He carefully placed the coffee in front of me and said, “You look like shit.”
I smirked and wrapped my hand around the cup. “Good morning to you too, nigga.”
He dropped the folder on the counter, flipped it open, and got straight to business.
“Aight,” he began. “Tomorrow, you got that label meeting at three. They wanna talk numbers on the soundtrack rollout.”
I let out a breath, folded my arms, and pressed my back into the chair. “The one with the streaming execs, right?”
“Yep. Them and the film studio. After that, you have the session with the new girl they just signed. She’s flying in from New York. She’s only here for the night.”
I sighed again, but he continued.
“Wednesday, you back in the booth, two sessions. One for the album and the other for the feature you working on now.” He turned the page and continued without skipping a beat. “Thursday, you have that panel interview withThe Good Guys Podcast, and then back to the studio for the film.”
“What about Friday? What was that again?” I squinted my eyes and searched the schedule to find the answer. Kam didn’t even have to look.
“Another session.”
“Of course it is.”
He smirked. “Kam keep you working, my boy.”
Between meetings, sessions, and flights were my heavy red eyes, red like the color of the sunset I’d see from the jet window before I closed my eyes and prayed that I’d get at least twenty minutes of undisturbed sleep before turbulence jolted me awake.
“It’s a session penciled in for Saturday night, but I have to call to confirm that’s still on, so don’t count that out just yet,” Kam added, slicing through my thoughts.
I shook my head. “Damn, man.”
Kam finally looked up. “What’s up?”
I rubbed my hand across my forehead. “Block off next Friday night and all day Saturday for me.”
His brows furrowed. “For what? What you got going on?”
“Yana and her mama flying in. It’s spring break, so she ain’t got school.”
He sat up straight in his chair like he was seeing me for the first time this morning. “How long they gon’ be here?”
“A week,” I replied. “But I need that night and a full day, with no meetings or sessions, no check-ins, nothing.”
Kam’s head tilted like a puppy that heard a new sound for the first time. “Damn, that’s the first time I heard that from you. You want me to block out your schedule completely? What’s really goin’ on, man?”
I didn’t argue. “I know.”
He closed the folder and crossed his arms. “Something done changed. Talk to me.”
I wrapped my hands around the cup of coffee and felt the heat seep into my palm. With my voice unstrained, I didn’t hold back the exhaustion that rose in my chest. “I’m tired, bro.”
“Tired, how?” He stared at me, puzzled.
“Tired of . . . tired of running, honestly. I keep feeling like I missed out on my own life.”
Kam remained silent. He never interrupted when I shared these kinds of things with him. He’d just stare at me and listen without judgment. I continued, taking his silence as an invitation.
“I look up, and I got all this money and success, everything I used to pray for. But when I found out that I had a fifteen-year-old daughter, whose life I missed out on, it started making me look at my life and the things that mattered to me.”
He took a deep breath before he spoke. “You saying that you want to slow down a little bit?”
