Damaged Petals.

[Soapy]

“Miss Aibileen.“ she stopped and looked at his face. “You’ve never read The Help?”

Now, she know good and well that Mayo American has never read The Help...

Sophie better get out of that dysfunctional household while she still can. Go to the University of Hawai'i or something far, far away.

Connie about to snatch up some Bolivian kid to replace the baby they took from her?

nobody wins when the family feuds

Having two kidnappings in one RTG gotta be illegal, no?

Connie is gonna find out Valentina is an orphan and stay in Bolivia to be her care taker

agree with Caes, fuck a legacy and get the fuck outta dodge, kid

Now that Brice can pawn of his child like all of his other responsibilities, Serena suddenly trying to earn that birkin again huh

Why are all of y'all jumping to Connie snatching that girl lmao

she can't give her some frijoles as an act of kindness?

[Soapy]

Season 8, Episode 4
The room wasn’t full but it wasn’t empty either. The once rows of chairs were replaced by a circle. Brice had previously appreciated that it was rows instead of the cliched circle. Tanner was there. He had lost his brother to a car accident. Gwen. Carlos. A few others whose names he had and a couple he’d been meaning to learn. The woman who ran the sessions, Elaine, was standing near the table with the coffee setup, mid-sentence with someone Brice didn’t recognize.

She looked up first.

“Well,” she smiled. “Look who it is.”

Tanner turned around in his chair. “Oh, shit."

“Hey,” Brice slightly lifted his chain up.

Tanner got up and dapped him. Gwen said his name from across the circle and raised her water bottle slightly in greeting. Someone he barely knew said welcome back. Elaine was already moving toward the coffee table, pulling a Styrofoam cup from the sleeve.

“You want some?” she asked, already pouring.

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

He found a chair and sat down, and Tanner started asking him about the football team, how they were looking. Brice leaned into it, welcoming the distraction, the easy nature of their conversation.

It was only when Elaine was moving the chairs into a tighter circle that Brice scanned the room the way he’d been avoiding scanning it since he walked in.

She was there. Third chair from the left, already seated. She was looking at the window across the room. She hadn’t looked at him. Not when he walked in, not when Tanner got up to greet him, not when Elaine said his name loud enough to carry across the whole room.

He waited another beat. She kept looking at the window.

…

"Hold on. How are we shopping for a trip that ain’t even booked yet?" Kennedi asked, stopping in front of a display of swimsuit coverups.

"The important word in that sentence is yet," Serena held a finger up.

"But it’s not booked, though. That’s an important part too."

"Kennedi," Sabrina shot her a stare from a rack of dresses.

"I’m just trying to get some clarity here," Kennedi shrugged.

"If he said we’re going, we’re going," Serena answered, "He’s a lot of things but a liar ain’t one."

"Well," Jasmine raised an eyebrow, "I don’t know about all that but I think it’s sweet. Bitch, you’re going to fucking Bali."

Kimmy came around the corner from the adjacent section. “Okay, real talk though. Are y’all like, together together now? Or—“

“Or,” Serena said.

Kimmy waited.

“I mean,” Serena pulled a white bikini top from the rack and examined it. “We’re whatever we are. It doesn’t have a label or anything."

“It has a label,” Kennedi said. “The name is situationship.”

“The name is complicated,” Serena said pleasantly, “and none of your business.”

“You brought it up.”

“I brought up the trip. Y’all turned it into a whole thing.”

Sabrina materialized from between two racks with a floor-length cover-up in her hands. “I’m just surprised you two are still…whatever it is y’all are."

Serena turned the bikini top over in her hands. She had thought about how to answer this question, not because she didn’t know the answer but because the answer had a few layers to it and some of those layers were better kept where they were.

“I’ve had to adjust,” she said finally. “Obviously. His life is different now.”

“A whole ass baby,” Jasmine said.

