Page 86 of Body Language
“I ain’t got time to argue. You wanna talk? Talk.”
She closed the door behind us.
No yelling. No neck rolls. No dramatics.
Instead, she walked to the couch, sat down, and looked up at me like she was trying to unlearn how to cry.
“I love you, Kendrix,” she said softly. “I’ve loved you for years. We’ve always been solid… so I don’t understand how one girl in the club just shows up and flips everything upside down.”
Her voice cracked, and I realized I hadn’t heard her sound like that in so long.
It didn’t sound like Arlette. It sounded like the girl I used to laugh with on slow Sundays.
I exhaled and sat down across from her.
“You always been cool, Arlette,” I said.“I liked the way we used to kick it… years back. When you weren’t being wild. When you weren’t trying to be the loudest one in the room.”
She blinked, fast.
“But somewhere between my brother getting locked up and me tryna keep shit from falling apart, you changed. You got good with business. I’ll never take that from you but everything else turned to chaos.”
She opened her mouth, but I kept going.
“It started being about shitting on your family. About what you had, what you wore, who was watching. Like everything was adamn competition. Meanwhile, I’m tryna survive and you can’t even pack a lunch.”
Her mouth twitched like she wanted to defend herself, but I leaned forward.
“I made sure you didn’t go without. I did that because I cared. But you couldn’t even return the favor with peace. And after a while, I stopped fucking with you for real. Yeah, we had sex. Yeah, we ran business. But I didn’t see you as no wife. That was long gone.”
She sniffled, and just when I thought the softness would turn back into fire—
“I was loyal,” she whispered.
I laughed.
“I know you fucked my homeboys.”
Her head snapped up like I’d slapped her.
“Stop this loyalty act. I knew. I been knew. But I didn’t say shit, because truth is… the only reason I kept anything going after that wreck was because you lost the baby.”
That broke her. Her lips quivered, and the tears came heavy. “If I hadn’t sped off… if I wasn’t acting so damn crazy that day…”
She couldn’t finish it.
And even though I should’ve stayed cold, I felt it in my chest too. That accident wrecked more than a car. Two wrecks took two kids from me before I could even meet them. I thought about Megan. Pieces of me I would never get back.
I stood and walked over to her. I sat beside her and let her fall into me.
She was sobbing and shaking. Snot and tears soaking into my shirt.
I didn’t love her or even like her, but I wasn’t heartless.
Sometimes grief doesn’t let you be the villain. Sometimes you just sit in the wreckage with someone who remembers the same pain you do.
“I just wanna be under you one last time,” she whispered against my chest, breath shaky.
I didn’t say anything.
