Chapter 6
The kickback was buried in the gut of a Crown Heights brownstone basement.
Red and gold Afrobeats posters lined the walls alongside Jay-Z and Bob Marley.
The air was thick with the smell of jollof rice, fried chicken, plantains, and suya.
I even spotted mac and cheese piled next to cornbread on somebody's plate—the whole damn diaspora was up in this bitch.
Ayo stepped through the doorway and immediately caught the vibe, her shoulders rolling to the beat.
"Damn," she said, her voice carrying over the bass. "I forgot how live these parties be."
"Move." Diamond shoved past us without missing a beat. "They got goat meat. I need a plate before these vultures finish it."
We found a corner spot near the back with a low table and mismatched chairs. Somebody had strung fairy lights across the ceiling. I breathed out, feeling lighter than I had earlier. This was the kind of place that made you forget the world outside existed.
I'd barely sat down before a plate appeared in front of me—jollof, plantains, suya, and a heap of spicy jerk wings. I wasn’t even hungry, but I was about to eat anyway.
It would be insulting not to when somebody's auntie was in the back running the show, and she was not playing.
Plates appeared in front of Diamond and Ayo next.
"Eat," Diamond snapped. "Keep y'all mouths busy so you don't fuck up my mood."
Ayo sucked her teeth. I avoided looking at both of their faces and just ate. I wasn’t about to start any more conversations about the past. Diamond had a short fuse, and I wasn't in the mood to pull her off Ayo if shit went sideways.
By the time we finished, Ayo had her head tilted back, laughing at something Diamond had said—acting like what happened in the car hadn’t even happened.
"You're staring," she said, catching my eye.
"Maybe."
“Are you seeing me or Indigo?” she asked, but she was smiling.
I frowned. I hadn’t even thought about Indigo in a minute. That was new.
"Stop fucking with me, Ma," I said, shaking my head.
She laughed in my face. I ignored her.
The DJ flipped the track, and old-school Sean Paul slammed through the speakers. Diamond was up instantly, abandoning us without a word to melt into the sweaty crowd.
Ayo leaned across the table, close enough that I could smell the vanilla and something floral on her skin.
"Come dance with me," she said.
"I don't dance."
"You used to dance."
"Used to."
"So you still can."
I opened my mouth to argue, but she was already pulling me to my feet.
"One song," she said. "That's all I'm asking. My carriage is about to turn into a pumpkin, so we ain't got long. Just do what I want."
"One song."
We stepped into the crush of bodies. The space was small, dark, and intimate in the way only basements and late nights know how to be.
I felt like I was in high school again. Everybody around us moved like the music owed them something.
Ayo found the pocket immediately, rolling her hips in slow, unhurried circles, her eyes locked on mine like she was daring me to look away.
She was drunk, high, or maybe she was just that free around me still.
Her hands slid up to my shoulders. Mine found her waist. We swayed, the rhythm threading through both of us, the fairy lights smearing gold across her cheekbones.
“You miss it?” she asked, her voice low enough that only I could hear it over the bass.
“Miss what?”
“Us.”
I looked down at her.
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
She smiled, satisfied, like I’d just handed her something she’d been waiting for.
“Good.”
We kept moving, bodies pressing closer, the music wrapping around us like silk.
She laughed, her forehead almost touching mine. “You good?”
“I’m great.”
Her fingers tightened on the back of my neck. I felt the soft drag of her nails, and heat crept up my spine. The music dropped into something even slower and heavier—R&B now.
Ayo rolled her hips deeper into me, matching every bassline like she was trying to sink inside the song.
I didn’t pull back. Couldn’t. The space between us disappeared completely.
Every time she moved, the hard line of my dick pressed against the soft heat of her stomach through both of our clothes.
She felt it, too. I knew the second she did.
Her breath hitched against my collarbone, and her hands slid lower, gripping my waist like she needed something to hold onto.
The fairy lights smeared gold across her face. Her lips parted. She looked up at me through half-lidded eyes, her voice low enough that it almost got lost under the music.
“You wanna fuck?”
I nodded. It was the only thing I wanted to do at that point.
We didn’t say anything else. We just looked at each other for one long second, and then she took my hand and led me through the crowd.
The bathroom was at the end of a narrow hallway—a single stall with cracked tile. She locked the door behind us. The bass from outside still thumped through the walls.
