Sandcastles | Completed

23 | too much

• • •

In all the time that we'd lived together, Coby had probably stepped foot in my room a handful of times.

I was immediately suspicious when he walked in and closed the door behind him.

"Wassup Ken?" He greeted, sitting down at the foot of my bed.

"Hey." I looked towards the door and back to him, "What's wrong?"

Coby took a deep breath, "I feel like we formed a relationship outside of Jai. Like me and you got our own bond."

"I don't like the sound of this chile."

"Nun like that." He laughed, turning more towards me, "I wanna talk to you about some, but Ion want you to tell her."

Coby and I had formed our own bond, I guess, but it wasn't close to mine and Jailyn's. That being said, if I told Jai what he said depended on what the topic was.

"Okay." I agreed.

"I know Eli and his family got they lil thing going, and I'm tryna get in on that."

"What thing Elijah and his family got?"

He ran a hand over his face, "I would ask Eli myself, but we don't never run into each other forreal."

A lie. He saw Elijah nearly every day.

"I'm confused," I said slowly,  still trying to figure out what exactly I was supposed to be asking.

Coby watched me for a few seconds, then his expression switched to that of thoughtfulness, "Just ask him to ask his daddy if I can do some work for 'em. He'll know what you mean."

That made one of us.

I didn't plan on staying in the dark for long, going to Google to search Christian Baker as soon as Coby left my room. A bunch of articles popped up, some hailing him as a businessman, others pointing to the contributions he'd made to low-income neighborhoods.

Majority of the links focused on a recent acquittal of murder and drug conspiracy charges, a case that fell apart when a key witness changed their statement on the stand.

The more I read, the more I wondered, How did this not pop up when I was stalking Elijah?

"And why the fuck Coby wanna talk to his daddy?" I asked, "I'll rather him keep rapping."

Ironically, Elijah was doing something with his dad and I wouldn't see him until later. I tried to assess how I felt about the situation, ultimately deciding that whatever he was doing had nothing to do with Elijah.

Elijah was a lawyer like he said, proven by the report that showed while he wasn't the lead attorney, he was on the defense team along with 2 other people.

Plus, Coby wanted to talk to Christian. Elijah was just the point of contact.

I put the corner of my thumb in my mouth, chewing as I continued to scroll, not really looking for anything else.

My phone rang, an unknown number showing up on the screen. I let it go to voicemail multiple times before sighing and picking up.