Untitled

Smoke left Aunt Cheryl’s without a second glance backwards.

The gravel crunched beneath the truck tires as he pulled onto the road, the familiar stretch of Mississippi highway unfolding beneath a sky slowly bleeding gold into orange. His knuckles ached every time he tightened his grip on the steering wheel, a steady reminder of the punch he’d thrown and the argument that had come before it. The pain should have made him feel foolish.

Instead, it mostly made him feel tired.

The entire afternoon weighed on him. Annie’s tears. Her yelling. The way she’d looked at him like he had personally ruined eight years of her life. How she stood in the middle of Aunt Cheryl’s yard and told him she’d spent all those years waiting for him to fight for her.

Then Stack’s voice showed up right behind the memory.

You punched him because she grabbed that suitcase again.

Smoke swore under his breath.

Unfortunately, his brother hadn’t stopped there.

The first person she reached for wasn’t you.

That part irritated him most because Stack had said it with the confidence of somebody who already knew the answer. Smoke had wanted to tell him he was wrong, and say Isoo got punched because he should’ve kept his fucking mouth shut. He wanted to tell him it had nothing to do with Annie. The problem was every time he replayed the moment in his head, he arrived at the same conclusion Stack already had.

The punch was never about Isoo.

His jaw tightened.

The road curved gently ahead. Smoke followed it automatically, barely paying attention to where he was going. He’d driven these roads his entire life. He could’ve found his way home blindfolded. His eyes drifted toward the passenger seat. The mixtape sat there. Quiet. Innocent. Like it hadn’t caused a damn thing. Annie’s handwriting stretched across the cover exactly the way it always had. Uneven in places. Slanted slightly to the right. Familiar enough that he recognized it before he’d even registered what he was holding.

Two weeks.

That’s what she said. Two weeks making the fucking thing. Choosing songs while thinking about him. The thought annoyed him, confused him. Then irritated him again because confusion felt entirely too close to hope.

His phone vibrated against the center console. Smoke glanced at the screen and sighed. He knew where this conversation was headed.

LEWIS JONES.

For a moment he considered letting it ring. Then he answered. “Uncle Lewis.”

“You done?”

The corner of Smoke’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Done what?”

“Actin’ stupid.”

A laugh escaped him before he could stop it. Small. Brief. Then it was gone. 

“Depends.”

“On?”

“How bad do his face look?”

The answer came without hesitation. “Bad enough.”

Smoke nodded once. “Aight.”

Silence stretched between them. One of the things Smoke appreciated most about Uncle Lewis was the man’s refusal to fill every empty space with noise. Most people got nervous when conversations slowed down. They rushed to fill the gaps with questions, opinions, or advice nobody asked for.

Lewis never did. 

The older man let the silence breathe before speaking again. “You know everybody saw through that shit, right?”

Smoke looked out the windshield. “Saw through what?”

“You ain’t punch that boy ‘cause he butted in.”

There it was. Smoke should’ve known. He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and watched a pair of headlights pass in the opposite direction.

“You ain’t even know that boy was there half the afternoon.”

Smoke huffed quietly. “That ain’t true.”

“Who you lyin’ to?” 

The question came so quickly Smoke almost laughed.

“You been mad for a long time.”

The words sank in a little deeper. Lewis wasn’t talking about the cookout anymore. Smoke knew it. Lewis knew it. Hell, everybody who loved him knew it.

The older man sighed softly through the phone. “You ever get tired?”

Smoke frowned. “Of what?”

“Being mad.”

The question caught him off guard, because it wasn’t complicated. For a while all he heard was the hum of tires against pavement and the low growl of the engine beneath him. Eventually he shrugged. “I guess.”

Lewis made a low sound. The kind that meant he wasn’t buying the answer. “You know how many arguments me and Cheryl survived because one of us was too stubborn to shut up?”

A smile tugged briefly at Smoke’s mouth. “Too many.”

“Exactly.” A pause followed. Then Lewis added quietly, “You know how many we survived because one of us was too stubborn to talk?”

The smile disappeared. Smoke’s eyes turned to the passenger seat again. To the mixtape and Annie’s handwriting. He looked back at the road. Neither man spoke. The silence stretched longer this time. Thoughtful and heavy at the same time.

“You know what I keep thinkin’ about?” Lewis asked eventually.

Smoke already knew. Still— “No, sir?”

“That girl flew all the way back to Mississippi.”

Smoke swallowed.

Lewis continued. “Three states.”

The truck rolled forward through the fading evening light.

“Three states and two weeks makin’ some CD.”

Smoke let the words sit with him.

“You think folks do that for somebody they don’t love?”

The question sat heavy between them. The answer coming fast. No. Of course not. But saying it out loud felt dangerous somehow. So he didn’t.

Lewis didn’t push either. He never had to, but he still continued— “You ain’t gotta forgive her tonight.”

Smoke stared ahead.

“You ain’t gotta fix everything tonight either.”

The road stretched empty before him. Fields on one side. Trees on the other. Home getting closer with every mile.

“But don’t spend another eight years punishin’ yourself.”

Something about the way Lewis said it made Smoke’s chest tighten unexpectedly. Yourself. The distinction mattered more than Smoke wanted to admit. Because if he was honest, truly honest, the years hadn’t only hurt Annie. They’d hurt him too. More than he’d ever admit.

The truck grew quiet again. The sky darkened another shade.

Eventually Lewis cleared his throat. “You headed home?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good.”

Smoke waited.

Lewis chuckled. “Go home.”

“That’s yo’ advice?”

“Yep.”

Smoke rolled his eyes. “You called me for that?”

Uncle Lewis chuckled. “I taught you construction. Might as well teach you common sense too.”

Despite himself, Smoke laughed. “Yes sir.”

The word left before he thought about it. A habit nearly as old as he was. For a minute he considered ending the call. Instead, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. 

“Thank you.”

The line went quiet. Then Lewis answered simply. “Welcome, son.”

There was a tightening in Smoke’s chest. It wasn’t that Uncle Lewis had never called him ”son” before. He had. A handful of times over the years. Usually when Smoke showed up to help with a project around the house or worked alongside him on a jobsite. Small moments. Easy moments. The kind that never seemed important until later. But hearing it now felt different. Maybe because there hadn’t been many men in Smoke’s life who earned the right to say it.

His father certainly hadn’t. Most of Smoke’s memories of his own father involved whiskey on his breath, anger in his voice, and the sound of boots crossing a porch that made two little boys tense before he even opened the door.

Uncle Lewis had been the opposite. Patient where his father had been cruel. Steady where his father had been unpredictable. The man who taught him how to frame a wall, read a tape measure, show up on time, and finish what he started. Uncle Lewis handed him his first construction job and expected him to work for every dollar of it. He was who Smoke thought about whenever people talked about good fathers.

His throat felt tight suddenly. “Yes sir,” he said again.

For a while neither of them spoke. Then, like always, Lewis broke the tension before it could become something either of them had to acknowledge.

“Get home safe.”

“I will.”

“And Smoke?”

“Yeah?”

Uncle Lewis paused. “Listen to that damn CD.”

The line went dead before Smoke could answer. For the rest of the drive, Uncle Lewis’s words followed him home. Not about Isoo or even the part about Annie. It was Uncle Lewis’ question that stayed with him.

You ever get tired?

At the time Smoke had brushed it off. Gave him a half-answer and kept driving. But the farther he got from Uncle Lewis and Aunt Cheryl’s house, the harder it became to ignore. Somewhere between North Carolina and Mississippi, between missed calls and unanswered letters, pride and hurt and eight years of silence, carrying it all had become exhausting.

And for the first time, Smoke found himself wondering what it might feel like to finally put some of it down.

By the time Smoke pulled into his driveway, the anger had given way to something heavier than it had been when he left the cookout. It still sat in his chest, still burned every time he replayed parts of the afternoon, but it no longer felt sharp. Sharp things cut quickly. This felt more like a weight. Something dense and stubborn that had followed him all the way across town and climbed into the truck beside him.

The engine idled for a moment after he parked. Smoke rested both hands on the steering wheel and stared through the windshield at the dark outline of his house. Usually coming home felt like relief. Quiet. Predictable. A place where nobody needed anything from him for a few hours. Tonight it felt different. Maybe because he knew exactly what was waiting on the passenger seat. And Stack’s voice had still managed to survive the entire drive.

You punched him because she grabbed that suitcase again.

Smoke exhaled slowly through his nose.

The worst part wasn’t that Stack had said it. The worst part was that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He replayed the argument, Annie calling for Isoo, and the look on her face when she said she wanted to leave. He still arrived at the same conclusion. The punch hadn’t been about Isoo. It hadn’t even been about whatever smart ass shit came out of Isoo’s mouth. It had been about Annie reaching for somebody else when everything inside him had been screaming for her to stop running to any and everything, but him.

Eventually he killed the engine and climbed out. The house was quiet when he stepped inside. Not peaceful, quiet. Empty quiet. The kind that made every creak of the floorboards sound louder than it actually was. Uncle Lewis and Aunt Cheryl’s house had always been full. Full of people, conversations, and yelling from one room to another. Even when nobody was talking, there was always the feeling that somebody might start. Smoke’s place wasn’t like that. Most days he preferred it. Tonight it gave him too much room to think.

The mixtape landed on the kitchen counter while he headed for the refrigerator. He opened the door and stared inside, as though something useful might appear if he gave it enough time. A container of leftovers sat on the top shelf beside eggs, sandwich meat, and vegetables he’d bought because he told himself he was going to start eating cleaner. None of it looked particularly appealing. Smoke shut the refrigerator and got pissed all over again.

Aunt Cheryl had probably made enough food to feed half the county. There had been ribs, potato salad, baked beans and rolls. Even Pearline’s nasty ass Mac and cheese was there. And at least five desserts. Normally he’d have left carrying enough leftovers to survive the next several days. Instead he’d left carrying a bruised hand and a damn mixtape.

“Ain’t even get to bring no fuckin’ plate home.”

The complaint sounded stupid the second it left his mouth. Unfortunately, that didn’t make it less true.

For half a second he considered getting back his truck, driving to Aunt Cheryl’s, and fixing himself a plate like a grown man with priorities. Then he pictured Annie sitting in that house, Stack there with a stupid ass look on his face, and Aunt Cheryl looking at him like she had a sermon ready.

Hell nah.

A little while later he found himself standing over the stove making a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. The entire situation felt ridiculous. He’d spent the afternoon arguing with Annie, punching Isoo, getting lectured by Stack, and receiving life advice from Uncle Lewis, only to end the night standing in his kitchen cooking like a man who hadn’t just had his entire emotional foundation kicked in. The sandwich wasn’t terrible. It also wasn’t Aunt Cheryl’s ribs.

Smoke ate anyway.

Afterward he grabbed a beer, stared at it for a second, then put it back. The whiskey seemed like a better idea. He poured himself a glass and carried it into the living room. A few minutes later, he looked down and found it untouched. His attention kept drifting back to the kitchen counter. To the mixtape. That pissed him off too.

At some point he found himself wiping down countertops that weren’t dirty. Then reorganizing a drawer that hadn’t bothered him in months. Then checking laundry that didn’t need checking. 

The thought arrived slowly enough to make him feel stupid. He was avoiding the mixtape. A grown ass nigga avoiding a CD. Worse, Annie would probably find it hilarious. That thought alone nearly made him put the fuckin’ thing in the CD player just out of spite.

Instead he took a shower.

The hot water should’ve helped. Usually it did. Construction work had a way of settling into muscles and joints. A shower could wash away most of a hard day. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough hot water in Mississippi to wash away Annie. She showed up anyway—crying, yelling, and saying she’d waited. 

And she called him Elijah. 

