Sena sat with her hands laced together in her lap, her fingers threaded tight enough that the knuckles pressed white against each other. Her feet were flat on the floor, her weight settled into the cushion behind her, her shoulders held at a height that kept her spine off the back of the couch.
Across from her, Celia had the leather notebook open against her knee, the pen uncapped between two fingers, her other hand resting on the armrest of the chair with her wrist turned so her palm faced the ceiling.
“I feel like I’m not relationship material,” Sena said.
Celia’s head turned a fraction. “That’s interesting that you feel that way because one of the reasons things played out with Alex the way they did was because you wanted a real relationship.”
“I know. But I think, somewhere in the back of my head, I knew that wouldn’t require me to come out to anyone. She was always going to keep me a secret.”
Celia’s ankle uncrossed and recrossed the other direction, the sole of her shoe settling against the carpet. Her chin lifted and her eyes found Sena’s face, her hands still on the armrest and the notebook. “I see. Why are you saying it now?”
Sena’s jaw shifted once behind her closed lips. Her interlocked fingers tightened in her lap and she drew a breath through her nose that expanded her ribs against the fabric of her shirt before she let it back out.
“Because I cheated on Mireya.”
Celia’s hand stilled on the armrest. Her expression held its line, her mouth flat, her eyes on Sena’s face. She let a beat pass and then several more, the clock on the bookshelf ticking through its intervals, before she spoke.
“Tell me about that.”
“I went out with Alex because she just showed up at my apartment. We started dancing and she kissed me.”
Celia’s chin dipped a fraction. “What are your thoughts about that?”
“I think she was doing it for her boyfriend. He was watching us.”
Celia leaned back in the armchair. “That’s something you said she’s asked you about before.”
Sena nodded, her laced fingers loosening in her lap, the knuckles losing their color as the pressure between them eased. “I freaked out and left.”
Celia’s pen shifted between her fingers, the barrel rotating a quarter turn before it settled. “Did you tell Mireya?”
Sena nodded again. “I couldn’t keep it a secret.”
“I’m sure that’s not what makes you think you’re not relationship material. How did she take it?”
Sena’s shoulder lifted and dropped. “She said she didn’t care and that she wasn’t mad at me.”
Celia’s chin dipped once. “Do you believe her?”
“She hasn’t really been any different since so I guess I have no choice, but to believe her. She said she doesn’t see kissing as cheating.”
“Different people have different barometers for infidelity. That would mean hers is quite high, or potentially doesn’t exist.”
Sena’s mouth pulled at one side. “Considering what she does, I’d imagine it leans toward the doesn’t exist side of things.”
“That’s a possibility.”
Sena’s hands came apart in her lap and settled on her thighs, her fingers spreading once against the denim before they pressed flat. Her weight shifted against the cushion behind her, her spine finding a lower angle, her shoulders dropping a fraction.
“But the reason I think I’m not relationship material is because she’s open about us and I’m still terrified about my parents finding out.”
Celia’s head tilted. “How do you think they would take it?”
Sena’s shoulder rose and dropped again, barely lifting the collar of her shirt. “I don’t know. All they talk about is me finding a nice boy and now that I lied about it to my mom. I don’t know.”
Celia let a beat pass before she asked. “Does Mireya ask you to tell them?”
Sena shook her head. “She asked once.”
Celia brought her forearm off the armrest and forward, her hand coming to rest on the open notebook. “It sounds to me like she’s giving you space to decide when, or if, to do that on your own. To me, that sounds like two people operating inside of a relationship where there is give and take.”
Sena’s fingers curled against her thighs, the denim pulling into small ridges under her grip before she released it and let her hands go flat again. “I don’t know. I just feel like it’s going to blow up eventually.”
Celia held her gaze. “Do you ever not feel that way?”
Sena snorted a laugh. “Probably not.”
~~~
Caine stood on the mark, a strip of tape pressed flat against the concrete floor, his arms at his sides. The set ran long and narrow ahead of him, a corridor of black curtains hung from rigging overhead, the far end lit with a bank of softboxes aimed back at him. A camera operator sat on a wheeled stool a few feet in front of him, the lens at waist height, his feet braced against the floor to keep from rolling. A second operator stood behind a tripod at the far end of the corridor, one eye pressed to the viewfinder.
