American Sun
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djp73
- Posts: 12802
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 13:42
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 16105
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
He's talking to a co-conspirator in previous murders and other criminal activities. You making it sound like he just told some rando
The irony is the pointCaptain Canada wrote: ↑15 Apr 2026, 11:09Get the fuck outta here
I know Saul's father (who's name escapes me) is mad as hell, sweating in his mama's house
Hector punching the air.
Especially because Caine laid the "live in the baby mama house" blueprintredsox907 wrote: ↑15 Apr 2026, 12:23Hector iircCaptain Canada wrote: ↑15 Apr 2026, 11:09I know Saul's father (who's name escapes me) is mad as hell, sweating in his mama's house
he definitely punching air. Caine a millionaire while Saul living at his BM house and doesn't bring the baby around lmao
Asia on some weird shit, cause you can't just show up at Target and get OT lmao
Mireya laughing at some wanting to throat dick for money lmao
People call out bro
The irony is the point
Hey, man. Plenty of folks don't want the pressure of being a millionaire.
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 16105
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
Pahtik / Tlacotontli
Sena sat on the couch with her ankles crossed and her hands resting palm-down against her thighs. The cushion was firm under her, a dark gray fabric with a nap that caught a faint sheen from the window behind her. She'd shoved a throw pillow against her hip on the walk past the coffee table, and now its corner jabbed her through her sweater. Her sleeves were bunched at her elbows where she'd pushed them up coming in from the cold.
Across from her, Celia sat in an armchair with a leather notebook open against her knee. Celia clicked her pen once, tested the tip against the margin of the page, then slid it into the spiral binding. She drew a breath and let it out slowly through her nose.
"Last time we spoke, you mentioned that you wanted to start doing more things beyond school," Celia said. "Have you decided to try anything new?"
Sena lifted one shoulder and let it drop, her mouth pulling to the side.
"Every time I think about it, I just feel like I'm wasting time," she said.
Celia nodded once. "Why do you think that you'd be wasting time?"
Sena's thumb moved against the hem of her sweater, rolling the edge between her fingers. She looked at the carpet, at the pattern of the rug where her feet rested, a square of woven gray and cream set between the couch and Celia's chair.
"I guess because my brothers are into their careers, married, all that stuff," she said. "I feel like I'm falling behind."
Celia tipped her head, the motion small. "You're 20 years old, Sena," she said. "You can't fall behind in a race that you haven't even started yet."
Sena's eyes flicked to the far wall, to the framed watercolor above Celia's shoulder. A marsh scene, cordgrass bending to one side, the water at the bottom of the frame pulled back to mudflat. Nine months of sessions and she'd only ever glanced at it. Her eyes moved across the brushwork now, across the pale wash of sky above the reeds, across a smear of pink that might have been a distant roseate spoonbill or might have been a stray drop of paint.
"Halfway through college," she said.
"That's definitely one way to put it." Celia's pen clicked once in the spiral, her fingers finding it without her looking down. "Have you thought more about what I said about reframing the way you think about things? You have a very negative mindset. And while I'm not coming from a standpoint of glass half full, glass half empty, we do give off that negativity when we think that way. People around us notice. Does that make sense?"
Sena snorted a laugh. "It sounds like you're saying I'm a bitch and that's why I can't get to where I want to be in life.”
Celia's mouth pressed flat before she spoke.
"That's not what I said," she said. "But it does show how you immediately move statements to a negative light."
Sena dragged her teeth over her bottom lip. "I guess.”
Celia rested the pen flat against the page. She let a beat pass and then another, her eyes steady on Sena's face, her chin dipping a fraction before she asked her next question.
"What else would you like to talk about?" she asked.
Sena sighed, her chest rising and falling under the sweater in one long pull. She looked at her hands, then at the edge of the coffee table, where a box of tissues had been pushed toward the center, half of them pulled up through the slit. She dragged her eyes off the box and rubbed the side of her palm against her thigh.
"Things are still weird with Mr. and Mrs. Schexnayder," she said. "I think they're still hoping for that porn babysitter-couple threesome."
Celia's eyebrow lifted a fraction. "Why do you continue to work with them?"
Sena's shoulder lifted again, smaller than before. "Because I committed to doing it.”
Celia leaned forward a few inches, her forearm coming to rest on the top of her notebook. She held Sena's eyes a beat longer than before, her gaze moving across Sena's face, the line of her jaw, the corner of her mouth.
"Tell me more about why you believe you can never change your mind after you've told someone you'll do something," she said.
Sena leaned back against the couch, her spine pressing into the cushion behind her. She laced her fingers together across her stomach, thumb pressing thumb. Her eyes went past Celia, past the armchair and the bookshelf and the framed diploma on the wall. They settled on the window. A pale wash of morning light spread across the street beyond the glass, thin and cold.
