Page 11 of Welcome Home

Falcon chuckled. “Are the innocent eyes in the room with us?” We all tittered. “Yeah, we can get outta here. Come on, babe.”

The Wednesday Before . . .

“Ma, is it cool if I go chill with Kee for a lil bit?” I asked my mother from my seat beside her. “When I talked to her last night, she didn’t feel well.”

My mother’s ear leaned toward her shoulder. “I told Frank that your ass wasn’t coming here just to come for two Wednesdays in a row. Your daddy owes me some special time.”

My face contorted. I knew exactly what my mama and daddy’s special time was. “Mrs. St. Claire, that is not alright. I’m gonna go over there for about an hour just to make sure she’s good.”

She giggled in that way that only she could. She knew her ass was out of pocket. “That’s fine, baby boy. That was the main reason I brought you here that Wednesday. I wanted you to meet your forever. Tell her I said hey.”

“I will, Ma.” There was no need to push back on what she said. In the short time that we’d been texting and talking since we'd exchanged numbers, I’d learned so much about her. From what I learned, my mother might have had a point. I think I met my forever.

When I walked to the other side, Jessica didn’t question or hesitate to let me back. I stood in the doorway for a moment just to watch Mazikeen. She tapped away on her laptop that was in front of her. Her glasses sat on the tip of her cute nose. Her brows were knit together and face was tight.

I waited until I stood in front of her to speak. “Who has your face scrunched up like that, beautiful? I don’t like that.”

Her head popped up. Her eyes widened for a second before they matched the smile on her face. “Hey, you. What are you doing here?”

“You know I had to come check on my new favorite person.” I sat down in the recliner next to her. “Now tell me who I got to fuck up behind you, Kee.”

“No one, I promise. I’m just frustrated with a vendor that my property management uses. I’ve told them to change vendors for years, but they didn’t want to. Now they want it done in less than a week because of a legal matter,” she vented. “When I told them years ago that I saw problems, they were blinded by pricing.”

My ears perked up. I knew what she did for a living because of what Rome told me, but she and I hadn’t had the ‘what we do for work’ conversation yet. This was as good a time as any to broach the topic. “Property management? You know I own a property solutions company.”

Her head snapped in my direction, and she sat up a little bit. “Wait, what? Which one? Why did I not know this?”

I tittered at her rambled questions. “Yeah, you probably didn’t know because I didn’t tell you. I own Saint⁠—”

“St. Claire Property Solutions!” Her eyes bucked while a smile rose to her beautiful face. “I have been trying to get on y’all’s calendar for a long time. You guys are the property solutions company to have, but that also makes y’all hard to get a meeting with.”

I tilted my head before I showed my God-given beautiful smile. Today I had in my bottom diamond-encrusted fangs. I was much different in the meeting rooms than I was outside of it. “Well, now you have a direct meeting with the man that makes all the final decisions. What do you need, love?”

For the next twenty minutes, we went over what Queen Luxury Property Management needed and what St. Claire Property Solutions could do for them.

“Okay, this is more of an informal meeting. I would like to make a formal proposal for you. I’m going to text you the email to send what you need, and we’ll put you on our calendar for an official proposal presentation,” I told her. “How are you feeling?”

My main goal for coming here was to check on her. Last night when we were on a video call, she had a little bit of brain fog. I recognized it because it happened to my mother. When it happened to her, she became extremely frustrated, so I could only imagine how Kee felt. She became flustered during our conversation last night before she abruptly ended the call.

She thought about it for a moment before she answered. “I’m alright today. Yesterday was trying, but I woke up to a new day. My blood markers are good, and my hope for a new kidney heightens daily. I can’t wait for the day that I can stop this dialysis shit.”

This arena when it came to lupus was new to me. My mother’s lupus didn’t affect her kidneys. “My mama’s lupus doesn’t affect her kidneys. I honestly didn’t think that someone with lupus could get a transplant because of the lupus.”

“I can understand how you would think that because most people do. A kidney transplant is the preferred for us with lupus nephritis that has progressed in end-stage kidney disease. It’s a stringent evaluation process, but my body gave me some act right, and I was approved. Now, I’m on the deceased-donor waiting list,” she said.

It was crazy how lupus affected people’s body differently. My mother’s moderate diagnosis affected her, but she always called it more of an annoyance rather than a life disrupting thing. My sister and I thought she underplayed it so that we wouldn’t worry too much. It was obvious that, for Kee, it was in some ways life disrupting. “What kind of things do they look for in the evaluation to approve you?”

“They look for my firstborn.” She giggled before she placed her hand on my wrist. “No, but it’s a lot. You can’t have a recent flare, your blood markers have to be stable or improving, no cancer, blood pressure issues, untreated infections, and stuff like that. You also have to show them that you care by taking your meds and attend your appointments like you’re supposed to.”

Yeah, that did sound like a lot. “Well, it looks like you’ve been able to keep up with all that. Those fuckas can’t have our first, second, or any born.”

Her breath hitched which was the expectation. After our second phone conversation last week, I settled in my mind and heart that I wanted this woman. With that settlement came the plan on how I would get this woman. Intentional words was one component of my plan. I wanted her to be able to securely hang from every word.

“So, we’re going to have borns, huh?” Her question was accompanied by a high brow. “That’s an interesting development.”

My body leaned into her. “Yeah, we’re going to have a lot of interesting developments through the course of our relationship. That I can guarantee.”

I slid forward in my seat so that my body was closer to hers. In a low voice with my eyes focused on hers, I left her with one last thought. “Mazikeen, I’m on your ass.”