5. YAHMARIA BAPTISTE #2
Scrolled past a photo of someone’s vacation in Bali. Paradise. Freedom. Everything I didn’t have anymore.
Footsteps on the stairs.
Syx.
I didn’t look up from my phone. Just kept scrolling. Kept sipping. Kept pretending the body on the floor didn’t exist.
“What the fuck?”
His voice was loud in the quiet kitchen. Shocked. Then—
He started laughing.
Actually laughing.
“Yooooo,” he said, his voice full of dark amusement. “Yooooo, Amai gon’ be mad you killed his favorite hoe.”
I shrugged. Took another sip of wine.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I said flatly. “The bitch was out of uniform.”
Syx laughed harder, bending over like it was the funniest shit he’d ever heard. Like I hadn’t just killed someone in this kitchen. Like there wasn’t blood on the tile. I hated being back in this shit show.
“Out of uniform!” he wheezed. “Man, you wild as hell.”
I refilled my glass. The bottle was almost empty now. I’d need another one. There was always another bottle in Amai’s wine cellar. He had everything. Everything except what he actually wanted.
Syx pulled out a chair and sat down across from me, still grinning like we were old friends catching up over brunch instead of sitting next to a dead body.
“So, what we doing?” he asked. “We calling somebody? We moving the body? We—”
“We not doing shit,” I interrupted. “Amai can handle it when he gets home.”
Syx leaned back in his chair, studying me. The grin faded slightly. Not completely, but enough that I could see something shift in his face.
“Aight, real talk,” he said. “Why you really here?”
I didn’t look up from my phone. Didn’t want to see the question in his eyes.
“What you mean?”
“I mean you ain’t been around in a minute,” Syx said. “And now you back, moving your shit in, killing the help—” He gestured toward Layla’s body. “Acting like you own the place. So, what’s the play?”
I finally looked at him. His eyes were sharp. Sharper than I expected from someone who spent most of his time high or in therapy or both.
“It’s grown folks’ business,” I said.
Syx held my gaze for a moment. Then nodded slowly, like he understood something I wasn’t saying.
“I’m grown in all the ways that matter but aight.”
He didn’t push. That was one thing about Syx—he knew when to leave shit alone.
When to let people keep their secrets. He’d gotten finer since the last time I saw him, but he was off limits.
Syx and I flirted from time to time, but it was harmless.
His ass wouldn’t be twenty-one for another month and a half.
It would be inappropriate to cross a line with him. I wasn’t that much of a hoe.
I went back to scrolling. He drummed his fingers on the table.
The silence stretched between us. Not uncomfortable. Just… empty.
“You still having them night terrors?” I asked suddenly.
Syx blinked. Looked at me like he wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
“What?”
“The night terrors,” I repeated. “You still getting them?”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I been having them. But I’m back on my meds now, so I ain’t had issues for like a week.”
I nodded. Took another sip of wine.
“That’s good,” I said quietly.
“Yeah.”
“You seeing that therapist Amai got you?” I asked.
“Yeah. Twice a week.”
“It helping?”
Syx shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. She keep asking me about my mama and shit, and I don’t really wanna talk about that, but—” He stopped. “Yeah. It’s helping.”
I took another sip of wine. Studied him over the rim of the glass.
He looked tired. Like someone who’d been fighting his own demons for so long he’d forgotten what peace felt like. I recognized that look because I saw it in the mirror every morning.
“You deserve to be okay,” I said quietly.
Syx stared at me. For the first time since he’d sat down, the grin was completely gone from his face.
“You good?” he asked. “Like for real. I hate the way Amai treats you.”
I didn’t answer. Just refilled my glass.
The front door opened.
Footsteps in the hallway.
Amai.
Syx’s eyes went wide.
“Ah shit,” he said.
I looked back down at my phone. Just kept scrolling through Instagram like Layla’s body wasn’t cooling on the tile three feet away from me.
The footsteps stopped.
I could feel him standing in the doorway. Could feel the weight of his presence filling the space.
I took another sip of wine.
Slowly, I lifted my eyes.
Amai stood frozen in the kitchen entrance, his face a mask of controlled fury. His eyes went to mine first—held there for a beat—then dropped to Layla’s body on the floor.
Blood pooled beneath her head. The cast-iron skillet sat on the counter where I’d left it.
His eyes came back to mine.
The air between us crackled with violence.
I set my wine glass down deliberately.
“Dinner is ready,” I said.
For a moment, he didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stared at me like he was trying to decide which part of me to destroy first.
Then he moved.
Fast.
He crossed the kitchen in three strides, grabbed me by the front of my dress, and yanked me out of the chair so hard I heard fabric tear.
