The Price ࿊f Peace

☮️:003

Somewhere In Oakland

Elijah was laying soil over the patches he had to start over in his yard, pouring it over a section and patting it with his shovel.

Some oldies were playing from the speaker he had sitting on the porch. He hummed under his breath to the songs on his playlist.

Elijah always enjoyed older music, some Cuban, but mostly oldies in English. They reminded him of his abuela. Her name was tattooed on his upper back with angel wings on top of it and a halo made of Orchids. To this day, she was still the first and only person to ever love him.

His abuela, Camila Lucia Amaros, was the one to influence his love for plants. From a baby, he spent most of his time with her, playing while she worked on her hands and knees to plant fruits and vegetables for the dishes she would cook.

For fun, though, she would always plant White Mariposa Orchids, they reminded her of her home country, Cuba. And they reminded him of her. He'd always keep an orchid or two in his garden for her. Always.

Abir heard a car pull up and squeak to a stop, but he wasn't focused on it, if it was somebody he should be worried about, they wouldn't have stopped in front of his house. They would have been bussing at him by now.

He was breathing heavily as he hefted the large bags of soil to spread it over another patch.

"Elijah!" He heard from behind him, causing him to stop for a moment, tensing.

Elijah glanced up from where he was patting a section of his freshly laid soil with a shovel. He was shirtless as he had just woken up from a nap, his half tattooed torso on display.

He turned back to what he was doing with a sigh, barely paying his brother any mind.

"E.J!" Camarro called again from the driver side window.

Abir didn't even look up this time, focusing back on what he was doing. He really didn't feel like talking right now and he felt like he had made that clear.

He stuck his shovel with an annoyed exhale when he heard the closing of the door to his older brother's truck.

"What? You'on hear me calling you?" Camarro asked him, already heated. It seemed Abir just had that effect on people.

"Nah." He replied with a chuckle. "Can I help you?"

Camarro looked like he was two seconds from bursting a vein. He looked away, gathering himself as he prepared to talk. "Why you ain' tell us you was out?" He asked him.

"Mamá's asking about you." He told him.

Abir scoffed. That was bullshit if he ever heard it. He knew his mother didn't care whether he lived or died and it was evident in the way she refused to even look him in the face.

"Your niece wanna see you too," he told him. "You too good for family now?"

"Don't do that lame ass shit, Marro." He shut that down quickly with a low chuckle and a shake of his head. Camarro was always trying to guilt trip into coming around people that had made it abundantly clear they didn't fuck with him.

He just didn't fucking care anymore. He'd get out there with any of them weak ass niggas on any given Sunday, but they were the type to believe in old values. If you're an elder, you're never wrong. And they believed the stories his mother would spin about him his whole life.