Mireya swung into the spot outside the daycare and cut the engine, grabbing her bag from the passenger seat as she opened her door and stepped out. She walked around the back of the car to the rear passenger side where Camila sat strapped into her car seat, her curls pressed flat on one side from leaning against the headrest, her sneakers kicking in small, idle swings against the seat in front of her.
Mireya pulled the door open and leaned in, her fingers finding the buckle at the center of the harness. Camila's hand closed over hers before she could press the release.
"Mami, I want to go to see daddy."
Mireya's thumb stalled on the buckle. She breathed out through her nose, a long, measured pull that she let empty before she spoke. "Next week, mi amor."
"No, now," Camila said.
Mireya brought her other hand to the harness strap and eased Camila's fingers off the buckle, working it open with her thumb. "Escuchame, carina. It's almost December. After daddy finishes playing football, we'll go up to see him for a whole week, okay?"
Camila shook her head, her curls swinging, and crossed her arms over her chest with her elbows locked and her chin dropped. "I want to see him now."
Mireya dropped her head, her forehead almost touching the edge of the car seat and held it there for a second before she lifted it again and went back to working the straps free from Camila's shoulders, loosening them enough to slide her arms through. "We're going to school, mi amor. Don't you want to see your friends?"
She got the straps clear and slid her hands under Camila's arms to lift her from the seat. Camila's body came up for a second, her legs swinging free of the base, and then she threw herself backward into the seat with her full weight, her back hitting the padding, her mouth opening wide.
"I want to see daddy! Now!"
The scream filled the car and rang off the glass and the headliner, high and raw, and tears broke from both eyes at once, running down her cheeks in fast, wet lines that she made no effort to stop. Her body heaved with each sob, her crossed arms tightening against her own chest as if she could hold herself together by pressing hard enough.
Mireya stood in the open door of the car and watched her, one hand still resting on the edge of the car seat, giving Camila the seconds she needed to push the first wave through. A woman walked past on the sidewalk with another child by the hand and looked over once before she kept moving.
Mireya leaned back into the car. "Next week, I promise. He's going to be in West Virginia this week. Remember I showed you on the calendar? You don't want to go there. It's yucky."
Camila let herself be lifted this time, her body going heavy and limp in Mireya's arms, crying into Mireya's shoulder as Mireya pulled her from the car and set her feet on the pavement. The moment her sneakers touched concrete, Camila's knees buckled and she dropped to the ground, her legs folding under her, her palms hitting the sidewalk, the scream climbing back up from wherever it had settled during the carry.
Mireya squatted down beside her, her knees spreading on the pavement, and tried to get her hands under Camila's arms again to bring her back to her feet. Camila's body stayed loose and boneless, refusing to hold its own weight, slipping through Mireya's grip every time she tried to steady her.
"Por favor, mi amor. Te prometo que iremos la semana que viene."
"Ahora!" Camila screamed, the word stretching and breaking apart into a wail that carried across the parking lot.
"He's not going to be at home, baby," Mireya said.
"No!" Camila's fists hit the concrete once, her body curling in on itself, knees drawing up, face pressed toward the ground.
"C'mon, Camila. We gotta go to school. Both of us." Mireya brushed a curl back from Camila's forehead where it had stuck to the tears on her skin. "I can call Graci's mom and see if she can play later."
"I want daddy!" The words came out torn and ragged, Camila's voice already going hoarse from the screaming, her chest shaking under her shirt with each breath.
Mireya leaned back from her squat until she was sitting on the concrete, her legs folding under her, her back resting against the side of the car with her arms draped over her knees.
"Alright, we'll wait then."
~~~
Caine sat on one of the iron benches in the quad with his legs stretched out and his hands buried in the pocket of his hoodie, watching the campus move around him between classes. Students crossed the green in clusters and pairs, backpacks bouncing, conversations rising and falling as groups split at the pathway intersections and reformed on the other side. A girl he recognized walked past with a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other, glancing at him long enough to smile before she kept moving. He lifted his chin once in return and let his eyes drift to where a couple of guys near a building were throwing a frisbee badly enough that it kept landing in the flower bed, one of them laughing while the other dug it out of the mulch and brushed the dirt off the rim.
His phone buzzed in the front pocket of his hoodie. He pulled it out and checked the screen. Markus. Two minutes before the time they'd agreed on. He let it ring once more, shifted his weight on the bench so the iron slats pressed into a different spot on his back, and connected the call.
"I thought the saying was if you five minutes early you on-time," he said. "That make you late, huh?"
Markus's laugh came through warm and close. "That's something you need to tell people who are never on time. What can I do for you, Caine?"
