American Sun
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djp73
- Posts: 12660
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 13:42
American Sun
Autumn appalled at Caine’s upbringing
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 15872
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
If it work, it workredsox907 wrote: ↑26 May 2026, 23:47oh look, Mireya avoiding her problems with sex, go figure
also, curious what's going to happen when Sena walks in on Mireya and Jas spooning
did Mireya tell Sena she was a pro, or just a stripper? I forget.
Caine really giving Autumn the VIP treatment huh? She never gonna come back to New Orleans, think its just full of thugs
Sena ain't been promoted to keyholder yet.
Just told her that she stripped.
But everyone knows that New Orleans is full of--
I ain't got nothing to do with your GOAT getting locked down by a yt.
Should she have stopped?Captain Canada wrote: ↑27 May 2026, 09:34Mireya still fucking around with Jaslene (inb4 Caesar says its innocent friends bonding through physical touch) is hilarious.
I'll give rare props to Caine, he's really leaning into the relationship and being extremely transparent. Good on him.
Sol y Luna is eternal.
Sound the alarm! I don't know if I would call it appalled. It's just the extreme other end of the spectrum from hers.
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 15872
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
Walapa / Nextia
Caine pulled Autumn’s carry-on off the end of the conveyor belt by the handle and set it on its wheels beside him. He reached back for her tote and grabbed it off the gray plastic tray that had come through behind the case, settling the strap over his shoulder. The TSA agent at the end of the belt waved another tray through the x-ray, the rubber flaps slapping shut behind it. Autumn had her shoes back on and was tucking her ID into the front pocket of her bag where it hung from her elbow, her phone in her other hand. She stepped clear of the conveyor and fell in beside him as he started walking.
The terminal opened in front of them, the ceiling vaulting up high, the gates running off in both directions down their respective concourses. A cart with flashing lights and a beeping horn rolled past them in the opposite direction, the driver leaning on the wheel, an older couple sitting in the back with their bags between their feet. Caine angled toward the screens overhead and read down to her flight, then cut left into the concourse that would carry them down to her gate.
Autumn looked over at him. “You sure it’s cool if you wait with me? I’m not trying to keep you from going to the hospital.”
Caine shook his head. The wheels of the carry-on bumped over a seam in the tile. “We going later today. Camila got some appointments Mireya is taking her to.”
“You could’ve did that.”
“You forgetting I don’t live here. I don’t know her doctors and shit.”
Autumn shook her head, the corner of her mouth pulling. “Typical of a nigga to not know that.”
Caine shrugged. “I knew when I was here. She started going somewhere else though.”
“Excuses.”
A coffee shop ran along the right side of the concourse, the line wrapped around a velvet rope, the smell of espresso and butter pushing into the walkway as they passed it. They came up on her gate near the end of the concourse, the screen above the desk flashing the boarding time, a few rows of seats already filling with passengers staring at their phones. He spotted a row against the wall opposite the desk with two empty seats at the end and walked toward it.
He set the carry-on down beside one of the seats and lowered himself into it, the tote sliding off his shoulder and landing on his knee. Autumn dropped into the seat beside him and crossed her legs, her bag settling in her lap.
Caine looked over at her.
“I appreciate you for coming out here and staying with me. For real.”
Autumn nodded. Her eyes stayed on the desk across from them for a beat before they came back to him.
“Yeah, I’m glad I did. It was dumb on some shit looking back, but I think I needed to do this.”
“Gonna ghost me when you get back to LA?”
Autumn sucked her teeth. Her head tipped back against the wall behind her chair. “Nigga, I ain’t stay out here for weeks in your baby mama’s house to do that. I would’ve left your stupid ass here and had me a few new niggas by the time you got back.”
Caine shook his head. “You ain’t gotta say it like that, you know.”
“Yes, I do.” Autumn turned her head against the wall and looked at him. “I gotta remind you that I’m extremely desirable so you remember what you got and don’t go doing something stupid like niggas prone to do.”
“I wouldn’t have introduced you to my people if I was planning on that.”
Autumn snorted a laugh. “Your criminal potnas as y’all called each other.”
Caine smiled, his head dipping once. “Yeah, them. And I know mi mama talked to you.”
“You ain’t get any of that woman’s personality.”
Caine laughed, his shoulders moving with it. “Nah, I definitely got some of it. She just don’t hide it anymore.”
“Case in point.”
A gate agent walked behind the desk and tapped at a keyboard, the boarding time on the screen above her shifting by a minute. A family came down the concourse and settled into a row of seats two down from theirs, the father lowering a car seat onto the carpet, the mother pulling a tablet from a bag and handing it to the toddler beside her. The toddler took it with both hands and pressed the screen on, the cartoon volume coming up before the mother reached over and thumbed it down.
A couple sat down in the row across from them and pulled an airport pretzel out of a paper sleeve, the salt scattering across the tile under their seats. The woman tore off a piece and held it out to the man between her thumb and forefinger. He took it from her and put it in his mouth, then reached for the pretzel in her other hand and tore off a piece of his own. He held it out to her and she took it the same way. The pretzel passed between them, piece by piece, the paper sleeve crumpling smaller in her lap.
Caine watched them for a beat. Then he looked back at Autumn.
“You know you the first chick I’ve done all this for since—”
“Yeah, I figured that out.”
Autumn leaned over the armrest between them and brought her hand up to his chin, her fingers closing around his jaw and holding him there. Her thumb pressed against the side of his face just below his ear. She held him for a beat, her eyes moving across his face, then pressed her mouth to his. The kiss came slow, the pressure even, her hand still on his jaw. She pulled back and let her fingers slide off his chin, her thumb dragging once along the underside of his jaw before her hand dropped to her lap.
“Just don’t make no more kids with her.”
Caine laughed. “I can probably manage that.”
Tatum stood at the window with his phone pressed to his ear and his free hand braced against the glass at shoulder height. Downtown filled the glass behind him, the towers stacked pale, bright across the basin and the sun cutting hard across their western faces, the shadows falling long down into the streets below. He shifted his weight off one foot and onto the other, the watch on his wrist catching the light coming in over the credenza behind him. A helicopter tracked north along the skyline, small and steady, the rotors flashing once each pass as they caught the sun. The voice on the other end of the line ran past his ear in a stream, his head tilted half an inch toward the phone, his eyes on the freeway south of the financial district.
He pulled in a breath.
“Look, Jeanie. I’m telling you all I got to tell you. He’s in New Orleans, taking care of his family. I know we had something set up, but we gotta push it until he comes back.”
He let his hand drop from the glass and slid it into the pocket of his slacks. The sleeves of his crew neck were pushed to his forearms and he flexed his wrist once inside the cuff before he settled. Through the door, two voices ran back and forth over speakerphone three doors down, the sound coming through muffled by the wall.
Jeanie’s voice came back through the line fast, the words stacked tight against each other. “We’ve already pushed it three weeks. This campaign was supposed to launch before the semester started. Now, we’ve got 12, 13 days to film, edit, get it back from prod and place the ad buys. And that’s if he comes back today.”
Tatum pulled his hand out of his pocket and ran it back through his hair, the strands giving and settling against his palm. He held there a beat then let it drop.
“Well, I can tell you that he isn’t coming back today.”
“What’s so important that he can’t come back to fucking Los Angeles?” Jeanie’s voice came up half a register. “This better not be you covering for him doing something that would jeopardize this campaign.”
Tatum turned from the window, crossed the carpet in two steps and turned back, his free hand coming out to gesture at nothing before it dropped against his thigh.
“You see Lincoln Riley getting on TV every day and saying that Caine’s going to come back when he comes back, right? You think he’d be doing that if Caine was in some kind of trouble?” He paused, his voice dropping half a register. “Look, we can work something out here.”
Jeanie let a beat pass on her end. A keyboard clacked behind her voice, fast bursts and then a pause.
“What we’re going to work out is I’m going to call that kid at UCLA’s agent and see if we can rush something out to get this launched. At a third of the price.”
Tatum’s mouth pulled at one corner. He brought his hand back up to the glass, his fingers spreading wide against the pane. The traffic on the freeway below him kept moving in the slow drag it had been, the cars catching the light off their roofs and windshields in pieces that moved with them.
“Let’s not get rash now, Jeanie. I’ll give you back some of the markup on the hard costs for your trouble. I just need you to lay off until the kid’s back in town.”
Jeanie let a beat pass. The keyboard behind her stopped.
“A quarter off the markup.”
“Fifteen.”
“A quarter.”
Tatum closed his eyes for a beat. He opened them, his palm still pressed against the glass.
“Fine, a quarter.”
“I’ll send the updated sheet today.”
Tatum opened his mouth and his lips parted on the start of something. Three beeps sounded before he had it. He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the screen, the call timer frozen at four minutes and change before it cut to the contact card. He locked the screen with his thumb and let the hand fall to his side. He stood at the window for a beat longer, his shoulders settling back down into his shirt. He ran his hand through his hair a second time, the gesture shorter than the first, and turned from the window.
A knock came against the office door, two quick taps. The handle turned and Kimberly’s head came around the edge of the frame, her hand still on the knob, her other hand holding the door open behind her.
“Tatum?”
He crossed to his desk.
“What is it?”
“I got Mo with Monster on line two for you.”
Tatum set the phone on the desk and pulled the chair out, lowering himself into it.
“I’m guessing it’s about Caine.”
Kimberly nodded once. Her hand stayed on the knob.
“I got it.”
