Soap knows ball
if i hit it once...
American Sun
American Sun
American Sun
first, last and security for $775? what is it a box?
American Sun
American Sun
If God Brought You to It, He’ll Drown You in It
The town wasn’t awake yet. Statesboro air moved like warm breath, all pine and cut grass and the faint sugar of somebody’s late-night fryer drifting from somewhere that never fully shut. Caine cut along the shoulder where the sidewalk gave up, shoes drumming a steady count he could keep without thinking. The campus sat emptied out and echoing, brick squares and glass that kept their own quiet. Back home, morning had a sound. Sirens leaning somewhere, a bus wheezing, somebody arguing with a window. Here the quiet lay out flat and made him listen to himself.
He kept seeing Camila’s face from the video call last night, curls pushed flat on one side like sleep was a fight she never won all the way. Mireya had held the phone tight and tried to smile for the baby. Softer than usual. Sad lived under it, a new layer she didn’t bother burying. “Te amo, mamá,” Camila had chimed to the screen, and the way Mireya didn’t look at him when she said goodnight stuck. He told himself he wouldn’t push on the phone with their daughter there.
Blue and white sat up the block, a cruiser nosed into the gravel of a small lot by a laundromat. The officer leaned against the door and drank coffee from a paper cup, his radio whispering nothing. Caine felt his body lock a notch anyway. Years make habits. He raised his chin in a quiet nod to show he saw him and wasn’t trying to not be seen. The man lifted two fingers from the rim in a lazy salute and slid into the car. The engine turned, light bars dead, and the cruiser rolled out the other way. Caine’s breath rode steady. He glanced after it once and kept moving.
He slowed at the stop sign to cross when the Jeep eased up and put a shadow on his shins. The window came down. Rylee leaned across the seat, hair pulled into a quick tail, a bead of sweat at her temple that hadn’t bothered to leave.
“What you doing out so early?” she asked, voice easy.
He lifted both hands to his shirt and shorts like the answer wore itself. “Running.”
“Mm.” Her mouth tilted like she wanted to laugh but wasn’t gonna give him the full thing yet. “Hop in. I’m headed for breakfast.”
“I been sweating.”
“And?” She grinned now. “You don’t smell no worse than them boys out there in them pastures.”
He glanced over his shoulder. Not at her like he was weighing the choice. At the street. At where the cruiser had been. She read it wrong and waggled her fingers at the handle. “Come on. Ain’t nobody gonna bite.”
He opened the door and slid in, the seat hot under his legs. The Jeep smelled like sun and something peachy she must’ve just put on her wrists. She drove one-handed, elbow on the window, humming something he didn’t know. The town rolled by without any hurry.
…
The diner sat where grass gave way to billboards and long flat road. A gravel lot. A front door with a handle made to look like chrome. Inside, the AC cut across his damp shirt and raised bumps on his arms. A cow clock ticked over the kitchen window. The room held men in caps bent over eggs and women with stiff hair talking low. He felt every head he couldn’t see anyway. He let the waitress set the coffee in front of him and kept his face quiet. The cup warmed his hands.
Rylee watched him like she wanted to figure him. She didn’t say anything until the silence had its own heat. “So, how you end up in Georgia?” she asked finally.
He lifted a shoulder. “Georgia Southern was my only scholarship.”
Her eyebrow notched. “Because you’re on probation?”
He took a sip and let the coffee sit on his tongue a second. “Something like that.”
“What for?”
He shrugged again, let it be nothing and everything. “Supposedly carjacking.”
Rylee studied him, eyes steady. “Is that the serious answer or the I ain’t do it answer?”
“Nah,” he said, voice even. “I did it.”
She let that pass without dress or sermon. The cow clock clicked. Plates kissed each other somewhere behind the counter. She tipped her chin toward his shirt again like she was cataloging him, then set her forearms on the table and leaned in a touch. He nodded at the cropped top and the leggings and the small silver cross that laid against her skin.
“You go out your way to be the opposite of your sister?”
Her mouth stiffened like maybe he misjudged, a flash of offense quick on the surface. He saw the corner twitch, the almost-smile she held back like a secret.
He shook his head. “Man, chill out with that shit.”
She laughed then, soft. “I’m just enjoying life.” The laugh faded. “Laney ain’t always been like that anyway.”
His brow went up. He didn’t push.
She slid past it herself. “You got a girl back home?”
He chuckled once and looked out the window at nothing, at a truck nose taking heat like a lizard in a driveway. “I don’t know what to call it anymore.”
“What’s that mean?”
The waitress showed up with plates before he answered. Heavy white china. Bacon shining. Toast stacked like folded paper. The smell rose and filled the small space between them.
The porch boards didn’t creak under her weight. That was the first tell. Old houses in this city always answered you back. This one held its breath behind fresh paint and a door that fit its frame like a secret. Mireya checked the address Stasia texted and tucked the phone away before she could change her mind. Heat hovered under the awning. The doorbell chimed clean as hotel glass.
Stasia opened the door like she had been standing just out of sight, waiting for the exact note. Expensive lounge set that made soft shapes, silk robe tied loose, a thin glass of white in her hand at mid-morning. Perfume lifted in a slow curl from the cool air behind her.
“Morning. Come in.”
Inside smelled like lemon cleaner and money. The floors had the kind of shine that dared you to smudge them. Light slid across a long mirror and caught the edges of frames that sat perfectly straight. Somewhere deeper, ice loosened and dropped, a small private sound.
Stasia walked barefoot, robe whispering at her calves.
“Parlor,” she said, and led the way beneath a doorway that made you remember your posture. The room opened into velvet, glass, and a rug so thick it silenced the chair legs. A drink cart winked from the corner. The walls carried a calm that said nothing bad had ever been allowed to happen here.
Stasia sank into the couch like it remembered her. She tipped her chin at the chair opposite. Mireya sat with her bag at her feet and kept her hands flat on her thighs so they would stay still. She looked, but she tried not to look like she was looking. The couch seams were tight. The curtains fell right where they should. A clock ticked with a heartbeat she did not trust.
“I want to dance,” she said.
Stasia raised the glass an inch, not a toast, more like a marker placed on a page. “Want to or need to?”
“What difference does it make.”
“It makes plenty difference.” Stasia’s voice didn’t sharpen. “That part is yours to figure out, though.”
She reached to the side table and lifted a manila folder. The paper inside had weight. Mireya took it. The first page wore a cheerful logo for a cleaning company. The next page asked for name and address and social, all the things the jobs always ask for. Behind that sat forms with more boxes and lines to sign.
“I don’t want to clean houses,” Mireya said, confusion in her brows.
“That is only for taxes.” Stasia let the smile touch the edge of her mouth. “Just in case.”
Mireya flipped a page. Direct deposit. Emergency contact. The kind of language that one would expect from a job.
“It is a no-show job,” Stasia said. “You will get a check every week. Fifteen hours at seven twenty-five. Think of it like a waitress clocking in. Bookkeeping.” She set the numbers down like something already decided.
“Who owns it?” Mireya kept her eyes on the header.
“Somebody does. Or nobody does.” Stasia’s shrug was a breath. “What matters is it is legitimate.”
A truck moved slow outside. The sound rolled and was gone. The clock pressed on. Mireya felt each box on the forms.
“If I sign this,” she said, “I can start dancing for you and Felix?”
Stasia set her glass down with a light click. The silk slid when she shifted, a spill of fabric against fabric. “Honey, you are dancing for yourself.”
The words landed in the center of her chest and sat there.
“How does it work?” Mireya asked. The pen was still capped in the tray. She didn’t reach for it yet.
“You will get a text with a location,” Stasia said. “That is where we are working. We stay three days and then we move. Do not tell anyone where you are going. Do not tell anyone what you do. Keep your profile low.”
Mireya nodded like she understood and also like she was somewhere else, watching herself understand.
Stasia watched her without hurrying the silence. The robe had a thin stitch along the edge that caught light every time her wrist turned. The wine held a pale stripe from the window. Everything in the room said take your time while the clock said the opposite.
Mireya looked back at the first page. Name. Address. Social.
She lifted the pen. The plastic felt too light for the moment. She uncapped it and set the cap near the corner of the folder so it wouldn’t roll. The tip hovered. A small pause that measured the space between what she didn’t want and what she couldn’t afford to refuse.
Stasia spoke again, tone even, like she was continuing a lesson. “When we text, you answer. If you can’t come, say so. If someone asks where you work, you say the name on that page and nothing else. This is for your protection.”
Mireya kept her face neutral so nothing spilled out. She nodded once. The clock ticked. Outside the leaves didn’t move.
“Three days and then it changes,” she said, repeating it to hear it in her own voice.
“Three days,” Stasia said, nodding.
Mireya lowered the pen to the first box. The nib touched paper and made its first small sound. She wrote her name in careful block letters. She moved to the date. The scratch of ink felt loud in the quiet room.
Across from her, Stasia eased deeper into the couch. The robe slid at her shoulder. She rested the glass in her palm and watched, not pressing, not filling the space with more rules. The world narrowed to the line Mireya was on and the next box waiting. She breathed out and kept writing the letters that were hers.
She turned to the second page. The paper slid under her hand. The pen left a thin trail of black. Stasia’s gaze held steady from the couch, patient and unblinking, as Mireya began to fill out the documents.
The café’s air felt colder than it needed to be, like they were trying to chill down the nerves people brought in with them. Saul rubbed a thumb along the sweating plastic cup, water slicking his skin, ice ticking the lid every time he breathed on the straw. Sugar packets were stacked like little paper bricks between them. The espresso machine hissed in the back and the door kept swinging on its spring, bells tapping out a dull note that didn’t belong to any song he liked.
Zoe slid into the chair across from him. No hug. No brush of fingers. She set her cup down and didn’t meet his eyes right away. Saul felt the stupid urge to reach for her hand and pressed both palms to his thighs instead.
“You good?” he asked, voice low so it didn’t carry.
She moved her cup a centimeter. “We gotta chill.” The words came careful, like she had practiced them out loud and hated how they sounded all the same.
“Chill… what?” He made it into a joke by habit and it fell on the table between them, empty. “On the cold brew? ’Cause you know I ain’t even order this right.”
“On us hanging out.” She finally looked at him. There was nothing mean in it. That made it worse.
“Why?” He heard himself and didn’t like the shape of it. Too sharp. He tried again, softer. “Why, Zoe?”
“You’re just…” She let the rest hang. A couple walked past their table, the man laughing loud enough to earn a glance from the barista. When the door closed again, Zoe finished it. “A lot.”
Saul sucked his teeth. It wasn’t loud. It still sounded like a fight. He leaned back and the chair creaked. Her “a lot” rolled around in his head. He thought about the other day, the argument that had started as a joke and kept rolling until it was a cliff.
“That because of what I said?” he asked. “The other day?”
She shook her head. “No.” Then she did a small shrug that said the thing she didn’t want to say. “Yes.”
The ice ticked his lid again. “I ain’t mean it like that.”
“I know.” She spoke quick, as if the faster she said it the faster it would be done. “You’re sweet. It’s not… you’re just too new for me. I should’ve seen it before.”
“New,” he repeated. He didn’t know what else to do with the word. He could feel the heat crawling up under his shirt even with the A/C cutting the room down. He dropped his stare to the napkin by his cup. The barista had stamped a little sun on it. He didn’t want to look at a sun right now.
Zoe wrapped her fingers around her drink but didn’t sip. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s just not for me.”
He wanted to ask what “for me” meant. He wanted to say, You were for me though. He swallowed all of that. He could still remember the feel of her breath on his jaw, the surprise in it, how his own hands had shook after like he’d done something wrong and right at the same time. Firsts had a way of sticking to you.
“It’s cool,” he said, and even he could hear that it wasn’t. “I hear you.”
She nodded the way people nod when they wish you would fight them so they could feel less bad. She stood. The chair legs kissed the floor. She grabbed her cup and her bag in one motion and looked like she might put a hand on his shoulder, but she didn’t.
“Don’t text me, okay?” she said.
“Alright,” he said, and maybe he meant to ask how long, but the words came out like he was reading them from a wall. He thought of his phone sitting heavy in his pocket, the thread of messages that jumped from memes to “you up?” to nothing, then back again. He thought about the part of himself that had been lighter these past months because her name would pop up. He hated that he had let himself get used to that light.
She gave him a small, sad smile. The bell tapped once when the door opened, then twice as it swung back. Heat swelled up from outside and got eaten by the air.
Saul stayed where he was. He counted the slow minutes the way you do in class when you know the clock is lying to you. He looked at the napkin again, the little sun turning into a stain under the water ring from his cup. He pressed his thumb into the wet and made a smear.
If he stood up right away it would feel like chasing. If he texted anyway, it would be worse. He let his shoulders fold and the chair take him. He wanted to tell somebody. There wasn’t anybody to tell who wouldn’t make it sound like a lesson. He laced his fingers together under the table and held on.
After a few minutes, the ice had melted to slivers. He took the lid off because the clatter of it was getting on his nerves. He took one sip and it tasted like nothing. He tossed the cup in the trash on the way out and missed. He picked it up and set it where it belonged because he needed one thing today to be where it was supposed to be.
Outside, the heat ran its palm over his face. He kept his head down. The sidewalk made the same old sound under his shoes. He didn’t look back through the glass.
The projector washed the table in a dull gray that made the paper look wet. Aplin clicked through slides and clips, his voice steady as he walked them into install three. The freeze frame held a tight front and a boundary safety cheating like he knew what was coming. The room smelled faintly of dry coffee and old carpet, the air cold enough to keep everybody awake.
Caine kept his head down and his pen moving. His notes ran along the margins in small, neat lines. He listened for what the coaches said and what they didn’t. The AC hummed above them. Somewhere behind, Mizell shifted in the chair that always creaked.
“Protection?” Mizell asked.
“Slide left,” Weston said without lifting his eyes.
“Where’s your first throw?” Aplin asked.
“Short,” Turner said. “Flat to quick out. Hitch if the safety bails.”
