“Lucille, this is Mr. Grimson. It was bring your husband to work day,” I said, attempting to calm her down. She was so nervous, and it was making me anxious.
She laughed, and I winked at him.
He winked back but never took his eyes off me as I adjusted lighting and critiqued floral arrangements, but it wasn’t the usual way men watched me work—always waiting for me to need their help or prove I couldn’t handle it.
“Why do you do this?” he asked when we were back in the car, heading toward the florist.
I was checking my notes on my phone, making sure I hadn’t missed anything at the venue. “Do what?”
“This. The event planning, the long days, the stress.” He kept it casual but his jaw was doing extra work. “You know I got enough money that you never have to work another day in your life if you don’t want to.”
My stylus stopped moving across the screen. I looked up at him, trying to read his expression, but his eyes were on the road. “Is that what you think? That I do this just for the money.”
“I’m just saying you got options now. You don’t have to?—”
“Pull over.” My voice came out sharper than I’d intended, cutting through whatever he was trying to say.
He found a parking spot along the street and cut the engine. I turned in my seat to face him fully, feeling that familiar fire wake up again, the same one that had kept me alive and fed and housed since I was a teenager navigating the world on my own.
“You think I’m playing dress-up?” The words came out harder than I meant them to. “Think this is just some hobby to keep me busy while you handle the real business?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.” I unbuckled my seatbelt, needing space to breathe, to think, to figure out how to explain something I’d never had to explain to him before. “Let me tell you something, Lesley Grimson. I’ve been taking care of myself since I was sixteen years old. sixteen. You know what that means?”
He was looking at me now, smirking, and I watched the smirk fade.
“That means I've been paying my own bills, finding my own place to sleep, making sure I had food in my stomach when nobody else gave a damn if I lived or died.” The words were pouring out now. “I've been working since I was old enough to lie about my age on job applications. I’ve been fighting for every dollar, every opportunity, every chance to prove I belonged somewhere.”
His face had gone still, and I realized he didn’t know any of this. How could he? I’d never told him. Only mentioned not having family. Never sat him down to explain why I couldn’t just be the wife who stayed home, looked pretty, and spent his money on whatever made me happy.
“I didn’t know,” he said quietly.
“Of course you didn’t know.” My voice was softer now, but the pain was still there, sitting heavy in my throat. “Because I don’t talk about it. I don’t sit around feeling sorry for myself about what I didn’t have or who wasn’t there when I needed them. But I learned something when I was sixteen and sleeping on my friend’s couch because I had nowhere else to go, I learned that the only person I can depend on is me.”
I looked out the window at the people walking past, living their lives, probably having normal conversations about normal things in their normal relationships. Not trying to explain why love and security weren’t the same thing, why having a rich husband didn’t erase years of knowing what it felt like to have nothing.
“So when you ask me why I work when you've got plenty of money, what I hear is give up your passion and hustle. Stroke my ego and rely solely on me.” I turned back to him, and my eyes were burning with tears I was too proud to let fall. “And I can’t do that. Because even if I never thought you’d be the type to put me out on my ass, even if I trust you more than I’ve trusted anyone in my whole life, I still can’t turn off that part of me that knows things change. People change. People leave. People die. And I need to know that no matter what happens, I can take care of myself.”
The silence in the car was thick, heavy with all the things I’d been carrying alone for so long. I’d never said these words out loud to anyone, never explained why I worked sixty-hour weeks.
“Tell me about it,” he said finally.
“About what?”
“Being sixteen. Being on your own. Tell me what happened to you.”
The question hit me in a place I kept locked up most days. I looked at his hands on the steering wheel, strong and steady, and tried to figure out where to start.
“My mama died when I was fifteen. Breast cancer.” The words felt rusty; I hadn’t used them in years. Besides Rashad, Lesley was the only new person I had in my life. “No, father. No insurance, so by the time she passed, there was nothing left. No house, no savings, no family that wanted to be bothered with a teenage girl who reminded them of all the ways they’d failed her mama.”
I could feel him watching me, but I kept my eyes on the traffic moving past us. I missed her so much sometimes. Even though she was sick a lot, we still sang, we danced, and she taught me how to cook. How to take care of myself.
“My aunt let me stay with her for about six months, but she made it really clear every day that I was a burden. Extra mouth to feed, extra person taking up space, extra reminder that her sister was dead and somebody had to deal with the mess she left behind.” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “So I left. Got a job at this little diner where the owner didn’t ask too many questions about my age, found a studio apartment that was basically a closet with a hot plate, and figured it out.”
“Shit, Coco.”
“I put myself through business school,” I continued, the words coming easier now, like a dam had broken somewhere inside me. “Worked at the diner during the day, cleaned offices at night, babysat on weekends. Took out loans I’m still paying off, but I did it. Got my degree in hospitality management because I was good at making things beautiful and making people feel special. Started working for other people’s event planning companies, learning the business from the ground up, watching how they did things, and knowing I could do them better.”
