Page 145 of Love's Most Wanted

“How you doing, Aunt Bell?” He hugged her before I did the same.

“I’m okay, handsome.” She shut the door behind me. “He’s in the guest room. He’s angry and refuses to go home unless his father moves out.”

Unique started back there, tugging me with him by the hand and knocked on the door with his free one once we got to the guest room.

“I’m not hungry, Auntie Bell,” Deacon called out.

“It ain’t ya aunt. Put ya dick up if you in here on some other shit,” Unique announced before turning the knob and entering as I smacked his arm for his statement.

Deacon’s eyes widened upon seeing Unique.

“Oh, my bad,” Deacon said as I sat beside him and Unique sat in the chair across and off to the left.

“You good. Aunt Bell saying you don’t wanna go home.” Unique got right to it.

“And I won’t be unless that man leaves the house. I hate him.” Deacon’s young face balled up.

“You don’t hate that nigga. You just embarrassed.” Unique leaned forward, elbows pressed into his thighs covered by his gray joggers. He clasped his hands after running one over his fresh cut.

I watched the way his muscles bulged. He was so sexy.

“I do though. He ain’t no real man! He gay! And he a fucking liar! He can’t show me shit, so why the hell I need him around?” Deacon shouted angrily. I could almost feel the tremors in his frame as I sat beside him, making me rub his back gently.

“You sound like my oldest brother, Khari. I know it feel like you got nobody to look up to ’cause you the oldest. You looked up to him, but he turned out to be a fraud, so you mad. I get it.” Unique nodded, nibbling on his bottom lip briefly. “Even worse, everybody know that shit.” He chuckled humorlessly, and Deacon watched him, his handsome features relaxing out of the glare he was once wearing.

“Exactly.” Deacon nodded. “So what did Uncu—Khari do?”

His mistake made Unique smirk.

“You listen to secular music, huh?” He chuckled. “It’s cool. We did too when we wasn’t supposed to.” Unique stroked his beard for a beat then continued. “But Khari acted out, spun out of control, and changed from who he was for a bit. He was mad at the world and stopped giving a fuck about shit he used to. Our father being gay was only part of it. Our mother had to work a job that wasn’t the best, and that added to the ridicule, mainly for him because he was around grownups that saw her.

“You don’t have to deal with a lot of the shit we did. Y’all not broke, ya mama ain’t working a certain job, and it’s only three of y’all.” He chuckled half-heartedly. “It’s cool to be upset with that man because I can’t even say I’m not upset now, and it’s been eighteen years.”

“Wow,” I commented, not realizing how much time had passed.

“But your mother needs you, Deacon.”

“No she doesn’t, because if she did, she would leave him like I asked her to,” he replied.

“Yeah, but it’s not that easy.”

“Your mom did it, right?”

“She did.” Unique nodded. “That’s how I know it ain’t easy. I don’t think my mother realized how shit would deteriorate either. She knew, but she didn’t know, if that makes sense. What my mama did is rare, so don’t take it out on yours. Continue being a good dude and eventually a good man. Take care of ya mama. And long as ya pops show you respect, you do the same. Him being gay don’t take away from him being ya father.”

Deacon nodded hesitantly. “It’s embarrassing.”

“It is. But you in ya last year of high school, and you can move on to college and forget the shit soon.”

Deacon bobbed his head to agree again.

“I just don’t want people thinking I’m gay,” he said, making us laugh.

“Yeah, I can feel that, and long as you ain’t out here sucking dick or having sex with other men, they ain’t gon’ have no reason to.”

“Hell nah.” Deacon shook his head, looking Unique up and down like he was insane.

“Cool.” Unique stood. “So go home and look out for your mother, aight?”