Because the real answer wasn’t something I wanted to say out loud.
I looked down at my hands instead.
“I think you mean you already made up your mind,” I said. “And everybody else just gotta adjust.”
His jaw ticked a little at that. Not mad. Just acknowledged.
The room got quiet again except for the faint sound of what was on the TV in the background, nobody was actually watching.
He reached over, set the blunt in the ashtray, then leaned forward a bit, elbows on his knees for the first time since we got in the house. He looked less like he was in motion and more like he was actually present with me.
“You’re not wrong,” he said. “But you’re making it sound like I just be reckless.”
I didn’t respond.
He kept going anyway.
“I don’t move off emotions,” he said. “I move off what I already see comin’. That nigga been trippin’, and it finally reached my doorstep.”
My stomach dropped a little at how calm he said it. Like consequences were just weather. Something you predict, not something you question.
I leaned back in the chair, trying to slow my thoughts down before they ran away from me.
“And where does that leave me?” I asked.
That made him pause.
Not long. Just enough to show the question hit a place he wasn’t tryna touch too deep.
He looked at me different now, not softer, but more focused.
“It leaves you where you already at,” he said. “Right here.”
I shook my head slightly.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
The air between us tightened again, but this time he didn’t shut down or shift away from it.
He stood up slow and leaned against the window again, like he needed something to look at while he talked.
“I never lied to you about who I am,” he said. “What I got, where I came from, none of that.”
I watched him, not interrupting.
He continued.
“You knew I wasn’t regular when you met me. You just haven’t seen that part of me yet.”
That part hit different because he was right. I have seen pieces of him, all the good parts, and I have seen the ugly side.
He turned back to me.
“And now that you see it,” he said, “don’t switch up on me halfway through, actin’ like I changed.”
I could hear my heartbeat in my ear.
“I’m not sayin’ that you changed, I am sayin’ that I didn’t think it would feel like this.”