Aplin nodded and rolled the clip. The quarterback on screen took the snap, set, and fired to the out. Tackle for four. Aplin backed it up and let it run again. The field corner opened his hips early. Caine drew a short arrow in his notes toward the space that the ball had ignored.
“Anything else?” Aplin said, still looking at the screen.
Caine tapped the arrow once with the end of his pen. “Could’ve tagged the slot on a now,” he said. His tone stayed even. “Corner opened the gate. Safety sat. Ball right there and let him run.”
Aplin’s eyes slid to him and away. Mizell’s did the same. Neither said good. Neither said much of anything. Aplin clicked ahead. “Install four.”
They went clip to clip. Formations stacked in columns on the page. Coaching points layered. Caine’s wrist started to ache, so he rolled it low against his thigh and kept writing. It was better to have it on paper than trust that it would return to him later when the empty in Statesboro made noises out of nothing.
When the film ended, the lights came up sharper than they had gone down. Aplin capped it. “Keep your packets. Be here Thursday at four. On time.”
Chairs scraped. The room broke in three different directions at once. Weston stood and left like the door owed him something. Turner and Tyler drifted together, heads bent, already mid-conversation. Dillon stretched until his back popped and grinned about it to no one. Terrell stood slow, easy, hands on the seat back like he had all day.
They stayed near Caine instead of leaving. Dillon lifted his chin. “How you liking the sticks, bruh?”
Caine tucked his pen into the spiral and stacked the packet on top. “I hate it,” he said. “Too fucking quiet.”
Terrell laughed under his breath. “They asked me that same thing all spring, and I’m from fucking Tyler.”
Caine looked at Dillon. “Ain’t that fucking BFE?”
Dillon put up both palms, smiling. “Ain’t nothing in Mississippi not BFE. I got no room to talk.”
Terrell tapped Dillon’s packet against his shoulder. “We going to get food. You coming?”
“Yeah,” Caine said, glancing at the table for his phone and finding it already in his pocket. “I gotta call my baby mama first.”
Dillon and Terrell shifted toward the hallway and then stopped along the wall to give him space. Caine stepped a few feet off the flow of bodies leaving the room, turned his shoulder toward the cinderblock, and pulled up Mireya’s name with his thumb.
He called. One ring. Two. The voicemail recording cut in. He hung up before the tone sounded.
He typed fast. Call me back
The text sent. The screen stayed blank after. No bubbles. No reply.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and let out a breath he hadn’t planned. He kept his shoulders at ease and his face set to neutral. Dillon peeked over with a question in his eyebrows. Terrell studied the floor like there was something there to read.
“I’m straight,” Caine said. He hooked the packet under his arm. “Let’s go.”
They walked the hallway that smelled like cleaner and something faintly rubber from the indoor turf. Trophy cases threw back the overhead light across glass and metal, and the shine skated over their faces as they passed. Outside the doors, the heat met them without the city noise to carry it. Pines cut the sky into even strips.
Dillon talked about a place with plates too big for what they charged. Terrell said he wasn’t trusting a menu where the pig was smiling. Caine listened and let the jokes land where they wanted. He kept one part of his mind on the stretch of quiet inside his pocket, where the phone lay heavy against his leg.
At the steps, Weston was already gone. Turner and Tyler had peeled off toward the far lot. Dillon pointed with his chin toward the cars, an unspoken which one. Terrell flicked his keys in one hand and started that way. Caine fell in beside them.
The sun threw heat back up from the pavement. The quiet stayed wide and stubborn.
The house on the North Shore sat deep off the road, lights thrown high across trimmed pines like a stage that didn’t want to admit it was a stage. Gravel shifted under their shoes as Stasia led the way, her keys already out, the night pressed quiet between cicada hum and the low wash of distant highway. Mireya kept a half step behind, bag close under her arm, the cold of the strap sweating against her palm.
Inside, the air chilled her skin. A foyer opened into shine—dark wood, a glass bowl on a hall table with pale shells arranged like someone had thought about the shape of them. A framed photo leaned casual on a shelf, the kind of casual that cost money. Stasia didn’t pause for any of it. She took the stairs like she owned the house, heels soft on carpet that ate sound.
Upstairs, a door at the end had been propped with a folded towel. Behind it, the dressing room had been made out of a guest bedroom. Mirrors leaned along one wall. Two ring lights threw a cool circle over a folding table littered with brushes and compacts. The AC clicked on and sighed in the ceiling but barely kept up with the bodies and heat.
There were more women than Mireya had seen before. The room had the low rustle of work about to happen. A cluster of three white girls kept near the far corner, heads together, the straps on their lingerie thin as thread. Hayley passed behind them, tattoos catching light as she moved a bag out of the walkway with her foot. On the other side, an older Black woman sat on a chair with her ankles crossed, hands easy in her lap, an Asian woman beside her scrolling a phone without looking up.
Alejandra stood by the window with her phone to her ear, Spanish running hot and fast, the words snapping like wire pulled too tight. She turned her face toward the glass, voice low but sharp, wrist flicking when whoever was on the other end said something she didn’t like.
Jaslene looked up from a face she was working—another Black woman Mireya hadn’t seen before, light catching on the line of highlighter at the cheekbone. Jaslene’s mouth tipped into a smile and she lifted her chin in a wave without putting the brush down.
Stasia didn’t slow. “Show her the ropes,” she said to Jaslene, already scanning the room once. “No dancing tonight.”
Mireya stepped in and the door swung almost closed behind her. “I need the money,” she said, not loud, not soft. It came out like a fact.
“You won’t make shit if you get on a pole and break your hip,” Stasia said, dry. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded stack. She peeled off bills—twenties gone soft from being counted—and pressed them into Mireya’s hand.
“Training wages,” she said. “One fifty.” She turned, already sliding back into the hall, voice disappearing into the carpeted hush.
Mireya tucked the cash deep into her bag, the zipper rasping. When she looked up, Jaslene was patting a chair.
“Come sit,” Jaslene said. “Don’t look so nervous. This is Bianca.”
Bianca smiled from the mirror, the kind that lived more in the eyes than the mouth. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Breathe. That’s half the trick.”
Mireya sat. The chair flexed under her weight. She pulled her shoulders back because it felt better than hunching. Jaslene shifted her brush to the other hand and reached to smooth a strand of Bianca’s hair near the temple.
“That’s Khadijah,” Jaslene said, tipping the brush toward the older woman across the room. “She’s like forty. Don’t let anybody mess with us. I’ve never seen her dance.” She nudged her chin to the woman next to her. “Jessica. She’s nice. About her business. Just don’t talk much. Mostly with ’Dijah.”
Across the way, the trio in the corner rearranged their straps, the pale one in the center laughing at something only the three of them found funny. “Brooke,” Jaslene said, counting off with the brush. “C.J. And Maren. They keep to themselves. Either with each other or Hayley.”
Alejandra finally ended her call, exhaling through her nose like she had been holding her breath the whole time. She slid the phone into her robe pocket and crossed to them in three long steps, a grin already set.
“You finally decided to join us, Mexicana?” she said, warmth and bite braided together.
“It looked like a good way to make money,” Mireya said.
“It is,” Alejandra said, “if you get the right persona.”
Bianca rolled her eyes without turning her head. Jaslene reached over and gave her a soft slap on the hand that read more like affection than warning.
“You don’t need all that,” Bianca said to Mireya. “Some good floss and pop some pussy and you’ll make money.”
C.J. crossed the room toward the door. Lingerie cut high at her hips, the fabric more suggestion than clothing. Mireya tracked the line of it.
“What’s floss?” she asked.
Jaslene tilted her head toward C.J.’s retreating back. “That,” she said, and the brush flicked once, amusement running under the word.
The line landed and sat between them. Mireya felt heat lick up her neck and focused on the mirror, on keeping her face still.
Alejandra leaned close enough for the warmth of her breath to touch Mireya’s ear. “Cuando termines con las lecciones de principiante,” she whispered, “te enseño cómo hacer dinero de verdad, Mexicana.” She winked as she straightened and turned toward the door.
Liana came in with Hayley then, the two of them moving like they already heard the set building downstairs. Liana’s mouth curved when she clocked the room. Hayley’s tattoos lit for a second in the doorway light, then dimmed.
Mireya nodded. Her fingers found the edge of the armrest and pressed there. On the far side, Khadijah shifted and murmured something to Jessica that didn’t carry. Brooke laughed again at a joke that didn’t leave their corner. Downstairs, bass started low and thick, as if the house itself had a heart that had just remembered to beat.
The room breathed around her. Powder lifted when Jaslene closed a compact and hung for a second like dust in a sunbeam, even though the room had no sun. Alejandra’s whisper still ticked at Mireya’s ear, a promise or a threat depending on how the night went. Liana and Hayley disappeared back into the hallway, voices getting smaller as they turned the corner.
Mireya kept her eyes on the mirror as the music grew, as bodies shifted toward the door in twos and threes, as Bianca stood and smoothed her outfit with calm hands, as Jaslene reached for her own kit. The floor felt steady under Mireya’s feet. That steadiness didn’t change the way the question rose in her chest and stayed there, quiet and present.
She watched the room, and for a breath, she wondered if she had made the right decision.
The car rolled the block cool with the windows cracked just enough to drink the heat. Streetlights gave the asphalt a sick shine. A cicada buzzed like a loose wire. Ramon drove with two fingers on the wheel and his eyes working the angles. Tyree had his seat leaned back, hoodie up, one knee bouncing to a beat he wasn’t sharing. E.J. kept tapping the face of his phone.
They slid past the shotgun with the plywood windows and the porch sagging. Four young dudes stood out front in a knot, elbows flashing when they laughed, cups shining in their hands. One had a hat pulled low. Another kept looking up and down the street.
Ramon clicked his tongue once. Tyree sat forward.
“That them?” Tyree asked.
Ramon only nodded. He eased the car into a driveway a block down, nose tucked behind a Buick that hadn’t started in months. The engine clicked as it cooled. Their breaths went quiet. Somewhere far a siren whooped and then forgot them.
“Alright,” Ramon said, voice low.
They popped doors in the same breath. The night pressed close and sticky. Shoes found loose gravel and quieted. All three moved past a rusted fence overtaken by vines, hugging the dark. Guns came up smooth.
At the corner of the abandoned house the music from somebody’s backyard slid along the siding. Grease hung in the air. A dog barked twice and then remembered its place. The four boys were still there, heads bent together. Close enough to count lashes. Close enough to see the slow surprise when Tyree and E.J. came out the shadow at a trot that turned to a run.
“Get on the fucking ground, bitch,” Tyree barked, all command now.
“In the dirt, nigga,” E.J. snapped, stepping wide to see everyone at once.
The boys froze, then cursed, then hit dirt sloppy. One tried to look back. Tyree put a knee between his shoulder blades.
“Don’t do nothing stupid, lil’ nigga. I’ll put your ass on a t-shirt,” Tyree said, not loud, not soft either.
E.J. swept the line, muzzle hovering over forearms and hairlines. “Don’t reach for nothing. I ain’t trying to have nobody mama crying.”
The curses kept spilling. “Man, y’all fucking tripping.” “We ain’t got shit, bitch.” “You got the wrong—”
“Shut yo fucking asses up,” E.J. said. He planted a heel near one boy’s wrist. The hand got the message and opened.
Ramon was already peeling off to the side yard. He cut through weeds high enough to hide small animals, toeing at piles that collected against the house. A bucket. A cracked storage tote with a missing lid. A milk crate full of green neck bottles. He flipped each with his shoe, a rhythm he didn’t have to think about. Roaches scattered in a wave. He crouched near the lattice skirting the porch, eyes tracing the cheap wood. There—a cut where there shouldn’t be.
He slid his fingers under the soft edge and tugged. The slat gave with a whisper. A dark hole breathed heat. He reached in up to his elbow, feeling through grit and spider web. His fingertips scraped cardboard. He gripped and pulled.
Shoebox. Tape across the top. He peeled it his thumb. The lid lifted. Weed smell. Rubber bands. Plastic that wrinkled under streetlight. Small baggies pressed into each other like they were sharing a secret. An envelope stuffed full. He didn’t count. Didn’t need to. The weight told him enough.
Back at the front, the boys’ mouths hadn’t learned quiet. Tyree eased his knee off a neck and leaned down by an ear.
“Don’t y’all lil’ niggas get up and get shot now,” he said, calm like instructions on a field trip.
E.J. chuckled once without humor.
Ramon jogged back into the frame, chest only a breath faster, shoebox tucked against his ribs. He didn’t flash it. Just caught Tyree’s eye and jerked his chin. Time.
“C’mon,” he said.
They came off their marks in one motion. Gravel spit out from under sneakers. The night dragged at their shoulders and then let go. A porch light blinked on across the street and then snapped back off. Ramon rounded the fence first, Tyree on his hip, E.J. checking over his shoulder once to make sure nobody played hero.
They hit the car at a run. Doors opened. Bodies slid in. The engine turned and the dash came alive. Ramon reversed out, tires whispering against concrete, then eased forward. No rush until the corner held them, then he pressed the pedal and the block fell behind.
Air moved through the car, hot and grateful. Tyree laughed once and let it die. E.J. stared at the box, then at Ramon.
“Good?” E.J. asked.
“Good,” Ramon said.
A few streets away the world loosened. Less noise. Fewer eyes. A stop sign with a sticker that said PRAY ABOUT IT. Ramon took the right, then another right, nothing fancy. He kept one hand on the wheel and tipped his head toward the shoebox.
“Text Caine,” he said. “Tell him we got the money for his girl.”
E.J. was already unlocking his phone. Thumbs moved. The screen lit his face in a cheap blue. Tyree leaned back and blew air out.
From the back, the city chased and then didn’t. Ramon watched the mirror and then the road and then the mirror again. The box sat quiet in E.J.’s lap, heavy enough to make plans.
“Sent,” E.J. said.
“Bet,” Ramon answered, and drove.
