“Not nice but expected,” I said.
Her eyes did that quick flicker—surprised, then pleased. “Okay, sir.”
“Say that again and see if I don’t drive over there,” I told her lazily, teasing.
She pressed her lips together to smother a smile and failed. Her dimples were snitches. “You are impossible.”
“Or you just need practice. Talk to me, beautiful. What do you do when you not spilling drinks on fine ass strangers?”
She sucked her teeth, but she was smiling so hard she couldn’t even pretend to be offended.
“First of all, fine ass strangers iscrazy,” she muttered, shaking her head like I was a problem she didn’t have time to solve. She laughed again, full now, and it made her shoulders loosen. Her eyes creased at the corners like happiness was a habit.
“I teach,” she said, like that one word explained everything. And then, like a dam broke, she spilled out, talking with her whole chest. “High school English. Juniors specifically. But I also tutor the incoming freshmen and sophomores as well.”She rolled her eyes so dramatically I almost applauded her performance. “Junior papers are trying to end me.”
I snorted. “They got you in a chokehold like that?”
“Roman.” She said my name sharp, like a warning. “I read the same sentence three different ways, and it still don’t mean nothing.” She fanned herself dramatically. “They’ll write, ‘The symbolism was symbolizing,’ and I have to remember I got bills and a calling, so I can’t walk out mid-period.”
I laughed again, already drifting, watching her passion spill past her composure. She was beautiful like that. I wasn’t just hearing her; I was witnessing her.
“But I love them,” she added, eyes soft. “Behind the nonsense, they’re smart—full of stories. They just don’t know how to put it on paper yet. School and their tests make it feel like, if you can’t write it perfectly, you have nothing worth saying.”
She leaned in. “So, I run small groups after school, like really run them. I take my time with the kids who freeze up organizing their thoughts, the ones who think they’re dumb because they process slower. I tell them, ‘You’re not stupid; you just haven’t practiced yet, but I got you.’ Then we break it down thought by thought, sentence by sentence.”
She talked with her hands, drawing invisible paragraphs in the air—gorgeous and passionate. I could’ve listened for hours. She kept going.
“And me and my best friend? We’ve been sketching a real tutorial center, not no sad library corner with a wobbly chair.”
I laughed under my breath. My eyes were stuck on her mouth because she said everything like she meant it.
“I’m serious,” she said, laughing. “Solid chairs—no wobble. And a wall of kids’ victories: best essays, first A’s, most improved . . . proof they could do it once somebody stayed long enough to show them.” Her voice dipped, got tender. “Becausethe world is already loud enough when it’s tearing them down, and I want their wins to be louder.”
“That’s fire,” I said, meaning it. “Name it. Put it on paper. The world gotta respond when you give it a clear address.”
She studied me through the screen like she was measuring the weight of my words. “You always talk like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re giving TED Talks at the gas station.”
I smiled. “Hood intellectual, baby. I speak two languages.”
“And what’s the other?” she asked, more playful than doubtful.
“Protection. It doesn’t always need words.”
Quiet stretched comfortably. She tucked one knee up, and I realized I was staring—not undressing, but admiring, like memorizing a skyline.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, her cheeks going soft pink. “You’re making me shy.”
“I like shy on you. Makes the freckles louder, my little Constellation.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Constellation?”
“Mm.” I let it sit between us. “Your face does maps when you blush.”
She tried to hide behind her hand and then dropped it, giving up. “You’re ridiculous.”
