12. KO #2
She grabbed Dakoda’s face and kissed his forehead before heading back toward the door.
I opened it for her, and she stepped across the hall toward her apartment.
I watched long enough to see exactly which unit she went into before my eyes dropped to the box of groceries sitting beside Lyrius’s door.
Dude must have come back and left it, and my jaw tightened immediately.
Yeah . . . Lyrius and I were definitely going to have a conversation about niggas playing house around my damn son.
“Mama!” Dakoda shouted, making me turn toward the apartment door just as Lyrius pushed inside, balancing a cardboard food box against her chest. “You back!” Little man hopped down from the chair so fast he almost slipped.
He took off running toward her while I stood over the stove, stirring the spaghetti sauce.
“Hey, baby.” Lyrius laughed tiredly as he wrapped himself around her legs. “You had fun with daddy today?”
“The best!” Dakoda grinned. “We went to the park and got dinosaur nuggets, and I got to feed Ali, and we cleaned up all my toys!”
“That definitely sounds like the best day.” She looked over at me and smiled softly, then her eyes moved around the apartment.
“Thanks for helping him clean up.”
“No problem.”
“Somebody left these outside the door. You know who they came from?” She adjusted the box in her arms before setting it down on the counter.
I glanced down at the groceries like I didn’t know exactly where they came from. “Nah.”
“Mama, we making spaghetti!” Dakoda interrupted proudly.
Lyrius smiled. “You cooking?”
“It’s just spaghetti,” I muttered.
“The only thing you know how to cook,” she teased lightly.
I sucked my teeth under my breath, but she wasn’t wrong.
I wasn’t a cooking type of nigga. My foster mama made sure Jaylen and I knew enough to survive in the kitchen before she passed, though.
We knew how to make spaghetti and breakfast food, just enough to feed ourselves whenever Pops got stuck at the gym late training fighters.
“Well, thank y’all,” she said while pulling her cardigan off. “I don’t know what I was going to do for dinner, ’cause I’m exhausted.”
“You look exhausted,” I replied before I could stop myself. Her eyes lifted toward mine for a second before she looked away.
“You mind if I shower before dinner?”
“Nah, go ahead. I got Dakoda.” I nodded toward the grocery box that was going straight into the damn trash. “And I’ll take care of that.”
“Aight.”
“Hurry back.” Dakoda grabbed onto her hand before she could disappear down the hallway.
“I will.” She smiled down at him, and I watched her walk off, ass bouncing in her scrubs before turning back toward the stove.
I opened the fridge, looking for the shredded cheese and noticed the stack of bills pinned beneath a magnet on the side.
It was the standard shit. Electric. Internet.
Rent reminder. None of them were overdue, but the shit still didn’t sit right with me.
I pulled my phone out and snapped pictures of every last one before texting them to Jaylen.
Me:
Handle these.
Jaylen:
Damn.
You over there paying bills already?
I snorted. This nigga.
Jaylen:
You gon’ be laying pipe next.
Me:
Nigga shut up and pay them. Six months.
Jaylen:
Bet. I got it.
I shoved my phone back into my pocket right as Dakoda popped up beside me again.
“Daddy, did you grab the cheese?”
“I got it, little man.”
The two of us went back over to the stove and finished dinner together.
I even popped some garlic bread in the oven while he talked nonstop about dinosaurs and how Ali was gonna need his own bed now that he was living in his room.
It was a cool little time, one that I had never had with my own parents.
“Mama gonna be so happy,” Dakoda said proudly while carrying napkins to the table.
Something about hearing how excited he was to do something special for his moms did some weird shit to my chest. By the time Lyrius came back out, Dakoda and I were already sitting at the table with food on our plates.
My eyes lifted toward her automatically.
Damn. I watched as she made it to the table.
Those little shorts she had on barely contained her thighs. The shower had relaxed her some.
“Mama,” Dakoda started immediately, “Daddy let me use extra cheese. I hope you like it.”
“Slow down before you choke.” She laughed while sitting down beside us.