That always stayed with him. Most people call him Smoke now. Some folks probably forgot Elijah existed. The nickname had become easier over the years. Simpler. Safer. Smoke belonged to everybody. Smoke was the man people expected him to be.

Elijah belonged to Annie. 

Always had.

After the shower, Smoke dried off and pulled on a pair of sweatpants before catching sight of his hand in the bathroom mirror. The knuckles looked worse now than they had at Aunt Cheryl’s. Adrenaline had carried him through the drive home, but it wasn’t doing him any favors anymore. Swelling had already begun to set across the back of his hand, and purple bruising was working its way beneath the skin.

“Shit.”

He flexed his fingers once and instantly regretted it. The punch felt good for about three seconds. Now it just hurt like hell.

Smoke dug through the bathroom cabinet until he found peroxide and a box of bandages his mom had practically forced him to buy after splitting his hand open at a construction site a few months earlier. At the time she’d fussed at him for nearly twenty minutes about keeping basic first-aid supplies in the house. Standing here now, pouring peroxide across busted knuckles, he hated admitting she might’ve had a point. A few minutes later he found himself sitting on the edge of the bathtub while the antiseptic fizzed against broken skin. The sting should have kept his attention. Instead, his mind wandered right back where it had been all evening.

Annie.

It seemed like no matter what he was doing, every road eventually led back to her. The tears. The yelling. The way she’d looked at him in the middle of the yard. Then, inevitably, his thoughts landed on the part he hated most.

Isoo.

The punch? Nah. Not even the argument that led to said punch. It was the moment before it. The moment Annie grabbed that suitcase and looked past him. Smoke lowered his head and rubbed a hand across his jaw. By the time he’d wrapped the worst of the damage and tossed the used bandages into the trash, he was in a perpetual state of irritation. Because Stack had been right. And so was Uncle Lewis.

A cigarette seemed like a logical next step. Then whiskey. Then sitting on the back porch convincing himself he wasn’t thinking about the mixtape while doing exactly that.

The Mississippi night wrapped around him warm and familiar. Crickets chirped somewhere beyond the fence. A dog barked in the distance. His neighbor several houses over was playing music low enough that only the bass reached him. Smoke sat there until his cigarette burned almost to the filter and the whiskey glass sat empty beside him.

Eventually he ran out of things to do. He’d exhausted every distraction available.

The house felt different when he walked back inside. It was later now and the whiskey had finally done its job. But now there was no avoiding the fact that Annie’s mixtape was still sitting exactly where he’d left it. Waiting. Patient in the way Annie never was. Smoke shook his head and picked it up off the counter. The plastic case felt surprisingly light in his hands. His thumb brushed across the writing on the cover before he could stop himself.

For Elijah.

Never Smoke.

The version of him she always seemed able to find no matter how deeply he buried it. For a moment he simply stood there staring at the words. Then Uncle Lewis’s voice echoed in his head.

Listen to the damn CD.

Smoke sighed heavily. “Yeah, yeah.”

He wasn’t entirely sure whether he was answering Uncle Lewis or Annie.

Maybe both.

The disc disappeared into the stereo. Smoke stood there with one hand resting on the shelf beside it, seriously considering taking it back out. The thought lasted right up until he remembered the few hours of his evening had been spent avoiding it.

Enough was enough. He pressed play and static crackled softly through the speakers.

Then Annie’s voice filled the room. “Elijah, if you’re listenin’ to this, it means you finally stopped bein’ hardheaded.”

Smoke froze. All he could do was stare at the stereo. Then Annie laughed. Not a big laugh or one of the loud ones that made everybody else join in. This was smaller, the one that usually appeared when she thought she’d gotten away with something. Her voice came through the speakers again, pleased with herself.

“Good.”

A click followed.

Seconds later the opening notes of Can We Talk came through the living room.

Smoke closed his eyes and laughed despite himself. “Oh, she got jokes.”

The song continued playing.

Track 1: Can We Talk

The opening notes of Can We Talk filled the room as Smoke leaned back into the couch. At first he listened the way most people listened to old songs. Half paying attention. Half letting familiarity do the work. The melody was recognizable, pulling up memories he hadn’t thought about in years. He could already hear Annie laughing at herself for choosing it. Shit, he was laughing too. Of all the songs she could’ve started with, she picked the one that practically came with a flashing sign attached to it.

The thing was though, the joke stopped being funny about halfway through. The song didn’t change, but he did.

The longer he listened, the harder it became to separate the music from the message underneath it. Annie had never been the type to do anything halfway when she cared. If she baked a cake, she spent three days finding the right recipe. If she bought somebody a gift, she’d somehow remember a throwaway comment they made six months earlier and build the entire thing around it. Every meaningful thing Annie had ever done came with intention attached to it. Looking back, maybe that was why the last eight years had hurt so much. Neither of them had ever stopped caring enough to become indifferent. 

They’d simply found different ways to carry the hurt.

Smoke clenched his jaw until the muscle ticked, then leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. The whiskey sat forgotten on the coffee table. At some point he’d stopped drinking it. He wasn’t sure when. His attention had been entirely on the stereo, which was annoying because it meant Annie had managed to hijack his evening without even being in the room.

A bitter laugh escaped him. That sounded about right.

The song continued playing, and with every passing minute Smoke found himself thinking less about the argument at the cookout and more about the years before it. Not the breakup or the misunderstandings. The good parts. 

Annie stretched across his couch with textbooks scattered around her. Annie stealing fries off his plate after claiming she wasn’t hungry. Her singing along to songs she only knew half the words to and making up the rest with complete confidence. There had been a time when talking to her felt as natural as breathing. Somewhere along the way they’d lost that. Or maybe they hadn’t lost it at all. Maybe they’d simply buried it beneath years of pride, hurt, and assumptions until neither of them remembered where it was.

By the time the song ended, Smoke hadn’t moved in several minutes. The room felt quieter afterward, though that probably had more to do with the absence of Annie’s chosen soundtrack than actual silence. He sat there waiting without meaning to. Waiting for the next song and for whatever she’d decided came next, because curiosity had quietly replaced resistance along the way.

Annie’s voice returned before the next track started. Something in his chest tightened. It wasn’t the recording itself. It was how normal she sounded. She wasn’t crying, there wasn’t any anger in it or heartbreak.

Just Annie.

There was amusement in her voice before she even spoke, the same amusement she’d carried since she was fourteen years old and entirely too pleased with herself. “Before you start rollin’ your eyes, yes, I know that one was obvious.”

Smoke shook his head and rolled his eyes despite himself. 

There she was. 

Since she’d stepped back into Mississippi, he wasn’t thinking about the woman standing in Aunt Cheryl’s yard with tears streaming down her face. He was hearing the girl he’d fallen in love with. The girl who always had something to say, and who could make him laugh when he was trying his hardest not to.

Annie laughed softly on the recording. “If I gotta suffer through eight years of your stubbornness, you can survive one Tevin Campbell song.”

The smile lingered longer this time. She wasn’t wrong, because she’d always known exactly which nerve to touch. Or maybe hearing her like this reminded him of something he’d forgotten. The Annie sitting safely inside this recording wasn’t trying to win an argument. She wasn’t defending herself and not asking him to choose between his version of the past and hers. She was simply trying to talk to him. Really talk to him. And judging by the fact that he was sitting alone in his living room listening this closely, it was working. 

The knowledge came over him slowly as Annie exhaled on the recording and fell quiet for a moment. She hadn’t made him a playlist. She’d built him a conversation.

And Smoke was finally listening.

Track 2: Truth Is

The silence that followed Annie’s recording didn’t last long. A few seconds later another song began to play.

Smoke recognized Fantasia instantly. That alone made him sit back. Annie had always loved Fantasia. Not casually either. That girl treated Fantasia songs like scripture. Back in high school, he’d spent an entire semester listening to Annie defend her against people who insisted she sang too many sad songs. Annie always disagreed.

“They ain’t sad,” she’d argued one afternoon from the passenger seat of his car. “People just don’t like the truth.”

At the time he’d rolled his eyes and told her she sounded fifty years old. At sixteen, he’d thought she was being dramatic. At twenty-six, he wasn’t so sure.

The song continued playing while Smoke leaned back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. At some point he’d stopped treating the mixtape like background noise. His attention remained fixed on every word, every transition, every choice she’d made. Annie had spent two weeks putting this thing together. Two weeks deciding what came first and what came next. Nothing about that sounded accidental.

Which meant Truth Is was here for a reason. The message wasn’t difficult to understand.

The truth is. Three simple words. Words capable of ruining an otherwise peaceful evening.

Smoke closed his eyes.

The memory arrived before he could stop it.

It was years ago. Long enough that he couldn’t remember the exact date anymore. Stack had talked him into going out after work. A restaurant on the other side of town. Some female Stack was messing with at the time had a cousin or a friend she insisted would be perfect for him. Smoke remembered almost none of the details now. Not her name, what she ordered, or what they talked about.

He only remembered the feeling.

The woman was beautiful. Smart too, and easy enough to talk to. The conversation never stalled. She asked questions and listened to the answers. By every measurable standard, the night should’ve been a success. Stack certainly thought it was. The first thing out of his mouth the next day had been, “So when you seein’ her again?”

Smoke remembered shrugging. Remembered saying, “I don’t know.” At the time he’d blamed work, timing, then the fact that he wasn’t looking for anything serious. The same excuse he’d been feeding everybody for years. Listening to Fantasia now, he found himself wondering if that had ever really been true, because the part he remembered most wasn’t the woman.

It was the moment she’d laughed.

For one brief second she’d tilted her head back and smiled, and before he could stop himself he’d thought about Annie. The thought had simply appeared. 

Uninvited and Automatic.

Annie would’ve laughed louder. Annie would’ve made fun of him afterward. Annie would’ve stolen something off his plate and then argued about why it didn’t count as stealing.

The comparison lasted all of three seconds. The date never stood a chance after that.

Smoke rubbed a hand across his mouth.

The song continued. Another memory surfaced. Then another. Different women. Different years. Different cities. Every single one ending exactly the same way. Nothing wrong with them. Nothing he could point to and say that’s why this didn’t work. Just a persistent feeling that something wasn’t there.

Or maybe somebody.

The thought crept up on him so gradually he almost missed it. For years he’d told himself Annie was the exception. The first love. The one that got away. The person everybody compared others to for a little while before eventually moving on. The problem was “a little while” wasn’t supposed to last eight years. “A little while” wasn’t supposed to survive multiple relationships, birthdays, holidays, and entire stages of life. “A little while” wasn’t supposed to follow somebody into adulthood.

Yet Annie had.

The song was still playing when Smoke lowered his head and stared at the floor. Across the room, the stereo glowed softly in the darkness. The house felt smaller now. Quieter. Like Annie was sitting somewhere nearby saying all the things neither of them had been brave enough to say before.

Truth is.

The words echoed through his head. Not the lyrics—the title. The confession hidden inside it, because the longer he listened, the harder it became to ignore the possibility that Annie wasn’t the only person this song belonged to. Maybe that was why it bothered him. Why he hadn’t reached for the whiskey in nearly twenty minutes, because for the first time all night, the mixtape wasn’t asking him to think about Annie.

It was forcing him to think about himself and that was a much harder conversation.

Track 3: Garden (Say It Like Dat)

The transition into the next song happened so smooth Smoke almost missed it. Almost. SZA’s voice eased through the speakers, and he understood Annie wasn’t done telling the truth.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

Of course she picked this one. Of all the songs on the radio, Annie had always gravitated toward the ones that sounded like confessions. Songs that peeled back ugly feelings people normally tried to hide. Songs that admitted things most folks would’ve rather kept to themselves.

Garden was one of those songs.

Smoke reclined a little further into the couch. Outside, the Mississippi night continued without him. Crickets. Distant traffic. The dog was still barking. The sounds filtered through the screened window above the sink, familiar enough to disappear into the background. His attention remained fixed on the stereo. On what Annie was trying to say. At first he thought the song was about vulnerability. It was about fear.

