Kelli: I’m sorry, for real. I just didn’t wanna disappoint you.
I sat there with my phone still in my hand, readin’ it over without even scrollin’, but just lettin’ that shit sit on me the way it came.
I ain’t rush through it this time. I let every word land the way he meant it, and the more I sat with it, the more that hurt started settlin’ in my spirit in a way I couldn’t joke off or push to the side like I usually would.
I tried to be mad about it. I tried to twist it into some shit I could be angry at, but that wasn’t what I wanted to believe Kelli gave me. I truly wanted to believe he just… stepped back.
But damn… that shit still stung.
I leaned back against the headboard slow, starin’ at the screen like it might change if I looked at it long enough.
“Damn, Kelli…” I whispered.
This shit actually… hurt.
Trill-Land, ’LoLux Estate
Three days later…
Today, I was leaving Kay’Lo’s for good.
I had my duffel bag slung over my shoulder, packed and ready. I stood on the front steps for a minute, lettin’ the cigarette burn between my fingers while I looked out past the gates, takin’ it in without feelin’ the need to rush off just yet.
I had been here for months, and it was long enough for it to stop feeling temporary. What started as me just helping Kay’Lo through his trial turned into something else without me even noticing when it happened. I got used to the house, the noise, the way people moved in and out like it was normal and the way everybody showed up for each other whether they felt like it or not.
I had been around family my whole life, but this felt different from anything I was used to. People checked on you without making it a thing, and you could sit in the same room with somebody, not say a word, and still feel like you wasn’t by yourself. Kay’Lo gave me that without ever putting it into words, and his people moved the same way, like I had already been built into it without no extra effort.
His mom spoke to me with grace. His dad looked me in my eyes when he talked to me. Even his aunts, with the way they carried themselves, still found a way to make space for me like I wasn’t just some outsider passing through their family. That was the kind of shit that stayed with you.
I took a slow drag from the cigarette, lettin’ it sit in my chest before I exhaled, watchin’ the smoke drift off while my mind moved somewhere I had been trying not to let it go.
I was thinking about Sha’Nelle, but I didn’t let it sit long.
I already knew if I stayed there too long, I was gon’ start questioning myself, and I wasn’t in the space to do that. I had made my decision already, and I stood on it for a reason. That night in the hotel had changed something between us, and I felt it just as clear as she did. That wasn’t no regular moment we could laugh off and go back to how it was before.
That was something that could turn into more, and I knew myself well enough to know I wasn’t ready to handle that the right way.
’Nelle deserved consistency. She deserved somebody who was sure about what they were stepping into, and I couldn’t give her that without second guessing myself halfway through it. I wasn’t about to be the reason she ended up looking at me different later. I stepped back, and it wasn’t because I didn’t feel nothing… but because I did.
I flicked the ash off the cigarette when another thought pushed its way in right behind her.
I thought about my brother, Bishop…
That situation sat deeper than I let on, even to myself. I hadn’t said shit about it out loud. My sister had called me like it was just another regular conversation, talking like she always do. Then she slipped it in like it wasn’t nothing, telling me Bishop was having a baby with Harlow as if that was just news I was supposed to hear, process, and move on from.
I didn’t react the way she probably expected me to either. I kept my voice even. I didn’t ask no extra questions or give her nothing to read into, and we got off the phone like it didn’t change shit for me. But that shit sat with me as soon as the line went dead.
I stayed looking at my phone for a second after that call, replaying the way she said it and how casual it sounded, like there wasn’t no history behind it or like it didn’t involve me at all.
Maybe that’s what made it hit the way it did. Not because I still wanted Harlow or because I was stuck on what we used to be, but because I knew what me and her had, what we was building before everything went left, and I knew how that ended.
I knew what she chose when I wasn’t there, and I knew what I walked into when I came home and saw my brother standing in a space I put together for us.
So, hearin’ that she was carrying his child now, after she got rid of mine, did something to me. It also meant that she would be a part of my family forever.
I didn’t lash out about it or call nobody else in the family, looking for answers, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel it.
“You plannin’ on standin’ out here all day or you actually leavin’?” Kay’Lo’s voice came from behind me.
