American Sun

[Caesar]

Gradus Intus

Saul sat at the kitchen table with his phone flat in front of him, one hand on the screen and the other resting on the edge of the table where his fingers tapped a slow beat against the wood. Ava stood at the stove with Angel's bottle in a pot of water, her hand on the handle, watching the surface for the first bubbles to break.

Ava's mother walked into the kitchen from the hallway, her purse already on her shoulder and her keys in her hand. She opened her mouth and started to say something to Ava, then looked over at Saul sitting at the table. Her mouth closed. She shook her head once, a small tight motion, and turned and walked out of the kitchen toward the front door. The door opened and shut behind her, the latch catching firm.

Ava looked out of the window above the sink as her mother crossed the yard toward her car, watching her get in and pull the door shut and back out of the driveway. The car straightened on the road and drove off, the sound of the engine thinning until it folded into the distance.

Saul looked up from his phone. "She's gonna throw me out soon."

Ava shook her head, her hand still on the pot handle, her eyes coming back from the window to the stove. "It doesn't matter if she does. She'd rather me not look like a single mama so I think you're pretty safe."

Saul shook his head and looked back down at his phone, his thumb moving across the screen in slow swipes as he scrolled through a list of apprenticeship programs. Trade schools, union programs, entry-level positions that wanted experience he didn't have. He stopped on one listing and read it before swiping past it.

"Do you know anyone who knows anything about being a welder or a plumber or some shit?" he asked.

Ava lifted the bottle out of the pot with two fingers on the cap, steam curling off the plastic, and set it on the counter to cool. "My friend Heather's boyfriend is a welder."

Saul looked up again. "He make good money?"

Ava shrugged, reaching for a dish towel to dry the bottom of the bottle where the water still clung. "He's got an apartment and just bought a truck. Buys Heather all kinds of stuff."

Saul's thumb stopped moving on the screen. He sat with that for a second, turning it over, measuring it against the listings he'd been scrolling through for the last half hour that all wanted certifications or degrees or years of experience before they'd let you in the door. "I think I'm gonna look into one of these trades."

Ava walked over to the bassinet near the edge of the kitchen where Angel lay on his back, his fists up by his ears, mouth working at nothing. She slid her hands under him and lifted, bringing him up against her chest in one careful motion, his head settling into the crook of her neck as his body curled toward the warmth of her. She turned back toward the counter where the bottle waited.

"That would be better than thinking you were going to get rich from selling weed," she said.

Saul's jaw tightened. "Yeah, I know. You don't have to keep reminding me that was stupid."

Ava picked up the bottle and tested the temperature on the inside of her wrist, tilting it until a drop ran across her skin. She wiped it with her thumb and adjusted Angel in her arms, shifting him from her shoulder down into the bend of her elbow so his face was turned up toward her. "Yes, I do, because it was stupid and you need to remember that it was."

"Okay, okay," Saul said.

She walked over to the table and pulled the chair out across from him with her foot, the legs scraping against the tile, and sat down with Angel cradled in her arm, bringing the bottle to his mouth. He found the nipple and latched, his jaw working in quick, steady pulls, one hand pressing against the side of the bottle and the other curled against Ava's chest.

"I can talk to Pat, Heather's boyfriend, if you want," Ava said, watching Angel's face as he ate. "See what you need to do to be a welder."

Saul nodded. "Yeah, that's cool."

Ava nodded back, her chin dipping once as Angel's pulls slowed and then picked up again, his eyes half open and unfocused, fixed somewhere past her shoulder. She adjusted the angle of the bottle and settled deeper into the chair, her free hand coming to rest on Angel's stomach where his shirt had ridden up, her palm covering the warm skin there.

Saul watched the two of them for a moment, Ava's fingers spread across their son's belly, Angel's mouth still working at the bottle. Then he looked back down at his phone and started scrolling through the listings again, slower this time, his thumb stopping on each one long enough to read it through before moving on.

~~~

Mireya brought the latte to her mouth, the cup warm against her fingers where the cardboard sleeve had slid down and took a sip as Frankie leaned forward across the table with both elbows planted and her eyes locked on Mireya's face. The table sat tucked near the window where the sun came through at an angle that caught the steam rising off their drinks and turned it gold for a second before it disappeared. Sena sat with her back against the wall, one hand around her own cup, the other resting in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankle under the table.

"You text Javon back?" Frankie asked.

Mireya set the cup down and turned it once on the table, the cardboard sleeve catching on the surface. "Text him back about what?"

Frankie sucked her teeth. "Girl, whatever the fuck he be texting you about so he can stop bothering me in class."

Sena's mouth pulled at one corner. "Sounds thirsty."

Mireya nodded. "Oh, yeah. Definitely. I told his ass that I'm busy and don't have time to be playing phone tag."

"And of course, he can't take no for an answer," Sena said.

Frankie held up a finger toward Sena, her eyes still on Mireya. "I ain't hear not one no in what she just said."

Mireya shook her head. "I didn't. Didn't say no to him either. Motherfucker just keeps asking to come to my apartment because of his roommates and I ain't letting his ass in my apartment."

Frankie tilted her head, one eyebrow climbing, her straw still between her teeth. "You saying that like he care if you got dirty draws on the floor when he just trying to dig you out."

"Nothing is dirty about my house," Mireya said, her voice flat.

Sena nodded, her cup halfway to her lips, a small smile forming around the rim before she took a sip. "She does keep it pretty clean for someone with a four-year-old."

Mireya gestured at Sena with her open hand, palm up. "See, from an impartial source."

Frankie shook her head, her hair shifting across her shoulders, and picked up her own drink, taking a long pull through the straw before she set it back down and pressed her palm flat on the table.

"Well, can you just please text that nigga back so he can stop being all up in my face talking about 'Frankie, what your girl on? What your girl on?'" She scrunched her face up, her voice pitching higher in the impression, her neck moving side to side before she dropped it back flat. "Like ew."

Mireya picked up her phone from the table and held it up, the screen facing Frankie, her thumb hovering over the lock button. "I'll text him right now just so you can be spared." She paused, mouth curving as she looked at Frankie over the top of the phone. "Or you can just give him some pussy so he's satisfied."

Frankie's hand came up. "Bitch, please. He don't like Black women. You can send Sena his way if you don't want him."

Sena held both hands up, palms out, her shoulders lifting toward her ears. "I'm good."

Mireya shook her head and looked down at her phone, unlocking the screen and pulling up her messages. She scrolled down through the threads with her thumb looking for Javon's name. Before she reached it, a new text slid in at the top of the screen.

Alejandra. "Mexicana, you want to make some money?"

Mireya's thumb stopped scrolling. She tapped the message open and typed back with both thumbs, the keys clicking soft against the screen protector. "Yeah. Always."

The response came in seconds. "It's a solo thing. I can't do it. You want it? Two businessmen types."

Mireya read it, Frankie and Sena still talking across the table about something she let pass without tracking. She typed back. "Yeah, send me the info."

Three money emojis appeared, and then a second text underneath with an address and a phone number. Mireya liked the message with a double tap, then scrolled back down through her threads until she found Javon's name. She tapped it open, looked at his last three unanswered texts stacked on top of each other, each one a variation of the same ask, and typed. "Wyd?"

She hit send and put the phone face down on the table, leaning forward on her elbows, hands folding together in front of her cup.

Frankie stared at her across the table, chin resting on her palm now, eyes narrowed with amusement. "Took you so long I thought you were over there telling that boy sweet nothings."

Mireya rolled her eyes as Frankie's laugh broke open across the table, Frankie's hand slapping the surface once, and Sena shook her head beside her, the straw still between her lips, her shoulders moving with a breath that was almost a laugh but stayed behind her teeth.

