Page 40 of Smoke

“Answer the question.”

“Yes, I’m feeling her, damn. What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing, nothing. I’m happy to see you on your way to being locked down.”

“I ain’t said all that.”

She laughed. “Deuce and Maceo said the same thing, and look at them… married. Salima and Shar turned some hos into house husbands.”

I laughed. “Man, get outta here. I can’t deal with you right now. I need to finish cleaning this shit, and if I’m correct, you have a session in about ten minutes. Go get to work.”

She kissed her teeth. “I’ll be back, cousin.”

She mushed my head and left the room, leaving me to focus on the task at hand. After thirty minutes, I was done, just in time to hear a knock on the door. It opened, and Romi stepped in.

“Hey,” she said, closing the door. “They sent me straight back.”

“You good. How are you?”

She looked tired and somewhat defeated.

“I’m here. Just ready to get this over with.”

“Damn, you didn’t even want to see me today?” I jested.

“It’s not you. Just… a lot going on.”

“Anything I can help with?”

She looked at me like she wanted to ask me something but quickly shook her head.

“No. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure? We can talk about it?”

“I’ve talked about it enough. This is something I have to deal with on my own.”

“Says who?”

She waved her arms around. “Who else am I gonna depend on? Can we get started?”

I remained quiet for a moment before speaking so I could choose my words carefully.

“If you want to talk?—”

“I don’t want to talk about it. What is talking going to do? Nothing. I’ve talked about things until I’m blue in the face, andwhere has that gotten me? That man broke into my house and snatched me up. He made me let him into my salon where he had a whole fucking delivery truck waiting to store his shit. I had to shut my shop down for a whole week so he could do what he needed to do. That is gonna cost me thousands of dollars because I still have to pay my staff.

“How do you compete with a man that has the law on his side? His father doesn’t even fuck with him like that, yet he goes out of his way to cover up his son’s transgressions. And no, I can’t prove that, but that has to be the case because there is no other explanation. How would it look to have the son of a prominent city official behind bars for selling drugs and harassing his pregnant ex?”

She began pacing and breathing hard, and I realized she was beginning to have a panic attack. I went to her and grabbed her hands.

“Take some deep breaths, mama. You’re getting yourself all worked up. Breathe.”

I took some deep breaths, encouraging her to do them with me. Her lips quivered as she tried to regulate her breathing.

“You’re doing good,” I said, massaging her hand with the pads of my thumbs. “Stay with me. Close your eyes.”

She closed her eyes and continued to breathe in and out. I released her hands and slowly ran mine up and down her arms before moving behind her to massage her shoulders. She began to relax, and after a minute or so, her breathing returned to normal.

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