The problem, Murda thinks, staring at the door Teak just left out of, is that he's gotta leave these big niggas alone. The problem is they look too good and he fucks around and fucks them and it's too good and now they out here asking him about his other bitches like he somebody baby daddy. Damn near only good thing he’s gotten from this whole fucking niggas thing is not having to worry about what little somebody might be running around wearing his face, so it's probably time to tighten his shit up.

“No more big niggas,” he grumbles, rubbing his face and hitting the j one more time before he gets up to shower. “Lil niggas. Them lil girly ones, that sound like bitches.”

He stands in the shower, trying to imagine wrapping his arms around a thin waist, bending something over that didn’t have a little give and bounce back. That last about five minutes before he’s thinking about all of Teak in his hands and under him, thick and full from hours with the weights out in the yard. And then he’s thinking about Cliff, the soft give of her, the indentions left in her sides from corsets, and straps and strings of pearls and all the other wild things she wraps herself up in.

Murda thinks he might get hard, but instead, Teak’s question slithers back in. It’s in the back of his thoughts and then louder and louder, til he’s standing under the spray of water, thoughts ringing so loud it feels like it's in his ears.

Who is Cliff? Who is Cliff?

Cliff

How does he tell Teak that sometimes, light attracts light? How does he tell him that he’s been chasing Cliff since she took one look at him and tried to send him on his way? He thinks about the postcards. The way he wants to buy a hundred, a million, he wants them spilling out of her mailbox, under Ms. Earnestine’s slippers, more and more, anything until she just texts him back.

How does he tell Teak anything, when Cliff has all the parts of him that Teak couldn’t have -- all the softness, the times when he doesn’t want anything but to look at her, the way none of his gang gang big baller shit mattered with her? Clifford had all of that tucked behind her ear like the blunts he used to roll for her and Teak don’t even know any of it existed because Murda had to regrow all of it, all of it after his bid.

all of it

How do you tell that man that you love a bitch that smelled like flowers and fruit and bourbon all the time and drops crystals across her skin and yours every time y’all touch?

Murda tips his head back, letting the shower run over his face and wash everything away - the thoughts, the tears, the memories of the last time he had touched Cliff -- the way she smelled, and the sound of her laugh in his ears.

She hadn’t been in the room last night, when he was fucking Teak. It was the first time in months that she hasn’t been just out of sight, right next to him if he just turns and looks fast enough.

Murda turns off the shower, dries off, and stands in front of the mirror. The little spots Teak had found with his teeth and a hard grip last night were invisible, but Murda felt them. They were there, and different from the claw marks, the trail of lipstick, glitter, and bruises Cliff liked to suck along his neck.

12 stops wasn’t that many and they were halfway through. Eventually, they’d go back to Chucalissa, all of them, and he had to make some decisions. About who Cliff was to him, who he was to Teak, and who he wanted to be to the world. He wanted--wants to be a star, and the world is starting to unwind for him, peeling off her layers slow-like, tantalizing like the best bitches at The Pynk.

Murda rubs his hip, right at the only gift Boosie ever gave him, millimeters away from death, and thinks about pink light, bright white teeth in the dark. He thinks about what, and who, he’s willing to give up.

He checks his phone -- habit now. Who the fuck is Cliff, other than the one that’s got him check his phone, day after day, looking for a sign that she just might let him back in. Who is Cliff, but the bright and shining sun he’s been bending toward since the first time they met. Who Cliff, and more importantly, who was Murda ready to be for her?