~~~

Laney sat in the plastic chair with her legs crossed and her phone in both hands, her thumbs moving in short swipes across the screen. Tommy sat one chair over with the empty seat between them, his own phone held low near his thigh, scrolling with his thumb while his other hand rested flat on the armrest. The hallway smelled of floor wax and the sour edge of cafeteria food that had soaked into the cinder block years ago. Children's artwork hung in rows above their heads, construction paper and glitter and crooked letters spelling names. A fluorescent tube at the far end of the hall buzzed and flickered once before holding steady, casting a flat, cold light across the tile floor and the row of parents waiting in their chairs.

Other parents sat scattered along the hallway in the same plastic chairs, some talking low to each other, some on their phones. A couple sat three chairs down from Tommy, leaning toward each other, the woman's hand on the man's knee as they spoke about something that made her smile and him shake his head.

Laney kept her eyes on her screen. "You gonna have to go to the other side the school to meet with Braxton's math teacher."

Tommy's thumb stopped moving on his phone for a second, then started again. "What are you here for?"

"To meet with Knox's science teacher 'cause you don't know him," Laney said.

Tommy looked over at her, his head turning slow, his eyes finding the side of her face where the hallway light caught the edge of her jaw. "Sounds like you're trying to find the next man you're going to fuck behind my back."

Laney's thumb paused on her screen. Her eyes cut sideways toward the couple three chairs down, measuring their faces for a reaction, looking for the tightening of a mouth or the turning of a head. The woman said something to the man and he laughed, his hand coming up to scratch the back of his neck, the two of them still inside their own conversation without any sign that Tommy's words had reached them.

Laney looked back at her phone. "No, I'm sendin' you to go find another woman who wants to put up with your fuckin' shit."

Tommy's mouth flattened into a line, his jaw shifting once before the words came out level and cold, his eyes still on her profile. "At least I know she won't be a stupid fucking bitch like you."

Laney's thumb pressed hard enough against the screen that the page she was on scrolled past where she meant to stop. She corrected it with a quick swipe, her grip tightening on the phone until the case dug into her palm and kept her voice at the same low pitch it had been in, aimed at him and not at the hallway. "You sure know how to get on my motherfuckin' nerves."

"The feeling's mutual," Tommy said, and looked back down at his phone.

They sat there with the empty chair holding the distance between them, their thumbs moving on their screens in separate rhythms, the fluorescent lights humming overhead and the voices of other parents filling the hallway around them. Down the hall, a door opened and another set of parents stood and walked into a classroom. The couple three chairs down kept talking, kept smiling, the woman's thumb rubbing a circle on the man's knee.

A door opened beside them. A man stepped out of the classroom, young, glasses pushed up on his forehead, a folder in one hand. He looked down at a clipboard balanced on his forearm and then up at them.

"Mr. and Mrs. Matthews?" he said. "Y'all are up."

Laney stood first, dropping her phone into her purse and stepping in front of Tommy before he had fully straightened from his chair. She crossed the short distance to the teacher with her hand already extended, her smile arriving on her face. Tommy raised an eyebrow behind her, his jaw tightening around whatever he wanted to say, and let it go. He followed her toward the teacher, his hand coming out to shake the man's a beat after Laney's had already released it, and the two of them walked into the classroom together.

~~~

Trell stood in the center of the traphouse with all three phones in his hands, one screen lit and the other two darkt. Ant leaned against the wall to his right with his arms crossed over his chest, chin dipped, eyes moving between the men in the room. Yola sat backwards in a folding chair with his forearms stacked across the backrest, and Scotty stood beside him with one hand resting on the table where a pistol lay next to a bag of chips someone had torn open and abandoned. Shad sat on the edge of the couch with his knees apart and his hands pressed together between them. Dez stood near the door, shoulders against the frame, hands in the front pocket of his hoodie.

Trell looked at Ant. "You find out where that nigga other baby mama stay yet?"

Ant shifted his weight against the wall, one shoulder rolling forward. "Not yet. I found a couple niggas up there who used to be cliqued up with him and now they fuck with some other niggas down the way. They finding me the lo."

Trell nodded, scratching his chin with the hand holding the dark phones, the stubble scraping under his nails. He looked down at the lit screen, read something, then checked the other phone and thumbed it awake before letting both screens go dark again.

Dez pulled one hand from his hoodie pocket and rubbed the back of his neck. "Why we trying to find his baby mamas?"

Yola leaned forward on the chair, the metal creaking under the shift. "To snatch them hoes up so that nigga got come to the city to find them."

"Exactly," Trell said.

Shad looked from Yola to Trell and then to Ant, his hands pressing harder together between his knees, his jaw working once before he spoke. "Ain't no other way to get to him? We know where he live, right?"

Scotty reached over and slapped his hand onto the back of Shad's neck, his fingers gripping the muscle there and giving it a rough shake. "Don't worry about it, lil' brudda. This gonna put some hair on your nuts. Pop your cherry."

Dez's hand dropped from his neck back into his hoodie pocket. "That just seems like the kind of shit that gonna make this spin out of control."

Ant's head came up off his chest and his eyes locked onto Dez, his arms uncrossing and falling to his sides. "Shut your bitch ass up, nigga. They came at us. They whole fucking families is fair fucking game." His voice stayed flat. "If I want to put their grandma in the ground, I'm gonna put their fucking grandma in the ground."

Yola nodded. "Yep."

Dez looked past Ant to Trell, his chin lifting. "You not worried about them trying to do the same shit to you? Coming down here and grabbing Mireya?"

Trell's jaw tightened. He slid the phones into his pockets, freeing his hands, and took a step toward Dez. "Nigga, I'm not trying to hear this shit right now. We at motherfucking war, nigga."

Ant reached behind his back, his hand finding the grip of his pistol where it sat tucked in his waistband, his fingers curling around it and holding there. Yola and Scotty both nodded, Yola's slow and deliberate, Scotty's sharper, a single dip of his chin.

Dez held his ground near the door, his eyes on Trell's face, his hands still buried in the hoodie. "That's a crazy way to show you care about the chick you be having around all this shit. I keep telling you—"

Trell closed the distance in one stride and drove his fist into Dez's throat. The punch landed center, knuckles against cartilage, and Dez folded forward with a choked sound that cut off before it finished, his hands flying from his hoodie to his neck as his knees buckled and he crumpled to the floor. He hit the linoleum on his side, both hands wrapped around his throat, mouth open, pulling air in short, rasping gulps.

Yola shook his head from the chair. Scotty snorted a laugh, the sound punching out through his nose. Shad stared at Dez on the floor, his hands still pressed between his knees, his body rigid on the edge of the couch.

Dez rolled to his knees, one hand still on his throat, the other pressing flat against the floor to push himself up. He got his feet under him and stood, swaying once before he steadied, his eyes red and wet, his breath still coming in shallow, ragged pulls through his open mouth.

Trell stood close enough that Dez had to look up to meet his eyes. "If you say some shit that ain't you down to go catch a hat then I'm gonna shoot your fucking ass right now, nigga."

Dez stared at him. His hand dropped from his throat to his side, his fingers opening and closing once. He shook his head, slow, and kept his mouth shut.

Trell held his gaze for another second, then turned his back on him and looked at Ant.

"Find where that bitch live."

