16. Egypt
EGYPT
T he moment I laid eyes on him, I felt my heart drop.
Like for a second it forgot how to beat and just..
. froze. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. Weeks that felt like months.
And now here he was, standing in my Nana’s kitchen like he belonged there, like he wasn’t the same man who’d told me to get rid of our child and walked out on me like I was nothing.
I blinked hard, my jaw tightening as my lips parted. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Nasseem’s mouth opened like he wanted to say something, but I didn’t give him the chance. “I’m talking to you!” I snapped, rounding the island with fire bubbling in my chest. “Who the fuck told you I was here?”
“Language…” My Nana said warningly.
Nas glanced toward my Nana, then back at me, hands raised slightly in a weak-ass attempt to calm me. “Egypt, just chill?—”
“Don’t tell me to chill, Nas. This ain’t no random city. This is Memphis. This is my Nana’s house. Serenity and Ari don’t know where she lives, so that means it had to be Averi?—”
“It wasn’t her,” he cut in quickly.
“Then who?” I demanded, fists balled at my sides. “You break my heart, tell me to get rid of my baby, and now what? You think you can just show up and what? We hug it out? Cry together over greens and cornbread?”
“I didn’t say that?—”
“Then tell me who the fuck gave you the address!”
“Egypt…language.” Nana warned again, her voice sterner now. I knew she wouldn’t repeat herself a third time, but I was too mad to give a damn.
“I’m not gon’ do that.”
“Why? Cause you know I’m right? Because whoever it is knew damn well, I didn’t want to see you?—”
“It was me,” Nana said firmly, her voice slicing through the tension like a hot blade.
I whipped around to face her. “What?”
“I gave him the address, baby,” she said calmly, her eyes soft but unyielding. “I called him.”
My entire face scrunched with disbelief. “How? When?”
She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and turned to face me fully. “You remember when I asked for your phone to look something up and sent you inside to get my sweet tea and caramel cake?”
I blinked, remembering that day clearly. “You said you were just checking your email.”
She nodded with a little shrug. “I lied. I went into your contacts and texted myself his number. Before I went to bed, I called him up and we talked. I erased the text I sent myself so you wouldn’t suspect anything. Figured you wouldn’t like it.”
My mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Oh my God, Nana—are you freakin’ serious?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Egypt Alexandria,” she said with a firm clap of the towel against the counter.
“I might be old, but I’m not senile. That boy looked like he needed to speak to you.
And you? You’ve been walking around here with pain all over your face pretending you’re fine.
I wasn’t about to sit back and watch y’all ruin your lives with stubbornness. ”
I stepped back, stunned. “You had no right.”
“I had every right,” she snapped, pulling herself up to full grandma height, which, mind you, wasn’t much, but that tone made her feel ten feet tall. “I raised you. And I know when you need a push.”
“This is not a push, Nana. This is a shove.”
She didn’t blink. “Then you better land on your feet. Now both of you, go wash up. Dinner’s almost ready, and I don’t serve food to ungrateful mouths that ain’t clean.
” That voice. That grandma voice. Me and Nasseem both stiffened like two bad-ass kids who just got scolded in front of the whole congregation.
I glared at him one last time and turned sharply toward the hallway bathroom.
He followed me silently, the sound of his soft steps trailing mine like a ghost. I shoved the bathroom door open and moved to the sink, gripping the edge hard enough to crack the porcelain. I didn’t even look at him. Not yet.
He stepped in behind me and gently shut the door. “Egypt, I?—”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t come here to fight.”
“You shouldn’t have come here at all, Nasseem.”
“I just wanted to see you and talk to you.”
“Well, congratulations. You saw me. Now you can go.”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said, voice low but stubborn as hell. “Your Nana invited me here. And I’m stayin’ as long as she wants me to.”
That made me finally turn to face him, eyes narrowed. His jaw was set. Brows slightly furrowed. There was no smugness, no smirk, no flirty banter in his expression. Just a man who was tired, guilt-ridden, and maybe a little scared. I hated how much I still loved that face.
I turned back to the sink and turned on the faucet, scrubbing my hands way rougher than I needed to. Water splashed over the edge. I didn’t care. He stepped up beside me and washed his own hands in silence.
We stood shoulder to shoulder, both of us tense as hell, neither saying a word until he grabbed the towel before I could. He handed it to me, our fingers brushing. I snatched it without looking at him.
