Houston
She hadn’t called in four days.
I wasn’t going to pretend that didn’t mean something.
Teaghan wasn’t a woman who went quiet by accident.
Everything she did was intentional, even the silence.
Especially the silence. So I let the first day be.
Let the second one go. Worked a job on Cartwright Avenue through the third and fourth, and told myself she would call when she was ready, and believed it less each time I said it.
By the fourth day, I was done telling myself that.
I dropped Malone at Luke’s for the night, came home, stripped out of my work clothes, and stood in the shower until the hot water ran out.
Stood in my closet after and looked at what was hanging there.
I didn’t normally do this type of shit, so my selection was slim, but I had a red Polo, washed jeans, and white Forces that surprised me as I put them on.
Clean, pressed as a muthafucka, smelling like something other than a workday.
Showing up for a woman the way she deserved to be shown up for.
The fact that I was standing in that mirror thinking about it meant something had already been decided in me that I hadn’t said out loud yet.
I grabbed the flowers off the counter and left before I could talk myself into waiting one more day.
My phone rang, and I hoped it was her but was also thankful it wasn’t. I wanted to surprise her. Wanted to show her I was on different shit.
“Hey Shawn, what happened?”
“Nothing, but there’s a new restaurant bar called Luther’s. Take Teaghan there. She’ll love it.”
“Preciate that.”
“Yeah. Don't mention it.”
I shook my head because that wasn’t anybody but Malone running his mouth through his aunt. That boy was working his side of the deal. I finally made it to her spot and could tell she was home by the amount of lights on. I shook off the nerves and headed to her door.
She answered, and I watched her face do three things in about two seconds. Surprise. Something softer than surprise. Then the chin came up as she put herself back together.
She had on a silk robe the color of dark honey, and her hair was wrapped, a few pieces loose around her face.
Fresh-faced and barefoot, and still the most striking woman I had ever been in close proximity to.
Deep brown skin, slanted eyes that took their time looking at you, lips that always looked like she had something to say and was choosing whether to say it.
Just standing in her own doorway in a silk robe, my shoulders tightened.
“Houston, hey.”
“Hey? What’s up, Tea? You’ve been MIA.”
“You could have called,” she said.
“I did. Twice.”
She looked at me then, head to toe, and something moved through her face that she tucked away before it could become a full expression. She stepped back and let me in.
“These are for you,” I said, offering the flowers, then shoving my hands in my pockets.
“Hey Houston,” Missy said from the couch, shoes off, wine glass going. She looked at me and then at Teaghan with an expression that said she already knew what brought me here, even if Teaghan wasn’’t going to say it.
“I was just leaving,” Missy said, which was a lie, but I appreciated it. She gathered herself, kissed Teaghan on the cheek, and gave me a look on the way out that meant handle this.
The door closed behind her. The apartment got quiet. Teaghan stood in the middle of the room with her arms folded and I sat down on her couch and waited. She could run the clock if she needed to. I wasn't going anywhere.
She lasted about ninety seconds.
“My mother auctioned me off Sunday.” She said it flat, no setup, the way you said something you’d been carrying so long it had lost most of its weight.
“At a brunch. Stood up in front of a room full of people and put a date with me on the table like I was cattle.” She laughed once.
Not because it was funny. “I guess I should be grateful right. Miss can’t keep a man finally has some worth. Somebody put a number on it.”
I watched her face. The way she was holding it still.
“And then to top it off, the man who paid is somebody my parents have already mapped out for my future. That’s what the whole brunch was.
A presentation. An ambush. And I stood up there and smiled because that's what you do when you are Franklin LeJune’s daughter and you don’t want to make a scene.
” She shook her head slowly. “He wrote the check easily. Didn’t even blink.
Because that’s how it works in their world.
Money is what you throw at things. It does the work nobody wants to do. ”
She looked at me when she said that last part.
“Roderick had nothing and I still made it easy for him. Got him the job, wrote the resume, called in the favor. He got on his feet and got options and I got left.” She set her jaw.
“Not one person in my life has ever just shown up for me. Because I don’t need it that way.
I show up for people. That’s my function.
That’s what I’m for.” She paused. “And then there’s you Houston. ”
The room was quiet. I let it stay that way for a minute.
Then I stood up. “Go get dressed.”
She blinked. “Houston, it's late.”
“No it’s not. Go put something you feel good in on.”
“I’m not really in the mood to go anywhere.”
“Tea, I didn’t ask what mood you were in. I gave you four days. I’m taking the night.”
She looked at me for a long moment, deciding if I meant it and what I meant by it. She must have found something because she turned and went to the back without another word.
I stood at her window and watched the street, and thought about what she said.
That’s my function. That’s what I’m for.
No. That was what people had decided she was for because she was good at it, and she let them.
But that wasn’t the same thing and anybody that spent five minutes actually paying attention to Teaghan LeJune could see the difference.
She wasn’t a resource. She was a whole woman with a whole life that she had been quietly starving while she fed everybody else and calling it purpose.
She came back twenty minutes later and I had to work to keep my face neutral.
Black dress, cinched at the waist, stopping above the knee.
Her jet black hair was out and styled, a few soft curls falling at her temples, the rest full around her face.
Gold earrings, a thin gold chain, and that honey and peppermint scent that I had stopped pretending wasn't one of my favorite things about walking into a room she was already in.
She put her hands out at her sides. This work?
Every head in whatever room we walked into tonight was going to turn. She had to know that. She always knew that.
“You look beautiful, Tea.”
She pressed her lips together. “You clean up decent yourself McGraw.”
“Thank you. It’s for you, on the cool.”
She laughed and grabbed her purse and I held the door.