The director stepped out from behind a monitor, his headset pulled down around his neck, and lifted his hands to frame the shot with his fingers before dropping them back to his sides.
“Alright. It’s easy. All you have to do is put the headphones on, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Stop, turn, look up.”
Caine nodded. An assistant handed him a pair of red headphones and he turned them over once, the plastic catching the light from the softboxes, the cushions compressed where his thumbs pressed against the inside of the band. He held them out in front of him at chest height, the cable coiled and taped against the left ear cup. The assistant stepped back from the edge of the set and the director returned to his monitor, one hand on the back of the chair in front of it.
“Alright, and action.”
A jingle came through the speakers mounted above the curtains, a looped melody that sat somewhere between a bass line and a synth pad, cycling through the same four bars. Caine lifted the headphones over his head, settled them onto his ears, the band pressing flat against his hair, and started walking. The operator on the stool rolled backward in front of him, his knees drawn up to keep his feet off the floor, his hands steady on the camera housing as he tracked Caine’s stride.
Caine kept his eyes forward, past the operator, past the lens, his jaw set, his pace even against the concrete. The jingle looped again. The corridor of black curtains narrowed as he moved deeper into the set, the fabric close enough on both sides that the air shifted around his shoulders with each step. The jingle cycled into its third repetition. He reached the second mark, a strip of tape identical to the first, stopped, turned to his left, and looked up at the camera on the tripod. The operator behind it adjusted the angle a fraction, the tripod head tilting with a soft mechanical click. Caine held the look, his eyes on the lens, his chin lifted.
“Cut. Good. Take five and then we’re going to get a few more angles to see what works best.”
Caine pulled the headphones off and handed them to the assistant who had stepped forward with one hand already extended. He rolled his neck once, the vertebrae settling, and walked off the set toward a folding table pushed against the far wall where bottles of water stood in rows alongside plastic containers of cut fruit with the lids propped open.
The jingle cut out behind him as he cleared the edge of the set, the speakers going to a low hiss before someone killed the feed. Two crew members sat in canvas chairs near the table, one scrolling through footage on a tablet, the other pulling a lens cap from her pocket.
Tatum leaned against the end of the table with his arms folded across his chest, one ankle crossed over the other. His mouth was already pulled into a smirk, his eyes tracking Caine across the soundstage floor.
He clapped once, the sound flat against the concrete walls. “You’re becoming a regular at this, kid.”
Caine snorted a laugh, reaching past him for one of the water bottles. “I’m just trying to make sure I get paid.”
“Aren’t we all?” Tatum pushed off the table and pulled his phone from his back pocket, his thumb working across the screen until he had his emails open. He held the phone out toward Caine, tilting it so the screen caught the overhead light, his other hand coming up to point at the list as he scrolled through it with his thumb. “Look, we’re going to really make up for lost time over the bye week. We’ll get back with Nike, Powerade and I got something in the works with Balmain.”
Caine cracked the seal on the water bottle and took a drink. He lowered it from his mouth, his eyes on Tatum’s face. “Do I look like a clothes model to you?”
Tatum laughed. He pulled the phone back toward his chest, his head tipping to one side as he looked Caine up and down. “Good looking young man like yourself? In good shape? Over six feet tall? Absolutely.”
Caine shook his head, pointing at Tatum with the hand holding the bottle. “You lucky I know I need to make some of this right after dipping on these people for a month.”
Tatum tucked the phone into his back pocket and brought his hands up, his watch sliding an inch down his wrist with the motion. “It’s how we gotta play the game, kid.”
~~~
Mireya took the stairs two at a time, her bag bouncing against her hip with each step, the rubber soles of her sneakers gripping the concrete. She reached the landing and crossed to Jaslene’s door, knocking twice with the back of her knuckles. She pulled her phone from the pocket of her scrubs and looked at the screen. The last text she’d sent Jaslene sat at the bottom of the thread, the timestamp from two hours ago, no read receipt beneath it.
The deadbolt turned. Diego opened the door, his shoulder braced against the frame, a glass of something in his other hand. He nodded to her.
“What’s up?”
