“You callin’ me toxic?”
I nodded once.
He scraped his bottom lip with his top teeth. “Shit… That ain’t good.”
He let me go, and I flew backward so fast that I fell against the dresser. Holding on to it and leaning my bottom against it, I hoped he would keep his distance now.
Widening his stance, Shio cupped his hands in front of his waist. “Solana, do you understand why I put you here?”
“Because you thought I gave your daughter drugs.”
“No, Solana. ’Cause I don’t fuck with cocaine. At least not in a sense of a muthafucka doing it.” He shook his head before moving to sit on the bed. His legs gapped and his elbows rested on his knees. “And ’cause I fuck with you, I wanted you to shake this shit.”
I squinted my eyes. “You thought it was wise to put me here without professional help?”
He lifted his head, peering at me with hooded eyes. “Did you need a professional to help you get on that shit?”
I went silent.
When he realized I wouldn’t answer, he sighed. “Look, Solana. I fuck with you.”
“Here we go with that word again. You know I do not like it. You fuck with everyone.”
“Let me finish, yo. I fuck with you, but I don’t fuck with your ways. Your habits. Your routine. It… It reminds me of my fathera lot… But you already know that ‘cause somebody has been runnin’ their mouth.”
No. I know that because I read it from the man himself.
“He had the same habit, and it made him do some shit that he shouldn’t have. I’m not— naw. I refuse to go through that shit again withanybody.”
“You really think I remind you of your father, Shio?”
He stared at me, and I shifted my hips trying to relieve the building pressure from just his eyes. He may have been right. He didn’t need to touch me to make me come.
“Naw, Solana, baby… I think you remind me of me.”
“Um, qué?”
“You remind me of me… Unresolved childhood trauma, that is. We both didn’t have the best upbringing, and that shit followed us into adulthood. Except, I didn’t become an addict. I did pills and drank, but I went cold turkey on that shit and didn’t look back. It didn’t affect my way of living, my decision-making, or my mental health. I fuck with you, but I don’t fuck with the fact that you’re an addict.”
What he said was comical. It was so comical that I could not laugh. I would not laugh. Not at him. Not at his pain.
“Shio, I think you are an amazing person. You are giving. You are disciplined. You are determined. You are ambitious. You do anything for your family, and all of them adore you. You are a man of faith, strength, and courage. But you are an addict too.”
He cocked his head and squinted his eyes.
I had already unleashed Pandora’s box, so I forced myself to finish. “You start your mornings at four, before the sun rises. You like to run five miles after your two-hour workouts. If you are not eating your meal preps, you have one plate of said food—never any seconds, and you only eat the bad stuff until you are satisfied, never full. You have to consume two hundred and fifty-seven grams of protein a day. If you miss church, youwatch at least two sermons back-to-back and overcompensate by doubling the tithes you send to your mother. When you are not working out or eating healthy or praising the Lord, you are looking after everyone in the family. You have let your childhood trauma turn you into an addict too.”
“I haven’t.”
“You have. Miss a day of workouts. Miss a day of clean eating. Miss a day from checking in on the family. Miss a day of not consuming any fruits and veggies. Sleep in one day. Just one.” I dared him before shrugging. “You cannot. You cannot because it will start the detox process. You would not even last two days before you are back at it.”
I pointed to my chest. “I have lasted twenty-six! Twenty-six days without a drug that you hate so much! The one in which you have become a king from! Even when you came here covered head to toe in it, I did not relapse! Even when it was staring me in the face, I did not relapse! You watered your clothing because you thought I was going to sniff it!” I frowned in disgust when I thought back to it.
“Like… Like I am some bum? Well, you are wrong! You do not know me as well as you think you know me. When I figured out what I wanted and who I wanted to be, I did not look back. No matter how much it hurt!”
“You shouldn’t have gotten clean in the premises of wanting me or the possibility of becoming my wife.”
“What! I did it for me! Forme! Not for you. Not for my father. For me! And for those teenagers who have held my hair back while I threw up. Who have washed the piss from my skin! Something you were able to see on the camera, and not once did you come. Not once!” I held up my index finger.