~~~

Caine held his empty glass up over the bar and caught the bartender's eye with a short gesture, two fingers lifting off the rim. The bar sat half full for a weeknight, country music low enough from the jukebox that conversations carried across the room, pool balls cracking in the back where a couple of guys in ball caps circled the table. The bartender nodded from down the rail where he was wiping a pint glass dry and walked over, pulling the whiskey bottle off the shelf behind him and pouring a fresh measure into Caine's glass without asking what he wanted. The amber filled the bottom and settled, catching the neon from the sign in the window. Caine set the glass back on the bar.

"Appreciate it, bruh," Caine said.

The bartender tapped the bar once with his knuckles. "Can't have the town's superstar having an empty glass.”

He capped the bottle, set it back on the rail, and moved down to the other end where a couple waited with their hands up.

Dillon sat on the stool to Caine's left, his beer resting between both palms on the bar, condensation running down the glass and pooling at the base. He turned his head toward Jaylen on the other side of Caine and said, "Every time I'm around this motherfucker and someone say some shit like that, I think about the fact I could've transferred and been the king in some place like Loman, Mississippi."

Jaylen leaned forward on his elbows, his own glass halfway gone, his jaw resting in one hand. "But then you'd be in fucking Loman, Mississippi."

Caine picked up his glass and took a slow sip, the whiskey sitting warm on his tongue for a second before he swallowed and set it back down. "Anywhere in Mississippi is a no for me. These last two years about the limit of me living somewhere I gotta think that some of these motherfuckers might put me in a tree."

Jaylen straightened on his stool and pointed at Caine with the hand that had been holding his chin. "You wouldn't have to worry about that shit if you would stop fucking everybody girlfriend and everybody daughter."

Caine's mouth pulled up at one corner. "You saying that shit like these hoes don't be throwing themselves at me. If you playing baseball and someone throw you a 72 mile per hour pitch down the middle of the plate, you gonna crack that shit, right?"

Dillon rotated his beer glass a quarter turn on the bar, watching the foam slide inside. "Some of them you can just watch pass by."

"I do," Caine said. "Whenever it's an ugly or fat bitch. I send her y'all way. My guy Jaylen love them chunky bitches."

Jaylen sucked his teeth, the sound cutting through the noise from the jukebox playing at the far end of the bar. "I ain't never hit nothing over 150."

Caine lifted his glass again and held it near his mouth, looking at Jaylen over the rim. "150 in whatever that shit is that the Europeans use."

Dillon's laugh broke open first, his shoulders folding forward over the bar, his beer sloshing against the glass when his elbow hit it, and Jaylen followed a second later, shaking his head even as the laughter forced its way out of him before he picked up his drink and took a pull to cover the grin he gave up trying to kill.

Dillon took a breath that pulled the last of the laughter out of his chest and looked at Caine, the amusement still sitting in his face but the tone shifting underneath it as he turned his beer glass one more time on the wet bar. "So, what your agent saying about the schools that's looking at you?"

Caine set his whiskey down and rested both forearms on the edge of the bar, his fingers lacing together around the base of the glass. "He just keep telling me it's all the P4 schools basically. Except Georgia."

Jaylen's head turned. "Why the fuck Georgia don't want you?"

"They got that Keys dude," Caine said. "Don't think they need someone else."

Dillon shook his head, his thumb dragging through the condensation ring his glass had left on the bar. "Fuck all that shit. I know them motherfuckers talking stupid money."

Jaylen leaned back on his stool, one arm draping over the backrest of the empty seat beside him. "Stupid money to put that nigga in a 360 deal of death."

Caine snorted a laugh. "I got six figures here so seven definitely."

Jaylen's eyebrows climbed. "Fuck is you gonna do with millions of dollars? You don't need that shit."

Caine looked at him, his glass in one hand. "Fuck you mean I don't need that shit? Bitch, we all need millions of dollars."

Jaylen and Dillon both laughed, Dillon reaching for his beer and Jaylen grabbing his glass off the bar with both hands, and the three of them lifted their drinks and knocked them back together, the glasses hitting the wood in a ragged line of thuds as they set them down empty.

[Soapy]

Boy tryna run sympathy gimmick with the DV shit but that Mireya pack on the way and we will be there no matter what

[Caesar]

Boy tryna run sympathy gimmick with the DV shit but that Mireya pack on the way and we will be there no matter what

An obsession at this point

[Caesar]

Ex Malis Eligere

Ramon threw the duffel bag onto his shoulder and walked out of Nina's, pulling the front door shut behind him with his free hand. He crossed the yard toward his car where it sat parked at the curb, the trunk already popped. He swung the bag off his shoulder and dropped it into the trunk, pushing it toward the back so it sat flat against the spare tire, then reached up for the lid.

Nina's car turned onto the block before he could pull it down. She slowed as she came up alongside him and parked beside his car. The engine cut off and her door opened and she stepped out with her work bag over one shoulder, lanyard still around her neck from the community center, keys in her hand. She looked at the open trunk and the duffel bag sitting inside it.

"Going somewhere?" she asked.

Ramon nodded, one hand still on the trunk lid. "Yeah, I gotta go to Georgia."

"With Tyree?" Nina asked.

"Nah, solo. Tyree got some shit he gotta do apparently."

Nina shifted her bag higher on her shoulder, her keys jangling against each other as her hand tightened around them. "I don't think that's smart."

Ramon shrugged, his fingers drumming once against the edge of the trunk. "Ain't nothing I ain't done before."

Nina stared at him for a moment, her eyes moving from his face to the bag in the trunk and back.

"Asia called me today," she said.

Ramon pulled the trunk lid down until it caught, the lock clicking into place, and leaned back against the car with his arms folded across his chest, his ankles crossing. "About what?"

"What do you mean about what?" Nina said, her voice climbing a half step. "She wanted to let me know that she's making progress and is gonna finish the program on time."

Ramon's eyebrows lifted. He rubbed the heel of his hand across his jaw. "Damn, that's crazy. I ain't expect her to do it this time. Thought it would've been like all the other times."

Nina rolled her eyes. "You know if you wanted to help her, you'd probably stop selling drugs. Y'all are the only family each other got so if her support system got the thing that she's addicted to,"

Ramon waved the comment off with one hand, the gesture loose and dismissive, his arm dropping back across his chest. "I ain't never sold nothing to her so if she get back on that shit that's on her. And if she get it from me, that mean she stole it so who really in the wrong?"

Nina took a step closer to him, her bag swinging once on her shoulder before it settled. Her hand came up and pressed flat against her own chest, the lanyard from the community center bunching under her fingers. "You, nigga, for even having it around. You ever thought that it don't make no sense for you to do what you do while your sister trying to get clean and while I'm in the community trying to get y'all thrown in jail."

Ramon shrugged, his back still against the trunk, his eyes on her face, his expression carrying the same steady blankness. "One thing ain't got nothing to do with the other."

Nina sucked her teeth. She adjusted the strap on her shoulder with a rough pull, the bag shifting against her hip. "You should think about that while you driving to Atlanta."

Ramon held her stare. His mouth opened a fraction, the start of something forming behind his teeth, and then it closed again. He kept his arms folded and his weight against the car and watched her turn and walk up the yard toward the front door, her bag bouncing against her hip with each step, her keys already finding the lock before she reached it. The door opened and she stepped inside and pulled it shut behind her.

