Page 45 of Love You Like That

“Yeah, well, them lights 'bout to supply ya daughter wit' the life y’all niggas want her to have,” I snapped before I could stop myself.

Yaya’s face dropped. “Wow.”

I closed my eyes, instantly regretting it. “Yaya…”

“I gotta go,” she said coldly.

The screen went black and I sat therewith my phone in my lap, jaw tight and my stomach twisted. The city buzzed around me like it didn’t care about none of it.Fuck this shit.Instead of rushing to the airport to get a change of flight, I drove to Lennox & 7th.

Nipsy’s Bar and Loungewas dark, dimly lit with jazz humming low through the speakers. I nodded at the bartender when I took a seat. “Henny,” I said. “Double.” He poured withoutasking and I took the glass and threw it back, the burn settling in my chest like a reminder that some shit love can’t fix overnight.

Yeah, we loved each other. That part was never in question. But love wasn’t a fucking bandage. It was a mirror. And right now, that mirror was showing every crack we’d been ignoring.

I thought about Yaya sitting there alone, hand over her belly, her father breathing down her neck and the doctor calling her name. I downed another double shot of Henny and motioned for another. Love, I’d learned, didn’t just need poetry and good feels. It needed presence and I was still figuring out how to give that without losing myself in the process.

The bartender set down my glass filled with amber liquid and I just stared at it. Somewhere across the city, my woman was carrying my child and I was sitting in a bar trying to figure out how to keep from becoming the nigga I swore I’d never be. The kind that loves loud but shows up late. I picked up my phone and thumb hovered over her name. Maybe she’d pick up. Maybe she wouldn’t. But either way, I had to try again. Not for love but for us.

I stared at her name on my screen for a long time. The little contact photo I’d taken when we were only locked in for a fewweeks. Yaya was lying in my bed, head on my chest, eyes half-closed with a soft smirk on her lips. She looked so peaceful in it. But now, I didn’t know if she even wanted to hear my voice.

I slid the phone into my pocket and sat with the silence. The bar had thinned out so there were only a few couples at the back. A guy nursing a beer alone near the jukebox while neo-soul played low through the speakers. My hands curled around the glass again, but I didn’t drink it. All I kept thinking was how did we get here?

A month ago, we were curled up in bed with my hand on her stomach, laughing at how my son kicked every time I said the word “poet.” I was flying back and forth, grinding, fucking exhausted, but I felt like I had a purpose. Like I was doing it for something. For Yaya. For my son. For us. But now? We were slipping and I didn’t know how to stop it.

The pressure was getting louder. More eyes on me. More money on the table. More rooms that required me to perform, to sell and to prove something. Meanwhile, Yaya was carrying life.Ourlife. Shit, we were both tired and trying but she was right. Trying just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

My phone buzzing in my hands pulled me from my thoughts. It was her. I answered Facetime and there she was with her tied scarf, curled on the couch. My sweatshirt drowning her belly. Eyes tired. We didn’t speak right away although her lips parted like she wanted to say something, but she couldn’t decide what.

“Baby…” I started.

“Don’t, Ezra,” she said softly, but not coldly. Just worn. “I’m too tired to argue tonight.”

I nodded, swallowing thickly. “I know.”

We sat there. Quiet. Looking at each other through the screen like the distance between us wasn’t just cities. It was disappointment, guilt, and love, too. So much of it.

“I don’t wanna do it like this,” she finally whispered. “I don’t want to raise our son in different area codes with us resentful, missing moments, and drowning in our own shit.”

“I know,” I said again. “I feel it too.”

She rubbed her eyes. “So what do we do?”

I leaned forward, elbows on the bar. “We figure it out. Not tomorrow. Not later. Now. We stop pretendin’ like this shit ain’thard. We get honest about what wecando. I need to be there more.”

She looked at me, eyes watery. “You do and actuallywantto be here.”

Those words hit different and I couldn’t deny them. “I hear you Yaya,” I said quietly. “And I’mma do better. I gotchu.”

She nodded, slowly. Then after a long pause, she said softly, “Just… come home, babe.”

“I will,” I whispered. “First flight out.” We stared at each other, and for the first time all day, I saw her soften.

“I’m mad at you,” she mumbled.

I smirked. “I know.”

“I still love you.”

“Same.”

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