“Good. ’Cause I’m planning on being around. Loud. In the way. All up in your business. Annoying you into happiness.”
“That sounds exhausting,” she said softly.
“Then, I’ll hold you and let you recharge.”
“That sounds amazing.”
She sighed, then. I caught it with my mouth, kissing her slow and easy under Mama’s porch light. Nothing wild this time. No desperation. Just us. Just here where it started.
Seemed fitting.
When we broke apart, she rested her forehead against my chest.
“What you thinking about now?” she asked.
“Honestly?”
She pursed those pretty lips. “I wish you would try to lie.”
“I’m thinking about how I can’t wait for next year. Christmas on the hill. Flamingos front and center. You in some disrespectful dress. Our daughter running around telling everybody what to do. You yelling about glitter. Me pretending I’m mad about it.”
“There will be no flamingos.”
I shook my head. “There will absolutely be flamingos.”
She sighed again, but it was the good kind. “Fine. One flamingo. In the back. Behind a bush.”
“Growth,” I teased. “I’ll mention the holy dinosaur later.”
She smiled against my shirt. “And between now and then, we just keep doing this. Loving her. Loving each other.”
“That’s the plan. I like our chances.”
Inside, Truth yelled for me about dominoes. There was a loud argument about who cut the pie crooked. Hyacinth’s voice floated out from someone’s phone, hitting the big note on “O, Holy Night” like she was singing just for us.
“I’on know about Christmas, Grindley the Grinch, but you shol’ stole my heart.”
Kyleigh turned up her cute little nose. “Corny as hell, Jabali.”
But she slipped her hand into mine, fingers warm and steady.
“Come on, Gangsta Claus. Let’s go back in the house.”
“I’ma kill Braeden,” I mumbled.
Then, I squeezed her hand, opened the door, and followed her into the light.
Ten months ago,I was a stranger knocking on a hill I thought I’d lost. Tonight, I was sitting in our shared office at the top of that same hill, pretending to look at spreadsheets while I really watched the hallway. Waiting on my woman.
Aziza was gone, loud and happy, at Zahara’s for a cousins’ Halloween sleepover. She’d left our house in a glittery witch costume, cackling like she was an aspiring actress. She hugged me, hugged her mama, grabbed her overnight bag and her pillow like she was moving out, then bounced down the stairs.
“I’ll call you if they’re weird,” she’d promised.
“They are weird. That’s why you like them,” Kyleigh had told her.
The house got real quiet after that. I told myself I was fine with a quiet Halloween. Few trick-or-treaters up this far. No mandatory town events. Just the big grown-up treat I knew was coming.
Because Kyleigh had said, all casual at breakfast, “I might try on a costume later. Don’t wait up.”