Caine leaned back on the bench, one arm stretching along the backrest, his eyes still on the quad. "I got an agent and all. Gonna transfer in December, when the season over."
"And you're calling me to make sure that you don't get stuck there because of your probation again," Markus said.
"Yep." Caine's thumb rubbed once along the edge of his phone case. "This is why they pay you the big bucks."
"I think you're forgetting that you've only paid me a dollar over all these years," Markus said.
"You tell me that you can get me to another state and I'll throw in a cold drink to make up for all of that," Caine said.
"Two cold drinks. Don't forget Nicole."
"64 ounce and everything." Caine shifted on the bench, crossing one ankle over the other where his slides rested on the concrete. "So, what's the verdict?"
Markus's voice settled into something steadier, the banter clearing out. "Like I told you last year, it's going to be an easier sell after two years of stability than it would've been with one. Where's your PO on all of this?"
"He just told me to bring him whatever paperwork he has to sign off on and he will," Caine said. A breeze came across the quad and pushed the hood of his hoodie against the back of his neck, carrying the smell of cut grass from wherever the grounds crew had been working that morning.
"That's a good sign for Georgia," Markus said. "We'll have to fight Louisiana but the case to transfer you back here for just one year is weak. It'll come across as punitive for the sake with you staying clean for three years."
"The whole shit like that," Caine said.
"You're not wrong." Markus paused, and Caine could hear something on the other end, a chair creaking, papers shifting, Markus settling into the next part of it. "My suggestion, son, is for you to cut it down to a shortlist by the middle of December and we'll submit the compact transfer with every state on that list so when the semester comes around again, you're ready to go."
Caine's eyes followed the frisbee as it sailed wide again, the disc catching an angle off the guy's fingers and skipping across the walkway near a woman who flinched and kept moving with her head down. The guy who'd thrown it jogged after it with his hands up in an apology she'd already walked past. "You think it'll take that long?"
"You'd think I was talking to someone who didn't spend a year sitting in jail waiting for the resolution of their case," Markus said.
Caine snorted a laugh, his chest moving once with it. "Fair enough."
~~~
Saul sat in the Buick outside the warehouse with the engine off and his hands on the steering wheel, his thumbs resting on the logo pressed into the center of it, the raised metal cool against his skin. He stared at the badge and his thumbs pressed harder, the grooves of the lettering digging into the pads of his fingers.
He reached over and popped the center console open. A detective's card sat on top of a handful of napkins and a phone charger cable, the edges bent from being picked up and put back more than once, the name and badge number printed in blue ink on white stock. He held it between two fingers and turned it over. The back was blank. He turned it back and read the number again, his thumb pressing into the corner hard enough to crease the cardboard.
His phone sat in the cupholder beside him, Ava's last text still on the lock screen from this morning and Caine's from two days ago sitting underneath it.
He dropped the card back into the console and closed the lid.
The suit jacket lay across the passenger seat where he'd set it when he got in, still creased from the plastic it'd come in at the outlet, the tag clipped off but the fold lines sharp enough that they showed in the fabric.
He picked it up and worked his arms through the sleeves one at a time, the lining cool and slick against his forearms, the shoulders sitting wider than his frame could fill. He pulled the cuffs down past his wrists and checked himself in the rearview, adjusting the collar where it'd bunched against his neck, running his palm flat down the lapel to press the crease out.
He opened the door and stepped out into the parking lot, gravel shifting under his shoes as he straightened and shut the door behind him.
The warehouse stretched long and flat across the lot, corrugated metal walls catching the sun in dull silver panels, loading bays open at the far end where a forklift sat idle on the concrete apron. He started walking toward the admin office at the near end of the building where a sign above the door read PERSONNEL in letters that had faded from black to gray, the door propped open with a brick, the sound of a phone ringing somewhere inside carrying out across the gravel.
~~~
E.J. pulled into the dental office lot with the windows down and Rob49 pushing through the speakers hard enough that the bass rattled a pen in the cupholder. He swung the car into a handicap spot near the entrance, cut the engine mid-bar, and stepped out, leaving the doors unlocked and his sunglasses on the dashboard.
Inside, the office smelled of mint and rubbing alcohol and the cold, clean air that came from vents set too high. Tessa stood near the front desk with a package tucked under one arm, talking to a UPS driver who leaned against the counter with his scanner resting on the surface beside him. Both of them were laughing at something he'd just said, the driver's smile wide and easy, Tessa's head tipped back enough that her throat showed.
E.J.'s lip curled up. He walked across the lobby and stopped beside Tessa. "You ready to go?"
Tessa blinked, her head pulling back a fraction at his sudden presence beside her. "Yeah. I just clocked out." She turned to the driver, setting the package down on the desk. "Your favorite Maycee will be here tomorrow so make sure you time your route to spend two hours here talking to her."
