Chapter 22
ADAIR
Adair sat on the couch, TV low, half-watching the game highlights.
Ade had knocked out an hour ago mid-sentence, still halfway telling him some rambling story about the rocket launcher they were going to build.
He always ran himself into the ground on Fridays, and Adair didn’t mind.
Truth be told, he preferred when his son was up.
When the noise filled the space. He felt sad when bedtime crept in.
Now the only sound was the TV. Adair wasn’t even watching—just staring.
Thinking. About her. She’d been distant on the phone earlier.
Not cold, just…elsewhere. Distracted. Polite, but not tender.
She used to say his check-ins were performative.
Now that they were genuine, she didn’t even seem to notice.
Adair leaned forward, elbows on knees, phone flipped face down on the table. A knock at the door caused him to sit up, confused for a second as he wasn’t expecting anyone.
When he opened the door, Tate was standing there in a hoodie and sweats, holding a bottle of Hennessey and wearing the kind of expression that didn’t come with good news. His face said you might wanna sit down.
“Ade already sleep?”
“Yea, why?” Adair stepped back letting him walk in.
“Good. 'Cause I’m about to say some shit and ion need his lil snitchin’ ass in my mouth.”
“Don’t talk about my son nigga.”
“Yea whatever,” Tate flagged him off. “How Narri find out that time I put a tracker on her car? His lil ass.”
“Didn’t nobody tell you to do that shit while they was outside!”
Tate walked in like he owned the place, sat the bottle on the counter, and leaned against it like the weight of what he was carrying needed support.
“You and Narri good?” Adair asked. Half-joking. Half-not. He’d lost count of how many times Narri had left Tate, called Sabine crying, showed up with the kids and a car full of bags.
“Would I be here if we were?” Tate cut his eyes.
“Don’t get mad at me, shit.” Adair grabbed two bottle of water. None of the hard stuff yet. Whatever this was felt like a conversation that needed clear heads.
“What happened?”
“I heard Narri on the phone with Sabine before her date.”
Adair’s whole body glitched.
“Be…be…before…her…her…what?”
“Her…her…da…da…date nigga!” Tate mocked him while cracking up.
“What do you mean…date?”
“That nigga she been workin’ wit took her out.”
“What nigga she been workin’ wit?!” Adair exploded. “Why the fuck would you just now tell me she was working with a man?!”
“I just found out too! Some nigga name Garland or some shit—”
“Garland?” Adair’s nose curled in disgust. “Fuck type of pussy name is that?”
“Now Garland a pussy name ‘cause he got ya wife,” Tate jabbed, ducking the swing Adair threw. “Chill nigga!”
“Stop fuckin’ playin’ wit me!”
“Bro…” Tate was hollering.
Adair sat down. His pulse was roaring in his ears. That tight ache was back in his chest, the one he thought had dulled over the last few months. The one that used to keep him pacing the kitchen when Sabine wouldn’t talk to him.
“How the fuck you know she went out with this Garland muhfucka?”
“Narri was on FaceTime with her in the bathroom, getting ready. You know how they are.”
Adair turned to him, jaw tight. “And you just stood there listening like a bitch?”
“Nigga, it’s my woman. I pay all them bills in that house, if I wanna stand in the doorway and admire the fine furnishings, I can do that! I wasn’t tryna hear what I heard though, but once I did? I couldn’t un-hear it.”
“What all she say?” Adair rubbed his face.
“Look, I’m tellin’ you 'cause I know you. You still call her your wife even though them papers been signed.” Adair stayed quiet.
“She didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” Tate added.
“So don’t be on some shit…she was nervous.
Kept saying it felt fast. She even said it felt like cheating on her past or some shit. ”
“Did Narri still tell her to go?”
“Yeah. Told her she deserved to be seen. To be soft or some shit. All that ‘wine and dine’ shit women be talkin’.”
Adair nodded once. “She does…she does deserve that.”
Tate looked at him sideways. “So why you look like somebody took your rib out your chest?”
Adair didn’t answer right away because there wasn’t a clean answer. Because it wasn’t jealousy. Not in the traditional sense. It was that she was ready. Ready for someone else. Ready for a night out, a sexy dress, a new hand to touch the one he used to hold.
“I just…I wasn’t ready to hear that.”
“You thought she was still waiting?”
“No,” Adair said. “I thought maybe…we were finding each other again.”
They both sat there with that.
