If the baby were mine, I needed to know.
The phone buzzed in my hand as her name flashed across the screen. I hit the ignore button. My jaw was tight. I was never in love with Amora. She was just always there when I called. When I needed a body, when I needed a distraction, she would pull up with no questions asked. I never made any promises. We never had any talks about the future.
Princess filled my mind then. The thought of her hit me in the chest like a warning shot. This was how it started last time. When I was overseas with my group, I thought I got a girl pregnant. When I told Princess on the phone, my heart broke when I heard her voice on the other end shake as if her whole world had fallen apart. Then she disappeared without a word. I never thought I’d hear from her again. Fifteen years later, the truth fell into my lap and exploded like a bomb. She had been pregnant with Yana and kept that secret from me.
We slowly developed our relationship since then. I accepted the mistake, although I had been upset for a while. But the past had been the past, and when I met that little girl, none of that shit mattered. However, in that moment, the way Princess and I had connected just recently, . . . how would she take this news now?
Fear, guilt, and déjà vu all wrapped around me as my phone buzzed with another missed call, and an unopened text from Amora popped up again. I couldn’t talk to her in that state of mind. I needed time to think about my next move.
I walked back to the meeting door and placed my hand over the handle. When I took a deep breath, I opened it, walked over to my chair, and plopped back into it.
The same man stood in the same spot and was still talking about some numbers that I still didn’t give a fuck about. His words faded into static. I finished the meeting, although I hadn’t paid attention to any of it besides the occasional nod of my head when I was cued.
Everything felt like it was about to change. I hadn’t even said a word.
8
“That’s it. Another one in the books.” Kam clapped his hands together when the meeting room finally cleared out. Chairs scraped the floor, and I heard Simone’s laughter, along with the other execs, fading down the hallway. He and I were the last two left in the room.
I sat back in the chair and loosened my shoulders as he continued to speak.
“Congratsto you, nigga. Film scores, producing for movies, then easing into your own label with indie artists? That’s grown-man bid-ness.”
I didn’t move. With the shades still on my face, I remained emotionless. I still had remnants of that call on my mind.
He squinted his eyes at me. “You ain’t even smiling. What’s wrong with you?”
Amora called back-to-back so many times after I hung up on her that I turned my ringer off. It lay face down on the table in front of me. I reached for the table, picked it up, and tapped the screen.
“Amora,” I answered, dry.
Kam’s whole mood shifted. He stopped fidgeting with the papers he had in front of him and turned his body toward me. “Nah.”
“Yeah.”
“What she want?”
I looked at the screen and saw three missed calls and four unopened texts before I pressed the side button and locked the screen again.
“She says she had a baby. Says it might be mine.”
Kam let out a sharp laugh. “Man, please.”
“That’s what I said.”
“She lying,” Kam snapped. “You know she lying.”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly.
He stared at me. “Zay.”
“I know how she looks,” I continued. “But Amora ain’t stupid. And she don’t lie about shit like that.”
He paused, then took a deep breath. “So . . . what you sayin’?”
I exhaled and threw my head back on the chair. I wished I knew the answer to that myself. “I’m saying, the dates line up enough to make it possible.”
“Possible how?”