Mireya lay back in the tub with her hair spilling over the porcelain rim and her shoulders just under the waterline. Steam rose off the surface in a slow curtain and thinned in the cold coming off the window. The window ran floor to ceiling beside her, and through it downtown Los Angeles stacked itself in pale gray columns, the buildings catching the early light along their western faces.
She let her head settle against the tub's lip, her neck finding the curve where the porcelain had been cut to hold it, and her breath rolled out long. Her eyes moved off the skyline and across the bathroom, marble along the walls veined in black and gold, a vanity running the length of the opposite wall, a long slab of stone set into a cabinet of dark wood with two sinks cut into it and two faucets arcing out of the stone in brushed brass. Past the vanity, a free-standing shower took up its own corner, glass walls on three sides, a showerhead the size of a dinner plate mounted to the ceiling.
Her heartbeat started up in her ears, and her hand came up out of the water and pressed flat against her sternum. The thudding pushed back against her palm. Her chest moved shorter, faster, the water at her collarbone rippling in time with it, and her breath cut shallow through her nose. She fixed her eyes on the nearest building beyond the glass and tried to hold them there, tried to count the windows along its face, and her count kept breaking off.
The door opened and her body locked. The ripple across her chest stopped. Her fingers curled against the porcelain under the water and her other hand stayed pressed to her sternum as she pulled her eyes from the window to the door.
Caine stepped into the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind him. His hand rested on the knob for a beat after it closed, then dropped to his side.
Mireya's breath came back. She drew one long pull in through her nose and let it out through her mouth, her shoulders dropping an inch under the water. The thudding in her ears kept on.
Caine crossed to the vanity and pulled the stool from underneath it, a low padded thing upholstered in cream leather. He carried it to the side of the tub and set it down, and he sat. His forearms came to rest on his thighs, his hands loose between his knees.
"We gonna talk about that shit you told me," he said.
Mireya held his eyes across the rim of the tub. "That shit being what I do for work.”
"Yeah."
Mireya's eyes closed. She let her head settle fully back against the porcelain, her wet hair pulling cool along her neck.
"There ain't nothing to talk about," she said. "I told you. You know. Do with that information what you want."
Her eyes opened. She turned her head a fraction against the rim, angling her face toward his. "You're the millionaire here. Not like I could stop you if you wanted to take my daughter from me."
Caine's head tipped to the side. "That's what you think I'm gonna do?"
Mireya's shoulder lifted out of the water and dropped back, sending a small wave across her chest.
"If it ain't cross your mind yet, it will," she said. "It'll be easier to tell a judge I'm a filthy fucking whore."
Caine shook his head once. "I'm just trying to make sure that you good, Mireya," he said. "I can give you more money if you need it."
Mireya sucked her teeth, the sound cutting sharp against the steam. "Fuck you," she said. "I'm not going to let you control me with your fucking money."
"That ain't what I said."
"Eso es exactamente lo que dijiste, carajo."
Caine's jaw worked once. His hands stayed loose between his knees. "You just being fucking stubborn at this point.”
Mireya's mouth curved at one corner.
"Pot meet motherfucking kettle," she said. "But there ain't shit else to talk about when it comes to that. When you start regretting not beating my ass when I first told you, just warn me before you get that lick back."
Caine’s hands closed into fists then relaxed. He pushed up from the stool. He lifted it by the edge and carried it back across the bathroom, setting it under the vanity where he'd found it. He straightened with one hand on the edge of the stone, his back to her, and Mireya's eyes moved along the line of his shoulders.
"Look, you don't even want to fuck me anymore," she said. "Wouldn't even think I was laying in your fancy ass bathroom naked."
Caine turned. He looked at her across the length of the bathroom, his hand dropping from the vanity.
"That what you want?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Unless you're too fucking disgusted by me."
Caine nodded once. His hand came up to the hem of his shirt and he pulled it over his head in one motion. He let the T-shirt fall from his fingers to the vanity behind him and walked back across the bathroom toward the tub. He stopped at the edge of the tub and brought his hand down to the rim, fingers resting on the porcelain, and then his other hand lowered past the curve of the tub and into the water.
Mireya's eyes stayed on his face, on the line of his jaw, on the shadow along his cheekbone, on his mouth. Her eyes held there until the ripple from his wrist reached her thigh and his fingers pressed against the inside of her leg, and then her eyes closed.
Tyree sat on the edge of the folding table with his feet planted on the bench below it and his elbows resting on his thighs. The food truck idled a few feet off, the smell of grease and blackening seasoning pushing out through the service window every time the cook pulled a basket from the fryer. Cars cut across the gravel lot where somebody had dragged a couple of picnic tables under a stretch of live oaks, the branches bare overhead, the air cold enough that the steam off the trays rose clean and visible.
Jayla sat beside him with a Styrofoam tray balanced on her lap, a chicken breast in one hand and a plastic fork cutting dirty rice in the other. She set the fork down on the lip of the tray and brought the breast up to her mouth, teeth sinking into the crust, juice running down her thumb and catching on the edge of her napkin.
