Then I just sat there for a moment longer and watched her.
I was never given the opportunity to do this when she was little. I never had the chance to carry her to bed when she fell asleep on a couch. I never had the chance to tuck her in at night. I never even believed that was a real thing parents did.
Something in my stomach fluttered. I leaned forward and carefully lifted her into my arms. She was heavier than I expected, but she still fit into my arms perfectly.
She stirred slightly. “Dad?”
“I got you,” I whispered.
She relaxed immediately. I walked her to the second bedroom, laid her down gently, and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. She rolled over as if it was instinct.
For a second longer, I stood there and watched her. A smile spread across my face, and I felt my eyes begin to water. That simple moment of tucking my daughter into bed felt like something I had waited a lifetime to do.
I stepped out quietly and closed the door halfway.
The suite was quiet again, but it didn’t feel as lonely anymore.
I walked to my room and closed the door. When I peeled back the covers and lay back, I picked my phone up and opened the browser.
I did a Google search for therapists in Los Angeles. I watched as the screen populated names, reviews, and availability.
A thought about my stepfather’s face when he dismissed me flashed across my mind.
You was just soft.
I placed my phone back on the nightstand and exhaled as I turned over.
I thought about Princess telling me that I hid my problems in my work.
I flashed back to my voice in that church, cussing and cracking open in front of everybody.
When I looked up at the clock, I realized how late it had gotten. I turned back over, tapped the light off, and let the silence wrap around me again. I turned on my back and stared at the ceiling.
I thought about how I tried to be strong through everything in my life. I had been taught that men weren’t supposed to cry. I had been taught that tears equaled weakness, and softness meant you deserved pain. I finally let myself unlearn that then.
Before I could stop it, the tears poured out of my eyes as if they carried all my pain through them. The tears slipped down the sides of my face as my body released all the water my body had built up inside of me throughout the years, the tears I held back when I went into the studio and let the tracks do it for me.
I turned my head into the pillow to muffle the sound as if I still had something to be ashamed of. That night, in a hotel room back in a city that I once believed tried to break me, with my daughter sleeping safely in the next room and a DNA kit on the table that waited to decide my future, I cried, and I allowed it to take me.
I fell asleep as my breath evened out somewhere between the ache and exhaustion.
16
“Are we almost there?” Yana asked the driver from the back seat of the SUV.
She sat beside me with curls that bounced from the rough Detroit roads. We were supposed to have been at the church thirty minutes before I checked my watch.
“Yes, ma’am, only seven minutes from the venue,” the driver calmly replied.
I scrolled through my phone and continued to check my emails. I realized how I was always unbothered when it came to deadlines. “They can wait” had become my motto, yet I felt different about Kennedy’s wedding. That day meant more, but my mind was still back in the bed of my hotel room, where I’d cried the night before. The emotional weight of everything from confronting my stepfather to the pending DNA results sat heavily on me. I decided I would let it go and focus on the day. Kennedy deserved that much. Yana did too.
I locked my screen and placed the phone in my pocket. Yana looked at me and smiled behind the sunglasses over her eyes. She had been the only light throughout that difficult time. I was glad to have her with me.
When we finally reached the church, Kennedy was upstairs, getting ready. Yana scurried inside to find Princess, and I stood in the lobby, adjusting my cuffs, trying to steady my breathing.
My stepfather walked in, and we locked eyes for a moment. I was surprised he wasn’t drunk or high. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him without being one or the other.
His suit didn’t fit right. The shoulders were too big, as if the suit had been borrowed from someone else. He dropped his gaze and quickly went inside the open doors to the sanctuary. I saw him take a seat and rest his hand on his knees like he didn’t know what to do with them. He didn’t look at anyone. He just stared at the floor.
