Page 16 of Hood Legacy

“I swear,” I held my hands up in surrender and smiled. “Scout’s honor!”

“Yo ass wasn’t no girl scout.”

“I was,” I said, nodding. “Spent a whole two days as a Daisy Scout.” I cleaned my hands again, picked up my phone, pulled up the only picture I had from my tortured time, and showed it to him.

“No way!” He rocked back and forth in his seat and laughed. “Yo ass was a Daisy?” I nodded, and he held my phone, looked at the picture, and smiled back at me. I went back to eating while he sat there in shock. “Why did you only last two days?”

“I asked too many questions,” I answered with a shrug. He set my phone on the table and went back to eating. “My den mother got annoyed and sent me outside to play with her son during the first meeting. Guess what he was outside doing.”

“Playing ball?” he lifted his brow, and I nodded. “So, you are telling me a young nigga introduced you to ball?” he shook his head. “Damn, so this is how my villain origin story starts, huh?”

“What?” I laughed as I ate.

“A nigga introduced you to basketball; that shit can’t slide.” He wiped his hands with his napkin and then picked up his phone. “What’s his name so I can make some moves.”

“Stop.” I reached across the table and covered his phone with my hand. “It's not even that serious.”

He reared back in his seat and shook his head. “Damn, you even remember the nigga name?” he nodded and twisted his lips. “Bet.”

“He comes to games all the time,’” I said as if it would improve the situation. “He’s cool, happily married, and a fan.”

“Don’t matter,” Aceyn said, shaking his head. “Nigga gotta go.”

“Oh, whatever,” I laughed and waved him off. “Anyway, I was in love after he showed me how to play basketball. It didn’t help that my parents were too busy to worry about what I was doing. They didn’t even know that I was going to practice with Mike instead of doing Girl Scouts until I’d been playing for almost a year.”

“How didn’t they know?” he questioned with a look of surprise on his face. “Like, how were you getting to games, shit, paying the fees? You were young as fuck.”

“His mom paid them with the money my parents were paying her for Girl Scouts. It was enough to cover my basketball fee and have a little money left to pay for her gas since she was running us around.”

“Were your parents mad when they found out?”

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “My mama was more annoyed that she’d been called to the hospital because I broke my wrist in a game than the fact that I was playing.”

“You broke your wrist?”

“Yeah, I fell going after the ball and landed wrong.” I ate a few more shrimps, then decided to mess with him a little. “Mike was there to nurse me back to health, though.”

Aceyn was about to bite into his corn but stopped and stared at me. “Yeah, that nigga dying for real,” he said, then bit into his food. “No questions asked; he’s dead.”

I laughed so hard tears started to fall from my eyes. “I’m just playing,” I said once I got myself together.

“Don’t matter,” he said, shaking his head as he cleaned up his mess. “That nigga got too many fond memories for my liking. I gotta fix that shit.”

“Get out of here,” I said as I followed suit. I was full, and the food was so good that I knew I would be back soon.

After we were done, we said goodbye to Bright, promising that we would be back again and left. Aceyn rolled the windows down, and we rode through the city, enjoying our time together.

“Put your address in,” Aceyn handed me his phone and I put my address into his GPS. We were about thirty minutes from my house, so I adjusted my seat to get more comfortable and closed my eyes. “I’ll wake you when we get there.” He reached behind my seat, grabbed a jacket, and handed it to me to cover up with.

“Thank you,” I mumbled softly as I closed my eyes.

I tookmy time pushing my car through the city. Legacy sleeping in my passenger seat felt a little too right, but I wasn’t about to fight the feeling. My phone rang, and I sighed before answering it.

“What's good?” I said as I switched lanes.

“No fingerprints and the same shit on video as before, “ Yeti said. I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “Whoever this nigga is knows where the cameras are.”

“Got to,” I agreed, then wiped my hand over my mouth. “I stopped at the light and adjusted in my seat before taking a deep breath. “And the guard on her said he ain’t seen shit out of the ordinary?”

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