Chapter 13
NOVA
The house felt different when I walked into it that night.
No one else would have noticed it. The furniture hadn’t moved.
The city lights outside the pane just above the front door hit the walls the same way it always did at that hour, catching the edge of the bench in the entryway, softening as it reached the hallway.
Nothing had been rearranged, added, or taken away, but something in me had shifted just enough that the room didn’t receive me the same way.
I stood there longer than I needed to, keys still in my hand, listening to the quiet settle around me. The show was still in my body, the way certain moments lingered in your chest long after the music stopped. The way he held me had done that.
I set my keys down on the table and walked up the three flights of stairs.
The photograph was where I had left it, leaning against the wall behind the couch, angled slightly because the floor there wasn’t perfectly even.
I had meant to hang it months ago. I didn’t because I told myself countless times that I needed to decide where it belonged, which wall made the most sense, what it should sit beside.
All of that had sounded reasonable at the time. It was also not the truth.
The truth was that once I hung it, it would no longer be waiting. It would be placed, fixed, part of the house in a way that didn’t shift depending on how I felt when I looked at it. I had not been ready for that kind of certainty.
I crouched down and picked it up.
The large frame was cool in my hands. The mounted print inside it was a beautiful black-and-white I found and had blown up because to me it always felt like art.
In it, my mother stood behind the table, one ear covered by headphones, her hand resting on the vinyl as if she were mid-decision.
She wasn’t looking at the camera. She never did in pictures like this.
She was looking out, with that face she made when she was reading the room in front of her, already moving ahead of whatever was happening.
That was the version of her I had been avoiding. Not the mother or the woman I had lost. It was the one who knew exactly what she was doing.
I set the frame back down carefully and straightened up as the third floor pulled at me before I could talk myself out of it at this late hour. Probably because I couldn’t sleep after a night like the one I had.
Before long, I moved into the middle of the room.
For a while, I didn’t touch anything. I sat on the floor with everything spread out around me and let myself see it the way it actually was.
Not done or wrong. Just waiting on me to decide what belonged together.
My records were still separated from hers in places, like I hadn’t committed.
I reached for a stack and thumbed through it slowly, stopping on the ones that felt worn in a way mine didn’t.
I didn’t have to check the labels to know which were hers.
My mother’s collection had always been organized in a way that made sense to her and no one else.
I could follow it if I stayed close enough to how she thought, if I let memory guide me instead of logic.
Mine had developed differently, built from how I listened, how I worked through sound when I needed to understand it.
I had kept them separate without ever saying I was doing that.
It had felt respectful. It had also kept something from moving.
I reached for the first record within arm’s reach, one of hers, and turned it over in my hands.
I could remember a time when she had played it, the way she would set it down, the way she would let the opening stretch just long enough before bringing something else in underneath it.
I knew how she used it. I also knew how I would.
That was the part that had been sitting just out of reach.
I placed it on the shelf, not where she would have put it or where I would have put it before, but somewhere between those two instincts. I didn’t pause after that. I kept going.
One record, then another. Hers, then mine, then hers again, until the distinction stopped mattering and my hands moved without checking which pile I was pulling from.
I adjusted as I went, shifting things slightly when they didn’t sit right, stepping back occasionally to see how it was coming together without trying to perfect it.
Time passed without marking itself. At some point I leaned back against the wall and looked at what I had done.
The shelves no longer read as two collections occupying the same space. They read as one conversation, layered, uneven in places, but intentional in a way I hadn’t allowed before.
I sat with that for a while. Then I looked over at the photograph that was still leaning where I had left it. This time, I didn’t hesitate.
I picked up my phone and typed before I could edit it into something safer.
Feel like coming by to hang a picture?
I hit send and set the phone down on the coffee table, forcing myself not to pick it back up immediately.
He didn’t take long.
By the time I heard the buzzer downstairs, I had moved the frame to the center of the room, cleared the space around the wall where it would go, and put on Who Is Jill Scott?
, something about that album always settling things.
I wiped my hands on the back of my jeans without thinking, then crossed to the door.
He stood there with a bag in one hand, his shoulders relaxed in a way that would have read as casual to anyone who didn’t know him. I knew better. There was a slight hold in the way he stood, like he had already considered what this was and had decided to meet it without naming it first.