Mireya sucked her teeth. “Apártate.”
She squeezed past him through the gap between his body and the doorframe, her bag catching his arm as she came through. The hallway stretched ahead of her, the bedroom door open at the end of it. She walked straight to it without slowing.
The bed was made, the room empty. She crossed to the bathroom on the far side, the door open, the overhead light on, and found Jaslene standing at the mirror with a mascara wand in one hand, her other hand holding her eyelid taut at the outer corner. Her hair was pulled back and clipped at the nape of her neck, a few loose pieces hanging at her temples.
Jaslene looked over at her in the mirror first, then turned her head. The smile that came was small, the corners of her mouth pulling up without the rest of her face following.
“Hola, mi amor.”
Mireya crossed her arms over her chest, her fingers gripping the fabric of her scrubs at her elbows. She leaned her shoulder into the doorframe of the bathroom.
“¿Por qué me estás alejando?”
Jaslene’s eyes held on her for a beat before they dropped back to the mirror. She brought the wand up and finished the last stroke along her lashes, her wrist turning at the end to separate them. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Ever since you came back from Puerto Rico, you’ve been distant.”
Jaslene capped the mascara and set it down on the counter beside a row of other tubes and compacts lined up along the edge of the sink. She turned fully toward Mireya, her hip pressing into the vanity behind her, her hands coming to rest on the counter on either side of her body.
“No. Ever since you almost died in the hospital, I’ve been distant.”
Mireya’s jaw shifted. “You just said you’re not pushing me away and then you agree that you’ve been distant.”
Jaslene stepped away from the sink and put her hands on Mireya’s arms, her palms settling just below the shoulders, her fingers wrapping around the outside of Mireya’s biceps through the cotton of the scrubs. “Ven conmigo, mi amor.”
She steered Mireya back through the doorway into the bedroom, her hands guiding without pulling, and sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. She patted the space beside her, her palm pressing flat against the comforter and lifting.
Mireya stayed where she was, her arms still crossed, her weight on one foot. “Tell me why.”
“Because I told you. The life, it’s not good for you. It almost took everything from you.”
Mireya shook her head. “I had a freak accident. It had nothing to do with work.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“That’s what the doctor said.”
Jaslene’s hand lifted from the mattress and gestured toward Mireya, her fingers tracing a line from the collar of the scrub top down to the hem, taking in the whole of what she was wearing. “This is enough. You can be someone. If I let things go how they were, you will hang on to the way I live and I can’t accept you doing that because of me. No lo permitiré.”
“Lo necesito.”
“You don’t. You haven’t worked for three months and you’re fine.”
Mireya’s arms tightened across her chest, her fingers pressing harder into the fabric at her elbows. “You’re the one who told Stasia to stop telling me where y’all were every weekend.”
Jaslene nodded, her chin dipping once. “Si.”
“Without talking to me.”
“Si.”
“You’ll make less money.”
Jaslene nodded again, her hands settling in her lap, her rings catching the overhead light from the bathroom behind Mireya. “Si. But if I know you’re safe, it’s worth it.”
Mireya’s arms came apart. Her right hand dropped to her side, the left one hanging a beat before it followed. “¿Y nosotros? Te necesito.”
“Seguiré aquí. Sol y Luna son eternos. But I have to pull back or I’ll keep you in it.”
“You have no right to make this decision for me.”
Jaslene stood up from the bed, the mattress springing back behind her, and took a step toward Mireya. The space between them closed to a few inches, close enough that Mireya could smell the cocoa butter on her skin and the faint chemical sweetness of the mascara she’d just applied. “Mi amor. Listen to me.”
Mireya held her hand up between them. “I told you not to treat me like I was fragile.”
“Please understand where I’m coming from.”
Mireya sucked her teeth, shaking her head, the motion sharp enough that her hair swung across her shoulder. “I got to get to class.”
Jaslene’s shoulders dropped a fraction. Her hands stayed at her sides. “I’ll text you later. We can talk some more.”
Mireya stared at her for another moment, her eyes moving across Jaslene’s face, across the line of her mouth and the careful makeup and the loose pieces of hair at her temples. Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the room, her hand coming up to run through her hair from the temple back, her fingers catching in the strands past her shoulder as she went down the hallway toward the door.
