Page 34 of Standing In The Sun
“I don’t scare easy.”
“I bite.”
He grinned. “So do I.”
The sound of the CO slapping the wall snapped the moment in half.
“Time’s up.”
Ahvi stood slow, heart tight. She looked at Kamari again wishing she could walk back out with him. Wishing Lunar would reach his arms out to grab her up too but life had never been fair to her. So instead, she had to hand her son off and watch him go with a man she didn’t know but somehow felt she could trust.
Her chest twisted when Kamari went to Lunar with ease.
“Can you bring him again next week?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
Lunar nodded. “Every week, Ahvi.”
Her fingers curled around the edge of the table. “Tell him I love him…every day.”
“I do,” Lunar said, “even when you don’t ask.”
She turned to go, eyes wet now, throat tight. She didn’t look back…she couldn’t.
But Lunar stayed sitting for a few more minutes, rubbing Kamari’s back slowly, saying nothing but thinking everything.
2 weeks later
“Put them headphones on him,” Lunar fussed from the recording booth when he saw Kamari’s wild ass had done snatched them off.
He was crawling and getting into everything. As the days passed, Kamari got used to his surroundings and the people that seemed to rotate in and out. He was still only really messing with Lunar and Pimp but he’d let Aku hold him too now and then.
Aku shook her head. “Hurry up so you can get his bad ass! How he so young but getting into everything?” she huffed, trying to put the headphones on him. Kamari was on something else though. He bobbed his head away from her, like he was skilled at getting on her nerves.
As soon as she put them on, he snatched them back off.
Lunar cracked up. “Aye!” he called out through the speakers, startling Kamari since he knew that tone of voice meant he was in trouble.
“You ain’t gotta yell at him,” Aku fussed. She liked to talk about how busy Kamari was yet she was taking up for him. I mean how could you not? He was the prettiest brown baby with wide eyes, a head full of hair, and a gummy smile that had everyone wrapped around his fat fingers.
Pimp scooped him up after he pressed a few buttons on the soundboard. Lunar had been inspired so they stayed in the studio. In Pimp’s mind, his boy was putting down some of his best work. He had no idea where the inspiration was coming from but he was rocking with it.
Outside of the in-home studio, Lunar hardly left the house. If he wasn’t hitting up the stores to get Kamari what he needed or at the jail visiting Ahvi, he was in the house. It was like the events of the last two weeks gave him a new outlook on life.
“Your phone ringing.” Aku flared her nose at Apple’s name flashing across the screen.
Clearly, Lunar had been feeling so good that he was back talking to Apple as if his people hadn’t put hands on her that night at the club. Before then, Aku and Noodle were cool with her. Now, Aku couldn’t stand her.
Pimp laughed, “You ain’t gonna let that girl make it - huh?”
“And you ain’t gon’ let Bobby Jr. make it?” she shot back.
Flicking her off, Pimp instructed Kamari to do the same, even going as far as twisting his little finger for him to do it. Bobby Jr. was still a sore spot for Pimp. He thought that was going to be his forever, which was preposterous in itself, since Bobby Jr. hadn’t come out yet to his dad. His mom and granny knew he was gay but somehow that information was never passed to Big Bobby.
What should’ve been an issue from the jump, didn’t become a problem until Pimp had given him his heart. But Pimp was a real nigga so he didn’t shed many tears behind it. He didn’t even get mad when his big brother Bu chastised him for moving reckless in the first place.
Now, he had his head down, focused on running the label.
“Aww, did I hit a nerve?” Aku wiggled her shoulders.
