Prologue #7
My hand found the Bible on the counter, and I pressed my palm down, whispering without thinking, “No weapon formed…”
He glanced over his shoulder, softened, and reached to tug the blind shut. “Don’t waste scripture on mannequins.”
“He’s still flesh,” I countered, gentler. “Flesh bleed. Flesh bow.”
He breathed a short, appreciative laugh. “You gon’ have me churchy and dangerous.”
“I prefer dangerous and covered,” I teased, easing back toward the mattress.
He hovered at the window a second longer, scanning street sounds the way animals read wind. The Ducati’s idle dropped, then rose, then finally slid away slow, kid performing a smooth exit in front of men who wouldn’t clap. The patrol car drifted along after it like a bored chaperone.
Ro let the blind fall, sat on the edge of the mattress, and scrubbed both hands down his face. “We just got married in a strip-mall chapel,” he muttered toward the floor, voice a low rumble of wonder and threat. “And the first thing the night does is send me a homework assignment.”
I walked over to him, pressed my chin to his shoulder, and wrapped both arms around his ribs from behind, cheek against the warm damp of his shirt. “Then turn it in late,” I pleaded, humor softening the plea. “Let the professor wait.”
He leaned back into me, tension unclenching one notch at a time. “You stay talkin’ me off ledges.”
“You stay building them.” I teased, kissing the line of his jaw where sweat had drawn a world map.
He turned, caught my mouth, kissed with gratitude and something more feral under it, then eased down beside me in the warm dip the two of us had made. The bed breathed our names; the building sighed; the city remembered it had a million other windows to haunt.
“Ro,” I whispered into the near-dark, tracing his chest tattoo with a fingernail—a crown, a date, a line that only he knew the meaning of. “You hear me?”
“I hear everything with you,” he answered, eyelids heavy, breathing slowing by choice.
“You hear Sal?” I nudged, the name like a coin on my tongue. “His warning?”
He rolled to his back, stared at the ceiling where a hairline crack had made a map of somewhere neither of us planned to visit.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” He mouthed it like he’d memorized it without wanting to.
His right hand closed over his ring, fist tightening until the knuckles paled. “I ain’t breakin’ none.”
“Then don’t run,” I breathed, a confession disguised as a dare. “When it gets loud. When it gets ugly. Don’t leave me out here explaining a vow I can’t hold alone.”
He turned his head, met my eyes in the half-light that crawled around the blind’s edge, and the boy in him dropped all the way out so the man could stand there without wobbling.
“On everything I love,” he promised, voice rough as asphalt.
“On Moms. On Grams. On the dead homies. On God if He’s still listening. I won’t run from this.”
“Good,” I whispered, the word settling into my bones like warm soup. “Because I’m not a porch. I’m a house.”
He chuckled, then sobered, reciting under his breath like he always does when he’s sewing a memory to a face. “Nova Rae Zore. August twenty-third. My whole calendar.”
I kissed his forehead the way aunties bless, then the corner of his mouth the way wives keep score. “Roman Zore. October nineteenth. My whole plan.”
We climbed back into bed. We lay there with our breaths learning each other’s cadence, the clock making that tiny plastic tick you only hear when everything else shuts up.
Outside, a bus hissed at the stop, sighed, then labored on.
Somebody hollered “Domino!” two floors down and laughter spilled after it, respectful of the hour.
The apartment upstairs leaked a slow drip into a metal bowl and the sound slid down into our room like a metronome.
He dozed first, stubborn mouth finally losing its fight with sleep.
I watched him until the ceiling turned one shade darker, fingers combing his hair in a rhythm my grandmother had taught me calms storms. My ring pressed a little crescent into my palm, an ache I didn’t mind wearing.
When my eyes finally closed, I fell into the kind of sleep you only get after you hand God both your hands and don’t ask for one back.
A hammering-knock shook the door at what felt like the same breath later—three hard thuds that sent the hallway echoing.
Ro was up in a blink, bare feet soft on linoleum, grabbing jeans from the chair and yanking them on in a way that told me he’d practiced fast mornings.
I slid off the mattress, pulled his overshirt around me, and stood behind him as he checked the peephole.
“Who?” he challenged, voice clipped.
“It’s me, lil’ king,” a familiar voice crooned through the wood. Toothpick Tony. “Open up ‘fore your neighbors report me to the HOA that don’t exist.”
Ro cracked the chain and swung the door. Tony slid in sideways like a chorus line, flashing teeth and trouble. The camcorder hung from his wrist; the red light winked off. He clocked me in the shirt and grinned wider.
“Well, if that ain’t the face of holy matrimony,” he crowed, toothpick bobbing triumphantly. “Congratulations, Mrs. Low-Profile.”
“Keep your volume respectful,” Ro warned with a hand, though his mouth couldn’t hide a smile.
Tony sobered a little, sniffed the air like a hound dog, then lowered his voice to a whisper that still somehow filled the room.
“On a serious note, y’all—White Lie cruised the block again.
He got the little city seal ring out and everything, like he married to the budget.
He made a call after. Cop car circled twice. I ain’t loving it.”
Ro’s jaw worked. “We saw.”