“What the fuck happened?” His voice was low. Deadly. The kind of voice that preceded bodies dropping. “And why the fuck are you hell-bent on ruining my life when I never did shit to you?!”
I didn’t flinch.
Didn’t look away.
Just met his eyes with the same cold indifference I’d been carrying since I left my dad’s house.
“You forgot something,” I said quietly. “Neither of us have a choice in this shit. So, you better keep your hoes in line—” I glanced at Layla’s body. “—or dig multiple graves.”
“She didn’t deserve this, Yaya! She’d cooked my food, warmed my bed when I let her, and knew better than to ask me for anything I wasn’t willing to give. And now she’s dead because you wanted to prove a point.”
“Of course you’re mad I killed your in-house pussy.”
His grip tightened on my dress.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
I smiled.
It wasn’t a happy smile.
It was the smile of someone who’d already lost everything and had nothing left to lose.
“What I want,” I said softly, “you can’t give me.”
His brows furrowed.
“And for that,” I continued, my voice steady, “we both have to suffer.”
“Have you lost your damn mind?” he asked, his voice rising. “You killed someone in my house—”
“Our house,” I corrected. “Legally.”
“And you’re sitting here drinking wine like it’s a fucking Tuesday!”
I shrugged.
Pulled away from his grip—or tried to. He held on tighter.
“I’m just trying to keep breathing,” I said. Then I twisted out of his hands and walked toward the stairs.
My legs felt steadier than they should have. The wine was doing its job.
“Clean up that mess in the kitchen,” I called over my shoulder.
I made it three steps before he grabbed me.
His hand closed around my arm, and he dragged me back down the stairs. I stumbled, caught myself on the railing, but he didn’t let go.
He pulled me all the way back into the kitchen and shoved me toward the table.
“You want this cleaned up?” His voice was ice. “Call your money-hungry ass daddy’s cleaners. Because I ain’t doing shit.”
I straightened my dress.
Met his eyes.
“I don’t give a fuck if the body stays there,” I said evenly. “Do you?”
We stared at each other.
Two people locked in a marriage neither of us wanted, bound by fathers who cared more about empires than the people building them.
I snatched my arm away from him.
“I’m not scared of you,” I said quietly. “The rest of New Orleans may be fooled by your over-inflated ego, but I’m not.”
Rage twisted his face.
“You pop that shit,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper, “because you know I can’t body your ass.”
He stepped closer.
“But that’ll change soon enough,” he continued. “Bet on it.”
I didn’t move.
Didn’t back down.
Just held his gaze and let him see that I meant every word I’d said.
He turned away from me. Ran a hand over his face. When he looked back, his eyes were colder than I’d ever seen them.
“Everybody got me fucked up,” he said quietly. More to himself than to me. “And it’s time for a reckoning.”
He walked past me.
Past Layla’s body.
Out of the kitchen.
I heard his footsteps on the stairs. Heard a door slam somewhere upstairs.
I stood there in the silence.
Looked down at Layla’s body.
Felt nothing.
Just the wine warming my blood and the certainty that I’d crossed a line I could never uncross.
I walked back to the table.
Sat down.
Refilled my glass.
And went back to scrolling through my phone like nothing had happened at all.
“Y’all gon’ kill each other in this damn house,” Syx said.
“Might.” I shrugged.
Now we see who folds first. Me or Amai. Neither of us wanted to call the cleaners because that would mean admitting the other won.
One Day Later
I woke up in the guest bed.
Again.
The sheets were expensive—Egyptian cotton, high thread count, the kind that felt like butter against skin. But they weren’t his sheets. Weren’t in his room.
Amai had kicked me out after the first day.
I didn’t care.
Couldn’t care less where I slept. I was just there ’cause I had to be.
Fuck it.
I threw the covers back and sat up, my feet finding the plush rug beside the bed. The house was quiet. The kind of silence that pressed against your eardrums and made you aware of your own breathing.
I stood and pulled on my silk robe—cream-colored, expensive, something I’d bought in Paris last summer.
When I still had air.
I walked to the guest bathroom and flipped on the light.
My reflection stared back at me.
I looked tired.
Not physically—my skin was still flawless, my body still tight, my face still the kind that stopped men mid-sentence. But my eyes looked tired. Like I’d been running for years and hadn’t realized I was never going to reach the finish line.
I turned on the faucet and started my morning routine.
Cleanser first. Then toner. Then serum. Then moisturizer. Then eye cream.
Each step precise. Methodical. The same routine I’d done every morning since I was sixteen, and my mother told me that beauty was currency, and I’d better learn how to spend it wisely.
I journaled next.