~~~
Ramon came through Nina’s front door and let it shut behind him, his keys already in his hand, the ring looped around his index finger. The sun pressed into the concrete and the siding and the hoods of the cars parked along the curb, the heat of it sitting flat against everything it touched.
A silver Civic pulled up to the curb before Ramon reached his car. The rear quarter panel had a dent in it and a Target employee badge hung from the rearview mirror, spinning once as the car rolled to a stop. The engine idled rough, a misfire ticking somewhere under the hood. The passenger door opened and Asia climbed out, one hand on the roof to pull herself up, her lanyard swinging against the front of her khakis. She leaned back into the car and said something to the driver, then shut the door. The Civic pulled off, the driver’s arm lifting once through the open window before the car turned at the end of the block.
Asia came through the gate as Ramon held it open with his foot. He nodded toward her.
“I thought you had to work until seven.”
Asia stopped on the walkway, her bag sliding off her shoulder and catching at her elbow. She adjusted it, her eyes on Ramon. “They asked me if I wanted to do an overnight tonight. And I don’t turn down no money so they said go home for a couple hours so I don’t have to take another lunch.”
Ramon shook his head. He leaned his shoulder into the side of the house, the wood warm through his hoodie from the sun that had been pressing against it all morning. His keys settled in his palm, the teeth of them pressing small lines into his fingers where he gripped them. “That’s that corporate American shit for you.”
Asia shrugged, her shoulders lifting and dropping under the red polo, her weight settling onto one hip. “It can be whatever it want to be if they’re going to give me seventeen an hour for it.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He let that sit for a beat, his eyes moving past her toward the end of the block where the Civic had turned, then coming back. His jaw shifted once behind his closed lips and he crossed one ankle over the other where he leaned against the house, his shoulder blade pressing a crease into the siding.
“You still plan on moving out the city?”
Asia nodded. Her hand came up to adjust the lanyard where it had twisted against the front of her polo, her fingers straightening the card at the end of it before she let it drop back against her chest. “Soon as I got enough experience to get a job somewhere else then I’m out of here. Ain’t nothing here for me that I want to stay attached to.”
Ramon’s chin lifted. “Ain’t you have some random white woman up in here the other day?”
Asia sucked her teeth. “That’s different. We both trying to do the same thing. I can’t be around niggas that’s out here smoking and drinking, shooting up, all that.”
Ramon’s mouth pulled at one corner. “But she an addict, too, so it seem like the same thing to me.”
Asia shook her head, her arms folding across her chest, her fingers gripping the outside of her elbows through the polo. “I ain’t expect your slow ass to understand it, nigga. You slow.”
Ramon sucked his teeth, his head tilting back against the siding, his eyes half-closing against the sun that caught him full in the face at this angle. “It’s crazy that you a whole crackhead and up here calling me slow.”
Asia threw her hand up in his face. “Whatever, nigga.”
Ramon pushed off the wall with his shoulder, his weight coming forward onto both feet. He started down the walkway, his keys shifting on his finger as he turned them over in his palm.
“You could always go to Houston with E.J. and live like that lame ass nigga.”
Asia’s arms tightened across her chest, her chin coming up, her weight rocking back onto her heels. “That’s your potna so what that say about you?”
Ramon shook his head as he crossed the strip of sidewalk to where his car sat at the curb. He hit the unlock on the fob, the locks popping with a flat sound, pulled the door open, and dropped into the driver’s seat.
~~~
Mireya pushed a piece of chicken across her plate with the side of her fork, the metal scraping against the ceramic in a short line. Across the table, Sena had her own plate half-cleared, her fork resting between bites, her glass of water sweating a ring onto the placemat. From the living room, the television played a cartoon at low volume, the colors shifting against the far wall in soft pulses. Camila lay on the sofa with her head on a throw pillow, her eyes on the screen. Micaela slept in her bassinet beside the couch, the monitor on the kitchen counter behind Mireya hissing its low static.
“I think I have to find another job.”
Sena looked over at her, her eyebrow lifting. “Why?”
“Because I think they blacklisted me. Even my friends aren’t telling me about shit.”
