He laughs and takes his spot in the opposite corner of the couch. “Rhyson should be home soon,” he says.
I’d almost forgotten to be irritated with my brother. Grip does a great job distracting me.
“It’ll be good to see him again.” I sit cross-legged on the couch and palm my knees. “I’m glad he found you guys out here. He needed somebody in his life.”
“We’re as close as brothers,” Grip says softly. “I probably wouldn’t have made it through those first few years of high school without him. That school was like a foreign country.”
“Was it so different from your old one?”
“Uh, night and day. Growing up in Compton is no joke.” The quick-to-smile curve of his lips settles into a sober line. “The School of the Arts required a completely different set of survival skills. I’ve learned to navigate any world I find myself in. Be whatever I need to be for every situation.”
“You adapted?”
“Had to. Constantly.” Grip chuckles just a little. “It was tough, but it taught me to be comfortable, even in environments where there’s no one else like me. I got whiplash trying to be one thing at school and another thing at home with my friends and family.”
He shrugs.
“So I just decided to be myself. To adapt, yeah, but never lose who I am.”
“That’s cool,” I say. “It took me longer to figure that out. Sometimes I think I still am.”
We both tuck our private thoughts into the silence that follows my confession.
“Well, being myself comes and goes.” Grip gives me a smile that takes some of the heaviness out of the room. “We’re always tempted to be something else when it’s easier. My mom was determined for me to go to that school, but she always challenged me to stay true to who I was.”
“It’s just the two of you?”
“Yeah, always has been.” He leans forward, elbows on knees as he speaks. “She is the single most influential force in my life. She demanded so much from me. Wanted more for me than most guys from my neighborhood end up having.”
“Sounds like you guys are really close.”
“We are. When my teacher realized I could write, she pushed for the scholarship. If it were left to me, I never would have tried. I didn’t want to leave my friends and go to a school across town with a bunch of rich, uppity kids. That was how I thought of it then.”
He glances up from the floor, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “My mom dragged me up to that school for the entry exams and sat there while I took every test.”
My mother probably never even knew one of my teachers’ names in school. I’m the “privileged” one, considering our wealth growing up, but I feel positively deprived as Grip talks about the active role his mother took in his upbringing, in his life.
“She used to give me a supplemental book list every school year. Books she said the schools wouldn’t teach. She said, ‘Don’t wait for nobody to give you nothing. Even your education you have to take. If the one they offer you isn’t enough, make your own.’”
“Is that how you’re so well-read? Or at least seem to be.” I raise my brows at him. “Or maybe that’s just how you pick up the smart girls?”
“Are you a smart girl, Bristol?” His voice fondles my name.
“You can’t turn off the flirt, can you?” I ask to distract myself from the fact that it’s working.
“Was I flirting?” He lifts one brow. “I wasn’t trying to. I wasn’t gonna bother because I assumed you weren’t into the brothers.”
A puff of air gets trapped in my throat as I try to draw a deep breath. I cough, aware of his eyes on me the whole time.
“That isn’t how I decide who I’m ‘into’, as you call it,” I say once I’ve cleared my airway.
“You telling me you’ve dated a Black guy before?” Surprise colors the look he gives me. Surprise and something else. Something warmer.
I wish I could surprise him, but I can’t.
“No, I’ve never dated a Black guy.” An imp prompts my next comment. “What am I missing?”
The warmth overtakes the surprise in his eyes, spiking to a simmer that heats the gold in his brown eyes molten.