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Funny-ass nigga.

Mike was worse.

That morning, I had been carrying some shit across the site when he yelled, “Yo, Xay! Your brother coming today or we safe?”

Whole fucking crew started laughing.

I stopped walking.

“Mike, suck my dick.”

“I’m just asking! I need to know if I should put my hard hat on.”

“You supposed to have your fucking hard hat on anyway,” Luis yelled.

“Not for work. For Xay brother.”

More fucking laughing.

I flipped all them niggas off and kept walking.

Even Ron was getting his jokes in, and his ass wasn’t even there when it happened.

He’d been off that day.

Came back the next morning and apparently got a full fucking ESPN recap from everybody on the site.

First thing he said when he saw me was, “So I take one day off and you turn my job site into Fight Night?”

“Man, fuck you too, Ron.”

He laughed. “I’m your manager. You can’t say fuck me.”

“Write me up.”

“I would, but you been through enough.”

I stared at him.

He started laughing all over again.

“See? That’s the shit I’m talking about.”

“All right, all right.” He slapped my shoulder. “I’m done.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“And I’ll probably say it again tomorrow.”

I couldn’t even be mad for real.

Well, I could.

But that was construction.

You got embarrassed in front of a bunch of niggas you worked with every day, you might as well accept you were gonna hear about that shit until somebody else did something stupid enough to take the attention off you.

Unfortunately, nobody had.