That was an opening and Jag wanted to jump on it and tear it wide.
But he fought against that urge, and instead proceeded carefully.
“Your dad knows about the twins?” Jag asked.
Mal sucked back more Coke.
“Mal, buddy, please tal—”
Mal let go of the straw, and still slumped over his drink, he turned only his head to Jag.
“He wants me to tell Mom. I don’t want to worry her. I can handle the twins.”
“No offense, bro, but it wasn’t looking that way to me,” Jag replied warily.
“I don’t care about them.”
“You kinda hid that you were racing away from them, but not totally,” Jagger pointed out.
“Not wanting to put up with their shit isn’t the same as caring about them.”
You couldn’t argue that.
“Have they done this before?” Dutch asked.
Mal looked to him and Jag didn’t know whether to give Dutch the sign to shut up, or not. Jag barely knew the kid. Dutch didn’t know him at all. And he was finally talking, they didn’t need for him to clam up.
“The shoving, yeah. The kicking, no. The generally being a pain in the ass, all the time. But they don’t matter,” Mal answered Dutch.
Jag let out a relieved breath, hearing the news that today was the day it escalated, and today was the day they were making moves to put a stop to it.
Then he asked, “So your dad knows and…”
Mal looked to him. “And I told him I can hack it. I made him promise not to tell Mom. So he’s ticked that the Harris brothers are being pains in my ass, and he’s ticked because he thinks Mom should know. He’s also ticked that school hasn’t done something about it. But I told him I’m the man of the house now, so I get to make that choice. And he got me, so he stood down.”
Right, well…
Shit.
“You wanna explore that?” Jagger asked.
“What? That he and Mom split?” Mal asked back. “Not really. It sucks. It happened. They fought a lot and it’s better this way. I don’t have to listen to them shouting at each other. And they don’t have to shout at each other. But I’m her guy now, he’s not anymore, and I gotta look after her. I told him it’s what he taught me to do. Even if they fought a lot, he looked out for her, still does. So he knows he gave me that and it’s what I gotta do.”
Jag did not get where this was going, this talk of looking out for his mother when it wasn’t her that was being harassed by some assholes.
So he cautiously pushed, “What does that mean?”
“It’s cool you guys are named weird names.”
It took a sec, but at this abrupt change in topic, Jag released the tension in his shoulders that was caused by his excitement and hope that Mal was finally opening up.
Mal had shared.
He was done sharing.
They got what they got, and Jag wasn’t going to push it.
“I wish I had a weird name, like LeBron or Chadwick,” Mal continued.
“Those aren’t weird names,” Dutch said.
Mal looked at him. “Don’t fake it. White people totally think Black people have weird names.”
Dutch wisely decided not to reply because Dutch, like Jag, didn’t give a shit what anyone named their kid, and not only for the obvious reasons they wouldn’t give a shit about something like that, but they both knew what Mal said was not wrong.
“Mal is a cool name,” Jagger told him.
“It’s short for Malcolm,” Mal replied.
“Malcolm is a cooler name,” Jag returned.
“I know. And you don’t have to educate me. Mom and Dad told me. Made me read about him. I know I’m named after Malcolm X. He’s theirs though. Or their parents’ and he was passed down to them. But LeBron and Chadwick, they’re mine,” Mal stated.
You really couldn’t argue that either.
“So name your kid one of those names,” Dutch suggested. “That way, you can give him that and keep those names alive, at the same time give him who’s a piece of you and keep Malcolm X alive.”
Mal stared at Dutch a beat before he turned to Jag.
“Your brother’s dope,” he declared.
Jag grinned at him. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Mal kept eye contact when he said, “Thanks for today. It’s cool you care. And I’m really not mad at Archie. So Mom will know now. I’ll deal.”
“All right, Mal. But just to say, it’s clear there’s more, and if you need to talk, like I told you, I’m there.”
Mal nodded a boy-man nod that was more man than boy. “Thanks. Though even if Dad doesn’t get to call very often from where he’s at, he calls. I talk to him. So I’m cool. Honest.”
He wasn’t cool.
But again, they got what they got that day, and it was more than Mal had been giving.
So he wasn’t going to push.
“Okay, buddy,” Jagger said.
Mal turned back to his drink and sucked more up.
He then said to Jag, “I never had a cherry Coke. It’s pretty sick.”
Jag grinned at him again. “Stick with me, Mal. I’ve got a lot of things to share that are awesome, and totally bad for you.”
Mal grinned back, it was genuine and there didn’t seem to be anything dragging on it.
A minor win, but a win.
He’d take it.
And for today at least, they’d managed to get it done.
Chapter Fourteen
The House He Built
Jagger
“I don’t think I’d ever even heard of a yurt until Archie mentioned it.”
“Her trip to Portugal sounded totally rad. I wanna go and stay where she stayed.”
“Archie’s gonna do Archie, but you won’t catch me staying somewhere that I don’t have my own bathroom and the room isn’t cleaned every day by maids.”
“You are so boujee.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It kind of is. You’re like, not enlightened at all.”
“Power to the people and especially power to the ones with vaginas, and my power is going to be making scads of money and then staying at the Ritz during my bi-annual trips to Paris to go shopping.”
“Ugh, gross.”
“Whatever.”
The comment about the yurt was Haley’s.
The ensuing discussion was between Hellen and Liane, Haley’s daughters, Archie’s stepsisters.
Hellen was twenty, going to the University of Colorado in Boulder, studying business. She was the boujee one, and she didn’t let down that side and dressed for dinner at what was still her home, considering she was a student, like she was having sushi with some real housewives somewhere.
Liane was eighteen. She was also at U of C in Boulder, her major undeclared. She was the granola one and she also represented, wearing a tee that said A Well-Read Woman Is A Dangerous Creature, dark-wash jeans that, regardless of the wash, still had a number of splits and tears in the legs and Birkenstocks.
Jagger really wanted to find their conversation hilarious, because it was. They’d generally been hilarious since he and Archie arrived.