Chapter 9 Zainab #2
“Not bad.” Prime nodded, standing up to adjust Yusef’s stance. “But you’re dropping your shoulder. Keep your guard up even when you slip. Soon as you drop that guard, you’re open.”
“Like this?”
“Better. Again.”
I watched them work through the movement a few more times, Prime patient but precise with his corrections, Yusef eager to get it right. This man had given my nephew something I never could—confidence in his own body. The belief that he could defend himself if he needed to.
“Y’all hungry?” I called out, finally pushing off the wall. “I can throw something together.”
“YES.” Yusef’s head popped up over the back of the couch so fast I thought he was gonna give himself whiplash. “Can you make that jerk chicken? With the rice and peas? Please please please? I been thinking about it for like four days straight, I’m not even exaggerating.”
“Boy, that takes forever.”
“So?” He hit me with those puppy dog eyes that he knew good and well I couldn’t resist. “We got time, right? We ain’t got nowhere to be.”
I looked at Prime, who just shrugged, that little smirk playing at his lips. “I could eat.”
“I got you.” But I was already pulling pots out the cabinet, digging through that fancy refrigerator that cost more than my car. “Fine. Jerk chicken. But somebody better be on dish duty later because I’m not doing everything.”
“I got you,” Yusef said, already turning back to the TV. “After I finish destroying Prime in a game of chess.”
“You ain’t destroying nothing, lil man. I’m about to cook you.”
“That’s cap and you know it.”
I shook my head, smiling to myself as I started pulling out ingredients. Chicken thighs. Scotch bonnets. Thyme. Allspice. Soy sauce. The rice and peas would take a minute, but I had time. We all had time tonight.
The next couple hours passed in a kind of haze that felt almost… peaceful?
The penthouse filled up with the smell of jerk seasoning and coconut milk, spices so fragrant that even the fancy ventilation system couldn’t keep up.
I found myself humming while I cooked—actually humming, like I wasn’t standing in the middle of about seventeen different crises with more on the way. I smiled, stirring the rice.
By the time I called them to the table, I’d made a whole spread.
Jerk chicken glistening with that spicy-sweet glaze.
Rice and peas cooked in coconut milk the way my grandmother used to make it.
Fried plantains because Yusef loved them.
A little cabbage on the side because SOMEBODY in this house needed to eat a vegetable.
We sat at that big walnut dining table—the one designed to seat twelve people but only ever held the three of us—and ate together. Like a family. A real one.
Yusef loaded up his plate like he hadn’t eaten in a week, which was typical. He grabbed a plantain before I could even finish saying grace and bit into it immediately.
“HOT! Hot hot hot—” He started fanning his mouth, eyes watering, but he didn’t spit it out. Just kept chewing through the pain like a soldier.
Prime started laughing. “What did you think was gonna happen? She just took them out the oil two seconds ago.”
“I thought they would’ve cooled down!”
“In what universe do fried plantains cool down in two seconds?”
“I was hungry!”
“You were being greedy. There’s a difference.”
I was laughing too, shaking my head at him. “Drink some water. And maybe wait thirty seconds before you shove the next one in your mouth.”
“Yes ma’am.” He grabbed his glass, still fanning his tongue, but he was grinning. Looking like a regular kid dealing with regular kid problems. Not a traumatized twelve-year-old who’d caught a body and watched his whole world fall apart.
This. This right here. This was what I wanted for him. What I’d been fighting for since the day I walked into that apartment in California and found my sister dead on the floor.
Normal moments. Safe spaces. A chance to just be a kid.
Dinner conversation flowed easy after that. Yusef talked about school. His piano teacher saying he was ready for more advanced pieces. A project he had coming up in history that he was actually excited about.
Normal stuff. Boring stuff. Beautiful, precious, regular degular boring stuff that I used to pray he’d get to worry about instead of all the grown folk trauma I’d been dumping on his shoulders.
Prime listened. Asked questions. Gave advice when Yusef wanted it, backed off when he didn’t. He was so natural with my nephew—patient and firm at the same time, pushing him to be better while making it clear he was safe enough to mess up.
Like a father should be.
Like the father Yusef never had.
After dinner, Yusef helped me clear the table and load the dishwasher—his idea, not mine, which nearly made me check his temperature because WHO was this responsible child and what had he done with my nephew?
Then he disappeared to his room claiming homework, but we both knew he was about to be on that phone for the next three hours.
I let it slide. The boy deserved a normal night.
Prime and I ended up on that massive sectional, some movie playing on the TV that neither of us was really paying attention to.
I was curled into his side like a cat, his arm around my shoulders, my head against his chest. I could hear his heartbeat—slow and steady, the same rhythm that had been lulling me to sleep every night for the past week.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table.
