did have lunch period at the same time, but he always sat across the room with some butch-looking chicks. To me, they didn’t look interested, in that way, in each other at all. They just looked like they would converse while eating and go their separate ways afterwards. Besides, I spent most of the lunch period texting Tony on my phone anyway.

“Look, Jasmine, he is focused on his schoolwork and the football season. I don’t think he has time for girls right now.”

“Yeah, whateva, gurl.” She sucked her teeth. “Just put a word in for a sister, okay.”

“Sure thing.”

That was a promise I wasn’t going to keep. She was so out of luck.

Truth was, I thought Alex was gay myself. I had no solid proof, but frankly, it was his life, not mine. Regardless, I loved him. He was my brother.