Ramon stood there with his back against the trunk, looking at the closed door, the yard between them empty now, the lawnmower down the street still grinding through whatever patch it was working on. He breathed out through his nose and pushed off the car, walking around to the driver’s side and get in. He pulled his seatbelt across his chest, adjusted the rearview mirror with two fingers, turned the key in the ignition.

~~~

Caine swung into the parking lot across from his apartment and pulled into his spot, cutting the engine and stepping out with his keys already in his hand. He shut the door and stood beside the car for a few seconds, rolling his shoulders once to loosen them, and then Laney's SUV turned into the lot and pulled into the spot beside him.

She cut the engine and got out, her purse over one shoulder, sunglasses pushed up on top of her head. She locked the SUV with the fob and the lights flashed once.

"Went with the fertility treatment excuse again today?" Caine asked.

Laney came around the back of her SUV and fell into step beside him. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Threw in some extra testin' today so I could be gone for hours. Who knows?"

"You either gonna break your mama heart or you gonna have Tommy thinking his swimmers ain't swimming," Caine said.

Laney started walking toward his door, her heels clicking on the pavement and then going soft when she hit the sidewalk. "His swimmers ain't swimmin' 'cause he ain't gonna be fuckin' me. He can try to convince Claire to knock her up."

Caine snorted a laugh. "Imagine that shitshow."

He stepped around her when they reached the door, his key finding the lock, and pushed it open with his shoulder, holding it wide so she could walk through first. She passed him close enough that her arm brushed his chest, the smell of her perfume and the leather of her purse strap mixing with the warmer air coming from inside the apartment.

Caine closed the door behind them. He kicked his shoes off by the entrance, both of them landing crooked on the tile, and reached down to line them up flush with the grout line, the toes even, the heels touching the wall. He straightened and turned to find Laney already pulling her dress over her head in one smooth motion, the fabric whispering up her body and off her arms. She folded it twice, edges meeting clean, and laid it across the back of the chair by the kitchen table, smoothing it once with her palm so it sat flat. She stepped out of her heels and lined them up under the chair.

She looked back at him over her shoulder, standing in her underwear in the middle of his living room with the afternoon light from the window laying a warm band across her collarbone. "You comin'?"

Caine laughed. "Hopefully."

Laney shook her head, the corner of her mouth pulling up, and turned toward the hallway. Caine followed, pulling his hoodie over his head as he walked, the fabric catching on his dreads before he tugged it free and tossed it onto the couch in passing. He unbuttoned his jeans in the hallway and stepped out of them, leaving them where they fell, and walked into the bedroom behind her.

Laney had already settled onto the bed, lying on her side facing the wall, her knees drawn up enough that her body formed a loose curve against the sheets. She reached back and patted the mattress behind her once.

"Just hold me for a bit," she said. "We ain't in no rush."

"Alright," Caine said.

He got in behind her, the mattress dipping under his weight, and pulled her back into his chest. His arm slid under her head, the other wrapping around her stomach, his palm resting flat against her skin where her bra ended and her ribs began. She settled into him, her back warm against his chest, her breathing already slowing as the tension in her shoulders loosened and her weight shifted fully into him.

"Almost a month left," Laney said.

"Might be two," Caine said, his chin resting on the crown of her head, his thumb moving once across her stomach and then holding still. "Playoff game gonna be in the middle of December."

Laney pressed back into him, her body fitting tighter against his, and laid her arm over his on her stomach. Her fingers found his and threaded through them, lacing together, her smaller hand pulling his closer against her skin.

"Guess I better be hopin' that y'all get to the championship so you're here through January," she said.

"You ain't hoping we get to the championship because you a fan?" Caine asked.

"Ain't nothin' wrong with havin' plenty reasons for somethin'," Laney said. "And ain't nothin' wrong with bein' realistic."

Caine shook his head against the pillow, his dreads shifting across the cotton. "You know I could always swing by out here even after I transfer. Little sneaky links."

"Yeah, maybe so," Laney said.

Her eyes closed. Her fingers loosened around his but held their position, the lacing going slack as her body settled heavier against the mattress. Her breathing evened out in slow, deepening pulls, her ribs expanding and contracting under his arm in a rhythm that stretched longer with each cycle until it held steady and her weight went still against him.

Caine stayed where he was, his arm around her, his hand in hers. He hooked his foot under the edge of the covers bunched at the bottom of the bed and flipped them up far enough that he could reach down and grab the fabric. He pulled the covers up over both of them in one motion, the sheet and comforter settling across their bodies, and slid his hand back into hers.

~~~

Mireya lay in the tub with the water up to her collarbones, her hair twisted and pinned on top of her head to keep it dry, her arms resting along the porcelain edges on either side. The heat pressed into her muscles and sat there, working at the soreness in her calves and her lower back and the tops of her feet where the heels had been digging in for hours. Steam hung thick in the air above the water, fogging the mirror over the vanity and beading along the tile behind her head.

The house held its own sounds around her, the heat cycling through the vents and the faint tick of something settling in the walls, and she let them blur together with the heat until her breathing slowed and her jaw loosened.

The front door opened.

Her eyes came open. Her body stilled in the water, the surface going flat around her as she stopped breathing for a beat and listened. Footsteps crossed the hardwood in the front room, steady and unhurried, the weight of them familiar enough that she tracked them through the hall without lifting her head. They came closer, passing the bedroom doorway and continuing toward the bathroom.

She looked over her shoulder just as Trell stepped through the open door. He filled the frame for a second, his jacket still on, one hand in his pocket and the other holding his phones, his eyes finding her in the tub before the rest of him came into the room.

Her shoulders dropped back against the porcelain and she closed her eyes again, her head settling into the curve of the tub's edge, her body releasing whatever tension had gathered in the seconds between the door opening and his face appearing.

Trell slid his phone into his pocket and walked over to the tub. He pushed the sleeve of his jacket up past his elbow with his other hand, the fabric bunching at his bicep, and reached down. His fingers found the side of her neck first, his palm warm and dry against her wet skin, and then he dragged his hand down in a slow, deliberate line across her collarbone and over the curve of her chest, his fingers spreading as they moved across her stomach and into the water. His hand continued along the inside of her thigh, following the length of it until he reached her ankle. He wrapped his fingers around it and lifted, pulling her foot up out of the water and setting it on the edge of the tub, the porcelain cool and smooth against her heel. Water ran down her calf and pooled where it met the rim.

Mireya opened her eyes and looked at him, her head still resting against the back of the tub. "I was comfortable."

Trell straightened and walked over to the vanity, catching his reflection as he pulled his jacket off and then the hoodie underneath it, the two of them peeling apart as he tugged them over his head in one motion. He tossed them toward the laundry basket in the corner, the fabric landing half in and half draped over the side. "You get comfortable however I put you."

Mireya rolled her eyes, but her foot stayed where he'd placed it on the rim of the tub. She shifted her leg a fraction, bending her knee enough that the position sat more naturally against the porcelain, her toes pointing toward the ceiling.

Trell leaned forward on the vanity with both palms flat on the counter, his back to her, looking at her reflection in the fogged mirror. He wiped a streak clear with the side of his hand and found her eyes through the glass.

"Isn't this one of those weekends where you going see that lame ass fuck nigga in Georgia?" he asked.

Mireya nodded, her chin dipping once against the surface of the water. "Yeah, it's the second to last home game."

Trell held her eyes in the mirror. "You ain't going."

"What do you mean?" Mireya asked.

Trell pushed off the vanity and turned around, walking back toward the tub. He hooked the ottoman near the door with his foot and dragged it across the tile until it sat beside the tub. He dropped down onto it, his knees wide, his elbows coming to rest on the rim of the tub on either side of her raised leg.

