Page 70 of Free Agent

“I don’t,” I admitted. “I have children and parents in my life who I love, who I saw struggle—friends, family, hell, even strangers on the internet who deserve more support, more access to information, more advice, more community, more everything. But… yes. It’s also quite personal.”

I didn’t mean to clam up. But a wave of emotion hit me as I was speaking, so once I finished my statement I stopped, trying to collect myself.

“Hey,” Tatum spoke up. “You don’t have to take it there right now, I wasn’t trying to kill the vibe or anything.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I assured, blowing out a sigh. “I’ve just still got a bit of liquor in my system from dinner, so…”

“Ahhh, you’re one of those?”

“One of what?”

“Those people who get all introspective and emotional when they drink?” he chuckled. “I’ve only seen you after a lemon drop, so I… wait. Actually… you did cry hard as fuck in that room.”

“Oh my God, don’t remind me.” I cringed, my face going hot even though that was…

Shit.

It felt like ages ago, despite being maybe a month behind me at best.

Still embarrassing though.

“Shit, we all have our moments,” Tatum said, and I sucked my teeth.

“So you’re an emotional drunk too?”

He laughed. “Uh… you could say that, I guess?”

“What does that mean? It’s a yes or no question!”

“Fine then, yes. Since anger is an emotion, yes. I’m not gonna start crying, but the chances of me throwing bows is… whew. High.”

“Well that’s not good!”

“Exactly, so I drink responsibly,” he chuckled. “Keeping my ass out of jail is a high priority.”

“Is it though?”

He fake gasped, making me laugh. “Now why would you say that?”

“You’ve offered to beat Monty up like twenty times.”

“Oh I’ll take that charge fa sho. On principle. I do not like that nigga.”

“Because of me?”

“Not solely, but that’s part of it.”

“What are the other parts?” I asked, curious to hear a view of Monty from a different perspective.

Which had been one of the interesting things about this transition period.

Apparently, everyone had felt some shift happen with him, but it was only ever talked about in these nebulous terms. All of our shared friends talked about him being different—less social, more aggressive, a self-centeredness that had never been part of his personality before.

All things that I’d noticed too, but wrote off because I loved him. Made excuses for it, pegging it as stress over his career, just getting older, or even blaming it on myself. I was so focused on getting BabyBee off the ground that I had changed, not him.

Now though, I was seeing the truth.

Maybe I was different.

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