13. And Yet, We Stray #2
Trevor reached Aniyah’s condo that evening, the day had settled into his body like bad weather.
The hallway outside her door smelled faintly of garlic and somebody’s fabric softener, and beyond the insulated hush of the building, he could hear the ocean shifting against the shore.
He stood there a second longer than necessary, hand braced at the back of his neck, trying to leave the rest of the day out in the corridor where it belonged.
When the door opened, Aniyah’s face did that thing his chest had gotten entirely too used to. Softened first. Then sharpened when she really looked at him .
“Hey,” she said, stepping back to let him in. Her voice was warm, but careful now, her eyes moving over his face with that quiet perception of hers that never missed much. “Everything okay?”
Trevor stepped inside and the first thing he noticed was the setup.
She had done exactly what he’d texted her about earlier.
The chair was angled near the window to catch the last of the natural light.
The throw on the couch had been smoothed.
Her notebook sat on the coffee table with two candles burning low beside it, and for one brief second the care in it hit him square in the chest. She had been nervous and still made this space ready.
For him. For the work. For something she wasn’t even sure she wanted strangers to see.
He should’ve said that. Should’ve told her it looked perfect. Instead, he dropped his bag by the couch harder than he meant to and watched her flinch almost imperceptibly at the sound.
“I’m fine,” he said, even though they both knew that was bullshit.
Aniyah closed the door slowly, still watching him, “That answer doesn’t match your face.”
A tired laugh nearly escaped him, but it died before it could become anything real.
She was wearing something soft, one of those cardigans she favored when she wanted comfort without looking like she was asking for it, and there was a pen tucked behind her ear.
He noticed that too. Noticed everything, actually, which somehow made him feel worse.
Because the more clearly he saw her, the more obvious it was that he needed to get his shit together before he said something stupid.
He bent to unzip his camera bag, buying himself a second. “It’s been a long day.”
“I can tell.” She stepped closer to the window and glanced at the chair. “I moved everything around a little. The light was falling weird on the couch, so I thought maybe this would work better. If you want, I can move it back. Or we can try both and see what Hassan thinks.”
Trevor looked up at the chair. Then looked at the notebook.
He noticed the way her fingers kept rubbing together like she was trying not to let the nerves show.
Guilt tugged at him, immediate and sharp.
She had been texting him all day about this.
She was clearly nervous. Wanting to get it right.
And he’d shown up carrying Katelyn, London, the network, and every other piece of his frustration like he planned to dump it in her living room.
He straightened, forcing himself to inhale. “It looks good.” His voice came out flatter than he intended. “Really good, actually.”
Aniyah’s shoulders eased a little, “Okay. Good.” She gave him a small smile that felt more like relief than happiness. “I know this matters to you.”
That made it worse.
Because it did matter. Her piece mattered more than half the people at the network understood.
It was the soul of the damn episode. And after the day he’d had, the thought of anybody touching it, cutting it, reducing it to pacing notes and runtime concerns, made something ugly scrape against his ribs all over again.
Aniyah tilted her head, studying him, “Did something happen with the shoot?”
Trevor rubbed his jaw, “It’s handled.”
She paused, “That doesn’t sound like handled.”
He said nothing.
The condo had gone quiet in that way spaces do when two people are trying not to trip over the thing sitting between them.
Trevor wanted to reach for her. Wanted to put his forehead to hers and breathe until his mind stopped feeling like a fist. Instead, he stood there feeling every inch of the distance he was creating in real time.
Aniyah glanced back toward the chair and tried again, because of course she did. “Well, if the light’s still good for another twenty minutes, we can probably get a clean first sit-down before the crew comes up. I can start with the grandfather story if you want, or the What I’m Not poems, or?—”
“God dammit! Can we just start, Aniyah?!” The words came out sharper than he meant them to, edged with all the jaggedness he’d been trying and failing to keep buried. “Without you turning this into a whole thing? It’s not that deep.” He barked.
Silence hit the room so fast it damn near echoed.
Trevor felt it immediately. The shift in her face. The way surprise gave way to hurt, then to that stillness women got when they refused to let hurt be the only thing visible. Her arms came across her chest slowly, not defensive exactly, but contained.
