Drake folds. Tired. His arms cross.
“Tonight? This?
“It wasn’t goin’ to change anything.”
She swallows through the mic.
Her body’s gone stiff, waiting for the blow she believed wouldn’t come. “I know,” she says, quiet, barely getting the words out. “I still had hope…”
Her voice falls apart.
The rest of the sentence dies in her throat.
Drake levels a gaze on her, over it.
“I came because you asked,” he says. “Not because I thought this would be anything more than what it is.”
She nods. A lie she tells with her neck.
“I just need to say a few things,” she says.
But the wordfewsnaps right in the middle.
He exhales.
“It’s not fair for you to say them when you know I don’t feel the same.”
Her eyes fall to the pants she bought earlier today for him.
She thought she could change his mind this time. Thought if her hair fell perfectly, if she picked the right shade of lipstick, smiled the way he used to love, it’d trigger something old and warm in him. That he’d remember what they had. That he’d come back.
But he isn’t coming back. He never was.
“I’m not tryna hurt you,” Drake says.
The statement’s a classic.
People only say ‘I’m not tryin’ to hurt you’
while they’re hurting you.
The intention’s supposed to dull the blade,
but never does.
Celie laughs, defeated,
the kind of laugh that escapes when you can’t cry fast enough.
“I know,” she whispers.
“You already did that.”
Drake doesn’t comfort her,
doesn’t apologize.
Because this is the part
