Page 60 of Collateral Love
“How does it work in your house?” he asked.
I didn’t talk about home. I talked about numbers, systems, and risk. I didn’t talk about how my mother’s eyes sliced me open every time I walked through the door. How I felt like an intruder in my own family. How my father tried to balance what couldn’t be balanced, and my brother got thrown away like a cautionary tale.
“You already know,” I said, voice flat. “You've seen enough to guess.”
“That ain’t the same as you sayin’ it.”
A bitter smile twisted my mouth. “They expect me to hold shit. To fix shit. To be strong enough to take the hits and quiet enough not to make it about me. If I stop for five minutes, everything I’m holding drops. That’s all.”
He watched me as if every word mattered.
“You know what I think?” he asked.
“No.”
“I think you holdin’ shit you ain’t supposed to be carryin’ by yourself,” he said. “And I think you scared to give anybody else a grip ‘cause you don’t trust muthafuckas not to fumble.”
Silence stretched out between us.
He wasn’t wrong.
That pissed me off.
“You don’t understand,” I said.
“I might not understand your house,” he replied. “But I understand weight. I understand bein’ the one who always has to be ready so everybody else gets to be soft.”
His voice was rougher now, something old and familiar in it.
“You don’t even sit in chairs right. You sit on the edge like you're ready to jump. Like rest is a luxury you gotta earn with blood.”
My eyes burned.
I blinked hard.
“You shouldn’t say shit like that,” I muttered.
“Why?”
“Because I might believe you,” I said. “And if I believe you, I might relax. And if I relax, I might miss something.”
He shook his head slowly, eyes never leaving my face.
“Or,” he said, “if you relax, you might breathe. And then you might see we ain’t just standin’ on what you build by yourself. We standin’ in this together.”
The words landed somewhere deep.
Too deep.
“You can’t promise me that,” I whispered.
“I already did,” he said. “You just ain’t noticed.”
I stood up suddenly, the chair scraping harshly against the floor.
“We should call it a night,” I said. “It’s late.”
He rose too, towering over me.
