Page 198 of Buy Back My Love

“He got gas.”

“Still counts.”

I laughed and reached for my drink. The TV had been playing low in the background the entire time, some local afternoon news neither one of us had been paying attention to. Then I heard the reporter say something about a federal drug investigation.

My hand stopped halfway to my mouth. Van turned toward the television too.

Footage showed tractor-trailers surrounded by police vehicles while federal agents moved in and out of a warehouse carrying boxes. The second I heard drugs and saw those eighteen-wheelers, my stomach dropped.

“No.”

Van reached for the remote, but before he could turn the volume up, the screen changed and JB’s face appeared. Everything in me went still.

Van turned the television louder while the reporter talked about multiple arrests and a federal drug trafficking investigation involving commercial trucks. There were raids, seized narcotics, people in custody, and the reporter said more charges were expected.

I barely comprehended any of it. I just stared at JB’s face on my TV. For five years, I had sat in federal prison because drugs were found inside my business while JB stayed free. He built his trucking company, had kids, bought shit, and made a whole other life while mine sat still behind concrete walls. And apparently he never stopped.

I had spent years wondering when that man was finally going to have to answer for something. Now his face was on the news, and I didn’t feel satisfied. That surprised me.

I had imagined this plenty of nights in prison. Sometimes I wanted somebody to kick JB’s door in and make him feel even a piece of what I was going through because of him. Now it was happening, and all I felt was tired.

Van muted the television. He didn’t touch me or start asking a bunch of questions. He just waited a second before saying, “You good?”

I looked at him, then at the bassinet beside my bed.

“Yeah.”

And for once, I actually meant it. JB had made his choices. I couldn’t get my five years back, couldn’t get Junior back, and couldn’t undo all the shit that happened after I came home. But I wasn’t tied to any of it the way I used to be.

Love-Lee was smaller than it used to be, but it was mine. My money was mine. Myles had my last name. And even if me and Van moved into that house together, I wasn’t giving up everything I had built just because I loved him.

I reached into the bassinet and rubbed one finger gently over Myles’s cheek. He scrunched up his face but stayed asleep.

“Your daddy got terrible timing,” I whispered.

From beside me, Van laughed under his breath.

I looked over. “What?”

“This boy ain’t even two days old and you already talking shit to him about his daddy.”

“I ain’t lie.”

“Nah,” Van said, looking at Myles. “You didn’t.”

I picked my sandwich back up while the muted news moved on to something else.

Myles slept through the whole damn thing.

Lee

Six weeks was the magic number everybody threw around after you had a baby. Once you hit it, your doctor could clear you for sex. What nobody bothered mentioning was that being medically cleared and actually wanting somebody anywhere near your vagina were two completely different things.

At my six-week appointment, my doctor told me everything had healed like it was supposed to. I went home and continued not having sex.

Between breastfeeding, pumping, leaking, finally being done bleeding, being tired enough to fall asleep sitting straight up, and having a tiny human attached to me damn near twenty-four hours a day, sex wasn’t exactly at the top of my list.

Six weeks turned into two months, then two months turned into three. One night while I was lying in bed staring at the baby monitor, it hit me that me and Van hadn’t done anything sexual since Point Clear. Even then, we still hadn’t actually had sex.