Apple Brown Betty by Phillip Thomas Duck Page A

mother.
    â€œI’m tired,” she told her brother. He’d been eerily silent.
    â€œGet some rest.”
    â€œAre you upset with me?”
    He shook his head. “You called it how you see it.”
    â€œYou think I’m wrong.”
    â€œI was ready to hit that lady for what she said about Mama,” Slay offered.
    â€œSo yes?”
    Slay nodded toward the couch. “Get that rest.”
    Cydney bit into her lip and then settled into a curled-up position on the couch. Before long, she was in the peace only sleep could give her; even her brother’s presence in the apartment with her wasn’t stopping her from chasing down slumber.
    Slay ran his fingers over the spines of the books on Cydney’s bookshelf. All of them were hardcover, the majority of them thick. He pried a particularly thick one from the shelf and opened the cover. The photographs inside startled him. Pictures he’d never seen before of Cydney in a bikini. He guessed they were from one of her trips. The trees and the background looked nothing like New Jersey. He flipped through them one by one, spending a considerable amount of time studying her features in each photo. She was beautiful, smart, a Theresa—no, scratch that— Pamela type of female. The type of woman who didn’t have time for gat-damned toothless crack hoes or the sons those hoes gave birth to. He wondered who took the photos. Some dude Cydney hadn’t told him about? Slay bunched the photos back as he’d found them and placed them in the crease of the book, placed the book on the shelf. He shook his head and pawed at his temples with his hands.
    He moved from the bookshelf and pulled Cydney’s ottoman to the edge of the couch. He sat down on the ottoman and undid the strap of her shoes, slid them off her feet. He took her foot and started massaging the underside, then the top, then the toes. Love coursed through him.
    â€œHmm,” Cydney murmured, breathy, sexy and still fast asleep.
    He moved his way up to Cydney’s ankles, then her calves, both of his hands working the knots from her muscles. Cydney shuffled her position, turned her head the other way and twisted her torso in the same direction as her head. Slay hiked up her dress and started to massage her thighs.
    Cydney’s eyes opened at that point. “What are you doing?” she calmly asked, though her heart raced in her chest.
    â€œYou were tense and shit. I was giving you a massage,” Slay said, pulling her skirt back down.
    â€œI wish you hadn’t done that,” Cydney told him. She wanted to scream but decided remaining calm was her best option.
    Slay stood and moved the ottoman back in place by her chair. “I was thinking…You really feel that way about Mama?” he asked without turning to face Cydney. He spotted some anger in her voice and wanted to move quickly past it by putting guilt in its place.
    Cydney pulled her legs up on the couch and crossed them under her.
    He turned to her and sat on the chair, his eyes probing her for an answer.
    â€œHard seeing her like that,” Cydney said. “She wasn’t even coherent.”
    â€œA lot of Nyquil to keep her calm. Only thing I could think of,” Slay said.
    â€œNyquil?”
    Slay nodded. “Otherwise she would have been jumpy and out of control the whole time, and right about now, without me watching her like a hawk, she’d be out on the Ave trying to get her fix on.”
    â€œUnreal.” Cydney sighed.
    Slay leaned in. “How it make you feel knowing that’s your mother? That her blood runs through you.”
    Cydney didn’t quite know how to respond. Here she was, a college student studying sociology, and her street hoodlum brother was analyzing her. Well, it would take a mind deeper than he possessed to figure out a mind as complex as hers.
    â€œEasier not to answer,” Slay said. His mouth turned up in a lopsided smile.