The town wasn’t awake yet. Statesboro air moved like warm breath, all pine and cut grass and the faint sugar of somebody’s late-night fryer drifting from somewhere that never fully shut. Caine cut along the shoulder where the sidewalk gave up, shoes drumming a steady count he could keep without thinking. The campus sat emptied out and echoing, brick squares and glass that kept their own quiet. Back home, morning had a sound. Sirens leaning somewhere, a bus wheezing, somebody arguing with a window. Here the quiet lay out flat and made him listen to himself.
He kept seeing Camila’s face from the video call last night, curls pushed flat on one side like sleep was a fight she never won all the way. Mireya had held the phone tight and tried to smile for the baby. Softer than usual. Sad lived under it, a new layer she didn’t bother burying. “Te amo, mamá,” Camila had chimed to the screen, and the way Mireya didn’t look at him when she said goodnight stuck. He told himself he wouldn’t push on the phone with their daughter there.
Blue and white sat up the block, a cruiser nosed into the gravel of a small lot by a laundromat. The officer leaned against the door and drank coffee from a paper cup, his radio whispering nothing. Caine felt his body lock a notch anyway. Years make habits. He raised his chin in a quiet nod to show he saw him and wasn’t trying to not be seen. The man lifted two fingers from the rim in a lazy salute and slid into the car. The engine turned, light bars dead, and the cruiser rolled out the other way. Caine’s breath rode steady. He glanced after it once and kept moving.
He slowed at the stop sign to cross when the Jeep eased up and put a shadow on his shins. The window came down. Rylee leaned across the seat, hair pulled into a quick tail, a bead of sweat at her temple that hadn’t bothered to leave.
“What you doing out so early?” she asked, voice easy.
He lifted both hands to his shirt and shorts like the answer wore itself. “Running.”
“Mm.” Her mouth tilted like she wanted to laugh but wasn’t gonna give him the full thing yet. “Hop in. I’m headed for breakfast.”
“I been sweating.”
“And?” She grinned now. “You don’t smell no worse than them boys out there in them pastures.”
He glanced over his shoulder. Not at her like he was weighing the choice. At the street. At where the cruiser had been. She read it wrong and waggled her fingers at the handle. “Come on. Ain’t nobody gonna bite.”
He opened the door and slid in, the seat hot under his legs. The Jeep smelled like sun and something peachy she must’ve just put on her wrists. She drove one-handed, elbow on the window, humming something he didn’t know. The town rolled by without any hurry.
…
The diner sat where grass gave way to billboards and long flat road. A gravel lot. A front door with a handle made to look like chrome. Inside, the AC cut across his damp shirt and raised bumps on his arms. A cow clock ticked over the kitchen window. The room held men in caps bent over eggs and women with stiff hair talking low. He felt every head he couldn’t see anyway. He let the waitress set the coffee in front of him and kept his face quiet. The cup warmed his hands.
Rylee watched him like she wanted to figure him. She didn’t say anything until the silence had its own heat. “So, how you end up in Georgia?” she asked finally.
He lifted a shoulder. “Georgia Southern was my only scholarship.”
Her eyebrow notched. “Because you’re on probation?”
He took a sip and let the coffee sit on his tongue a second. “Something like that.”
“What for?”
He shrugged again, let it be nothing and everything. “Supposedly carjacking.”
Rylee studied him, eyes steady. “Is that the serious answer or the I ain’t do it answer?”
“Nah,” he said, voice even. “I did it.”
She let that pass without dress or sermon. The cow clock clicked. Plates kissed each other somewhere behind the counter. She tipped her chin toward his shirt again like she was cataloging him, then set her forearms on the table and leaned in a touch. He nodded at the cropped top and the leggings and the small silver cross that laid against her skin.
“You go out your way to be the opposite of your sister?”
Her mouth stiffened like maybe he misjudged, a flash of offense quick on the surface. He saw the corner twitch, the almost-smile she held back like a secret.
He shook his head. “Man, chill out with that shit.”
She laughed then, soft. “I’m just enjoying life.” The laugh faded. “Laney ain’t always been like that anyway.”
His brow went up. He didn’t push.
She slid past it herself. “You got a girl back home?”
He chuckled once and looked out the window at nothing, at a truck nose taking heat like a lizard in a driveway. “I don’t know what to call it anymore.”
“What’s that mean?”
The waitress showed up with plates before he answered. Heavy white china. Bacon shining. Toast stacked like folded paper. The smell rose and filled the small space between them.
~~~
The porch boards didn’t creak under her weight. That was the first tell. Old houses in this city always answered you back. This one held its breath behind fresh paint and a door that fit its frame like a secret. Mireya checked the address Stasia texted and tucked the phone away before she could change her mind. Heat hovered under the awning. The doorbell chimed clean as hotel glass.
Stasia opened the door like she had been standing just out of sight, waiting for the exact note. Expensive lounge set that made soft shapes, silk robe tied loose, a thin glass of white in her hand at mid-morning. Perfume lifted in a slow curl from the cool air behind her.
“Morning. Come in.”
Inside smelled like lemon cleaner and money. The floors had the kind of shine that dared you to smudge them. Light slid across a long mirror and caught the edges of frames that sat perfectly straight. Somewhere deeper, ice loosened and dropped, a small private sound.
Stasia walked barefoot, robe whispering at her calves.
“Parlor,” she said, and led the way beneath a doorway that made you remember your posture. The room opened into velvet, glass, and a rug so thick it silenced the chair legs. A drink cart winked from the corner. The walls carried a calm that said nothing bad had ever been allowed to happen here.
Stasia sank into the couch like it remembered her. She tipped her chin at the chair opposite. Mireya sat with her bag at her feet and kept her hands flat on her thighs so they would stay still. She looked, but she tried not to look like she was looking. The couch seams were tight. The curtains fell right where they should. A clock ticked with a heartbeat she did not trust.
“I want to dance,” she said.
Stasia raised the glass an inch, not a toast, more like a marker placed on a page. “Want to or need to?”
“What difference does it make.”
“It makes plenty difference.” Stasia’s voice didn’t sharpen. “That part is yours to figure out, though.”
She reached to the side table and lifted a manila folder. The paper inside had weight. Mireya took it. The first page wore a cheerful logo for a cleaning company. The next page asked for name and address and social, all the things the jobs always ask for. Behind that sat forms with more boxes and lines to sign.
“I don’t want to clean houses,” Mireya said, confusion in her brows.
“That is only for taxes.” Stasia let the smile touch the edge of her mouth. “Just in case.”
Mireya flipped a page. Direct deposit. Emergency contact. The kind of language that one would expect from a job.
“It is a no-show job,” Stasia said. “You will get a check every week. Fifteen hours at seven twenty-five. Think of it like a waitress clocking in. Bookkeeping.” She set the numbers down like something already decided.
“Who owns it?” Mireya kept her eyes on the header.
“Somebody does. Or nobody does.” Stasia’s shrug was a breath. “What matters is it is legitimate.”
A truck moved slow outside. The sound rolled and was gone. The clock pressed on. Mireya felt each box on the forms.
“If I sign this,” she said, “I can start dancing for you and Felix?”
Stasia set her glass down with a light click. The silk slid when she shifted, a spill of fabric against fabric. “Honey, you are dancing for yourself.”
The words landed in the center of her chest and sat there.
“How does it work?” Mireya asked. The pen was still capped in the tray. She didn’t reach for it yet.
“You will get a text with a location,” Stasia said. “That is where we are working. We stay three days and then we move. Do not tell anyone where you are going. Do not tell anyone what you do. Keep your profile low.”
Mireya nodded like she understood and also like she was somewhere else, watching herself understand.
Stasia watched her without hurrying the silence. The robe had a thin stitch along the edge that caught light every time her wrist turned. The wine held a pale stripe from the window. Everything in the room said take your time while the clock said the opposite.
Mireya looked back at the first page. Name. Address. Social.
She lifted the pen. The plastic felt too light for the moment. She uncapped it and set the cap near the corner of the folder so it wouldn’t roll. The tip hovered. A small pause that measured the space between what she didn’t want and what she couldn’t afford to refuse.
Stasia spoke again, tone even, like she was continuing a lesson. “When we text, you answer. If you can’t come, say so. If someone asks where you work, you say the name on that page and nothing else. This is for your protection.”
Mireya kept her face neutral so nothing spilled out. She nodded once. The clock ticked. Outside the leaves didn’t move.
“Three days and then it changes,” she said, repeating it to hear it in her own voice.
“Three days,” Stasia said, nodding.
Mireya lowered the pen to the first box. The nib touched paper and made its first small sound. She wrote her name in careful block letters. She moved to the date. The scratch of ink felt loud in the quiet room.
Across from her, Stasia eased deeper into the couch. The robe slid at her shoulder. She rested the glass in her palm and watched, not pressing, not filling the space with more rules. The world narrowed to the line Mireya was on and the next box waiting. She breathed out and kept writing the letters that were hers.
She turned to the second page. The paper slid under her hand. The pen left a thin trail of black. Stasia’s gaze held steady from the couch, patient and unblinking, as Mireya began to fill out the documents.
~~~
The café’s air felt colder than it needed to be, like they were trying to chill down the nerves people brought in with them. Saul rubbed a thumb along the sweating plastic cup, water slicking his skin, ice ticking the lid every time he breathed on the straw. Sugar packets were stacked like little paper bricks between them. The espresso machine hissed in the back and the door kept swinging on its spring, bells tapping out a dull note that didn’t belong to any song he liked.
Zoe slid into the chair across from him. No hug. No brush of fingers. She set her cup down and didn’t meet his eyes right away. Saul felt the stupid urge to reach for her hand and pressed both palms to his thighs instead.
“You good?” he asked, voice low so it didn’t carry.
She moved her cup a centimeter. “We gotta chill.” The words came careful, like she had practiced them out loud and hated how they sounded all the same.
“Chill… what?” He made it into a joke by habit and it fell on the table between them, empty. “On the cold brew? ’Cause you know I ain’t even order this right.”
“On us hanging out.” She finally looked at him. There was nothing mean in it. That made it worse.
“Why?” He heard himself and didn’t like the shape of it. Too sharp. He tried again, softer. “Why, Zoe?”
“You’re just…” She let the rest hang. A couple walked past their table, the man laughing loud enough to earn a glance from the barista. When the door closed again, Zoe finished it. “A lot.”
Saul sucked his teeth. It wasn’t loud. It still sounded like a fight. He leaned back and the chair creaked. Her “a lot” rolled around in his head. He thought about the other day, the argument that had started as a joke and kept rolling until it was a cliff.
“That because of what I said?” he asked. “The other day?”
She shook her head. “No.” Then she did a small shrug that said the thing she didn’t want to say. “Yes.”
The ice ticked his lid again. “I ain’t mean it like that.”
“I know.” She spoke quick, as if the faster she said it the faster it would be done. “You’re sweet. It’s not… you’re just too new for me. I should’ve seen it before.”
“New,” he repeated. He didn’t know what else to do with the word. He could feel the heat crawling up under his shirt even with the A/C cutting the room down. He dropped his stare to the napkin by his cup. The barista had stamped a little sun on it. He didn’t want to look at a sun right now.
Zoe wrapped her fingers around her drink but didn’t sip. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s just not for me.”
He wanted to ask what “for me” meant. He wanted to say, You were for me though. He swallowed all of that. He could still remember the feel of her breath on his jaw, the surprise in it, how his own hands had shook after like he’d done something wrong and right at the same time. Firsts had a way of sticking to you.
“It’s cool,” he said, and even he could hear that it wasn’t. “I hear you.”
She nodded the way people nod when they wish you would fight them so they could feel less bad. She stood. The chair legs kissed the floor. She grabbed her cup and her bag in one motion and looked like she might put a hand on his shoulder, but she didn’t.
“Don’t text me, okay?” she said.
“Alright,” he said, and maybe he meant to ask how long, but the words came out like he was reading them from a wall. He thought of his phone sitting heavy in his pocket, the thread of messages that jumped from memes to “you up?” to nothing, then back again. He thought about the part of himself that had been lighter these past months because her name would pop up. He hated that he had let himself get used to that light.
She gave him a small, sad smile. The bell tapped once when the door opened, then twice as it swung back. Heat swelled up from outside and got eaten by the air.
Saul stayed where he was. He counted the slow minutes the way you do in class when you know the clock is lying to you. He looked at the napkin again, the little sun turning into a stain under the water ring from his cup. He pressed his thumb into the wet and made a smear.
If he stood up right away it would feel like chasing. If he texted anyway, it would be worse. He let his shoulders fold and the chair take him. He wanted to tell somebody. There wasn’t anybody to tell who wouldn’t make it sound like a lesson. He laced his fingers together under the table and held on.
After a few minutes, the ice had melted to slivers. He took the lid off because the clatter of it was getting on his nerves. He took one sip and it tasted like nothing. He tossed the cup in the trash on the way out and missed. He picked it up and set it where it belonged because he needed one thing today to be where it was supposed to be.
Outside, the heat ran its palm over his face. He kept his head down. The sidewalk made the same old sound under his shoes. He didn’t look back through the glass.
~~~
The projector washed the table in a dull gray that made the paper look wet. Aplin clicked through slides and clips, his voice steady as he walked them into install three. The freeze frame held a tight front and a boundary safety cheating like he knew what was coming. The room smelled faintly of dry coffee and old carpet, the air cold enough to keep everybody awake.
Caine kept his head down and his pen moving. His notes ran along the margins in small, neat lines. He listened for what the coaches said and what they didn’t. The AC hummed above them. Somewhere behind, Mizell shifted in the chair that always creaked.
“Protection?” Mizell asked.
“Slide left,” Weston said without lifting his eyes.
“Where’s your first throw?” Aplin asked.
“Short,” Turner said. “Flat to quick out. Hitch if the safety bails.”
Aplin nodded and rolled the clip. The quarterback on screen took the snap, set, and fired to the out. Tackle for four. Aplin backed it up and let it run again. The field corner opened his hips early. Caine drew a short arrow in his notes toward the space that the ball had ignored.
“Anything else?” Aplin said, still looking at the screen.
Caine tapped the arrow once with the end of his pen. “Could’ve tagged the slot on a now,” he said. His tone stayed even. “Corner opened the gate. Safety sat. Ball right there and let him run.”
