Tainted (Urban)

Chapter 2: Blacktop

I pulled up to the house I lived in before moving to college, it's form the same as it has always been. Nothing too big at all, but it definitely wasn't shabby. It looked pretty much like every other damn house on the block, but it was on the inside of that house that mattered to me.

As I stepped onto the porch, I slid my finger across the "headstone" that was inscribed with my dog's birthdate and day of decease.

I slowly let my gaze transition from the stone to the door, ringing the bell in the process. The wait wasn't long before the front door swung open, revealing the grinning face of my father.

"Hey, snowman. Is it just me or do you get lighter each time this door swings open?" I laughed, pestering my old man just like always.

His smile instantly turned into a scowl at my comment, pursing his old man lips at me. My dad was biracial with a white mother and black father. Therefore, the shade of his skin was pretty low of the blackness spectrum. The whole family gave him Hell for it too, relentlessly taking jabs at him. He's been called every synonym for "white" in the book. He took it in stride though, and we all managed to get some hardy laughs from it. In all honesty though and despite being a few shades lighter than me, I saw him as nothing except a Black man. But still, the jokes were pretty funny and so were his reactions.

"Hold on, let me check." I grabbed the door handle and pulled it back to its original position. I quickly swung it open one more time, stepping in the house and looking my dad right in his eyes. I stared at him for one slightly uncomfortable minute before stepping past him. Patting him on the back while he closed the door behind me, I whispered "Yup. Definitely a bit lighter."

I didn't get far before I was tackled by some sort of beast. A beast with a long, flowing mane and sterile blue scrubs. Holding his shoulders, I held my older brother in place before he could knock me to the ground.

"Hey to you too, sunshine." I laughed, pulling the big guy into a hug where we exchanged manly back pats. Drawing away from the embrace, I looked my brother over once. Nothing much had changed since I last saw him. He still had his perfect teeth, long hair, and jovial aggressiveness. Sometimes I wished that I had his smile while I had grown up, yet I got stuck with years of braces and retainers.

Needless to say, I didn't get too many girls back then. I was the stereotypical dork. I walked with my books and folders squeezed tight to my chest, pushing up on the bridge of my glasses when they would start to fall down my protruding nose, and looked down at the ground when spoken to. At least I didn't have suspenders and a pocket protector, right?

To this day, I still don't know how I ended up with a girlfriend back then. I'd have liked to think that it was my charming personality, but then I'd have been lying to myself. I was was never smooth. I never had "game". It did get easier over the years though as I started to grow into myself.

"There's my baby!"

I looked past my brother and watched as my mom leapt from the couch with a huge smile on her face. Her chocolatey face melted the same way each time she saw me come through that door during my college years. I never grew tired of it. Truth be told, I was a bit of a momma's boy. But not one of the annoying, excessively attached ones that let their mother's rule their lives on some Norma and Norman Bates type shit. Nah, I was just the kind that just wanted to make her proud and use her teachings to treat women the way they deserved to be. I didn't have the perfect track record with that though, but I had been working on it.

"Hey, Ma. Looks like life's treating you well. Ya don't look a day past sixty-five!" I smiled at her while she returned it with a shocked expression before pounding me on the shoulder and stating, in fact, that she was not a day past sixty-five.