Sena set her fork down against the rim of her plate. “No, why do you need to get another job?”
Mireya leaned back in her chair and set her fork down on the edge of her plate. “Because I need to work.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t even have bills.”
“I don’t want to be that reliant on Caine.”
Sena’s eyes stayed on Mireya’s face, her hands resting on either side of her plate. “But you are. If you don’t want to rely on him then you probably shouldn’t have moved into this house.”
“Sara asked me.”
“That’s splitting hairs. Caine’s mother asked you to move into Caine’s house.”
Mireya’s jaw shifted. Her fingers found the edge of her plate and pressed there, her thumb running the rim once before settling. “You know me and Sara have a relationship beyond Caine.”
Sena shrugged, her shoulder lifting and dropping. “The point stands, though.”
Mireya leaned forward onto the table, her forearms pressing flat against the surface, the space between them closing. “Baby. Can you just help me figure out something else to do, please?”
“Just get a work study job or something.”
Mireya shook her head. “Fuck no. I’m not working for experience. I gotta get paid.”
“I mean, you can get a job at like a clothing store or something. Starbucks.”
Mireya nodded toward the living room where the cartoon played its colors across Camila’s face and the bassinet sat in the warm reach of the lamp. “It has to be something I can bring them where they have to go.”
Sena picked up her glass of water and took a sip, setting it back down on the ring it had left on the placemat. “Daycare. You’d probably even get a discount.”
Mireya leaned further forward onto the table, her weight on her forearms, her face close enough that her eyes found Sena’s across the few inches between them. “I ain’t never considered it before but I’m thinking about OnlyFans.”
Sena’s eyes widened, her body going still in the chair, her hands flat on the table. “Are you serious?”
Mireya shrugged, her forearms staying pressed against the surface. “It’s not all that different than the shit I been doing.”
“Getting fucked on camera is a lot different than stripping.”
“Who said anything about getting fucked?”
Sena’s mouth pressed flat. “Are you not worried about people finding out? Well, were you not worried about people finding out about you stripping?”
Mireya’s chin dipped a fraction and she drew a breath through her nose before she answered. “There’s no one I care about that would find out that wouldn’t already know I’ve done wo—It’s the same shit I’ve been doing.”
Sena’s fork stayed where it was on her plate. Her eyes held on Mireya’s face, her lips pressed together, her hands flat on the table. The monitor hissed from the counter. Dialogue from the cartoon carried low from the other room.
Mireya reached across the table and took Sena’s hand in both of hers, her fingers wrapping around it, her thumbs pressing into the back of Sena’s knuckles. “Baby, I need to feel like I’m more than just a mother. I need it.”
“You are, though. Not that just being a mother is a bad thing, but you’re in nursing school.”
“I can’t explain it. It’s a lot. I just… I just need my job. It’s what I am.”
Sena’s fingers tightened once inside Mireya’s grip, a small contraction that moved through her hand and released. “Who.”
Mireya’s eyebrow went up. “What?”
“You said what you are. Who.”
“Oh.”
Sena held her eyes. “Why’d you say what you are? You’re not a thing. You’re a person.”
Mireya’s thumbs stilled on the back of Sena’s hand. She blinked once and her mouth opened a fraction before it closed. She shook her head, her grip on Sena’s hand loosening but not letting go. “Don’t worry about it. What do you think?”
Sena looked down at their hands on the table, at Mireya’s fingers laced around hers, the brown of Mireya’s skin against the lighter tone of her own. Her eyes moved from their hands toward the living room where the cartoon played its shifting light across Camila’s face and the bassinet under the lamp’s reach. Then her eyes came back to Mireya’s face.
“I’ll support you if you go to two therapy sessions and ask someone else what they think.”
Mireya sucked her teeth. “Those things have nothing to do with each other.”
Sena shrugged, her shoulder lifting inside the hold Mireya had on her hand. “If you want my support, that’s what I need from you.”
Mireya shook her head, her thumbs pressing once more into Sena’s knuckles before she eased her grip. “I’ll think about it.”
Sena nodded. She slid her hand free and picked up her fork with it, the tines finding the edge of the chicken left on her plate and continued eating.