Aplin’s eyes slid to him and away. Mizell’s did the same. Neither said good. Neither said much of anything. Aplin clicked ahead. “Install four.”
They went clip to clip. Formations stacked in columns on the page. Coaching points layered. Caine’s wrist started to ache, so he rolled it low against his thigh and kept writing. It was better to have it on paper than trust that it would return to him later when the empty in Statesboro made noises out of nothing.
When the film ended, the lights came up sharper than they had gone down. Aplin capped it. “Keep your packets. Be here Thursday at four. On time.”
Chairs scraped. The room broke in three different directions at once. Weston stood and left like the door owed him something. Turner and Tyler drifted together, heads bent, already mid-conversation. Dillon stretched until his back popped and grinned about it to no one. Terrell stood slow, easy, hands on the seat back like he had all day.
They stayed near Caine instead of leaving. Dillon lifted his chin. “How you liking the sticks, bruh?”
Caine tucked his pen into the spiral and stacked the packet on top. “I hate it,” he said. “Too fucking quiet.”
Terrell laughed under his breath. “They asked me that same thing all spring, and I’m from fucking Tyler.”
Caine looked at Dillon. “Ain’t that fucking BFE?”
Dillon put up both palms, smiling. “Ain’t nothing in Mississippi not BFE. I got no room to talk.”
Terrell tapped Dillon’s packet against his shoulder. “We going to get food. You coming?”
“Yeah,” Caine said, glancing at the table for his phone and finding it already in his pocket. “I gotta call my baby mama first.”
Dillon and Terrell shifted toward the hallway and then stopped along the wall to give him space. Caine stepped a few feet off the flow of bodies leaving the room, turned his shoulder toward the cinderblock, and pulled up Mireya’s name with his thumb.
He called. One ring. Two. The voicemail recording cut in. He hung up before the tone sounded.
He typed fast. Call me back
The text sent. The screen stayed blank after. No bubbles. No reply.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and let out a breath he hadn’t planned. He kept his shoulders at ease and his face set to neutral. Dillon peeked over with a question in his eyebrows. Terrell studied the floor like there was something there to read.
“I’m straight,” Caine said. He hooked the packet under his arm. “Let’s go.”
They walked the hallway that smelled like cleaner and something faintly rubber from the indoor turf. Trophy cases threw back the overhead light across glass and metal, and the shine skated over their faces as they passed. Outside the doors, the heat met them without the city noise to carry it. Pines cut the sky into even strips.
Dillon talked about a place with plates too big for what they charged. Terrell said he wasn’t trusting a menu where the pig was smiling. Caine listened and let the jokes land where they wanted. He kept one part of his mind on the stretch of quiet inside his pocket, where the phone lay heavy against his leg.
At the steps, Weston was already gone. Turner and Tyler had peeled off toward the far lot. Dillon pointed with his chin toward the cars, an unspoken which one. Terrell flicked his keys in one hand and started that way. Caine fell in beside them.
The sun threw heat back up from the pavement. The quiet stayed wide and stubborn.
~~~
The house on the North Shore sat deep off the road, lights thrown high across trimmed pines like a stage that didn’t want to admit it was a stage. Gravel shifted under their shoes as Stasia led the way, her keys already out, the night pressed quiet between cicada hum and the low wash of distant highway. Mireya kept a half step behind, bag close under her arm, the cold of the strap sweating against her palm.
Inside, the air chilled her skin. A foyer opened into shine—dark wood, a glass bowl on a hall table with pale shells arranged like someone had thought about the shape of them. A framed photo leaned casual on a shelf, the kind of casual that cost money. Stasia didn’t pause for any of it. She took the stairs like she owned the house, heels soft on carpet that ate sound.
Upstairs, a door at the end had been propped with a folded towel. Behind it, the dressing room had been made out of a guest bedroom. Mirrors leaned along one wall. Two ring lights threw a cool circle over a folding table littered with brushes and compacts. The AC clicked on and sighed in the ceiling but barely kept up with the bodies and heat.
There were more women than Mireya had seen before. The room had the low rustle of work about to happen. A cluster of three white girls kept near the far corner, heads together, the straps on their lingerie thin as thread. Hayley passed behind them, tattoos catching light as she moved a bag out of the walkway with her foot. On the other side, an older Black woman sat on a chair with her ankles crossed, hands easy in her lap, an Asian woman beside her scrolling a phone without looking up.
Alejandra stood by the window with her phone to her ear, Spanish running hot and fast, the words snapping like wire pulled too tight. She turned her face toward the glass, voice low but sharp, wrist flicking when whoever was on the other end said something she didn’t like.
Jaslene looked up from a face she was working—another Black woman Mireya hadn’t seen before, light catching on the line of highlighter at the cheekbone. Jaslene’s mouth tipped into a smile and she lifted her chin in a wave without putting the brush down.
Stasia didn’t slow. “Show her the ropes,” she said to Jaslene, already scanning the room once. “No dancing tonight.”
Mireya stepped in and the door swung almost closed behind her. “I need the money,” she said, not loud, not soft. It came out like a fact.
“You won’t make shit if you get on a pole and break your hip,” Stasia said, dry. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded stack. She peeled off bills—twenties gone soft from being counted—and pressed them into Mireya’s hand.
“Training wages,” she said. “One fifty.” She turned, already sliding back into the hall, voice disappearing into the carpeted hush.
Mireya tucked the cash deep into her bag, the zipper rasping. When she looked up, Jaslene was patting a chair.
“Come sit,” Jaslene said. “Don’t look so nervous. This is Bianca.”
Bianca smiled from the mirror, the kind that lived more in the eyes than the mouth. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Breathe. That’s half the trick.”
Mireya sat. The chair flexed under her weight. She pulled her shoulders back because it felt better than hunching. Jaslene shifted her brush to the other hand and reached to smooth a strand of Bianca’s hair near the temple.
“That’s Khadijah,” Jaslene said, tipping the brush toward the older woman across the room. “She’s like forty. Don’t let anybody mess with us. I’ve never seen her dance.” She nudged her chin to the woman next to her. “Jessica. She’s nice. About her business. Just don’t talk much. Mostly with ’Dijah.”
Across the way, the trio in the corner rearranged their straps, the pale one in the center laughing at something only the three of them found funny. “Brooke,” Jaslene said, counting off with the brush. “C.J. And Maren. They keep to themselves. Either with each other or Hayley.”
Alejandra finally ended her call, exhaling through her nose like she had been holding her breath the whole time. She slid the phone into her robe pocket and crossed to them in three long steps, a grin already set.
“You finally decided to join us, Mexicana?” she said, warmth and bite braided together.
“It looked like a good way to make money,” Mireya said.
“It is,” Alejandra said, “if you get the right persona.”
Bianca rolled her eyes without turning her head. Jaslene reached over and gave her a soft slap on the hand that read more like affection than warning.
“You don’t need all that,” Bianca said to Mireya. “Some good floss and pop some pussy and you’ll make money.”
C.J. crossed the room toward the door. Lingerie cut high at her hips, the fabric more suggestion than clothing. Mireya tracked the line of it.
“What’s floss?” she asked.
Jaslene tilted her head toward C.J.’s retreating back. “That,” she said, and the brush flicked once, amusement running under the word.
The line landed and sat between them. Mireya felt heat lick up her neck and focused on the mirror, on keeping her face still.
Alejandra leaned close enough for the warmth of her breath to touch Mireya’s ear. “Cuando termines con las lecciones de principiante,” she whispered, “te enseño cómo hacer dinero de verdad, Mexicana.” She winked as she straightened and turned toward the door.
Liana came in with Hayley then, the two of them moving like they already heard the set building downstairs. Liana’s mouth curved when she clocked the room. Hayley’s tattoos lit for a second in the doorway light, then dimmed.
Mireya nodded. Her fingers found the edge of the armrest and pressed there. On the far side, Khadijah shifted and murmured something to Jessica that didn’t carry. Brooke laughed again at a joke that didn’t leave their corner. Downstairs, bass started low and thick, as if the house itself had a heart that had just remembered to beat.
The room breathed around her. Powder lifted when Jaslene closed a compact and hung for a second like dust in a sunbeam, even though the room had no sun. Alejandra’s whisper still ticked at Mireya’s ear, a promise or a threat depending on how the night went. Liana and Hayley disappeared back into the hallway, voices getting smaller as they turned the corner.
Mireya kept her eyes on the mirror as the music grew, as bodies shifted toward the door in twos and threes, as Bianca stood and smoothed her outfit with calm hands, as Jaslene reached for her own kit. The floor felt steady under Mireya’s feet. That steadiness didn’t change the way the question rose in her chest and stayed there, quiet and present.
She watched the room, and for a breath, she wondered if she had made the right decision.
~~~
The car rolled the block cool with the windows cracked just enough to drink the heat. Streetlights gave the asphalt a sick shine. A cicada buzzed like a loose wire. Ramon drove with two fingers on the wheel and his eyes working the angles. Tyree had his seat leaned back, hoodie up, one knee bouncing to a beat he wasn’t sharing. E.J. kept tapping the face of his phone.
They slid past the shotgun with the plywood windows and the porch sagging. Four young dudes stood out front in a knot, elbows flashing when they laughed, cups shining in their hands. One had a hat pulled low. Another kept looking up and down the street.
Ramon clicked his tongue once. Tyree sat forward.
“That them?” Tyree asked.
Ramon only nodded. He eased the car into a driveway a block down, nose tucked behind a Buick that hadn’t started in months. The engine clicked as it cooled. Their breaths went quiet. Somewhere far a siren whooped and then forgot them.
“Alright,” Ramon said, voice low.
They popped doors in the same breath. The night pressed close and sticky. Shoes found loose gravel and quieted. All three moved past a rusted fence overtaken by vines, hugging the dark. Guns came up smooth.
At the corner of the abandoned house the music from somebody’s backyard slid along the siding. Grease hung in the air. A dog barked twice and then remembered its place. The four boys were still there, heads bent together. Close enough to count lashes. Close enough to see the slow surprise when Tyree and E.J. came out the shadow at a trot that turned to a run.
“Get on the fucking ground, bitch,” Tyree barked, all command now.
“In the dirt, nigga,” E.J. snapped, stepping wide to see everyone at once.
The boys froze, then cursed, then hit dirt sloppy. One tried to look back. Tyree put a knee between his shoulder blades.
“Don’t do nothing stupid, lil’ nigga. I’ll put your ass on a t-shirt,” Tyree said, not loud, not soft either.
E.J. swept the line, muzzle hovering over forearms and hairlines. “Don’t reach for nothing. I ain’t trying to have nobody mama crying.”
The curses kept spilling. “Man, y’all fucking tripping.” “We ain’t got shit, bitch.” “You got the wrong—”
“Shut yo fucking asses up,” E.J. said. He planted a heel near one boy’s wrist. The hand got the message and opened.
Ramon was already peeling off to the side yard. He cut through weeds high enough to hide small animals, toeing at piles that collected against the house. A bucket. A cracked storage tote with a missing lid. A milk crate full of green neck bottles. He flipped each with his shoe, a rhythm he didn’t have to think about. Roaches scattered in a wave. He crouched near the lattice skirting the porch, eyes tracing the cheap wood. There—a cut where there shouldn’t be.
He slid his fingers under the soft edge and tugged. The slat gave with a whisper. A dark hole breathed heat. He reached in up to his elbow, feeling through grit and spider web. His fingertips scraped cardboard. He gripped and pulled.
Shoebox. Tape across the top. He peeled it his thumb. The lid lifted. Weed smell. Rubber bands. Plastic that wrinkled under streetlight. Small baggies pressed into each other like they were sharing a secret. An envelope stuffed full. He didn’t count. Didn’t need to. The weight told him enough.
Back at the front, the boys’ mouths hadn’t learned quiet. Tyree eased his knee off a neck and leaned down by an ear.
“Don’t y’all lil’ niggas get up and get shot now,” he said, calm like instructions on a field trip.
E.J. chuckled once without humor.
Ramon jogged back into the frame, chest only a breath faster, shoebox tucked against his ribs. He didn’t flash it. Just caught Tyree’s eye and jerked his chin. Time.
“C’mon,” he said.
They came off their marks in one motion. Gravel spit out from under sneakers. The night dragged at their shoulders and then let go. A porch light blinked on across the street and then snapped back off. Ramon rounded the fence first, Tyree on his hip, E.J. checking over his shoulder once to make sure nobody played hero.
They hit the car at a run. Doors opened. Bodies slid in. The engine turned and the dash came alive. Ramon reversed out, tires whispering against concrete, then eased forward. No rush until the corner held them, then he pressed the pedal and the block fell behind.
Air moved through the car, hot and grateful. Tyree laughed once and let it die. E.J. stared at the box, then at Ramon.
“Good?” E.J. asked.
“Good,” Ramon said.
A few streets away the world loosened. Less noise. Fewer eyes. A stop sign with a sticker that said PRAY ABOUT IT. Ramon took the right, then another right, nothing fancy. He kept one hand on the wheel and tipped his head toward the shoebox.
“Text Caine,” he said. “Tell him we got the money for his girl.”
E.J. was already unlocking his phone. Thumbs moved. The screen lit his face in a cheap blue. Tyree leaned back and blew air out.
From the back, the city chased and then didn’t. Ramon watched the mirror and then the road and then the mirror again. The box sat quiet in E.J.’s lap, heavy enough to make plans.
“Sent,” E.J. said.
“Bet,” Ramon answered, and drove.
-
Captain Canada
- Posts: 4973
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
American Sun
Mireya cashing checks from all sorts of fucked up situations now. Caine's gang money, Leo's dick money (we gonna talk about how she only got $75 or am I confused?), and now her stripper money.
American Sun
little does Alejandra know Mireya already knows how to turn tricks
American Sun
All money spend, brudda. The money she got from Leo was most of the money order, fam. C'mon now. She asked for triple her weekly salary the first time.Captain Canada wrote: ↑02 Oct 2025, 20:15Mireya cashing checks from all sorts of fucked up situations now. Caine's gang money, Leo's dick money (we gonna talk about how she only got $75 or am I confused?), and now her stripper money.
