His Life (Part 1)

CHAPTER 1

Our friendship began as teenagers. I first met Jax as he sat on the couch in my Southern California home with two of my brother Zander’s friends. While Zander ran upstairs to get something from his room, Jax sat in between them, blonde and skinny almost gangly as the other two teens with him were either shorter or meatier than him. My friends were waiting for me in the driveway as I made my way to the garage door when the heavier one, Andrew, stopped me.

With a thumb jabbed in Jax’s direction and a grin he said, “Hey, he likes you.”

Jax quickly answered with a matter-of-fact tone, nothing giving him away. “I said you were cute. I don’t like you.”

It was odd, yet not really to hear Zander’s friends tell me they were into me or even crushing on me. It happened when a group of younger teenage boys got around their best friend’s older sister. But at the time I giggled like the young kid I was and said thanks as I walked out the door with a little pep in my step. It was the first thing I mentioned when I got into the car with my friends before they asked if he was cute. I think I said he wasn’t and maybe at the time I meant it, but as Jax grew that wasn’t so true anymore.

Still, he remained my brother’s friend who was three years younger and teased me whenever he had the chance. I teased him back calling him a bitch, asshole, or anything except the name his mother gave him. But it was all in good humor and fun because I tagged along behind Zander and Jax in whatever trouble they managed to get into. Whether that meant joyriding in the middle of the night to walking around the neighborhood in hopes of saving gas or jumping the gate to the swimming pool for the apartment complex users when none of us lived there.

It was the best of times because we were invincible.

CHAPTER 2

Our parents moved in the middle of my college career to Alabama. Zander chose to stay with me in an apartment near Disneyland where we somehow straddled the line between Orange and LA County. The beach was much closer and all the Asian food I could live for was only minutes from our new home. We were the first of our friends to get a place of our own and they flooded our doors all the time even before we settled in.

I balanced my college career as I stayed up late with Zander, Jax, and our newest member of the crew, Blaze. He and Jax had been friends for some time and Jax started bringing him around more after Blaze’s brother committed suicide the year before.

In front of him.

Zander didn’t tell me much about Blaze’s brother nor did I ask even when he was brought up. I’d seen Blaze’s mother at times when we’d play video games late at night at his house. Her face was always withdrawn and her eyes red as if she’d been crying all night and couldn’t find rest. She was a nice woman, but she was also a woman who’d buried her own child. And, poor Blaze was the one who had to pick up the pieces his brother left behind despite the emotional scars carved on his soul. He tried to comfort his mother, but deep down Blaze knew he couldn’t be what his mother wanted or needed. She wanted both of her sons and Blaze couldn’t bring him back even if he tried.

Jax always seemed to have the right thing to say even in the darkest of times. He could make us laugh when things were growing bleak with a simple Holy shit! or You wanna fuck? or his favorite, Hey, bitch. Even better in his purest form, something so racially or politically wrong that it was right for him. Considering he could be a total asshole and our arguments were always petty, he was a good person deep inside. With the exception of Blaze, my brother and I were not only his closest friends but his black jokes didn’t rub us the wrong way as they’d had with other people.

The first time I’d ever heard him say nigga in front of us, my eyes bugged. Even though we grew up together, it was still foreign to hear someone non-black say the word as if his people had been tortured with it for centuries. Yet, there was an odd and fine line with Jax that was present because he had a history with us. Hearing it from him didn't feel like a whip cracking against our backs. If I had to describe it, at times it felt normal.

So, when my brother turned to me and said, "It’s cool, Sicily he’s one of us. Trust me, he’s going to say it anyway”, I initially took it with a grain of salt. I didn't understand the dynamics of their brotherhood and the foundation that had been established before I was welcomed into the group. Part of their friendship was based on degrading each other in ways to rile each other up not to be hurtful. Jax and Zander admired each other. Jax said it as a way of acknowledgment in the same way black people did, and with Zander as his best friend well some of our culture rubbed off on him including that word.

At times, Jax and Zander would get into arguments over a video game or something stupid like which anime character would win in a battle. Next thing we knew, nigga would fly off their tongues as if the color of their skin was a non-factor at that moment. Jax's pale face would turn red as my brother's brown skin would stretch taut as he tried to validate his reasons. Depending on the topic, Blaze and I would either laugh at the ridiculousness of it all or Blaze would try to play mediator.

If we didn't use that word with each other, ugly was next on the list. We used it so much that I began to associate the word with our group not with what it actually meant. For our group, testing each other's limits with the things we said was a testament to how close we were. It was a word that stayed with me for years to come for very different reasons.

