On the Come Up(54)

“I doubt she’d care why, Curtis. She’d just care that you’re there.”

“Maybe,” he mutters as Zane climbs on the bus. Curtis nods at him. “Since you got all in my business, now it’s my turn to get into yours.”

Here we go. People love to ask me what it’s like to have Lawless as my dad. They don’t realize the question should really be, “What’s it like having a dad that everyone seems to remember but you?” I always lie and tell them how great he was, even though I barely know.

“All right, be honest with me here.” Curtis sits up a little more. “Who are your top five rappers, dead or alive?”

That’s a new one. I appreciate it, too. It’s nothing against my dad, I’m just not in the mood to fake about a stranger. “That’s a hard-ass question.”

“C’mon, it can’t be that hard.”

“Yes it is. I have two top five lists.” I hold up two fingers. “One for goats, aka the greatest of all time, and one for what I call could-be goats.”

“Damn, you’re a serious hip-hop head. All right. Who are your top five could-be goats?”

“Easy,” I say. “In no order, Remy Ma, Rapsody, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, and Joyner Lucas.”

“Solid. Who are your top five goats then?”

“Okay, disclaimer: I actually have ten, but I’m gonna keep it to five,” I say, and Curtis chuckles. “Again, in no particular order, Biggie, ’Pac, Jean Grae, Lauryn Hill, and Rakim.”

He frowns. “Who?”

“Oh my God! You don’t know who Rakim is?”

“Jean Grae either,” he says, and I nearly have a heart attack. “The Rakim name’s familiar though . . .”

“He’s one of the greatest to ever touch a mic!” I’m probably a little too loud. “How in the living hell can you call yourself a hip-hop head and not know Rakim? That’s like a Christian not knowing John the Baptist. Or a Trekkie not knowing Spock. Or an HP head not knowing Dumbledore. Dumbledore, Curtis.”

“Okay, okay. Why is he in your top five?”

“He invented flow as we know it,” I say. “My aunt put me on to him. I swear listening to him is like listening to water—he never sounds forced or choppy. Plus, he’s a master at internal rhymes, which is like a rhyme in the middle of the line instead of at the end. Every single rapper with skills is his offspring. Period.”

“Damn, you’re really into this stuff,” Curtis says.

“Have to be. I wanna be one of the goats one day.”

He smiles. “You will be.” He eyes me from head to toe over the seat, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was checking me out. “You look cute today, by the way.”

Well, damn. He was checking me out. “Thanks.”

“You look cute every day, honestly.”

I raise my eyebrows.

Curtis laughs. “What?”

“You pay attention to me like that?”

“Yeah. I do. For instance, you always wear dope hoodies, but it’s not like you’re trying to hide or something. You’re just being you. You’ve also got this one dimple, right here.” He touches my cheek, right near the corner of my mouth. “That shows when you’re laughing, but not when you’re smiling, like it only wants to appear for special occasions. It’s real cute.”

Why are my cheeks suddenly warm? What do I say? Do I compliment him back? How do I compliment him back? “Your hair looks nice.”

Wow, Bri. Are you saying the rest of him doesn’t look nice? Okay, but his hair is on point. He clearly got a line up within the last day or so.

He runs a hand over the top. His waves are gone, and it looks like someone twisted the ends by hand. “Thanks. Thinking ’bout growing it out this summer for some locs or cornrows. Just gotta find somebody who can do them.”

“I can do them,” I say. “The cornrows, I mean. I don’t know how to do locs.”

“I don’t know if I could trust you in my hair like that.”

“Boy, bye. I know my stuff. Sonny’s momma is a beautician. She taught me ages ago. I used to hook my baby dolls up.”

“Okay, okay. I believe you,” Curtis says. He leans a little closer over the seat. “So, what? I’ll sit between your legs and let you do your thing?”

The corners of my mouth turn up. “Yeah. But you gotta let me do them however I want.”

“However you want?”

“However I want.”

“All right. So, what do you want?”

I try not to smile too much. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

Is this flirting? I think this is flirting.

Wait. I’m flirting with Curtis? And I’m okay with the fact that I’m flirting with Curtis?

At some point, Mr. Watson pulled up at Sonny’s and Malik’s houses, and they climbed on board. Sonny’s in the aisle, his eyebrows raised about as high as they can go. Malik’s near one of the front seats. Shana’s already sitting down and seems to be talking to him, but he’s looking straight at me. And Curtis.

He turns forward and slinks into the seat.

Sonny slowly lowers himself into a seat ahead of us, staring at me the whole way down. He wiggles his eyebrows just before he disappears.