1) How you know Alejandra not talking about selling arepas?
2) Saying Mireya knows how to turn tricks is a significant and absurd overestimation of what she's done
3) This man always think these Latinas selling pussy. Where's Latino Dr. Umar????
American Sun
The Harvest is Scarce, but the Laborers are Many
Sara wedged her hip against the door and slid into the passenger seat, the hotel’s back lot baking like a skillet. The kind of heat that climbs your neck and sits there. Nicole already had the AC going and two paper cups sweating in the console. Somewhere behind them a cart rattled over cracked concrete and a houseman whistled off key.
They didn’t talk at first. Sara peeled a sugar packet with a thumbnail and dumped it in, watching the swirl go tan. Nicole sipped and watched the rearview. The sweat on Sara’s spine cooled and then returned. Her calves still ached from stairs. Bleach lived in the lines of her fingers.
“I think I committed a crime,” Sara said finally, eyes on the dash like it could answer.
Nicole lifted one eyebrow without turning her head. “Think?”
Sara let a breath scrape out. “Maria put Mireya out.” She rolled the cup between her palms. “Camila’s other grandmother. Mireya’s mama. She put her out. I went over there to… talk.” The word tasted wrong. “I ended up with my hand on her throat.”
Nicole’s mouth did that little twitch it did. She gave a short, ugly laugh that said she wasn’t shocked at all. “That is, in fact, a crime.”
“Yeah.” The AC sighed and pushed cold that couldn’t keep up. Sara took a sip to have something to do with her mouth. Coffee sat bitter at the back of her tongue. “What would you do?”
“You want friend advice or legal advice?”
“Those different?”
Nicole shrugged. Her bracelets clicked once against each other. “I don’t know that woman. But if she really tossed her own daughter, that tells me what I need to know.” She drew a line on the fogged cup with her nail and wiped it away. “Legal advice? Forget it happened unless she files. If she does, then we deal with it.”
“She might not,” Sara said. “She’s probably scared of what Caine would do if she did.”
Nicole lifted her palm in a stop sign, head tilted. “I’ll stop you right there, because I’m not actually a lawyer yet.” The smile after cut the edge, a little apology and a little joke. “I’m just saying—keep your head down until there’s something to look up for.”
Sara huffed, something like a laugh and not. “I didn’t go over there planning to… you know.” She rubbed the seam of the seat with the side of her thumb. “That woman is just so fucking insufferable. I thought about Camila sleeping on couches and I—I just… I was mad.”
“Uh-huh.” Nicole looked at her then, full. “You hurt?”
“No.” Sara rolled her shoulders like proof. “She’s fine, too.”
From the lot, a delivery truck beeped itself backward and then killed the sound. Sun leaned through the windshield in a hard rectangle. Nicole reached forward and nudged the visor down.
Out by the dumpsters, a gull screamed at nothing. A security camera blinked a red dot over the loading bay. The hotel breathed its same tired breath—ice machine coughing, elevator dinging, somebody dragging a suitcase with one bad wheel. Sara stared at the sweep of Nicole’s wiper blades where dust had written a finger path and felt the stupid urge to wipe it clean with her thumb.
Nicole cracked the window two fingers, just enough to let the smell of hot asphalt in. “You know she might never call the cops,” she said, eyes back on the mirror. “Pride is loud.”
“Yeah.” Sara chewed the inside of her cheek.
They sat like that. Traffic hissed on the avenue beyond the fence. Somewhere nearby, someone’s phone blasted a bounce hook before they cut it off. A housekeeping cart rattled into view, piled with towels, plastic rustling like rain. The houseman waved without stopping. Sara lifted her chin back, a small hello.
Sara nodded. She checked the time on her cracked screen and winced. “I gotta clock back in.” She pushed the door open and the heat grabbed her face. One foot out, she turned back. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“Anytime.” Nicole gave her knee one light pat and let her go. “Hope the rest of your shift isn’t too bad.”
Sara slid out and put both soles on the hot concrete. The air pressed like a hand between her shoulder blades. She squinted into the glare, then leaned down to look back in at Nicole, mouth twisting like a prayer she didn’t want to say out loud. “God willing.”
She shut the door with a soft thunk. The car’s AC hissed on the other side of the glass, and for a second the cool looked like a different life. Sara turned toward the service entrance. Detergent hit her nose before the door. Voices rose and fell in the stairwell. She tucked her chin, rolled her shoulders like she could lower the weight onto stronger bone, and went in.
The studio sat above a nail shop that bled acetone into the stairwell, sweet and chemical in the wet air. The hallway bulbs buzzed and flickered as if tired of trying. Mireya arrived first and pushed through the metal door with the little glass window, the handle still warm from the day. Inside, the air didn’t cool so much as move around her, a fan pushing heat from one side to the other.
She took the bench by the wall and let her thighs stick to the vinyl. The room was a long box of mirrors and chrome. Six poles stood in two clean rows. Motivational quotes curled across the paint in neat vinyl letters. Strong is Sexy. Own Your Power. No Excuses. Every phrase felt like another bill to pay.
Footsteps clattered up the stairs. Keys jingled. Hayley came in first, a lanyard looped around her fingers. She flipped through keys and found the right one without looking, then threw the lock open.
“Is this yours?” Mireya asked.
“God no,” Hayley said. “I could never put up with these fucking suburban moms. My roommate is the manager.”
Jaslene followed her, half laughing already, hoops catching the overhead light. Liana lugged a big bag and set it down with a thud. When Hayley said roommate, Jaslene cut a look at Liana, and Liana lifted both hands to make slow air quotes.
“Roommate,” Liana said.
Hayley sucked her teeth. “We only hooked up once. Y’all not gonna keep playing with me.”
Mireya’s gaze caught on the swing of the lanyard, skimmed the hem of Hayley’s shorts, then went back to the mirror as she picked at a loose thread on her leggings.
Jaslene slid to the floor and folded in half until her forehead pressed her shin, then unfurled slow as if counting bones. Liana opened the bag and pulled out a pair of clear pleasers. The plastic still held a frost from its last wipe. She set them heel to heel, then slid her foot into one and stood taller, testing the floor with a careful roll of her ankle.
“Those necessary for you to show me what to do?” Mireya asked, nodding at the shoes.
“You’re going to be wearing them, so yes,” Liana said. She took a small step and her hips settled into a new rhythm like the height had rewired balance.
Hayley hopped to a pole and let herself spin with almost no effort, thighs soft, palm up as she turned. “See,” she said, voice easy. “It’s easy.”
“It’s not the dancing I’m worried about,” Mireya said. The mirror doubled her. She looked like she hadn’t slept in two days because she hadn’t. “It’s the being naked in front of strangers.”
Liana nodded as if she remembered that feeling in her own skin. “I struggled with that, too,” she said. She leaned into a pole and held herself there with one thigh, hair falling forward. “I just did that old trick. Picture everybody else naked.”
Hayley laughed and rode her spin to a stop. “Yeah, but you’re not staring into their asshole like they staring into yours. Motherfuckers get closer than my OB.”
The image knocked a grimace out of Mireya before she could stop it. She imagined a man with a folded bill leaning too close, breath wrong, eyes wrong, like she was something under glass. Her stomach tightened.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jaslene said from the floor, voice steady. She rolled up slow and met Mireya’s eyes in the mirror. She had the calm that had carried Mireya through the last two nights at the club, just watching.
“You’ll learn how to be okay with it. Or you’ll figure out how to separate Mireya the person from whatever your stage name ends up being. The stripper who is.” She tapped her temple. “Two girls, same body, different rules.”
The AC hummed against the drone of nail dryers through the floor. Hayley set music on her phone, a low beat that kept to itself. Liana tugged a strap into place and checked the mirror like the mirror was another set of hands.
“What’s your stage name?” Hayley asked, almost teasing.
“I don’t know,” Mireya said.
“You don’t need it yet,” Jaslene said. “Lesson one first.”
She gestured at an open pole. Mireya’s feet hesitated and then carried her forward anyway. The mirror put her next to herself, same girl twice, just as tired both times. The quotes on the wall stood over her shoulder like they wanted her to agree.
Jaslene nodded at the pole. Mireya reached up without needing more words. Her hand closed on the metal. The music held steady. The quotes on the wall didn’t blink. The glass held her where she stood.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t look away.
The room ran, the projector’s fan whining over the hush of chairs. Caine took a seat in the second row where he wasn’t on display and wasn’t hiding. Sweat from the walk over cooled at his collar and left a faint chill. The carpet smelled like old cleaner. Dry-erase ink hung under the air conditioning.
Coach Aplin turned down the side chatter with a quiet “Alright,” more dial than bark. Fatu queued the first cut-up at the laptop. Mizell leaned on the whiteboard with a capped marker tapping against his palm. Weston and Turner sprawled shoulder to shoulder. Tyler bounced a knee. Dillon and Terrell sat forward like they were trying to learn by osmosis.
“Last year. Third and six,” Coach Fatu said. “Boundary pressure.”
The clip rolled. Trips to the field. Edge heat came fast. Last year’s QB, J.C. French, threw hit the underneath and died short.
“What’s better?” Aplin asked, eyes on the screen.
“Motion to empty,” Caine said, steady. “Fast four from the back to widen the apex. If he carries, I take the stick now. If he sits, I hit the glance. Ball’s out before the nickel gets home.”
Mizell’s gaze flicked from the freeze frame to Caine and back. Fatu rewound.
“Back alignment?” Fatu asked.
“Start him weak. Jet late so they gotta bump now. Don’t give ’em time to check.”
Fatu ran it again, nodded once, and moved on.
Red zone next. Condensed splits. The backer mugged the A gap and paced like a dog on a chain. French’s throw went to the flat and got stomped out.
“Everybody sees the flat,” Aplin said. “What didn’t we hit?”
“High cross from two,” Caine answered. “Sell run first. Hard flash. If the safety spins down, I replace him with my eyes and throw on the back of the mike.”
“Why two and not three?” Coach Mizell asked, mild.
“Corner heavy outside. He’ll collision three off the line. Two free if we stack and take the inside. I’m reading the mike’s near hip. If he turns, I cross his ear. If he sits, I dump it to the back into the void.”
Tyler’s knee stopped. Weston worked at the athletic tape in his hand and squinted like he wanted to find an argument and couldn’t.
Fatu clicked to a first-and-ten from the minus-forty. Quarters, matchy. Last year’s call was split zone for a ho-hum gain.
“What else?” he asked.
“Orbit Z, glance away,” Caine said. “If they spin it, tag the post on the orbit side and hold the backside safety with my eyes. If they stay, I take the glance. Live in second and two.”
Mizell rapped the board twice with his marker and didn’t write. He just listened.
The next clip showed three-by-one with the boundary safety creeping. French looked, double-clutched, ate it.
“Set the back strong,” Caine said. “Hard count. See if they tip pressure. If they do, I check swing to the field with slant behind it. If the overhang widens, I bang the slant. If he sits, I take the swing and let the back win the alley.”
“And if they green-dog off the back?” Coach Aplin asked.
“Then I’m off the swing. Boundary hitch now. Build a wall with the guard. Ball out on one.”
Turner cut a look toward the screen. “You trust hitch there?”
“If the corner off with flat toes like that, yeah,” Caine said, pointing at the freeze. “He daring me to be late. I ain’t late, it’s a chunk.”
Silence held just long enough to feel like agreement. Fatu rolled on.
Short yardage. Heavy bodies mashed into heavy bodies. French’s sneak got folded and buried. A few groans, a couple laughs.
“Ain’t no reason to bang our head on a wall,” Caine said. “Use their big against ’em. Fast exit by Y. Sell the sneak with low pads. Pop it if the nose buries and the mike squeezes. If the mike hangs, I follow the guard’s hip and take the crease.”
Tyler let out a low whistle.
Third and long. Crowd noise bled into the audio. Two-man coverage squeezed everything. French tried to be a superhero. Sack. The punter jogged on.
“Alright,” Aplin said, mouth flat. “What now?”
“Don’t fight two-man,” Caine said. “Back weak. Chip the wide nine to buy rhythm. Dagger. Clear with nine, dig behind it. If they plaster, I take the back on the sit. If the backer got his back to me, I steal six with my legs and get down.”
“Protection?” Mizell asked.
“Six-man. If they bring more, I throw hot off the edge. I already know where it’s coming from.” Caine traced a small angle with his finger, the nickel’s heel light on the replay. “He greedy. You gotta punish that.”
Fatu let the clip finish, then cut it and sat back like his spine had opinions. Aplin wrote a few words only he could read under a scribble of hashes.
They kept going forty minutes like that. Install points layered over last season’s scars. Caine didn’t speak to speak. He spoke when the answer felt like it would live on the field.
Short yardage came up again and he asked for a quick shift to bunch to force a check, then a crack by Z so the back’s bounce had daylight. Boundary heat returned and he tagged a now screen to X with the glance away, telling Dillon to think waist-high, front-hip placement. Dillon nodded quick. Two-minute drill rolled and Caine said to build a sideline cheat into tempo, a quick-out look to steal five if the corner’s eyes got lost in the backfield. Fatu keyed it on the laptop without commentary, which said enough.
Somewhere during the run of clips, the newness fell off him. The room turned into pictures and space and timing. Turner called a check Caine liked. He tapped the back of Turner’s chair on the way to the next play. Weston caught a split-safety tell before Caine did. Caine tipped his chin once and Weston tipped his back.
Fatu loaded a final look. “Fourth quarter. Tied. Same defense we saw before.”
Caine leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Stack the boundary. Alert the fade if he put hands on us. If he bail, run him and win with the under. Feet quiet on the snap. One hitch. Throw.”
For a beat nobody talked. The projector hummed. Air moved through the vent and settled again. Aplin clicked the remote and the screen went black. The room let out the breath it had been holding.
“Come back in an hour,” he said. “Eat. Hydrate. Bring something back worth saying.”
Chairs scraped. Guys stood and stretched. Caine stayed seated a second longer, hands on his knees, the chill of the room finally beating the last of the sweat.