Ayo turned, backed up against the sink, and hopped up onto it in one smooth motion, legs open, eyes on me.
The fluorescent light above us hummed. I stepped between her thighs, my hands sliding under her top, feeling the warm skin of her waist, her ribs, the weight of her breasts.
She pulled my shirt up and over my head, and I did the same with hers.
Then my mouth was on her neck, her collarbone, and the space between her breasts while she worked my belt open.
She pushed my pants down just far enough. I shoved her skirt up around her hips and dragged her panties to the side. She was already wet when my fingers found her. She bit down on a soft sound and pulled me closer by the waistband of my boxers.
“I ain’t got a condom,” I muttered. Out of all the women I’d fucked, Diamond was the only one I’d ever gone raw with, and that was strictly off the sheer length of our history. I wasn’t trying to leave kids with just anybody.
She didn’t hesitate. She just locked her ankles tighter around me and rolled her hips.
“Just pull out. I trust you.”
No more needed to be said.
I lined up at the entrance and slid in slow—feeling every tight, velvet inch of her stretch around me—then drove deep once I was buried to the hilt.
Her pussy was still ridiculously tight. She gasped right into my mouth, her legs clamping around my waist. The sink groaned under our weight.
I dug my grip into her thighs and set a hard, steady pace, matching the distant bass leaking through the door.
Skin slapping skin. The wet sound of it echoing.
Her nails sank into my shoulders every time I bottomed out.
“Fuck—” she breathed, her forehead dropping against mine.
I kept going harder. Her heels dug into the small of my back. I could feel her getting tighter, closer.
I fucked her harder, one hand braced on the mirror behind her head, the other gripping her hip so I could fuck her the way the night demanded.
She came first—quietly, shaking, her face buried in my neck.
I followed a few strokes later, pulling out at the last second and nutting across her stomach with a low groan that got lost under the bass.
We stayed like that for a long minute—breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, sweat cooling on our skin. The music outside kept going like nothing had happened.
I finally pulled back just enough to look at her. Her mascara was smeared. Her eyes were still half-closed.
“I gotta call an Uber and go to the airport,” she said.
I nodded. No disappointment. No questions about what this meant or if I’d see her again.
We both knew the deal. This wasn’t a second chance.
It wasn’t us trying to rebuild. We’d just spent one night wandering through the ashes of what we used to be—touching the parts that still felt good and leaving the rest right where it died.
“Aight,” I said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
By the time we came out of the bathroom, the party was still going like we hadn’t disappeared. Diamond spotted us from across the room. Her eyes dropped to Ayo’s wrinkled skirt, then moved to my open collar.
She shook her head.
“Nasty,” she mouthed.
I smiled and kept walking.
Ayo ordered the Uber while we stood outside. The sky had started changing, the black softening into that dirty blue. Music still vibrated through the brownstone walls behind us, but out here, the street was quiet.
Her ride was four minutes away.
“You feel better?” she asked.
I paused, checking in with myself. Indigo still held real estate inside my head—that hadn’t vanished overnight. But it didn’t feel like a ton of bricks sitting on my chest anymore. I could finally breathe around her ghost.
“Better than I have in months.”
“Good.”
Her Uber turned onto the block and slowed beside us.
I opened the back door for her. Before she got in, she rested her hand against my chest.
“I think you should call Indigo.”
My body stiffened. “She told me to leave her alone.”
“Then call her once. Not to win her. Not to make her feel guilty. Tell her about the warehouse.”
I looked away. “Why?”
“Because she deserves to know the real reason you kept showing up for her.” Ayo paused. “And you deserve to stop carrying a memory she doesn’t even know the two of you share.”
“You think it’ll change a damn thing?”
“Maybe not.” She shrugged softly. “Closure doesn’t always rewrite the ending, Chinedu. Sometimes it just helps you make peace with it.”
The driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror.
Ayo slid into the leather interior. “Take care of yourself, Chine.”
“You too, Ma.”
She pulled the door shut and rolled the window down halfway. “And grow your locs back. This little heartbreak fade ain’t you.”
I couldn't help the laugh that burst out of me.
The Uber pulled away from the curb. I stood there until its taillights disappeared at the end of the block.
My phone felt heavy in my pocket.
For the first time in months, I didn’t want to call Midnight and ask her to choose me.
I just wanted to tell her the truth.