Novella “Novi” Hart
I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe when Prodigy knocked on the door.
Not regular crying either. Not a few tears slipping because I missed Kash.
This was ugly, chest-hurting, can’t-catch-my-breath crying.
The kind that made me press one hand against my heart because it felt like it might burst if I didn’t hold it inside my body.
I had been trying to calm myself down for almost twenty minutes, but failing. The grief kept rising until I felt trapped inside my own skin.
Then Prodigy showed up. I thanked God for that man before I even opened the door.
He stood there with bags in his hands, tall, tattooed, and too fine for my nervous system to process properly.
His shirt sat open enough to show the ink across his chest, his beard was lined perfectly, and his eyes moved over my face like he already knew he had walked in on me falling apart.
I hated that he saw it, but I was grateful that he had.
Prodigy was good to look at. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve had enough sense to be embarrassed by how I looked, but all I knew was that the love of my life would never meet our child so I didn’t care who saw me looking like what.
The murder documentary still played on the TV, even though I hadn’t paid attention to it in almost an hour.
Some woman had been found murdered in her house, and the episode was trying to make everybody look suspicious; her husband, her best friend, her neighbor, even the lady from her job who apparently didn’t like her.
Prodigy sat on the opposite side of the couch. “You always watch these?”
I shrugged weakly. “They’re interesting”.
On the screen, the husband walked into the police station wearing khakis, a wrinkled polo, and the confidence of a man who thought being average made him invisible.
Prodigy leaned forward. “Look at his goof-ass. Why he dressed like he about to sell somebody a used printer?”
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.
The detective asked the husband where he was the night his wife died. The man started talking too fast.
Prodigy scoffed at the TV. “That nigga sound guilty.”
“He could just be nervous.”
“Novi, that man was stuttering saying his own fucking name.”
The husband kept rambling, explaining his timeline, adding details nobody had asked for.
Prodigy threw a hand up. “Ask for a lawyer, dumbass!”
I covered my mouth, but the laugh came anyway.
“He in there giving them a whole TED Talk about why he ain’t kill his wife,” Prodigy said. “Police ain’t even got to work no more. He doin’ the job for them.”
The husband started crying on camera.
Prodigy shook his head. “Now look at those fake ass tears. He ain’t shed one fucking tear.”
“Are you going to watch the show or give commentary the whole time?”
I laughed again, realizing what he was doing. He had seen my red eyes. He knew I had been crying before he came in, and instead of making me explain my grief, he became overly invested in a murder documentary he hadn’t even been watching.
He was pulling me out of my head one joke at a time. I looked over at him, but he kept his attention on the TV.
My heart still hurt, but for the first time that day, I could breathe without feeling like I was breaking apart. So, I wiped my face, tucked my legs beneath me, and watched the dumb husband talk himself into prison while Prodigy yelled at the screen like the man could hear him.