Page 3 of Crash: Love in Scrubs
“What? You don’t think I can do it?”
I shook my head, gripping the steering wheel tighter. It wasn’t about what he could or couldn’t do. My son was smart, honor roll smart, scholarship smart. He got good grades, stayed out of real trouble aside from the occasional write-up or detention at school. Normal teenager stuff. But it was senior year, time to lock in and stop playing around.
Samaj was my only child, my heart walking around outside my body, and I wanted him to do and be everything I never got the chance to be. College had been hard enough as a single mom, but when Ashe left, I had to choose between textbooks and diapers, between study groups and daycare pickup. It becamedamn near impossible to chase or have a dream. Bottom line: I didn’t want my son stuck in Silverrun, with limited options and big dreams that never materialized into anything but a job at the local factory.
“Is that what you think? Samaj, I rai…”
“…raised you by myself,” he mocked. He knew the speech, because I had given it to him several times. And his ass was about to get it again.
I looked over at my son, the same boy who had once clung to my hip in grocery stores, now morphing into a version of himself that I barely recognized. In just three months, he’d shifted into someone harsh, cold. A certified asshole—one I loved more than life itself, but something was off. You didn’t just wake up and throw a ten-year dream away.
“Did something happen?”
“I’ve been talking to my dad.”
The words hit me like cold water. My chest collapsed, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe right. Not only did Samaj have me completely fucked up, but so did his lowdown deadbeat father Ashe.
After seventeen years of radio silence, this man wanted to play daddy now. I could still see him clear as day, twenty-two years old, standing in the doorway of our tiny apartment, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, telling me he “wasn’t ready for all this responsibility.” Samaj had been teething, screaming his little lungs out, and I was running on maybe two hours of sleep in three days.
“I can’t do this, MiMi,” he’d said, not even glancing at the baby he helped create. “I ain’t cut out for this family shit.”
And now that the real work was done, seventeen years of sleepless nights, scraped knees, homework battles, explaining why other kids had daddies and he didn’t, now he wanted to crawl from his hole? I’d survived raising a Black boy in thisworld alone, raised him to be the man Ashe never bothered to be. He didn’t get to come back into our life like that. He had me fucked up.
My hands trembled against the steering wheel, but I kept my voice even. Had to. Losing my cool would only push Samaj away from and closer to his daddy’s nonsense. Because it was definitely nonsense on the horizon. He was back around for a reason, and I was going to find out why and make sure he never got this idea in his head again.
“Come again?” I asked calmly. Too calm.
He shifted in the seat, picking at the string on his hoodie, winding it around his finger until the tip turned white. I’d watched him do this, whenever he was nervous or unsure of how to say something, especially if he knew I wouldn’t want to hear it.
The way he wouldn’t look at me said everything.
This wasn’t just curiosity. This had traction. This was something he’d been carrying around for weeks, maybe longer. How long had they been talking? How many messages had passed while I was at work?
“He hit me up. On Instagram. Said he wanted to reconnect. Talk. Maybe meet up.”
There it was.
The betrayal I’d felt brewing in my gut for months finally had a name. All the times I’d caught him quickly locking his phone. The sudden shift in how he questioned me, the way he looked at me like I was somehow the problem, instead of the one who stayed.
“And you said what?”
He met my gaze, and it made my blood pressure spike even more.
“I said okay. I wanna see for myself, Ma. I just…”
“Samaj, that man dipped before your baby teeth even came in. He doesn’t get to circle back now after the job’s damn near complete. No damn way. That’s absurd of you to even consider.”
“People change.”
I laughed, but there was no joy in it, because yes, people changed, but Ashe didn’t.
“Baby, the only damn thing he changed was his number and address when shit got rough.”
“But what if he wants to make things right?”
“Make things right?” My voice cracked. “Seventeen years too late for that, don’t you think? What could make him abandoning his family right?”
“I just...I need to know, Ma. I need to know why he left. Why wasn’t I enough? And only he can answer that.”