Tyree leaned over toward her and watched.
Jayla chewed, swallowed, and looked up at him with her eyebrow cocked. "What?"
Tyree smiled. "I'm just watching how you eating that meat up. Research for later, you know?"
Jayla laughed, the sound coming out through a mouthful, and swatted at his shoulder with the back of her free hand. "Nigga, that shit was lame as fuck."
"I'll take that charge if you finally let me fuck."
Jayla rolled her eyes, the smile still sitting on her face. She tore another piece of meat off the breast and chewed slow. "I'm still thinking about whether I'm gonna let you get lucky or not."
"I'm a lucky ass nigga so I already know how this gonna go."
Jayla shook her head. She picked up the fork and went back to the rice, scooping a bite and holding it close to her mouth as she watched him from the corner of her eye.
A dark sedan swung off the street and rolled through the lot, tires crunching over loose gravel. It pulled into a spot two down from where they sat and the driver's door opened. Yola got out first, keys looping around his finger, his other hand already going into his pocket. The passenger door opened a beat later and Ant stepped out. His eyes cut across the lot in a slow pass, finding the line at the food truck, then the picnic tables under the trees, then stopping when they landed on Tyree.
Ant changed course. He walked toward the table with the same unhurried stride he carried everywhere, hands loose at his sides, his jacket zipped halfway up against the cold. Yola followed a step back, phone already pulled out, thumb flicking across the screen.
Ant stopped a few feet from the table. "What's good, lil' brudda?"
Tyree looked up at him. "Ain't shit. Just cooling."
Ant nodded, his chin dipping once. His eyes moved from Tyree to the tray on Jayla's lap and back. "I ain't see you and Ramon come to Trell services and shit."
Tyree shrugged, his shoulders lifting and dropping beneath his hoodie. "I ain't know when it was. Duke ain't tell us nothing."
Ant nodded again, slower this time, and looked over at Jayla. His gaze settled on her face long enough that she lowered the fork back to the tray and held it there, her hand going still. Her eyes moved between Ant and Tyree and stayed on Ant.
Ant looked back at Tyree. "You know anything about what happened?"
Tyree shook his head. "You know that shit go out there though. Always someone that might got a reason to get at you."
"Right." Ant let the word sit a second before he went on. "Tell your potna I'm looking for him."
"I got you."
Ant nodded once more and turned, walking toward the line at the food truck, Yola falling in behind him without lifting his eyes off his phone. They took their spot at the end of the line, Ant sliding his hands into his jacket pockets, Yola leaning one shoulder against the side of the truck.
Jayla watched them go. She brought the fork to her mouth and chewed. "How you know that crazy looking ass nigga?"
Tyree kept his eyes on the line for a beat before he turned back to her. "Just some nigga from around the way." He leaned back over, close enough to her ear to feel the warmth of her jaw, his hand coming to rest on her thigh. "Let's get back to me and you fucking this afternoon, though."
Mireya walked with her hands tucked into the pockets of her coat and her hair loose against the collar, her pace slow through the foot traffic on the sidewalk. The buildings ran tall on both sides of the block, glass faces catching the afternoon sun at angles that threw squares of light onto the pavement. A man pushed a cart of folded boxes past her on the curb. Two women in matching athleisure stepped out of a coffee shop, talking over each other as they cut across her path toward a crosswalk. Camila was with Caine and Sara for the afternoon, and Mireya had the city to herself.
The trip she'd taken here with Trell sat in her memory as a set of rooms and a rental car and a hotel window. A couple of days, in and out, the city flashing past the passenger side and then gone when the plane lifted. That LA had belonged to somebody else. This one was different. Caine had an address here. Even this early in his time here, the permanency of it pushed up through her shoes and made her something other than a tourist in his city.
Her eyes moved across the storefronts. A brunch spot with a line out the door, a gallery with one canvas in the window, a salon with its curtain half drawn. She passed a boutique and kept walking, then stopped a few steps past it, turned, and stepped back. The window display held two mannequins in silk and a third in something fitted and cream, the pieces arranged against a pale backdrop with a single gold placard at the base. Mireya read the name on the placard, looked through the glass at the inside of the store, and pushed through the door.
A soft chime sounded above her head. The interior opened up wide, racks spaced far apart, the floor a pale herringbone catching the track lighting from above. The air smelled of sandalwood under a lighter floral. A single employee sat behind a counter at the back, her phone tilted against a coffee cup, her chin resting on her palm. The pieces on the racks had space around them, each one given room to be looked at. Higher-end, not couture, but a long step above stuff in the Lakeside.
Her fingers ran along the fabric of a dress on the first rack she reached. Silk, cool under her fingertips, the weight of it sliding heavy against the hanger.
