Ashley ✓

Twenty-Four | Trust

SOTC: Escapism by RAYE, 070 Shake
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"Wow," I just repeated for the tenth time, continuing to gaze at the baby sat on a colorful mat feet away, salivating a large red ring in his mouth.

"Yeah," Mustafa muttered, his elbows propped on his knees as he watched the kid, too.

His kid.

Just a minute later, we were settled on corduroy couches facing each other. That was the only furniture besides a crib in the corner and a stuffed dresser with a microwave on top in the studio apartment, whose four walls smothered in beige paint cracked on the edges of poorly finished white borders. Those borders hosted blended families of dust with the exemption of some scattered on the two windowsills and the floor.

"When you said your life went to shit in a minute, I fucking felt that," he laughed dryly after a pause.

These words didn't aid in the efforts of me making a sentence.

"I don't even deserve this, though," he whispered afterward. "Not even a torture session in hell."

I raised my eyebrows.

He took a breath and began. "Last year, Mustafa Fadahunsi was the shit. Every popular guy in West High was my homie, I was worshipped by my teammates and all the students and faculty members, and I had two full ride scholarships as a Junior when I put us at the top high school basketball team in central Los Angeles. No one was prouder of my achievements than my family, though. Out of my parents and us five kids, I was the brightest lantern. I was the living example of the American Dream."

Mustafa looked back at me, and I gave him a permitting nod to continue.

"It also meant that I got all the fucking girls I wanted. It helped that I was already the schoolwide crush or some shit like that, but when I became team captain, they were lining up for the dick. Junior girls, senior girls, girls who dropped out, girls who wanted their ex jealous, girls from rival schools would bang the whole team for a night with me. The people I was around because of my gifts turned me into the biggest asshole of them all, and it showed with the girls. Every girl who wanted and or got me was a slut and deserved treated like one in my mind, and that was basically all of 'em.

"West High made me notorious for how I treated them, but my family never knew cause in that household, you don't tap it until marriage. Even boyfriends or girlfriends. My parents pulled the belt on my oldest brother when he gave a girl a ride to the store, so if they even found a sixteenth of the chicks their American Dream son got on, I'd wouldn't be alive."

Francesca's speech about him when we first met played faintly in my mind before he furthered with:

"Last year in October, this chick calls me over the phone and tells me she's pregnant— and it's mine. She was a fuck, but everyone at West hated her; she was a well off cocaine dealer who punched anyone who looked at her, including Jordyn, and someone threw a rager when she transferred. I told her to talk to me again once she gave me teammates another round, but she kept insisting that the kid was mine. So I sent her a blood sample for a paternity test to get her to stop blowing up my phone, and weeks later, I get pictures of the physical papers telling me that it's my kid.

Mustafa exhaled. "And you know how I reacted when I saw the proof that I was a father? I texted her back, 'Pay for the abortion yourself, cunt.' Because in my mind, I was the King— I was the worshipped basketball team captain with a proud family and a future ahead of me, and it didn't matter if the mom was a violent coke dealer. No helpless infant was ever more important than me." He smirked dryly. "Then my ass just lived with it like it never happened— like a child was nothing."

"Then one Saturday in April, during a family reunion, I'm laughing with my uncles and aunts and cousins when the whole room just goes silent. Then I look at the opened front door, where my horrified mom steps away to reveal cops. The cops ask me and my parents to talk privately in my room, and that's when they tell me that— they say that—" He sucked in a breath, sniffing.

"They found my son in a crack house that got busted— having a seizure in a bathtub with an inch of water in it." He gasped out. "According to the people they questioned that we're living in the house, he was born cocaine dependent and he slept there. Sometimes he went without formula or medication days at a time when he'd cry too much, and he had bruises mainly where he was molested—" He cut himself off, a blade of a breath slicing through him before he continued with:

"My mom asked me if it was true, but I just keep staring at the cops like they stabbed me. My dad punched me in the face and I covered it when my mom hit my forearms over and over, screaming in Arabic. Then my dad dragged me by the hair in front of my brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins down the stairs and threw me out like garbage. Seconds later, my mom's throwing all my shit out the window and the cops are holding back my family members from beating the life out of me.

"I stayed awake at the police station that night, and they popped the question if I was going to take care of the kid I never knew or if it was foster care for him. I found my mouth telling them I'd be the dad, like it was an out of body experience. I knew even in the sheer shock that I was already fucked, but not more than the system.

"They told me I'd have my kid in a week. In that week I rented out this apartment, caused a social uproar by quitting the basketball team and taking all my emotions about myself out on other people, and cried in the bathroom. On the second day, a guy caught me when I was really going through it, but instead of calling me a pussy like my teammates would've— especially after abandoning them, he just sat down on the dirty floor beside me and asked me if I wanted a hit of his Juul. No mention of who I was to West High, just offered me a smoke. That guy's name was Fedor.

"Every day of that week in the same place at the same time, Fedor would sit on that dirty floor with me, offer me his smoke, and tell me funny ass Russian jokes. He could've insulted the most popular guy in school's masculinity like I deserved, but he offered me kindness, instead. He'd make me forget for an hour about my lost scholarships, lost friends, lost family, lost sanity, lost self-respect if I had any to begin with, and the stress of preparing to be a father— and he did it without knowing.

"At some point in week, I asked him why he was so nice to me and he just says, 'I'd rather help a crying man than be at his funeral next week.' Those were the words that kept my breathing for the rest of it.

"Although Fedor did keep me alive, it never prepared me for when I finally met Xavier. The second I opened that door and I saw him in a social workers arms—" Air came up his pathways when he furthered, "I fell to my fucking knees and screamed for Allah. Because when I laid eyes on my child, I automatically never loved anyone more in my life and my last shreds of self-respect dissipated."

Mustafa blinked, allowing a tears to fall from his eyes as he whispered, "And every time I have to stab a needle into him when he convulses and his little legs vibrate or he's crying and shrieking like he did in a bathtub, I'm reminded of that day.

"Even when he's not in pain or I'm working or anything, I'm reminded that I had a loving, caring mom and he doesn't because of me. He doesn't even really have a father, either, because what kind of a father puts their son through what I did?"

A hum from the mat led him to look down. The sound had been produced by Xavier as he dropped the red ring.

"Hey, what is it?" The same soothing melodies he used on me to ask what was wrong after Jordyn confronted me laced themselves in his whisper as Xavier slowly crawled to him. "Hal turid alnuhud?"

Do you want up?

The baby's palm tapped against his dad's black sock.

"Up it is then," Mustafa said as he hoisted Xavier to the edge of his knee, planting a ginger kiss on his forehead.

"Why did you trust me enough to tell me this?" I croaked.

When he looked up at me, I sensed the only thing he could say was, "I kinda trust you."

A/N: So there you go, a major insight on Mustafa's background! Ashley has not only hit 1.5k reads, but has also become #1 in moral.

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