The butcher’s hands moved easy over the slab, knife whispering in a line that made the meat fold on itself. Cold air from the case held onto Laney’s forearms and the backs of her fingers where she rested them on the ledge. Behind her, Knox and Braxton bumped shoulders and shoes. Hunter let out a laugh that started to grow until she cut it off with a look. It didn’t take a word. They settled, breath loud for a second, then quieted like the tile had told them to.
Mr. Hartfield leaned with his weight on the counter scale to test it. “You remember when you dated my boy back in high school?” he said, voice thick as syrup and twice as friendly.
Laney smiled with only half her mouth. “Sure do, and I remember findin’ him behind the bleachers with Rebecca Anderson and his britches ‘round his ankles.”
The knife stopped. The butcher threw his head back and laughed, the sound bouncing off the glass door where a paper sign said PORK CHOPS SPECIAL in a shaky blue. “Lord, I tell him all the time he messed up for that. You always been the prettiest woman ‘round here.”
Laney slid her card back into her wallet and pulled cash instead, more than the steaks cost by a bit. “I’ll tell Tommy how lucky he is you think he caught the prettiest woman in South Georgia.” She placed the bills on the gritty part of the counter where the butcher’s thumb had worn a half moon.
Mr. Hartfield folded the steaks neat into butcher paper and taped the seam. “You do that now.”
“Y’all have a good one,” she said, and gathered the bag by its twine handles. She tipped her head toward the boys. “Let’s move.”
They followed her out into the thick heat that settled over the parking lot. The air smelled like old oil and something sweet from the bakery two doors down. Laney’s keys clicked in her palm. She lifted her chin toward the van.
“Knox, take these. Put the bag down careful. Don’t crush it.”
Knox ran his tongue across his teeth like he did when he tried to look older and took the keys. Braxton pressed his hand flat to the glass to watch his breath fog it while Knox opened the door. Hunter followed behind as his older brothers got in.
“Laney!” a voice called, bright and certain. An older woman waved with the polished motion of someone who waved a lot. The sun silvered her hair.
Laney shifted the bag to her left hand and met the woman halfway. “Afternoon, Mrs. Wilcox.”
“We were out in downtown Statesboro,” Mrs. Wilcox said, already close enough for the powder on her cheeks to carry a scent. “Me and Janet—you know, Janet, Mrs. Morse—and we saw that new boy y’all got workin’ at the church. He was comin’ outta Mr. Bethel’s office.”
Laney kept her face easy. “Yes, ma’am. Caine’s on probation.”
She gave the sentence the clean shape it needed, nothing added. They’d seen him there, so it wasn’t a secret. The boys’ voices carried from the van in soft argument over who got the middle seat. She didn’t look back.
Mrs. Wilcox’s mouth pressed thin. “I don’t know that I’m comfortable with that. My Hannah’s at the daycare. I don’t think I like the idea of her around someone on probation.”
Laney let the words hang for a breath. Heat worked the back of her neck. “Caine, like all of us, is a child of God,” she said, steady. “He’s welcome in Lord’s house same as the rest of us sinners. If you feel Hannah’s concerned, that’s a conversation you need to have with Hannah. But he follows the rules and does his work without any lip.”
A car turned into the lot with its blinker still going after the turn. Mrs. Wilcox glanced, then looked back fast. “Well, I just don’t like it.”
Laney’s eyes didn’t blink. “Mrs. Wilcox, we didn’t turn your husband away when he had his… issues. My daddy won’t be turnin’ away anyone else doin’ their penance.” The last word sat gentle, not sharp.
Color rose on the woman’s cheeks under the powder. She swallowed and fussed with the strap of her purse. “I’ll be speakin’ to Pastor Hadden about this.”
Laney nodded once like that was a normal thing. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.” She shifted the bag higher in her grip. “I’ve got to go. Don’t want these steaks to spoil. Have a blessed day, Mrs. Wilcox.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She crossed the heat in clean steps, opened the sliding door, and put the bag on the floor behind the front seats where the shade reached. Knox already had his belt across his chest, fingers worrying the latch just because they liked to move. Braxton had twisted the shoulder strap, half trapped in it.
Laney reached in, untangled, clicked, checked. “Hands out from under,” she said, and the small hands came out at once. She tugged at Knox’s belt and it gave the right amount. “Snug.”
“Can I hold the steaks?” Hunter asked.
“You can not,” she said, and closed the door with the soft care of someone who had learned a hard lesson about slamming. She walked around and opened the driver’s door. The van smelled like sun-baked plastic and laundry detergent. She set her purse in the passenger footwell and looked back once more, eyes making a habit out of counting buckles and faces.
Behind them, Mrs. Wilcox stood where Laney had left her, chin up. Laney put the key into the ignition and turned. The engine caught on the second try and settled. The AC coughed and then slogged into life. Knox’s foot tapped an off-beat against the rubber floor mat.
“Home?” he asked.
“Home,” she said. She eased them out of the space, checked the mirror, and pulled onto the street, the meat market’s bell giving one last tired ring as the door swung behind someone else.
Dusk laid long purple across the daycare windows. The kitchen lights hummed against it. Hannah stood on tiptoe under the utility closet, one hand on the doorframe, the other pointing up.
“Caine, can you grab that case for me? My arms too short for this mess.”
Caine nodded. He reached into the high shelf, palms flat under the cardboard. The case slid forward with a rough whisper. Hannah’s eyes tracked the lift, down his forearms, over his chest, then the flat of his stomach when his shirt tugged. He set the box on the counter by the industrial sink.
“Appreciate you,” she said, a smile quick and bright. “These lil’ ones drink like they payin’ a light bill.”
“No problem, Hannah.”
He stepped back through the swinging door. Warm air pressed the hallway. Outside, the back lot took the last of the light and turned it gold. He walked the path to the shed with a push broom across his shoulder and a trash bag looped on a wrist. Light bugs blinked lazy in the bushes. The shed door stuck at the bottom until he lifted it with a hip and cleared the grit. He swept the threshold clean, then shouldered out a bent table leg to the trash can and tied off a bag.
Tires whispered over gravel. A Mercedes eased into the driveway behind the church. The engine clicked as it settled. A man in a sports coat stepped out and came around to open the passenger door with a practiced hand. The woman who climbed down was polished in the kind of way that resisted humidity. The man lifted his voice toward the shed.
“Hey, hey, you’re the new guy, right?”
Caine straightened. He nodded once.
“I’m Caleb,” the man said. The cadence was clean, no Southern honey in it. He tipped his chin toward the shed. “Can you get the chairs out of there for me and put them in the hall?”
Caine let a beat pass to see if Caleb would get a stack himself. Caleb didn’t move, already checking one phone while unlocking another. Caine nodded and pulled the shed doors wide.
The metal chairs nested in twos. He lifted four across his forearms and carried them to the fellowship hall. Inside, fluorescent light washed the waxed floor. On the far side, the woman from the Mercedes paced with her phone at her ear, a finance voice rolling smooth and quick.
“No, the delta’s in the spread, not the base. If we mark it to forward you’ll see it.”
No twang there either.
Caine set the first chairs along the wall, straight legs to the tape line. He walked back for another load, passing the patio where dusk had gone to blue. He stacked six this time, hands set wide to keep them from chattering. As he stepped out, Laney came out of the church and cut across the lot, skirt hem flicking against her shin, stride long and sure.
Back in the hall, Caleb had claimed a seat, ankle crossed on a knee. One phone lit his palm while he scrolled a second. Laney moved the front row with two efficient drags, aligning feet to tile, making the space behave. Caine set his stack down. Laney’s glance flicked from the rows to the door he’d just come through.
“That’s enough,” she said. “We ain’t hostin’ a revival.”
Caleb looked up like he might object, then rolled a shoulder and returned to his screens.
Caine eased the last pair in place. Laney gave the line one small tug so all the backs kissed even. Then she turned and crooked two fingers for him. She didn’t wait to see if he’d follow. He did, a step behind, then two, because she stayed multiple paces ahead the way she always did, pulling the building into order as she went.
They cut through the hall and into the kitchen. A cardboard box sat where the counter caught the last square of light. Condensation beaded on butcher paper tucked inside. Laney slid the box toward him with her forearms.
“My daddy wanted you to have this ’cause you out here alone,” she said. “I don’t know if you cook, but there’s some fresh meat in there for you.”
“I can cook,” he said. “Thank you.”
He lifted a corner of paper. Cold clung to it. A family pack of ground beef. Pork chops wrapped tight. Bread slid in on top with a stick of butter and a bag of rice. He put the paper back where it had been and met her eyes.
“That was your brother, right?”
She nodded once.
“What he do?”
“He’s in finance,” she said. “His wife, Gabrielle, too.”
Caine heard the cold in her tone and didn’t push past it. He shifted his hands under the box and found the weight. “Thanks again,” he said. “I’ll lock up the shed and head out.”
“Alright,” she said. “Good evenin’ to you.”
He carried the box to the patio door and leaned it against his thigh to catch the handle. Evening air had gone softer, but it still held the day’s heat. Out by the lot, the Mercedes lights blinked once, then died. Inside the hall, Gabrielle’s voice was still steady and low, talking through numbers. Caleb’s screen glow pulsed against his shirt.
Caine set the box on his hip and stepped onto the patio. He glanced back through the glass. Laney was already moving again, replacing the knife where it belonged, scooping crumb and crust into a bin, wiping a water ring flat with the side of her palm. She shifted a tray two inches left so it squared to the edge. He watched the small order settle in her wake.
He took the box down the steps. Gravel cracked under his heel. He paused at the path to the shed and turned the padlock through the eye. The chain scraped, links bright where paint had worn back to metal. He tugged the door once, felt it hold, then looked over his shoulder one last time.
In the kitchen window, Laney’s reflection crossed the glass and disappeared, a hand rising with a towel, then falling. Always cleaning. Always moving. He lifted the box again and headed for the lot, dusk deepening around the church as the day let go.
It was late enough that the boutique’s front glass showed more of the street’s reflection than what lay behind it. The busted ceiling vent pushed warm air that only stirred the smell of detergent and fake lily room spray. Racks leaned under the weight of end-of-season dresses. Mireya refolded a stack of crop tops on the center table, smoothing the edges like that might make the whole place look newer.
Paz talked while she straightened a line of plastic hangers, voice pitched casual. “You should see these folks next to our apartment. The girl is always out there with her dog wearing sweaters Her boyfriend always parking crooked like he’s allergic to lines.”
Mireya let a small sound answer, just enough to pass. “Mm.”
Paz kept going, thumbing a size sticker around and around a strap. “And them boys upstairs started grilling on the balcony. Smoke everywhere. Ashley from two doors down said she was gonna call the landlord, but I doubt she does that.”
Mireya shifted the top of the stack a quarter inch, faced the tags, and slid her phone from behind the register to check the time. The screen lit with a green bubble from an unknown number. No name. Just an address. No punctuation. No explanation. She looked at it for a breath, then pressed the single X emoji and sent it.
“Who’re you texting?” Paz asked without looking up. “Don’t tell me you already got a man to fill that Caine-sized space in your bed.”
Mireya snorted under her breath and set the phone face down. “I got a new job.”
Paz arched an eyebrow, finally glancing over. “Where?”
Mireya paused, eyes on the register’s smudged display like the name might be there waiting. “South Plaquemines Cleaning and Supply.”
“You got a job cleaning?” Paz asked, half teasing, half surprised.
Mireya lifted a shoulder. “Caine’s mama cleans. She made almost enough to keep them from drowning.”
“There ain’t no ‘supporting yourself’ when you live in a house with ten people,” Paz said, mouth quirking.
Mireya gave a thin laugh that didn’t sit right in her throat. She set the folded pile on the shelf and realized she hadn’t told anyone she’d been put out, that she was on their couch until the complex called. Ten had turned to twelve, bodies and noise pressed into those walls. She didn’t say any of that. She slid the lint roller across black knit until the fuzz came off clean.
The door chime rang with its tired single note. Ramon stepped in like he knew exactly where he was going. He spotted Mireya, then tipped his chin at Paz. “Caine’s moms told me you was here.”
Mireya blinked, confused by the path that sentence had taken to reach her. “Hey.”
Ramon reached into his pocket and pulled out a tight roll, the rubber band cutting a thin groove through the bills. He held it out, palm up. “It’s like four fifty, four seventy-five or some shit. Caine got it together for you.”
Mireya’s fingers stalled on the lint roller. The words hit soft and hard at the same time. A picture she didn’t want flashed in her head and she pushed it away. She kept her face set, eyes going once to Paz. Paz’s attention had sharpened, tracking every movement like a cat caught by a rustle.
Mireya took the money and shoved it deep into her front pocket so it disappeared under denim. “Thank you.”
“Thank him,” Ramon said. He shook his head a little. He dug into his other pocket and slid a ripped corner of notebook paper onto the counter, numbers scrawled in black. “That’s my number. You need anything, reach out. We got you.”
Mireya nodded. “Okay.”
Ramon tapped the counter once, a small goodbye. “See y’all later.” He lifted two fingers toward Paz and turned for the door. The chime answered him on the way out, then the glass went still and gave them the street again.
Silence dragged for three beats before Paz leaned in, voice down to a whisper that still carried. “What’s that money for and where did it come from?”
Mireya took the paper, folded it twice, and shoved it into the same pocket as the cash. She kept her eyes on the stack she’d just straightened. “Where you think, Paz?”
Paz shook her head, earrings clicking against her jaw. The AC coughed and failed to cool anything. Outside, a car idled at the light, bass turned low enough to rattle the glass. Inside, the boutique settled back into its hum.
Paz went back to the rack and started re-spacing hangers with quick, neat flicks. Mireya lifted the price gun and clicked the trigger into the quiet. One label. Another. The sound marked time. A moth bumped the fluorescent and fell away, then tried again. Paz didn’t ask another question. Mireya didn’t offer anything else.
The door didn’t open. The phone didn’t buzz. The only sound for a long minute was the slow scrape of a hanger across metal and the click of the gun when the label stuck.