“Whaddup,” he said.
“Hey.”
I stepped back to let him in. He closed the door behind him and followed me up the steps, his gaze moving around the space, him taking in the small changes without commenting on them. He always noticed more than he said.
“What’s in the bag?” I asked, nodding toward it.
“Hammer. Level. Hooks,” he said. “You know, everything one would need for a midnight repair job.”
I laughed. “You came prepared. Just happy you came through this late.”
He glanced at me briefly. “You asked.”
That was all he offered. He set the bag down and picked up the frame without asking.
“Wow. Look at her,” he said.
I nodded, watching him instead of the picture. He took his time with it.
“She looks like she’s in the middle of something,” he said.
“She always was,” I replied. “That’s the only place she didn’t have to be anything else.”
“Where do you want it?”
I moved back a few steps. “Centered on that wall.”
He positioned it, holding it in place while I adjusted from across the room.
“A little to the left,” I said.
He shifted it.
“Back the other way.”
He adjusted again.
“That’s it,” I said.
He stayed where he was, the frame still in his hands, waiting.
I didn’t speak right away. The room had gone quiet in a way that didn’t feel empty.
“She always liked you,” I said finally.
He glanced back at me then, something softer in his expression than I was used to seeing without him covering it. He marked the wall with the pencil, measured once, then reached into the bag for hooks.
“Deion,” I said.
He paused, turning slightly.
“Yeah?”
I took a breath, not because I didn’t know what I was about to say, but because I did.
“I’ve been… managing something,” I said slowly. “Calling it other things so I didn’t have to call it what it is.”
He set the tools down carefully, giving me his full attention.
“What is it?” he asked.
I met his eyes.
“I didn’t want to lose you,” I said. “So I kept everything in a place where nothing could touch it. Including me.”
The words settled between us without needing anything added to them.
Somewhere behind us, Jill had been playing long enough to disappear into the room, her voice low and steady, the kind of song that took its time and felt like something real.
He looked at me for a long moment, something shifting in his face that he didn’t try to hide this time.
“I’ve been right here,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
That was the first time I’d said it without adjusting it into something smaller. Deion stepped closer, just enough to close the distance that had been there for too long.
His fingers settled along my jaw, warm and steady, his thumb just beneath my ear like he already knew the place that would quiet everything else.
I felt the contact travel further than it should have, down my neck and into my chest, like my body had been waiting for this exact touch and recognized it before I could.
“Nova,” he said, my name low and sure in his mouth.
“Yeah.”
I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t need to. Jill’s voice curved behind him, “He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat)” playing low, soft, and sure, and I felt it settle somewhere I hadn’t been letting myself look at too closely.
He closed the rest of the distance between us with a kind of patience that made it clear he wasn’t guessing, wasn’t hoping.
He knew where this was going and had decided to meet me there.
When his mouth found mine, it didn’t rush, didn’t press, just settled, and something deep in me answered it immediately.
There it was. This moment was not imagined and nothing to be filed away for later. It was very much as real as anything could get.
The shape of him this close, the span of his hand shifting from my jaw to the back of my neck, holding me there without pressure, just enough to keep me from pulling away even if I’d tried. I didn’t… There was no way in hell I would ever want to.
My hands found his shirt, fingers curling into the fabric like I needed something solid to anchor myself to, and he felt that, a quiet exhale slipping between us before he kissed me deeper.
Still not rushed. Still not overwhelming.
Just right in a way that made everything else fall out of the room.
Like we had both arrived somewhere we’d been circling for years, and neither of us felt the need to move past it now that we were finally standing in it.
When I pulled back, it wasn’t far. My forehead rested against his chest, my breath uneven in a way I wasn’t interested in fixing.
“That okay?” he asked, softer this time.
A small breath left me, something close to a laugh but not quite.
“Do it again,” I said.
It landed between us like it was the only decision worth making. Jill’s voice carried on behind us, smooth and sure, like a love that already knew it didn’t have to hurry to be right.
I felt the shift again, the one we had been holding off for years, the way his hand moved from my jaw to the curve of my ass, the way my hands found parts of him I had never explored before now without stopping to think about where they were going.
We had been here longer than we let ourselves admit.