There was a difference.

What it meant became clear slowly. The way most important things did. Piece by piece. Memory by memory.

Smoke found himself thinking about a night during their sophomore year. Football practice had run late, leaving him sore, exhausted, and running almost entirely on instinct by the time he finally met Annie outside the library. She’d talked nearly the whole walk home, telling him about a history article she’d read, Pearline getting written up in chemistry for arguing with the teacher, and some recipe she'd seen on a cooking show that she was convinced she could make better.

Smoke had listened the way he usually did after practice. One-word answers. A nod here. A quiet laugh there. Enough to let her know he was listening. Or at least he’d thought so.

Along the walk Annie got quiet. He barely noticed at first. She always had something to say. The silence felt strange enough that he eventually looked over at her.

“You alright?”

She shrugged.“Mhm.”

“You sure?”

“I’m fine.”

Smoke frowned. He knew better. Annie wasn’t the type to stop talking unless something was bothering her. 

He tried again. “What happened?”

“Nothin’.”

The answer annoyed him instantly because it was obvious she was lying. They went back and forth for nearly twenty minutes, Annie insisting she was fine while Smoke insisted she wasn’t, until she finally stopped walking altogether. He’d taken another few steps before he looked over. She wasn’t beside him anymore. When he turned around, Annie was standing in the middle of the sidewalk staring at the ground.

“You still like me?”

The question caught him so off guard that he laughed. It wasn’t that it was funny, it didn’t make any sense to him.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Where’d that come from?”

She shrugged again, refusing to look at him. “I don’t know.”

Smoke walked back toward her. “Annie.” “You serious?”

Another shrug.

He remembered reaching out and tipping her chin up until she finally looked at him. “Of course I still like you.”

“You do?”

“Man, what…” He laughed again, shaking his head. “I thought that was obvious.”

She searched his face for another second before finally smiling, small and almost embarrassed. “Okay.”

Then, just like that, she started walking again.

At sixteen, Smoke thought that had settled it.

He’d chalked the whole conversation up to Annie overthinking things the way Annie sometimes did. He never stopped to ask what had made her question it in the first place. Didn’t consider that spending one evening distracted by football and fatigue had been enough to make her wonder if she’d done something wrong. Sitting in his living room now, listening to a woman who had flown across state lines carrying a mixtape and eight years’ worth of unresolved feelings, Smoke felt that memory differently. Back then he’d blamed Annie’s insecurities. Now he wondered if he’d been looking at them wrong the entire time.

Maybe Annie wasn’t asking because she doubted him. Maybe she was asking because she needed to hear it. Needed confirmation, reassurance, and needed something he wasn’t particularly good at giving. Now, he wondered how many times she’d needed words and never gotten them. Because if there was one thing Annie had been asking for their entire relationship, it wasn’t grand gestures, gifts or promises.

It was words.

And words had always been the thing Smoke struggled with most.

Track 4: Damage

The next song started before Smoke could talk himself into getting another drink. He recognized the voice. But the artist? No idea. Couldn’t have told anybody if they paid him. But he’d heard the song plenty of times on the radio. At the time, he’d never paid much attention to it. 

Now he did.

That seemed to be happening a lot tonight.

By the second verse, Smoke was on his feet. He didn’t mean to stand. He just found himself moving. Restless. The same way he’d been restless beneath the pecan tree earlier. The way he’d been restless sitting on the porch pretending he wasn’t thinking about Annie while thinking about nothing else. He crossed into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, one hand rubbing absently across his jaw.

The song continued—and unfortunately, so did his memory. 

Standing in Aunt Cheryl’s yard crying.

“I came to yo’ house so excited to see you.”

The words hit differently now than they had a few hours ago. At the time he’d been too busy defending himself to really hear them.

Now he couldn’t stop hearing them.

“You acted like you couldn’t wait for me to get the fuck outta Mississippi.”

Smoke closed his eyes, because that wasn’t what happened. He knew that. Annie knew that now too. At least part of it. But knowing she misunderstood him didn’t erase the hurt she’d carried all these years. For years he’d been focused on the fact that Annie left. Focused on the unanswered phone calls, unreturned letters… silence. The feeling of being abandoned. He’d spent so much time staring at his own wound that he’d never stopped to consider hers. Didn’t stop to think about what it must’ve felt like walking out of his house that day believing she was saying goodbye to somebody she loved.

Believing he didn’t care.

Smoke exhaled slowly and looked down at his bandaged hand. The irony wasn’t lost on him. All afternoon he’d accused Annie of running, but the more he thought about it, the less that word fit. Annie hadn’t run from hard things. She stayed through grief, through loneliness. Shit, she’d spent seven years carrying around his mixtape.

Seven years. 

Through college. Through apartments. Through every version of herself she’d become since leaving Mississippi. She’d been too afraid to listen to it. Too afraid it would confirm the thing she’d feared most. That he’d already said goodbye. Yet she kept it anyway. Like some part of her couldn’t bear to hear him let her go, but couldn’t bring herself to let him go either.

That wasn’t somebody running. That was somebody hurting. The thought lingered long after the song ended. Smoke found himself looking at the damage between them and recognizing something he’d spent almost a decade avoiding.

Not all of it belonged to Annie.

Some of it belonged to him too.

That—that left him restless.

Smoke pushed himself away from the kitchen counter and crossed the living room without thinking. He grabbed his cigarettes off the end table, slipped through the back door, and stepped onto the porch. The night air met him immediately, thick with humidity and the familiar chorus of crickets beyond the fence. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the porch railing, hoping the nicotine would quiet the thoughts Annie had spent the last four songs stirring up.

Track 5: Say Yes

By the time Smoke came back inside, the cigarette had done absolutely nothing to help. The night had grown later while he stood on the porch. The sounds of the neighborhood had thinned considerably. The dog that had been barking earlier was finally quiet. The bass from music farther out disappeared. Even the crickets seemed softer now.

The house felt still when he stepped back through the door. Still and entirely too empty. Smoke shut the door behind him and stood there for a moment, looking towards the stereo. Part of him considered calling it a night. 

The smarter part. 

The part that understood Annie had already managed to drag him through memories he’d spent years avoiding. Unfortunately, the smarter part hadn’t been winning much tonight. A few minutes later he crossed the room and sat back down. He pressed play on the stereo remote. The stereo clicked. Then Annie’s voice returned. For a moment she didn’t say anything. Smoke could hear movement in the background. Paper rustling. A quiet breath. 

When she finally spoke, her voice sounded different. Softer. “You know what’s really embarrassing?” 

A soft laugh escaped her. Smoke could hear the smile in it, because sometimes Annie laughed when she was nervous.

“I almost didn’t put this song on here.” A pause followed. “Actually, that’s a lie.” Another small laugh. “I knew I was gonna put it on here. I just kept trying to talk myself out of it.”

Smoke’s attention shifted completely on the stereo. Her voice sounded less playful. More exposed.

“I think what bothers me most is that I know better.” The words came quietly. “I know people probably gonna hear this and think I lost my mind.” Another pause. “Maybe I have.”

Smoke dragged a hand over his chin.

“I called you.” The words landed softly. “I tried to talk to you.” A longer pause. “And you made it real clear that whatever we used to be ain’t what we are now….”

Smoke closed his eyes.

“Maybe that’s true.” Her voice dropped. “There really is no us anymore.” 

The sentence sat between them.  Heavy. Honest.

“But…” A breath. “If somebody asked me today.” Another breath. “Knowing all that.” 

The next words came without hesitation.

“I’d still choose you.”

Smoke stared at the floor.

“I’d still say yes.”

The click sounded. Then the song began. Smoke closed his eyes. For a long moment he didn’t move. Didn’t think. He didn’t do much of anything except listen. The music filled the room, wrapping around everything Annie had just admitted.

I’d still choose you.

The words lingered because they carried a weight he wasn’t prepared for. Yet here Annie was. Still choosing him.

The thought followed him into memories of her. 

Annie asleep on his shoulder during a movie she’d sworn she wanted to watch. The way she’d automatically reach for his hand whenever they crossed a crowded room. How she’d laugh when something genuinely caught her off guard. How she’d curl her feet beneath her whenever she sat on the couch. 

The way she’d say his name.

After she gave herself to him that first time, it was like a dam broke. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Every stolen moment, every quiet hour they managed to find, he wanted her again and again—wanted to feel the way her body softened and fit against his, the way her breath would catch as she cried out his name while her fingers would dig into his back like she was trying to keep him there forever. He had never known hunger like that. He couldn’t get enough of her skin, her scent, her warmth, or the quiet sounds she made when it was just the two of them and the rest of the world disappeared.

Smoke rubbed a hand across his jaw. 

That was the part nobody ever talked about. It wasn’t just the attraction or the chemistry. It was the familiarity. The comfort. The ease of being understood without having to explain himself. Even as kids, Annie had a way of making his world feel quieter simply by being in it.

His mind went there anyway. Annie now. Grown ass woman. Hips thicker, body filled out in all the right ways. She had that steady confidence in her voice on the tape now, even with the tiredness underneath. He wondered how it would feel to take his time peeling her out of her clothes, no more rushed teenage shit. Slow. Thorough. Learning every new inch of her.

He could picture it— her looking up at him without that old nervousness, hands sure as hell when she grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down. The way she’d probably arch into him, legs around his waist, knowing exactly how she wanted it. Deep strokes. Heavy breathing. The kind of sex that came with history and hunger and the quiet understanding that they’d already lost too much time.

There had only ever been one person for him. The only person who felt woven into the fabric of his life so completely that imagining a future without her felt unnatural. The only person who understood his silences without demanding explanations, and who could sit beside him for hours without needing to fill every quiet moment. Somehow, she had always managed to make a room feel less empty simply by existing inside it.

Smoke let out a slow breath, trying to shake the image.

It wasn’t just about sex. It never had been.

Annie.

The name moved through him quietly.

The song continued playing. Smoke lowered his head and stared at his hands. One knuckle was still swollen beneath the bandage. His skin still carried the faint scent of cigarette smoke.

The house remained empty. Yet for the first time all night it didn’t feel quite as lonely. Maybe because Annie’s voice still lingered in the room. Or maybe because she’d just admitted something he’d spent trying not to admit himself.

Given the chance, he’d still choose her too.

He’d say yes.

Track 6: Made For Me

The last song ended, but Smoke didn’t reach for the remote. He remained where he was, forearms resting on his thighs, staring at nothing in particular, letting the last few minutes sink in. The house had gone completely quiet again. The clock above the stove ticked steadily behind him. The ice in his abandoned whiskey glass had melted into cloudy water. Outside, the darkness pressed against the windows.

It was late.

Later than he’d thought. The mixtape had stolen most of his night. The thought should’ve made him mad. Instead, he found himself reaching for the remote before he could talk himself out of it.

The stereo hummed softly.

Then Annie laughed.

The sound caught him off guard. It wasn’t loud, but it was familiar. The kind of laugh that always sounded like she was smiling at her own thoughts.

“You know what annoys me…again?”

Smoke shook his head. Despite everything, the corner of his mouth twitched. Annie had been starting conversations that way for most of her life. “You know what annoys me?” usually meant Annie was about to say something she’d spent entirely too much time thinking about.

“I spent years trying to figure out what was wrong with me.”

The smile disappeared. His attention fully on the stereo.

“I thought maybe I was comparing everybody to some impossible version of you that didn’t even exist anymore.”

Something tightened in his chest. Her words didn’t surprise him. The older he got, the harder it became to ignore how often he’d done the same thing.

The recording continued.

“But the older I got…” Her voice softened. “The more I realized there wasn’t nothin’ wrong with me.”

