said, looking at Lonnie after seeing Dame pull up on the other side of the parking lot. "So, just a heads up." He paused, looking at Lonnie. "Your boy thinks you're dead." He got out quickly. Closing the driver door behind himself. Lonnie got out after him, quickly grabbing his arm before he tried to walk away from the conversation.

"Nigga, what?"Lonnie asked. "Who? What?"

"That nigga, Cole? After they came back from they birthday trip, you was already gone down south and we found out that he thought you were dead, and we just let him believe it. It just made sense at the time. Some valid points were made and it was a unanimous decision. It was to keep both you and him safe."

Lonnie didn't know what to do with the information. He didn't know whether to feel betrayed, angry, hurt, or grateful. It was true that Cole's safety was important, but who's decision was it to make? Him ghosting Cole was one thing. But, claiming to be dead and showing up nearly three years later alive and well is another. When Cole appeared at the cookout some twenty minutes later, he was still just as confused. But now, he was embarrassed. He felt like a fool. An idiot. He'd been bamboozled and so had Cole in the name of he.

When Cole touched his hand to his, he couldn't find the words to speak. The sensation of an old flame he knew never went out being that close to his skin made his brain go crazy. "How you been?" He heard Cole ask, but all he could manage was a nod. He'd gotten lost in Cole's eyes. A hopeless romantic if you've never noticed. Lonnie loves hard and never forgets how a love made him feel. But, why didn't Cole seem as disturbed as he was?

Now, nearing the midnight hour, he wanted badly to redo the reunion between him and Cole. Just to explain what happened. Just to tell him he didn't want it to happen that way. To let him know that he truly intended to die that day and that he thanks God that he didn't.

While he was angry at Jah for breaking hella codes, he didn't want to focus on that. But, Jah is damaged; he cold. Jah could never understand that Cole was the only person he'd ever known who wanted nothing from him. Cole had no expectations of what or who he was supposed to be. He was truly free to be whomever he was in his rawest, purest form. While Lonnie let Cole learn all of him, he'd learned Cole in the process. He won't easily let him back in. Maybe Jah knew. Maybe he knew all of that. And keeping the gun was his backup plan. But why?

Lonnie found himself back in midtown, standing beside the water with more questions than he had answers. While he watched the water crash into the rocks at the shore, Makaveli's words came to him. "we did decide ourselves to do the shit we did, whether we knew it or not, we always had a choice." He was right, Lonnie thought.

The two men, both sat at the Detroit River, unknowingly together. The River that had always been Cole's refuge, was now Lonnie's too.

p:05.10.2022
rp:04.28.2024