She pulled the door shut behind her. Tatum reached for the desk phone and pressed the button for line two. The light blinked twice and held steady. He picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear, his elbow coming down to the desk, his other hand pulling the laptop open with two fingers under the lid.
“Mo, my man! What can I do for you?”
Sena sat in the armchair across from the couch with the water bottle held against her thigh, the plastic cool against the skin where her shorts had ridden up. Her feet were flat on the rug, her ankles parallel, her bag set on the carpet beside the chair leg with the strap looped through itself. Alex had pulled both feet up under her on the couch and was watching Sena over the rim of her own bottle, one elbow braced on the armrest, her free hand flat against her ankle where it pressed into the cushion.
“You’re really going to sit over there the entire time?”
Sena brought the bottle up and took a sip. She lowered it and held it back against her thigh then nodded.
“Seems like something that friends would do to me.”
Alex rolled her eyes, her head tipping a fraction with the motion. “Friends can sit next to each other. You don’t have to make this weird, Sena.”
“You already did that. I’m just working inside of that.”
Alex held her hands up, the bottle pinned between her forearm and her ribs. “You’re right. I don’t want to argue. I really did miss you.” She let her hands drop, one to her knee and the other to the cushion beside her and tilted her head. “I’m surprised that this new girlfriend of yours takes up so much of your time already.”
Sena turned the bottle once in her hand. The label crinkled under her thumb where the adhesive had lifted at the seam. She turned it again and the plastic ridges caught against the pad of her thumb.
“Her name is Mireya. She just had a baby. It—It wasn’t good. A lot of things went wrong.”
Alex’s eyebrow climbed. The bottle came down to her thigh.
“You’re dating a woman that just had a baby.”
Sena nodded.
“With IVF or something?”
Sena shook her head.
Alex snorted a laugh, the corner of her mouth pulling. “I hope you see the irony there.”
Sena’s thumb stopped on the label. She set the bottle on the side table beside the armchair, the base tapping once against the wood. Her hand came back to her lap and her fingers laced together across the front of her thigh.
“You’d have a point if she didn’t openly tell everyone around her, including her children’s father, that I’m her girlfriend.”
Alex pressed her lips together. She shook her head, the motion small, her chin sweeping a half inch each way. “It just seems kinda shady. How much can you really know about someone who is going around dating people while getting pregnant by some man?”
“I know plenty.”
“I just don’t think you should fully trust her.”
Sena’s jaw shifted and she held Alex’s eyes. The hum of the air conditioning cycled through a shift in pitch above the kitchen and came back to its even level.
“You don’t even know her. If you’re trying to do this friendship thing, you probably shouldn’t start it off by acting a fool about a woman I’m with who you’ve never even met.”
Alex held her hands up again, her bottle going to the cushion beside her thigh. Her hand came back down to the couch and picked up her phone from where it lay against the fabric. She thumbed the screen on, her eyes already moving to it.
“You said her name was Mireya?”
Alex had pronounced it with the long e, the second syllable lifted.
“Mireya.”
Sena pronounced correctly. Alex kept her eyes on the phone.
Her thumb pulled down the screen, the swipes slow and deliberate, her head tilting a fraction as the app loaded. Her eyebrow climbed. She kept scrolling, her thumb moving with the same slow drag. She tilted the screen a few degrees, then a few more, the angle catching her own face in the glass for a second before she shifted it again.
“She sure doesn’t mind showing skin, huh? And hangs around with a lot of women who look like fucking strippers.”
“Is that your opinion as a friend or as someone who is jealous of her?”
Alex’s thumb stopped on the screen. She lowered the phone to her thigh and shrugged, one shoulder lifting and dropping inside her t-shirt.
“I just don’t like it. I don’t like her for you, Sena. Based on that? She’s too wild.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you don’t have to like it then.”
Alex looked at her, her mouth slightly parted, the bottle on the cushion beside her thigh sweating a small ring onto the fabric. She held the look for a beat. Two beats. Then she shifted her weight on the couch and brought her chin up toward the television mounted on the wall above the entertainment console.
“You want to watch Euphoria with me and get something DoorDashed?”
Sena shrugged then picked the water bottle back up off the side table and brought it to her thigh.
“Sure. I got time before Mireya is home.”
Mireya broke off another corner of the sandwich with her fingers and set it on the wrapper without bringing it to her mouth. The bread was soft where the mayonnaise had worked into it overnight in the refrigerated case downstairs and the turkey under the bread had the same pale flat color of every hospital deli sandwich. She rolled the corner of the wrapper down with her thumb and pressed it flat against the tray. Next to her plate, the bag of chips sat on top of Caine’s sandwich, the chips bag bright blue against the brown paper, the wrapper of the sandwich folded shut at the top where she’d pinched it closed for him before he’d stood up.
She flipped her phone over on the table and pressed it with her thumb. The screen lit up and she thumbed it open and slid her thumb across the rows of apps until she’d worked her way to TikTok. Her thumb hovered over the icon.
“Hi, Mireya.”
Mireya turned her head over her shoulder. Stephanie stood a step back from the chair on her other side, her tablet held flat against her chest and her keys in her hand. She’d stopped at an angle to the table, her body turned a quarter off the chair so that the chair stood between them with the space to it open and clear.
“Hey.”
“You’re looking better. I’ve been meaning to check up on you, but since you were released, it’s been hard to find a time to do that and not take time away from you with your daughter.”
Mireya pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yeah, just waiting to go back up now.”
Stephanie tipped her chin toward the chair on Mireya’s other side. “Do you mind if I sit for a moment?”
“Go ahead.”
Stephanie pulled the chair out and lowered herself into it, the legs giving a small scrape against the tile. She set her tablet down on the table between them and her keys on top of the tablet, the metal teeth catching the light from the fluorescent panel above them. She folded her hands in her lap. Her body angled toward Mireya, her shoulders square, her chin level.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this, but the anonymous caller from a couple months ago? That was your mother.”
Mireya’s lip pulled up at one corner. She caught it before it could land and smoothed it back down with the muscles at the side of her mouth. Her thumb came off the home button and dropped to the table beside the phone.
“I figured that. Why tell me now?”
“I want you to understand and believe me when I say I’m committed to your well-being. It was flagged on your file when we did the psychological evaluation for your discharge.”
“That’s some shit you’re saying to let me drop my guard so you can take my babies.”
Stephanie pressed her lips together. The small pull at the corners of her mouth held for a beat, then settled.
“That’s probably the most honest thing you’ve said to me since I met you.” She let that sit. Her hands stayed in her lap, her fingers folded over each other, her thumbs pressing once together and releasing. “I’m not trying to take your babies from you, Mireya. Struggling emotionally isn’t grounds for that provided you’re managing those emotions to not be a danger to yourself or others.”
“I’d never do anything to my children.”
Stephanie nodded. “I believe you. Even if there was a concern, your children would likely be placed with their grandmother Sara. Louisiana doesn’t have the foster families for siblings.”
Mireya let her eyes settle on Stephanie’s face and stay there. The cafeteria around them ran low, a few tables filled, the line at the salad bar down to two people with trays. A janitor pulled a mop bucket past the table on its small black wheels, the water in the bucket sloshing once against the rim before it settled. Mireya’s thumb rolled the edge of the sandwich wrapper between her finger and the pad.
“So, why bother me?”
“I told you. You’re my client even though you were assigned to me. That’ll end when Micaela is discharged unless you choose to extend it.”
Mireya tilted her head a fraction. “That the alternative to the shrink?”
Stephanie shook her head. “That would be in addition to Fernanda.”
Stephanie’s eyes lifted past Mireya’s shoulder, then came back to her face. She uncrossed her hands and brought them up to her tablet, sliding her keys off the top and into her palm.
“It’s good to see you doing better, Mireya.”
She stood up, tucking the tablet under her arm the same way she’d carried the folder months ago, her keys closed in her other hand. She gave Mireya a small nod and started off across the cafeteria, her loafers tapping a steady half beat on the tile until the sound of them got lost in the low hum of the room.
Mireya watched her go. She watched her until Stephanie passed the salad bar and turned the corner past the registers and disappeared into the corridor that led back toward the elevators.
Caine pulled the chair out next to her and sat down. He picked up his sandwich and pulled the wrapper open at the top, his eyes moving from the sandwich to Mireya’s face.
“¿Estás bien?”
Mireya nodded. She picked up the corner of bread she’d broken off the sandwich earlier and put it in her mouth.
“Sí. Ella decía lo mismo.”
Caine pulled Autumn’s carry-on off the end of the conveyor belt by the handle and set it on its wheels beside him. He reached back for her tote and grabbed it off the gray plastic tray that had come through behind the case, settling the strap over his shoulder. The TSA agent at the end of the belt waved another tray through the x-ray, the rubber flaps slapping shut behind it. Autumn had her shoes back on and was tucking her ID into the front pocket of her bag where it hung from her elbow, her phone in her other hand. She stepped clear of the conveyor and fell in beside him as he started walking.
The terminal opened in front of them, the ceiling vaulting up high, the gates running off in both directions down their respective concourses. A cart with flashing lights and a beeping horn rolled past them in the opposite direction, the driver leaning on the wheel, an older couple sitting in the back with their bags between their feet. Caine angled toward the screens overhead and read down to her flight, then cut left into the concourse that would carry them down to her gate.
Autumn looked over at him. “You sure it’s cool if you wait with me? I’m not trying to keep you from going to the hospital.”
Caine shook his head. The wheels of the carry-on bumped over a seam in the tile. “We going later today. Camila got some appointments Mireya is taking her to.”
