IT WAS PASSED DOWN TO ME. Just like my uncles’ blue eyes, my grandfather’s flat feet, and my dad’s big nose. All the men in our family have it. And it didn’t skip one generation, either. The men call it the cheating gene. They say it’s built into our DNA. The women in our family say we’re just nasty, sniffing after every skirt in town. But we were born this way. I swear. Even my three-year-old cousin Richie has it. A woman walks into the room and he goes after her. The next thing we know he’s sitting on her lap, rubbing the side of her face, getting all the kisses he wants. Sometimes he even goes for her thighs. “He just likes how stockings feel,” his mom will say. We guys tell her that he’s gonna be a leg man—just like the rest of us.

I started off like Richie; that’s what Mom says. Only I was younger—two years old and cute enough to model. Now I’m seventeen. In the eleventh grade. And getting all the girls—even the ones that belong to my boys.

“Hey, Tyler. I texted you last night. Why didn’t you text me back?”

It takes me a minute to think up an answer. “Aw, man . . . I meant to. Sorry.” If you tell a girl the truth, she says it’s a lie anyhow. So I tell them what they want to hear. It just makes life easier. “I’ll hit you up later.”

Monique’s arms go around my waist, and her belly pushes into me. My phone vibrates, over and over again. It’s in my front pocket. She feels it. And just gets closer. “You know too many girls,” she says, digging in my pants, grabbing at my phone.

Girls play around too much. Especially ones like Monique. “Hey. Don’t do that.” I push her hands away. But she has nails, long ones with diamonds on the tips. “Don’t scratch me, girl.”

“Just let me see it.”

“Huh?”

“Come on.” She’s on me again. I don’t like her, but I like how it feels with her so close that if she sweats I’ll feel it. “Monique . . .”

“It’s just a phone, right?” Her fingers dig around in my pocket. “Everyone’s got one.” Her other hand goes around my back. “So what do you care if I see who’s on the other end? I know everybody at this school anyhow.”

I’m taller than she is, six-one to be exact. She’s like five-five, and pretty, I guess you could say. But anybody can have pretty, you know what I mean? There’s tons of those here. I walk by ’em every day. They give me their numbers and I pass them on to my boys. Beautiful, that’s what I’m after. The top of the line—Bentleys, Range Rovers, that’s my type. “Hey, Monique, quit that,” I say, shoving her.

Attitude. I knew it was coming. It’s not just a black-girl thing, either. White girls have it now, too. That’s why sometimes I just go for the foreigners. You know, the girls that snuck across the border a few years back. Or the ones whose parents wait on you at the hospital, but you need the nurse to tell you what they’re saying.

“You’re not all that cute.” Monique looks me up and down and gives me the finger. “And you probably have some disease anyhow.” She stares at my phone, then lowers her eyes. “You know what they call girls that do what you do?”

I’m waiting for her to say it. She doesn’t, because if she does, we’re done.

“Just text me sometimes, okay?”

“I will. Seriously.”

She takes a pen out of her backpack, lifts my hand, and writes her number on my palm in red ink. “Just in case you forgot,” she says. And then she’s gone. But men in our family are like airports: as soon as one plane takes off, here comes another.

“Tyler. Hi.”

Beautiful. Celeste Johnson Nichols is beautiful. She would never rub up on a guy, but man, you wish she would. “Hey, Celeste.” I pull out my phone and keep moving. You can’t just stop for a girl like her. She expects it, you know. You can’t give her the upper hand either— that’s what my uncles say.

“Wait up.”

She’s following me. But not the way Monique does, all desperate-like. She takes her time. So I step it up. If she wants to talk to me, she’s gonna have to hustle.

Celeste and I went together all last year. We both decided to call it quits and just be friends. She did not like the way girls blew up my cell. I did not like the way I acted around her, like I could not live without her. We said we would just be friends. But she plays too many games. Like she has a cell, but she blocks my number. She lives six blocks from my house, but if I come by, her mom always says she’s not home. In the hallway, Celeste might speak to me; she might not. Then one day out the blue, she will do what she just did—ask me to hold up. I hate that. Because when she does, I get to thinking . . . maybe.

“Tyler. This is silly. Just stop.”

