“You know I got you . . . I got you that spicy lamb and sweet potato bowl. I don’t miss nothin’!”
I laughed again. “Yeah, I hear you. My shit better be right too! Get back in the booth. Let’s do this shit.”
I turned back to the console, and Malik stepped back into the booth. I played it cool, but something inside me still felt the weight of everything.
Behind the glass, Malik stepped behind the microphone, energized. He placed his headphones over his ears. “This next take gon’ be it,” he said. “I can feel it.”
I looked at him. He was determined and focused. I knew he was building something brick by brick. In that moment, I realized something I hadn’t before. He wasn’t just another artist I wanted on my roster. He had been watching me, studying me. He was learning what leadership looked like from me. If I handled this situation wrong, if I were to hide behind silence, it wouldn’t just cost me the relationship I tried to build with Princess.
It would cost me my daughter’s trust.
It would cost me my prodigy’s stability.
And it would cost me becoming the kind of man I kept claiming I wanted to be.
For years, I had used work as an escape, but escape didn’t build legacy. Presence did.
That day, I finally felt the weight of how my silence wasn’t just affecting one relationship.
It would cost me everything.
14
Things were coming together at the church the following week.
I flew in the day before for rehearsal. There were coordinators who walked around and set up flowers. A few others put together folding chairs. The wedding party lingered near the altar; some looked focused, and others looked restless.
Kennedy stood at the front with her veil over her face. I guess she did it for placement. I didn’t know much about weddings or what went on at one. She looked excited and nervous at the same time, as if everything that ever mattered to her had come together in one room.
“Okay!” the woman I’d been introduced to as the wedding coordinator boomed through the chaos of the room. “Let’s do one full walk-through.”
The room got quiet as everyone shuffled to their places. I stood from where I was seated in the back of the room and watched as Kennedy walked down the aisle toward me. When she reached me, she slipped her arm through mine and guided me to the front of the doors of the church. “You good?” she whispered.
“I got you.” I smirked. “Areyougood?”
She smiled the sweetest smile I’d ever seen her give. When we were growing up, smiling was seldom in our house, with my abusive stepfather stomping around and shouting our names as if they were bullets firing from a gun. It was nice to see her so calm and controlled. I was happy that she’d chosen to share her life with a man who was the total opposite of the only role model we’d ever known as a man.
Kennedy’s soon-to-be husband, Tyler, was a man she’d met during her short time in college. I was upset when I learned she’d dropped out when he got her pregnant, especially when I was the one who paid the tuition. But he ended up doing the right thing and supporting her throughout the years. They opened their own restaurant there in Detroit and, soon enough, went on to acquire others throughout the country to help their business grow and prosper. He was okay in my book, and I was so proud of the woman she’d become.
Everyone took their places. Kennedy squeezed my arm tighter, just as the music began. The bridesmaids walked down the aisle in their blush-pink dresses with their arms locked with the groomsmen dressed in gray to “Ribbon in The Sky” by Stevie Wonder. Tyler stood at the front with his arms folded and eyes focused on Kennedy. I glanced between them and noticed the looks they shared with one another. It was as if the space between them was nothing but an inch the moment their eyes locked. They looked as if the wedding was just a memory they shared when returning home at the sweetest moment. It was one I hadn’t felt, at least not since I was a teenager. It was one I wished I knew as well as Kennedy had.
When all of the wedding party made their way to the front of the altar, the coordinator signaled that it was our turn to walk down. Kennedy’s grip around my arm was tight as we took our places. Stevie Wonder’s song stopped, and the room went quiet. Then the strings to a melody I didn’t immediately recognizebegan to play. After the first few seconds, I realized it was a track I had written years ago for Kennedy. My eyes lit up, and I snapped my neck toward her. She was already smiling at me when we met each other’s gaze.
“Surprise!” she whispered.
The wedding coordinator waved her hands at us as if to hurry us. I had no time to react. I fought back the tears in my eyes as I took a step forward with my sister by my side when, suddenly, the doors to the church opened behind us.
Even through the music that played through the speakers, I recognized the way the steps scraped against the floor. That same sound used to terrorize my nervous system, and the memory made me feel like I was a sixteen-year-old boy again.
Kennedy and I both turned around and stopped in our tracks. Standing in front of me was a black man in a wrinkled suit and crooked tie. His eyes were glossy in a way nobody had to explain; they were a deep red and so low that everyone knew. When he looked at Kennedy and then back at me, he smiled as if he thought he’d made it just in time.
“Hey,” he said. “I ain’t miss it, did I?”
I felt Kennedy’s body stiffen beside me. The music cut.
“This is rehearsal, Daddy,” she said carefully.
He blinked and looked around at the empty pews. “Oh.” He chuckled. “Yeah. I knew that.”