“You could’ve did that.”
“You forgetting I don’t live here. I don’t know her doctors and shit.”
Autumn shook her head, the corner of her mouth pulling. “Typical of a nigga to not know that.”
Caine shrugged. “I knew when I was here. She started going somewhere else though.”
“Excuses.”
A coffee shop ran along the right side of the concourse, the line wrapped around a velvet rope, the smell of espresso and butter pushing into the walkway as they passed it. They came up on her gate near the end of the concourse, the screen above the desk flashing the boarding time, a few rows of seats already filling with passengers staring at their phones. He spotted a row against the wall opposite the desk with two empty seats at the end and walked toward it.
He set the carry-on down beside one of the seats and lowered himself into it, the tote sliding off his shoulder and landing on his knee. Autumn dropped into the seat beside him and crossed her legs, her bag settling in her lap.
Caine looked over at her.
“I appreciate you for coming out here and staying with me. For real.”
Autumn nodded. Her eyes stayed on the desk across from them for a beat before they came back to him.
“Yeah, I’m glad I did. It was dumb on some shit looking back, but I think I needed to do this.”
“Gonna ghost me when you get back to LA?”
Autumn sucked her teeth. Her head tipped back against the wall behind her chair. “Nigga, I ain’t stay out here for weeks in your baby mama’s house to do that. I would’ve left your stupid ass here and had me a few new niggas by the time you got back.”
Caine shook his head. “You ain’t gotta say it like that, you know.”
“Yes, I do.” Autumn turned her head against the wall and looked at him. “I gotta remind you that I’m extremely desirable so you remember what you got and don’t go doing something stupid like niggas prone to do.”
“I wouldn’t have introduced you to my people if I was planning on that.”
Autumn snorted a laugh. “Your criminal potnas as y’all called each other.”
Caine smiled, his head dipping once. “Yeah, them. And I know mi mama talked to you.”
“You ain’t get any of that woman’s personality.”
Caine laughed, his shoulders moving with it. “Nah, I definitely got some of it. She just don’t hide it anymore.”
“Case in point.”
A gate agent walked behind the desk and tapped at a keyboard, the boarding time on the screen above her shifting by a minute. A family came down the concourse and settled into a row of seats two down from theirs, the father lowering a car seat onto the carpet, the mother pulling a tablet from a bag and handing it to the toddler beside her. The toddler took it with both hands and pressed the screen on, the cartoon volume coming up before the mother reached over and thumbed it down.
A couple sat down in the row across from them and pulled an airport pretzel out of a paper sleeve, the salt scattering across the tile under their seats. The woman tore off a piece and held it out to the man between her thumb and forefinger. He took it from her and put it in his mouth, then reached for the pretzel in her other hand and tore off a piece of his own. He held it out to her and she took it the same way. The pretzel passed between them, piece by piece, the paper sleeve crumpling smaller in her lap.
Caine watched them for a beat. Then he looked back at Autumn.
“You know you the first chick I’ve done all this for since—”
“Yeah, I figured that out.”
Autumn leaned over the armrest between them and brought her hand up to his chin, her fingers closing around his jaw and holding him there. Her thumb pressed against the side of his face just below his ear. She held him for a beat, her eyes moving across his face, then pressed her mouth to his. The kiss came slow, the pressure even, her hand still on his jaw. She pulled back and let her fingers slide off his chin, her thumb dragging once along the underside of his jaw before her hand dropped to her lap.
“Just don’t make no more kids with her.”
Caine laughed. “I can probably manage that.”
~~~
Tatum stood at the window with his phone pressed to his ear and his free hand braced against the glass at shoulder height. Downtown filled the glass behind him, the towers stacked pale, bright across the basin and the sun cutting hard across their western faces, the shadows falling long down into the streets below. He shifted his weight off one foot and onto the other, the watch on his wrist catching the light coming in over the credenza behind him. A helicopter tracked north along the skyline, small and steady, the rotors flashing once each pass as they caught the sun. The voice on the other end of the line ran past his ear in a stream, his head tilted half an inch toward the phone, his eyes on the freeway south of the financial district.
He pulled in a breath.
“Look, Jeanie. I’m telling you all I got to tell you. He’s in New Orleans, taking care of his family. I know we had something set up, but we gotta push it until he comes back.”
He let his hand drop from the glass and slid it into the pocket of his slacks. The sleeves of his crew neck were pushed to his forearms and he flexed his wrist once inside the cuff before he settled. Through the door, two voices ran back and forth over speakerphone three doors down, the sound coming through muffled by the wall.
Jeanie’s voice came back through the line fast, the words stacked tight against each other. “We’ve already pushed it three weeks. This campaign was supposed to launch before the semester started. Now, we’ve got 12, 13 days to film, edit, get it back from prod and place the ad buys. And that’s if he comes back today.”
Tatum pulled his hand out of his pocket and ran it back through his hair, the strands giving and settling against his palm. He held there a beat then let it drop.
“Well, I can tell you that he isn’t coming back today.”
“What’s so important that he can’t come back to fucking Los Angeles?” Jeanie’s voice came up half a register. “This better not be you covering for him doing something that would jeopardize this campaign.”
Tatum turned from the window, crossed the carpet in two steps and turned back, his free hand coming out to gesture at nothing before it dropped against his thigh.
“You see Lincoln Riley getting on TV every day and saying that Caine’s going to come back when he comes back, right? You think he’d be doing that if Caine was in some kind of trouble?” He paused, his voice dropping half a register. “Look, we can work something out here.”
Jeanie let a beat pass on her end. A keyboard clacked behind her voice, fast bursts and then a pause.
“What we’re going to work out is I’m going to call that kid at UCLA’s agent and see if we can rush something out to get this launched. At a third of the price.”
Tatum’s mouth pulled at one corner. He brought his hand back up to the glass, his fingers spreading wide against the pane. The traffic on the freeway below him kept moving in the slow drag it had been, the cars catching the light off their roofs and windshields in pieces that moved with them.
“Let’s not get rash now, Jeanie. I’ll give you back some of the markup on the hard costs for your trouble. I just need you to lay off until the kid’s back in town.”
Jeanie let a beat pass. The keyboard behind her stopped.
“A quarter off the markup.”
“Fifteen.”
“A quarter.”
Tatum closed his eyes for a beat. He opened them, his palm still pressed against the glass.
“Fine, a quarter.”
“I’ll send the updated sheet today.”
Tatum opened his mouth and his lips parted on the start of something. Three beeps sounded before he had it. He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the screen, the call timer frozen at four minutes and change before it cut to the contact card. He locked the screen with his thumb and let the hand fall to his side. He stood at the window for a beat longer, his shoulders settling back down into his shirt. He ran his hand through his hair a second time, the gesture shorter than the first, and turned from the window.
A knock came against the office door, two quick taps. The handle turned and Kimberly’s head came around the edge of the frame, her hand still on the knob, her other hand holding the door open behind her.
“Tatum?”
He crossed to his desk.
“What is it?”
“I got Mo with Monster on line two for you.”
Tatum set the phone on the desk and pulled the chair out, lowering himself into it.
“I’m guessing it’s about Caine.”
Kimberly nodded once. Her hand stayed on the knob.
“I got it.”
She pulled the door shut behind her. Tatum reached for the desk phone and pressed the button for line two. The light blinked twice and held steady. He picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear, his elbow coming down to the desk, his other hand pulling the laptop open with two fingers under the lid.
“Mo, my man! What can I do for you?”
~~~
Sena sat in the armchair across from the couch with the water bottle held against her thigh, the plastic cool against the skin where her shorts had ridden up. Her feet were flat on the rug, her ankles parallel, her bag set on the carpet beside the chair leg with the strap looped through itself. Alex had pulled both feet up under her on the couch and was watching Sena over the rim of her own bottle, one elbow braced on the armrest, her free hand flat against her ankle where it pressed into the cushion.
“You’re really going to sit over there the entire time?”
Sena brought the bottle up and took a sip. She lowered it and held it back against her thigh then nodded.
“Seems like something that friends would do to me.”
Alex rolled her eyes, her head tipping a fraction with the motion. “Friends can sit next to each other. You don’t have to make this weird, Sena.”
“You already did that. I’m just working inside of that.”
Alex held her hands up, the bottle pinned between her forearm and her ribs. “You’re right. I don’t want to argue. I really did miss you.” She let her hands drop, one to her knee and the other to the cushion beside her and tilted her head. “I’m surprised that this new girlfriend of yours takes up so much of your time already.”
Sena turned the bottle once in her hand. The label crinkled under her thumb where the adhesive had lifted at the seam. She turned it again and the plastic ridges caught against the pad of her thumb.
“Her name is Mireya. She just had a baby. It—It wasn’t good. A lot of things went wrong.”
Alex’s eyebrow climbed. The bottle came down to her thigh.
“You’re dating a woman that just had a baby.”
Sena nodded.
“With IVF or something?”
Sena shook her head.
Alex snorted a laugh, the corner of her mouth pulling. “I hope you see the irony there.”
Sena’s thumb stopped on the label. She set the bottle on the side table beside the armchair, the base tapping once against the wood. Her hand came back to her lap and her fingers laced together across the front of her thigh.
“You’d have a point if she didn’t openly tell everyone around her, including her children’s father, that I’m her girlfriend.”
Alex pressed her lips together. She shook her head, the motion small, her chin sweeping a half inch each way. “It just seems kinda shady. How much can you really know about someone who is going around dating people while getting pregnant by some man?”