“I’m still mad,” I said quietly, drying my hands.
“I know.”
“You hurt me worse than anybody ever has, Nas.”
“I know that too.”
“I don’t forgive you.”
He nodded slowly. “Not askin’ you to. Not yet.”
I dropped the towel on the counter and stepped aside so he could pass. He didn’t say another word. Just walked out of the bathroom and down the hallway like this was his house, like he belonged. And maybe, deep down…a part of me still wanted him to.
But fuck that part right now. Because dinner was about to be served, and I was gonna sit across from the man who shattered me with a fork in my hand, chewing slow and plotting how the hell I was gonna keep my heart from doing backflips the second he looked at me like I still belonged to him.
Dinner was… exhausting. Not because the food wasn’t good—it was, as always, perfect.
My Nana’s smothered chicken and cabbage never missed.
But the tension between me and Nasseem was doing laps around my nerves like it paid rent.
And what made it worse was how damn comfortable he was.
Laughing softly with my Nana, passing her the hot sauce like he hadn’t ghosted me after telling me to abort our baby.
I sat at the end of the table, chewing slowly and trying not to glare at the two of them sharing stories like they were kinfolk. I didn’t say a word the entire meal, too busy forcing back the tears that kept threatening to fall.
Under the table, my hand instinctively rested on my lower belly, gentle and protective. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want me. And now he was here. In my safe space. Cracking smiles and fitting into my family like he hadn’t shattered me.
I kept my head down. Ate quietly. Nana said grace, hummed between bites, and complimented my healthy appetite. She acted like the air wasn’t thick with tension, like we weren’t sitting on a porch full of unsaid words.
After the meal, she pushed her plate forward with a satisfied sigh and said, “Whew.
That hit the spot. But I need to lay down.
This weather got my joints talkin' back.” I immediately stood, ready to clean up so I could breathe without his presence.
“Egypt, walk me to my room, baby,” Nana said as she stood up slowly, resting her hand on my shoulder for balance.
“Nasseem, go on and start wrapping the food. I know you can figure out some foil.”
Nasseem chuckled low under his breath. “Yes ma’am.”
I clenched my jaw and helped her down the hallway, glancing once over my shoulder to see him already stacking plates and grabbing foil like he belonged there. It made my stomach twist.
When we got to her bedroom, I helped her sit on the edge of her bed, fluffing her pillows out of habit. She looked up at me, her expression soft but serious. “You gon’ keep actin’ like that boy didn’t fly all the way here to fix what he broke?”
“I didn’t ask him to come,” I snapped, sharper than I intended.
“I did,” she reminded me gently, patting my hand. “Because somebody needed to. And you sure as hell wasn’t gon’ do it.”
I sighed, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Nana, you don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand better than you think,” she said.
“He hurt you. He broke your heart. And I’d like to wring his neck for it, but baby…
that man is sorry. I can see it in his eyes.
” I didn’t respond. “You two gotta talk,” she continued.
“Whether y’all fix it or not…you got a child to think about now.
” I winced, feeling the weight of that sentence fall heavy on my shoulders.
“Talk to him, Egypt. Tonight. You’ll feel better if you do. ”
I nodded, even though I didn’t mean it. “Goodnight, Nana.”
She smiled, brushing my cheek with her thumb. “Goodnight, baby girl.”
I walked slowly back down the hallway, dreading the next moment. When I stepped into the kitchen, I found him putting the last covered dish into the fridge. The room was, quiet.
I didn’t speak. Just turned on the faucet and started the dishwater.
The tension sat between us like a ghost. We moved around each other in this quiet, angry ballet—his arm brushing past mine, my hip almost bumping his.
Still no words. Just sighs and the sound of dishes clinking in the soapy water.
I hated how familiar it felt. How easy it was to fall back into rhythm, even in our silence.
Once everything was clean and put away, I turned off the light over the sink and wiped my hands on a towel. “Come on,” I said quietly, walking past him without looking back.
He followed me out the back door and onto the porch. The air was thick but cool, the Memphis night wrapping around us like a blanket of stillness. I sat on the porch swing and waited. When he finally sat next to me, I pulled my legs up under me and stared straight ahead.
“Say what you came to say.”
He was quiet for a second, gathering his words. “I’m sorry, Egypt,” he said finally, voice low, raspy. “For all of it. For the way I reacted…for what I said…for how I made you feel. I fucked up.”