4. AMAI #3
She must want to see me in person.
Because I wasn’t letting this sit.
Not tonight.
Not ever.
I took the stairs two at a time, my footsteps heavy and deliberate.
Syx was in the living room playing video games.
He looked up when I passed.
“Yo, where you going?”
“Out.”
“At damn near two in the morning?”
I didn’t answer.
Just kept walking.
“Amai!”
The front door slammed behind me.
I got in my car and started the engine.
My mind was racing.
Yaya’s words. Truth’s voice. The way she’d sounded when she told me to lose her number.
I pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the Seventh Ward.
Toward Delphine’s house.
Toward Truth.
Because if she thought blocking me was going to keep me away—
She didn’t know me at all.
I got in my car and slammed the door so hard the whole frame shook.
My hands were shaking.
My stomach was in knots.
I couldn’t breathe right.
I started the engine and pulled out of the driveway too fast, tires screeching against the pavement.
I hit the highway doing seventy.
Then eighty.
Then ninety.
The city blurred past me—streetlights, billboards, the dark stretch of I-10 cutting through New Orleans like a scar.
My mind was racing faster than the car.
A car swerved into my lane without signaling.
I jerked the wheel hard to the right.
The car fishtailed.
For a split second, I felt the tires lose traction—felt the vehicle start to spin out.
My heart slammed into my throat.
I eased off the gas.
Corrected the wheel.
Slowly.
The car straightened out.
I exhaled hard, my hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
“Fuck.”
I forced myself to slow down.
But my mind didn’t slow down with it.
I couldn’t let myself go there.
But I was already there.
Already drowning in it.
By the time I pulled onto her street, it was 2:22 AM.
The house was dark except for a single porch light.
I parked in front and got out.
Didn’t hesitate.
Didn’t second-guess.
I walked up to the door and knocked.
Hard.
A few seconds passed.
Then I heard footsteps.
The porch light flicked on.
The door opened a crack.
Delphine stood there in a robe and a bonnet, her face set in a scowl that could cut glass.
“Do you know what time it is?” she said, her voice low and dangerous.
“I need to talk to Truth.”
“At two in the goddamn morning?”
“Yes.”
Delphine stared at me.
Then she opened the door wider and stepped onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind her.
“I don’t care what you and my daughter got going on,” she said, her voice sharp. “You don’t come knocking on my door at this hour unless somebody dying or somebody dead. You understand me?”
“I understand—”
“Is anybody dying?”
I hesitated.
“No ma’am.”
“Is anybody dead?”
“No ma’am.”
“Then it can wait until a decent hour.” She turned to go back inside.
“Delphine—”
“Goodnight, Amai.”
She stepped inside and closed the door.
The lock clicked.
I stood there for a moment.
Staring at the door.
Then I knocked again.
Harder this time.
The door swung open.
Delphine’s face was a mask of fury.
“Boy, if you don’t—”
I walked past her.
Straight into the house.
I knew I was crossing a line.
I crossed it anyway.
“Amai!” Delphine’s voice was sharp behind me. “You gon’ make me shoot you right in the asshole!” I heard her stomping toward her bedroom. “I got somethin’ for yo’ ass. Sho the fuck do!”
I didn’t stop.
I knew where Truth’s room was.
Down the narrow hallway.
Second door on the left.
I could hear movement inside—footsteps, the creak of bedsprings, the rustle of sheets.
She was trying to get in bed.
Trying to pretend she’d been asleep.
I opened the door without knocking.
Truth was halfway under the covers, her eyes wide, her hair wrapped in a silk scarf.
“Stop playing with me,” I said.
Her face shifted.
From surprise to anger in half a second.
“I’m playing?” She sat up, the covers falling away. “You’re the one playing games, Amai!”
“Truth—”
“No.” She pointed at me, her hand shaking. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to call me in the middle of the night, accusing me of fucking somebody else, then show up at my mama’s house at two in the morning like you got the right!”
“I do have the right!”
“You don’t have shit!” Her voice cracked. “This is my fault. I made you feel like shit was sweet because I was trying to be professional. But this?” She gestured between us. “This is anything but professional.”
I took a step closer.
She didn’t back down.
“So many lines have been crossed until they’ve blurred,” she continued, her voice shaking with fury. “And I don’t tolerate disrespect. Not from you. Not from anybody. Not anymore!”