“Ion think she like completely closed off to you. She told Narri she didn’t even know if she wanted to go,” Tate said. “Almost canceled.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No,” Tate said. “She didn’t.”
“You know what that feels like? Knowing that the first time your wife put on a dress for another man, she had to talk herself through it because part of her was still holding space for me?”
“Do you want her back?” Tate asked. Not pressing. Just real. “Because if you do? Then do but if you just want her because another nigga got her? Let her go, Adair. For real this time.”
Adair looked him dead in the eye. “You ever look at a woman and think, ‘I could’ve been everything if I’d just been ready when she needed me’?”
Tate’s silence was his answer.
Adair ran a hand over his face.
“I’m not mad that she went,” he said. “I’m mad that I gave her every reason to.”
Tate exhaled hard and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “That’s why I came,” he admitted. “Not to start no shit.”
There was something about the way he said it—low, cracked at the edges—that made Adair freeze.
“I been fuckin’ up, bro,” Tate said, staring at the floor.
“Narri told Sabine I hurt her so bad she angry all the time now. Said she love me, but she don’t feel good enough.
” He released a hollow laugh. “You know how that shit feel? To hear the woman you ride for, would die for, the one you had two kids with, think she don’t even measure up?
She think she not good enough for me,” he scoffed at the idea. “That’s how I made her feel.”
Adair didn’t offer a response. He honestly didn’t have one.
“Then,” Tate said, shaking his head slowly, “this the kicker—Narri cried, A. You know it take for somebody to die or somethin’ wit Bine to get that woman to cry.
I don’t even remember her cryin’ while pushin’ out my babies.
I think about how many times she probably cried like that but hide it from me.
I think about how much shit she keep tucked cause what we got is what became normal for us.
Bro…” he shook his head. “We ain’t fucked in a minute.
Told Sabine last time we did, she didn’t even want me to touch her that night but she let me. And now…now she pregnant again.”
“What?” Adair sat up straighter.
“She pregnant,” Tate repeated, barely above a whisper. “With my kid. Again. Givin’ me all that good shit for a third time and…she think she not good enough.”
“Damn,” Adair said.
“Yeah. I ain’t come here to joke. Shit, I ain’t even come here to drink but a nigga always got that Henny on ‘em. I came here cause…”
Tate was doing his best to be vulnerable with his brother in loyalty. With the person who knew him more than anybody in the world because his ways were hurting the person he loved most in the world.
“I didn’t know who else to be…this with. Who else know what it feel like to have a real one? Not just fine. Not just good on paper but a real one and fumble that shit like a rookie.”
“You tryna kick me while I’m down?”
“Nah,” Tate shook his head, and they shared a laugh. “Forreal though, I thought maybe, for once, you and me could sit in this L together. Not like clowns. Just…two men who got loved deep and didn’t know what to do with it until the women we wanted ain’t trust us no more.”
Adair looked at him. Really looked. Tate never got this deep.
Never this raw. He was jokes and jabs. Cocky in the way only a man with too much pain and not enough tools could be.
But right now? He wasn’t wearing any of that.
No bravado. No deflection. Just a man who looked cracked in the middle and finally stopped trying to hide it.
Tate had been through shit. Real shit. He learned to be loud early. Learned to fight so he wouldn’t fold. But love? Loving a woman like Narri? That had exposed something in him he’d spent years trying to pretend didn’t exist.
And now, here he was—standing in Adair’s kitchen, finally naming the weight he’d carried. Finally admitting that maybe he didn’t know how to be the kind of man she deserved, but he wanted to be.
Adair’s respect for him didn’t shrink. It grew because this kind of vulnerability between men wasn’t common.
Especially not their kind of men. Black men taught to eat pain for breakfast and hide everything that didn’t come with a punchline.
To hear Tate say he hurt the woman he loved and didn’t know how to fix it—that hit different.
Adair realized something then: they weren’t just two men dealing with relationship drama.
They were two men who had never been taught how to sit with grief.
How to say, “I’m sorry” and mean it without trying to buy their way back in.
How to hold space for the women who held them down without making it about their own redemption.
He’d known Tate his whole life. They’d fought together. Lied for each other. Damn near raised each other but this was the first time he’d seen this version of him—the version that didn’t need to be the coolest or the hardest in the room.
Just a man who was tired of making the same mistake and calling it love. It honestly made Adair check himself too.
So, he sat in this moment of vulnerability, recognizing that Tate was trying and gave him space to do that. Testing something out in front of him before he tried to fix it with Narri.