Sara pulled into the driveway and put the SUV in park, the engine ticking under the hood as she turned it off. She sat with her hands on the wheel for a beat, her thumbs resting against the leather where the stitching ran in a ridge along the top, the light catching the dust on the dashboard.
A yawn pulled through her jaw and up into her temples, her eyes closing, her shoulders lifting then dropping with it. She ran her hand through her hair, fingers pulling through the strands where they’d fallen loose from the clip she’d put in before she left the hospital.
She stepped down onto the concrete and the humidity pressed against her arms and the back of her neck before she’d closed the door. She reached back into the SUV for her purse on the passenger seat, her fingers finding the strap and pulling it toward her across the leather as she pushed the door shut with her hip.
She was halfway up the driveway when Jabari came out his front door and crossed the strip of grass between the properties, his stride easy, his feet carrying him to the edge of her concrete.
He held a hand up. “Hey, it feels like I ain’t seen you in a lil’ minute.”
Sara nodded, another yawn catching her before she could answer, her hand coming up to cover her mouth while the purse strap slid down her shoulder an inch. She caught it with the crook of her elbow. “It’s been a long couple of weeks. My second granddaughter was born. But she came early. Been in the NICU.”
The ease in Jabari’s face pulled back, his brow drawing down, his weight planting on both feet. “Damn, Sara. I’m sorry to hear that. How’s she doing?”
“Thank you. She’s fighting. That’s all we can really ask right now. That and praying for the Virgin Mary to cover her, you know.”
“Absolutely, but with you as a mawmaw, I already know she got it in her blood.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “You make me sound so old when you call me that.”
Jabari held his hands up. “Aged like a fine wine.”
“Flattery don’t get you nowhere.”
He dropped his hands and shifted his weight onto one foot, crossing his arms, his forearms settling against each other. His eyes moved over her face, and he nodded toward the house behind her.
“Was that your boy I saw over here the other day? Tall guy with dreads?”
Sara nodded. “Him and his girlfriend I’m guessing.”
Jabari’s eyebrows furrowed, the lines between them deepening. “Different girl from the one having the baby?”
“Yeah. He met her in LA apparently. After he’d gotten Mireya pregnant.”
His mouth pulled to one side and he sucked his teeth once. “Hopefully he’s smart enough to wrap it up.”
Sara snorted a laugh. “Something tells me she’s too smart to get knocked up when she doesn’t want to.”
“God’s time ain’t always our time though.”
Sara’s thumb found the seam of the purse strap and pressed along it. “No, it’s not.”
A car passed on the street behind them, the tires hissing on the asphalt.
“How about you?” Jabari said. “How are you holding up in all of this?”
“I’m tired, but I’m not the one going through the worst of it so I’m okay.”
“You still need to make sure you’re good. You no good to that baby if you falling out.”
Sara’s hand tightened on the purse strap, her fingers pressing into the canvas. “You’re not wrong but I worked enough long hours in hotels to know how to manage.”
“Well, let me know if you need anything.”
She looked at him across the few feet of concrete between them, the weight of the last two weeks sitting behind her eyes, in the set of her mouth and in the pull across her shoulders.
“Do you want to come in?”
Jabari raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. What you need?”
Sara turned to the door, her keys already in her hand from the ignition, and slid one into the deadbolt. The lock turned and she pushed the door open, the cool air from inside pressing past her. “Just shut up and come in.”
A grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. He followed her through the door, his footsteps falling into pace behind hers on the hardwood, and the door swung shut behind them.
~~~
Autumn came through the entrance at Canal Place with her phone pressed to her ear, her bag over one shoulder, her stride slowing a half step as the air conditioning cut through the warmth she’d carried in from the street. The atrium opened ahead of her in tiers of glass and polished stone, storefronts lining both sides, a few shoppers moving between them.
“I never realized how little I could do this spur of the moment shit until this last week.”
Nadine’s voice came through the speaker even and measured. “I wouldn’t have advised a client of mine to pick up and fly across the country like you did. It was a little rash.”
“A little?”