The employee looked up from her phone. "Hey, welcome in."
"Hey," Mireya said, her eyes staying on the rack. She moved her hand to the price tag at the collar and turned it between her fingers. Four digits. She read the number and released the tag and moved to the next dress. Three digits on that one, high. She turned it over and set the tag back flat.
Caine threw a football. That was the part she kept catching on. He threw a football and now there were hundreds of stores like this one within walking distance of where he slept, stores he could walk into and buy the whole front display. She'd walked into plenty of them too. Paid in cash she'd peeled off a roll she'd earned on her back, on her knees, pressed up against a wall for a man who'd flown in from Houston for a weekend. The bitterness came back warm and familiar behind her ribs. She pressed it down with her thumb moving to another tag, her mouth holding its shape.
She pulled a dress off the rack and held it up in front of her, gripping it by the shoulders and letting it fall against her body, measuring the hem against the line of her thigh. It fell about right. Nothing that would drag past mid-thigh.
The employee came around the counter and walked over, her heels soft on the herringbone. "You'd look great in that. The color would really look good against your skin."
"You think so?"
"Yeah, for sure." The girl smiled, her eyes moving from the dress to Mireya's face. "Anything specific you're looking for?"
Mireya shook her head. "Just doing some retail therapy."
"I hear that." The employee tilted her head, one eyebrow lifting. "Are we going with just buy something retail therapy? Or buy a lot of things retail therapy?"
Mireya looked at the dress again, turned it once to see the back, and draped it over her arm. "Buy a lot of expensive things retail therapy."
The employee smiled wider. "Let me show you these new pieces we just got in then."
Caine sat on the sectional with his feet kicked up on the ottoman, one arm stretched along the back of the cushion, his phone face down on his thigh. Sara sat beside him with her legs tucked to the side and a mug of coffee balanced between her hands, the coffee long gone cold.
The glass wall across from them held the whole shape of the afternoon sky, pale blue over the downtown rooftops, clouds stretched thin in a line toward the ocean. Camila stood at the window with her nose almost on the glass, her palms flat against the pane, her weight rocking forward onto her toes whenever something moved through her view. An hour of this, maybe more, her attention locked on the sky. A plane had crossed earlier. Then another. Then a helicopter banking low toward the interstate. Her breath fogged small circles on the glass, and she kept her eyes fixed past them.
Sara watched her for a beat. "You should take her down to the beach later."
Caine nodded, his hand coming up to smooth the back of his neck. "Yeah, probably going to take her to Manhattan Beach. Since they be having more yachts and shit out there."
"She does love them boats."
Caine looked over his shoulder toward the window. Camila had both hands splayed wide now, tracking something low along the skyline, her eyes locked on the sky past the glass. He turned back to Sara and kept his voice low.
"¿Te lo dijo Mireya?"
Sara's eyebrow lifted. "¿Qué me dices?"
"I'm guessing she didn't if you don't know what I'm talking about," Caine said, the Spanish low enough that it stayed on the couch.
Sara shook her head, her thumb pressing into the handle of the mug. "No, and it ain't your business to tell me either. If she wants me to know something, she knows where to find me."
Caine shook his head. "She's on some other shit lately. For the last couple of months, during the championship game, Christmas, when we went on the visits, after when I was in New Orleans. Even fucking now." He pointed over his shoulder at the window without looking back. "Even Camila notices something is off about her."
Sara's eyes moved to his face and held there. "You using your daughter to spy on her mother?"
Caine waved the question off with his hand. "No. Camila just asked me why Mireya seems sad. And if it was because I didn't come home." His hand settled back on his thigh. "I ain't know what to say because Mireya is mad that I came out here but she the one told me not to go back to Louisiana."
Sara sighed. She set the mug down on the coaster on the coffee table and turned more of her body toward him, one knee sliding up onto the cushion. "Something happened to her a couple months ago. I don't know what it was and I don't want you going question her. You can see it in her eyes."
"That don't explain why she always talking crazy to me."
"Yes, it does." Sara's hand came to rest on his forearm, the pressure light. "She's broken. And she may never tell us why. And you just have to accept that."
Caine sighed and shook his head. He let his eyes drop to the floor between his feet, to the edge of the rug where it met the hardwood. His jaw worked once and then stilled.
"Daddy, look at the helicopter!" Camila's voice carried across the room, bright and loud, her words pitched high to pull his eyes onto whatever she was seeing.
Caine pushed up from the couch. He crossed the living room to her and crouched down beside her at the glass. Camila was still pointing, her arm extended, her finger pressed against the pane.
"That one?" Caine followed her finger out into the sky, his head tilting beside hers. "That looks like a big bug. Un mosquito gigante."
Camila's giggle broke out hard, her whole body shaking with it. She swatted at his shoulder with her free hand. "You silly, daddy. That's a helicopter!"
Caine laughed. "My bad, my bad."
