“Zaria is a toddler. Is that still postpartum?” Simone flopped onto the couch beside me. “Open them, my God. The point is we match.”
I opened mine to find a sage green silk button-up pajama top with a small white “A”over the breast pocket, and matching pants. “I love them, Simone. Thank you.”
Taryn held hers up. “They’re gorgeous. Now everybody go put them on so we can get drunk.”
We changed in different rooms and came back matching, glasses refilled, the coffee table laid out with charcuterie, and the baby monitor glowing on the side table with Zaria asleep upstairs. Raschad had been banished to Zion’s for the night under threat of bodily harm and had Zhaire and Micah with him.
I sat there for a second and looked at the five of them. Before I moved here, Tamika and Jordan and Jada had come to Ma’s house to say goodbye, and we’d sat out on the back porch talking until two in the morning. I’d thought then that I wouldn’t get a night like that again for a long time. And here I was, in matching silk with five women I’d known all of a few months. Different sisters. Same kind of room.
“Alyssa.” Marlowe was watching my face. “You alright?”
I took a long sip. “Yeah. This is nice. Thank you, Simone.”
“Don’t thank me, sis. You’re family.”
“Y’all decided that fast.”
“Girl.” Zenobia pointed at me. “You are Raschad’s blood. Raschad is married to Simone. Simone is a Wade. So by the transitive property of Black genealogy, you are a Wade, and we have adopted you. The papers are signed.”
“There is no recall,” Kendra confirmed.
“Binding adoption,” Marlowe agreed.
“You are now legally one of us,” Taryn said, with dry authority. “Welcome.”
I laughed. “I’m honored.”
We talked about everything and nothing. Our weeks, the shows we were behind on, the books nobody was finishing, work, and then the way it always does, the conversation turned to men.
“So,” Taryn swung to me. “Julian?”
I didn’t look at her. “What about him?”
“You tell us.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Mm-hmm,” half the couch hummed at once.
“They run together in the mornings,” Simone shared.
“Just a couple times a week, yes. He’s helping me train for a marathon.”
“Mhm. I drove by y'all coming back from one of those runs the other week, you know,” Marlowe leaning in. “Talking, laughing, looking like a couple. A happy one.”
“Not you spying on the people,” Taryn teased.
Kendra had her legs tucked under her and her glass in both hands. “He looks at you different. I’ve known that man my whole life. He does not look at women the way he looks at you. That’s just a fact.”
“He doesn’t look at me any kind of way. We get along well and have become good friends. Besides, Julian doesn't date. Y'all would know that better than I do.”
The looks that happened between the five of them across that sentence were a whole conversation in two seconds. Marlowe's eyebrow going up, and Kendra pursing her lips, and Simone glancing at Taryn, and Taryn glancing back at Simone. The whole room shifting into a register I didn’t understand.
“You want to know what it is? It’s the charts,” Simone piped up excitedly. “Julian’s a December Capricorn, Saturn-ruled, hence the whole…” She waved a hand in the air, at the entire concept of Julian. “And you’re a Scorpio, Capricorn moon, which makes the two of you an earth-water situation, and earth-water is the most?—”
“Simone.Pul-ease!” Taryn groaned.
“…durablepairing in the?—”