“I know plenty.”
“I just don’t think you should fully trust her.”
Sena’s jaw shifted and she held Alex’s eyes. The hum of the air conditioning cycled through a shift in pitch above the kitchen and came back to its even level.
“You don’t even know her. If you’re trying to do this friendship thing, you probably shouldn’t start it off by acting a fool about a woman I’m with who you’ve never even met.”
Alex held her hands up again, her bottle going to the cushion beside her thigh. Her hand came back down to the couch and picked up her phone from where it lay against the fabric. She thumbed the screen on, her eyes already moving to it.
“You said her name was Mireya?”
Alex had pronounced it with the long e, the second syllable lifted.
“Mireya.”
Sena pronounced correctly. Alex kept her eyes on the phone.
Her thumb pulled down the screen, the swipes slow and deliberate, her head tilting a fraction as the app loaded. Her eyebrow climbed. She kept scrolling, her thumb moving with the same slow drag. She tilted the screen a few degrees, then a few more, the angle catching her own face in the glass for a second before she shifted it again.
“She sure doesn’t mind showing skin, huh? And hangs around with a lot of women who look like fucking strippers.”
“Is that your opinion as a friend or as someone who is jealous of her?”
Alex’s thumb stopped on the screen. She lowered the phone to her thigh and shrugged, one shoulder lifting and dropping inside her t-shirt.
“I just don’t like it. I don’t like her for you, Sena. Based on that? She’s too wild.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you don’t have to like it then.”
Alex looked at her, her mouth slightly parted, the bottle on the cushion beside her thigh sweating a small ring onto the fabric. She held the look for a beat. Two beats. Then she shifted her weight on the couch and brought her chin up toward the television mounted on the wall above the entertainment console.
“You want to watch Euphoria with me and get something DoorDashed?”
Sena shrugged then picked the water bottle back up off the side table and brought it to her thigh.
“Sure. I got time before Mireya is home.”
~~~
Mireya broke off another corner of the sandwich with her fingers and set it on the wrapper without bringing it to her mouth. The bread was soft where the mayonnaise had worked into it overnight in the refrigerated case downstairs and the turkey under the bread had the same pale flat color of every hospital deli sandwich. She rolled the corner of the wrapper down with her thumb and pressed it flat against the tray. Next to her plate, the bag of chips sat on top of Caine’s sandwich, the chips bag bright blue against the brown paper, the wrapper of the sandwich folded shut at the top where she’d pinched it closed for him before he’d stood up.
She flipped her phone over on the table and pressed it with her thumb. The screen lit up and she thumbed it open and slid her thumb across the rows of apps until she’d worked her way to TikTok. Her thumb hovered over the icon.
“Hi, Mireya.”
Mireya turned her head over her shoulder. Stephanie stood a step back from the chair on her other side, her tablet held flat against her chest and her keys in her hand. She’d stopped at an angle to the table, her body turned a quarter off the chair so that the chair stood between them with the space to it open and clear.
“Hey.”
“You’re looking better. I’ve been meaning to check up on you, but since you were released, it’s been hard to find a time to do that and not take time away from you with your daughter.”
Mireya pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yeah, just waiting to go back up now.”
Stephanie tipped her chin toward the chair on Mireya’s other side. “Do you mind if I sit for a moment?”
“Go ahead.”
Stephanie pulled the chair out and lowered herself into it, the legs giving a small scrape against the tile. She set her tablet down on the table between them and her keys on top of the tablet, the metal teeth catching the light from the fluorescent panel above them. She folded her hands in her lap. Her body angled toward Mireya, her shoulders square, her chin level.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this, but the anonymous caller from a couple months ago? That was your mother.”
Mireya’s lip pulled up at one corner. She caught it before it could land and smoothed it back down with the muscles at the side of her mouth. Her thumb came off the home button and dropped to the table beside the phone.
“I figured that. Why tell me now?”
“I want you to understand and believe me when I say I’m committed to your well-being. It was flagged on your file when we did the psychological evaluation for your discharge.”
“That’s some shit you’re saying to let me drop my guard so you can take my babies.”
Stephanie pressed her lips together. The small pull at the corners of her mouth held for a beat, then settled.
“That’s probably the most honest thing you’ve said to me since I met you.” She let that sit. Her hands stayed in her lap, her fingers folded over each other, her thumbs pressing once together and releasing. “I’m not trying to take your babies from you, Mireya. Struggling emotionally isn’t grounds for that provided you’re managing those emotions to not be a danger to yourself or others.”
“I’d never do anything to my children.”
Stephanie nodded. “I believe you. Even if there was a concern, your children would likely be placed with their grandmother Sara. Louisiana doesn’t have the foster families for siblings.”
Mireya let her eyes settle on Stephanie’s face and stay there. The cafeteria around them ran low, a few tables filled, the line at the salad bar down to two people with trays. A janitor pulled a mop bucket past the table on its small black wheels, the water in the bucket sloshing once against the rim before it settled. Mireya’s thumb rolled the edge of the sandwich wrapper between her finger and the pad.
“So, why bother me?”
“I told you. You’re my client even though you were assigned to me. That’ll end when Micaela is discharged unless you choose to extend it.”
Mireya tilted her head a fraction. “That the alternative to the shrink?”
Stephanie shook her head. “That would be in addition to Fernanda.”
Stephanie’s eyes lifted past Mireya’s shoulder, then came back to her face. She uncrossed her hands and brought them up to her tablet, sliding her keys off the top and into her palm.
“It’s good to see you doing better, Mireya.”
She stood up, tucking the tablet under her arm the same way she’d carried the folder months ago, her keys closed in her other hand. She gave Mireya a small nod and started off across the cafeteria, her loafers tapping a steady half beat on the tile until the sound of them got lost in the low hum of the room.
Mireya watched her go. She watched her until Stephanie passed the salad bar and turned the corner past the registers and disappeared into the corridor that led back toward the elevators.
Caine pulled the chair out next to her and sat down. He picked up his sandwich and pulled the wrapper open at the top, his eyes moving from the sandwich to Mireya’s face.
“¿Estás bien?”
Mireya nodded. She picked up the corner of bread she’d broken off the sandwich earlier and put it in her mouth.
“Sí. Ella decía lo mismo.”
-
Captain Canada
- Posts: 7232
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
American Sun
Alex getting on Sena's case would be hilarious on its own, but its even funnier that she's 100% right 
Just go to therapy, Mireya.
Just go to therapy, Mireya.
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redsox907
- Posts: 5376
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
American Sun
she talks to the glizzy when she has problems. Or the taco, whichever is handy
Alex getting pressed because she doesn't feel special anymore eh?
Tatum bout to have a come to Jesus with Caine? Like we get it, but going 0 dark thirty right before you about to cash in all these deals is bad biz
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 15872
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
The message might be right, but the messenger isn't.Captain Canada wrote: ↑28 May 2026, 10:43Alex getting on Sena's case would be hilarious on its own, but its even funnier that she's 100% right
Just go to therapy, Mireya.
Mireya a Catholic. She just need some church in her life, none of that shrink shit.
redsox907 wrote: ↑28 May 2026, 19:18she talks to the glizzy when she has problems. Or the taco, whichever is handy
Alex getting pressed because she doesn't feel special anymore eh?
Tatum bout to have a come to Jesus with Caine? Like we get it, but going 0 dark thirty right before you about to cash in all these deals is bad biz
She thought she could have some coont coont on tap when she feeling lesbian-y but Mireya blocking that.
Caine said he used to have worry about getting shot for bad bidnis. Some mad white folks not moving him.
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 15872
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
Yasha / Tonatiuh
Caine had Micaela against his chest with one hand spread flat across her back, his palm reaching from one shoulder blade to the other and his fingers curling up toward the base of her head. Her cheek pressed into the open collar of his shirt. Her face had turned into him so the weight of her head fit under his jaw, and her breathing came against his throat in small fast pulls he could feel more than hear. Dr. Begeron leaned in over his forearm with the disc of her stethoscope pressed to Micaela’s back below his hand. Her head tipped down. Her eyes went to the middle of the room while she listened, moving once to the monitor on the stand beside the bed and coming back. Tanya stood at her shoulder, two fingers near the clip on Micaela’s foot where the line ran to the screen.
Mireya sat up against the pillows with her knees drawn under the blanket and her hands folded over her shins. Her eyes stayed on the two of them. On Caine’s hand and the small back under it. On the face tucked against his throat and the fist that had worked loose of the blanket between them.
Dr. Begeron straightened. She pulled the earpieces free and let the stethoscope fall around her neck, her thumb running down the tubing before it settled. She looked at Caine, then past him to Mireya on the bed.
“You two have a real tough little one.” She slid the chestpiece into the pocket of her coat. “We were looking at a few more weeks, but I think if she does well today in here then you’ll be taking little Micaela home tonight.”
A smile crossed Mireya’s mouth and went. Caine dipped his chin toward the doctor and brought his eyes back down to Micaela against his chest.
“Let us know if you think something’s wrong and we’ll come back to check on her,” Dr. Begeron said.
“Thank you,” Mireya said.
Dr. Begeron nodded and turned for the door. Tanya stepped in behind her. Her eyes found Mireya as she went, and her mouth pulled into a small smile. She drew the door closed behind her, her palm flat against it. She eased it the last inch so it met the frame soft.
The air conditioning ran low through the vent, and the monitor at Micaela’s foot turned its numbers over beside the bed. Through the window the light had the white press of morning, the glass warm where the room’s cool met the heat behind it.