Sena sat on the couch with her ankles crossed and her hands resting palm-down against her thighs. The cushion was firm under her, a dark gray fabric with a nap that caught a faint sheen from the window behind her. She'd shoved a throw pillow against her hip on the walk past the coffee table, and now its corner jabbed her through her sweater. Her sleeves were bunched at her elbows where she'd pushed them up coming in from the cold.
Across from her, Celia sat in an armchair with a leather notebook open against her knee. Celia clicked her pen once, tested the tip against the margin of the page, then slid it into the spiral binding. She drew a breath and let it out slowly through her nose.
"Last time we spoke, you mentioned that you wanted to start doing more things beyond school," Celia said. "Have you decided to try anything new?"
Sena lifted one shoulder and let it drop, her mouth pulling to the side.
"Every time I think about it, I just feel like I'm wasting time," she said.
Celia nodded once. "Why do you think that you'd be wasting time?"
Sena's thumb moved against the hem of her sweater, rolling the edge between her fingers. She looked at the carpet, at the pattern of the rug where her feet rested, a square of woven gray and cream set between the couch and Celia's chair.
"I guess because my brothers are into their careers, married, all that stuff," she said. "I feel like I'm falling behind."
Celia tipped her head, the motion small. "You're 20 years old, Sena," she said. "You can't fall behind in a race that you haven't even started yet."
Sena's eyes flicked to the far wall, to the framed watercolor above Celia's shoulder. A marsh scene, cordgrass bending to one side, the water at the bottom of the frame pulled back to mudflat. Nine months of sessions and she'd only ever glanced at it. Her eyes moved across the brushwork now, across the pale wash of sky above the reeds, across a smear of pink that might have been a distant roseate spoonbill or might have been a stray drop of paint.
"Halfway through college," she said.
"That's definitely one way to put it." Celia's pen clicked once in the spiral, her fingers finding it without her looking down. "Have you thought more about what I said about reframing the way you think about things? You have a very negative mindset. And while I'm not coming from a standpoint of glass half full, glass half empty, we do give off that negativity when we think that way. People around us notice. Does that make sense?"
Sena snorted a laugh. "It sounds like you're saying I'm a bitch and that's why I can't get to where I want to be in life.”
Celia's mouth pressed flat before she spoke.
"That's not what I said," she said. "But it does show how you immediately move statements to a negative light."
Sena dragged her teeth over her bottom lip. "I guess.”
Celia rested the pen flat against the page. She let a beat pass and then another, her eyes steady on Sena's face, her chin dipping a fraction before she asked her next question.
"What else would you like to talk about?" she asked.
Sena sighed, her chest rising and falling under the sweater in one long pull. She looked at her hands, then at the edge of the coffee table, where a box of tissues had been pushed toward the center, half of them pulled up through the slit. She dragged her eyes off the box and rubbed the side of her palm against her thigh.
"Things are still weird with Mr. and Mrs. Schexnayder," she said. "I think they're still hoping for that porn babysitter-couple threesome."
Celia's eyebrow lifted a fraction. "Why do you continue to work with them?"
Sena's shoulder lifted again, smaller than before. "Because I committed to doing it.”
Celia leaned forward a few inches, her forearm coming to rest on the top of her notebook. She held Sena's eyes a beat longer than before, her gaze moving across Sena's face, the line of her jaw, the corner of her mouth.
"Tell me more about why you believe you can never change your mind after you've told someone you'll do something," she said.
Sena leaned back against the couch, her spine pressing into the cushion behind her. She laced her fingers together across her stomach, thumb pressing thumb. Her eyes went past Celia, past the armchair and the bookshelf and the framed diploma on the wall. They settled on the window. A pale wash of morning light spread across the street beyond the glass, thin and cold.
~~~
Mireya lay back in the tub with her hair spilling over the porcelain rim and her shoulders just under the waterline. Steam rose off the surface in a slow curtain and thinned in the cold coming off the window. The window ran floor to ceiling beside her, and through it downtown Los Angeles stacked itself in pale gray columns, the buildings catching the early light along their western faces.
She let her head settle against the tub's lip, her neck finding the curve where the porcelain had been cut to hold it, and her breath rolled out long. Her eyes moved off the skyline and across the bathroom, marble along the walls veined in black and gold, a vanity running the length of the opposite wall, a long slab of stone set into a cabinet of dark wood with two sinks cut into it and two faucets arcing out of the stone in brushed brass. Past the vanity, a free-standing shower took up its own corner, glass walls on three sides, a showerhead the size of a dinner plate mounted to the ceiling.
Her heartbeat started up in her ears, and her hand came up out of the water and pressed flat against her sternum. The thudding pushed back against her palm. Her chest moved shorter, faster, the water at her collarbone rippling in time with it, and her breath cut shallow through her nose. She fixed her eyes on the nearest building beyond the glass and tried to hold them there, tried to count the windows along its face, and her count kept breaking off.