I sat there, eating and half listening to Dakoda ramble while watching Lyrius twirl spaghetti around her fork.
She looked comfortable here, like this was normal, like maybe this could’ve always been normal if life hadn’t gone left five years ago.
Dakoda made it through maybe six bites before shoving his plate away dramatically.
“I’m full. Can I go watch TV?”
Lyrius barely looked up from her plate. “Yeah, baby. Go ahead.”
“That boy barely ate,” I muttered.
“That’s normal for him,” she replied. “He snacks more than he actually eats meals.”
“Got it.” I nodded my head, and Dakoda emptied his food into the trash, put his plate into the dishwasher, and rushed off to his room without needing to be told.
The second Dakoda disappeared down the hallway, I leaned back in my chair and looked across the table at Lyrius, just watching her.
There was a time when I was crazy about this woman.
I thought together, we could have it all.
Now, I didn’t know what was appropriate to feel.
“So your little boyfriend stopped by earlier.” The words escaped my mouth before I could even give them thought.
“What boyfriend?”
“Dark-skinned, dread-head nigga.”
“Oh. You talking about Mekhi?” She blinked before realization crossed her face.
“Yeah. That nigga.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” She laughed lightly.
“You been on dates with him, though?”
“No.”
“Well, y’all watching movies together with my son. This how you moving? You having random niggas around my son?”
“He’s my neighbor,” she said slowly. “Not that I owe you an explanation, but he fixed my sink one day when maintenance was taking forever. I was watching one of his favorite movies, and he stayed afterward and finished it. Hardly a date.”
I leaned back in my chair. “That nigga wants to fuck, though. Look. Just tell yo’ niggas to cool it on stopping by. Your baby daddy live here now.”
“Why are you acting like this?”
“Acting like what?”
“Like some jealous-ass baby daddy.”
I opened my mouth to argue and immediately realized I didn’t actually have an argument, because she wasn’t wrong.
All day, I’d been telling myself it was about Dakoda, about knowing who was around my son.
But it was bothering me that some nigga had been comfortable enough to sit in her apartment and watch movies with her.
Shit was actually eating my ass up because I didn’t want Lyrius, so why was I jealous?
“Well, I am your baby daddy, so.” I looked directly at her, and she stared at me for a second before looking back down at her plate.
“I don’t have random men around Dakoda. Mehki is the only man he’s been around, and he’s not around him like that.
He’s only been around him a couple of times because we live in the same building.
” Her neck was rolling, and her voice was slightly raised.
Shit. I had offended her. And honestly, I wasn’t trying to.
I just wanted her to tell dude not to come back to this door.
“My bad,” I muttered. “I ain’t trying to come in here criticizing your shit. Seeing another man be familiar with my son when I’m just now getting to know him triggered me.”
“Yeah, okay.” Her response came out dry as hell, and I sighed. I didn’t want us to start this co-parenting shit off on worse terms than it already was.
“I paid the bills for six months,” I blurted, like it was some kind of peace offering.
“Why would you do that?” Her fork stopped halfway to her mouth.
“’Cause I wanted to.”
“KO, you can’t just pay my bills.”
“Yes, I can.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Well, it’s already done.” I stared at her, daring her to keep protesting. “What I look like letting my son struggle while I’m comfortable?”
“We are not struggling.”
“Maybe not. But you working more hours than you spending with our son.”
“KO—”
“I want my son to have a mother that ain’t in survival mode.” I cut her off calmly. “You done built a nice little life down here. I get it, but I’m here now, so shit gon’ change. Get used to it.”
She just stared at me.
“And stop picking up so many shifts,” I added. “You ain’t gotta work that hard no more.” Her mouth opened and closed like she wanted to argue but decided against it.
“I’m finna go see what little man watching before he falls asleep with the TV on.
” I pushed away from the table and headed down the hallway toward Dakoda’s room.
I didn’t know how staying at Lyrius’s place was going to work, but I guess it was just one of the many things we were going to to have to figure out.