When he pulled back, his forehead was against mine.
“Thank you for the ride.”
“Thank you for the car.”
He smiled into my mouth. He kissed me again.
We sat in the lot at the lake overlook for a long time, engine off, music low, windows cracked to let the night air in, and after a while I started the car back up and drove us home. His hand stayed on my thigh the whole way, and I drove the car he had given me through the town that had become mine.
29/
what should i call you?
julian
My relationshipwith Micah happened naturally somewhere under the part of my life I was paying attention to. It began back when Alyssa and I were just friends. He was always around, the way family is around. He and Zhaire were the same age and cousins and thick as thieves, so any room that had one of them often had the other. I’d been an active uncle to Zhaire since the day he was born, so being something to Micah never felt like a new weight I was picking up. It felt like the same one, sitting a seat over.
It wasn’t quite the same, though, and I knew it wasn’t. Zhaire had a father in the house. Micah had a man in the ground who’d left him with a scar above his eyebrow and a mother who’d done the work of two people for years.
So I showed up for him. Not as a favor to Alyssa, she never asked. I’d have done it if she and I had stayed nothing but friends till the end of time. Micah was such a good kid, he made it easy.
I knew being with a woman with a child raised the stakes. More to lose. I just had nowhere to put it down, because he was Simone and Raschad’s nephew, and Zhaire’s cousin, and a boy without a father, and I was… me. A careful version was never on the table.
What I didn’t see coming was how cleanly the two things would fuse. Somewhere along the way of Alyssa and me becoming “us,” so did Micah and I. By the time I clocked it, it was already done.
He wasn’t a favor to his mother. Somewhere along the line he’d gotten essential, becoming someone I’d rearrange a whole day for, and that should have scared a man like me.
It didn’t. It just made me want to keep showing up.
One afternoonI came by and found Alyssa pacing the kitchen, shoulders tight, phone in her hand like a weapon.
“He says he fell off the slide,” she said, “but look.”
Micah was at the table, picking at a sandwich, eyes on the floor. Too quiet. She turned his elbow gently and showed me a raw scrape running wrist to forearm.
“Baby. Just tell the truth. Did somebody push you?”
He shrank. “It was an accident.”
She looked at me, helpless and furious. “He’s getting pushed around and he won’t tell the teacher, won’t tell me?—”
“Let me try.”
She bit her lip, nodded, stepped into the next room.
I crouched to his level. “You don’t have to lie to me.”
His face crumpled. “They push me off the slide and call me a crybaby. I didn’t want them thinking I’m scared.”
I kept my voice level. “Are you scared?”
He shook his head, wiping his nose.
“Good. Because you don’t have to be.” I held his eyes. “Here’s what we do. Your mama’s right — you tell the teacher. Every time. That’s not snitching, that’s smart. But you also stand up straight, look them dead in the eye, and let them see you’re not somebody who’s easy. Bullies want easy.”
“What if they hit me?”
“You don’t start anything. Ever. But if a boy puts hands on you, you make sure he only does it once. Plant your feet—” I showed him “—and don’t fold up small. Take up your space.” I tapped his chest. “Confidence. That’s the whole thing. You show them you’re not afraid, they go find easier.”