The room seemed to grow quieter.

“I was just lookin’ for you.”

The click sounded. Then the song began. Smoke leaned back slowly against the couch. For a long moment he didn’t do much of anything except listen. The song floated through the room while his attention slipped somewhere he usually tried not to let it go.

Years. Entire years. Twenty-six wasn’t old. At least that was what everybody kept saying. Yet somehow adulthood had arrived anyway. Careers. Responsibilities. Bills. Funerals. Relationships. Life kept moving whether you were ready for it or not. That was the strange part. Somewhere inside all those years, Smoke had convinced himself he’d eventually wake up one day and Annie would stop being the standard. The way people claimed first loves were supposed to fade. Time, distance, and life were supposed to handle it. 

Instead, life kept handing him reminders. Jada had been a good woman. She was funny. Easy to talk to. Pretty. He enjoyed being around her, and for a while he’d convinced himself that was enough.

So he tried. 

He tried to ignore the feeling that something wasn’t quite clicking. Tried to believe that whatever he’d shared with Annie belonged to another lifetime, another version of himself that had long since grown up and moved on. But every time he started thinking maybe this could work, something held him back.

It wasn’t anything Jada did. That was the problem. She’d done nothing wrong. Yet every goodbye came too easily. A few days could pass without seeing her and it never really bothered him. When she left, he missed her company, but never her presence.

Annie was different. She could leave a room and somehow take the room with her. Annie wasn’t perfect. Lord knew she wasn’t. She overthought things. Jumped to conclusions. Held onto hurt longer than she should’ve, and when she got angry enough, she could say things sharp enough to leave scars. Yet somehow none of that changed the fact that she’d always felt right.

Right.

Such a simple word. But it explained more than all the others combined. 

Annie fit.

It wasn’t that loving her had been easy. Quite the opposite. There had been moments when loving Annie felt like the hardest thing he’d ever done. But even then, she still felt right. Like the missing piece of a conversation he’d been having his entire life. Like somebody he’d been searching for long before he knew enough to search.

The song continued. Smoke lowered his gaze toward the floor. For years he’d told himself he was protecting his peace. Protecting his heart and himself from disappointment.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

Maybe he’d simply been protecting a place nobody else had ever managed to reach. A place Annie had occupied so completely that every attempt to replace her had failed before it truly began. The thought should’ve bothered him.

Instead, it felt suspiciously close to relief.

For years he’d told himself there had to be a reason nobody else ever felt right. There had to be a reason he kept comparing Jada and other women to somebody who lived three states away. A reason eight years had passed and Anissa Marie Landry still occupied more space in his head than she had any right to.

It wasn’t because something was wrong with him. He wasn’t stuck, he didn’t believe. He'd simply spent years looking for something he’d already found once. 

Annie was right. Maybe she had just been looking for him. And maybe he’d been looking for her too.

The thought lingered. Then, before he could stop it, another one followed.

Maybe she was made for him too.

Not maybe.

She was.

Track 7: Thinking Out Loud

The track began so quietly Smoke almost missed it.

For a second he simply sat there, one arm stretched across the back of the couch, eyes half-lidded from exhaustion and whiskey and the emotional beating Annie had spent the last several hours delivering through a collection of songs. The house had gone quiet around him hours ago. The kitchen clock ticked steadily somewhere behind him. Outside, the night pressed against the windows in a blanket of darkness broken only by the occasional passing headlights.

Then the opening notes drifted through the speakers. Smoke’s eyes opened completely. Recognition arrived immediately. Not because he remembered the title. Shit, if somebody had asked him what the song was called, he probably couldn’t have answered. But he knew the song. More importantly, he knew exactly where he knew it from.

A slow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he could stop it.

“Man.”

The word escaped quietly into the empty house.

Out of every song Annie could’ve chosen, somehow she’d found this one.

The memory came so fast it almost felt like being pulled backward through time. One minute he was twenty-six years old sitting in the middle of his living room. The next he was fourteen years old standing inside Rollers Skating Rink with rented skates laced too tight around his ankles and half the church youth group packed inside.

The place smelled like floor wax, popcorn, sweat, and stale nacho cheese. Colored lights swept across the rink while music echoed through speakers that had probably been outdated before any of them were born. Every few minutes, somebody crashed into somebody else, and laughter erupted from somewhere across the building.

Smoke had spent most of the evening regretting coming. Skating wasn’t his thing. If he’d had his way, he’d be sitting at home. But his mama informed him that sitting in the house all weekend wasn’t a personality trait and practically shoved him out the door. Stack had spent the entire ride there acting like the church had personally organized the event for his entertainment.

Unfortunately, the night had gone exactly the way Stack wanted. He was in his element. He was showing off and making a fucking fool of himself while a cluster of girls laughed at everything he said. Every time Smoke looked up, Stack was somehow at the center of another conversation.

Smoke had no interest in any of that. He’d been perfectly content skating slow laps around the edge of the rink and counting down the minutes until their mama decided they’d stayed long enough.

Then the youth pastor announced a partner challenge.

Looking back now, he couldn’t remember what the challenge actually was. He couldn’t tell you the rules, the prize, or whether anybody even won. What he remembered was standing near the wall when the youth leader started pairing people together and noticing there weren’t enough partners left.

The youth leader barely finished explaining the challenge before everybody started scrambling for partners. Stack wasted no time, calling dibs on a girl before half the room even understood the rules. Across the rink, Pearline laughed as one of the girls from church grabbed her arm and claimed her for their team. Within seconds everybody seemed to have found somebody. 

Everybody except Smoke and Annie. 

Smoke noticed it at the exact same time Annie did. Her eyes met his briefly before darting away.

Neither moved.

The youth leader looked between them and laughed. “Boom, there you go.”

Annie dropped her gaze to her skates. Smoke rolled his eyes.

The youth leader sighed dramatically. “Y’all act like I told you to get married.”

That only made things worse. 

A few minutes later they found themselves skating side by side. The awkwardness lasting all of ten minutes. Annie talked too much for awkwardness to survive around her. Every time the conversation threatened to die, she dragged it back to life with another question. Another observation. Another completely random thought that somehow made perfect sense inside her head. By the third lap she’d gotten him talking. By the fourth they were arguing about music. By the fifth Smoke found himself looking forward to whatever ridiculous thing was about to come out of her mouth next.

The crazy part was that Annie wasn’t even trying. She wasn’t flirting, showing off, or doing any of the things girls usually did when they wanted his attention. She was simply being herself. At one point she started skating backwards while carrying on an entire conversation.

Smoke stared at her. “You gon’ break yo’ neck.”

“I’m fine.”

“You ain’t even lookin’.”

“I know where I’m goin’.”

“Do you?”

Annie laughed. The sound followed him halfway around the rink. 

The music changed a few minutes later.

Smoke didn’t think much of it at first. Songs had been rotating all night. Some people cheered when they recognized one. Others groaned dramatically before continuing whatever conversation they were already having. The speakers crackled slightly as the next track started, and for a second nobody paid much attention.

Then Annie gasped. The sound caught his attention.

“Oh, I love this song.”

Smoke glanced toward the ceiling speakers before looking back at her. “Nah.”

Annie blinked. “Nah what?”

“I ain’t skatin’ to this.”

Her expression shifted instantly. Confusion first. Then suspicion. “Why?”

Smoke pointed vaguely toward the music overhead. “Cause this some white people shit.”

She shot him such an offended look that he almost laughed.

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“If you actually listened to the words, they’re beautiful.”

Smoke snorted. “Aight.”

“No. Not aight.” Annie folded her arms.

The movement nearly threw her off balance and she corrected herself with an irritated little skate adjustment that only made her look more annoyed.

“Sorry, this ain’t Lil Wayne. 

Now it was Smoke’s turn to be offended. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with Weezy F. Baby, girl.”

“Of course you’d say that. Every song can’t be about sex, selling drugs and threatening people, you know.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

“There is when it’s all you listen to.”

“It ain’t all I listen to.”

“Sure it ain’t.”

The argument continued for another lap around the rink before Annie finally threw her hands into the air.

“You know what? Forget it.”

Smoke didn’t like that tone. “What?”

“I’m done arguing with you.” Then she pointed toward the center of the floor where couples were beginning to gather. “I’m gonna skate by myself.”

The words shouldn’t have mattered. Looking back now, Smoke knew that. She wasn’t leaving, going home, or disappearing. She was moving maybe twenty feet away. Yet something unpleasant sat low in his stomach anyway.

Annie started pushing off before he could fully understand why.

For the first time all evening, the thought of her not being beside him felt wrong. The thought arrived quietly. So quietly that fourteen-year-old Smoke almost missed it. Somewhere over the last hour he’d gotten used to her. The questions, her laughter and used to looking over and finding her beside him. The idea of spending the rest of the night without any of that suddenly felt far less appealing than it should have.

“Annie.”

She stopped and turned. “What?”

Smoke regretted speaking, because now he had to explain himself. His ears felt warm.

“I mean…”

Annie waited. One eyebrow slowly rising.

“If you wanna skate…”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “You wanna skate to the white people  music?”

Smoke rolled his eyes. “Man, shut up.”

Annie laughed. “No, answer the question.”

The smile she was trying to hide made it difficult to stay annoyed.

Smoke shook his head. Then finally looked at her. “I wanna skate… with you.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them. Before he could make them sound cooler, or could pretend they meant something else.

For a moment Annie just stared at him. She wasn’t laughing or teasing him. Just looking. Then something flickered in her expression. Surprise. The honest kind. Then, slowly, she smiled. The smile was different from the others she’d given him all night. Smaller…softer. Like she’d suddenly become aware of something she couldn’t quite name.

Without saying another word, she held out her hand. Smoke looked at it for half a second before taking it. Her fingers were warm.

That was all.

Nothing dramatic happened. The lights didn’t get brighter. The music didn’t swell. Nobody stopped skating. The world continued exactly as it had thirty seconds earlier. Yet Smoke became painfully aware of the fact that he was holding Annie’s hand. The awareness followed him straight into the slow skate.

Around them, teenagers paired off beneath the colored lights while the song echoed through the speakers. Some couples talked. Others didn’t. A few boys looked like they’d rather be anywhere else.

Annie looked delighted. She quietly sang along to parts of the song under her breath, mouthing words she clearly knew by heart. Smoke pretended not to notice. He noticed. Every single time.

“See?” she asked after a minute.

Smoke frowned. “See what?”

“The lyrics.”

He groaned. “Oh Lord.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“They aight.”

Annie gasped dramatically. “‘Aight’?”

“They ain’t Lil Wayne.”

That earned another laugh. The sound landed deep in his chest.

The song continued. The conversation flowed. At some point Annie stopped trying to convince him the song was amazing and started talking about something else entirely. A teacher she didn’t like. A test she thought she’d failed. Pearline threatening to fight somebody earlier that week.

Smoke couldn’t remember most of it anymore. What he remembered was how easy it felt. The strange comfort of it. The way an hour had somehow turned into two without him noticing. How being around Annie required less effort than being around almost anybody else.

That was the part that stayed.

Her.

The way her eyes lit up when she talked about something she cared about. How she laughed with her whole body, and she always looked directly at whoever she was speaking to. The way she made ordinary things feel interesting simply because she was the one talking about them. And somewhere along the way, he found himself wishing the night wouldn’t end. The thought surprised him enough that he almost looked around to make sure nobody had heard it. When the song finally faded and another one took its place, Annie released his hand and skated ahead a few feet before turning back toward him.

“You survived.”

Smoke rolled his eyes. “Barely.”

Annie laughed again, then she reached out and grabbed his wrist. “C’mon.”

Before he could ask where they were going, she pulled him towards the middle of the rink.