“I’m hedging. Most people could talk themselves into doing either if they sat with it long enough.”
Autumn walked into a boutique off the main corridor, the racks spaced wide enough to move between, the fabrics running from linen to silk along the wall display in a gradient that caught the overhead lighting at different sheens. She trailed her fingers along the shoulder of a dress hanging at the end of the nearest rack, the cotton cool under her fingertips, and kept walking past it toward the back of the store.
“I think you used to say to me that there wasn’t a playbook for life, and you couldn’t plan everything.”
Nadine laughed. “I did say that. That doesn’t mean you get to use my own words against me. I’m sure there was plenty of your daddy in your decision.”
“I wanted to know what I was dealing with. It’s one thing to be told. It’s another thing to see for yourself.”
“And what is that you are dealing with?”
Autumn moved deeper into the boutique, her fingers brushing the edge of a display table stacked with folded tops, her eyes passing over them without stopping. A saleswoman near the register looked up and Autumn gave her a nod.
“His baby mama is with a woman.”
Nadine let a beat pass on the other end of the line. “Can’t say I was expecting you to say that.”
“I don’t think he knew either. Seemed like only his mama knew.”
“What do you make of that?”
“All things considered, it makes me feel as though she ain’t exactly going to be running back to him anytime soon.”
“Perhaps. What do you make of her? The mother?”
Autumn stopped at a rack near the fitting rooms and pulled a blouse out by the hanger, holding it at arm’s length, her eyes running down the seams. “She’s intense on some shit. I thought it was just because of what happened, but nope. That’s just how she is.”
“Caine was like that when I met him the other day.”
Autumn sucked her teeth and pushed the blouse back into the rack, the hangers clicking against each other as it settled. “Psh. He was all aw shucks, yes ma’am, no ma’am.”
“You can see it in his eyes.”
Autumn pulled another top from the rack and checked the tag, her thumb pressing the fabric back to read the size. “He has me staying there. At his baby mama’s house.”
Nadine’s laugh came through the speaker sharp enough that Autumn pulled the phone a half inch from her ear. “You agreed to that? My daughter?”
“It’s a nice house.”
“Why?”
Autumn shrugged, her shoulder lifting and dropping. “I don’t know. I just feel like now’s the make or break for this whole thing and if I’m going to invest in it, then I’m going to invest in it.”
She put the top back and moved along the rack, her fingers finding the hangers and pushing them one at a time, the metal scraping against the bar.
“That’s a way to think about it. All relationships are gambles,” Nadine said.
“You never drop the psychologist talk.”
“That was mama advice. But I’d say the same thing as a psychologist.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Nadine let a beat sit on the line before she spoke again, the silence carrying the faint sound of something in the background on her end. “How long are you staying out there?”
“Playing it by ear.”
“Hopefully, you’re making the most of it then.”
Autumn stopped at a display near the front window where the light from the atrium came through the glass and caught the colors of the fabrics on the table. She picked up a top off the rack beside it and held it against her chest with one hand, the fabric draping over her fingers, her chin dipping to check where the hem fell.
“If I was doing that, I’d be learning Spanish while I’m down here.”
~~~
Sena came through the front door and dropped her keys into the dish on the side table, the metal rattling once against the porcelain. She pulled her bag off her shoulder and let the strap slide down her arm into her hand.
Cassidy was on the pole in the middle of the living room, her legs wrapped around the chrome at the calf, her body tilted at an angle that looked like it was supposed to be a lean but read closer to a controlled fall. Her phone sat on a tripod three feet from the base, the screen facing her. She lowered herself down the chrome in increments, her arms shaking where they gripped above her head, and her feet found the carpet. Her weight dropped out of her hands and she sat down hard, one leg folding under her, her palm slapping the floor beside her hip to catch the rest of her body.
She stood, pulling at the hem of her tank top where it had ridden up past her ribs and saw Sena at the door.
“Damn, where you been? I feel like I haven’t seen you in a week.”
Sena walked past the tripod and set her bag on the arm of the couch. “I’ve been at Mireya’s mostly. Or at my parents.”