"I want you here in New Orleans this weekend," he said. "I ain't been spending too much time with you with this shit with Meechie going on."

He looked at her, his face close now, the steam from the water rising between them, his eyes moving over her face in a slow pass that started at her mouth and ended at her eyes.

"You gonna argue with me?" he asked. "Say you gotta go? Throw in some school shit you gotta do?"

Mireya shook her head against the porcelain, her wet hair shifting where it was pinned, a strand pulling loose and falling against her neck. "No. I'll let my daughter's grandmother know so she can take her out there."

Trell smiled, the expression opening slow across his face, and reached out with one hand to put it on the side of her neck, his thumb pressing into the hollow beneath her ear, his fingers spreading across the back of her head. He pulled her toward him, her body sliding forward in the tub, water sloshing against the sides, and kissed her. His mouth was firm and unhurried against hers, holding there for a few seconds before he pulled back just far enough to look at her face again.

He reached his other hand into the water and found her opposite ankle, lifting it and setting her leg on the other side of the tub, the porcelain catching behind her knee as the water shifted around her opened body. "That's my bitch."

Mireya closed her eyes and let her head rest back against the edge of the tub, the porcelain pressing into the base of her skull, her arms settling loose along the rim on either side as his hand went back into the water.

~~~

Kayjuan sat in the driver's seat of the Tahoe with a box of chicken wings open on his lap, grease already darkening the cardboard at the corners where the sauce had soaked through. Maine had his own box balanced on the center console between them, lid propped open, a bone stripped clean pinched between his fingers as he sucked the last of the meat off the knuckle end and tossed it back into the box. The stereo pushed bass through the seats and into their spines, the track rolling low and heavy with the windows cracked enough to let the heat out and the parking lot noise in.

Maine pulled another wing from the box and bit into it, talking around the meat. "Say, son, you gotta tell your girl to hook a nigga up with that lil' white bitch she fuck with."

Kayjuan tore a piece of cartilage free with his teeth and chewed it, jaw working. "Nigga, fuck you gonna do with her? That bitch lame as fuck."

Maine shook his head, sauce on his thumb, the bone turning between his fingers as he stripped it. "Her being lame ain't got shit to do with that bitch being able to suck dick and everybody know them quiet white hoes be eating that meat up like it's they last meal."

Kayjuan shook his head, his eyes on the windshield, watching a family cross the parking lot toward the restaurant entrance with a kid dragging behind them. "Whatever, nigga. I'll tell her."

A car swung into the drive-thru lane from the street, headlights cutting across the lot as it turned and slowed into the line. Maine looked up from his box, the wing still in his hand, and his chewing stopped. He pointed through the windshield with the hand holding the bone, sauce on his knuckle, the gesture sharp and fast.

"Ain't that that little Mexican nigga's car?"

Kayjuan looked up. His eyes locked on the car sitting in the drive-thru lane, two figures visible through the rear windshield, the glow from the menu board lighting up the outline of the driver's head and the passenger beside him. He set the box of wings on the dashboard and reached under his seat. His hand found the grip of the pistol and he pulled it out, the metal catching the orange light from the parking lot lamps as it cleared the seat rail.

Maine dropped the wing back into the box and reached behind his back, pulling his own gun from his waistband. He racked the slide, the action loud and sharp inside the cab, and looked at Kayjuan.

Both doors opened at once. They stepped out into the lot, shoes hitting the pavement in the same beat, and walked toward the drive-thru lane where the car sat idling in the line. Kayjuan came from the driver's side and Maine from the passenger's, the two of them closing the distance in long, even strides, their guns rising as they walked.

They opened fire at the same time. The reports cracked across the parking lot in a rapid, overlapping burst that swallowed every other sound, muzzle flash strobing against the restaurant walls and the cars parked nearby. Bullets punched into the back windshield of the car, the glass spiderwebbing from the first hit, then cracking apart and caving inward from the second and third, chunks of tempered glass scattering across the trunk and the asphalt behind the car. More rounds hit the body panels, sparking off metal, punching through the rear quarter panels and the tail lights.

Screams broke out from the restaurant entrance and the drive-thru window. Cars in the lot started moving, engines revving hard, tires screeching as drivers reversed out of their spots and swung toward the exits, headlights sweeping wild across the building and the fence line. A woman grabbed a child and ran crouched between two parked cars. Someone inside the restaurant hit the floor and the sound of trays clattering off tables carried through the open door.

The car in the drive-thru lurched forward, tires spinning once before they caught, and shot toward the exit at the far end of the lot. It made it halfway before it veered hard to the left, the front end crashing into the dumpster near the exit lane, metal buckling against metal with a deep, grinding crunch. The car's horn blared, a single sustained note that flattened out across the lot and held there, and in the distance sirens began to wail, the sound climbing up from somewhere south and building.

Kayjuan tapped Maine on the chest with the back of his gun hand, two quick hits. "We got that nigga. C'mon, let's go."

The two of them turned and ran back to the Tahoe, shoes slapping the pavement, guns still in their hands. Kayjuan threw himself into the driver's seat and Maine pulled the passenger door shut as the engine was already revving, the Tahoe jerking out of the spot and then surging forward across the lot toward the street, tires barking once against the curb as it bounced over and disappeared into traffic.

[Caesar]

Via Dolorum

Saul came through the hospital entrance at a run, his shoes squeaking against the polished floor as he cut around a nurse pushing an empty wheelchair and nearly clipped a man standing near the elevator bank with a coffee in his hand. The corridor split in two directions under signs he read without slowing, his eyes jumping from room numbers to arrows to the color-coded lines on the floor, his breath coming hard and fast through his mouth.

He passed a family sitting in chairs outside a closed door, a woman breastfeeding an infant near the vending machines, a janitor backing out of a room with a mop bucket, the fluorescent lights throwing a flat white wash over everything that made the whole building feel like it existed outside of time.

He found the waiting room at the end of the hall and slid to a stop in the doorway, his hand catching the frame to keep his momentum from carrying him past it. The room opened up in front of him, rows of cushioned chairs bolted to metal frames, a television mounted in the corner playing something with the volume too low to hear, magazines fanned across a table nobody was looking at.

Reba sat in the second row with her hands in her lap, her fingers twisted into a tissue that had already been shredded to strips, her eyes swollen and red and wet, her chest still moving with the uneven rhythm of someone who had been crying for hours and was only pausing because the body runs out of the ability to sustain it. Armando and Isabella sat beside her.

Armando had his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him, his jaw clenched, his eyes fixed on the floor between his shoes, moisture sitting in them that he held there through force of will alone. Isabella sat with her back rigid against the chair, her purse still on her shoulder, her face drawn tight in an expression that looked like it had been set when she first arrived and had not moved since.

Saul walked over to them. His face carried everything he couldn’t say, the muscles around his mouth pulling tight, his eyes wide and glassed, his throat working as he swallowed against the dryness that had been there since the phone call.

"How are they?" he asked.

Reba looked up at him. She shook her head, the motion small and exhausted, the tissue fragments falling from her fingers into her lap. "Trent's been in and out of surgery. I don't know. They haven't told me anything else."

Armando lifted his head from his hands. The tears sat bright in his eyes, held there, refusing to fall, the effort of containing them visible in the tension running through his jaw and his temples. "Javi, he's no good, mijo." His voice cracked on the last word and he pressed through it. "La bala le dio en el cuello."

Isabella dropped her head into her hands, her fingers pressing into her forehead, her shoulders curving inward as the sound that came out of her was small and airless, the sound of someone hearing the worst thing in the world for the second time and finding that it destroys just as completely as the first.

Saul's hands went to his hair. His fingers pushed into the roots and pulled, the skin at his temples stretching under the pressure, his grip tightening until the pain registered and he kept pulling anyway. His eyes moved off their faces and swept the waiting room, landing on an old man in a wheelchair parked near the window, on a woman pacing by the far wall with her phone pressed to her ear, on a teenage girl sitting alone with her hood up and her knees drawn to her chest, on anyone and anything that was not Reba's swollen eyes or Armando's held tears or Isabella's hands over her face.

"Saul, baby," Reba said. "Sit down."

Saul moved toward the chair beside her. His feet carried him there but his body stopped before he reached it, his weight shifting backward, his hand hovering over the armrest without touching it. He stood there for a second, his jaw locked, his eyes on the seat of the chair as if the act of sitting in it would make everything that had led to this room real and permanent and his.

Reba patted the cushion of the chair once and held her hand out toward him, her palm open, her fingers trembling from exhaustion and grief and the simple act of trying to comfort someone else when comfort had been stripped from her hours ago.

He looked at her hand. He looked at her face. He nodded, the motion small and directed at no one but himself, and sat down beside her. His back slid down against the cushion until his shoulders were below the backrest and his legs stretched out in front of him, his body folding into the chair in a slouch that took everything out of his posture. He brought both hands up and pressed them over his face, his palms against his eyes, his fingers spread across his forehead and held them there.