To this day, Smoke couldn’t even remember what they were supposed to be doing the rest of the night. But he remembered everything about Annie that night. Her laughing, singing along to a song he’d spent years pretending he hated. Annie grabbing his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

And maybe that was the night it started.

A week later he would be standing in a crowded school parking lot listening to Jada talking about something, when Stack yelled from across the pavement.

He’d turned automatically. Not towards Stack—

Towards Annie.

She stood near the curb laughing with Pearline, her backpack hanging from one shoulder. The sight of her found its place in his chest with the same ease it had at Rollers. Familiar. Comfortable. Natural.

Annie looked up. Their eyes met. Surprise crossed her face first. Then a smile. Small and quick before it disappeared again.

Smoke looked away before she did, but the feeling stayed.

Looking back now, Smoke he’d spent years mistaking the feeling for coincidence. The parking lot after school. Football games on Friday nights. Church on Sundays. Cookouts at Aunt Cheryl’s house. Hallways crowded with students rushing to class. 

Somehow his eyes always found Annie.

At the time, he never questioned it. Annie had simply become part of the landscape of his life. As familiar as Stack, his Mama, and Uncle Lewis. As familiar as home. If he arrived somewhere and she was there, his attention naturally went her way sooner or later. If she wasn’t there, he noticed that too.

Back then he thought it meant nothing.

Now he knew better.

A fourteen-year-old boy standing beneath colored lights at a skating rink had looked at a shy girl with a quick smile and a laugh he couldn’t seem to get enough of. Somewhere between arguing about music, holding her hand, and wishing the song would last a little longer had quietly taken root inside him.

It wasn’t love—yet. Just the first fragile beginnings of it. The kind of feeling that grows so slowly you don’t notice it’s happening until years later, when you look up and find it’s woven itself through nearly every important memory you have.

Smoke leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. A fourteen-year-old boy had taken Annie Landry’s hand and thought the night was better when she was in it.

And whether he’d understood it or not, he’d been looking for her ever since.

Sometime during the night, Smoke fell asleep. He wasn’t entirely sure when it happened. One minute he had been lying on the couch staring at the ceiling while Thinking Out Loud drifted through the speakers. The next he was fourteen again, with Annie’s hand in his and her laughter ringing through the air. Even asleep, the memory lingered.

The sound of music pulled him back toward consciousness.

Slowly.

Reluctantly.

Smoke frowned before he even opened his eyes. Sunlight pressed against his eyelids. His neck ached from sleeping on the couch. One arm had gone numb during the night and the stiffness in his shoulders reminded him that thirty-minute naps and sleeping in an actual bed were two very different things.

Music continued as he laid there listening without really hearing it. His mind was still caught somewhere between sleep and memory. Then different lyrics rolled through the room and his eyes finally opened.

My face turns to gold

Hoping to find my way home

This place I don't know

No yellow brick road to follow

The living room looked different in daylight. The whiskey glass still sat on the coffee table. His bandaged hand rested against his stomach. The CD case remained exactly where he’d left it the night before. Smoke pushed himself upright and rubbed a hand across his face.

The song continued. Unfamiliar to him. At least he thought it was. Frowning, he looked toward his phone. It was lying face up on the coffee table with the screen illuminated.

Spotify.

The CD must’ve ended hours ago. At some point the stereo had switched back to the playlist he’d been listening to earlier while he spent half the evening finding excuses not to press play.

Mmm, take me home, let’s make love, real love

Take me home, let's make real love, real love

Take me home, let's make real love, real love

Take me out of the blue

Smoke glanced at the screen.

Green Papaya — Lianne La Havas

The title meant nothing to him. Still, he found himself listening to the words. Really listening.

Our hearts overgrown

Longing for peace of our own

Found heaven in you

Promise to be pure and true

The house remained quiet except for the music and the occasional creak of old wood settling beneath the morning heat. Sunlight spilled through the windows, painting bright rectangles across the floor while the song floated through the room with an easy warmth that reminded him entirely too much of Annie.

Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop listening.

Still mountains to climb

We will survive, still got time

Or maybe everything reminded him of Annie now.

The thought would’ve pissed him off yesterday. This morning it felt suspiciously close to acceptance.

Smoke leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The lyrics continued, soft and thoughtful and intimate in a way that felt less like a performance and more like a conversation. Not a desperate one.

Just someone who knew another person completely.

My partner-in-crime

Hoping you'll love me till we die

The kind of knowing that couldn’t be built overnight— that came from years. The kind that came from paying attention.

And suddenly he thought about Annie knowing he hated tomatoes, but loved tomato sandwiches. How he ate slowly, always taking twice as long as everybody else to finish a meal. How, when he was angry, she never pushed him to talk. She’d simply sit beside him in comfortable silence because she knew her presence mattered more than her words. She remembered the houses he used to draw in the margins of his notebooks. She knew he always reached for the corner piece of cornbread. She could tell when he was lying before he’d even finished the sentence.

She knew him. 

The truth quietly fell into place. Even after everything that had happened, and the years between them, Annie still knew him. His gaze went towards the CD case again. Towards the careful handwriting on the front—to the evidence of an entire night spent listening to a woman explain herself in every way she knew how.

Something shifted. Not another revelation. Those had come all night long. A decision. Clear, certain and simple. Smoke stood so quickly he nearly knocked the coffee table with his knee.

He needed to see her, not call or text. See her. 

Today. 

Now. 

Before fear had another chance to talk and pride convinced him to stay home. Before he could come up with a single excuse not to go. The urgency surprised him. One minute he was sitting on the couch and the next he was looking for his keys. 

The kitchen counter. Nothing. Coffee table. Nothing. End table. Nope…not there either.

Smoke frowned. “Where the fuck…”

He checked the kitchen again. Then checked the coffee table again. Then stopped. The keys were already in his hand. For a moment he simply stared at them. Annoyed. Half awake. Entirely too tired to be trusted.

A laugh escaped him. His shirt was still missing. He was standing in the middle of his house wearing nothing but sweatpants and determination.

He didn’t care.

For the first time in years, he knew exactly what he wanted. And for once, he intended to do something about it.

Then came the knock. Three soft taps against the front door. Smoke froze, he thought he’d imagined it. Then the sound came again. Softer this time. His heart kicked hard against his ribs. Because somehow he already knew. The distance between the living room and the front door had never felt longer. He crossed it anyway. Slowly at first. Then faster. His hand closed around the knob. For one brief second he simply stood there. Then he opened the door—

And there she was.

Morning sunlight spilled across the porch behind her. She stood there with her braids pulled into a high ponytail and a pale yellow dress that made it entirely too easy to stare. The color shouldn’t have done anything for him. It was just yellow. Yet somehow it made her look more beautiful against her smooth chocolate skin. Brighter. Like she’d carried a piece of the morning with her. 

Her hands were clasped loosely in front of her, fingers lacing and unlacing together while uncertainty flickered across her face. It had been a long time since he’d seen Annie look this nervous around him. Then again, maybe she wasn’t nervous around him. Maybe she was nervous about what came next.

Neither spoke. They simply stared at each other. Two people who had spent eight years carrying the same thing in different ways.

Then Annie swallowed. A small smile appeared.

“Hi.”

Smoke forgot every single thing he’d planned to say.

End Note: Y'all know Smoke is about to fuck Annie into a coma, right? Right. K, byeeee! ✌🏾💜

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He rose from his bedding with a sluggish energy, stretched his limbs, and padded over barefoot to the open window. Old Charlie, the seven-year-old brown frizzle-feathered rooster on his last leg of life, forced out another pitiful screech, trying to wake up the sun and everything under it. Although it was only seven in the morning, the temperature already hinted at an oppressive heat to come by noon. The horizon stretched before him with a golden hue and faint promises of a blessed day.

The Lord's day of rest.

Sunday.

Thoughts of Annie's smile brought forth a tender yearning in his heart to see her again. They kissed so much the night before that his lips remained swollen and sensitive to the touch. She whispered things in his ear that singed the places her tongue traced along the shell. He could still hear the Creole spilling off her lips like honey dripping from a warm spoon.

"Ton corps ne m'oubliera," she'd whispered, putting a verbal root on his soul that tied him next to her all night at the jump up.

Your body will never forget me.

That's what she told him in her bayou tongue. And all he murmured in return was a confident, "Mm-hmm."

Smoke glanced to his left.

Stack's sleeping area was empty, his pallet unrumpled from lack of use.

Smoke frowned.

Stack wasn't an early riser.

Smoke ran a hand over his unkempt hair. He hadn't bothered to tie it down for the night with a stocking cap. Pulling his sore legs through some work denims, he ambled into the tidy front room bare chested and headed for the kitchen. Taiwo busied herself there, already up early grinding coffee beans. She held a hand above the grinder. The comforting aroma of dark roasted grounds filled the kitchen.

"I bless ya and I thank ya. Ashe," Taiwo said with her eyes closed, praying over the next batch of beans ready to go through the grinder.

"Morning Momma," Smoke said.

He plopped down in a chair facing the stove.

"Morning, son. Coffee?"

"Yes, ma'am."

His mother's thick dark hair fell loose across her back, down to her waist. Hints of gray touched her temples. She remained a stunning woman. Many men had come for her hand after Cash's death. She never re-married nor considered seeing anyone else. Cash had been the love of her life, even after he turned into a lowly womanizer and abusive father. Smoke suspected that a couple of potential suitors hesitated in pursuing her because of the reputation of her two rambunctious boys.

Despite her efforts at protecting her twin sons—going so far as to physically attack Cash herself before he even touched the boys—Taiwo still mourned the loss of the happier times, the days and months and years before Cash hit the road to seek his fortune in music to make a better life for his family. A family life he ultimately brought low with his rambling ways and wickedness.

Taiwo poured the fresh brew into a ceramic mug. She dropped a sugar cube in and handed it to him.

"I didn't even hear you boys come in. Must've been really late last night. Did Cornbread have a good time?"

"That he did. It was a shindig for the ages."

She sat down at the table across from his seat and watched him blow over the rim of the mug. He let the heat seep into his fingers as he tightened the surrounding grip. Quiet time with his mother was a rare gift.

He sipped.

She studied his face.

"You enjoy yourself?"

"I did. I even danced for most of it."

"Well now, you really did have a good time. How many girls you dance with?"

"Just one."

"One?"

"Annie."

The name sank in. Taiwo quirked her lips up into a smile.

"I figured she'd be sweet on one of you boys. Thought it would be Meji. He did the most showing out for her."

Smoke sighed at the sound of his brother's nickname, remembering the exchange of hurt feelings over Annie.

"What happened to your face?" Taiwo asked.

There was no alarm in her voice. Her tone sounded like she expected some type of run-in with outsiders. The coffee pot bubbled and hissed, and she went over to pour herself a steaming mug.

"Just got into it with some fellas. It ain't nothin'."

"Meji bruised up, too?"

"No."

"Tai, you know I don't want y'all coming home and giving people a reason to think ill of ya. Caint y'all keep cordial among your friends?"

Whenever his mother called him by his middle name, the same as her first, Smoke knew she was truly concerned.

"Momma, I promise, it was nothin'. Just foolin' around, rough housing…nothin' serious."

Taiwo lifted his chin and inspected all of his face before sitting down. She puckered her lips and blew across her coffee mug. Sipped.

"Tell me about Annie," she said with a glint in her eye.

"What's there to tell? You already know her."

He broke eye contact and drank some coffee.

"I know her as she is…when she's with me. Not when she's with you. You must like her a lot to ignore every other girl there."

He pressed his lips together tight, but his dimples betrayed him.

His mother clucked her tongue like she knew everything about his affections for Annie.

"Oh, Annie is special, indeed. Respectable young woman with a good head on her shoulders," she said.

"People say she two-headed like you."

