Kemi nodded slowly.
“And she’s done this shit for years,” I said. “Like it's nothing. Like it doesn’t weigh her down daily. But now that I’m stepping into it more… I can see it.”
I looked down at my hands.
“With that kind of responsibility you can’t clock out. You don’t get breaks. You don’t get to be tired. You still have to show up smiling, loving, patient, and understanding… even when you running on empty. I think Khloe has been exhausted longer than I ever realized.”
Kemi smiled gently and said—
“Welcome to the life of a Black mother, Kairo.”
I looked up at her while she folded her hands together.
“Even when we don’t want to, we still have to show up,” she said. “We mask everything. The stress. The fear. The loneliness. The doubt.Because if we don’t do it… who else will?”
She shrugged lightly. “We have to make it happen regardless.”
23
Khloe
Coffee stood in my bathroom with one hip popped against the counter while she blended my foundation. I watched her through the mirror and smiled. It was her second day in town and I was already dreading her leaving the next day. She’d come in a whole day early for Kennedi’s Sweet Sixteen, knowing how overwhelmed I’d been trying to pull everything together. The fact that she came early just to give me girl time I desperately needed made my heart smile.
My phone lit up on the counter.
Stacks:I miss you.
I bit my lip, trying not to smile too hard as I typed back.
I miss you too.
Coffee looked down and caught the grin spreading across my face. She immediately shook her head.
“He wanted to see me last night before his son came for the weekend, but I told him we already had girl time planned.”
Coffee didn’t even stop doing my makeup to acknowledge what I said.
“I don’t give a fuck about Stacks,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He needs to understand I come first.”
“You know I couldn’t cancel our night. I needed that.”
“And you did,” she said, dabbing concealer beneath my eye. “Because you’ve been spiraling.”
She paused, looking at my makeup.
“So you don’t go over there when he has his kid?”
I shook my head. “No. Not unless his parents have him or something. That just feels like… we’re doing too much.”
I shrugged. “He knows I have a daughter, but I don’t share pictures. I don’t plan on them ever meeting. And I want to respect his space the same way.”
Coffee twisted her lip, unconvinced.
“I think getting emotionally and mentally attached to someone is actually worse than meeting kids,” she said. “Kids meet people every day. That emotional attachment isn’t an everyday thing.”
She never missed an opportunity to remind me she didn’t fully trust what I had going on with Stacks. Deep down, I knew why. She wasn’t scared for the right now me. She was scared for future me. The version of me who might have to survive a messy divorce or sit across from my daughter one day and explain choices I couldn’t undo.
But I was floating in a kind of bliss that made consequences feel unreal. I was too busy enjoying how alive I felt.
