“Doing that as we speak,”he said.“Send that seven thirty.”
“Seven hunnit and thirty dollars, nigga?”
“Yeah, nigga. A hunnit for every minute. I was out here for seven minutes and thirty seconds. I’m on the scene, I’m charging.”
I chuckled.“This nigga really charging family.”
“Hell yeah. This wasn’t no emergency, nigga,”he replied.“Consider it an inconvenience fee cause you know you wasn’t taking that girl car no way.”
I leaned back on the couch and swiped my hand over my face.“It was a warning.”
“Nah. That was you showing yo’ hand.”
“Never that. Just me reminding her that I’m omnipresent.”
“You know you could just tell her that you love her. The same way you tell the rest of us.”
I paused for a second.“This is different. Danae ain’t ready for all that yet.”
“How you know?”
“Trust me. I know. I’m content loving her from a distance for now and applying pressure when it counts.”
“Aight, lover boy ass nigga.”He scoffed.“If you like it, I won’t question it.”
“You don’t even like people, so I don’t expect you to understand.”I laughed.
“Could give a fuck about ‘em.”He snickered.“Send that bread, my boy.”
When he hung up, I opened my text thread and sent Danae a message, letting her know I wasn’t sorry and to let me know when she was home, so I could have food delivered. Of course, she said she wasn’t telling me shit. I laughed, expecting nothing more than that. Exiting the messages, I opened the DoorDash app and proceeded to search for the Japanese place she liked around her way. Don’t ask me how I knew her exact order when I got to it. It was my job to know. Adding the order to the cart, I planned to wait until the tracker showed close to her building before submitting it.
As I went through the prompts to double dash her dessert, I could hear my grandmother’s slippers before she entered the living room.
“You wear her down yet?” Grandma Lettie asked with a smile that warmed my heart.
“You eavesdropping, G?” I joked.
“In my house? No. I listen with open ears and clear intentions.” She sat down across from me in her favorite chair.
I chuckled. She’d been listening intently since I was a child. And nobody dared to call her out on it cause Grandma Lettie had rank and pretty much did what she wanted to do.
My grandmother’s home had always been my place of peace. I’d lost my mother to suicide at thirteen, and Grandma had beenmy saving grace. She was my father’s mother. Under her roof, the weight eased. As the matriarch of the Sullivan family, she was the keeper of our secrets, the balance in any chaos, and the rider whenever we needed her. Grandma Lettie’s home was a sanctuary. So, when my days were long and weeks even longer, I found solace in her living room.
She had a way of making me feel like things would be okay no matter what the situation was. Sometimes, there were small decisions to be made like what property made sense to invest in, where to move money, and who to delegate tasks to. Then others were heavier – whose luck had run out and needed to be put down, who to trust and to what extent. Those decisions followed me every day. Grandma’s crib was where I sought clarity the most.
“Right,” I replied, sitting my phone in my lap.
“I’ve been listening to you conspire the whole time I was in the kitchen. That’s why you came over here today?”
I smiled. “I come here every chance I get just to breathe and hang out witchu, lady. You know that.”
She studied me before breaking out in a small grin. “And to think about that girl.”
“I think about her every day,” I said unashamed.
She nodded. “This I know. I still remember the night you called me about her. I knew then that she had cracked open a part of you that you’d long ago closed off.”
I knew it too.