I don’t want to, but I do. “Hey, what’s up?” But then I’m staring into her eyes. I can’t help it. Her eyes are almost as pretty as mine. Mix her chocolate brown with my blue eyes, and wow. She said that to me once. She said when we get married and have babies they are going to be the prettiest kids ever. Why would a girl talk like that? What guy do you know wants to get married or talk about babies at my age? Besides, she’ll say something nice then ignore me in class or tell the lab teacher she wants another partner. Why would she do that? Because she can, my father said once. “So set her straight,” he told me. “Let her know who’s in charge.”

When you are as tall as I am, you like looking down at the world. It makes you feel better, stronger, smarter than everyone else. Only Celeste is my kryptonite. Walking with her makes me feel like a Hummer with a grenade underneath. Any second it’s like she is going to say something, do something that will make me feel two inches tall. I hate that.

Celeste plays with her gold necklace and stands too close to me. “So what are you doing this summer?”

I try to play it cool. “I don’t know. My dad wants to go to the shore, Mom wants Vegas.”

She stares at my feet. “I like your shoes. Are they new?”

She knows what she’s doing. I’ve got this thing for shoes, not sneakers. Everyone’s got those. Me, I have like sixty-five pair of shoes. People wait for me to come to school just to see what I have on my feet. So if you say something about them, it’s like I get high. “Thanks.” I stare at my blue shoes. “My brother sent them from Cali—Rodeo Drive, I think.”

Guys passing by say hello to me. But I see their eyes stopping on her best parts. One dude just shakes his head. That’s all you can do when you see a girl like her, because you know the guy that gets her is lucky. And you’re just hoping he screws up, so you can get a chance.

“What you doing this weekend?” I did not mean to ask her that.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

See? This is how she plays the game. She says she’s not doing anything, then all of a sudden she’s busy when I ask her out. Well, I’m busy too. “Miya and I are going to do something. I’m not sure what.”

“Oh.”

I like it when I get to her first. She does it to me all the time.

“She’s . . . cute,” she says, but I can tell that she doesn’t believe that. Celeste waves to a guy who’s driving out of the school parking lot in a Benz. “Hold on,” she tells me, and then takes her time walking over to him.

Celeste used to run track, so the muscles in her legs flex when she walks. And she used to dance ballet and tap, so her back is straight and her neck is long. It’s more like she is floating than walking, showing off more than just trying to get someplace.

She makes me wait ten minutes before she stops laughing and talking to him. So am I supposed to stand here doing nothing? “Hey, Angelina, wait up,” I say, watching Celeste watch me while she’s still talking to him.

“What’s up, blue eyes?”

You cannot just let a girl like Angelina pass you by. So I pull her away from her friends and give her the once-over. I let her know how good she looks. How lucky her boyfriend is. She speaks soft. To hear her, you’ve got to get close to her. So I get close; then a little bit closer. “What you up to, girl? You got the same number?”

Angelina’s hair is down to her waist. And it’s real. But that’s not what I’m looking at. I’m staring at that dress fitting her like the numbers on a cell—any smaller and she’d be in trouble. She plays with her hair while she’s talking. “Same number. Only guys with pretty eyes can call me, though.” I take a few strands and start playing too. When I look over at Celeste, she’s heading for the gate, leaving the school grounds. I start running. “Talk to you later, Angelina.”

I hate this crap. I can get any girl I want. “Wait up, Celeste.”

She keeps walking. It’s one of those I’m-mad-at-you walks, with her feet practically stomping the ground, but with her talking to me like everything is fine. We walk a block or two without saying anything. But I’m thinking: I can do better, way better than her. Then she stops and asks if there’s something in her eye. I lean over her, blowing at the hair in the corner of her eye. When I’m done, it’s her lips I’m staring at. Celeste has these big pretty lips that always shine from gloss and the sun reflecting off them. She licks them. I clear my throat. She’s explaining that if a girl plays her cards right, she can get a dude to do whatever she wants. I’m trying to make her understand that there are just too many girls around who will do what a guy says. “So he’d have to be nuts to stick with a girl who wants to play hard, when he can be with a ton of girls who just like to play.”

“Thanks,” she says.

“You okay?”

Her eyes are watering. “You sure there’s nothing in my eye? Man, it hurts.”

I pull down her bottom eyelid, like my mother does for me. I pick at her lashes, to see which ones might still be loose. She’s doing this on purpose, I swear. But I like it, even though I hate it. I am wondering when she is going to hit the beach with me; let me oil her skin. It’s the color of honey in the winter; apple butter brown in the summer.

“Tyler!”

Some girl’s voices are like acid; they eat right through you.

I turn around. “What?”

Celeste pushes my hand away. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

“I waited for you last night.”