Caine tipped his head down. His mouth came close to the curl of Micaela’s ear.
“¿Lo oíste, mi cielito? Esta noche te vas a casa.”
Micaela made a sound against his collar, thin and short, more breath than voice. Her hand came up off his chest and her fingers opened and closed against the skin at the base of his throat.
“How you doing right now?”
Mireya’s brow drew in. “You talking to me?”
Caine nodded. His eyes stayed on Micaela. “I know you been struggling to hold everything together these last few weeks.”
Mireya shook her head. “I’m fine. I just want to get her out of here.”
“Te estás olvidando de con quién estás hablando.”
“I’ll survive.”
Micaela shifted against his chest, her head turning a fraction under his jaw before it settled. Caine brought his free hand up and held a finger out in front of her fist. Her fingers found it and closed around it. Her whole hand stopped short of his first knuckle. A smile pulled at his mouth.
“I can get you and mi mama some help with taking care of her.”
Mireya sucked her teeth. “No voy a dejar que un desconocido cuide a mi hija.”
“¿Qué era Sena?”
“I knew her for almost a year before she started babysitting Camila.” Mireya pressed her shoulder back into the pillows, and her chin lifted a fraction.
“I don’t want you to get overwhelmed. With school and Camila, that’s a lot.” Caine moved his finger an inch and Micaela’s hand came with it. “An infant is a lot.”
“I’m aware, Caine. I’ve done this before, remember?”
Caine ran his thumb across Micaela’s cheek, from the corner of her mouth up to the soft place beneath her eye and back down. Her mouth worked once and went still.
“More reason you should let me help you.”
Mireya watched the two of them. Her eyes moved from his thumb on Micaela’s cheek to the fist closed around his finger and rested there a moment before they came up to his face.
“I’ll play it by ear. Is that enough for you?”
Caine nodded. “Yeah. I’ll just get Sena’s number before I go back to LA and ask her if you losing your shit and hiding it from me.”
Mireya’s eyebrow went up. “I wasn’t aware y’all got so close.”
A laugh came through Caine’s nose. “She cool. A little nervous but cool.”
“Ojalá pudiera decir lo mismo de la tuya.”
Caine looked over at her and his eyebrow came up.
Mireya held his eyes for a beat. Then she reached to the table beside the bed and took the remote off it. She lay back into the pillows and her thumb found the button, turning the TV on across the room.
Caine shook his head then he looked back down at Micaela, at the fist around his finger, at the lashes resting against her cheek.
“Ya me doy cuenta de que vas a ser tan terca como tu mamá, muñequita.”
Autumn came up the front walk with the box of books for the semester riding against her hip, one arm hooked under it and her other hand pressing the lid down where the cardboard had started to lift. Her father’s car was in the driveway, the black hood bright with the sun as she passed it. She shifted the box higher against her side and fit her key into the lock.
She pushed the door open and stepped inside. The cool of the house came over her arms and the back of her neck.
Garrison crossed from the kitchen before the door had swung shut behind her. He had one phone against his ear and the other in his hand with the screen lit, his thumb resting on the edge of it. He came to her and leaned down, his free hand settling at her shoulder, and pressed his lips to her cheek.
“We’re going to catch up after I’m done with these calls,” he said, the words low under whatever ran in his ear.
“Okay, daddy.”
He straightened, his thumb already moving across the second phone, his eyes dropping back to the screen, and he turned and went toward the kitchen. His voice picked up its clipped pace before he cleared the doorway and carried back into the room behind her, the words running short and fast into each other.
Autumn carried the box into the living room. Miles sat on the couch with his laptop open on his knees and his shoulders curved over it, the glow of the screen on his face. Documents covered the coffee table in front of him, some stacked square at the corner, some fanned across the wood, a legal pad turned at an angle with his handwriting running down it.
She set the box down beside one of the armchairs and lowered herself into it. Her bag slid off her shoulder and she let it drop to the floor against the box. She crossed one leg over the other and settled her arms along the rests, her eyes coming to rest on him.
Miles looked up from the laptop. A smile started at the corner of his mouth. “How was your month in N’awlins?”
“No one says it like that, nigga.”
Miles sucked his teeth. His eyes went back to the screen and his fingers moved once across the trackpad. “I just think it’s crazy to drop everything to fly across the country like that. Especially for some dude who plays gangster out here.”
Autumn’s eyebrow went up. “Is that your problem with Caine? That he’s more of a real nigga than you?”
“Like I said, playing gangster.” Miles kept his eyes on the screen, the smile still at the corner of his mouth.
From the kitchen Garrison’s voice came up a notch on a name and dropped again. Autumn let it pass before she answered.
“I guess it’s a good thing that I didn’t ask your opinion of Caine or me going down there to be with him when he was dealing with something difficult.”
“Right, because he has two children with another woman.”
Autumn looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen. Garrison stood at the counter with his back to the room. One phone was still at his ear and his free hand moved as he talked. She brought her eyes back to Miles and leaned forward in the armchair, her elbows to her knees, and her voice dropped under her father’s.
“Nigga, you must think you’re talking to someone else because it definitely isn’t me.”
Miles looked up from his laptop. “What?”
“You’re up in here talking like you got some kind of claim to me.” Her eyes stayed level on his. “If I wanted to fly to fucking China because he asked me to, it wouldn’t be anybody’s business but my own if I went or not.”
Miles leaned back into the couch. His jaw set for a beat before he spoke. “I’m just calling out the dumb shit that you’re doing right now for some dude you met eight months ago.”
“For how much he’s on your mind for you to have sat on this for a month, you must want to sit in the fucking corner and watch, nigga.”
Miles’s mouth opened on the start of something but Autumn pushed to her feet before it came. She bent for the box and brought it up against her hip as she rose, and she crossed back through the living room toward the hall.
“I’ll be in my room, daddy,” she called toward the kitchen.
Garrison’s hand came up in a thumbs up, the phone still pressed to his ear.
Sara pulled her front door shut behind her and came down the steps into the heat, her keys in one hand and her phone in the other. The humidity was already up off the grass, thick against her arms and the back of her neck. The strip between the two properties had gone dry and pale at the tips, and it pressed flat under her sandals as she crossed it. Jabari’s truck was parked nose-in at the top of his driveway. She came around the back of it and up the short walk to his door, knocking twice with the side of her fist.
The door opened a moment later. Jabari stood in the frame in a t-shirt and shorts, and the smile came up as soon as he saw it was her.
“C’mon.”
Sara stepped past him into the house. “I only got a few minutes. I need to get to the hospital.”
“Everything alright?” Jabari pushed the door shut behind her.
Sara smiled and nodded. “Oh, yeah. Great, actually. Micaela is coming home tonight.”
“That’s great news. I’m happy to hear that.” He tipped his head toward the front room. “You want to sit for a minute then? For whatever you had to stop over here for?”
Sara nodded. He stepped back and let her go ahead of him, and the two of them moved through the house.
Her eyes moved over the place as they walked through it. The front room smelled like coffee. A coffee maker against the tile of the counter with its pot half full, a single mug upturned on the towel beside it, the burner light still on. A pair of work boots at the foot of the hall scuffed gray at the toes, a hi-vis jacket hung on the hook above them. A recliner turned toward the television on the wall with the remote on its arm, a stack of mail squared to the edge of the side table. All of it one man’s, left where one man left it.
Sara let a breath out through her nose and lowered herself onto the couch. Her shoulders came down as her weight settled. Jabari sat at the other end and turned toward her, one arm draped along the back of the cushions.
“So, the other day,” Sara said.
“Was a bit of a surprise.” Jabari said it with his eyes on her.
Sara snorted a laugh. “You’ll have to cut me some slack. I was out of the whole dating game for most of the last twenty years until a guy who ended up being married last year.”
Her thumb found the edge of the phone in her lap and pressed along it. Jabari watched her for a beat, his mouth pulling at one corner.
“That’s what you were looking around when you just walked in.”
Sara shrugged. “Don’t think you can blame me.”
Jabari shook his head. “No, not really. I ain’t married though. Never been.”
“I figured.” Sara’s eyes went over the room one more time anyway, then came back to him. “I’m alright with keeping this going and seeing where it goes.”
“I’d be alright with that, too.”
“I just got one non-negotiable.” The ease went out of her face as she said it.
“What’s that?”
“You can never say to Caine that you were close to Calvin.” Sara held his eyes, her mouth flat. “Knew him? Sure, I don’t care. But not that y’all were best friends. Caine hates hard, and if he knew that, you’re never coming back from it.”
Jabari took that in then held his hands up. “Don’t forget I seen your boy. I ain’t trying to get on his bad side.”
Sara nodded. “Alright then.” She turned her phone over in her hand and looked at the screen. “I gotta go.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
The two of them walked back to the door. Sara pulled it open and stepped out onto the porch. The heat came up around her again off the concrete.
“I got a fourteen-day hitch in Tulsa coming up next week.” Jabari leaned a shoulder into the frame. “I’m gonna see you before then?”
Sara nodded. “I’m sure you will.”
Frankie had the chicken cut open at the thigh and was dragging a forkful of it through the gravy pooled in the rice when she started in. She loaded a tangle of greens on after it and talked before any of it reached her mouth.
“Girl, I still can’t believe that Mireya’s really going to go to school when she got her baby daddy sitting down here waiting for her to ask him to use some of that money on her.”