The driver smiled, his hands coming off the counter to hook his thumbs into the straps of his vest. "Nah, you know you my favorite."
E.J.'s chin came up. "Are you serious, my nigga?"
Tessa shook her head and put free hand on E.J.'s arm, steering him toward the door with firm pressure, her fingers closing around his bicep as she turned him. She looked back at the driver over her shoulder. "Sorry about my boyfriend."
The driver shrugged, the smile still sitting on his face, and picked up his scanner from the counter.
The glass door swung shut behind them as they stepped into the parking lot, the sun pressing down on the asphalt hard enough to send shimmer lines up from the cars parked in the row.
"Fuck is you all in that nigga face kekeing about?" E.J. asked as they crossed the lot toward his car.
Tessa sucked her teeth. "If you had a regular fucking job, you'd know that people talk to each other when they're at work."
"That nigga a delivery driver. He don't work with you."
Tessa walked ahead of him toward the car and stopped when she reached it, looking down at the blue lines and the wheelchair symbol painted on the asphalt under the front tires. "You parked in a fucking handicap spot?"
"Don't change the subject," E.J. said, coming up beside her and reaching for the driver's door handle. "You work with a bunch of women. Don't be talking to no niggas in there."
Tessa rolled her eyes, pulled her door open, and dropped into the passenger seat. E.J. got in on the other side and pulled his door shut, the car rocking once on its springs.
"You're being ridiculous," Tessa said. She fastened her seatbelt with one hand and crossed her arms over her chest. "You have been since we moved out here."
E.J. turned the key and the engine caught, the speakers jumping back to life with the Rob49 track still queued, the bass filling the car before he reached over and turned the volume down enough that they could hear each other. "Then stop letting niggas plot on punching dick in you and I won't be acting no type of way."
Tessa kept her arms crossed and her eyes forward, staring through the windshield at the dental office door where the UPS driver was walking back out with his scanner in hand, heading toward his truck parked at the curb. "Can we just go fucking eat?"
E.J. sucked his teeth, the sound sharp in the car, and shifted into reverse. "Yeah, whatever."
~~~
Mireya sat at a table near the windows in the university center with her laptop open and her bag hanging off the back of her chair, one hand holding her phone against her thigh while the other scrolled through the assignment page on her screen. The words blurred together every few lines and she had to drag her cursor back to the top of the paragraph she'd been trying to read for the third time, her teeth pressing into the inside of her cheek as she forced her eyes to track left to right without jumping ahead.
She clicked away from the assignment and opened the grades tab. The page loaded and she scrolled down through the columns, her thumb tapping once against the edge of the trackpad as each row appeared. A new zero sat near the bottom of the list, logged for a minor assignment, the due date printed in small gray text beside the score. She clicked on it and the details expanded. The date filled the screen. She stared at it, her jaw tightening, her hand leaving the trackpad to press flat against the table beside the laptop.
"Fuck," she said, low enough that it stayed at her table.
She ran her hand through her hair, fingers pushing from her forehead back through the length of it, catching once on a tangle before she pulled through and let her hand drop to her neck. She scrolled further down the page to the finals schedule, the dates stacked in a column on the right side of the screen, each one highlighted in red by the system. She counted them, her lips pressing together harder with each one, then dropped her head into both hands, her elbows landing on either side of the laptop, her fingers pressing into her temples.
She sat there for a few seconds with her face hidden behind her palms. Then she leaned back in the chair, her spine hitting the plastic backrest, her hands falling to her lap, and watched the flow of students passing through the center. Groups and pairs and people walking alone with earbuds in, all of them moving between the food court and the exit and the study rooms along the far wall.
A group of guys came through the double doors near the bookstore, four or five of them, backpacks slung low, laughing about something one of them had said outside. One of them she recognized. Mazi. He sat two rows over in one of her class and had asked for her number more times than she could count, always mentioning a study group.
She looked back at her laptop screen. The zero and the finals dates sat there unchanged. She shook her head once, closed the laptop, and slid it into her bag in one motion.
"Mazi!" she called out, lifting her hand and curling her fingers toward her in a slow wave.
He said something to his boys and split off from them, crossing the open floor toward her with his hands in his pockets and his stride unhurried. He pulled the chair out across from her and sat down, one arm draping over the backrest.
"What's good?" he asked.
"You live on campus?" Mireya asked. She rested her chin on her palm, her elbow on the table, her body angled toward him, her eyes steady on his face.
Mazi's brow pulled together. "Yeah, in Privateer. Why?"