“Yes, a whole ass baby,” Serena confirmed. “But I mean, it’s not like he’s doing it alone. The nanny’s there all the time. So it’s not like I’m competing with a newborn for his attention.”

“That’s a wild sentence,” Kimmy said.

“I’m just saying. It could be worse,” She moved down the rack. “A lot worse, actually.”

The group got quiet. Serena kept her eyes on the clothing in front of her.

“I mean,” she clarified. “I’m obviously not happy about what happened to Skylar. That’s not what I’m saying."

“We know,” Jasmine said quietly.

“I’m just saying that the situation is what it is. And the situation, as it stands, means that I’m not spending every day wondering if he’s going to go back to her or choose her over me or whatever,” she pulled another piece from the rack without really looking at it. “You know what they say about niggas and their baby moms. Now that’s not a thing anymore.”

Nobody said anything.

Serena put the piece back. “As long as he’s taking care of me and I’m happy, I’m fine with whatever the fuck it is that we’re doing.” She looked over her shoulder at them, one eyebrow up. “Unless something better comes along. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Sabrina scoffed.

“See, that’s the difference between me and some of y’all,” Serena shook her head. "At least I’m getting something out of mine. Y’all stressing behind these niggas that all they do is make your skin itch and some whack dick."

Kennedi’s mouth dropped open. "Bitch, excuse me?"

"If the shoe fits," Serena shrugged.

Kimmy lost it. Jasmine covered her mouth. Even Sabrina’s composure cracked slightly at the edges.

“You are so…“ Kennedi pointed at her. “I cannot stand you.”

“You love me,” Serena laughed. “Now come help me figure out which one of these I’m wearing when I’m on a beach in Bali.”

“It's not even booked yet!” Kennedi called after her.

“Yet!” Serena called back, disappearing around the corner.

…

Brice sat in the chair they’d positioned near the window in the living room, the afternoon light coming in at the angle the camera operator seemed to want. They had moved the side table and angled the couch out of the shot and done three different things with the blinds before settling on halfway.

Ilyssa stood just outside the frame with her arms crossed, tablet in hand, watching the monitor on the camera operator’s rig.

“Okay,” the interviewer, Dana, said, settling into the chair across from him. “We good?”

The camera operator gave a thumbs up.

“So,” Dana said, leaning forward slightly. “Tell me about the grief group.”

Brice nodded, slow, like he was gathering something. He let the pause sit there just long enough to read as genuine.

“It’s been a blessing for me,” he said. “Since Jimmy passed. Just having that space, those people, it’s something I’ve leaned on a lot.”

“How did you find it? The group?”

“My therapist connected me with it,” he said. “He felt like I needed something outside of just the one-on-one sessions. Something where I was around people who actually understood what it felt like.”

“And did it? Help?”

He looked at his hands for a moment.

“Yeah,” he said. “It did. It does.”

Dana nodded. “Has the group changed for you since Skylar’s passing? Has it taken on a different meaning?”

He breathed in through his nose and let it out.

“It’s given me a place to process both of them,” he said. “Which is something I didn’t expect. You know, I went in originally because of Jimmy. That was the loss that brought me there. And then Skylar—“ he stopped. Let the stop do its work. “It became a different kind of grief. But the group has been able to hold both of those things. The people in there, they get it.”

“The consistency of it,” Dana continued. “Do you think that’s been important? Showing up week after week?”

“Absolutely,” Brice said, without hesitating. “That’s the whole thing. You can’t do it once and expect something to change. It’s like training. You have to put in the reps. Show up even when you don’t want to. Especially when you don’t want to.”

He delivered it cleanly.

“James is going to grow up and watch this someday,” Dana said, softer now. “Is there something you want him to understand about how you’ve navigated this? About grief, about losing his mother?”

Brice looked at the window. The blinds were halfway down and the light came through the gaps in pale, even lines across the floor.