Sena had a tray of sushi in front of her, two rows of rolls lined in the plastic, a packet of soy sauce torn at the corner and a paper cup of water beading a ring onto the laminate beside it. She pulled a piece off the end of the first row with her chopsticks and pressed one edge of it into the soy. She brought it to her mouth and chewed it slowly then set the chopsticks down across the lip of the tray before she swallowed and answered.
“He’s going back to LA.”
The Tiger’s Den ran loud through the middle of the day around them. Trays slid onto the return rack along the far wall, and a bus tub behind it filled and got pulled and set back empty. The line off the registers bent back past the hot bar, students in scrubs and lanyards shifting their weight while it crawled forward. The overhead panels threw a flat white over all of it, a wash that ran noon and evening together, the same light on the laminate whatever the clock said. The light came in hard and bright through the windows along the far wall, off the cars on the deck, the glass warm to within a foot of the nearest tables.
Frankie leaned back in her chair and pointed the fork at Sena. “So, you saying that if some dude gave you the option of moving to LA with him and millions of dollars or staying here and going to school, you wouldn’t take the money?”
Sena picked the chopsticks back up. She turned a piece of sushi over on the tray and pressed the edge of it into the soy again. Her hand moved small and even. “I don’t think their relationship works like that. And Mireya has always been pretty focused on getting her degree.”
“Sure, before she popped out another kid.” Frankie chewed through it, swallowed and jabbed the fork back down into the greens. She scraped it along the plate to gather what had slid off the chicken. “And, bitch, how you ain’t tell me her ass was pregnant?”
Sena shrugged, one shoulder lifting and dropping. Her eyes stayed down on the tray. “That’s not something that was mine to be telling anyone.”
“But she told your ass.”
“Because I babysit Camila.”
Frankie lifted the hand with the fork still in it off the table and shook it side to side. “Nah, fuck that. Because she ain’t have to tell you that just because you watching her other kid.” She set the fork down across the rim of her plate and put both elbows on the table and leaned in over them. “Y’all got something going on. Y’all fucking?”
Sena had a mouthful half swallowed when the question landed, and the spit went down behind it the wrong way. The cough came up hard out of her chest. Her hand came off the chopsticks and pressed flat to her sternum. Her eyes watered at the corners, and the light off the window blurred across them.
She turned her head toward her shoulder and coughed into her fist. The run of it came faster than she could get ahead of. Her other hand found the paper cup and dragged it closer across the laminate. A girl two tables over glanced at them and went back to her phone. Frankie sat back and watched Sena over the table with one eyebrow up. She forked another bite of chicken into her mouth and worked it while the fit ran itself down. Sena got a breath in past the last of the cough. She lifted the cup and drank, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth when she set it back down.
“Why would you just jump to that?” Sena asked, clearing her throat once.
Frankie tipped the fork toward her. “Because I see how y’all be looking at each other.”
“It’s a leap.” Sena turned a roll over in the soy.
Frankie waved the comment off with the back of her hand. “Girl, whatever. I’m just trying to see what her baby daddy up to if she don’t want him and all his money.”
“He has a girlfriend.” Sena said.
“How you know?”
“I met her. She’s from LA.”
Frankie sucked her teeth and pulled her chin back. “But I’m the wild one because I think y’all fucking.”
Sena’s mouth came open on a breath to answer it. Frankie got there ahead of her.
“Yeah, because you watch Camila.”
Sena let the breath out and nodded. “Yeah.”
Frankie picked the fork back up and went after the chicken again. She cut a fresh piece off the thigh and dragged it through what was left of the gravy. “I’ll be a side bitch for a few hundred thousand dollars anyway.”
Sena snorted a laugh.
Mireya had Micaela settled in the crook of her arm, the blanket wrapped close around her so the fold came up under her chin and left only her face and one fist clear of it, a knit cap pulled down over the small head. She nodded along while Dr. Begeron went down the sheet on the clipboard at her hip.
Dr. Begeron worked the cap of her pen down the printed list. “She came early, so she’s going to lose heat faster than a full-term baby would. Keep her covered, keep the room warm, and any time her skin feels cool to you, or she feels hot, you take her temperature. Anything over a hundred point four and you call us and you bring her in. You don’t sit on it.”
Mireya nodded. Micaela’s fist opened against the blanket at her chin and closed again.
“Watch how she breathes,” Dr. Begeron said. “She’s going to go fast and then take a little pause, and that’s hers, that’s normal for her. What I want you watching for is her working at it. Her nostrils pulling wide, the skin sucking in under her ribs, any blue or gray coming up around her mouth. You see that, you don’t call first. You come straight back through those doors.”
Mireya nodded again. Behind the chair Caine stood with the car seat hanging off the ends of his fingers, the handle balanced across his knuckles, the empty shell turning a slow inch one way and back with the weight of it. Sara stood at his shoulder with her hands folded in front of her and her eyes on the blanket in Mireya’s arms.
Tanya had the going-home bag zipped and looped once around her wrist at the foot of the bed. “And she eats every two to three hours, around the clock,” she said. “You wake her up for it if you have to. She’s still got catching up to do. You’re going to count her wet diapers. Six good ones a day and you’re fine. They start falling off, that’s her telling you she’s not getting enough, and that’s when you call.”
Tanya shifted the bag higher on her wrist. “Keep her away from anybody sick. Her lungs are brand new and she can’t fight off what the rest of us shake off in a day. Everybody washes their hands before they touch her, and anybody coughing or running a nose waits. Family’s going to want to pass her around. They can wait their turn.”
“She passed her car seat screening this morning, so she’s cleared to ride home in it.” Tanya tipped her chin toward the seat on Caine’s hand. “Keep that strap snug, keep her time in it short the next few weeks, and don’t prop anything in there with her.”
Dr. Begeron clicked the pen and slid it into the breast pocket of her coat. “Her first visit with the pediatrician is in three days. The card’s in the bag, and the clinic number’s on it. We’ll see her back here in two weeks.” She looked from the sheet down to Micaela’s face in the wrap, then up to Mireya. “Alright, mama. Time for you and your little one to get out of here.”
Mireya nodded. She looked back over her shoulder at Sara. Sara’s eyes were already on the baby, and they came up and met Mireya’s.
Tanya came around the foot of the bed. She put her hand on Mireya’s arm, just above the elbow, her fingers pressing once into the skin. “You did good.” She stepped back and swept her hand toward the open door.
Caine leaned down at Mireya’s shoulder, the car seat swinging a slow arc off his fingers as he bent. “¿Quieres que la lleve?”
Mireya shook her head. Her arms drew Micaela a degree closer against her chest. “Yo la traje aquí, y yo me la voy a llevar.”
Caine nodded. “Alright.”
Mireya came up out of the chair with the baby against her chest. One arm braced under Micaela and the other cupped the capped head. She walked past Tanya out into the hall.
Sara fell in behind her and brought her hand to the middle of Mireya’s back. The two of them went down the corridor together. Sara kept her eyes on Micaela’s face over Mireya’s shoulder. The blanket rose and fell against Mireya’s chest with the baby’s breathing.
Caine came behind them, the car seat in one hand and the bag in the other. Tanya followed all of them a few steps back, her hands at her sides.
They came through the front doors into the heat still heavy off the pavement at the end of the day. The light had gone low and gold across the lot, the last of the sun dropping under the rooftops on the far side, the sky above it run through with orange and a deep rose that ran up toward the blue going dark at the top. Mireya stopped a few steps past the doors.
She turned her body so the wrap came around into the light and Micaela’s face opened toward the horizon. The gold of it caught the blanket and the small face above the fold, the cap, the one fist still clear of the cloth.
“Mira, mi tesorita. El cielo te ha pintado un cuadro.”
Micaela made a sound against the blanket. Her head turned in the wrap, her whole body shifting toward the sound of Mireya’s voice.
Caine had Micaela against his chest with one hand spread flat across her back, his palm reaching from one shoulder blade to the other and his fingers curling up toward the base of her head. Her cheek pressed into the open collar of his shirt. Her face had turned into him so the weight of her head fit under his jaw, and her breathing came against his throat in small fast pulls he could feel more than hear. Dr. Begeron leaned in over his forearm with the disc of her stethoscope pressed to Micaela’s back below his hand. Her head tipped down. Her eyes went to the middle of the room while she listened, moving once to the monitor on the stand beside the bed and coming back. Tanya stood at her shoulder, two fingers near the clip on Micaela’s foot where the line ran to the screen.
Mireya sat up against the pillows with her knees drawn under the blanket and her hands folded over her shins. Her eyes stayed on the two of them. On Caine’s hand and the small back under it. On the face tucked against his throat and the fist that had worked loose of the blanket between them.
Dr. Begeron straightened. She pulled the earpieces free and let the stethoscope fall around her neck, her thumb running down the tubing before it settled. She looked at Caine, then past him to Mireya on the bed.
“You two have a real tough little one.” She slid the chestpiece into the pocket of her coat. “We were looking at a few more weeks, but I think if she does well today in here then you’ll be taking little Micaela home tonight.”
A smile crossed Mireya’s mouth and went. Caine dipped his chin toward the doctor and brought his eyes back down to Micaela against his chest.
“Let us know if you think something’s wrong and we’ll come back to check on her,” Dr. Begeron said.
“Thank you,” Mireya said.
Dr. Begeron nodded and turned for the door. Tanya stepped in behind her. Her eyes found Mireya as she went, and her mouth pulled into a small smile. She drew the door closed behind her, her palm flat against it. She eased it the last inch so it met the frame soft.
