17. Roman Blake
The talk in the parking lot with Melissa sat on me heavier than I wanted to admit.
She gave me a little.
Promised to answer when I asked where she at. Promised to stop disappearin’ just to prove a point.
But I could still see it in her face.
I had her lookin’ over her shoulder…That wasn’t love…That was fear.
And I was addin’ to it.
I tried to do my usual shit.
Handle club business.
Answer calls.
Make plays.
But my focus was trash.
Every time my phone buzzed, my chest jumped. Every time it didn’t, my mind went back to every worst-case scenario I’d lived through.
Finally, I got tired of hearin’ my own thoughts echo.
Next thing I knew, I was pullin’ up in front of Nana Hope’s house.
She opened the door before I could knock twice.
“There go my grandson,” she said, lookin’ me over. “You look heavy.”
“I’m aight,” I lied.
She cut her eyes at me. “Come on in wit’ that lie.”
I followed her to the kitchen. She had a pot on the stove and somethin’ in the oven, smelled like peach cobbler.
“Sit,” she said, noddin’ at the table. “You want some tea?”
“Yeah,” I said, droppin’ into the chair.
She moved around efficient, makin’ tea like she done it a thousand times, then sat across from me.
“Now,” she said, foldin’ her hands, “which woman got you in here lookin’ like this?”
I huffed a laugh. “What make you think it’s a woman?”
She stared. “Boy.”
“Aight,” I said, givin’ up quick. “Melissa.”
She nodded like she already knew. “Mhm. What you done now?”
I fiddled with the mug. “She say I’m chokin’ her.”
“Are you?”
I thought about it.
Bathroom.
Drive-bys.
Parrin’ in parkin’ lots.
“Maybe,” I admitted.
Nana leaned back. “Talk.”
“I don’t know how to do this halfway,” I said. “When I care, I move heavy. I like knowin’ where she at, if she safe, who around her. After what happened wit’ Mo, my brain don’t know how to sit still.”
Her eyes softened at Mo’s name, but she let me finish.
“So I been… watchin’,” I went on. “From a distance. Ridin’ past, poppin’ up. At first I thought I was just checkin’ on her. Then April told her I been in areas I had no business in. Melissa caught me a couple times. Now she look at me like I’m half protector, half monster.”
“And how that make you feel?” Nana asked.
“Like shit,” I said. “‘Cause I’m tryin’ to keep her from gettin’ hurt and I’m the one addin’ to her fear.”
She nodded slow. “You cannot choke love into stayin’, baby.”
I looked up.
“You hear me?” she repeated. “You cannot choke love into stayin’. All you do is squeeze the joy out of it. If that girl is scared, you gotta give her enough air to see you not like the last man she was with.”
“I am not like him,” I said, jaw tight.
“And you know that,” she said. “I know that. But does her nervous system know that? Her body only remember hurt. Men who say ‘I got you’ and then disappear. Men who say ‘you safe’ and then break that safety.”
I stared at my tea.
“You sittin’ in cars outside her places, showin’ up unexpected, demandin’ access… that might feel normal to you ‘cause of what you’ve seen and lost,” Nana said. “But to her? It feel like another man takin’ her choices away. Even if your heart is in the right place.”
I swallowed. “So what I’m supposed to do? Just not care?”
She smiled, small. “Caring ain’t the problem. Control is. You need to learn the difference between protectin’ somebody and possessin’ ‘em.”
“That easier said than done,” I mumbled.
“Ain’t say it was easy,” she replied. “I said it was necessary. If you want that girl for real, you gon’ have to give her some room to walk toward you, not just drag her to where you standin’ and hold her there.”
I leaned back, feelin’ like somebody let air out my chest.
“I pull back, she run,” I said. “What then?”
“Then you know what it was,” Nana said calmly. “Either she come, or she don’t. Either way, at least you didn’t lose her tryin’ to wrap both hands ‘round her throat.”
Harsh, but true.
“So what you suggest?” I asked. “For real. Not the pretty answer.”
She sipped her tea, thinkin’.
“Give her space for a little while,” she said.
“Real space. Not shadow space. No followin’.
No pullin’ up ‘just ‘cause.’ You call when you got somethin’ to say.
You answer if she reach out. You keep your door open.
But you stop runnin’ up in her life uninvited every time your fear start talkin’ loud. ”
“That gon’ eat me alive,” I said.
She smiled. “That’s the part you take to God and this tea, not to her driveway.”
I huffed a laugh, even though my chest hurt.
“Trust that if y’all meant,” she added, “your presence won’t be the only thing holdin’ it. She gotta choose you, same as you chose her.”
Silence sat between us for a minute.
Then I nodded.
“Aight,” I said quietly. “I’ll back up.”
She reached across the table, squeezed my hand. “Good. And baby?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let your grief make you a villain in somebody else story,” she said. “You been through hell. That don’t give you a pass to drag somebody through a new one ‘cause you scared of losin’ ‘em.”
That one landed hard.
I sat there, lettin’ it sink in.
I knew pullin’ back was gon’ feel like withdrawal.
But if I wanted any chance at seein’ Melissa choose me without fear, I had to give her somethin’ I hadn’t given her since we met.
Room.
That night, I laid in my bed, phone face-down.
I didn’t drive past her buildin’.
Didn’t check her mama street.
Didn’t sit outside Charlie Mac shit.
I texted once.
You home?
She replied.
Yeah.
I stared at the screen.
My fingers itched to say, Text me when you wake up. Tell me your plans. Let me know where you at.
Instead, I typed:
Aight. Sleep good.
No overkill, and no extra shit.
It felt wrong and right at the same time.
Like takin’ off a cast and tryin’ to walk on a leg I ain’t trusted in a while.
It ate at me.
But for once, I let it.
‘Cause if what Nana said was true, if this thing with Melissa was real, she was gon’ come toward me on her own.
And I owed her the chance to do that without my shadow already waitin’ at every turn.