There was a time when we’d had a kickback at the apartment. It was our first of many, but it was the most memorable because it was my first time realizing I’d secretly found Jax attractive. I only knew a handful of the people Zander invited, but I was the only one of legal age to buy the alcohol so I walked to the liquor store and got our share with the money we all pitched in. Before we knew it, we were all twisted. Smirnoff bottles to the left, Kool-aid tequila shots in the kitchen and blunts were being rolled on the kitchen table underneath the unread newspapers.

Smirnoff Apple was my choice of poison and I noticed was the same as Jax as he sat beside me on the couch. There was music playing loudly through the laptop we’d somehow hooked into the speaker. The sound collided with the commotion of video games being played in Zander’s room and the hustle and bustle of people. My room, on the other hand, was off-limits. I was keenly aware I was the only female at the party despite them all being friends with my brother.

“So, when are we gonna fuck?” Jax asked abruptly with slightly closed lids and a very serious expression. He took a lazy sip of the vodka, obviously feeling a bit more than tipsy.

I laughed because Jax had asked me that before. In fact, after we’d gotten to know each other better it was normal for him to say it and I felt nothing. But that was when he was fifteen. Now he was twenty and much taller than me and more filled out. He had facial hair and was more...smooth with his words even when he wasn’t trying to get in my pants. I knew then it wasn’t the alcohol making me look at him differently. Deep down, I was excited when he’d come over or stay the night because he was always a good time and the more we flirted, the more Zander noticed it wasn’t all one-sided. I’d deny it every time even when my best friend asked me if I was into him, but we both knew the truth. Though flirting was the extent of our chemistry, I always placed a wall between us when things could have gone further out of respect for my brother.

Zander never said it, but I knew he’d be pissed if he thought his best friend slept with his sister. We had all gone to Jax's house to hang out and Zander had walked up the street with Blaze to Andrew's house. Andrew lived in the area in an apartment complex near Jax's neighborhood. Zander said they were checking if Andrew was home so he could join in on the festivities. Jax and I didn't want to go. While we sat on the front porch waiting for them to return, that was when we decided to play the ultimate prank.

So, we told Zander we made out while he was gone. He was stunned and made a nervous chuckle.

“Are you serious?” he said, the uncomfortable smile plastered on his face deepened when neither of us responded right away. He mechanically licked his dry lips.

“Yeah,” Jax said, throwing an arm around my shoulders. I couldn’t stop smiling. “We’ve been wanting to tell you what’s been going on for some time, but we thought you’d get mad.”

“I fucking knew it,” Zander mumbled. Then, he proceeded to throw punches at Jax as I moved out of the way. They went at it for a few seconds on the front lawn, Jax’s kid sisters grinning as they watched their brother get beaten up.

“It was a joke!” he yelled with a laugh as my brother tried to tackle him.

“Yeah-fucking-right!” Zander was going for his face.

“We were kidding,” I hollered, trying to stifle my laugh. “Seriously, Z we were just kidding. We knew you’d lose your shit.”

Zander paused, looking to me for confirmation and back at Jax. He stared at Jax, their eyes zeroing in on each other with this look from one male to another.

Then he said, “Not my sister.” And they helped each other to their feet.

For the longest, our days flowed like that for so long that when I graduated, the beginning of the end, it was too fast. I was closest to Jax, so I invited him to my graduation. He and Zander took pictures of me walking across the stage and made jokes during the entire ceremony. They even sent me zoomed-in pictures of myself. The whole event was joyous, and not once did I think about the real reason why my parents were in town aside from my graduation. They were also here to take me and my brother away from the only home we'd ever known. It still wasn't a real feeling yet.

Even when Jax and Blaze came by the house later that evening to hang out and see my parents, the packed boxes around the two-bedroom space still hadn’t made any of it real. We went to grab ice cream and Jax, being the usual life of the party, was full of pleasantries which caused everyone in the restaurant to look at him.

“What are we celebrating today?” the waitress asked. She was enjoying Jax’s personality because it matched so well with the atmosphere. This ice cream parlor, Farrell's, was very old-fashioned, and if you had anything to celebrate they had a song for it with alarms and an entire squadron of employees to join in. They even used a bass drum used that held the company logo on the side.

“My best friend right here just graduated from college,” Jax exclaimed with a huge smile. “She’s officially the smartest one in the group.”

We all shared a laugh at that. I didn’t know it then, but he was proud of me. He, Zander, and Blaze were all proud of me and I felt so relieved to have that chapter of my life closed because I worked so hard for it, but I was tired of school. But to end that chapter, it also meant I had to immediately start a new one that required me to leave Jax, Blaze, and California behind. My parents let Zander and I stay in our apartment as long as I was in school and now that I was done, things were drastically changing.

One of the last things Blaze said to us before we left was, “You guys are the best friends I’ve ever had.”