The air conditioning ran low through the vent, and the monitor at Micaela’s foot turned its numbers over beside the bed. Through the window the light had the white press of morning, the glass warm where the room’s cool met the heat behind it.
Caine tipped his head down. His mouth came close to the curl of Micaela’s ear.
“¿Lo oíste, mi cielito? Esta noche te vas a casa.”
Micaela made a sound against his collar, thin and short, more breath than voice. Her hand came up off his chest and her fingers opened and closed against the skin at the base of his throat.
“How you doing right now?”
Mireya’s brow drew in. “You talking to me?”
Caine nodded. His eyes stayed on Micaela. “I know you been struggling to hold everything together these last few weeks.”
Mireya shook her head. “I’m fine. I just want to get her out of here.”
“Te estás olvidando de con quién estás hablando.”
“I’ll survive.”
Micaela shifted against his chest, her head turning a fraction under his jaw before it settled. Caine brought his free hand up and held a finger out in front of her fist. Her fingers found it and closed around it. Her whole hand stopped short of his first knuckle. A smile pulled at his mouth.
“I can get you and mi mama some help with taking care of her.”
Mireya sucked her teeth. “No voy a dejar que un desconocido cuide a mi hija.”
“¿Qué era Sena?”
“I knew her for almost a year before she started babysitting Camila.” Mireya pressed her shoulder back into the pillows, and her chin lifted a fraction.
“I don’t want you to get overwhelmed. With school and Camila, that’s a lot.” Caine moved his finger an inch and Micaela’s hand came with it. “An infant is a lot.”
“I’m aware, Caine. I’ve done this before, remember?”
Caine ran his thumb across Micaela’s cheek, from the corner of her mouth up to the soft place beneath her eye and back down. Her mouth worked once and went still.
“More reason you should let me help you.”
Mireya watched the two of them. Her eyes moved from his thumb on Micaela’s cheek to the fist closed around his finger and rested there a moment before they came up to his face.
“I’ll play it by ear. Is that enough for you?”
Caine nodded. “Yeah. I’ll just get Sena’s number before I go back to LA and ask her if you losing your shit and hiding it from me.”
Mireya’s eyebrow went up. “I wasn’t aware y’all got so close.”
A laugh came through Caine’s nose. “She cool. A little nervous but cool.”
“Ojalá pudiera decir lo mismo de la tuya.”
Caine looked over at her and his eyebrow came up.
Mireya held his eyes for a beat. Then she reached to the table beside the bed and took the remote off it. She lay back into the pillows and her thumb found the button, turning the TV on across the room.
Caine shook his head then he looked back down at Micaela, at the fist around his finger, at the lashes resting against her cheek.
“Ya me doy cuenta de que vas a ser tan terca como tu mamá, muñequita.”
~~~
Autumn came up the front walk with the box of books for the semester riding against her hip, one arm hooked under it and her other hand pressing the lid down where the cardboard had started to lift. Her father’s car was in the driveway, the black hood bright with the sun as she passed it. She shifted the box higher against her side and fit her key into the lock.
She pushed the door open and stepped inside. The cool of the house came over her arms and the back of her neck.
Garrison crossed from the kitchen before the door had swung shut behind her. He had one phone against his ear and the other in his hand with the screen lit, his thumb resting on the edge of it. He came to her and leaned down, his free hand settling at her shoulder, and pressed his lips to her cheek.
“We’re going to catch up after I’m done with these calls,” he said, the words low under whatever ran in his ear.
“Okay, daddy.”
He straightened, his thumb already moving across the second phone, his eyes dropping back to the screen, and he turned and went toward the kitchen. His voice picked up its clipped pace before he cleared the doorway and carried back into the room behind her, the words running short and fast into each other.
Autumn carried the box into the living room. Miles sat on the couch with his laptop open on his knees and his shoulders curved over it, the glow of the screen on his face. Documents covered the coffee table in front of him, some stacked square at the corner, some fanned across the wood, a legal pad turned at an angle with his handwriting running down it.
She set the box down beside one of the armchairs and lowered herself into it. Her bag slid off her shoulder and she let it drop to the floor against the box. She crossed one leg over the other and settled her arms along the rests, her eyes coming to rest on him.
Miles looked up from the laptop. A smile started at the corner of his mouth. “How was your month in N’awlins?”
“No one says it like that, nigga.”
Miles sucked his teeth. His eyes went back to the screen and his fingers moved once across the trackpad. “I just think it’s crazy to drop everything to fly across the country like that. Especially for some dude who plays gangster out here.”
Autumn’s eyebrow went up. “Is that your problem with Caine? That he’s more of a real nigga than you?”
“Like I said, playing gangster.” Miles kept his eyes on the screen, the smile still at the corner of his mouth.
From the kitchen Garrison’s voice came up a notch on a name and dropped again. Autumn let it pass before she answered.
“I guess it’s a good thing that I didn’t ask your opinion of Caine or me going down there to be with him when he was dealing with something difficult.”
“Right, because he has two children with another woman.”
Autumn looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen. Garrison stood at the counter with his back to the room. One phone was still at his ear and his free hand moved as he talked. She brought her eyes back to Miles and leaned forward in the armchair, her elbows to her knees, and her voice dropped under her father’s.
“Nigga, you must think you’re talking to someone else because it definitely isn’t me.”
Miles looked up from his laptop. “What?”
“You’re up in here talking like you got some kind of claim to me.” Her eyes stayed level on his. “If I wanted to fly to fucking China because he asked me to, it wouldn’t be anybody’s business but my own if I went or not.”
Miles leaned back into the couch. His jaw set for a beat before he spoke. “I’m just calling out the dumb shit that you’re doing right now for some dude you met eight months ago.”
“For how much he’s on your mind for you to have sat on this for a month, you must want to sit in the fucking corner and watch, nigga.”
Miles’s mouth opened on the start of something but Autumn pushed to her feet before it came. She bent for the box and brought it up against her hip as she rose, and she crossed back through the living room toward the hall.
“I’ll be in my room, daddy,” she called toward the kitchen.
Garrison’s hand came up in a thumbs up, the phone still pressed to his ear.
~~~
Sara pulled her front door shut behind her and came down the steps into the heat, her keys in one hand and her phone in the other. The humidity was already up off the grass, thick against her arms and the back of her neck. The strip between the two properties had gone dry and pale at the tips, and it pressed flat under her sandals as she crossed it. Jabari’s truck was parked nose-in at the top of his driveway. She came around the back of it and up the short walk to his door, knocking twice with the side of her fist.
The door opened a moment later. Jabari stood in the frame in a t-shirt and shorts, and the smile came up as soon as he saw it was her.
“C’mon.”
Sara stepped past him into the house. “I only got a few minutes. I need to get to the hospital.”
“Everything alright?” Jabari pushed the door shut behind her.
Sara smiled and nodded. “Oh, yeah. Great, actually. Micaela is coming home tonight.”
“That’s great news. I’m happy to hear that.” He tipped his head toward the front room. “You want to sit for a minute then? For whatever you had to stop over here for?”
Sara nodded. He stepped back and let her go ahead of him, and the two of them moved through the house.
Her eyes moved over the place as they walked through it. The front room smelled like coffee. A coffee maker against the tile of the counter with its pot half full, a single mug upturned on the towel beside it, the burner light still on. A pair of work boots at the foot of the hall scuffed gray at the toes, a hi-vis jacket hung on the hook above them. A recliner turned toward the television on the wall with the remote on its arm, a stack of mail squared to the edge of the side table. All of it one man’s, left where one man left it.
Sara let a breath out through her nose and lowered herself onto the couch. Her shoulders came down as her weight settled. Jabari sat at the other end and turned toward her, one arm draped along the back of the cushions.
“So, the other day,” Sara said.
“Was a bit of a surprise.” Jabari said it with his eyes on her.
Sara snorted a laugh. “You’ll have to cut me some slack. I was out of the whole dating game for most of the last twenty years until a guy who ended up being married last year.”
Her thumb found the edge of the phone in her lap and pressed along it. Jabari watched her for a beat, his mouth pulling at one corner.
“That’s what you were looking around when you just walked in.”
Sara shrugged. “Don’t think you can blame me.”
Jabari shook his head. “No, not really. I ain’t married though. Never been.”
“I figured.” Sara’s eyes went over the room one more time anyway, then came back to him. “I’m alright with keeping this going and seeing where it goes.”
“I’d be alright with that, too.”
“I just got one non-negotiable.” The ease went out of her face as she said it.
“What’s that?”
“You can never say to Caine that you were close to Calvin.” Sara held his eyes, her mouth flat. “Knew him? Sure, I don’t care. But not that y’all were best friends. Caine hates hard, and if he knew that, you’re never coming back from it.”
Jabari took that in then held his hands up. “Don’t forget I seen your boy. I ain’t trying to get on his bad side.”
Sara nodded. “Alright then.” She turned her phone over in her hand and looked at the screen. “I gotta go.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
The two of them walked back to the door. Sara pulled it open and stepped out onto the porch. The heat came up around her again off the concrete.
“I got a fourteen-day hitch in Tulsa coming up next week.” Jabari leaned a shoulder into the frame. “I’m gonna see you before then?”
Sara nodded. “I’m sure you will.”
~~~
Frankie had the chicken cut open at the thigh and was dragging a forkful of it through the gravy pooled in the rice when she started in. She loaded a tangle of greens on after it and talked before any of it reached her mouth.