"Yes, she is. Her grandmother's lineage is strong. She even knows some of the old language from Africa, too. Just like my mother. She told me her great-grandpa was a saltwater African. But I ain't never met a family that skipped a generation of our kind. Her mother caint stand what we do. Forbids it. Gave me a tongue-lashing two years ago when I helped Annie make her first mojo bag. I told Annie she gotta carry it on her somewhere since she caint wear it as a necklace in front of her parents. She holds that old time swamp knowledge from way back and they despise it."

Taiwo drank more coffee and stared at him.

"I sit in that church every Sunday with them. I know scriptures backward and forward. God speaks to me in ways that should be studied. I have tended to many of the sick in our community and yet they look at me like they can smell fire and brimstone on my clothes."

"That's cuz Uncle Jed spreads lies about us to the congregation."

"Hmmph. Jed only turned to the church because of me. I couldn't pray the devil outta your father, but I sure as hell got Jed back on the true path with God. We used to sit right in this kitchen and read passages from my great-grandmother's bible—a book she wasn't even allowed to read by her owner! I spent months learning that sinner how to read properly. Now he acts like what I done for him ain't mean a damn thing. Got his nose so high in the air. If it rained, that man would drown! And Ruthie running around here thinkin' she got the biggest saint for a husband. The nerve!"

Smoke laughed. Taiwo chuckled too.

She reached across the table and took Smoke's hand in hers.

"Annie has a growing power in her, son. Everything I teach her she soaks up and studies. A true root worker. She's a healer like her grandmother, and we need more of that in these parts. Her hands can make medicine from so many plants and herbs around here. She done taught me some things from her grandmother that I can use, too. My gifts are spiritual, more in tune with what people caint see. But Annie…she's a natural herbalist. Her ancestors stand close to her and they shine so bright in her face. That girl can bind protective roots stronger than I've ever seen. You would be wise to keep her around."

"Momma, you know I don't believe in none of that stuff y'all do. Heck, I don't even know if I believe in that bible you and Uncle Jed quote from."

"Don't matter. If you want to believe in something, just believe in me, hear?"

Smoke nodded and pulled back his hand, thinking of what he planned for the day. Visiting Mr. Belizaire after church let out.

"Uncle Jed already told her parents I'm a wicked man. I'm gonna ask her father's permission to see her anyway."

"He won't like that."

"I know. But I'll show him I can be a proper gentleman by asking first."

"Be nice to have Annie as my daughter-in-law."

Smoke's face warmed up, and he scoffed at her, wrenching his gaze away from his mother's twinkling eyes.

"I gotta start courting her first before I start talkin' marriage."

Taiwo sucked her teeth.

"You wanna marry her. Ain't none of my boys gone to a jump up and danced with one woman all night. Hmmm…Annie Moore. That has a nice ring to it."

"Momma, please."

Smoke ducked his head to avoid eye contact. He found it embarrassing to talk about the prospect of marriage in front of his mother. If he failed to convince Annie's father for a chance at romance, what would he say to Taiwo? Her sons were pariah for life with the proper Black folks?

"Maybe it's your fate to be with her. I never told ya that you met Annie when she was a baby, did I? It was during that terrible flood almost twenty years ago. Roy and Mavis weren't here long, about a year. I kinda think they were running away from something bad in New Orleans cuz they went back a month after the ground dried up completely. They'd left all their older daughters behind in Baton Rouge, except for Annie. She was still nursing from her momma. I was sad to see them go, but when they came back three years ago with some other relatives migrating for work—right after you and Meji went to war—they acted like they didn't know me anymore. No matter what Jedidiah told them about your daddy and you boys, they knew y'all a short time as babies before Cash turned mean…before he…"

Taiwo rubbed her arm and shook away the thought.

"Annie was a pretty baby. I often wondered if all of their daughters came out perfect that way. So sweet and loving. You used to pat her head and stick your face so close to hers when I held her. You and Meji were a year old, and Annie was a couple of months. She'd laugh and shake her little fists. Maybe had they stayed here, things could be easier for you…and her."

She gently patted his hand.

"I'ma start cooking breakfast. Go wash up. I can smell ya from here."

Smoke sniffed his armpits and groaned.

Grabbing a clean shirt and underwear, he headed outside and pumped water from a well into a bucket. He dumped six buckets into a tub, pulled off his jeans, and stepped in.

Charlie crowed and flapped his scrawny wings on a post, and Smoke scrubbed down with the chilly water. The soap his mother made smelled like wild mint and he washed all over thoroughly with a sponge. He rinsed with another bucket of clean water, and ran a handful over his hair, bringing out small curls at the top of his head.

After drying off, he sprinkled baking soda in his hand and swiped them under his pits. Hanging around the newcomers Wilson and Randolph with their funky body odor kept Smoke self-conscious about smelling good to court Annie. Thinking about what his mother said about meeting her as a baby, Smoke wondered if their instant connection could've started long before they were young adults.

He dressed in the yard, luxuriating in the caress of sunlight toasting his face.

Back in the house, Taiwo fried catfish with hot grease popping in a cast-iron skillet and stirred thick brown gravy in another pan. Grits bubbled in a pot and the flaxen light of morning poured through the kitchen window, casting a soft glow on his mother's unlined face.

"Get your brother up. These grits are about done," Taiwo said.

"He ain't here," Smoke said, sneaking a piece of hot fish from a plate.

"Whatchu mean he ain't here? Y'all went to Cornbread's party together."

"I don't know where he is."

"You left him behind?"

"Annie and her friends had to get back home before it got too late, so I drove them. Meji said he'd get a ride with Cornbread."

Taiwo's brows knitted together and her eyes grew narrow. She fixed herself and Smoke a plate for breakfast, and halfway through their meal, someone banged on the door.

Smoke opened it and Annie tumbled in. Behind her were two men from down the way carrying shotguns. Annie clutched on his arms with fearful eyes and a heaving chest. She hugged him tight, then looked behind him at Taiwo.

"Is Stack here?"

She said his brother's name so loud that it frightened Smoke.

"Nah…"

"Oh, Jesus!" Annie cried out.

She burst into tears. Taiwo rushed forward and embraced her. Smoke stepped outside to the men.

"What's going on, Herbert?" Smoke asked.

"They found a body hanging from the Sunflower River Bridge. An ex soldier," Herbert said, pulling off his straw hat.

Taiwo wailed behind him.

The man next to Herbert, Bean, shuffled forward and pulled off his hat, too.

"They beat the body up real bad, Smoke," Bean said. "Daniel and Marcus over in Gator Walk said them white folks in town are over there gawking at it, so we caint even get near to cut whoever it is down. People sayin' the Klan ran around last night lookin' for ex soldiers. Only ones we know over here is you and…Stack."

Taiwo grabbed Smoke's arm.

"You shouldn't have left him by himself, Tai…why'd you leave him behind?" Taiwo cried out.

Smoke dashed into his bedroom and pulled on his shoes. He grabbed his WWI issued binoculars along with a gray flat cap, and joined the men outside.

"You can ride with us," Bean said, pointing to his truck.

"I'm comin', too!" Taiwo said.

"Nah, Momma, you stay here. I don't want you seeing nothin' like that," Smoke said.

"I'm comin' with you!"

Taiwo's harsh shriek scared him. He flexed his hands to keep the tremors away.

"Okay, Momma."

He helped her get into the front seat with Bean, and hustled with Annie and Herbert onto the back of the truck bed where they seated themselves on top of scratchy burlap potato sacks. Smoke cradled Annie's hand on his thigh. She rested her head on his shoulder.

Word had spread among the community.

Other people followed behind on wagons and a few old cars. The somber trek to the bridge and his mother's loud praying didn't help calm his nerves. He prepared his mind for the worst outcome and realized he forgot to grab his Colt. The truck jounced across a loose gravel path that Bean used to bypass the main road leading to the Sunflower River Bridge. There was no telling how many Klan members were prowling unsheathed from their white killing robes for more victims in broad daylight. Annie's soft frame jerked with the movement against him, and he threw an arm around her. She wiped her eyes.

Bean maneuvered the truck through a dense covering of pine trees that brought them closest to the river's edge without being seen. Smoke hopped out first.

"Y'all stay here," he told the women.

He crept as far as he could with the men to survey the gruesome deed, and lifted the binoculars around his neck. Scanning the full length of the bridge's five hundred feet, he released a shudder of breath.

The limp body of a man swung above the river water.

A large cluster of white spectators leered at the corpse. Men and women.

The other men who followed Bean's truck rallied around Smoke. Proud colored men with anguished faces. Nine in all. Most skipped church to help retrieve the body. Smoke couldn't tell who the victim was from the distance. But they were clothed in a similar vest and dark pants like his brother. The body rocked forward and back on the rope. Lifeless. Unspirited. The soul long gone.

Taiwo fretted in the front seat of the truck, her hands clasped together and resting against pinched lips, her red-rimmed eyes stained with worry.

Annie stayed in the truckbed with her hands rubbing the upper part of her arms frantically, her cheeks already wet with tears. Smoke strode next to Bean and exhaled the tension he carried in his chest.

"We gotta wait 'til those crackas leave," Bean said.

Smoke nodded and peered over at the others waiting in silence behind them. As long as they remained out of sight, no confrontation would be needed. The urge to snatch Herbert's rifle and blast every white person on the bridge surged through him. He pushed down on his killer instinct and checked on his mother instead.

"Is it him?" Taiwo said through the open window of the truck.

"I don't know. Gotta wait and see."

She covered her face and burst into fresh tears. Annie climbed out from the back and rushed around to rub his mother's shoulder. He checked on the bridge with the binoculars again. The sheriff arrived twenty minutes later and the crowd dispersed within the hour. The body was left purposely to hang longer over the bridge as a warning to the colored community. It would've been left to bloat and stink all day had someone from Gator Walk not discovered it quickly.

Bean made everyone wait another ten minutes before they drove over the bridge.

"Keep my momma in the truck," Smoke told Annie.

He and the other men marched across to the center of the wood-planked bridge and cast wary eyes over the side.

"We can cut him down or pull him up," Bean suggested.

"Ain't got no boat here to reach him and the water will carry him downriver too fast," Herbert said.

"Gotta pull him up and hope the head don't snap off. That rope is dug in there deep. They mighta dragged him with a vehicle first," Smoke said.

His mind disassociated the victim as his brother or anyone else. The synapses in his brain went into soldier mode. In the war, he and Stack witnessed bodies blown to bits and faces blasted into fleshy mush. Wasn't no time to think about that being his brother and weeping over it. Not yet anyways, and not with his momma losing her shit one hundred feet away.

Herbert reached over the railing and grabbed a section of the rope. He pulled and lifted. Smoke and Bean assisted as he stepped back. Their combined strength raised the body until it was within reach by the shoulders. Smoke sucked in a breath while examining the bloody and bruised face once they hoisted it to the railing. The eyes were puffy and swollen shut. Lips twice their size.

They laid the victim out on the bridge.

"Jesus Christ…look what they did…goddamn animals," Bean hissed.

"Is it him?!" Taiwo yelled.

Annie prevented his mother from getting out of the truck.

Smoke looked over the body carefully and sighed heavily. Staring at the belt, Papa Will's shiny brass turtle buckle was nowhere to be found. A khaki-colored U.S. Army issued belt with simple snap fasteners circled the man's waist. He dug his thumb under the top lip and checked for gold-rimmed teeth.

It wasn't Stack.

He shook his head at the older men and used a borrowed knife to cut the embedded noose from around the man's broken neck.

"Let's get him into the truck. The sheriff might come back. I wouldn't doubt he had some hand in this," Bean said.

Herbert and Bean lifted the body and carried it to the truckbed. Taiwo hopped out of the truck and ran to the dead man.

"It ain't him, Momma," Smoke said, grabbing her away from the victim.

Taiwo went limp for a second, then lunged forward to look at the body, anyway.

