Chapter 3 #3
“Come on.”
I slowed down when he turned at the corner instead of continuing toward Loretta’s. “The diner is that way.”
“I know where the fuck yo’ mama’s diner at, Lacey.”
“Then where are you going?”
Smoke kept walking. “You ask too many damn questions.”
“And you don’t answer enough of them.” I stood there for another second before following him anyway. “Mama’s food is getting cold.”
“She’ll live.”
I caught up with him and glanced back toward Main Street. “Where are you taking me?”
“Right up here.”
We walked another block before he turned onto a street I hadn’t been down since I came home.
The houses were farther apart here, with bigger yards and old trees lining both sides of the road.
I recognized the neighborhood before I recognized anything else, and my steps slowed as memories started filling in the things that had changed.
I looked ahead again, and then I stopped. “Wait.”
Smoke took another step before turning back toward me. I stared at the house across the street. It was bigger than I remembered, or maybe it only looked that way because nearly everything about it had changed. The faded siding was gone, replaced by dark siding with warm wood across the front.
A wide porch stretched almost the entire length of the house, and new black windows made the old two-story place look nothing like the house I remembered sneaking into after dark.
The yard was clean and landscaped, the driveway had been redone, and there was a detached garage farther back that definitely hadn’t been there when we were younger.
I looked at Smoke. “Is this your mother’s house?”
“Mine now.”
I looked back at it. “You… Sherrod, you own it?”
“Yeah.”
For some reason, that surprised me more than the hardware store had. I stepped off the curb with him and crossed the street, taking in more of the house the closer we got. “I thought you would’ve had this place knocked down after… you know.”
“Thought about it.”
“What changed your mind?”
Smoke glanced at the house before looking at me. “Couldn’t fix my mother, but I figured I could fix the house all the bad shit started in. So, I did that.”
We walked up the driveway toward the house, and I kept looking around at everything he had changed. “When did you do all of this?” I asked.
“Been doin’ shit to it for years.”
“You did it yourself?”
“Most of it. My crew helped, though.”
Smoke walked onto the porch and reached into his pocket for his keys.
I stayed near the bottom step, still looking at the house.
I remembered sitting on this same porch with Keyana in my lap while she played in my hair.
I remembered Anthony running in and out of the front door with Smoke yelling at him to stop slamming it.
I remembered nights when Smoke would walk me outside and stand right where I was standing now because neither of us wanted me to leave yet.
“You wanna see inside?”
I looked up at him. “Inside?”
“Nah, Lace. The fuckin’ roof.”
I rolled my eyes, but the smile came before I could stop it. “You’re so damn mean.”
I should’ve told him no. My mother was waiting on her food, Smoke had work to get back to, and there was no reason for me to walk into a house carrying that many memories with me.
I went up the steps anyway. Smoke unlocked the door and stepped aside so I could walk in first. The second I crossed the threshold, I stopped again.
The house was beautiful. The old cramped living room was gone.
Smoke had opened the entire first floor, and sunlight came through large windows that hadn’t existed before.
The floors were dark hardwood, the walls were warm and clean, and a wide opening led into a kitchen that looked nothing like the one his mother used to stand in, yelling at everybody to stay out of her way.
A large island sat in the middle, with new cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and enough space for several people to move around without bumping into each other.
I slowly turned around, mouth dropped in awe. “Smoke.”
“What?”
“You really did all of this to this house?” I walked farther into the living room and looked toward the staircase.
Even that had been rebuilt. I could still remember the old carpet covering those stairs and exactly which step squeaked when I tried to sneak upstairs without waking anybody. “The stairs used to be over there.”
“Moved ’em when I opened this side up.”
“And that wall was there.”
“Took it down.”
I looked toward the kitchen. “Your mother used to hate when we sat at that table while she cooked.”
Smoke gave a quiet laugh. “She hated when we did anything in her kitchen as kids.”
“She used to tell me I was in the way when I was sitting completely still.”
“Then turn around and make you a plate.”
I smiled because that was true. His mother had been complicated in ways I hadn’t fully understood when I was younger.
