Meadow’s hand flew to her chest where her heart beat like wild bat. “Zaire…”
He lifted his head but didn’t meet her eyes yet. “I been moving on autopilot for a long time. Smiling for cameras pretending I’m good...pretending I don’t hear the whispers…pretending I ain’t crumbling a little bit every time I walk off a course feeling like I failed a whole community.”
He finally looked at her.
Direct, unmasked…too damn honest.
“And I ain’t tell nobody that,” he admitted. “Not even my mama.”
Meadow’s eyes fluttered, heart thudding against her chest.
“So yeah,” His voice lowered. “I’m tired too. The kind of tired you don’t say out loud ’cause you know everybody gon’ say the same thing - ‘keep going.’ Like that’s enough to fix shit.”
She let out a soft breath of understanding. Listening to Zaire, Meadow didn’t feel an ounce of petty or sadness for him. If anything, she felt his strength… his strength to even voice the shit that rested in his head and his heart.
Zaire tapped his thumb against his knee. “I didn’t come here to fall apart. I came here to breathe…just breathe. That’s it.”
“Are you breathing?” Meadow asked, desperate to know her land was truly healing like Ray claimed, because in that moment she wanted Zaire to find himself wrapped up in her green.
He stared at her for a long moment, smiling at what he was about to admit. “You the first breath I done had in a while.” Itslipped out before he could catch it but he didn’t regret it either. Meadow felt safe, calm, all the shit Black women were to Black men…peace wrapped up in melanin.
Meadow’s eyes widened, heat rising under her skin.
He didn’t flinch either, he wanted to stand on what he said.
He let it stand between them, heavy and unadorned, the truth neither of them were ready for but both of them felt.
Meadow swallowed. “You…don’t say stuff like that to people you barely know.”
“I don’t say stuff like that at all,” he corrected. “That should tell you something.”
Her breath caught again.
Zaire leaned forward slightly, looking right at her.
“We both tired as hell,” he recognized. “But for the first time in a long time…I don’t feel drained sitting next to you.”
A serene feeling fell over them as the sun peeked through her arched window. His eyes scanned her room again and he was ready to just do whatever it took to help calm her like her presence had done for him.
Zaire rubbed the back of his neck. “You don’t gotta talk…you don’t gotta be strong…you don’t gotta do nothing right now.”
He sat on the floor beside her bed, knees bent, waiting for her to join him no pressure, no expectation, just presence…just truth.
Meadow adjusted her body moving closer to him, their shoulders brushing.
Zaire glanced at her. “See…you still here…you still showing up.”
She let out a shaky laugh. “You really a hood fairy godfather therapist today, huh?”
He smirked. “You the one with a random heel on the floor…Cinderella…Marai…”
Her eyes widened at the name…it was the one from the story and he couldn’t possibly know that. Still, Meadow kept her thoughts and questions to herself not wanting to scare him anymore than he probably already was.
Instead, she nudged him with her shoulder. “Shut up.”
He nudged back. “Make me.”
Something clicked into place, not love…not lust, just the understanding that whatever this thing was…it was forming, slow and steady, right here on a messy floor in a room that smelled like her.
