College Fiend [A$AP Rocky]

Nineteen

The ride in the van was bumpy; we were slowly entering the outskirts of Mississippi where the land was rough and no faces could be seen for long stretches of time. Every few minutes Quincy would ask Wayne if he was sure that we were heading in the right direction, but Wayne constantly seemed sure.

Wayne. I didn’t know how to feel about him. I felt love when I saw him at the gas station, and I felt hate when he opened his mouth and ruined it. And now, I felt love again as our eyes met in the rearview mirror whenever I dared to look up. Just that simple eye contact made my insides flutter and made the car feel like it was floating on a cloud. He was beautiful, even more than the first day I saw him. What made him better today was that he wasn’t arrogant or self-centered anymore. He was just himself, my own to marvel at.

And then when I looked down, reality hit. That’s the thing about Quincy—he was reality in itself. With Wayne I felt like I was in a fantasy, but it wasn’t like that with Quincy. He forced you to confront the hardships of life, look them in the eye, and then overcome them laughing. He knew his way around every obstacle and was willing to walk me through it. His eyes read certainty, so much so that it made me want to be certain about my situation, too. But I wasn’t certain. I was unsure and afraid and alone. Quincy was here for comfort, though. His lips and his sweet words were here for comfort.

If I could have both of them, I would in a heartbeat. But how? There was no way to have one without hurting the other.

Unfortunately, there were no cons or kisses to fix this one.

“It’s down that street there. Don’t drive too fast.” Wayne said suddenly. His voice sounded raw and unfamiliar. He hadn’t spoken in a while.

Quincy stopped the car when he spotted house number 420, which was almost impossible to see with its bronze color in the watery moonlight. When he turned off the van, the silence that replaced the hum of the engine sounded loud enough to make my ears ring. There was nothing I could say to break the silence, no sentence long enough for it to hold off the quiet.

“Miss Susanne said that the man she spoke to, the one who told her that your mom lives here, lives in house 416.” Wayne told us. I didn’t respond. Quincy sighed a long and tired sigh, took off his seatbelt, and got out of the car. Whenever he got out, it was a cue for me to get out, and automatically Wayne followed. Quincy’s sigh wasn’t one of attitude, just of plain exhaustion. He had been driving all this way, and who knew what went on in his head to tire him even more? I wished I did.

Approaching the house was like waking up on a birthday. I knew it was supposed to feel nerve-wracking or special, but I felt nothing. All I kept remembering was the will, and how official yet unbelievable it looked. And then I thought of my father. Did he know that my mother was alive? Would he—

“Who’s that on the front porch?” A shrill and irritated voice called from inside of the house. I jumped.

“Are you Regina Brice?” I asked in the sweetest and unafraid voice I could manage. Quincy and Wayne stood behind me silently.

Footsteps progressed to the front door and then a series of locks were being unlocked, and finally a woman with a stocking cap and a burgundy velour tracksuit showed her face in the tiny crack that the door’s chain lock allowed.

“Who wants to know?” She asked roughly and suspiciously.

I swallowed. Now it was kicking in, the realization that I could meet my mother who was supposedly dead. It could happen right now, right here. This could be her.

“I’m Sabine Brice, your daughter.”

She opened the door.

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