Page 60 of Rather: The Therapist

I ended the call and immediately dialed Killian’s cell.

This fucking nigga, man. Fuck. Kofi was the most careless fucker I knew. He had Honor, from the Baptiste family, beat. But as the years passed us by, he was becoming more of a nuisance than the joke we took him for in his earlier days.

Killian picked up on the second ring.

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“With this nigga. Kleigh and I.”

“Good. Where’s Ro– Ro– Where’s his fiancée?”

“She’s home sleep, I suppose.”

Good. She didn’t need to witness his bullshit on her first night home.

“Alright. Eyes open. Keep Kleigh safe and that fool from killing himself.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

I ended the call with one person in mind.

She’s home sleep, I suppose. Killian’s words looped in my head.

She has six sisters. I reasoned. She’s not the one, Priest.

“She’s not,” I groaned, “Unless God has fucking jokes or some shit.”

I stepped into the shower and allowed the water to cascade down my chest and back.

But, the smell of her perfume.

It was special. Unique. And, smelled so fucking good.

“Riot. From a small fragrance company my sister loves. It was a gift from her.”

“Tell her I need a gift, too. You smell so yummy.”

I recalled the words exchanged between her and Kleigh.

“Her sister. There are six more of them,” I whispered to myself, “She’s not the one.”

The birthmark.

I couldn’t explain that one, but I prayed her sisters shared the same one to make sense of this all.

She’s not the one.

THREE

Dressed in a pair of barrel jeans, a white wrap top, and vintage Dior slingbacks, I sipped from the prettiest textured glass filled with coffee. Without a doubt, I knew it had been sourced from a vintage shop or a generous estate sale.

Genre, the corner coffee shop, was notorious for their glassware and trinket dishes for serving their guests. It was almost impossible to find a match or set that wasn’t at least sixty years old. Pat, the owner, had a very unique vision that I was happy to see come to life.

The coffee was incredible. The scenery was perfect. The crowd was diverse. The fact that there was a library full of books by Black writers that guests could read freely the duration of their sitting made the visits even sweeter.

Currently, my eyes were nestled between the pages of a very cute, very short story about strangers becoming lovers. Ironically, their union had been arranged as well. I’d smiled a hundred times since I split the book’s pages to read the prologue.

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