~~~

Caine sat at the kitchen table with Camila on his lap, the two of them bent over a coloring book spread open to a page of a farm with a barn and a fence line and a field that needed filling in. Camila had the green crayon in her fist and was pressing it hard into a section of the sky she'd decided was also grass, and Caine worked the brown into the dirt path beside the barn with slow, careful strokes that stayed inside the lines in a way Camila's didn’t.

Sara stood at the stove behind them with a wooden spoon in one hand and her other resting on the edge of the pot, steam rising past her face as she stirred something that smelled of cumin and onion and the slow heat of tomatoes that had been cooking down for a while.

A knock came at the door. Caine leaned back in the chair far enough to see past the edge of the blinds, the slats bending under his fingers when he pulled two of them apart. Ramon stood on the other side of the door with duffel bags on his shoulder and in his hand, his head turning once to look at the parking lot behind him before he faced the door again.

"It's open," Caine shouted.

Ramon pushed the door in and stepped through, the duffel bags shifting on his shoulder as he cleared the frame. He looked around the apartment, his eyes moving over the kitchen and the living room and the coloring book on the table and Camila's curls before they settled on Sara at the stove.

Sara looked back over her shoulder. "Hey."

Ramon nodded to her, setting the bag in his hand down by his feet so he could dip his chin without it swinging. "Hey, Ms. Guerra. How you doing?"

She smiled, the warmth in it easy and immediate. "Good. Thank you, mijo."

Caine pointed down the hallway with the hand that still had the brown crayon in it. "You can go put your stuff in the closet."

"You sure?" Ramon asked.

Caine looked up at him, his arm still around Camila's waist where it held her steady on his lap. "Yeah, you good."

Ramon shrugged, picked the bag back up, and walked down the hall. His footsteps carried through the apartment until a door opened and the duffels hit the floor with a soft, heavy thud.

Sara kept her eyes on the pot but pitched her voice low, the words slipping underneath the sound of the spoon against the edge of the metal. "Es mucho equipaje para una sola noche."

"Aun asi, no tanto como lo que traeis tu y Mireya para tres," Caine said, his crayon still moving along the path in the coloring book without looking up.

Sara laughed, the sound warm and brief, her shoulders shaking once before she turned back to the stove and adjusted the flame beneath the pot.

Camila reached across the table and tapped the section of the field Caine was working on, her finger landing right on the patch where brown and white paper still showed through the green he had started layering in. "Daddy, grass is green, not brown!"

"I'm getting there, mi vida," Caine said, switching the brown for the green she had abandoned on the table. "We making it look good good. Like Picasso."

Camila giggled and shook her head so her curls bounced against her shoulders and his chest.

Ramon came back from the hallway and stopped at the edge of the kitchen, one hand in his pocket. He looked at Caine and pointed toward the front door with two fingers.

Caine nodded, then leaned his head down close to Camila's ear, his voice dropping to the register he kept just for her. "I'm gonna go outside for a bit with my friend, okay, mi vida? I'm gonna be right outside."

Camila looked at him, her eyes widening, her hand tightening around a crayon until her knuckles pressed white against it.

Caine reached over and tapped the blinds on the window beside the table, the slats clicking against each other. "I'll be just right there."

"Okay," Camila said.

Caine kissed the top of her head, letting his lips rest against her curls for a second before he lifted her off his lap and set her down on the chair, her feet not reaching the floor, the coloring book and the scattered crayons still spread in front of her. He grabbed his hoodie from the chair nearest the door and pulled it over his head as he and Ramon stepped outside into the cold, the door closing behind them.

Ramon looked back at the closed door, then at Caine. "You sure that's good in the house with your kid?"

Caine laughed, rubbing his hands together against the chill, the friction warming his palms. "My kid not white, brudda. She not going through nothing she ain't supposed to be going through."

Ramon shrugged. "Fair enough." He shifted his weight against the wall outside the door and crossed his arms over his chest. "Heard them boys had y'all in hell earlier."

Caine sucked his teeth. "Motherfucker, we shut them out. Sorry ass bitches."

Ramon held his hands up, palms out, the gesture wide and innocent. "That's not what I heard. Old white men at the gas station said a white boy bailed you out."

Caine shoved him, his palm flat against Ramon's shoulder, pushing him off the railing hard enough that Ramon had to catch his balance with one foot. "Boy, fuck you."

Ramon laughed, the sound rolling out loose and unhurried as he settled back into his lean. "They did say that a white boy play the game the right way though."

Caine shook his head, the corner of his mouth pulling up despite his effort to kill it. "J.J. cool people. I ain't gonna clown my dog."

The two of them went still for a beat, both of them looking out at the parking lot where the streetlights threw orange circles onto the asphalt and a car sat idling near the far end of the row with its headlights on and nobody getting out. The air had the bite that came after the sun dropped and the concrete gave up whatever warmth it had been holding all day.

"You know a motherfucker named Trell?" Caine asked.

Ramon raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, why?"

"Mireya with him. Brought him up here and everything." Caine kept his eyes on the parking lot, his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie. "What you know about him? He cliqued up?"

Ramon shook his head, his arms still crossed, his posture unchanged. "He ain't. He got a small crew. I ain't never heard of him before Duke started sending us out here to the A for the work."

Caine turned toward Ramon, squaring his body to face him. "But you knew him?"

"Yeah, I know him," Ramon said. "I just said that."

Caine took a step closer, the distance between them shrinking. "So, you knew Mireya was around him."

Ramon's eyebrow went up again. "I don't know that nigga like that."

Caine shoved him again, and the force behind it this time was different from the first, his hand catching Ramon in the center of his chest and driving him back a full step. "That ain't what I asked you."

Ramon shoved Caine back with both hands, fast and hard, his feet planted and his weight behind it. "Don't make me bat the piss out you out here. I ain't know what your baby mama was doing. You want me checking behind her like that?" He held Caine's stare, his jaw set,. "Nigga, that's weird."

Caine stared at him. The parking lot sat between them and the street, the car at the far end finally pulling out of the spot and rolling toward the exit with its lights cutting across the pavement. Caine breathed out through his nose and let the stare hold for another second before his shoulders dropped half an inch and the charge in the air between them thinned.