The door opened and her body locked. The ripple across her chest stopped. Her fingers curled against the porcelain under the water and her other hand stayed pressed to her sternum as she pulled her eyes from the window to the door.
Caine stepped into the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind him. His hand rested on the knob for a beat after it closed, then dropped to his side.
Mireya's breath came back. She drew one long pull in through her nose and let it out through her mouth, her shoulders dropping an inch under the water. The thudding in her ears kept on.
Caine crossed to the vanity and pulled the stool from underneath it, a low padded thing upholstered in cream leather. He carried it to the side of the tub and set it down, and he sat. His forearms came to rest on his thighs, his hands loose between his knees.
"We gonna talk about that shit you told me," he said.
Mireya held his eyes across the rim of the tub. "That shit being what I do for work.”
"Yeah."
Mireya's eyes closed. She let her head settle fully back against the porcelain, her wet hair pulling cool along her neck.
"There ain't nothing to talk about," she said. "I told you. You know. Do with that information what you want."
Her eyes opened. She turned her head a fraction against the rim, angling her face toward his. "You're the millionaire here. Not like I could stop you if you wanted to take my daughter from me."
Caine's head tipped to the side. "That's what you think I'm gonna do?"
Mireya's shoulder lifted out of the water and dropped back, sending a small wave across her chest.
"If it ain't cross your mind yet, it will," she said. "It'll be easier to tell a judge I'm a filthy fucking whore."
Caine shook his head once. "I'm just trying to make sure that you good, Mireya," he said. "I can give you more money if you need it."
Mireya sucked her teeth, the sound cutting sharp against the steam. "Fuck you," she said. "I'm not going to let you control me with your fucking money."
"That ain't what I said."
"Eso es exactamente lo que dijiste, carajo."
Caine's jaw worked once. His hands stayed loose between his knees. "You just being fucking stubborn at this point.”
Mireya's mouth curved at one corner.
"Pot meet motherfucking kettle," she said. "But there ain't shit else to talk about when it comes to that. When you start regretting not beating my ass when I first told you, just warn me before you get that lick back."
Caine’s hands closed into fists then relaxed. He pushed up from the stool. He lifted it by the edge and carried it back across the bathroom, setting it under the vanity where he'd found it. He straightened with one hand on the edge of the stone, his back to her, and Mireya's eyes moved along the line of his shoulders.
"Look, you don't even want to fuck me anymore," she said. "Wouldn't even think I was laying in your fancy ass bathroom naked."
Caine turned. He looked at her across the length of the bathroom, his hand dropping from the vanity.
"That what you want?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Unless you're too fucking disgusted by me."
Caine nodded once. His hand came up to the hem of his shirt and he pulled it over his head in one motion. He let the T-shirt fall from his fingers to the vanity behind him and walked back across the bathroom toward the tub. He stopped at the edge of the tub and brought his hand down to the rim, fingers resting on the porcelain, and then his other hand lowered past the curve of the tub and into the water.
Mireya's eyes stayed on his face, on the line of his jaw, on the shadow along his cheekbone, on his mouth. Her eyes held there until the ripple from his wrist reached her thigh and his fingers pressed against the inside of her leg, and then her eyes closed.
~~~
Tyree sat on the edge of the folding table with his feet planted on the bench below it and his elbows resting on his thighs. The food truck idled a few feet off, the smell of grease and blackening seasoning pushing out through the service window every time the cook pulled a basket from the fryer. Cars cut across the gravel lot where somebody had dragged a couple of picnic tables under a stretch of live oaks, the branches bare overhead, the air cold enough that the steam off the trays rose clean and visible.
Jayla sat beside him with a Styrofoam tray balanced on her lap, a chicken breast in one hand and a plastic fork cutting dirty rice in the other. She set the fork down on the lip of the tray and brought the breast up to her mouth, teeth sinking into the crust, juice running down her thumb and catching on the edge of her napkin.
Tyree leaned over toward her and watched.
Jayla chewed, swallowed, and looked up at him with her eyebrow cocked. "What?"
Tyree smiled. "I'm just watching how you eating that meat up. Research for later, you know?"
Jayla laughed, the sound coming out through a mouthful, and swatted at his shoulder with the back of her free hand. "Nigga, that shit was lame as fuck."
"I'll take that charge if you finally let me fuck."
Jayla rolled her eyes, the smile still sitting on her face. She tore another piece of meat off the breast and chewed slow. "I'm still thinking about whether I'm gonna let you get lucky or not."
"I'm a lucky ass nigga so I already know how this gonna go."
Jayla shook her head. She picked up the fork and went back to the rice, scooping a bite and holding it close to her mouth as she watched him from the corner of her eye.