~~~
Autumn had her legs draped across Caine’s lap with her back against the arm of the couch, a bowl of ice cream cradled in one hand, the spoon in the other. The TV threw shifting colors across the far wall and the coffee table and the side of her face where the light caught the line of her jaw. Something played on Netflix, the dialogue running low under their conversation, the plot already lost to their conversation. Caine’s hands worked her left calf, his thumb pressing into the muscle below the knee and drawing a slow line down toward her ankle before starting again at the top, the pressure steady, his grip loose around the shape of her leg.
Autumn looked over at him, the spoon resting against her bottom lip. “You’re good at that. I might put you to work more often, nigga.”
Caine laughed, his thumb pressing into a knot and holding there before releasing. “I charge. Seventy-five an hour.”
Autumn tilted the bowl toward her and scraped the spoon along the side, gathering a thin line of melted ice cream from the rim. “Is that with or without the happy ending?”
“Without. With is the seventy-five, two hours minimum and three hundred for the ending, but I got a no refund policy for lack of satisfaction.”
Autumn laughed, her hand coming up to cover her mouth with the back of her wrist. “That must be how you used to lower girls’ expectations when you were growing up.”
Caine scoffed, his head pressing back against the cushion, his eyes cutting to her. “I ain’t never had to do that. And you already know the deal. That’s why you keep coming back for more.”
Autumn rolled her eyes, her chin lifting a fraction, but her mouth held its shape, the smile pulling at her lips as she scooped another bite from the bowl and brought it to her mouth. The spoon came out clean between her teeth. She let the bite sit for a second, the cold of it pressing against her tongue, before she swallowed and settled the spoon back into the bowl.
Caine’s thumb found the line of muscle along the outside of her calf and traced it. His other hand shifted to her right leg, his palm spreading across the top of her shin before his fingers curled around to the back and his thumb found the same groove it had worked on the left side.
“I heard you got some sorors in town from Indiana.”
Autumn sucked her teeth. “Those hoes ain’t nothing but a bunch of birds. But how you know that? And watch how you answer that.”
Caine’s thumb kept its rhythm on her calf. “Cam, Derron and Rachaad going link with some of them. Said they staying at a Holiday Inn over by MacArthur.”
Autumn laughed, her legs shifting in his lap with the motion, the bowl tilting in her hand before she steadied it against her stomach. “That sounds like some broke ho activity.”
“I don’t know what you expecting from some chicks who mess with dudes who play at Purdue. They ain’t got but two nickels to rub together on their best day.”
Autumn’s eyebrow climbed. She pointed the spoon at him across the length of the couch, the handle aimed at his chest. “It’ll be crazy if you lose to them after saying some slick shit like that.”
Caine sucked his teeth. His hands stopped on her calves, his fingers going still against her skin, and he turned his head to look at her full. “You know who you talking to, right?”
Autumn held his gaze, the spoon still leveled at him, her expression flat above the ice cream bowl balanced on her stomach. “Just making sure you confident like you should be. Always gotta make sure you’re letting them white people know who the fuck you are.”
Caine nodded, his hands resuming their work along the muscle, his thumb finding its rhythm again. “You already know.”
Autumn brought the spoon back to the bowl and ran it along the bottom, scraping up what had melted into a thin pool. She lifted the spoon to her mouth and licked the back of it, her eyes still on the TV, before pointing it at him again. “I heard one of those AKAs is with Purdue’s quarterback. Jade said she saw her at Boule. Heard her and her girls kekeing about it.”
“The white boy?”
Autumn nodded, her mouth pulling into a flat line. “Coon behavior. An Aunt Jemima ass bitch. Fucking our oppressors for a Birkin.”
Caine shook his head, his thumb pressing into the curve of her calf and holding. “Nasty work.”
“I hope he got her somewhere nicer than the Holiday Inn by MacArthur for all the shucking and jiving his people probably make her do.”
Caine laughed, the sound low against the couch cushion behind his head. “I doubt it.”
Autumn shook her head. Her eyes dropped to where his hands had gone still on her legs again, his thumbs resting against her skin. She nodded toward them, the spoon clicking once against the rim of the bowl in her lap. “I don’t know why you stopped, baby.”
