My mother walked in with his tea and set it on the table beside him. He looked at her hand first, then her face.
“You put lemon in it?”
“I always put lemon in it, darling,” she said, already tired of him.
He grunted. “You be forgetting.”
“I don’t forget nothing when it comes to you.”
She adjusted his blanket without asking. He acted bothered, but he didn’t move her hand. I watched that and didn’t say nothing.
That was them.
Fussing.
Routine.
Love without all the extras.
My father only ever loved one woman, and she was still here taking care of him while his body betrayed him. That part did something to me every time I came over. My mother could havehired help and stepped back. She didn’t. My father could have been softer about needing her. He wasn’t.
But when she left the room, his eyes followed her. he loved the fuck out of my mother, and I knew he wanted that for me.
He picked up his tea and took a sip. “You still wasting money on women?”
I laughed once. “Why you ask me that?”
“Because I know you.”
“I’m grown.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I’m not wasting money on women.”
He looked at me over the rim of his cup. “You lying. I see you paying for that Milan girl’s rent on our business account.”
“I pay for peace sometimes.”
“Peace don’t charge.”
I sat back, quiet after that.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Women either bring peace or distraction,” he said. “Ain’t too many in-between.”
“This was the last month,” I told him honestly.
I thought about the women in my life.
Milan was destruction.
Nia was easy.
Alana wanted more than I felt like giving.
Sade came to mind before I could stop it, and that irritated me because she didn’t belong in the same thought as the rest of them.