“Mireya. That’s the hot Latina that was in here spinning around on the pole like a pro?”
“Yeah.”
Cassidy reached for her water bottle on the floor beside the tripod, her fingers closing around it and bringing it to her mouth. She took a long pull and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. “I thought y’all just went to school together, not stay for a week at her house close.”
Sena ran her hand through her hair, the strands catching between her fingers as they pulled through, and a laugh pushed through her nose. “Uh, yeah. She’s my, uh, girlfriend?”
Cassidy’s hand stopped on the water bottle. She looked at Sena for a long beat, her eyes narrowing a fraction, her mouth pulling to one side before the rest of her face caught up.
“Damn. You’ve been hiding that you’re into girls from us this whole time?”
Sena shrugged. “I guess.”
“Well, I only seen her once but she was fucking hot so I’d definitely start batting for the other team if she tried to pick me up.”
Sena rolled her eyes and gestured toward the pole, her hand sweeping from the base plate to the ceiling mount. “I’m gonna leave you to that. I just came to get some more clothes before going back to Mireya’s.”
Cassidy held her hands up. “Don’t let me keep you from your hot lesbian sex with your hot lesbian Latina. But I’ll just say that I’m pretty jealous.”
Sena shook her head as she turned down the hall toward her bedroom, Cassidy’s laugh following her until she pushed the door open and stepped inside.
She set her bag on the bed and crossed to the dresser. The top drawer slid open under her fingers, and she pulled two shirts from the stack, folding them once against her forearm before she tossed them onto the comforter beside the bag. She opened the second drawer and pulled a pair of leggings out, pressing the fold flat before adding them to the pile.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and tilted the screen toward her, her thumb resting against the edge of the case.
Alex.
The text sat on the lock screen in a gray bubble: when can we hang out
Sena let a breath out and tapped the notification. The thread opened to the last few messages between them, short and spaced further apart. She typed back that she’d been busy, her thumb moving across the keyboard in two short passes.
The three dots appeared at the bottom of the screen almost immediately.
with your girlfriend?
She typed back: Yeah. I’ll see if I have some time next week.
She sent it and waited. The dots appeared again, held for a beat longer this time before the message came through.
I miss you, Sena.
She stood in the middle of her bedroom with the phone in her hand, the screen bright against her palm, the pile of clothes on the bed behind her. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. The cursor blinked in the empty text field at the bottom of the screen.
She pressed the side button and the screen went dark. She slid the phone back into her pocket and walked to the closet, pulled a pair of jeans off the shelf, and carried them to the bed.
~~~
came down the corridor toward the NICU, Mireya at his shoulderThe fluorescents ran in a long unbroken strip above them and the tile carried their footsteps back in overlapping echoes that thinned as they moved.
“Where does Autumn live? In LA?”
Caine looked over at her. “This area called Baldwin Hills.”
Mireya nodded as she stepped around a wheelchair parked against the wall with its brake locked and its seat folded up. “Sounds fancy as fuck.”
“It’s pretty nice on some shit. Ain’t like you ain’t living in some nice shit, too, though.”
“I ain’t say I was feeling inferior to her, Caine. I just asked a question.”
Caine held his hands up. They passed a nurses’ station where a woman was writing something on a whiteboard mounted to the wall behind the desk, her marker squeaking against the surface in short strokes.
“That shit with Sena serious?”
Mireya nodded. “Yeah, it’s serious.”
“Didn’t know you were into women like that.”
Mireya looked at him. A smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. “What’s wrong? ¿Te da miedo que haya estado pensando en el coño todos estos años mientras me follabas?”
Caine laughed. “I ain’t worried about that. Just because you decided you like pussy, too, don’t mean you ain’t love this dick.”
Mireya snorted a laugh as they came to the NICU door. Tanya saw them through the glass and crossed to open it, the lock buzzing as the door swung wide.
