Page 49 of Quasim: King Inferno

She looked up at me with wide eyes. “You’ve been practicing.”

“Something like that… Ry won’t let me forget that she’s fluent.”

She nuzzled her head on my stomach. “You had a lot more pressing issues to handle than to keep up… I am glad that you are coming back to it.”

“I want you to meet someone, Gams,” I waved for Elijah to get out the car. Slowly, the door opened, and he hopped out. Gams looked from me to Elijah, confused and probably thinking he was my son. “He’s my neighbor’s son, and I’m watching him for the summer.”

I didn’t need to get into what Thea was into with Gams. All she needed to know was that he was going to be living with us for the summer, and with the way his mother was, it might go further than the summer.

“Quasim, you scared me half to death… you are secretive enough to have a secret child, too.” She let out a hearty laugh filled with relief.

“His name is Elijah… yo, Eli, this is my grandmother… one of the most important people to me.” I told him.

“Call me Gams,” she smiled at him.

“Hi, Gams,” Elijah smiled at her.

She looked up at me. “Has he met Ryder? I know she’ll have a kick out of having another friend for the summer. The girl can hang right with the best of them… Elijah, do you like cookies?”

“I love cookies.”

She waved for us to follow behind her. When we entered the house, I always paused when my eyes landed on the portrait of Harley in the foyer of the house. It was a reminder that she was gone, and a reminder why I didn’t visit Gams too often. I had pictures in my house with her, but they weren’t as big as this one.

It was the same picture that Capri had used for the gift she got me for father’s day. I forced my eyes to look away and saw luggage, so I took it out to the car to get a minute to myself. Leaning against the truck, I held my hand and took a deep breath and steadied my breathing.

Panic attacks had become normal for me, and I knew how to control them, or at the very least, learned how to get them under control until the next one came lurking out the shadows. The first time I had one, I thought I was having a fucking asthma attack, and I didn’t even have asthma.

“Sim, you alright?” Elijah poked his head from around the truck, and I continued to hold my hands while counting and steadying my breathing.

Kid was smart because instead of asking again, he gave me the space to get my shit together. He stood there patiently while I continued to count down and pull on my fingers while breathing in and out.

After a few seconds, I was good enough to continue on. “I’m straight, Eli.”

“Okay.” He came over and gave me a hug, and I smiled as I rubbed his curls. “If you’re not okay, you can tell me. I can help you like you been helping me.”

“I’ll let you know… you had some cookies and used the bathroom before we hit the road?” I asked as I put the suitcases into the back.

“Going now,” he rushed back into the house, and I finished packing everything into the back of the car.

When I walked back inside, my mother was sitting in the front room. I walked into the room, and the minute that I did, and leaned down to kiss her head, she touched the sides of my face. It was something she always did whenever she saw me.

“meu bebê,” she looked into my eyes, and I kissed her a few times on her cheeks and then kissed her hands.

“mamãe.”

I remember when we were younger, she used to holler at us in only Portuguese. Whenever she got upset with my father, she would cuss his ass out in Portuguese, knowing he didn’t understand it. Me and Blaze heard everything and would whisper it to him, so he wasn’t completely clueless. Once she found out what we were doing, she made sure we were nowhere near when she got in his ass.

“I want us to have a big dinner at the lake house to welcome in the summer there… we can invite Blair.”

I turned slowly towards Gams who was in the doorway. “Why you being messy, Gams?”

“Messy? You like that girl… no?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Dumplin thought it didn’t matter and now he’s married to the girl that heliked. It matters because I see the way you look at that woman. She’s such a kind spirit, too... what you need to balance out all that darkness, Moochie.”

I cut my eyes at her, and she chuckled, her entire body shaking in the process. “Told you about that.”

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