“Girl, I still can’t believe that Mireya’s really going to go to school when she got her baby daddy sitting down here waiting for her to ask him to use some of that money on her.”
Sena had a tray of sushi in front of her, two rows of rolls lined in the plastic, a packet of soy sauce torn at the corner and a paper cup of water beading a ring onto the laminate beside it. She pulled a piece off the end of the first row with her chopsticks and pressed one edge of it into the soy. She brought it to her mouth and chewed it slowly then set the chopsticks down across the lip of the tray before she swallowed and answered.
“He’s going back to LA.”
The Tiger’s Den ran loud through the middle of the day around them. Trays slid onto the return rack along the far wall, and a bus tub behind it filled and got pulled and set back empty. The line off the registers bent back past the hot bar, students in scrubs and lanyards shifting their weight while it crawled forward. The overhead panels threw a flat white over all of it, a wash that ran noon and evening together, the same light on the laminate whatever the clock said. The light came in hard and bright through the windows along the far wall, off the cars on the deck, the glass warm to within a foot of the nearest tables.
Frankie leaned back in her chair and pointed the fork at Sena. “So, you saying that if some dude gave you the option of moving to LA with him and millions of dollars or staying here and going to school, you wouldn’t take the money?”
Sena picked the chopsticks back up. She turned a piece of sushi over on the tray and pressed the edge of it into the soy again. Her hand moved small and even. “I don’t think their relationship works like that. And Mireya has always been pretty focused on getting her degree.”
“Sure, before she popped out another kid.” Frankie chewed through it, swallowed and jabbed the fork back down into the greens. She scraped it along the plate to gather what had slid off the chicken. “And, bitch, how you ain’t tell me her ass was pregnant?”
Sena shrugged, one shoulder lifting and dropping. Her eyes stayed down on the tray. “That’s not something that was mine to be telling anyone.”
“But she told your ass.”
“Because I babysit Camila.”
Frankie lifted the hand with the fork still in it off the table and shook it side to side. “Nah, fuck that. Because she ain’t have to tell you that just because you watching her other kid.” She set the fork down across the rim of her plate and put both elbows on the table and leaned in over them. “Y’all got something going on. Y’all fucking?”
Sena had a mouthful half swallowed when the question landed, and the spit went down behind it the wrong way. The cough came up hard out of her chest. Her hand came off the chopsticks and pressed flat to her sternum. Her eyes watered at the corners, and the light off the window blurred across them.
She turned her head toward her shoulder and coughed into her fist. The run of it came faster than she could get ahead of. Her other hand found the paper cup and dragged it closer across the laminate. A girl two tables over glanced at them and went back to her phone. Frankie sat back and watched Sena over the table with one eyebrow up. She forked another bite of chicken into her mouth and worked it while the fit ran itself down. Sena got a breath in past the last of the cough. She lifted the cup and drank, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth when she set it back down.
“Why would you just jump to that?” Sena asked, clearing her throat once.
Frankie tipped the fork toward her. “Because I see how y’all be looking at each other.”
“It’s a leap.” Sena turned a roll over in the soy.
Frankie waved the comment off with the back of her hand. “Girl, whatever. I’m just trying to see what her baby daddy up to if she don’t want him and all his money.”
“He has a girlfriend.” Sena said.
“How you know?”
“I met her. She’s from LA.”
Frankie sucked her teeth and pulled her chin back. “But I’m the wild one because I think y’all fucking.”
Sena’s mouth came open on a breath to answer it. Frankie got there ahead of her.
“Yeah, because you watch Camila.”
Sena let the breath out and nodded. “Yeah.”
Frankie picked the fork back up and went after the chicken again. She cut a fresh piece off the thigh and dragged it through what was left of the gravy. “I’ll be a side bitch for a few hundred thousand dollars anyway.”
Sena snorted a laugh.
~~~
Mireya had Micaela settled in the crook of her arm, the blanket wrapped close around her so the fold came up under her chin and left only her face and one fist clear of it, a knit cap pulled down over the small head. She nodded along while Dr. Begeron went down the sheet on the clipboard at her hip.
Dr. Begeron worked the cap of her pen down the printed list. “She came early, so she’s going to lose heat faster than a full-term baby would. Keep her covered, keep the room warm, and any time her skin feels cool to you, or she feels hot, you take her temperature. Anything over a hundred point four and you call us and you bring her in. You don’t sit on it.”
Mireya nodded. Micaela’s fist opened against the blanket at her chin and closed again.
“Watch how she breathes,” Dr. Begeron said. “She’s going to go fast and then take a little pause, and that’s hers, that’s normal for her. What I want you watching for is her working at it. Her nostrils pulling wide, the skin sucking in under her ribs, any blue or gray coming up around her mouth. You see that, you don’t call first. You come straight back through those doors.”
Mireya nodded again. Behind the chair Caine stood with the car seat hanging off the ends of his fingers, the handle balanced across his knuckles, the empty shell turning a slow inch one way and back with the weight of it. Sara stood at his shoulder with her hands folded in front of her and her eyes on the blanket in Mireya’s arms.
Tanya had the going-home bag zipped and looped once around her wrist at the foot of the bed. “And she eats every two to three hours, around the clock,” she said. “You wake her up for it if you have to. She’s still got catching up to do. You’re going to count her wet diapers. Six good ones a day and you’re fine. They start falling off, that’s her telling you she’s not getting enough, and that’s when you call.”
Tanya shifted the bag higher on her wrist. “Keep her away from anybody sick. Her lungs are brand new and she can’t fight off what the rest of us shake off in a day. Everybody washes their hands before they touch her, and anybody coughing or running a nose waits. Family’s going to want to pass her around. They can wait their turn.”
“She passed her car seat screening this morning, so she’s cleared to ride home in it.” Tanya tipped her chin toward the seat on Caine’s hand. “Keep that strap snug, keep her time in it short the next few weeks, and don’t prop anything in there with her.”
Dr. Begeron clicked the pen and slid it into the breast pocket of her coat. “Her first visit with the pediatrician is in three days. The card’s in the bag, and the clinic number’s on it. We’ll see her back here in two weeks.” She looked from the sheet down to Micaela’s face in the wrap, then up to Mireya. “Alright, mama. Time for you and your little one to get out of here.”
Mireya nodded. She looked back over her shoulder at Sara. Sara’s eyes were already on the baby, and they came up and met Mireya’s.
Tanya came around the foot of the bed. She put her hand on Mireya’s arm, just above the elbow, her fingers pressing once into the skin. “You did good.” She stepped back and swept her hand toward the open door.
Caine leaned down at Mireya’s shoulder, the car seat swinging a slow arc off his fingers as he bent. “¿Quieres que la lleve?”
Mireya shook her head. Her arms drew Micaela a degree closer against her chest. “Yo la traje aquí, y yo me la voy a llevar.”
Caine nodded. “Alright.”
Mireya came up out of the chair with the baby against her chest. One arm braced under Micaela and the other cupped the capped head. She walked past Tanya out into the hall.
Sara fell in behind her and brought her hand to the middle of Mireya’s back. The two of them went down the corridor together. Sara kept her eyes on Micaela’s face over Mireya’s shoulder. The blanket rose and fell against Mireya’s chest with the baby’s breathing.
Caine came behind them, the car seat in one hand and the bag in the other. Tanya followed all of them a few steps back, her hands at her sides.
They came through the front doors into the heat still heavy off the pavement at the end of the day. The light had gone low and gold across the lot, the last of the sun dropping under the rooftops on the far side, the sky above it run through with orange and a deep rose that ran up toward the blue going dark at the top. Mireya stopped a few steps past the doors.
She turned her body so the wrap came around into the light and Micaela’s face opened toward the horizon. The gold of it caught the blanket and the small face above the fold, the cap, the one fist still clear of the cloth.
“Mira, mi tesorita. El cielo te ha pintado un cuadro.”
Micaela made a sound against the blanket. Her head turned in the wrap, her whole body shifting toward the sound of Mireya’s voice.
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redsox907
- Posts: 5376
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
American Sun
beautiful scene with Micaela finally leaving 
can't wait to see how Mireya tip toes through the train wreck she bout to make between Sena, Jas, swallowing meat, and taking care of two kids
glad Sara finding something. Hopefully it's better than fuck boi
Miles needs to get the piss batted out of him
can't wait to see how Mireya tip toes through the train wreck she bout to make between Sena, Jas, swallowing meat, and taking care of two kids
glad Sara finding something. Hopefully it's better than fuck boi
Miles needs to get the piss batted out of him
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Captain Canada
- Posts: 7232
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
American Sun
I'm glad the little one made it, can only handle so much tragedy 
He ain't wrong. Because another baby ain't going to fill that chasm we call Mireya's self-esteem (read: self-respect, but that's a conversation for another day).
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 15872
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
She a little trooper.redsox907 wrote: ↑29 May 2026, 00:42beautiful scene with Micaela finally leaving
can't wait to see how Mireya tip toes through the train wreck she bout to make between Sena, Jas, swallowing meat, and taking care of two kids
glad Sara finding something. Hopefully it's better than fuck boi
Miles needs to get the piss batted out of him
She's already ahead since she knows Jabari at least.
You know Caine a fighter
Three cheers for Mica.Captain Canada wrote: ↑29 May 2026, 09:36I'm glad the little one made it, can only handle so much tragedy
He ain't wrong. Because another baby ain't going to fill that chasm we call Mireya's self-esteem (read: self-respect, but that's a conversation for another day).
Some would say she shouldn't be looking to use her children to do that anyway.