A dark sedan swung off the street and rolled through the lot, tires crunching over loose gravel. It pulled into a spot two down from where they sat and the driver's door opened. Yola got out first, keys looping around his finger, his other hand already going into his pocket. The passenger door opened a beat later and Ant stepped out. His eyes cut across the lot in a slow pass, finding the line at the food truck, then the picnic tables under the trees, then stopping when they landed on Tyree.
Ant changed course. He walked toward the table with the same unhurried stride he carried everywhere, hands loose at his sides, his jacket zipped halfway up against the cold. Yola followed a step back, phone already pulled out, thumb flicking across the screen.
Ant stopped a few feet from the table. "What's good, lil' brudda?"
Tyree looked up at him. "Ain't shit. Just cooling."
Ant nodded, his chin dipping once. His eyes moved from Tyree to the tray on Jayla's lap and back. "I ain't see you and Ramon come to Trell services and shit."
Tyree shrugged, his shoulders lifting and dropping beneath his hoodie. "I ain't know when it was. Duke ain't tell us nothing."
Ant nodded again, slower this time, and looked over at Jayla. His gaze settled on her face long enough that she lowered the fork back to the tray and held it there, her hand going still. Her eyes moved between Ant and Tyree and stayed on Ant.
Ant looked back at Tyree. "You know anything about what happened?"
Tyree shook his head. "You know that shit go out there though. Always someone that might got a reason to get at you."
"Right." Ant let the word sit a second before he went on. "Tell your potna I'm looking for him."
"I got you."
Ant nodded once more and turned, walking toward the line at the food truck, Yola falling in behind him without lifting his eyes off his phone. They took their spot at the end of the line, Ant sliding his hands into his jacket pockets, Yola leaning one shoulder against the side of the truck.
Jayla watched them go. She brought the fork to her mouth and chewed. "How you know that crazy looking ass nigga?"
Tyree kept his eyes on the line for a beat before he turned back to her. "Just some nigga from around the way." He leaned back over, close enough to her ear to feel the warmth of her jaw, his hand coming to rest on her thigh. "Let's get back to me and you fucking this afternoon, though."
~~~
Mireya walked with her hands tucked into the pockets of her coat and her hair loose against the collar, her pace slow through the foot traffic on the sidewalk. The buildings ran tall on both sides of the block, glass faces catching the afternoon sun at angles that threw squares of light onto the pavement. A man pushed a cart of folded boxes past her on the curb. Two women in matching athleisure stepped out of a coffee shop, talking over each other as they cut across her path toward a crosswalk. Camila was with Caine and Sara for the afternoon, and Mireya had the city to herself.
The trip she'd taken here with Trell sat in her memory as a set of rooms and a rental car and a hotel window. A couple of days, in and out, the city flashing past the passenger side and then gone when the plane lifted. That LA had belonged to somebody else. This one was different. Caine had an address here. Even this early in his time here, the permanency of it pushed up through her shoes and made her something other than a tourist in his city.
Her eyes moved across the storefronts. A brunch spot with a line out the door, a gallery with one canvas in the window, a salon with its curtain half drawn. She passed a boutique and kept walking, then stopped a few steps past it, turned, and stepped back. The window display held two mannequins in silk and a third in something fitted and cream, the pieces arranged against a pale backdrop with a single gold placard at the base. Mireya read the name on the placard, looked through the glass at the inside of the store, and pushed through the door.
A soft chime sounded above her head. The interior opened up wide, racks spaced far apart, the floor a pale herringbone catching the track lighting from above. The air smelled of sandalwood under a lighter floral. A single employee sat behind a counter at the back, her phone tilted against a coffee cup, her chin resting on her palm. The pieces on the racks had space around them, each one given room to be looked at. Higher-end, not couture, but a long step above stuff in the Lakeside.
Her fingers ran along the fabric of a dress on the first rack she reached. Silk, cool under her fingertips, the weight of it sliding heavy against the hanger.
The employee looked up from her phone. "Hey, welcome in."
"Hey," Mireya said, her eyes staying on the rack. She moved her hand to the price tag at the collar and turned it between her fingers. Four digits. She read the number and released the tag and moved to the next dress. Three digits on that one, high. She turned it over and set the tag back flat.
Caine threw a football. That was the part she kept catching on. He threw a football and now there were hundreds of stores like this one within walking distance of where he slept, stores he could walk into and buy the whole front display. She'd walked into plenty of them too. Paid in cash she'd peeled off a roll she'd earned on her back, on her knees, pressed up against a wall for a man who'd flown in from Houston for a weekend. The bitterness came back warm and familiar behind her ribs. She pressed it down with her thumb moving to another tag, her mouth holding its shape.
She pulled a dress off the rack and held it up in front of her, gripping it by the shoulders and letting it fall against her body, measuring the hem against the line of her thigh. It fell about right. Nothing that would drag past mid-thigh.
The employee came around the counter and walked over, her heels soft on the herringbone. "You'd look great in that. The color would really look good against your skin."