Caine sucked his teeth, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as his thumbs settled back against her calves and started again.
~~~
Sara came out of the kitchen with a plate in one hand, a slice of cheesecake centered on it, two forks laid across the rim. She crossed to the sofa where Jabari sat with one arm draped along the back of the cushions, his legs stretched out, his socked feet crossed at the ankle on the carpet. She sat down beside him and set the plate on the cushion between them.
Jabari looked at the plate, then at her. “Now, you know I ain’t one for these fancy desserts.”
Sara rolled her eyes, her head following the motion a fraction before it came back. “If you think cheesecake from Costco is fancy then I’m going to start getting concerned that they messed up your brain out there on them rigs.”
Jabari laughed, his chest moving with it, his weight shifting against the cushion. “Well, they ain’t eating fancy on the rigs either. Not unless it’s someone’s birthday or them and their wife’s anniversary.”
Sara picked up one of the forks from the rim of the plate. She turned it in her fingers so the handle faced him. “Well, I’ll let you get the first bite then so you can properly adjust your opinion of cheesecake.”
Jabari sucked his teeth, but a smile pulled across his face as he took the fork from her. He scooped off a piece from the point of the slice, the tines pressing through the crust at the bottom, and brought it to his mouth. He chewed it slowly, his eyes going to the ceiling for a beat before he swallowed and nodded once to himself, the nod carrying into a second and a third. “I still think this a little fancy.”
Sara laughed and picked up the other fork. “You a lost cause.”
She cut off her own piece from the opposite end of the slice, the plate resting on the cushion between them, her fork scraping once against the ceramic. Jabari settled deeper into the couch, his arm still along the back of the cushions behind her, the tips of his fingers resting an inch past her shoulder. His fork stayed loose between his fingers against his thigh.
“Have we been kicking it long enough for me to ask you something a little personal?”
Sara brought the fork to her mouth and took the bite off it, her eyes on him as she chewed. She swallowed and let the fork come to rest against the edge of the plate. “Considering we’ve fucked a good few times. I think we’re already past that point.”
Jabari brought his hands up, the fork still between his fingers, the metal catching the lamplight. “Fair.”
“What is it? You want to know if I want to be in a throuple with you and the wife you’ve been hiding from me?”
Jabari laughed, his head tipping back against the cushion, his hand dropping to his thigh. “You’re really traumatized by that.”
“Well, yeah. You’d be, too. I mean, probably not. Men don’t care. A hole is a hole.”
Jabari’s mouth pulled at one corner, his eyebrows lifting a fraction. “You got a way with words sometimes.”
Sara laughed, her shoulder pressing into the cushion behind her as her weight shifted toward him. The plate between them rocked on the cushion and she reached down to steady it, her fingers pressing the rim flat before she let go. Jabari turned the fork once between his fingers, the tines pointing down toward his knee, before he spoke.
“You don’t find it weird that you’re so close to your son’s baby mama and they not together? I heard her call you mami the other day.”
Sara nodded. “That’s new. Just since the beginning of the year.” She leaned forward and scooped off another bite from the slice, the fork cutting through the filling at an angle, and brought it to her mouth. She chewed it a couple of times and swallowed, her thumb finding the edge of the plate and pressing there, the ceramic cool under the pad of her finger. “She reminds me of myself. Only difference is mi mama don’t hate me. Mi papa? Hit or miss. Especially after Calvin. God rest his soul. But I’m all she has now.”
His eyes stayed on Sara’s face, the lamplight catching the angle of his jaw where he’d turned toward her. “That sounds like a complicated line to walk, though. A tough position to be in between your son and his kids’ mama.”
Sara shrugged. “Caine’s got an interesting way of thinking about things. About Mireya. Once you figure out how he rationalizes things when it comes to her, it’s easy.”
“And his girlfriend? The one at USC? She knows that?”
Sara snorted a laugh, the air pushing sharp through her nose. “If Caine wants to keep that going, she won’t. I’m surprised she didn’t cut tail and run with what she saw during the summer.”
Jabari shook his head and laughed, the sound lower this time, his fork tapping once against his thigh before his hand went still. “This one of the reasons I never wanted kids. Too complicated.”
“You not wrong. Not wrong at all.”
