Chapter 7
We started eating together after meetings. Nothing romantic. Just food and quiet. Sitting on library steps or in my car with the engine running. Sometimes she talked about her baby sister, Chanel, brilliant and fragile in ways Kenya tried to hide. Sometimes she talked about her brother inside.
She never cried.
But her voice tightened when she spoke about injustice, about men who made deals and walked free while others rotted.
“I don’t believe in fate,” she said once. “I believe in infrastructure. If I build the right one, nobody I love will fall through the cracks as Jared did.”
The look in her eyes was so hopeful. She wasn’t Kenya the soldier, the Queen Pin, or my business partner. I saw the engineer, the chocolate beauty whom I had grown feelings for, pouring her heart out. I wanted to promise her things then.
But I couldn’t because in this life there are no promises, only day to day. And a Nigga couldn’t front, I enjoyed spending my days with YaYa.
Promises made too early always turned into liabilities.
Instead, I showed up, again and again.
Until one night, I realized I was checking my phone for her messages before making sure my mom or X was good.
That was the moment I knew I was fucked. Not because I wanted her body. But because I wanted her mind.
And that was more dangerous.
She started dating again.
Not seriously, just existing in spaces where men circled at the college.
I hated how easy it looked for them to make her laugh. She had a lightness with them that I hated she let them see.
One night, she came to a meeting late, cheeks flushed from the cold, but her energy was fucked up.
“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said too quickly.
I didn’t push.
But later, when we were alone, she said quietly, “You ever feel like people only want the parts of you they can understand?”
I looked at her. “What you mean?”
“I broke up with Tony.”
I looked at her, confused. “Who the fuck is that?”
She laughed. “Don’t act like you don't keep tabs on me. Everyone wants something from me that I just can’t give. I don’t let them stay long.”
I felt that.
“I’m with you, bestie, that’s why all these bitches can ever get from me is hard dick.”
She leaned in closer to me and pressed her forehead on top of mine. I could smell her sweet, fruity perfume and see the rise and fall of her chest. As much as I wanted to bring my lips to hers, I didn't.
I couldn’t cross the line.
Because what we were building mattered more than what I wanted.
And because some things, once broken, couldn't be engineered back together.
But every time she leaned over my shoulder to point something out on her tiny ass dorm room TV screen, and every time she called me bestie, I was reminded that I belonged to her.
Every time she trusted me with something fragile, like reading me a letter from her brother, Jared, or sharing all her hopes and dreams for her little sister, Channy, with me, I felt the cost of restraint.
And I understood something I hadn’t before, that loving Kenya wasn’t going to be about possession.