She looked up.
“If he mine,” I continued, “I’ma be there. For real. I’m going to do my part for him. But that don’t mean you get access to me.”
Her eyes welled again, but there was still caution there. It was as if she wanted to believe me and didn’t trust her own hope.
I saw Kam nod his head from my peripheral like he approved.
She continued to look at me as if she wanted to say a hundred things, but the only one that came out was the most honest thing she could think of.
“I didn’t want to do it like this,” she murmured.
I believed her, yet I didn’t. I told myself that both could be true. I agreed regardless. “Me neither,” I said.
Kam pulled his phone out and began typing something. The sound of his fingers on the screen was all that lingered in the room for a moment.
“I’m scheduling the test,” he said. “We’ll send you the lab details. You bring him in to test. You don’t get to do your part at home. You show up on time. No extra people. No cameras.”
Amora nodded. “I got it.”
I felt the room tilt a little when I stood from the couch. Kam stood after me, and we turned to head back to the front door. When my hand reached the handle, Amora called my name.
“Zay.”
I looked back at her.
Her eyes were wet again, but her voice was firm. “Whatever happens, . . . just know that I’m sorry for all of this,” she said. “I honestly need to know as much as you do.”
That hit. In that moment, my anger flared again because I knew, just like she knew, that I was not the only possibility of being Zayn’s father. She also knew that pinning it on me would carry weight. I was visible; I was a celebrity. It would hurt me as much as it did her. That thought burned into my skull.
At the same time, I also recognized the fear, hurt, and the desperation. Women like that reminded me of my mother. She was young, overwhelmed, and trying to survive when she met my stepfather. She tried her best to make things stick so she wouldn’t drown alone. That was how the abuse came into the picture. I couldn’t let another child grow up in confusion because grown-ass adults were too scared to learn the truth.
It wasn’t about ego. It was about peace. I needed to know the truth. If he was mine, I would step up and be the man that Zaynneeded, the man I never had in my life. If he wasn’t mine, I’d deal with that, too. Either way, I wasn’t going to run from it.
I nodded. “Okay.” I opened the door and didn’t look back when I stepped back out into the sun.
Kam followed behind me, and we walked down the driveway in silence. We reached Kam’s car first. He leaned against his truck and watched me like he was waiting for me to speak first. I didn’t.
“You good, bruh?” he asked, breaking the silence.
I let out a breath that felt like it came from my gut. “I don’t know.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
I shook my head and didn’t respond. I just walked to my car, opened the door, and got in. When I pulled out of that quiet neighborhood and drove back toward the life that I swore was straight only a few days ago, my heart pounded like it tried to warn me that ‘straight’ was anything but.
12
Iwoke up the next morning with the weight of yesterday’s events still on me. I caught a crook in my neck from the way I’d slept. After I left Amora’s, I drove straight to the studio. Malik and I laid another track, then we chopped it up over a few glasses of champagne. I may have gotten a little tipsier than I’d intended; I woke up in bed, fully clothed, with my arms and legs spread across like the letter X. I wasn’t a heavy drinker, but after the day I’d had yesterday, it was the first thing I thought I needed.
My bedroom was quiet. The curtains were half-closed, but the sun had forced its way through the blinds anyway. I blinked a few times and stared at the ceiling, replaying the scene from Amora’s living room in my mind.
My phone vibrated on the nightstand. I didn’t have to pick it up to know there were more emails, missed calls, and/or calendar reminders, but I did it anyway. With my arm stretched in the air as I continued to lie across the bed, I tapped the message from the only person that mattered from the piled-up list of notifications.
Kam: I canceled the 10am. Moved the producer meeting to Thursday. Don’t answer no blogs if they reach out.
Kam: Lab appointment pending. I’ll confirm.
I rubbed my face with my free hand and sat up slowly.