“I want him to know that you don’t have to be okay,” he said. “That’s the thing I’m still learning. You don’t have to perform being okay. You just have to keep going and find the people and the places that help you carry it.”

He kept his face even. Dana looked over to the camera operator and gave them a thumbs up.

“Cut,” the camera operator said.

Dana smiled at him. “That was really good, Brice.”

“Thanks,” he forced.

…

The restaurant was called Caesar’s and it sat between a dry cleaner and an insurance office on a street that nobody from South Bend had any reason to be on.

Tom was already at the table when Britney came in. She sat down across from him and set her phone face-down on the table immediately.

“You look like you need a drink,” he said.

“It’s eleven forty-five.”

“You look like you need a drink at eleven forty-five.”

She almost smiled. She picked up the menu even though they both knew what they were ordering. “I have a press thing at three. A fundraiser tonight. And chuck just sent me a forty-page brief on the Hayes case that I have not had a single minute to read.”

“The trial.”

"I can tell it’s going to be a shit show," she set the menu down, "It’s got all the elements for it."

“You’ll handle it.”

“I know I’ll handle it,” she sucked her teeth. "The last thing I need right now is some case that people are going to politicize and make it about everything except what actually happened. Anyway. I don’t want to talk about any of that.”

“Then we won’t.”

The server came and they ordered, going with their usual order.

“How are you?” she asked.

Tom turned his water glass a quarter turn on the table. "Same old, same old. Liz is still going on about us moving to Lafayette."

“Again.”

"She is persistent if nothing else,” he leaned back. "I don’t know, I guess she doesn’t feel like we’re helping Brice out enough with the baby."

“That doesn’t sound unreasonable on its face.”

“On its face,” Tom agreed. “But that’s not what it is. That’s not what it’s ever been. She wants to be close to him so she can be close to his life. So she can have a hand in it. Same as she always has.”

Britney remained quiet.

“He’s twenty,” Tom said. “He’s got a son. He’s about to be a multi-millionaire. Shit, he’s already a multi-millionaire. And she still talks about him like he’s fourteen and needs someone to drive him to practice.”

“Maybe she’s just worried about him. You know, that motherly instinct to want to protect."

"The problem is control and protect are the same thing for her,” he said.

The food came. Tom looked at his plate without moving toward it.

“Sophie got her PSAT scores back,” he said.

“And?”

“Good. Really good. Notre Dame numbers,” He picked up his fork. “Shit, I’m doing it now, too. I don’t know, I don’t want to pressure her into feeling like she has to go to Notre Dame just because."

“Is that the worst thing? A fine institution, present company excluded.”

“It’s not the worst thing,” he laughed. "I just want her to make her own choices. Let her life play out how she wants it to play out. Not us."

He stopped.

Britney waited.

“Jimmy was thinking about going to St. Frances,” Tom managed to get out. "It’s this prep school in Maryland. I thought it would have been good for him. It would have been good for him. But that wasn’t in the plan. Nope. Saint Joe’s and then Notre Dame. That’s all Liz had in her head and so that’s all it was allowed to be. Can’t deviate from the plan. Wonder if the plan had him…"

He let that sit there.

“Tom,” Britney said, quietly.

“I’m not saying…“ he shook his head once. "I just sometimes think about it. What if, you know? Maybe he doesn’t get hurt if he’s there."

“You can’t know that.”

“No,” he agreed.

“You can’t predict any of it, Tom. You can’t run the other version of it. That’s not how it works.”

“I just want Sophie to get to make her own mistake,” he said. “I want Brice to make his own mistakes. I want them to look back at their lives and feel like the choices in it were actually theirs. Even if it means making mistakes. At least it’s theirs.”

“And if they do?”

“Then selfishly,” he said, “I sleep better."

Britney held his gaze for a moment, then looked down at her plate. She picked up her fork.

“Eat something,” she said. “You’ve been talking for ten minutes and haven’t touched your food.”

Tom looked down at his plate and almost laughed. He picked up his fork.