"This is somebody's poor child," Taiwo said, touching the man's battered face.

She wept like it was her own son.

"Look alive, ya'll," Bean said.

Another truck roared toward them on the opposite side of the bridge. It stopped five feet away from them. An older Black man with a receding hairline and tired yellow splotches in the whites of his eyes rushed out of the vehicle and stalked toward them. Smoke recognized him as a long-time sharecropper named Morris from over in Shelby.

"Y'all gotta get outta here. These white folks are up in arms back in town," Morris said.

He glanced at the dead man.

"You know who he is?" Smoke said.

"Landon Breed," Morris said. "People over there sayin' he slept with a white woman in the hotel he worked for. They snatched him up from his job. He's a soldier from the war. Worked at the diner next to the Mosby Hotel."

"We'll get him back to his people. I know where they stay," Bean said.

Another truck rode up fast behind Smoke. He turned and came face-to-face with Royal Belizaire. Annie's father. After a quick glance at Landon's body, Roy grabbed Annie's arm and yanked her behind him.

"They killin' soldiers outchea, boy. Stay away from my daughter!" Roy barked.

"Papere!" Annie yelped.

Roy dragged Annie away. She squirmed in her father's grasp, and her big brown eyes searched for Smoke's.

"It's okay, Annie. Listen to your father," Smoke said.

Morris backed away from them and held up his hands.

"I suggest y'all lie low. Don't cross this bridge or come in town for a while. This done caused a big ruckus. Stay safe and keep your kinfolk close to home. Stay indoors when that sun go down," Morris said.

He trudged back to his truck and drove away fast, leaving dust in his wake.

Bean drove them back home, but his mother didn't stay there long. She gathered the bag she used on her house calls to folks who couldn't afford to see a doctor and relied on her to ease their misery and pain.

"His family will need tending to. I can help with that…prepare his body, too. We'll get your Uncle Jed and carry him over to the Breed's home. Go find your brother. Bring him home safe, Tai," Taiwo said.

"I will," Smoke said.

She tied her hair up and joined the men back outside.

Smoke remembered to grab his gun from under his pallet and rushed to his father's car. He drove to the last place Stack had been.

The old barn.

Smoke parked the car behind the barn hidden in tall brush.

He surveyed his surroundings before ambling over to the side door.

"Stack! You in here?"

Silence.

A few pigeons cooed above him in the rafters.

"Stack!"

A loud groan peppered his ears in a corner. Smoke dashed past the rickety stairs searching for the sound. Cornbread's large form greeted him face-down on a pile of scratchy hay. He rolled over with sleep crusted in the corners of his eyes.

"Smoke?"

"Where's my brother?"

Cornbread stared at him in confusion.

"I ain't got time, man. Where's my brother? There's been a lynching on the Sunflower River Bridge. The Klan killed Landon Breed."

"Holy shit."

"They lookin' for ex soldiers like us and I gotta find Stack quick."

Cornbread rose to his full height and dusted loose straw from his overalls. Smoke noticed a few other men passed out in misshapen lumps on other patches of straw.

"He must've gone home with Geeshie. That's the last woman I saw him with after you left," Cornbread said.

"Where she stay?"

"Not far. They walked."

"Y'all gotta get home and stay inside," Stack shouted to the others who roused up slowly from their drunken slumber.

"C'mon, I'll go with you to Geeshie's. You can drop me home afterward," Cornbread said.

Smoke clapped his hands loud.

"Get up! The Klan is lynching niggas!"

Five other men jumped and scurried from the barn through the back.

Cornbread followed him out and climbed into his car.

"Head over to the bend in the river by the blacksmith's shack. Geeshie stays with her older sister near there," Cornbread said.

Smoke pushed the car to its limits. The ride was bumpy but didn't take long.

"That one right there, Smoke."

Cornbread pointed out a shack that faced an overgrown patch of stinging nettle on the far end of a track of newer shacks.

"Wait here," Smoke said.

He turned off the car and headed for the front door. There wasn't a porch to climb. He banged on the door several times.

Mayola answered, pulling on a robe to cover the thin white nightgown she wore.

"What?!" Mayola huffed until she realized it was Smoke.

"My brother here?"

"He's in the back."

Smoke exhaled in relief and rushed past her.

"Stack, let's go!"

He pushed open a door.

His brother's ass clenched in the air, his dick thrust balls deep inside Geeshie who wiggled under him.

Stack glanced over his shoulder and shouted.

"The fuck you doin' here?"

He didn't stop thrusting into Geeshie.

"The Klan lynched a man. They lookin' for us and other soldiers to string up. We gotta get home."

"Shit!"

Stack pulled out from between Geeshie's thighs, his dick shiny and stiffer than a log. He quickly pulled on his clothes.

"Sorry, baby. We'll do another round another time," Stack said.

Geeshie nodded and pulled the covers over her breasts.

The twins hustled out to the car. Smoke gripped his brother's shoulder and pulled him in for a hug. Stack held him in a warm embrace.

"Hey, I'm okay," Stack said.

"Annie came and told us. She thought it was you."

Smoke shuddered and quickly composed himself. He pulled away from his twin.

"She cried over you and I…I was scared for ya, Stack."

"Good thing it wasn't me. Hey now…Tai…I'm alright."

"Boy, I don't know what I'd do if I lost you."

"You ain't gon' lose me."

Stack grinned. He finished buttoning his vest and sighed suddenly.

"I guess Momma fell out," Stack said.

"Yep. Bean and Herbert carried her over to Landon's people to help take care of his body. She sent me to find you."

"Well, shit. She ain't gonna want us outta her sight for a long time."

Stack scratched the side of his neck. The corners of his mouth lifted in a sly smile.

"Annie cried over me, huh?"

Smoke rolled his eyes.

Stack playfully punched Smoke's shoulder until his eyes turned somber.

"Let's get gone 'fore these crackas start another fucking lynch mob," Stack said.

He hopped in the front passenger seat, which Cornbread no longer sat in. Smoke glanced down the dirt road and noticed his big friend knocking on doors, spreading the word to the neighbors surrounding Geeshie's home.

Lumbering back to the car, Cornbread climbed into the back seat.

"I got the word out over here," Cornbread said, his voice laced with worry.

Smoke climbed into the driver's seat. They dropped their friend off at his mother's, and zoomed back to their own property.

Inside their home, Stack ate the cold breakfast left over from the morning. Smoke paced in the front room as the sun trekked a fresh path shifting the light and raising the heat. Much later, Stack put together a poke salad with fried liver and onions, leaving a good portion saved for Taiwo when she returned. The brothers ate together, both swiping sweat from their faces and guzzling down water to replenish the liquid leaving their pores at a high rate beyond regular perspiration. The humidity was torture even with the doors and windows open.

Their mother didn't come home until late evening when the heat finally mellowed. Exhausted and famished from the stressful day, she hugged and wept over having Stack home, checking every inch of him from head to toe. Smoke fixed her a plate of food, and she ate up rice with the liver and onions.

Stack broke out a bottle of whiskey he hid in their bedroom to mix in with some hot water, honey, and a lemon slice. He served it to Taiwo as she relaxed in her bed.

"A hot toddy will knock me out, Meji," she fussed.

"You went through a lot today, Momma. I worried you, and you helped a grieving family. Let this ease your nerves so you can get some rest," Stack said.

She took the small glass and drank from it, closing her eyes and stretching her legs. Stack sat on the bed next to her, and Smoke flanked her, sitting on the other side. Taiwo gulped down the rest of the hot toddy and let the effects carry her to a floaty place.

"Landon's family…it broke them. I ain't heard a scream like the one I heard today when that boy's mother saw his body. You both have to promise me I won't ever have people coming to my home with your bodies…on the back of a truck!"

Taiwo squeezed her eyes shut, and Smoke took her glass away. Stack pulled her in for a hug, and they listened to their mother cry and whimper the grief of fear visceral.

"Momma, it's okay…we're home and safe…together," Stack murmured.

Taiwo held both their hands and squeezed. Her breathing slowed, and her eyes turned into tired slits fighting sleep.

"Me and your daddy, we had to fight so many things to keep you both safe on this earth. Haints. Evil spirits that hid in plain sight. Floods. I tell y'all how ya Daddy got those black scars on his arm?"

"Yes, Momma. You and him told us how many times," Stack said, rolling his eyes at Smoke.

Neither of them truly believed the tall tales they grew up with. At least Smoke didn't.

Taiwo closed her eyes.

"He was marked. For the rest of his life, he carried those shiny, twisted scars on his flesh. I think the devil noticed when he went on the road, and knew he was damaged from what we had to do to save our babies…"

She closed her eyes, and Stack leaned closer to tuck her hair back.

"Cash, you ain't mean all that evil to come home with ya," she sighed, clasping Stack's arm. "You was a good husband and them devils stole you from me…made you hurt our boys…"

She raised Stack's hand to her face and nuzzled it, her eyelids parting slightly.

"I miss you, Cash. I hope God forgave you…"

Stack's eyes watered. Sometimes, when inebriated, Taiwo would mistake Stack for their father. Never Smoke. Stack had their daddy's aura, his playfulness, and slick mouth. Smoke was more like their grandfather, Papa Will. Quiet. Tender when needed. Protective.

Taiwo kissed Stack's palm and fell into a heavy slumber.

The twins grabbed their pistols and sat on the porch outside to keep watch. Several other men who lived on sharecropping property not connected to their privately owned patch did the same, carrying rifles and making patrol rounds late into the night up through dawn.

The next morning, Smoke and Stack joined their mother and members of their uncle's church to partake in a hastily put together funeral. The high heat made it impossible to preserve the body long enough for distant sharecroppers to come pay their respects without it stinking through the wooden coffin. Uncle Jed gave a brief sermon in the Negro cemetery, and Smoke helped lower the dead soldier into the ground under a sweltering sun. Annie's parents observed the solemn burial without Annie present.

Mourners scattered without a formal repast. Fear of the Klan lingered in the air. Smoke drove his mother and brother home after leaving the Breed house where a few men and women stayed behind to look after the family.

Smoke and his family were surprised that Annie waited for them on their porch. She carried the handle of a medium-sized cast-iron pot.

"Annie…what are you doing here? We just left your parents at the Breed's," Taiwo said.

Annie lifted the pot higher.

"I figured you'd been working so hard taking care of Landon and his people, you'd want something to eat."

"Your parents know you here?" Smoke asked.

Annie slid her warm brown eyes onto his face, and his heart galloped in his chest.

"They left me with Grace Liu so I wouldn't be home at all."

"Oh, sweetness, they'll be so upset if they know you're out here roaming. It ain't safe," Taiwo said.

"I won't stay long. Happy to see you're okay, Stack."

Stack grinned as wide as the Mississippi River.

"I'll have Smoke and Stack take you home," Taiwo said.

Taiwo glanced at Smoke, and the corners of her lips rose.

"We can eat first, though," Taiwo said, winking at him.

Annie followed their mother into the house. Stack snickered, playfully punching Smoke's stomach.

"Look at Momma helping you out," Stack teased.

Smoke took a deep intake of air to calm the tickling in his stomach, calming himself.

Annie used a ladle and filled up four bowls from her iron pot and placed them in front of the Moore family.

Smoke gazed into his bowl at the strange noodles and rich brown broth with sliced boiled eggs. Green onions floated over slow-cooked chunks of pork and crawfish.

"What is this now?" Taiwo asked politely.

"Yaka mein," Annie said, taking the seat next to Taiwo across from the twins.

"This look like some Chinamen food," Stack said.

Smoke dug in and ate with his fork, slurping the noodles. Annie grinned.

"It's Creole food we eat from back home. I used some noodles Grace gave me. It's similar to what the Chinese people eat. We all mixed up like gumbo in New Orleans."

"Tasty," Taiwo said.