"Is that the motherfucker Tyree be talking about with the weird shit happening at the trap?" Caine asked.

Ramon reached into his pocket and pulled out a blunt and a lighter, the plastic of the lighter clicking against the cellophane wrapping as he brought them both out together. "No. That's another nigga. Some nigga named Boogie."

He peeled the wrapper off the blunt, lit it with a cupped hand against the breeze, and took a long drag that pulled the cherry bright in the dark. Smoke trailed from his mouth when he held the blunt out toward Caine.

Caine took it, brought it to his lips, and pulled. The smoke sat heavy in his chest for a second before he let it out in a slow stream that the breeze carried off toward the street.

"So, we sitting in the crib all night?" Ramon asked.

Caine shook his head, passing the blunt back. "Wait for Camila to go to sleep and we'll shoot out to some parties."

~~~

Rylee danced with her drink held over her head, the plastic cup catching firelight every time she swung her arm, her body rolling with the bass that thumped from the speakers someone had backed a truck up to and wired into the bed. The bonfire sat at the center of it all, flames climbing high enough that the heat pushed people back into a wide ring around the pit, their faces lit orange on one side and dark on the other, and the whole field beyond the fire was full of bodies moving in loose, drunk clusters that had been at it since the tailgate lots opened before dawn and hadn’t stopped when the game ended in another blowout hours ago.

Amie stood a few feet off to Rylee's left, her body angled away from the dance, talking to a guy she had been texting for weeks whose face Rylee had only seen in screenshots until tonight. He leaned in close to hear her over the music, one hand braced against the tailgate behind her, and Amie kept tipping her head back to laugh at something before pulling him closer by the front of his shirt to say something else into his ear.

Rachael and Grant were hugged up on the tailgate of his truck nearby, Rachael sitting between his legs with her back against his chest and his arms around her stomach, the two of them watching the fire and the crowd with the settled ease of people who had already decided they were done for the night and were just waiting for a reason to leave.

Preston walked up from the direction of the keg line with a cup in each hand and stopped beside Rylee, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers when she turned.

"Hey, what's up?" he said. "Wasn't expectin' to see you here."

Rylee laughed, her cup coming down from over her head, her feet still moving with the bass even as she turned to face him. "C'mon, Pres. Everyone in the fuckin' town is here. You gotta get better pick-up lines than that. Especially for someone who already fucked you."

Preston shook his head, the tips of his ears going red in the firelight and took a swig from his drink. "I was just tryin' to make sure that you didn't think I was poppin' up on you just because I wanted to fuck."

Rylee stopped dancing and shifted to a loose sway that kept time with the beat, her weight rocking from one foot to the other as she took a sip from her cup and studied him over the rim with her eyebrows up. "What you came over here for if it ain't to fuck? You don't think I'm hot no more?"

Preston held his hands up, one still wrapped around his cup, the gesture wide and helpless in front of him. "My bad, again. Just tryin' to be a gentleman. I definitely want to if you do."

"I might," Rylee said.

Preston lowered his hands and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb toward a group standing near the tree line at the edge of the firelight, one of them taller than the rest with a ball cap shitting backwards on his head. "My boy Nicky has favors if you're down for that."

Rylee shrugged, her shoulders lifting and dropping in a motion that carried more invitation than indifference, and a smile spread across her face slow and wide. "I might."

Preston grinned. "C'mon. Let's go have a good time."

Rylee nodded and turned toward the tailgate where Rachael sat with Grant and Amie stood with her guy, the fire throwing their shadows long across the dirt. She pulled her keys out of her pocket as she walked, the metal jangling between her fingers, and held them out to Rachael when she reached the truck.

"Watch those for me," she said.

Rachael took them, her eyebrow lifting as she closed her hand around the keys and looked past Rylee toward where Preston stood waiting at the edge of the firelight. "Where are you going?"

"I'll be right back," Rylee said.

Amie looked over her shoulder at Preston, her eyes staying on him for a second before she shook her head once.

Rylee turned around and walked back toward Preston, falling into step beside him as the two of them crossed the field toward Nicky and the group by the trees, the bonfire at their backs throwing their shadows out in front of them, long and stretched and flickering\.

~~~

Mireya pulled up across from the row of condos and parked along the edge of the park. She cut the engine and swung her legs out of the car, feet bare against the pavement for the second it took her to slide them into the pleasers she'd set on the floorboard. She tugged the hem of her dress down over her thighs with one hand and pulled the neckline lower with the other, adjusting the fabric as she walked toward the condos with her clutch tucked under her arm.

She took her phone out of her clutch and checked the number, matching it to the brass digits screwed into the door at the end of the row. She dropped the phone back into the clutch and knocked twice, then let her hand fall to her hip and shifted her weight onto her hip.

The door opened. A man stood in the frame, mid-thirties, button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, a drink already in his hand. His eyes started at her face and went down and came back up, and a smile spread across his face.

"You Luna?" he asked.

"If you're Jere, papi," Mireya said.

"That's me. Come on." He stepped aside and held the door wider, his body clearing the frame.

She stepped into the condo and let her eyes sweep the space.

Jere whistled behind her, the sound long and low. "Fuck, you fine."

Mireya looked back over her shoulder at him, letting the look hold for a beat, her mouth curving. "Thank you, baby. And that's not even the best thing about me."

Jere closed the door and put his hand on her ass, steering her forward through the hall and into the living room. Mireya let him guide her, her hips moving easy under his hand, her body relaxed against the pressure.

Another man sat on the sofa with one ankle resting on his opposite knee, a tumbler of something dark in his hand, his posture loose and comfortable in someone else's condo. A wedding band sat on his left hand, the gold catching the lamp light when he lifted the glass and tipped it toward her.

"That's Devin," Jere said.

Devin's eyes moved over her body in a slow pass that started at her heels and climbed. "Man, I fucking love Latinas."

Mireya smiled, full and bright. "And I fucking love that you love us." She looked from Jere to Devin and back, her weight settling onto one hip, her clutch still tucked against her body. "Y'all paying by the hour, papi, so just tell me what we've got planned."

Jere smiled and rubbed his hands together. Devin set his glass down on the coffee table and stood up.

…

Mireya fixed her makeup in the bathroom mirror, tilting her chin to check the line of her lipstick where it'd smeared and wiping the edge clean with the pad of her finger. The bathroom was warm and bright, the fan humming overhead, the marble countertop still wet where she'd splashed water on her face a minute ago.

A stack of bills sat beside the sink. She picked it up and counted through it once, her thumb flipping each bill to the back, then turned the stack over and counted through it again from the other direction, her lips moving with the numbers. She rolled the stack tight, snapped a hair tie around it from her wrist, and slid it into her clutch.

She looked at herself in the mirror once more, straightened the neckline of her dress where it'd shifted, and pulled the hem back into place..

She stepped out of the bathroom into the bedroom. Downstairs, Jere's voice carried up through the floor, talking to someone on the phone, his laugh muffled by distance. In the hallway just outside the bedroom door, Devin stood with his phone pressed to his ear, his voice low and warm.

"I'll be home soon," he said.

Another phone sat on the nightstand beside the bed. Mireya looked at it, remembering Devin setting it there when they'd come upstairs. She shrugged, the motion small and internal, a thought dismissed before it fully formed. If he was cheating on his wife that wasn't her business.

She started toward the door. The phone on the nightstand vibrated, the screen lighting up against the wood, and the buzz turned her head for a second before she looked away. But the name on the notification caught her eye before she could complete the turn, and her feet stopped moving.

