Page 5 of The Sweetest Devotion

“I wasn’t really fuckin’ with no one,” I explained further of my self-exile.

“No, really?” Savon responded sarcastically.

I shook my head. “I was in a pit, man. She had me twisted up.”

“Shit, remind me never to fall like you did.” Savon’s pity was another reason I hadn’t shown my face around the city much. My grandmother once took a look at me and said I looked like a dog who’d lost his bone.

It was more than the love, though. It was everything. Ego. Self-esteem. Heartbreak. All in one fell swoop.

I still remembered what she’d said to me that day she broke up with me. Leila had come over, as she so often did, but to my surprise she had an empty box with her. She started grabbing things she’d left over the two years we were together around my spot. She fought against me when I’d tried to get ahold of her to see what was wrong.

“We just moving at different speeds, Keith,” she’d sighed, sounding exhausted. “We want different things.”

I managed to get her, taking her face in my palms and making her see into my eyes. That’s when I saw it. No light. No joy to see me. No spark. A pair of dull brown eyes stared back at me and something told me there was no getting through to her.

But I still tried. “Where’s this coming from?”

“Nowhere.”

“Nowhere?” I’d repeated, even more confused.

Leila shrugged out of my grasp, throwing her hands up and gesturing around us. “You not goin’ nowhere. I want bigger and better things. You not enough for me.”

Her words had hit me hard in the chest, piercing beneath my skin. I’d frozen, saying nothing more as she gathered the rest of her things and left, tossing her copy of my key on the table by the door and walking out.

A few months later I was scrolling through Instagram and noticed she’d become an IG girl, an influencer who went out more and wore less, and all that other shit Drake was whinin’ about. She’d done a complete one-eighty, turning into someone I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t until I’d seen her under the arm of some hot up-and-coming rapper that I deleted my account all together.

Coming back to now, I went and leaned against a beam in the room, looking out across the spacious garage and shrugging my shoulders. I’d fallen into a dark place after that. In and out of depression and self-loathing. I couldn’t blame Leila. I was gonna be thirty in August, and ain’t have shit to show for it. My education was a GED. My look was intimidating from my face to my tattoos. I could never go corporate. And my past wasn’t the cleanest either.

At the time, when I’d first hooked up with Leila, she hadn’t cared about none of that. I wasn’t looking for love or nothing too serious, but then I’d gone and fallen hard. Consumed in hearts and feelings, until I felt bled dry when she walked out of my life.

In the minutes, hours, days, and so on since the split, I withdrew from nearly everyone in my life. I kept close to my fam, because I was who they counted on and I owed my mother and grandmother more than I could ever repay. But outside of those two, I was like that GIF of Squidward, a mundane existence of home, the garage, and home again.

Love. Love was for suckers.

Ineededto snap out of it, and running into Savon was a welcome wakeup call.

“Remindmeto never fall again,” I managed to joke for the first time in forever.

Savon shook his head, pushing his glasses up his nose. “See, you should come out tonight. Have a few drinks with the boys, get you some ass, and let this Leila shit go.”

I wasn’t one of those men that relied on pussy to solve all his problems. Maybe in my younger days when I was first gettin’ some skin. But now, the idea didn’t even make my dick twitch.

“Nah, as you can see, I gotta work,” I pointed out.

Savon smirked, calling bullshit. “Negro, ain’t nobody comin’ through here tonight.”

Uncle Rod’s auto repair shop was the only shop openandopened till late on Sundays. It made us a step ahead of the competition. It was going on six in the evening, and we closed at eight. Rod wouldn’t care if I did decide to close up early, being the only mechanic and employee on duty that night. But still, I wasn’t feeling like hitting the bar or a club. Even though a part of me needed to throw myself out there again.

“Yeah, but not tonight, Von,” I said.

“Not even for a drink?” he pressed on.

I did like to drink when I was out, but I wasn’t in the mood. My current vice was smoking, and I’d been trying to quit—unsuccessfully—for about a year now. Just talking about my split from Leila had me itching to light up a Marlboro.

“Nah, not tonight,” I said again.

Savon shook his head. “So what you getting into after this?”

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