Chapter 11 - Jabali
I wasn’t surprised she hated it.
I was surprised she did it anyway.
Kyleigh walked into that Christmas Village like it was a courtroom and she was representing herself against the State of Louisiana. Chin up. Shoulders rigid. Eyes tight, like she was waiting on somebody to try her.
But then, forty-five minutes turned into damn near two hours.
We walked the little loop. Kids ran around with light-up swords.
Somebody’s speaker was fighting for its life, trying to play “Silent Night” over all the noise.
Folks side-eyed us, but nobody said anything slick, not with me right there. They knew better.
Kyleigh kept pretending she wasn’t enjoying herself.
She lingered at the cocoa booth. She watched kids lose their minds at the fake “snow” machine. She even laughed out loud when a little boy tried to square up with the inflatable Santa because “he looking at me wrong.”
Damn, I’d missed that laugh.
“See?” I nudged her as we passed a booth selling roasted nuts. “You not dead.”
She kissed her teeth. “Yet. The jury’s still out.”
But her shoulders were looser. Her eyes were soft. Every now and then, I caught her staring at the lights with that old look I remembered from high school—like she loved Christmas, was excited for it. The way Aziza looked at those trees.
I liked seeing that look on her beautiful face again.
We got cocoa and split a funnel cake “just to taste it.” She ate most of it.
Powdered sugar dusted the corner of her mouth.
I reached out and wiped it away before I thought about it.
She went still. My thumb dragged over her bottom lip.
Soft as I remembered. She swallowed and looked at me, eyes dark and complicated.
“You got it?” she whispered.
I nodded. “I did.”
We stood there like that a second too long, just looking at each other while people moved around us. I cleared my throat first.
“Our forty-five minutes been up. You ready to go back to your villain lair, Grinch?”
“Please. Before somebody changes their mind and decides to organize that prayer circle around me,” she quipped, saucy and pretty, with one hand on a thickly curved hip.
Down, boy, I told me and the man below. “Let ’em. I’ll flip the whole circle over.”
She snorted. “You so ghetto.”
“I thought that’s what you bougie types liked,” I said.
She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t deny it.
On the way back up the hill, it was quiet in the truck.
Not uncomfortably quiet. Just… thick, tense.
Like we wanted to say stuff that we didn’t say.
Like we felt stuff we shouldn’t feel. Christmas lights faded behind us.
Trees rose up on both sides. I checked the time.
Still early for them to be done at the museum and dinner.
I’d already texted Serena. Yeah, Braeden had gotten me her number, all their numbers. I’d sent preliminary texts already.
Me:
How long y’all gone have my baby out?
Serena:
Children’s Museum til 5. Then dinner. We bringing her back nice and tired. Why
I typed: Thinking about cracking her mama’s back.
I deleted that though.
Me:
Just checking. Be safe.
Now, in the truck, Kyleigh hugged my hoodie tighter around herself even though the heat was on.
“You dropping me or you coming to lurk around my house like security?” she asked.
She tried to make it sound light, but I heard the nervousness under it.
“You tell me,” I said. “You want me to wait up there ’til they get back or you want me to go?”
She looked out the window, thinking. “I know you wanna see her when she comes home. You might as well wait at the house.”
That “might as well” was a front, but I let her have it.
“A’ight. I’ll stay out your way. Mostly.”
“Lies you tell,” she muttered.
I laughed. We rode the rest of the way in silence.
She let me into her house quietly. Immediately, I noticed that being back in that house without a crowd of Christophers or a nine-year-old between us felt…
different. It was quiet. The rich people kind of quiet.
Also, the “we about to do something we not supposed to” kind of quiet.
I felt it, my dick felt it, and from the way she was acting all nervous, she felt it, too.
She dropped her bag on the entry table and toed off her boots, leaving them neatly by the wall. Max trotted up, sniffed me, and decided I was cool again.
“He is such a traitor,” she mumbled.
“Why? We not enemies, Grinch-ley.” As soon as I said it, something else dawned on me. “Damn, Ky. You even got a dog named Max. That shit crazy!”
Her only response was to turn up her cute little nose. “I’m going to make cocoa,” she announced. “Real cocoa. Not that powdered mess you tried to hand me at the Village.”
“Don’t disrespect packet cocoa,” I said. “The less fortunate of us lived off that in winter. Ain’t nothing like them rehydrated marshmallows.”
She gave me a look. “You want some or not?”
“I want whatever you making,” I said.