"You think so?"
"Yeah, for sure." The girl smiled, her eyes moving from the dress to Mireya's face. "Anything specific you're looking for?"
Mireya shook her head. "Just doing some retail therapy."
"I hear that." The employee tilted her head, one eyebrow lifting. "Are we going with just buy something retail therapy? Or buy a lot of things retail therapy?"
Mireya looked at the dress again, turned it once to see the back, and draped it over her arm. "Buy a lot of expensive things retail therapy."
The employee smiled wider. "Let me show you these new pieces we just got in then."
~~~
Caine sat on the sectional with his feet kicked up on the ottoman, one arm stretched along the back of the cushion, his phone face down on his thigh. Sara sat beside him with her legs tucked to the side and a mug of coffee balanced between her hands, the coffee long gone cold.
The glass wall across from them held the whole shape of the afternoon sky, pale blue over the downtown rooftops, clouds stretched thin in a line toward the ocean. Camila stood at the window with her nose almost on the glass, her palms flat against the pane, her weight rocking forward onto her toes whenever something moved through her view. An hour of this, maybe more, her attention locked on the sky. A plane had crossed earlier. Then another. Then a helicopter banking low toward the interstate. Her breath fogged small circles on the glass, and she kept her eyes fixed past them.
Sara watched her for a beat. "You should take her down to the beach later."
Caine nodded, his hand coming up to smooth the back of his neck. "Yeah, probably going to take her to Manhattan Beach. Since they be having more yachts and shit out there."
"She does love them boats."
Caine looked over his shoulder toward the window. Camila had both hands splayed wide now, tracking something low along the skyline, her eyes locked on the sky past the glass. He turned back to Sara and kept his voice low.
"¿Te lo dijo Mireya?"
Sara's eyebrow lifted. "¿Qué me dices?"
"I'm guessing she didn't if you don't know what I'm talking about," Caine said, the Spanish low enough that it stayed on the couch.
Sara shook her head, her thumb pressing into the handle of the mug. "No, and it ain't your business to tell me either. If she wants me to know something, she knows where to find me."
Caine shook his head. "She's on some other shit lately. For the last couple of months, during the championship game, Christmas, when we went on the visits, after when I was in New Orleans. Even fucking now." He pointed over his shoulder at the window without looking back. "Even Camila notices something is off about her."
Sara's eyes moved to his face and held there. "You using your daughter to spy on her mother?"
Caine waved the question off with his hand. "No. Camila just asked me why Mireya seems sad. And if it was because I didn't come home." His hand settled back on his thigh. "I ain't know what to say because Mireya is mad that I came out here but she the one told me not to go back to Louisiana."
Sara sighed. She set the mug down on the coaster on the coffee table and turned more of her body toward him, one knee sliding up onto the cushion. "Something happened to her a couple months ago. I don't know what it was and I don't want you going question her. You can see it in her eyes."
"That don't explain why she always talking crazy to me."
"Yes, it does." Sara's hand came to rest on his forearm, the pressure light. "She's broken. And she may never tell us why. And you just have to accept that."
Caine sighed and shook his head. He let his eyes drop to the floor between his feet, to the edge of the rug where it met the hardwood. His jaw worked once and then stilled.
"Daddy, look at the helicopter!" Camila's voice carried across the room, bright and loud, her words pitched high to pull his eyes onto whatever she was seeing.
Caine pushed up from the couch. He crossed the living room to her and crouched down beside her at the glass. Camila was still pointing, her arm extended, her finger pressed against the pane.
"That one?" Caine followed her finger out into the sky, his head tilting beside hers. "That looks like a big bug. Un mosquito gigante."
Camila's giggle broke out hard, her whole body shaking with it. She swatted at his shoulder with her free hand. "You silly, daddy. That's a helicopter!"
Caine laughed. "My bad, my bad."
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Captain Canada
- Posts: 7340
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
American Sun
I know she's inherently broken now and that's why she is the way that she is, but Mireya being so butthurt about Caine being a successful athlete rubs me the wrong way
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djp73
- Posts: 12802
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 13:42
American Sun
Mireya es una mula terca
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redsox907
- Posts: 5534
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
American Sun
Mireya gonna turn into her mother with less morals at this point. Just a bitt ol ho
Sena in therapy hmm
Sena in therapy hmm
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Soapy
- Posts: 15581
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 18:42
American Sun
Nigga snatched my therapy chain cuz he actually goes to therapy 
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 16105
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
People can't be upset about their circumstances around here.Captain Canada wrote: ↑16 Apr 2026, 10:42I know she's inherently broken now and that's why she is the way that she is, but Mireya being so butthurt about Caine being a successful athlete rubs me the wrong way
Es verdad
How we know Maria wasn't popping that pussy back in Guadalajara?
Even wrote that update hours after my bi-weekly therapy sesh
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 16105
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 16105
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47