Simone looked at me on my knees in front of her.
“We all want a lot out of life Deon,” she said. She used my government name and it landed different than it usually did. “That doesn’t mean you get all of it.”
She stood up.
I stood up with her.
“I need to go home.” She went to the bedroom and I heard her moving around. I stood in the living room and didn’t follow her because following her right now wasn’t going to help anything.
She came back with her overnight bag on her shoulder and keys in her hand.
She looked at me standing in the middle of my living room and I looked back at her, I had nothing left. No argument, no play, no move that was going to change what was about to happen.
“I love you,” I said. “That’s all I got right now. I love you and I’m sorry and I need you to know both of those things are real.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she walked out.
The door closed behind her and I stood there in the quiet of my apartment and for the first time since I was a little boy in my mama’s house on Delmont I felt something I didn’t know what to do with.
Helpless.
Like the one thing I actually wanted, I couldn’t move, fight, buy or talk my way into keeping had just walked out my front door. I had nothing left in me to stop it.
I sat down on the couch where she had been laying against me an hour ago and put my face in my hands.
And for the first time in longer than I could remember, the first time since I’ve been a man, I came close to crying. Hurting Simone had hurt me even more. She was the one thing I never wanted to lose, and she’d just walked out my house and probably my life. As a man, I could say that I was scared for what was next to come.
What I did know though, was that I was going to be a part of my daughter life. Even if that meant Sandra losing everything. That fuck nigga husband of hers wasn’t about to raise my baby as his much longer.
Kyla had been preparing for this town hall meeting for a while, and watching her walk into that room and own it the way she did, that made a nigga proud for real. While getting to know her, I realized that when she put her mind to something, she was gonna work her ass off to get it.
The venue was packed. Standing room only. People from her district who had shown up because they wanted to see for themselves if she was the real thing. She stood at that podium in a burgundy blazer with her hair pulled back and she talked about her community like she had been living in it and fighting for it her whole life because she really had.
No notes. No teleprompter. Just her and the truth of what she knew and what she planned to do about it.
She talked about youth programs that were underfunded. About small businesses that couldn’t get loans. About block by block initiatives that would bring resources directly to the people who needed them instead of making those people navigate a system designed to exhaust them before they got anything.
I sat in the second row and watched people respond to her in real time. Heads nodding. People leaning forward. An older woman in the first row who had her hand over her heart while listening to all the good things to come for her community.
This woman was going to win, I could feel it.
I already knew it before the applause hit when she finished. The kind of applause that came from people who had a good feeling about getting Kyla into that office.
She found me in the crowd when she stepped away from the podium, the look on her face when she saw me standing there did something to me. I rushed over to her, roses in hand and kissed her forehead then her cheek.
“You know you did yo biggest one up there! You got my vote, hands down council woman Bridges.” I said as I kissed her hand now.
She blushed hard before walking off to take pictures and mingle with the residents of the community. I stood close by, and so did her security. I’d never been more proud to have someone on my arms. She was really making a change for the better as a young black woman.
—
I took her to Monarch afterward. Nicest steakhouse in Dallas. She walked in still glowing from the town hall meeting and I lether have that the whole way through dinner. We ordered, ate, talked about the questions people had asked her and the ones she felt she had answered well and the ones she wanted to do better on next time. I made sure that I constantly told her how proud I was, because I meant that.
When the dessert came I reached into my jacket pocket and put the box on the table in front of her.
She looked at it and then at me.
