I leaned my hip against the counter and closed my eyes for a second.
Candace was bitterness in public. Micah was a man at work, irritated, direct, and very clear about where he stood.
And me?
I was standing in my kitchen trying not to let one jealous woman pull me backward into old instincts I had already been trying to outgrow.
So I let myself breathe.
Let myself remember what had actually been true between me and Micah lately. His consistency. His attention. The way he had answered instead of dodging. The way his first concern when he saw my face had not been protecting himself. It had been figuring out what had hurt me, what I needed from him, and how to make sure I understood exactly what had happened.
He had stopped what he was doing in the middle of his workday to give me the truth before my mind could turn somebody else’s mess into evidence against him.
That mattered.
More than Candace’s little raggedy post ever could.
By the time my coffee was ready, the sharpest edge of it had passed. Not all the way, because I wasn’t a saint, but enough for me to see the situation for what it was instead of what an old fear might have tried to dress it up as.
I picked up my mug and my phone, looked once more at Candace’s post, and then blocked her.
There.
Be ghetto by your damn self.
Then I went to get dressed for work feeling steadier than I had fifteen minutes earlier, still a little unsettled, still a little warm under the skin, but not spiraling. And maybe that was all I needed to do for now.
twenty-one
. . .
By Friday evening,the worst part of Tuesday had dulled, but it had not disappeared.
Just lost enough of its sting that I could hold it without flinching every five seconds.
Candace’s post had come and gone the way ugly little public things often did. Kendra, of course, had gone digging through the comments like she’d been hired by a network, but most people were saying the same broad, tired thing.
Niggas always moving dirty.
A few laughing emojis. A couple women swearing they knew exactly the type. Nobody naming Micah directly and nobody really having enough to do much with it.
It should have made me feel fully better.
It didn’t.
Not because I thought Candace mattered now. She didn’t. She was old noise in a loud package. But old noise could still reach for new things if it caught them tender.
Micah had done his part.
That mattered.
He’d come by later that day without fanfare, let himself into my kitchen with a bag from the drugstore and that look on his face that said he was here to take care of something, not argue it into submission. Tea. Chocolate. Pain relievers I already had and was still touched he thought to bring anyway. A heating pad because my cramps had decided to arrive with theatrical timing and no home training. He’d tucked me into the corner of my couch, wrapped the throw around my legs, warmed the kettle himself, and sat there holding me while I leaned into him and tried not to feel silly for how much his steadiness got to me.
“There’s nobody else,” he’d said, voice low and plain, one hand moving slow over my shin under the blanket. “No secret woman. No old flame still breathing. No current mess. Nothing.”
I believed him and still felt bruised, which was an altogether ruder thing for a heart to do than I thought I deserved.
By Thursday, I had stopped actively pressing at it.