Sara wedged her hip against the door and slid into the passenger seat, the hotel’s back lot baking like a skillet. The kind of heat that climbs your neck and sits there. Nicole already had the AC going and two paper cups sweating in the console. Somewhere behind them a cart rattled over cracked concrete and a houseman whistled off key.
They didn’t talk at first. Sara peeled a sugar packet with a thumbnail and dumped it in, watching the swirl go tan. Nicole sipped and watched the rearview. The sweat on Sara’s spine cooled and then returned. Her calves still ached from stairs. Bleach lived in the lines of her fingers.
“I think I committed a crime,” Sara said finally, eyes on the dash like it could answer.
Nicole lifted one eyebrow without turning her head. “Think?”
Sara let a breath scrape out. “Maria put Mireya out.” She rolled the cup between her palms. “Camila’s other grandmother. Mireya’s mama. She put her out. I went over there to… talk.” The word tasted wrong. “I ended up with my hand on her throat.”
Nicole’s mouth did that little twitch it did. She gave a short, ugly laugh that said she wasn’t shocked at all. “That is, in fact, a crime.”
“Yeah.” The AC sighed and pushed cold that couldn’t keep up. Sara took a sip to have something to do with her mouth. Coffee sat bitter at the back of her tongue. “What would you do?”
“You want friend advice or legal advice?”
“Those different?”
Nicole shrugged. Her bracelets clicked once against each other. “I don’t know that woman. But if she really tossed her own daughter, that tells me what I need to know.” She drew a line on the fogged cup with her nail and wiped it away. “Legal advice? Forget it happened unless she files. If she does, then we deal with it.”
“She might not,” Sara said. “She’s probably scared of what Caine would do if she did.”
Nicole lifted her palm in a stop sign, head tilted. “I’ll stop you right there, because I’m not actually a lawyer yet.” The smile after cut the edge, a little apology and a little joke. “I’m just saying—keep your head down until there’s something to look up for.”
Sara huffed, something like a laugh and not. “I didn’t go over there planning to… you know.” She rubbed the seam of the seat with the side of her thumb. “That woman is just so fucking insufferable. I thought about Camila sleeping on couches and I—I just… I was mad.”
“Uh-huh.” Nicole looked at her then, full. “You hurt?”
“No.” Sara rolled her shoulders like proof. “She’s fine, too.”
From the lot, a delivery truck beeped itself backward and then killed the sound. Sun leaned through the windshield in a hard rectangle. Nicole reached forward and nudged the visor down.
Out by the dumpsters, a gull screamed at nothing. A security camera blinked a red dot over the loading bay. The hotel breathed its same tired breath—ice machine coughing, elevator dinging, somebody dragging a suitcase with one bad wheel. Sara stared at the sweep of Nicole’s wiper blades where dust had written a finger path and felt the stupid urge to wipe it clean with her thumb.
Nicole cracked the window two fingers, just enough to let the smell of hot asphalt in. “You know she might never call the cops,” she said, eyes back on the mirror. “Pride is loud.”
“Yeah.” Sara chewed the inside of her cheek.
They sat like that. Traffic hissed on the avenue beyond the fence. Somewhere nearby, someone’s phone blasted a bounce hook before they cut it off. A housekeeping cart rattled into view, piled with towels, plastic rustling like rain. The houseman waved without stopping. Sara lifted her chin back, a small hello.
Sara nodded. She checked the time on her cracked screen and winced. “I gotta clock back in.” She pushed the door open and the heat grabbed her face. One foot out, she turned back. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“Anytime.” Nicole gave her knee one light pat and let her go. “Hope the rest of your shift isn’t too bad.”
Sara slid out and put both soles on the hot concrete. The air pressed like a hand between her shoulder blades. She squinted into the glare, then leaned down to look back in at Nicole, mouth twisting like a prayer she didn’t want to say out loud. “God willing.”
She shut the door with a soft thunk. The car’s AC hissed on the other side of the glass, and for a second the cool looked like a different life. Sara turned toward the service entrance. Detergent hit her nose before the door. Voices rose and fell in the stairwell. She tucked her chin, rolled her shoulders like she could lower the weight onto stronger bone, and went in.
~~~
The studio sat above a nail shop that bled acetone into the stairwell, sweet and chemical in the wet air. The hallway bulbs buzzed and flickered as if tired of trying. Mireya arrived first and pushed through the metal door with the little glass window, the handle still warm from the day. Inside, the air didn’t cool so much as move around her, a fan pushing heat from one side to the other.
She took the bench by the wall and let her thighs stick to the vinyl. The room was a long box of mirrors and chrome. Six poles stood in two clean rows. Motivational quotes curled across the paint in neat vinyl letters. Strong is Sexy. Own Your Power. No Excuses. Every phrase felt like another bill to pay.
Footsteps clattered up the stairs. Keys jingled. Hayley came in first, a lanyard looped around her fingers. She flipped through keys and found the right one without looking, then threw the lock open.
“Is this yours?” Mireya asked.
“God no,” Hayley said. “I could never put up with these fucking suburban moms. My roommate is the manager.”
Jaslene followed her, half laughing already, hoops catching the overhead light. Liana lugged a big bag and set it down with a thud. When Hayley said roommate, Jaslene cut a look at Liana, and Liana lifted both hands to make slow air quotes.
“Roommate,” Liana said.
Hayley sucked her teeth. “We only hooked up once. Y’all not gonna keep playing with me.”
Mireya’s gaze caught on the swing of the lanyard, skimmed the hem of Hayley’s shorts, then went back to the mirror as she picked at a loose thread on her leggings.
Jaslene slid to the floor and folded in half until her forehead pressed her shin, then unfurled slow as if counting bones. Liana opened the bag and pulled out a pair of clear pleasers. The plastic still held a frost from its last wipe. She set them heel to heel, then slid her foot into one and stood taller, testing the floor with a careful roll of her ankle.
“Those necessary for you to show me what to do?” Mireya asked, nodding at the shoes.
“You’re going to be wearing them, so yes,” Liana said. She took a small step and her hips settled into a new rhythm like the height had rewired balance.
Hayley hopped to a pole and let herself spin with almost no effort, thighs soft, palm up as she turned. “See,” she said, voice easy. “It’s easy.”
“It’s not the dancing I’m worried about,” Mireya said. The mirror doubled her. She looked like she hadn’t slept in two days because she hadn’t. “It’s the being naked in front of strangers.”
Liana nodded as if she remembered that feeling in her own skin. “I struggled with that, too,” she said. She leaned into a pole and held herself there with one thigh, hair falling forward. “I just did that old trick. Picture everybody else naked.”
Hayley laughed and rode her spin to a stop. “Yeah, but you’re not staring into their asshole like they staring into yours. Motherfuckers get closer than my OB.”
The image knocked a grimace out of Mireya before she could stop it. She imagined a man with a folded bill leaning too close, breath wrong, eyes wrong, like she was something under glass. Her stomach tightened.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jaslene said from the floor, voice steady. She rolled up slow and met Mireya’s eyes in the mirror. She had the calm that had carried Mireya through the last two nights at the club, just watching.
“You’ll learn how to be okay with it. Or you’ll figure out how to separate Mireya the person from whatever your stage name ends up being. The stripper who is.” She tapped her temple. “Two girls, same body, different rules.”
The AC hummed against the drone of nail dryers through the floor. Hayley set music on her phone, a low beat that kept to itself. Liana tugged a strap into place and checked the mirror like the mirror was another set of hands.
“What’s your stage name?” Hayley asked, almost teasing.
“I don’t know,” Mireya said.
“You don’t need it yet,” Jaslene said. “Lesson one first.”
She gestured at an open pole. Mireya’s feet hesitated and then carried her forward anyway. The mirror put her next to herself, same girl twice, just as tired both times. The quotes on the wall stood over her shoulder like they wanted her to agree.
Jaslene nodded at the pole. Mireya reached up without needing more words. Her hand closed on the metal. The music held steady. The quotes on the wall didn’t blink. The glass held her where she stood.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t look away.
~~~
The room ran, the projector’s fan whining over the hush of chairs. Caine took a seat in the second row where he wasn’t on display and wasn’t hiding. Sweat from the walk over cooled at his collar and left a faint chill. The carpet smelled like old cleaner. Dry-erase ink hung under the air conditioning.
Coach Aplin turned down the side chatter with a quiet “Alright,” more dial than bark. Fatu queued the first cut-up at the laptop. Mizell leaned on the whiteboard with a capped marker tapping against his palm. Weston and Turner sprawled shoulder to shoulder. Tyler bounced a knee. Dillon and Terrell sat forward like they were trying to learn by osmosis.
“Last year. Third and six,” Coach Fatu said. “Boundary pressure.”
The clip rolled. Trips to the field. Edge heat came fast. Last year’s QB, J.C. French, threw hit the underneath and died short.
“What’s better?” Aplin asked, eyes on the screen.
“Motion to empty,” Caine said, steady. “Fast four from the back to widen the apex. If he carries, I take the stick now. If he sits, I hit the glance. Ball’s out before the nickel gets home.”
Mizell’s gaze flicked from the freeze frame to Caine and back. Fatu rewound.
“Back alignment?” Fatu asked.
“Start him weak. Jet late so they gotta bump now. Don’t give ’em time to check.”
Fatu ran it again, nodded once, and moved on.
Red zone next. Condensed splits. The backer mugged the A gap and paced like a dog on a chain. French’s throw went to the flat and got stomped out.
“Everybody sees the flat,” Aplin said. “What didn’t we hit?”
“High cross from two,” Caine answered. “Sell run first. Hard flash. If the safety spins down, I replace him with my eyes and throw on the back of the mike.”
“Why two and not three?” Coach Mizell asked, mild.
“Corner heavy outside. He’ll collision three off the line. Two free if we stack and take the inside. I’m reading the mike’s near hip. If he turns, I cross his ear. If he sits, I dump it to the back into the void.”
Tyler’s knee stopped. Weston worked at the athletic tape in his hand and squinted like he wanted to find an argument and couldn’t.
Fatu clicked to a first-and-ten from the minus-forty. Quarters, matchy. Last year’s call was split zone for a ho-hum gain.
“What else?” he asked.
“Orbit Z, glance away,” Caine said. “If they spin it, tag the post on the orbit side and hold the backside safety with my eyes. If they stay, I take the glance. Live in second and two.”
Mizell rapped the board twice with his marker and didn’t write. He just listened.
The next clip showed three-by-one with the boundary safety creeping. French looked, double-clutched, ate it.
“Set the back strong,” Caine said. “Hard count. See if they tip pressure. If they do, I check swing to the field with slant behind it. If the overhang widens, I bang the slant. If he sits, I take the swing and let the back win the alley.”
“And if they green-dog off the back?” Coach Aplin asked.
“Then I’m off the swing. Boundary hitch now. Build a wall with the guard. Ball out on one.”
Turner cut a look toward the screen. “You trust hitch there?”
“If the corner off with flat toes like that, yeah,” Caine said, pointing at the freeze. “He daring me to be late. I ain’t late, it’s a chunk.”
Silence held just long enough to feel like agreement. Fatu rolled on.
Short yardage. Heavy bodies mashed into heavy bodies. French’s sneak got folded and buried. A few groans, a couple laughs.
“Ain’t no reason to bang our head on a wall,” Caine said. “Use their big against ’em. Fast exit by Y. Sell the sneak with low pads. Pop it if the nose buries and the mike squeezes. If the mike hangs, I follow the guard’s hip and take the crease.”
Tyler let out a low whistle.
Third and long. Crowd noise bled into the audio. Two-man coverage squeezed everything. French tried to be a superhero. Sack. The punter jogged on.
“Alright,” Aplin said, mouth flat. “What now?”
“Don’t fight two-man,” Caine said. “Back weak. Chip the wide nine to buy rhythm. Dagger. Clear with nine, dig behind it. If they plaster, I take the back on the sit. If the backer got his back to me, I steal six with my legs and get down.”
“Protection?” Mizell asked.
“Six-man. If they bring more, I throw hot off the edge. I already know where it’s coming from.” Caine traced a small angle with his finger, the nickel’s heel light on the replay. “He greedy. You gotta punish that.”
Fatu let the clip finish, then cut it and sat back like his spine had opinions. Aplin wrote a few words only he could read under a scribble of hashes.
They kept going forty minutes like that. Install points layered over last season’s scars. Caine didn’t speak to speak. He spoke when the answer felt like it would live on the field.
Short yardage came up again and he asked for a quick shift to bunch to force a check, then a crack by Z so the back’s bounce had daylight. Boundary heat returned and he tagged a now screen to X with the glance away, telling Dillon to think waist-high, front-hip placement. Dillon nodded quick. Two-minute drill rolled and Caine said to build a sideline cheat into tempo, a quick-out look to steal five if the corner’s eyes got lost in the backfield. Fatu keyed it on the laptop without commentary, which said enough.
Somewhere during the run of clips, the newness fell off him. The room turned into pictures and space and timing. Turner called a check Caine liked. He tapped the back of Turner’s chair on the way to the next play. Weston caught a split-safety tell before Caine did. Caine tipped his chin once and Weston tipped his back.
Fatu loaded a final look. “Fourth quarter. Tied. Same defense we saw before.”
Caine leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Stack the boundary. Alert the fade if he put hands on us. If he bail, run him and win with the under. Feet quiet on the snap. One hitch. Throw.”
For a beat nobody talked. The projector hummed. Air moved through the vent and settled again. Aplin clicked the remote and the screen went black. The room let out the breath it had been holding.
“Come back in an hour,” he said. “Eat. Hydrate. Bring something back worth saying.”
Chairs scraped. Guys stood and stretched. Caine stayed seated a second longer, hands on his knees, the chill of the room finally beating the last of the sweat.
~~~
The butcher’s hands moved easy over the slab, knife whispering in a line that made the meat fold on itself. Cold air from the case held onto Laney’s forearms and the backs of her fingers where she rested them on the ledge. Behind her, Knox and Braxton bumped shoulders and shoes. Hunter let out a laugh that started to grow until she cut it off with a look. It didn’t take a word. They settled, breath loud for a second, then quieted like the tile had told them to.
