Just a Little Teaser
Fee
They say kids change everything, but they don’t tell you how fast.
One minute I was arguin’ with Melissa over centerpieces and squeezin’ two little feet under my ribs.
Next minute I had two one-year-old boys runnin’ around my living room like they paid rent.
“Nasir! Noah! Sit down!” I yelled.
Neither one of them even looked at me.
Nasir was busy bangin’ a toy truck into the couch leg. Noah had found a pot lid from God-knows-where and was usin’ it like a drum.
The house was a war zone of toys, half-folded laundry, and baby wipes.
And somewhere in the middle of all that… was me.
Tryin’ to remember the girl I was before I answered to “Mama” eight hundred times a day.
Trend walked in from the hallway, shirt off, sweats hangin’ low, pickin’ up a stray shoe like he had no idea how it got there.
“You see my keys?” he asked.
I stared at him.
“My keys,” he repeated, diggin’ in his pockets. “I swear I just had ‘em.”
“You swear that every day,” I said. “Check the counter.”
He glanced at the counter. There they were.
He grabbed ‘em, grinnin’ like he’d accomplished somethin’ major.
“Appreciate you,” he said, leanin’ down to kiss my cheek.
I tilted my face just enough that he caught skin and not air, but barely.
He noticed.
“What’s up wit’ you?” he asked.
I looked around the room.
At the boys, the mess, and then him.
“At this exact second?” I said. “I’m tired.”
He exhaled, like he felt that in his bones too.
“I gotta run and handle this thing real quick,” he said. “I won’t be long.”
“You always say that,” I said.
“Come on now, Fee, you know I be working.”
The boys started screamin’ over the same toy.
He looked from them to me, conflict all over his face.
I didn’t say anything else.
Sometimes the quiet hit harder than the yelling.
He shoved his keys in his pocket.
“I’ll be back,” he said, low.
When the door shut behind him, the noise from Nasir and Noah filled the room again.
I picked Noah up before he could climb the TV stand, tucked Nasir under my other arm like a sack of sugar, and sank down on the couch.
Two boys and the one man I loved.
A whole lot of love and not enough of us to stretch around it some days.
I kissed each of their foreheads as they squirmed, blinkin’ back a sting in my eyes.
“We gon’ be alright,” I whispered. “Mama just gotta figure out who she is now. And Daddy gotta decide if he in this house with us, or just walkin’ through it.”
I didn’t have the answers yet.
We had good days, and bad ones.
We had nights where we felt like a team and mornings where we felt like roommates.
But if you think this little glimpse is the whole story… it’s not.
Not even close.
There’s a lot more to say about me, Trend, and these two little hurricanes we made.
I just can’t tell it all here.
If you really wanna know how we make it, or if we make it at all, you gon’ have to come see us in Heart At War: Trend and Fee’s Story.
‘Cause that’s where the real battle starts.
Coming Soon…