I reached for it lazily, expecting a text from Cookie about scheduling or maybe Mehar wanting to talk more about everything we’d missed in each other’s lives.
But it was Brandi’s name lighting up the screen.
Every muscle in my body went rigid at the same time.
I sat up so fast I almost gave myself whiplash, and Prime noticed immediately because of course he did. Man noticed everything.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Brandi.” I stared at the phone like it was a snake about to bite me. “She’s calling.”
“Answer it.”
I took the deepest breath my lungs could manage and picked up. “Hello?”
“Hey, Zahara.” Brandi’s voice sounded like someone had taken sandpaper to it. Raw. Worn down to the bone. But there was something steadier underneath it than the last time we talked. “Sorry for calling so late. I just… I wanted to let you know. The funeral is Friday.”
My heart dropped straight through the floor and kept going.
“Okay,” I heard myself say.
“It’s at Greater Hope Baptist over on MLK.
Eleven o’clock.” She paused, and I could hear her trying to hold herself together.
“I know this is a lot to ask. I know it’s hard.
But… Yusef was Nigel’s best friend. They was so close.
It would mean everything to me if he could be there.
I think Nigel would’ve wanted that. For his boy to say goodbye. ”
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through the wave of nausea rolling through me.
His boy. His best friend. The same best friend who’d been bullied and tortured by her “sweet angel” for months. The same best friend who finally snapped and put a bullet in him behind their building.
And now I was supposed to dress that child in his Sunday best and march him into a church to mourn the person he killed? Make him sit there and listen to people talk about what a good kid Nigel was? Watch him try to hold himself together while guilt ate him alive from the inside out?
What if he broke down? What if he couldn’t handle it? What if he opened his mouth and the truth just fell out right there in front of everybody—the family, the pastor, God himself?
What if Zoo was there, watching, looking for any sign of who was responsible for his son’s death?
This was a nightmare. An actual waking nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from.
But what was I supposed to say? No, sorry Brandi, we can’t make it because the boy you want to comfort is actually the reason you’re burying your child?
“Yeah.” My voice came out way steadier than I felt, which honestly deserved some kind of award. “Yeah, of course. We’ll be there. Absolutely.”
“Thank you, Z.” Her voice cracked and I could hear the tears breaking through. “Thank you so much. You don’t know what that means. You really don’t.”
“Of course, girl. We’re here for you. Whatever you need.”
We said our goodbyes and I hung up, staring at the phone in my hands like it had just delivered a death sentence.
Because in a way, it had.
Prime was watching me, waiting.
“Funeral’s Friday,” I said, and my voice sounded far away even to my own ears. “She wants Yusef there.”
He nodded slowly, processing. “I’ll go with y’all.”
I looked up at him, surprised through the fog of dread. “You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t.” He pulled me back against his side, arm tightening around me like he could physically hold me together if he squeezed hard enough. “I want to. Y’all ain’t walking into that alone.”
The tears came again. I swear I was so tired of crying—felt like that’s all I’d been doing for days. But these were different. These were the grateful kind.
“Thank you,” I whispered into his chest. “For everything. For today. For my father. For being here. For… all of it. Everything.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “I told you. I got you. Always.”
I tilted my face up and kissed him. Soft at first, just lips against lips, breathing the same air. Then deeper, letting him feel everything I couldn’t find the words for. All the fear and gratitude and love and exhaustion tangled up together.
When we finally pulled apart, he was looking at me with those eyes that saw everything. Every crack in my armor. Every scar on my soul. Every secret I’d ever tried to hide.
And he was still here. Still holding me. Still choosing me.
“Come on.” He stood up, pulling me with him. “Let’s go to bed.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s not even nine thirty.”
“And? Did I say something about sleeping?” That smirk was back, and despite everything—despite the funeral and the fear and the chaos waiting for us around every corner—I felt myself smile.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And yet.”
I let him take my hand, let him lead me toward the stairs, ready to forget about everything for a few hours and just exist with him in that big bed with the black sheets and the city lights streaming through the windows.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
I felt him tense—just for a second, barely noticeable, but I was pressed close enough to catch it. He pulled out the phone, glanced at the screen, and his jaw tightened.
Then he slid it back in his pocket without a word.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Nobody important.” He squeezed my hand and kept walking toward the stairs. “Come on.”
I noticed. Of course I noticed. The way his whole energy shifted for just a second before he locked it back down. But I didn’t ask.
Maybe I should have. Maybe the old me—the me from a week ago who was still keeping her own secrets—would have pushed. Demanded answers. Reminded him that we’d promised no more lies between us.
But I was tired. Bone tired. And whatever that phone call was about, whatever new problem was brewing, it could wait until tomorrow.
Tonight, I just wanted to be held by the man I loved in a home that was starting to feel like ours.
Tomorrow could bring whatever chaos it wanted.
I’d deal with it then.