“Then stop moving like you’re in a fight and start moving like you’re closing a deal. She gave you a week. That’s useful. That means she didn’t cut you off. She gave you a timeline; she’s thinking about it.”
I hadn’t looked at it like that.“I need space.”had sounded like a shutdown.
“So your play is simple,” Stetson said. “You give her the week. All of it. That proves you’re not like that crazy girl who couldn’t take no. And while you’re giving her space, you stay visible—not to her, to everybody else.”
“What does that look like?”
“You handle your business. You hoop. You show up. Business as usual. Make sure if your name comes up, it comes up attached to discipline and control. She’ll be hearing about you without you disrespecting the boundary.”
That made sense. Strategic, not slimy.
“I like that. Pops, I like her for real. I gotta have her.”
“And you will. When the week’s up, you show up. Not begging but standing on the fact that you heard her and adjusted. Show her what it looks like now that you’re not hiding.”
He set his cup down and looked at the picture of him and Ma on his desk.
“You remember the story we told you about how your mama and I met?” he asked.
“Y’all say it was at a club,” I said. “Love at first sight, locked eyes, she saw you, you saw her, and the rest is history.”
“That’s the pretty version. That’s the one your mama tells the country club ladies. That is not the whole story.”
I set my coffee down, too.
“It was 1998,” he said. “And your momma had just moved from Lexington, working two jobs, tryna take care of you and keep the lights on. We did meet at a club, but there was a shooting that night.”
My jaw clenched on instinct. I had heard pieces of this, but never like this.
“It was a business issue,” he said. “Some out-of-town niggas thought they were going to move in on our territory. They showed up at a spot they knew we liked, and they started shooting. Your mama was near the bar when it jumped off. She ran toward the back exit, straight toward me. Not because she knew me. She was just tryna get out.”
He paused, his eyes going somewhere behind me.
“I caught three that night shielding her,” he said. “I dropped right there in that hallway. Everybody else kept running. Your mama is the only one who came back for me. She took me to the hospital in a Geo Tracker. I knew then I had to get my baby a new ride,” he laughed. “When the cops came and asked questions, she lied and said she didn’t see anything.”
“Why would she do that for a stranger?” I asked, unable to help it.
“That is exactly what I asked her when I found her later, even though it could’ve been her and not me,” he said. “She told me she looked in my eyes and saw somebody worth the risk. She said something about me told her I was not supposed to die that night.”
“Three weeks later, as soon as I got out of the hospital, I pulled up to her apartment,” he said. “I told her exactly who I was. What I did. What kind of life I lived. I gave her every reason to tell me to get the hell away from her and never come back.”
“But she didn’t,” I said.
“No,” he said. “She told me she already knew. She wasn’t stupid, she could tell by the way people moved around me that I wasn’t regular. You know what she said after that?”
I shook my head.
“She said, ‘I saw what you are. Now show me who you can be. You got six months to prove it’s worth the trouble.’”
“Six months?” I asked.
“Six months,” he said. “So I went to work. I introduced her to my people. I showed her where the money was coming from and where I was trying to take it. I proved I could be the father you needed and the man she deserved.”
He pointed at me.
“That is how you close. You don’t argue the terms to death. You meet them and exceed them. Your mama needed proof, not speeches and wordsthat any nigga could say. So that’s what I gave her. Every day for six months until she believed me more than she believed her fear.”
“So, I give Halo the week,” I said slowly.