We ended up downtown at Luther’s, the spot Shawn put me on.
New place, still figuring out its identity, but when we walked in, Teaghan’s smile went wide enough to handle the job for it.
The karaoke night sign was blinking, and the house was full, and I wasn’t sure I was ready, but I was willing to try for her.
“I thought you said you ain't feel like coming out.”
She looked at me sideways. “Oh you think you cute tonight,” she joked, smile getting even brighter.
“I am not singing Houston. I will sip and eat, but I will not be getting on that stage.”
“Nobody asked you to. Just vibe with me.”
She cut her eyes at me, and I pulled out her chair, and she sat down.
I watched two men at the bar notice her the second she walked in, and look away when they caught me looking back.
We ordered drinks and settled in, and a woman in a green sequined jacket took the stage and launched into something that Anita Baker had never heard in her life.
Teaghan leaned forward with her elbows on the table and watched her with genuine delight.
“She's feeling it,” Teaghan said.
“All the way. Shit, too damn much.”
She snickered, and so did I. “It doesn’t matter that it’s not…she’s feeling it.”
“That’s the whole point. Gotta expose yourself sometimes.”
She smiled at that and sat back releasing and relaxing.
I watched it happen the way you watched weather change.
The tightness leaving her face. Her shoulders finding their natural place.
By her second drink she was laughing at a man in a button up who had dedicated a Boyz II Men record to his wife at the bar and the wife was covering her face and loving every second of it.
Teaghan shook her head and looked at me, pointing across the table.
“Tell me something.”
“Tell you what? When did you start being so skeptical? That’s my job.” I joked.
“Houston please. You act like you don’t have it in you. Sit there all quiet and reserved and then you show up at my door looking like that and bring me somewhere that knows exactly what I needed and I’m sitting here trying to figure out your angle.”
“No angle.”
“Everybody has an angle, Houston.”
“Maybe I’m just trying to step my damn game up.”
She studied me. “I don't think you can outlove me. I want you to know that up front. I love hard and I love specific. And left every single time because of it. Men take what I give and go build something with it somewhere else.” She tapped the table lightly. "You hear what I'm saying."
I heard her. Every word of it and everything underneath it.
I picked up my drink and tossed it back. Set it down. Stood up.
She frowned. “Where are you—”
I walked to the bar and put my name on the list. I came back, picked my drink back up like nothing had happened.
Her eyes went wide. “Houston McGraw.”
“Mm.”
“Do not.”
“Already done. Drink your drink.”
“I will get up and walk out of this establishment if you get up there sounding like Ice JJ Fish. I'm going to Showtime at the Apollo you off that stage.”
“Teaghan, you gon learn there ain’t much I can’t do.”
She looked at the stage. Looked back at me. Picked up her drink.
They called my name twelve minutes later.
“Oh, I’m sat, H-Town. Wow me.”
I got up slow and headed to the stage. Took the mic.
“This is for you, Sweet Tea.”
When the opening keys to Baby I'm Ready moved through the speakers I heard her from across the room before I even found her face. Not a laugh. Something that started like one and became something else halfway through.
She was shocked that I could actually sing. I found her in the amber light and sang to her straight. No performance. No showboating. Just Gerald Levert's words in a grown man’s mouth aimed at a woman who needed to be reminded that on any day that ended in a y, she was the prize.
A man that was ready. That was the whole song. That was all I had to say.
By the second verse, she wasn’t making a sound. Just watching me with both hands around her glass, her lips slightly parted, and her eyes lowered. I knew that look. I had been cataloging her expressions since that first day in Norwood’s office, and that one meant something had reached her.
I handed the mic back. Walked to the booth. Sat down.
The table was quiet.
“That,” she said, “was not fair. You never told me you could sing.”
I shrugged. “You said I couldn’t outlove you, and I don’t plan on letting you be right about that.”
She looked down at her glass. A smile she was fighting. “Gerald Levert, Houston. You went and got Gerald Levert to help?”
“He said it better than I could.”
She looked up at me and the smile won. Then it softened into something else and she said quiet, “He doesn't mean anything to me. The man they sold the date to. I need you to know that.”
“I know.”
“My whole life people have found a way to make me useful without making me feel like I matter.
And I keep showing up anyway because that's who I am, and I'm not going to apologize for it.
Won't cry about it either.” She exhaled.
“So I appreciate you Houston. You showed up and you showed out.” She pointed toward the stage.
“I did.”
She got still.
“I showed up because I haven’t had any other thoughts but you,” I said. “I went home and cleaned up and put on something decent because I wanted to show up for you the right way. You deserve that. I’ve been knowing it and moving too slow.”
She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she reached across the table and her fingers found mine and held on and I let them.
We stayed like that, singing along and talking low, until the room thinned out.
“Come back to my place,” I said as we made it out to the car. I let go of her hand to help her in and came around. She still hadn't answered, so I turned to look at her.
She turned her head and looked at me. “Okay. I'd like that.”
At my place, she kicked her heels off at the door, and I locked it behind us. The night had been perfect. A night I wouldn’t forget, and I hoped she wouldn’t either.
I crossed the room and pulled her into my chest.
“Did you enjoy yourself tonight?”
“I did,” she whispered as I kissed her neck softly.
“Good,” I said, easing the thin straps of her dress off her shoulders.
I took my time with her. All of it unhurried, all of it intentional.
Learning her the way she deserved to be learned.
Whatever she wanted she got. Her moans when I found her spot sent me somewhere I didn't want to come back from, and I had no intention of rushing.
I was just finally showing up the way I should have been showing up and letting her feel the difference.
She wasn’t mine yet.
Malone’s voice came to me in the dark. No reneging either.
She would be. I wasn’t going anywhere.