Tony leaned on the counter, flipped the camcorder around in his hands.
“Word is he’s plotting to crash Tino’s backyard session next Friday.
He been braggin’—‘bout to have the sheriffs fold lawn chairs and carry folks out on camera. Make a mess of our little joy.” He rolled the toothpick, eyes sharpening.
“You know, for a viral moment before viral was a word.”
Ro’s gaze cut to me, then back to Tony. “We handle it quiet.”
Tony brightened like a switch had flipped. “Ooh, you got a plan?”
“I got a mouth,” Ro answered, a sly heat curling his words. “And a crowd that loves a clowning. He wanna pull up on the set with sheriffs to my people’s party? I’ma make him famous for the wrong reason. Whole block gon’ know he rides daddy’s name more than his bike.”
Tony barked a laugh, slapped his thigh, then sobered fast. “Aight, but for real—keep your head on a swivel, king. He petty with a budget.”
My fingers found Ro’s elbow, steadying me without making it a thing. “No weapon formed…” I breathed again into his shoulder, so only I caught it.
I pressed two fingers to his chain through his shirt, a thank-you without grammar. “We good,” He promised, eyes on the door, ears on the stairwell, mind already drawing exits and entries and where the jokes would land hardest.
Tony dug in his pocket, set a house key on the counter. “Spare,” he grinned. “In case y’all lock yourselves out like dummies arguing over whose turn it is to buy milk.”
I scooped it, kissed his cheek quick, and he blushed like a kid, then puffed up like a man who likes being necessary. “Aight, I’m out,” he announced, backing toward the door. “Camera’s a vault. I’m Fort Knox. I’m ? —”
“Background,” Ro cut in, one eyebrow up.
“Atmosphere,” Tony corrected with flair, then slid into the hall, tossing a salute. “Long live the wifed-up!”
The door clicked. The building breathed. The quiet came back wearing our names.
Ro turned, leaned his spine to the door, and let his eyes find mine like the room was a compass. “Aight, Mrs. Zore,” he teased, tension unwinding half an inch. “You hungry?”
“Starved,” I smirked, drifting toward the kitchenette. “You got food or you got bachelor optimism?”
He cracked a cabinet and pulled a pack of Top Ramen like a magician with one good trick. “Gourmet,” he bragged, shaking the brick. “Chicken.”
“We fancy,” I giggled, turning the tap. The burner clicked twice, flame finally picking a side. He broke the noodles in the pot and I sprinkled the packet with reverence; we watched steam rise like a blessing that cost thirty-nine cents.
We ate from one bowl with two forks, legs touching on the counter like we were a table for two. He slurped, winced, grinned. I blew on noodles and fed him a bite just to watch him be extra.
“Mrs. Zore,” he crooned through the heat, hand cupping my knee. “I’ma get you a house where this pot got cousins. Cabinets and everything.”
“We already got a house,” I countered, tapping his chest with my fork. “It got heartbeat and a Bible and a window that knows your name.”
He leaned forward and kissed the corner of my mouth, noodles and salt and us. “On hood,” he murmured.
When he set the bowl in the sink, the ring on his finger caught the crooked lamplight and flared once—small, stubborn. He stared at it a long beat, then closed his fist around it like a man making a new kind of weapon.
“Come back to bed,” I coaxed, tugging his belt loop.
“In a sec,” he murmured, eyes flicking to the blind, mind finishing a map. “Just listening if the city gone try me again.”
I slid behind him, wrapped his waist, and laid my cheek between his shoulder blades.
His body softened under my hands as if somebody turned a dial.
Outside, the block turned over in its sleep: a car door thud, a cat yowl, tires hissing on wet somewhere far.
Inside, our breaths synced, and the cheap clock gave up and blinked 1:01 like it had finally made a decision.
“Sleep,” I urged, tugging him toward the mattress with a grin. “The world can’t steal tomorrow if we already used it up tonight.”
He let me pull him, heaviness dropping off him in pieces as he went.
We slid under the blanket and the room exhaled around us, satisfied.
His head found my chest like it had read the blueprint, and I threaded my fingers through his hair while my other hand palmed the ring under my shirt.
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High…” I breathed into his crown.
“Gon’ abide,” he finished, drowsy, already half-floating.
“Under the shadow,” I hummed, kissing his temple.
“Of the Almighty,” he answered, voice a rumble against my ribs, then drifted fully, mouth relaxing, jaw unclenching, hand still wrapped around his ring like a vow you sleep with, so you don’t lose it by accident.
I watched the dark for a minute more, letting the block’s noises take attendance—dice hush, far siren, fridge hum, upstairs drip, a boy laughing into his sleeve on the sidewalk for no reason but being alive.
Somewhere out there, White Lie polished his white toy and checked his reflection in a store window, practicing being important.
Somewhere in here, my husband’s heartbeat kept time.
“Covered,” I whispered to the ceiling. “We’re covered.”
The blind fluttered once, like the night nodded. Then everything settled—the city, the breath, the ring, the house we’d built out of two bodies, one bowl, a Bible, and a promise new enough to squeak but strong enough to stand.
Roman and Nova Zore. It was only the beginning.