She blinked at the way that came out. I did too.
I followed her to the kitchen, hands in my pockets, trying to act like my dick wasn’t swelling just from watching her move around her own space.
And fuck, she smelled so good. Like something warm and sweet that I wanted to wrap up in. Kinda the way I felt about her thighs.
I watched what she pulled down. Dutch-processed cocoa, heavy cream, real vanilla. Of course. Rich ass.
“Since when you a chef?” I leaned against the counter.
“Since I decided I like my hot chocolate to taste like chocolate and not brown water,” she popped. “Stir that.”
She slid the pot toward me. I took the whisk, stirring while she measured sugar and milk. It felt domestic in a way that messed with my head. My hand in her pot. Her hips near my elbow. Her humming under her breath.
“You used to burn everything. You remember that chicken?”
Her face twisted. “Jabali, please. That chicken was a hate crime. Mrs. Amanda banned me from the stove for a month.”
“She wasn’t wrong. I ate it, though.”
“You did,” she said, quiet now. “You always ate my experiments. Even when they were terrible.”
She glanced up. Our eyes met. Something buzzed between us.
“Cocoa’s done,” she said quickly.
We poured it into big mugs. She sprinkled cinnamon on top like she was trying out for a barista spot.
“You act like this is a coffee shop. You gon’ write my name on it?” I teased.
“I’d spell it wrong on purpose,” she said.
We carried the mugs into the sitting room. The big empty corner by the stairs had a bare tree in a stand now, waiting. In here, though, it was just low lamps, a gas fireplace flickering, and that big gray couch that looked dangerous to sit on with her.
Of course, she sat on it. I took the other end, giving her plenty of space. For now. She tucked one leg under her, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands, mug cradled against her chest. She looked soft. Like she’d finally put her armor down for a minute.
“This is weird,” she said after a sip.
“What is?” I asked.
“Just… this.” She waved a hand between us. “You in my house. Me not being actively angry. Drinking cocoa in front of a tree I let my… our child pick. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“This is progress. You saying ‘our’ is progress. Keep this Kyleigh; I like her.”
“She talks too much,” she said.
I shook my head. “She been quiet for ten years. She allowed some words.”
She looked at me over the rim of her mug. “Why did you really bring me to that Village, Jay? And don’t say it’s just for Aziza. She wasn’t even there.”
I leaned my head back on the couch, watched the fire for a second. Told the truth—half of it, anyway.
“You scared of this time of year. But you stuck here. Up on this hill. Surrounded by it whether you participate or not. I just wanted you to see there’s parts of it that don’t belong to that night.
Some of it is just kids and cocoa and bad speakers.
Thought if you saw it without the pressure, it might not feel so traumatic. ”
She was quiet a long moment.
“That’s very sweet for somebody who threatened to kidnap me three nights ago,” she said wryly.
I chuckled. “I’m a layered man. I got range.”
She smiled, small but real. “I hate it when you’re reasonable.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes it harder to demonize you. Makes me feel… guilty.”
“For what?” I asked.
She stared into her mug. “For not telling you. For letting it get this far.”
I swallowed. My fingers tightened around my own mug.
“I’m pissed off at you. Hurt so bad. But I believe you had reasons,” I said. “I might not like them or agree with them, because you didn’t have to hide her. But I’m not stupid enough to think you did it just to be evil.”
She exhaled, a tired whoosh of breath. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel pretty evil.”
“You not. You dramatic. You anxious. You stubborn as hell. But you not evil.”
Her throat bobbed. “That’s generous.”
“That’s accurate,” I said.
We got quiet again. The fire popped. Somewhere in the house, the old wood settled.
“You ever think about that night?” she asked suddenly.
I glanced at her. “Which one? We got a few.”
“The night we made her. Before it all went left.”
I could answer her truthfully, could tell her that I thought about it, that it fucking haunted me. That I relived it in my dreams, that I still woke up sometimes hard and angry, missing her, with the taste of her on my tongue and the feel of her on my palms.
Instead, I said, “Yeah. I think about it.”
Her eyes were on the flames, but I knew she was seeing something else. Her lip caught between her teeth the way it used to when she was nervous and wanted me to kiss her anyway.
“Sometimes I feel like that girl died. The one who believed in stuff. In us,” she whispered.
“She didn’t die. I saw her a little bit tonight. At the Village. When you were watching them lights. When you were laughing at that little boy trying to square up with Santa. She still in there.”
She turned her head then. Looked at me like she was trying to see what I saw.