“What did you just say to me?”
His stomach dropped. “Aniyah, I?—”
“No.” She stepped back, shaking her head once like she needed the movement to keep herself steady. “Actually, hold on.” A humorless laugh slipped out of her. “Fuck this docuseries.”
Trevor closed his eyes for half a second. Here it was.
“And fuck you if that’s how you’re going to talk to me.”
The quiet after that felt deserved, heavy and humiliating. Trevor dragged a hand down his face and wished for a second he could take the last thirty seconds and burn them clean off the timeline.
“Yo,” he said, voice lower now, stripped of the irritation because it had nowhere to hide anymore. “That was out of line.”
Aniyah didn’t move. “Completely.”
“You’re right.”
“You don’t get to come into my space carrying whatever happened out there and drop it on me.” Her voice wasn’t loud, which somehow made it cut deeper. “I’m not a punching bag for your frustrations. You either talk to me or hold it in, but you don’t yell at me. ”
He nodded immediately, because there wasn’t a single part of that he could argue with, “I know.”
Her eyes flashed, “Do you?”
That question landed. Trevor leaned his hip against the kitchen counter like it was the only thing holding him upright, then looked at her fully for the first time since he walked in.
“The artist in London pulled out this morning. The whole overseas segment is dead. The network spent half the day trying to convince me your piece should be cut because it’s ‘too intimate’ and ‘slows pacing.’” His mouth twisted on the last two words.
“And right before I got here, Katelyn showed up at my office screaming in the lobby.”
Aniyah blinked, “Wait. What?”
“She came up there crying, talking about I was supposed to love her for life, talking about fixing things, talking about one rough patch like she didn’t blow up the whole fucking marriage and leave Zara in the smoke.
” He let out a breath through his nose, anger and exhaustion tangling together in a knot he was sick of carrying.
“So by the time I got here, I was already not right. And instead of leaving that outside your door like I should’ve, I brought it in here and snapped at you. ”
The room went still again, but this time the stillness was different. Less like a break. More like a reckoning.
Aniyah looked down for a second, then back at him, and when she spoke her voice had softened without losing any of its shape.
“I grew up with people talking to me like that. My parents did it my whole life. Sharp when they were angry. Dismissive when they were disappointed. Like I was supposed to absorb whatever they felt just because they felt it.” She swallowed once, and Trevor saw the effort it took to keep the emotion from rising higher.
“I will never accept that from a man I’m sharing a life with. ”
Shame moved through him slow and hot.
“You shouldn’t,” he said quietly .
Her arms loosened some, though she didn’t uncross them completely. “I’m not saying we’re done. But if we’re going to keep doing this, you cannot bring that energy into my home…ever.”
“I won’t.” He answered so fast it almost overlapped her. “I mean that.”
Aniyah studied him for a long moment, measuring the apology, the man behind it, maybe the work she’d need to see before she fully trusted either. Then she sighed and glanced toward the equipment stacked by the door.
“Well,” she said, exhaustion threading through the word, “we still have a docuseries to shoot.”
Trevor frowned. “You still want to film?”
That earned him a small, tired smile. “I spent all day being nervous. I’m not wasting that anxiety.”
Something in his chest loosened at that. Not enough to call it relief, but enough to breathe without feeling the room closing in. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she muttered, brushing past him to fix the angle of the chair one last time. “You still owe me for that little attitude.”
Despite everything, the corner of his mouth twitched. “Noted.”
A few minutes later Hassan and the crew arrived, carrying the usual hum of production in with them.
Cables snaked along the baseboards. Light stands clicked into place.
Someone tested audio twice. Trevor kept mostly to the wall, headset loose around his neck, watching Aniyah move through it all with quiet determination.
She looked smaller in the chair once the camera was trained on her, hands folded in her lap, shoulders held a little too carefully, but she never once asked to back out.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Matthew—another crew member—said gently.
Aniyah took one breath. Then another .
“Tell us when writing first became important to you.”
For a moment she said nothing. Trevor watched the nerves flicker across her face, there and gone like a match strike. Then her voice came, soft but steady.