Sara Guerra.

Mireya looked back at the phone. The text sat on the lock screen in a gray bubble, the preview showing enough of the message that she could read it without touching anything.

"I miss you, too. We can get together when I get back from Georgia."

She read it once and her breath caught in her chest. She read it again and her hand tightened around the clutch hard enough that the clasp dug into her palm. She read it a third time, each word landing heavier than the last, the name at the top of the screen burning itself into a place behind her eyes that she couldn't blink away from.

She tapped the screen once with her fingertip to keep it from going dark.

In the hallway, Devin said something else into his phone, his voice carrying that same low warmth, and then she heard him say goodbye and the call ended.

Mireya opened her clutch and reached inside.

"Papi," she called out toward the hallway, her voice landing in the same register she'd used all night, sweet, easy and open. "You want one more for the road? On the house because y'all were so good."

Devin's laugh came through the doorway. "Shit, yeah."

He turned back into the room and closed the door behind him, already loosening his collar, his smile carrying the satisfaction of a man who thought he'd just gotten lucky twice in one night.

Mireya smiled at him. "Sit down, papi."

She pointed at the bed. Devin unbuckled his belt and sat down on the edge of the mattress, pushing his pants and boxers down past his hips, leaning back on his elbows with his legs apart. Mireya walked over to him and knelt down between his knees, looking up at his face, one hand resting on his thighs.

Devin's smile collapsed. The sound of the switchblade releasing was small and mechanical, a click followed by a snap, and the point of the blade pressed against him where the skin was thinnest and the fear arrived all at once, flooding his face, draining the color from his mouth and his jaw and the skin around his eyes.

"You fucking robbing us?" he asked, his voice climbing.

"Call her and tell her that you're a piece of shit or I'm gonna cut your fucking dick off," Mireya said. Her voice had left Luna behind entirely. What sat in its place was flat and tight and shaking at the edges.

"Who? My wife?" Devin's hands came up off the mattress, palms open, fingers spread. "Why you care about that now?"

"No. Sara Guerra." Mireya's jaw locked around the name. "Call her and tell her you're married and that you fuck prostitutes. Tell her your wife found out and that's why you're calling."

Confusion mixed into the fear on Devin's face, his brow pulling together even as his body stayed frozen on the bed. "That's just my side bit—"

Mireya pushed the blade up. Devin hissed through his teeth, his whole body going rigid, his hands flying higher, his breath cutting short.

"Don't you fucking call her that," Mireya said. "Do it. Now."

Devin held his hands where they were, palms shaking. "Alright, alright. I don't know why you care but I'll do it when you leave."

"Now!" The word tore out of her loud enough to fill the room and rattle in the space between them, her eyes wide and wet and burning, her hand steady on the blade even as every other part of her shook with a fury that had nothing to do with money and nothing to do with the job and everything to do with a woman who'd smoothed her hair and called her mija and told her she loved her.

Something in Mireya's face found the part of Devin that understood he wasn't negotiating anymore. He reached for the phone on the nightstand, slow, his other hand still raised and held the screen toward her so she could see him unlock it. He pulled up the recent calls. His thumb hovered for a second over the name, and then he tapped it.

~~~

Sara sat on the bed in Caine's apartment with her phone pressed to her ear and Camila asleep beside her, the girl's body curled into a comma shape against the pillow with one hand tucked under her cheek. The television across the room played a telenovela with the volume turned low, a woman in a red dress arguing with a man in a doorway, their voices fast and overlapping in Spanish that Sara wasn't following. She listened to the voice on the other end of the phone and nodded once, then again, her expression flat, her free hand resting on her thigh with the fingers still.

"I'm not surprised or angry," she said. "Just disappointed. Don't contact me anymore."

She pulled the phone away from her ear and ended the call. The screen stayed lit in her hand. She scrolled to her contacts, found his name, tapped edit, deleted the letters one by one with her thumb until the field sat completely empty, and typed a red X in their place. Then she scrolled down to the bottom of the contact card and blocked the number. The screen asked her to confirm and she tapped it without hesitating.

She set the phone face down on the nightstand and let out a long breath that emptied her lungs before she drew the next one. She settled back against the headboard, the wood pressing into her shoulder blades through the pillow she'd propped there and reached over to Camila. Her hand found the girl's hair and moved through it in a slow, steady pass, smoothing the curls flat against her temple before they sprang back up behind her fingers. Camila didn't stir.

On the television, the woman in the red dress slapped the man and walked off screen, and another scene began.

[Captain Canada]

That Saul pack gas or what? Or did they smoke the wrong car because Maine a fn

Caine in love and Mireya never beating not one allegation

EDIT: Catching up on the most recent update.

[redsox907]

Saul gonna try and pack Ana and Angel up, move out the bricks after that. Or, is he dumb enough to think he needs to get that lick back and ends up leaving Angel without a father

Tell me again how Caine isn't violating probation, good sir? Its also child endangerment to have narcotics in the house with his child. PD would send his ass back to the joint with a quickness.

Minute I saw the name Devin I knew what was up, snake ass bihh. Sara the realest and she don't deserve that, even tho we all knew something was coming. Devin move too different. Didn't expect you to wrap it up that quickly tho, figured he became her regular then she found out type thing.

Also, how Ramon one of the coolest and also a busta at the same time. Like, at this point if you tell Caine the whole story how is he not going to believe him? It was one thing before he'd met Trell and knew he was in the streets, but now Ramon open face lying to his own dude

[Captain Canada]

Finding out you fucked your baby daddy's Mom's boyfriend is insane. Even more insane that she skipped a trip of being with her family to do it because her pimp boyfriend said so

Now she acting noble.

[Caesar]

That Saul pack gas or what? Or did they smoke the wrong car because Maine a fn

Caine in love and Mireya never beating not one allegation

EDIT: Catching up on the most recent update.

now we begrudging this man for catching feelings?!

Saul gonna try and pack Ana and Angel up, move out the bricks after that. Or, is he dumb enough to think he needs to get that lick back and ends up leaving Angel without a father

Tell me again how Caine isn't violating probation, good sir? Its also child endangerment to have narcotics in the house with his child. PD would send his ass back to the joint with a quickness.

Minute I saw the name Devin I knew what was up, snake ass bihh. Sara the realest and she don't deserve that, even tho we all knew something was coming. Devin move too different. Didn't expect you to wrap it up that quickly tho, figured he became her regular then she found out type thing.

Also, how Ramon one of the coolest and also a busta at the same time. Like, at this point if you tell Caine the whole story how is he not going to believe him? It was one thing before he'd met Trell and knew he was in the streets, but now Ramon open face lying to his own dude

Tbf, Ava doesn't live in the ghetto so she doesn't have to go anywhere.

Good thing he ain't getting caught.

Nah, that didn't need to drag out.

Look at how Caine reacted to just assuming (correctly) Ramon knew about Mireya and Trell. "Hey, your baby mama's a stripper and a prostitute and also one time, I got her involved in some shit and she got her ass beat." Now everybody dead.

Finding out you fucked your baby daddy's Mom's boyfriend is insane. Even more insane that she skipped a trip of being with her family to do it because her pimp boyfriend said so

Now she acting noble.

Ah ah ah. She didn't stay home to do that nor did Trell tell her to do that job. Trell told her to stay home and she just used the time to take advantage of the job offered to her.

Woman can't win with y'all. In a chapter when someone lied to a friend's face, Mireya made Devin come clean immediately.

[Caesar]

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