…

The meeting room in the mission house was the same room they used for everything. Meals when it rained, language lessons on Tuesday mornings, the occasional movie night. Tonight the plastic chairs were arranged in a loose circle and the ceiling fan was doing its best against the heat and mostly losing.

Connie had her hands wrapped around a mug of something herbal that one of the older missionaries had pressed into her hands on the way in. It tasted like grass. She kept drinking it anyway.

Pastor Herrera opened with a short prayer, and then they went around the circle. Each of them sharing something from the past few weeks. How it had been, what they had noticed, what they were taking with them.

Most of it was beautiful. A woman talked about a family she’d been visiting twice a week, a grandmother raising four grandchildren, and how the grandmother had started teaching her to make something with cornmeal. A fellow college kid who had come in over-eager said he had never understood what service meant before this. That he had thought he understood it. He hadn’t.

People laughed at that. Brett laughed too. Connie kept drinking her tea.

“Connie?” Pastor Herrera said when it came around to her turn to speak.

She looked down at the mug. Then back up.

“I’m not totally sure what to say,” she said.

“That’s fine,” he said.

She almost laughed. “Okay. I came here because I wanted to help people. I wanted to do something that mattered. Give back, you know? I grew up in the church, I believe in the work, I wanted to be part of it.”

She paused.

“But I think the honest thing is that this trip has been good for me. Selfishly,” she said the word plainly. “Like, I came here to serve these people and every single day we’re out there, we’re feeding people, we’re showing up, and it turns out that’s been…It’s been filling something up in me that I didn’t know was empty. Or I knew it was empty and I didn’t know what to do about it.”

The room was quiet.

“Every day we make a real impact,” she said. “You can see it. It’s not abstract. Someone is eating because we showed up. Someone is not alone because we sat with them,” she thought about Valentina. “That’s been good for me. I needed that.”

“We’re also delivering the gospel,” said one of the longer-tenured missionaries.

“Yes,” Connie said. She nodded. “Of course."

…

The second session started the same way the first one had. Dr. Ellison set her clipboard on the table. Clicked her pen once. Asked Nia how she had slept.

“Better,” Nia said, which was partially true. She had slept until five-thirty instead of four-fifteen, which felt like a victory.

“Good,” Dr. Ellison wrote something. “You mentioned last time that you’d been reading. Still at it?”

“Finished that one. Started another.”

“What’s this one?”

Nia told her. Dr. Ellison nodded the same way she always nodded, like everything Nia said was a data point she was quietly cataloguing somewhere.

They talked for a few minutes about the week. Nothing significant. The food had been slightly less terrible on Thursday. One of the other girls in her unit had gotten into a fight with a CO and the noise of it had bled through the walls for almost an hour. Nia had read through most of it.

Then Dr. Ellison set her pen down flat on top of the clipboard.

“I want to talk about Jimmy today,” she said.

Nia’s hands, which had been resting loose in her lap, went still.

“Okay,” she said.

Dr. Ellison picked her pen back up. “How long had you known him?”

“Since grade school,” she said. “Maybe like the second or third grade."

“Were you close?”

She looked at the table. “Yeah. We were close.”

“Tell me about that. What was he like?”

“He was nice,” she said. “Like, genuinely nice. Funny. Not trying-to-be-funny funny. It was just how his brain worked. He’d say something and you wouldn’t even realize until like five seconds later that it was the most accurate thing anyone had ever said about a situation.”

Dr. Ellison was writing. Nia kept her eyes on the table.

“He was a good friend,” she added. “Not just to me but to everyone. He paid attention. He cared. He listened."

“He sounds like someone who mattered a lot to you.”

“He did.”

“When did he pass?”

Nia said the date. She didn’t have to think about it. It sat in her memory the way certain things do, not like a fact you’ve memorized but like something that got pressed into you.

Dr. Ellison wrote it down. “And how did you find out?”

