“There’s no comparison, Mo. Real shit, some women just don’t have to compete. Women out here with fake hair, fake nails, fake contacts, fake asses, drawing on eyebrows and shit, squeezing into them shits that make them skinny, trying to hit angles for cell phone cameras to make them look thick, just dumb shit. All for likes, all for attention. You know what you got to do for that?” he asked. “Just breathe. It’s that simple for you. The way your chest rises and falls when you’re nervous, like now, is the sexiest shit I’ve ever seen. The other girls compete, Mo, you just exist.” Messiah sighed because he knew he might be coming off wrong, like he was trying to game his way back into her favor, but he was speaking all facts. “Listen, Mo, you can’t be out here wilding, letting niggas push up on you, touch on you, dance on you, cuz when I see that, my mind only go to one place. Even if that bitch-ass nigga didn’t violate you that night, I was murking him anyway. That’s how crazy I am over you, Mo, and you not even mine. I only know one way to be and that’s all the way in, or all the way out, and I’ve never felt this over any woman. I don’t even give this much conversation to these hoes.” Messiah was high, so the candidness of his words was unfiltered, raw, but Mo was listening. This was a heavy discussion for a girl who had just learned to hear mere hours ago. “I don’t do the cuffing thing. I don’t know how this is supposed to go, but I know how it is between us now don’t work for me. I fuck with you, Mo.”

“You fuck with everybody,” she signed. “That big head bitch, Shayna, claiming you, Nish claiming you, 10 hoes behind them are claiming you. You for everybody, Messiah,” Her hands were going, and he couldn’t keep up.

“It look like you saying some bullshit,” he said, with a smirk. “So, I’ma say goodnight.”

Morgan shook her head, unable to contain the giddiness she felt, as she smiled. She cleared her throat and anxiously whispered, “Goodnight, Messiah.” It was raspy, and her s’s sounded more like z’s, but she had heard her own voice, and the tears that came to her eyes were proud ones.

She looked at him for validation, her eyes full of worry, as she waited for him to say something.

“You gon’ fuck me up every time with the way you say my name,” he complimented, as he placed a hand over his heart. “Good night, Shorty Doo Wop.” She popped open her door and walked back up to the house. For her, Messiah waited until she was safely inside, before pulling off into the night.

14