CHAPTER 9 #2
I reached into the upper cabinet, pulling down two oversized crystal wine glasses. I grabbed the bottle of red wine she had brought, using a chrome corkscrew to pop the cork with a clean, hollow pop. I poured a dark, heavy stream into her glass, filling it halfway, then did the same for mine.
We moved into the spacious living room, where the massive plush leather sofa faced a seventy-inch television screen.
I grabbed the remote, switching the input over to Netflix until the title card for The Perfect Match began playing, the low theme music providing a comfortable baseline for the room.
I sat down on the leather, leaving just a few inches of space between us, holding my glass out toward her.
Ciara clicked her crystal against mine with a high, melodic chime. We both took a long, slow sip of the wine—it was heavy, sweet, and perfectly cut through the lingering richness of the chocolate cake we had brought in with us on two small plates.
For the first twenty minutes, the conversation was light, filled with her quick-witted commentary about the reality show contestants on the screen.
Her humor was sharp, observational, and entirely devoid of the pretension I usually had to endure in my professional circles.
I found myself laughing—genuinely laughing—in a way that felt entirely foreign to the structure of my life.
But as the wine level in her glass began to drop, my clinical curiosity began to pull at the edges of my mind. I couldn't shake the memory of the malice I’d felt vibrating off the thin man in the supermarket.
“Ciara,” I said softly, turning my body slightly on the sofa so I could see the profile of her face in the shifting light of the television.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s completely fine.
We can keep watching the screen. But... why were those two ganging up on you like that in Walmart?
The energy from that man was remarkably hostile. ”
Ciara set her wine glass down on the mahogany coffee table with a soft clatter. She let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to drain some of the brightness from her face, her shoulders dropping slightly against the leather cushions.
“No, Joshua,” she said, turning her head to look directly at me, her brown eyes remarkably clear. “You stepped into the middle of my mess today and handled it like a king. You deserve an actual explanation.”
She leaned back, her fingers tracing the seam of her denim shorts as she began to speak, her voice dropping into that deep, rhythmic Houston register that felt like a living history.
She told me about Morgan—a man she had trusted completely, a man she had been prepared to marry.
They had been together for three years, building a life, sharing an apartment, planning a future that felt entirely secure. And then she told me about Tesha.
“She was my ride-or-die, Joshua,” Ciara whispered, a sudden, sharp flash of chagrin tightening her chiseled features.
“We went to high school together in East Houston. We shared clothes, secrets, money when things were tight. She knew everything about me. She knew Morgan was my fiancé. She sat at my kitchen table and talked about bridesmaid dresses with my momma.”
She took a slow breath, her chest rising sharply against the black tank top.
“And then I walked into my own crib on a Tuesday afternoon. An hour early from work because the system went down. And I found them. In my bed. In the sheets I’d bought the weekend before.
They didn't even have the decency to look ashamed when I threw the door open.”
I watched her closely, my clinical training automatically cataloging her micro-expressions—the slight tremor in her lower lip wasn't a sign of lingering grief, it was the structural vibration of a profound, unresolved rage. My own hand, resting on the back of the sofa, tightened slightly.
“The complete gall of that man,” Ciara spat, her eyes flashing with a dangerous fire.
“To look me in my face today and act like he’s the one who was wronged?
To raise his hand against me because I called his new hoe what she actually is?
I thank God every single day that he revealed himself fully to me before he put a real ring on my finger.
He’s a lying, cheating-ass bastard, and Tesha is a backstabbing snake who could’ve fucked any nigga on the block, but she chose mine because she wanted what I had. ”
“You are entirely correct,” I solaced her, my voice low and steady, providing a solid wall for her emotion to hit. “A betrayal of that magnitude isn't just a breach of contract; it’s a deliberate attempt to dismantle your sense of reality. You have every right to the anger you’re feeling.”
Ciara looked at me, a soft, grateful smile breaking through the tension on her face. “Thanks, Doc. It’s just... seeing them today opened up all those old scabs, you know? But then I saw you walk up, and it was like the whole room shifted.”
She picked her wine glass back up, taking a long sip before continuing.
“What killed me most was the channel. Before everything went down, Morgan and I were actually doing the damn thing on YouTube. We had a couple’s channel—doing pranks, vlogs, relationship advice videos.
We were pulling in numbers, getting brand deals.
But the second I caught them, I went into the dashboard and scrubbed the entire channel clean.
Deleted every single video. Erased him from my digital footprint like he never even existed. ”
I raised a blonde eyebrow, genuinely surprised by the revelation. “You’re a content creator? I knew you were excellent with the neighborhood children, but I didn't realize I was sitting next to a digital media entrepreneur.”
“Oh, don’t play with me, Doc,” she laughed, the bright, infectious sound returning to her voice. “I do music reactions now. Old-school R they were current vectors of stress that threatened the emotional stability of a subject I was becoming increasingly invested in.
By the rules of my own internal architecture—the code my mother had instilled in me—threats to my environment needed to be neutralized.
They had hurt my Ciara. And the thought of them walking around the city, breathing the same air, filled me with a quiet, clinical desire to erase their data from the ledger permanently.