I laughed. “I’m straight. Why you say that?”
“You don’t look straight. You’re sitting in this big room with the lights off, the curtains closed. I thought you would be out with Uncle Tyler or something, doing some bachelor stuff, like partying with strippers or something.”
“Girl!” I exclaimed. “Strippers?”
“I know how y’all rappers do!” She giggled.
We both laughed then. I ran my hand over my head. “Yeah, well, not tonight anyway. I’m already in enough hot water as it is.” Before I could catch myself, I mumbled aloud. “Some stuff happened today.”
“Some stuff? About what? With who?”
I hesitated, then shook my head. “It’s nothing important enough to talk about right now.”
Yana didn’t push. She dropped her head and nodded as if she understood.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, . . . you wanna watch something? Or play a game? Or just . . . chill?”
That was one thing I enjoyed learning from my baby girl. She didn’t fix things with speeches. It was as if she knew and understood the value of presence. It was amazing how much I learned from her on my journey of discovering fatherhood.
I nodded. “Yeah. Let’s chill.”
She perked up immediately, reached forward, and grabbed the remote from the table. Then she dramatically plopped back on the couch as if she owned it.
“What we watching?” she asked.
“Something you not gon’ judge me for,” I muttered.
She laughed. “Too late, you old man!”
“Old?” I scoffed. “Girl, I’m not old.”
She clicked through the apps on the screen. “Okay, then pick something, grandpa. But you can’t pick nothin’ depressing. No documentaries. No murder either.”
I stared at her. “Why you think I wanna watch somebody being murdered?”
She cut her eyes at me. “Because you be listening to the most ominous stuff in the car. All that rap noise.”
I lost it then. I laughed so hard at that.
We agreed on an anime. It was one of the ones she’d tried to get me into before, but I kept falling asleep on it—something about chosen families and fighting demons that represented your trauma. I pretended not to notice the metaphor.
She leaned against the armrest and tucked her feet under herself, her eyes locked on the screen.
I caught myself as I stared at her. This kid had popped into my life and suddenly become my entire world. She wasmyfamily.
In that moment, it hit me quietly. The kind of love she gave me was unconditional, in a way I had never experienced in my life until I met her mother.
Princess had been the first person to love me without fear attached to it. Her love came without fists or threats. It came without me having to earn it or suffer.
Then she took that and gave me something even more special: a daughter.
A chance.
A reason to become the man I kept telling myself I wanted to be.
Yana’s breathing slowed as the episode rolled. At some point, her head dipped into the back of the couch. Her lashes fluttered. She fought sleep, but it won.
I reached over and turned the TV off.