“On my phone,” she said. "I follow his sister on Instagram and she posted about it."

“That must have been a shock.”

“Yeah.”

Dr. Ellison was quiet for a moment. “In the weeks after he died. What was that like for you?”

Nia pressed her thumbnail into the pad of her index finger.

“It was hard,” she said.

“Can you be more specific?”

She looked at the window above the door. “I didn’t handle it well.”

“What does that mean? Not handling it well?”

She pressed her thumbnail harder. “It means I made bad choices. After. I was looking for something to make it hurt less and I found things that did that, for a little while, and then those things became their own problem.”

“The substance use.”

“Yeah.”

Dr. Ellison wrote something. “What do you think drove you toward that? After losing him?”

“I think I just didn’t know what to do with it,” she said. “I had never really lost anyone before and I didn’t know how to…I didn’t know how to just feel it and let it be what it was. So I didn’t.”

“Did you feel like yourself during that period?"

“Lots of people lose people,” she said. “They don’t all do what I did.”

Dr. Ellison watched her. “It’s okay if the answer is complicated, Nia. Grief is rarely clean.”

“I know,” Nia said. “But the answer isn’t more complicated. What happened after is on me. The choices I made, the way I handled it, all of it. That’s mine.”

“Even if losing him is what set those choices in motion?”

Nia looked at the table again.

“I’m not trying to make excuses,” she said, quieter.

Dr. Ellison set her pen down again. “I hear that but being fair to yourself isn’t making excuses. Context matters."

Nia didn’t answer.

“You were sixteen,” Dr. Ellison said. “You lost someone you loved. And you struggled. That’s not a character failing. That’s a young person trying to survive something that would be hard for an adult with all the tools in the world.”

Nia’s jaw tightened slightly. She kept her eyes on the table.

“He was a good person,” she said finally. “Whatever happened after, whatever I did or didn’t do, that’s not his fault and I don’t want it attached to him.”

Dr. Ellison was quiet for a moment. “I understand that,” she said.

“Good,” Nia said.

The word came out a little harder than she intended. She exhaled through her nose. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay."

[Caesar]

“You know what they say about niggas and their baby moms. Now that’s not a thing anymore.”

Now when Caine... you know what...

Brice hitting that fake image rehab tour hard. Everyone know what he said to Skylar. This fake grieving don't move us.

Brittany running for higher office while prosecuting this high profile case? Nia getting the NEEDLE. Hell, they might bring back the firing squad or hanging for her.

[Captain Canada]

Serena going to have herself one big ol' helping of humble pie when Brice picks his son over being a 20-year old with her

[redsox907]

Serena going to have herself one big ol' helping of humble pie when Brice picks his son over being a 20-year old with her

you mean when Liz and CAA force him to chose his son because that's the correct political move to rebuild his image

that bih ain't going to Bali, we see it.

Brice still fiending after Mel after she basically accused him of killing his BM is crazy

[djp73]

DARIUS MILES

[djp73]

It’s been filling something up in me

[Soapy]

“You know what they say about niggas and their baby moms. Now that’s not a thing anymore.”

Now when Caine... you know what...

Brice hitting that fake image rehab tour hard. Everyone know what he said to Skylar. This fake grieving don't move us.

Brittany running for higher office while prosecuting this high profile case? Nia getting the NEEDLE. Hell, they might bring back the firing squad or hanging for her.

that PR a motherfucker

Serena going to have herself one big ol' helping of humble pie when Brice picks his son over being a 20-year old with her

She's going all in. Can't blame her. $300m+ at stake here.

you mean when Liz and CAA force him to chose his son because that's the correct political move to rebuild his image

that bih ain't going to Bali, we see it.

Brice still fiending after Mel after she basically accused him of killing his BM is crazy

He can't want to reconnect with an old friend lol?

It’s been filling something up in me

[Soapy]

back to life

[Soapy]

back to reality