They scrubbed in at the station inside the entrance, the steps compressed now into something their hands moved through without thinking. Faucet, soap, lather worked between the fingers and under the nails and up past the wrists. Caine dried his hands on the paper towels and pulled a gown off the rack, sliding his arms through and reaching behind his back for the strings. Mireya tied hers at the front, her fingers working the knot by feel, her eyes already on the unit beyond the partition. They pulled masks from the box on the shelf and looped them over their ears, pressed the metal strip across the bridge of their noses.
They walked to Micaela’s isolette. Mireya brought her hand up toward the porthole, her fingers open, her palm turning flat to slide through the gasket. Tanya stepped beside her.
“Do you want to hold her?”
Mireya’s hand hung in the air. Her fingers stayed open, suspended between her body and the porthole, the distance she had closed every visit since the first day now held in a gap she had stopped crossing. She looked up at Tanya and her lips parted behind the mask.
“Really?”
Tanya nodded. “Her doctor said she’s progressed enough to be held when she did the rounds earlier.”
Mireya looked at Caine. He met her eyes over the top of his mask, and she turned back to Tanya, nodding, her voice pressing thin against the cotton. “Yeah, I mean. Of course. Please.”
Tanya smiled behind her mask, the corners of her eyes creasing. She gestured to the chair on the other side of the isolette. “We’ll just have you open that gown and take off your shirt so it’s skin to skin.”
Mireya’s hands went to the ties at the front of the gown, but Caine reached out and moved them back, his fingers closing around her wrists and lowering them.
“I got you. So you don’t have to go wash your hands again.”
Mireya nodded. Caine untied the gown and pulled it open, then gathered the hem of her shirt and worked it over her arms and her head while she held still. He settled the gown back over her shoulders, the cotton falling open at the front, and Mireya held the edges with her elbows pinned to her sides as she walked around the isolette to the chair.
She sat down. Her hands came to rest on her thighs, palms flat, her chest bare except for her bra under the parted gown. Her breathing had changed. The rhythm of it had gone shallow at the top, each breath pulling in short and releasing before it reached the bottom of her lungs.
Tanya unlatched the top of the isolette and lifted the panel. She reached inside with both hands, sliding her fingers under Micaela’s back, cradling the base of her head in the curve of her palm. She lifted her, gathering the trailing wires and the IV line against her forearm with her other hand as Micaela came free of the plastic. The wires swayed once and settled against Tanya’s sleeve. She turned toward Mireya and held her out.
Mireya’s hands came off her thighs. She reached forward, and her fingers slid under Tanya’s, and the weight transferred between them. Mireya brought her to her chest in a motion that traveled from her hands up through her wrists and her forearms and into her shoulders as she drew Micaela against her.
Micaela’s cheek found the skin above Mireya’s sternum. The contact was warm and immediate, Micaela’s face turning a fraction into Mireya’s chest, her mouth working once against the skin. Her hand came up from where it had rested against her own stomach and curled against Mireya, the fingers closing around nothing, the knuckles pressing soft into the space between her breasts. Her other hand opened and closed once and then settled flat against Mireya’s rib.
Mireya’s arms closed around her. The gown fell wider at the shoulders and the cotton bunched at her elbows where she held it open with the angle of her arms, her hands cradling Micaela’s back and the base of her head, her palms covering so much of her daughter that the fingers overlapped against each other on the far side. She could feel the heartbeat through Micaela’s ribs against her chest, quick and light.
Caine came around the isolette and stood beside the chair. His hand found Mireya’s shoulder, his palm settling against the gown.
Mireya’s eyes filled. The first tear broke from her lower lid and tracked down her cheek into the mask, the cotton darkening where the moisture hit. She looked down at her daughter’s face against her chest. At the closed lids. At the lashes pressed to her skin. At the small mouth working once more against nothing and then going still.
She pressed her lips together behind the mask and the tears came faster, running from both eyes now, catching in the cotton at her chin. Her arms tightened around Micaela by a fraction and Micaela’s body settled deeper against her chest with the pressure, the warmth of her spreading across Mireya’s skin.
“Es tan hermosa.”
“Eso se debe a mis buenos genes.”
Mireya snorted a laugh, and Micaela shifted against her chest, her hand tightening once and loosening.
And Mireya’s eyes stayed on her.
