I sat in the mall food court waiting, I felt a little guilty about not telling Mauricio about my plans but I knew my little bro better than anyone and the way that he saw things was pretty black and white, his feelings were; fuck our dad, fuck his wife, and fuck dem kids. I couldn't feel that way though.... at least not towards Mystik and Magik, I felt like they were innocent in all this so as the oldest, I at least owed them a chance to get to know me and establish a relationship. I started scrolling through my phone and rereading some of me and Piru's first few messages, it's crazy how I usually delete my messages after a few months but with Piru, I kept them all and honestly I can't believe how obvious I was with my flirting and how clueless Piru was. I checked my watch to see what time it was and I was starting to get annoyed because he was fifteen minutes late and I could be doing a bunch of other shyt right instead of waiting or Magik's ass to show up, but just as I was about to call him I saw him walking towards me looking over his shoulder nervously.
"You know if you were going to be late you could've at least called." I said standing up as he reached the table. "You aight?"
"Yeah I'm just taking a huge risk by coming here, my mom has a lot of friends that work here and if one of them see me I know they'll run back and tell her. But this is worth the risk.... so where do you wanna start?" Magik said looking at me and I really didn't know because there was so much there that I wanted to know and the things that I needed to know he couldn't answer.
"When did you and Mystik find out about us? And since we're on the subject of Mystik why didn't you bring him along with you?" I asked looking at him.
"Mystik.... well, he's hurt by the whole situation, he feels like his entire life was a lie. Growing up dad didn't mention y'all to us once.... and if it wasn't for us seeing you at the restaurant they probably would've kept the lie going on. Which answers your first question, we found out about y'all that day but it took a lot of pushing and prodding because they didn't want to talk about it.... at least not in front of us." Magik said. "So what happened? I mean from your side of things...."
"Our mom died giving birth to me and Mauricio.... dad got remarried not long after that, to her best friend who ended up pregnant with twins and she made him choose.... us or y'all, he picked y'all. I don't blame y'all for what happened but that's the truth as I know it." I said looking into his eyes.
"Why isn't Mauricio here?" Magik asked and I really didn't want to start of our relationship with lies.
"Mauricio harbors this hatred for dad.... he feels like he abandon us and chose his new family over us, he feels like it shouldn't have been a choice and that if dad was any kind of man then he would've worked it out so that he could keep all of us in his life but instead he took the easy way out." I said quietly.
"He's.... he's not wrong, dad should've never done that and my mom should've never made him choose IF that's true." Magik said. "But how do you feel about the whole situation?" Magik asked.
"It is what it is.... I don't like to deal with hypotheticals, the life I'm living now isn't perfect but I wouldn't change any of it, me and Mauricio got a nice ass roof over our heads, we got some of the most loyal friends imaginable.... and I got my nigga Piru, who knows if we would've stayed with dad there's no telling where we'd be." I said shrugging.
After about two hours of playing catchup, Magik had to leave but we agreed that we would talk again. I got back to the house and it was completely empty with the exception of Madison and Anjo who were talking amongst themselves; it was kinda weird being in this big ass house alone, I was so use to at least one person wandering around but whatever the silence would give me an opportunity to think about everything that Magik told me about my dad.... that nigga was real life shady and his wife even more so, but I knew eventually we'd have to have a sit down to discuss his actions.