There had been days when she was laughing, cooking, and fussing at everybody like any other mother, and there had been days when Smoke and I came home to find her passed out or gone completely.
Somehow, both versions of her lived in my memories of this house.
I felt pain tighten in my chest, and I turned away before Smoke could see it and walked back toward the living room.
The house was different enough that I should’ve been able to separate it from what I remembered, but I couldn’t.
Everywhere I looked, I saw pieces of the life that used to happen here underneath everything Smoke had built over it.
My eyes started burning before I could stop them.
“Lace.”
“I’m fine.” I blinked, setting my mother’s food on the kitchen island.
“Don’t bullshit me.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You also used to be a better liar.”
I let out a shaky laugh and wiped underneath one eye before anything could fall. “Shut up.”
He came closer, but he stopped a few feet away from me. “What’s up?”
I looked around the room again because looking at him felt harder.
Taking a breath, trying to get myself together, I replied, “I think I’m just realizing how much I missed.
” His face changed slightly, but he didn’t say anything.
“I saw Cole Hardware this morning, and I already knew about the construction company. Then I come here and see this.” I looked around again.
“You built an entire life while I was gone, Smoke.”
“Fuck you thought I was doin’?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head because that was the problem.
“I never really let myself think about it. Whenever I pictured you, you were still here. You were working construction and taking care of Anthony and Keyana. I knew time was passing, obviously, but in my head, I think I left you exactly where you were when I left.”
Smoke stared at me for a moment. “That’s fucked up.”
I looked at him. “I’m not saying I thought you were sitting around waiting for me.”
“Good, ’cause I damn sure wasn’t.”
I rubbed my forehead. “This is exactly why talking to you gets on my nerves. You decide what I mean before I finish saying it.”
“And you still take the long way ‘round sayin’ shit when you know exactly what the fuck you mean.”
“Fine.” I looked around the house again before meeting his eyes. “I thought you stayed in Bellhaven because you had to.”
“I did.” His answer caught me off guard.
Smoke folded his arms across his chest. “At first, my siblings needed somebody. I wasn’t leavin’ them, but that ain’t why I’m still here, Solace.
” I stayed quiet while he kept talking, eyes still on me.
“More ain’t the same for everybody. You wanted to go see shit, make money, live somewhere bigger, and do whatever the fuck you felt like doin’.
You did that. Ain’t nothin’ wrong wit’ it. ”
“I know.”
“But don’t look at what I built here like this is some shit I ended up wit’ ‘cause I couldn’t get nothin’ else.” His voice stayed calm, which somehow made it harder to hear. “I ain’t fuckin’ stuck nowhere. I live here ‘cause I wanna live here.”
My eyes burned again, and this time I didn’t bother pretending they didn’t. “I know. I just wish I’d known sooner.”
His jaw tightened. “How the fuck was you supposed to know anything ‘bout a nigga when you stopped answerin’ my calls?”
I had known this conversation was coming from the second I saw him standing inside the diner.
Maybe I had known it before I ever came back to Bellhaven.
There had never been a version of me walking into Smoke’s life again without eventually having to answer for how completely I had walked out of it.
“I’m sorry.”
Smoke was quiet for so long that I finally looked at him. “Yo’ ass coulda told me you needed space. You coulda told me you ain’t wanna do long distance no more. You coulda told me anything.” He shook his head. “You just ghosted a nigga.”
“I know what I did.”
“I need to know why.”
“Because every time you called me, I wanted to come home!” The words came out louder than I meant them to, and I pushed away from the wall, wiping angrily at the tears that had already started falling.
“I would be doing fine until I saw your name on my phone. Then I’d hear your voice, and suddenly I didn’t give a fuck about anything except getting back here to you. ”
Smoke went completely still as I spilled every emotion out of me right then and there.
“I’d go to work, meet people, do something new, and feel like I was finally building the life I’d been talking about forever. Then my phone would ring, I’d hear your voice, and I would miss you so fucking much that none of the other shit mattered.”
Smoke didn’t interrupt me. He stayed quiet and let me get everything out, watching me the whole time without giving me much of a reaction.