Mireya reached down and grabbed her bag from the back of the chair, pulling the strap over her shoulder as she stood halfway up from her seat, her hip cocked against the edge of the table. "Show me."
Mazi leaned back in his chair, a grin spreading across his face, his arms crossing over his chest. "Shit, what you trying to do? I ain't trying to just chill or nothing like that." He tilted his head, studying her. "And you always came across as the type that be playing, messing with niggas' heads. Want that ego boost."
Mireya looked at him. Her chin stayed on her palm for another beat, her eyes moving over his face without rushing, and when she spoke her voice came out flat and even. "I'm trying to suck your dick and you're talking about bitches playing games."
The grin on Mazi's face stalled. His arms uncrossed and his hands dropped to his thighs, his eyebrows climbing before he caught himself and reset his expression, the surprise folding back behind the composure he'd walked in with. He pushed away from the table, the chair legs scraping against the floor, and stood. "Shit, you ain't saying nothing but a word."
Mireya got up and stood beside the table with her bag on her shoulder, one hip shifted, her weight resting on her back foot, waiting. Mazi's eyes moved from her face down the length of her body and back up. He stayed in his chair for another second.
"I'm working with a monster," he said. "You sure you can handle it?"
Mireya snorted a laugh, her chin dipping once. "I'll be alright."
Mazi shrugged and stood up, gesturing toward the exit with an open hand. Mireya turned and started walking, her bag swinging once against her hip as she crossed the floor ahead of him.
~~~
Caine stepped back and reached down for his jeans, pulling them up from his thighs and buttoning them as Laney straightened from where she'd been bent into the back of the SUV. She tugged her dress down off her back and smoothed it over her hips, the fabric falling back into place, and turned around to lean against the bumper.
The field stretched out flat around them in every direction, rows of harvested stalks stubbled low against the dirt, the tree line far enough away that no road was visible from where they'd parked.
Laney ran her hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face where it'd come loose, her chest still rising and falling as her breathing found its way back to normal. "It's a good thing we ain't doin' this in plantin' season. Some poor farmer's son might come out here and catch us fuckin'."
Caine pulled his belt through the buckle and fastened it, then leaned back against the bumper beside her, their shoulders pressing together. "I don't know much about farmers or they sons but finding us out here would be better than what they usually see."
Laney laughed, her head turning toward him. "What you think it is they normally see?"
Caine shrugged, one shoulder lifting and dropping. "Their sisters, cousins. Maybe animals."
"We ain't that country 'round here, Caine," Laney said, her mouth pulling into a line that was trying not to smile.
"Nah, y'all definitely that country," Caine said. "You just got lucky developing a taste for Black dick so you wasn't running behind your family."
Laney shook her head, the laugh escaping her this time, her hand coming up to cover her mouth before she dropped it and let the grin sit where it wanted. "That might be a chicken and egg conversation that we ain't got the time to go through, 'cause some would say I like what I like 'cause I don't want to make no mistakes 'bout cousins."
Caine laughed, his chest shaking once against her shoulder. "Probably so."
The two of them sat against the bumper, the metal warm under them from the engine and the sun pressing down on the hood behind their backs. The field held nothing but wind moving through the stubble and a bird in the tree line calling in two-note intervals.
Laney crossed her ankles in front of her and let her head rest against his shoulder, her hair brushing his neck, the two of them looking out at the same stretch of turned earth and flattened rows without needing to fill it with anything.
"Can I ask you to do somethin' for me?" Laney asked.
"As long as it ain't committing no more crimes," Caine said.
Laney tilted her head, her eyebrow going up. "I ain't ask you do that to be fair."
Caine held his hands up, palms out, conceding.
Laney's voice shifted, something in it landing softer, her eyes staying on the field ahead of them rather than turning to his face. "Can you tell me how to say somethin' in Spanish? So I can have somethin' to remember you by?" She paused. "Somethin' tangible."
Caine looked at her. He rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger, working the stubble there in a slow pass while his eyes moved from her profile to the field and back. Then he nodded.
"Yeah, I can do that." He let another second pass, his hand dropping from his chin to rest on the bumper between them. "Donde hay amor, hay dolor."
Laney turned the words over in her mouth, her lips shaping each one separately, her accent bending the vowels in directions they weren't built to go. "Donde aye amor, aye dolor?"
Caine laughed, the sound warm, his head shaking once. "We'll work on it."
"What does it mean?" Laney asked.
"Where there is love, there is pain," Caine said. "Basically when you got love for someone, you gotta be vulnerable. And when you love someone like that, you feel that shit in your chest when they're gone."
Laney looked at him for a moment then leaned toward him, closing the few inches between their shoulders, and pressed her lips to his.
Mireya.
Locking in was about work. Affirmation was about her.