Mr. Hartfield leaned with his weight on the counter scale to test it. “You remember when you dated my boy back in high school?” he said, voice thick as syrup and twice as friendly.
Laney smiled with only half her mouth. “Sure do, and I remember findin’ him behind the bleachers with Rebecca Anderson and his britches ‘round his ankles.”
The knife stopped. The butcher threw his head back and laughed, the sound bouncing off the glass door where a paper sign said PORK CHOPS SPECIAL in a shaky blue. “Lord, I tell him all the time he messed up for that. You always been the prettiest woman ‘round here.”
Laney slid her card back into her wallet and pulled cash instead, more than the steaks cost by a bit. “I’ll tell Tommy how lucky he is you think he caught the prettiest woman in South Georgia.” She placed the bills on the gritty part of the counter where the butcher’s thumb had worn a half moon.
Mr. Hartfield folded the steaks neat into butcher paper and taped the seam. “You do that now.”
“Y’all have a good one,” she said, and gathered the bag by its twine handles. She tipped her head toward the boys. “Let’s move.”
They followed her out into the thick heat that settled over the parking lot. The air smelled like old oil and something sweet from the bakery two doors down. Laney’s keys clicked in her palm. She lifted her chin toward the van.
“Knox, take these. Put the bag down careful. Don’t crush it.”
Knox ran his tongue across his teeth like he did when he tried to look older and took the keys. Braxton pressed his hand flat to the glass to watch his breath fog it while Knox opened the door. Hunter followed behind as his older brothers got in.
“Laney!” a voice called, bright and certain. An older woman waved with the polished motion of someone who waved a lot. The sun silvered her hair.
Laney shifted the bag to her left hand and met the woman halfway. “Afternoon, Mrs. Wilcox.”
“We were out in downtown Statesboro,” Mrs. Wilcox said, already close enough for the powder on her cheeks to carry a scent. “Me and Janet—you know, Janet, Mrs. Morse—and we saw that new boy y’all got workin’ at the church. He was comin’ outta Mr. Bethel’s office.”
Laney kept her face easy. “Yes, ma’am. Caine’s on probation.”
She gave the sentence the clean shape it needed, nothing added. They’d seen him there, so it wasn’t a secret. The boys’ voices carried from the van in soft argument over who got the middle seat. She didn’t look back.
Mrs. Wilcox’s mouth pressed thin. “I don’t know that I’m comfortable with that. My Hannah’s at the daycare. I don’t think I like the idea of her around someone on probation.”
Laney let the words hang for a breath. Heat worked the back of her neck. “Caine, like all of us, is a child of God,” she said, steady. “He’s welcome in Lord’s house same as the rest of us sinners. If you feel Hannah’s concerned, that’s a conversation you need to have with Hannah. But he follows the rules and does his work without any lip.”
A car turned into the lot with its blinker still going after the turn. Mrs. Wilcox glanced, then looked back fast. “Well, I just don’t like it.”
Laney’s eyes didn’t blink. “Mrs. Wilcox, we didn’t turn your husband away when he had his… issues. My daddy won’t be turnin’ away anyone else doin’ their penance.” The last word sat gentle, not sharp.
Color rose on the woman’s cheeks under the powder. She swallowed and fussed with the strap of her purse. “I’ll be speakin’ to Pastor Hadden about this.”
Laney nodded once like that was a normal thing. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.” She shifted the bag higher in her grip. “I’ve got to go. Don’t want these steaks to spoil. Have a blessed day, Mrs. Wilcox.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She crossed the heat in clean steps, opened the sliding door, and put the bag on the floor behind the front seats where the shade reached. Knox already had his belt across his chest, fingers worrying the latch just because they liked to move. Braxton had twisted the shoulder strap, half trapped in it.
Laney reached in, untangled, clicked, checked. “Hands out from under,” she said, and the small hands came out at once. She tugged at Knox’s belt and it gave the right amount. “Snug.”
“Can I hold the steaks?” Hunter asked.
“You can not,” she said, and closed the door with the soft care of someone who had learned a hard lesson about slamming. She walked around and opened the driver’s door. The van smelled like sun-baked plastic and laundry detergent. She set her purse in the passenger footwell and looked back once more, eyes making a habit out of counting buckles and faces.
Behind them, Mrs. Wilcox stood where Laney had left her, chin up. Laney put the key into the ignition and turned. The engine caught on the second try and settled. The AC coughed and then slogged into life. Knox’s foot tapped an off-beat against the rubber floor mat.
“Home?” he asked.
“Home,” she said. She eased them out of the space, checked the mirror, and pulled onto the street, the meat market’s bell giving one last tired ring as the door swung behind someone else.
~~~
Dusk laid long purple across the daycare windows. The kitchen lights hummed against it. Hannah stood on tiptoe under the utility closet, one hand on the doorframe, the other pointing up.
“Caine, can you grab that case for me? My arms too short for this mess.”
Caine nodded. He reached into the high shelf, palms flat under the cardboard. The case slid forward with a rough whisper. Hannah’s eyes tracked the lift, down his forearms, over his chest, then the flat of his stomach when his shirt tugged. He set the box on the counter by the industrial sink.
“Appreciate you,” she said, a smile quick and bright. “These lil’ ones drink like they payin’ a light bill.”
“No problem, Hannah.”
He stepped back through the swinging door. Warm air pressed the hallway. Outside, the back lot took the last of the light and turned it gold. He walked the path to the shed with a push broom across his shoulder and a trash bag looped on a wrist. Light bugs blinked lazy in the bushes. The shed door stuck at the bottom until he lifted it with a hip and cleared the grit. He swept the threshold clean, then shouldered out a bent table leg to the trash can and tied off a bag.
Tires whispered over gravel. A Mercedes eased into the driveway behind the church. The engine clicked as it settled. A man in a sports coat stepped out and came around to open the passenger door with a practiced hand. The woman who climbed down was polished in the kind of way that resisted humidity. The man lifted his voice toward the shed.
“Hey, hey, you’re the new guy, right?”
Caine straightened. He nodded once.
“I’m Caleb,” the man said. The cadence was clean, no Southern honey in it. He tipped his chin toward the shed. “Can you get the chairs out of there for me and put them in the hall?”
Caine let a beat pass to see if Caleb would get a stack himself. Caleb didn’t move, already checking one phone while unlocking another. Caine nodded and pulled the shed doors wide.
The metal chairs nested in twos. He lifted four across his forearms and carried them to the fellowship hall. Inside, fluorescent light washed the waxed floor. On the far side, the woman from the Mercedes paced with her phone at her ear, a finance voice rolling smooth and quick.
“No, the delta’s in the spread, not the base. If we mark it to forward you’ll see it.”
No twang there either.
Caine set the first chairs along the wall, straight legs to the tape line. He walked back for another load, passing the patio where dusk had gone to blue. He stacked six this time, hands set wide to keep them from chattering. As he stepped out, Laney came out of the church and cut across the lot, skirt hem flicking against her shin, stride long and sure.
Back in the hall, Caleb had claimed a seat, ankle crossed on a knee. One phone lit his palm while he scrolled a second. Laney moved the front row with two efficient drags, aligning feet to tile, making the space behave. Caine set his stack down. Laney’s glance flicked from the rows to the door he’d just come through.
“That’s enough,” she said. “We ain’t hostin’ a revival.”
Caleb looked up like he might object, then rolled a shoulder and returned to his screens.
Caine eased the last pair in place. Laney gave the line one small tug so all the backs kissed even. Then she turned and crooked two fingers for him. She didn’t wait to see if he’d follow. He did, a step behind, then two, because she stayed multiple paces ahead the way she always did, pulling the building into order as she went.
They cut through the hall and into the kitchen. A cardboard box sat where the counter caught the last square of light. Condensation beaded on butcher paper tucked inside. Laney slid the box toward him with her forearms.
“My daddy wanted you to have this ’cause you out here alone,” she said. “I don’t know if you cook, but there’s some fresh meat in there for you.”
“I can cook,” he said. “Thank you.”
He lifted a corner of paper. Cold clung to it. A family pack of ground beef. Pork chops wrapped tight. Bread slid in on top with a stick of butter and a bag of rice. He put the paper back where it had been and met her eyes.
“That was your brother, right?”
She nodded once.
“What he do?”
“He’s in finance,” she said. “His wife, Gabrielle, too.”
Caine heard the cold in her tone and didn’t push past it. He shifted his hands under the box and found the weight. “Thanks again,” he said. “I’ll lock up the shed and head out.”
“Alright,” she said. “Good evenin’ to you.”
He carried the box to the patio door and leaned it against his thigh to catch the handle. Evening air had gone softer, but it still held the day’s heat. Out by the lot, the Mercedes lights blinked once, then died. Inside the hall, Gabrielle’s voice was still steady and low, talking through numbers. Caleb’s screen glow pulsed against his shirt.
Caine set the box on his hip and stepped onto the patio. He glanced back through the glass. Laney was already moving again, replacing the knife where it belonged, scooping crumb and crust into a bin, wiping a water ring flat with the side of her palm. She shifted a tray two inches left so it squared to the edge. He watched the small order settle in her wake.
He took the box down the steps. Gravel cracked under his heel. He paused at the path to the shed and turned the padlock through the eye. The chain scraped, links bright where paint had worn back to metal. He tugged the door once, felt it hold, then looked over his shoulder one last time.
In the kitchen window, Laney’s reflection crossed the glass and disappeared, a hand rising with a towel, then falling. Always cleaning. Always moving. He lifted the box again and headed for the lot, dusk deepening around the church as the day let go.
~~~
It was late enough that the boutique’s front glass showed more of the street’s reflection than what lay behind it. The busted ceiling vent pushed warm air that only stirred the smell of detergent and fake lily room spray. Racks leaned under the weight of end-of-season dresses. Mireya refolded a stack of crop tops on the center table, smoothing the edges like that might make the whole place look newer.
Paz talked while she straightened a line of plastic hangers, voice pitched casual. “You should see these folks next to our apartment. The girl is always out there with her dog wearing sweaters Her boyfriend always parking crooked like he’s allergic to lines.”
Mireya let a small sound answer, just enough to pass. “Mm.”
Paz kept going, thumbing a size sticker around and around a strap. “And them boys upstairs started grilling on the balcony. Smoke everywhere. Ashley from two doors down said she was gonna call the landlord, but I doubt she does that.”
Mireya shifted the top of the stack a quarter inch, faced the tags, and slid her phone from behind the register to check the time. The screen lit with a green bubble from an unknown number. No name. Just an address. No punctuation. No explanation. She looked at it for a breath, then pressed the single X emoji and sent it.
“Who’re you texting?” Paz asked without looking up. “Don’t tell me you already got a man to fill that Caine-sized space in your bed.”
Mireya snorted under her breath and set the phone face down. “I got a new job.”
Paz arched an eyebrow, finally glancing over. “Where?”
Mireya paused, eyes on the register’s smudged display like the name might be there waiting. “South Plaquemines Cleaning and Supply.”
“You got a job cleaning?” Paz asked, half teasing, half surprised.
Mireya lifted a shoulder. “Caine’s mama cleans. She made almost enough to keep them from drowning.”
“There ain’t no ‘supporting yourself’ when you live in a house with ten people,” Paz said, mouth quirking.
Mireya gave a thin laugh that didn’t sit right in her throat. She set the folded pile on the shelf and realized she hadn’t told anyone she’d been put out, that she was on their couch until the complex called. Ten had turned to twelve, bodies and noise pressed into those walls. She didn’t say any of that. She slid the lint roller across black knit until the fuzz came off clean.
The door chime rang with its tired single note. Ramon stepped in like he knew exactly where he was going. He spotted Mireya, then tipped his chin at Paz. “Caine’s moms told me you was here.”
Mireya blinked, confused by the path that sentence had taken to reach her. “Hey.”
Ramon reached into his pocket and pulled out a tight roll, the rubber band cutting a thin groove through the bills. He held it out, palm up. “It’s like four fifty, four seventy-five or some shit. Caine got it together for you.”
Mireya’s fingers stalled on the lint roller. The words hit soft and hard at the same time. A picture she didn’t want flashed in her head and she pushed it away. She kept her face set, eyes going once to Paz. Paz’s attention had sharpened, tracking every movement like a cat caught by a rustle.
Mireya took the money and shoved it deep into her front pocket so it disappeared under denim. “Thank you.”
“Thank him,” Ramon said. He shook his head a little. He dug into his other pocket and slid a ripped corner of notebook paper onto the counter, numbers scrawled in black. “That’s my number. You need anything, reach out. We got you.”
Mireya nodded. “Okay.”
Ramon tapped the counter once, a small goodbye. “See y’all later.” He lifted two fingers toward Paz and turned for the door. The chime answered him on the way out, then the glass went still and gave them the street again.
Silence dragged for three beats before Paz leaned in, voice down to a whisper that still carried. “What’s that money for and where did it come from?”
Mireya took the paper, folded it twice, and shoved it into the same pocket as the cash. She kept her eyes on the stack she’d just straightened. “Where you think, Paz?”
Paz shook her head, earrings clicking against her jaw. The AC coughed and failed to cool anything. Outside, a car idled at the light, bass turned low enough to rattle the glass. Inside, the boutique settled back into its hum.
Paz went back to the rack and started re-spacing hangers with quick, neat flicks. Mireya lifted the price gun and clicked the trigger into the quiet. One label. Another. The sound marked time. A moth bumped the fluorescent and fell away, then tried again. Paz didn’t ask another question. Mireya didn’t offer anything else.
The door didn’t open. The phone didn’t buzz. The only sound for a long minute was the slow scrape of a hanger across metal and the click of the gun when the label stuck.
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Captain Canada
- Posts: 4973
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
American Sun
Ramon a real one for taking care of Mireya while Caine's gone. Too bad she's too busy shaking ass to actually appreciate it.
American Sun
I'm guessing the single X means she ain't going. Already flaking on another job 
mamá no lo aprobaría
mamá no lo aprobaría