“I . . . I . . .” Girls love drama. “I wasn’t home. Text me.”

The car Sabrina’s riding in takes off, with Sabrina’s finger still hanging out the car window, pointing toward the clouds.

“So how many girlfriends do you have?” Celeste asks.

“I don’t do girlfriends.”

“Monique—is she your girl?”

“I told you. No girlfriends. Just friends.”

“What about Asia? Miya?”

“Friends. I’m done having girlfriends.”

When she changes the subject she walks a little closer to me. “So what are you doing this weekend? I forget.”

It’s a trick question, I know it. Only I’m not sure how to answer, especially since I already did. “Who knows?”

She says it’s a pity that I’m busy with Miya this weekend, because if I weren’t, she and I could hang out, see a movie or something.

Before I say it, I tell myself not to say it. But I am stupid for her. My dad says it all the time. “The dumbest man in the family,” he and my uncles call me. But I am just like them. I love girls—loads of them. It’s just that I’ve got this thing for Celeste. “What about next Saturday?” I say.

She smiles. “I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I was just asking. I’m not a hundred percent sure of my plans.”

You are stupid man, just stupid, I tell myself.

It’s a game. But I know how to play too. We’ve been playing it since last year, when I figured out that you cannot give too much of yourself to a girl. Some girls are like that, my uncles say. They know they got you, so they mess with your head. “They’ll ruin your mojo if you let them, boy.”

“Listen,” I say, kissing the side of her lips. “Unblock my number.”

Her mouth opens just a little, and I get the sweetest kiss. I try to make it last. “Why should I?” she says, breathing hard, putting her arms around me, making me wish we were back together again.

She smells like coconuts. And I like coconuts, so I put my nose to her neck and sniff and kiss. “Because you know you want to,” I say, surprised when she finds my lips and kisses me again.

“Do I?”

“Yeah,” I say, hardly getting the word out.

“Or do you just want me to do it?”

We both are silent. Then she’s like, “If you ask me again, I will.” She smiles. “Unblock your number, I mean.”

If I say yes, she will just say no. So I don’t ask her to. I can’t. Girls will make you soft. They will give you the runaround. Screw with your head. Celeste does this to me all the time. I step back from her. “I need to go,” I say, even though I don’t want to.

She looks hurt. Then she walks onto her porch, digs around in her purse for her keys, and says, “I was going to unblock it, if only you had asked.”

“If she wants to be with you, let her do the work,” I hear my brother saying.

My friend Terence’s voice is in my head, too. “Quit letting that girl play you.”

“Don’t be no fool,” my uncles always say.

Celeste is the only girl I’ve ever loved. The only one whose picture is in my bedroom and my wallet, too. I’m just about ready to tell her to unblock me, to make a fool outta me even, when all of a sudden who comes walking up the street but Angelina. It’s like God sent her to stop me before I did something crazy.

Angelina struts. Her heels scrape the ground and her feet stomp, so you always know when she’s coming. She and Celeste both have on yellow today. One yellow tells you to hold up, slow down. The other is like the sun, hot and getting hotter.

Celeste and I both stare at her. But I am the one who follows her. “Angelina, hold up.”

My lips are on her lips before she says a word.

“Man. They’re soft as butter,” she says.

It would have been better if Celeste had heard her.

I put my arm over Angelina’s shoulder. We start walking, and her hips move like music is playing somewhere. A horn beeps. She waves. Celeste stares over at the two of us.

At the corner, while we wait for the light to change, she whispers in my ear, saying something in Spanish.

Celeste can’t keep her eyes off of us.

Angelina squeezes me tighter. Then she stops and stares into my eyes. “You are so fine. And your eyes. Oh my goodness. They are so pretty.”

I could kiss Angelina again. I can tell she wants me to. And it would teach Celeste a lesson, that she’s not the only girl around.

I start walking, asking Angelina what she’s doing later on. I’m not listening to her, though. I’m thinking about Celeste, wondering if she really would have unblocked her phone. No, I think, asking Angelina if she wants to go get something to eat, ignoring the part of me that wants to turn around and go back and be with Celeste. I’m a good dude, Celeste needs to know that. I can get any girl I want. She needs to know that too. The men in our family got it like that. Blue eyes, brown-skinned and fine gives you options. Gets you any girl, any place, any time, I think, looking back at Celeste opening her front door. Wondering why some girls like to play games. Hoping Angelina don’t think I’m paying for her food.