“I wasn’t trying to disrespect you.”
“Then what the fuck do you call it?” She stood up now, her eyes blazing. “You called me a hoe, Amai. You accused me of letting some random man fuck me. You think that’s respect?”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
She was right.
And I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry, Truth. It was fucked up to say some shit like that when you haven’t given me a reason not to trust you. Please forgive me.”
“Get the fuck out of my house,” she said, her voice cold now. “Before my mama shoots your ass.”
I didn’t move.
“Truth—”
“I said, get out.”
“That’s still my baby,” I said, my voice low and hard. “Legally. Contractually. That’s mine.”
I had to remind her whether she liked it or not, we were connected for the foreseeable future. The second the words left my mouth, I knew I’d fucked up again.
I’d come here to apologize, and the first thing I reached for was ownership.
Her eyes narrowed.
“We’ll see about that.”
The words hit me like a punch to the chest.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” she said slowly, cynically, “that if you think I’m some hoe you can disrespect and control, you got me fucked up. Contract or not.”
I stared at her.
At the fire in her eyes.
At the way she stood there—small, pregnant, furious—and didn’t flinch.
And I realized something.
I’d fucked up.
Bad.
“Truth—”
“Get. Out.”
Behind me, I heard Delphine’s voice.
“Amai.” Her tone was calm now. Deadly calm. “You need to leave.”
I looked at Truth one more time.
She didn’t look away.
Didn’t soften.
Just stared at me with a fury that burned hotter than anything I’d ever seen.
I stepped out of Truth’s room and into the hallway.
The air was thick. Suffocating.
I’d lost her. I could feel it in the way she’d looked at me—like I was something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe.
Everything tilted.
My hands were still shaking.
I needed to leave. Needed to get out of this house before I did something worse, said something worse, made this unfixable.
Delphine had walked off. I turned toward the living room.
Toward the front door.
Toward escape.
That’s when I saw her.
Delphine was standing in the hallway, blocking my path. Her face was a mask of fury. Her hand was raised.
And in that hand was a taser.
“Wait—” I started.
She didn’t give me time to finish.
The prongs hit my chest, and the world exploded.
Every muscle in my body seized at once. My back arched. My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might crack. The electricity coursed through me—violent, unrelenting, consuming.
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t think.
Couldn’t do anything but convulse under the assault of fifty thousand volts.
My legs gave out.
I stumbled backward, my body no longer mine to control, and slammed hard into the wall behind me. The impact knocked the wind out of me. Pictures rattled. Plaster cracked.
The taser released.
I collapsed to the floor, my muscles still twitching, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
“You don’t walk into my shit with your high yella disrespectful ass,” Delphine said, her voice low and deadly calm.
I tried to push myself up. My arms wouldn’t cooperate.
“You hear me?” She stepped closer, the taser still in her hand. Still a threat.
I nodded. Couldn’t do anything else.
“From now on,” she continued, her voice cutting like a blade, “you are not welcome in my house. You understand me? Not my porch. Not my living room. Not my driveway. You stay the fuck away from my daughter and my home.”
I managed to get my hands under me. Pushed myself up against the wall, my body still shaking from the electrical assault.
“You got that?” Delphine asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I rasped. “I got it.”
At that moment, it hit harder than bricks how monumentally I fucked up.
Not only did I insult Truth, but I ruined everything we built.
Worst of all, I hurt her. And I wouldn’t forgive myself for that.
After everything she’d been through, I knew I had tainted her view of men even more.
The more I tried to fix things between us, the more I fucked up.
Delphine stared at me. Her eyes were blazing. Her jaw was set. She looked like she wanted to taser me again just for the satisfaction of it.
Then, she lowered the weapon.
“Get out,” she said quietly. “And don’t come back.”
I didn’t argue.
I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to.
My legs were still unreliable, my muscles still firing in random spasms, but I pushed off the wall and made my way toward the front door.
Every step was agony.
Every breath was a reminder of what I’d just lost.
I opened the door and stepped out into the pre-dawn darkness.
The lock clicked behind me.
Final.
I stood on Delphine Renois’s porch with my chest still twitching from the taser and the weight of what I’d done pressing harder than the voltage ever could.
I’d come here to fix things.
Instead, I’d burned them down.
And now I had no way back in.