Stack ate his share and took seconds. Smoke did the same.

Annie ate a small amount and spent the rest of her time watching them savor her food and sharing stories about Louisiana and gator hunting with her daddy. Her bubbly personality engaged them for an hour. He wanted her to stay longer. His mother placed hands on the table and stood.

"Smoke, get Annie back to where she belongs before her people find out she's gone," Taiwo insisted.

Smoke grabbed the key to the car and his gun. Taiwo placed the leftovers into another smaller pot from their kitchen and cleaned Annie's pot, handing it back to her with a hug.

"Thank you for your kindness," Taiwo said.

"Yeah, that was some good food, Annie. Thanks for checking on me," Stack said.

"You didn't have to do this, but I'm glad you did," Smoke said softly.

"I wanted to see you…make sure you were okay," Annie said.

"I can take care of myself," Smoke said.

"I know. I can take care of you too," Annie said, low enough so that only he could hear from the front door.

He couldn't hide his lips moving up.

"Goodbye…stay safe, Mrs. Moore," Annie said.

She waved to Taiwo and shadowed Smoke and Stack to their car. The drive to Grace's place annoyed Smoke because Stack chatted up Annie from the back with food questions and recipes. Stack could make her laugh, and she seemed to value his conversation. Smoke just wanted to ride with her next to him and take in the beauty of nature. He should've left Stack behind, but it would bother their mother too much being out alone.

"Are you alright, Smoke? That was a horrible thing to see yesterday. You were so brave," Annie said.

"It was pretty tense. But nothing the war didn't show me overseas," he said.

"That poor family. I'm sure your uncle gave him a nice homegoing despite the circumstances."

"Uncle Jed knows the right words. That's for sho," Smoke said.

"Oh, no," Annie huffed under her breath.

Smoke slowed the car to a stop fifty feet from Grace's home, and the newly built houses on plantation land that made up the small Chinese residential area. Annie's parents stood next to their truck in the company of Grace and her parents.

"Shit," Annie hissed.

Smoke helped her out of his car. Stack remained seated in the back. Roy pointed at Smoke.

"I told you to stay away from her!" Roy barked.

"Maman," Annie said, appealing to her mother for help.

"Annie, come here right now!" Mavis snapped.

Annie glanced at Smoke.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't worry about it."

She scurried over to her mother. Roy took two steps toward Smoke and stopped.

"I'm tellin' you for the last time, boy. Keep away from her or you'll have more than the Klan to worry about."

Smoke turned and climbed into his car. Stack took over the passenger seat. Annie locked eyes with him before her father scolded her and took his family home.

The days after Landon Breed's lynching dragged on as the summer limped into the early days of fall. The Breed family held a proper memorial at the church the following Sunday, while the Klan threat faded into the background of daily sharecropping life.

Uncle Jed preached until the chords in his sweaty neck strained. The church overflowed with everyone wearing white or pale coloring to signify the spiritual transition of one of their own. Between the wailing and singing, Smoke studied the back of Annie's head.

She avoided eye contact with him all morning.

Smoke and his family arrived early to greet other church members out front before the service. The Belizaire family arrived in their vehicle, and Roy kept his daughter close to Mavis. Annie looked everywhere except at Smoke. He accepted the behavior because she was still under the authority of her stern father, and he didn't want to cause her more grief at home.

Taiwo chose for them to sit on the left side, and Smoke stared three pews up, spying on the tilt of Annie's neck during prayer. She pinned her twisted hair up, leaving her nape bare. He imagined stepping behind her and kissing that delicate space of skin. Her white dress looked extra lacy and fancy, giving her the appearance of an angel in his eyes.

The service dragged on, and after two hours, Smoke fought sleep from jamming his eyelids closed. Stack had already nodded off. Their mother jabbed her elbow in his side to wake him up. His brother grimaced and sulked in his seat next to her.

The choir gave its final vocal testimony, and plenty of people jumped up, catching the Holy Ghost. Smoke rolled his stiff shoulders. He looked forward to going home, enjoying stewed chicken with okra and buttermilk biscuits. He'd wait another week or two to approach Mr. Belizaire like he originally planned. The man needed to cool down, and Smoke figured the trauma of the week would lessen by then. He'd keep going to church to show that he could be a rightful part of the community. He thought about talking to Uncle Jed man-to-man and enlisting his help in changing the attitudes about the Smokestack twins. It was time to force the tide of opinion favorably. Smoke refused to wear the sins of his father around his own neck.

Uncle Jed held his hands out toward the congregation, and the church quieted down. Stepping away from the podium, he grinned widely and gazed at his people.

"As we give thanks for the life of our young brother, Landon Breed, I would like to share some positive news for one of our church members. Brother Roy and Sister Mavis Belizaire's youngest daughter Annie is now engaged to Brother Percy and Sister Freeman's son, Beau Willie. Annie…Beau Willie, stand up and let the church see ya and say, amen!"

The Belizaire's and the Freeman's all stood. Uncle Jed gestured for Annie and Beau Willie to stand in the front. Annie blinked her eyes rapidly, and Beau Willie's big teeth filled up his face like a white picket fence.

Smoke lurched forward in his seat.

He gripped the back of the pew in front of him, battling the sour taste in the back of his throat threatening to spill out all over his church clothes.

"The hell?" Stack said out loud.

Taiwo tapped his brother's leg to hush him.

"Not here…not now," Taiwo hissed to Stack.

The congregation clapped, and Smoke left his seat, stomping out of the church blindly, his chest and lips tight with anger.

"Fucker," he blurted to no one but an oak tree growing a hundred feet away from the church entrance.

Stack and Taiwo sauntered over to him. His mother placed a hand on Smoke's back.

"Let's go home and eat. Food in your belly will make you feel better."

Stack sighed at her.

"Momma, a meal ain't gonna help him. He just got his heart broke. Mr. Belizaire did that on purpose to keep Smoke away from her."

"I'll be alright," Smoke grumbled.

"No, you won't," Stack said.

"C'mon now, son. Stack, you drive us back."

Stack nodded and took the key from Smoke.

He rode in the back seat silent.

The only sound he heard was the ache in his heart.

At home, the food he craved had no taste. He might've been eating dirt and rocks and it would be the same flavor. His brother slept the rest of the day off in their room, and his mother sewed together another section of her patchwork quilt from old clothing scraps she collected.

Night fell like the touch of his grandmother's hand — so soft like new cotton and gentle.

Once Stack started his nightly snoring, and his mother turned in to her own bed, Smoke slipped out of the house. He didn't bother taking the car. A long walk is what he wanted. The cooling air struck his determined face, and he strolled all the way to Gator Walk.

He found the tree stump his brother once used next to Annie's bedroom window and climbed on it, tapping the closed wooden window with his index finger. The clicks and loud buzzing of the cicadas and other insects trilling their night songs may have dulled the sound of his tapping. He almost gave up when Annie pushed it open and propped it with a thick stick.

"Smoke…what are you doing here?"

She glanced over her shoulder at the closed door in her room.

He couldn't speak.

Annie lit a kerosene lamp and stared at him.

"Smoke?"

"Do you love him?"

Annie lowered her thick eyelashes.

"If you love him, tell me so I can let you go."

"He came to my father and asked for my hand. My parents both agreed to it. They like Beau Willie for me."

"That ain't what I asked you."

"I don't love him. Not anymore."

Smoke closed his eyes and gulped air. When he looked at Annie again, her eyes glowed in the kerosene light like dark citrine crystals set on fire.

Was it too soon to speak of love?

The erratic thumping of his heart and the heat in his blood said otherwise. Her delicate face was a compass guiding him to his destiny. He couldn't allow Beau Willie to take her from him. But he couldn't disrespect her father either. Not if he wanted to build a new reputation. He had to prove everyone wrong about him.

"You ain't gonna marry Beau Willie," he said.

Annie gave him a winsome smile. He puffed his chest up and shook away the doubt stitching hooks into his backbone. Annie and Beau Willie were only engaged. Engagements could be broken. Strict fathers could soften.

Annie hooked a finger in his cotton shirt and pulled him closer.

She kissed him gently at first, then added more ardor as his mind turned to mush at her touch. He pulled away long enough to climb into her room with her help. She held a finger to her lips and cracked the door of her bedroom and listened for her parents. Her father's snores sawed logs on the other side of the home.

She shut her door and pushed a chair against it. Interlacing her fingers with his, Annie pulled him toward her bed, which had a bed frame and didn't sit on the floor. Unfortunately, it squeaked.

They crawled onto it together, and Annie pulled the sheets up to their waists. Keeping their movement to a minimum, they locked lips again. His tongue dipped in and out, and Annie couldn't control her pants. He untied the top of her gown, and her breasts spilled out braless and warm in his hands.

"Shhh," he whispered.

Smoke latched onto a nipple and sucked on it while playing with the other, pinching it until it pebbled under his fingers. He became a lazy man, indulging in the fullness that turned him into a romantic drunkard full of unrushed lust. His dick strained and throbbed behind his zipper. He knew his limits, and trying to fuck her wouldn't bode well for them under her father's roof. They were taking a serious chance with his simply being in her bedroom at night. Roy would be within his rights to shoot Smoke dead in his daughter's bed.

Annie made it difficult to think straight.

She pulled her gown over her head, and in the bedroom light, Smoke Moore had the rare privilege of seeing heaven on earth. Her breasts were more beautiful than he remembered, and the glorious dark thatch of pubic hair glistened with her arousal, curling outward from the spread of her labia.

Smoke quickly grabbed a pillow and dropped to his knees, shoving her legs back and feasting on pussy he could die for. Annie clamped a hand over her mouth and laid back, trying her best to keep still and prevent the bed from shaking and squealing on them to her parents. The top of his dick began leaking pre-cum. He had a decision to make.

Get a quick feel of her pussy with a few thrusts, or bounce.

He smothered his face in her juicy arousal and stood from the floor right after. The tent in his pants looked comical, and Annie giggled. Until he pulled his pants and underwear off. She lifted onto her elbows.

"Tell me to stop and I will. I know we can't do what we want fully, but I want you... bad."

"Just for a minute… then we should stop," she said.

"Okay. Two minutes."

Annie covered her mouth with her hand, holding back a laugh.

He lined himself up with her opening, thankful the bed was at the right height.

"Annie," he said, looking down into the depths of all that crystal brown in her eyes.

She widened her thighs, and he gasped at the first thrust into her. He moved so slowly that they both held their breath until he rooted down in that bottom, his balls resting on her ass. Smoke could only give her slow, short thrusts afterward. He rested his weight on top of her, and they simply kissed, tongues dancing, and lips smacking.

Annie was so wet that he didn't have to do much to keep her engaged. The slow friction of his dick tugging on her clit did the rest. She was so stuffed with him that her eyes looked like they were about to cross when he came up for air from all the kissing. He was going to drown inside her. His daddy taught him how to swim in rivers and lakes like a fish, but Annie Belizaire was going to suck him down into a whirlpool of sweet pussy and sugary kisses.

The bed squeaked when he thrust deeper.

"It's been more than two minutes, Smoke," she whimpered in his ear.

Her facial features crinkled up in ecstasy. They'd been slow-quiet fucking for twenty minutes. His balls throbbed, and the root of his dick jumped. She was so good and deep.

He pulled out and let her see how drenched she had his dick coated in her juices. A groan escaped his lips, and they both knew it was time for him to depart. He gripped his erection and stroked. The urge to cum inside her raged through his blood veins. He couldn't get her pregnant. Not yet. Not until he married her himself.

He reached down and played with her clit with his other hand, stroking gentle circles with sticky fingers. Annie squirmed and then slammed a hand over her mouth. He gazed at her labia and watched her opening wink open and close, revealing wet pink. Swallowing his deep-set groan, a thick creamy stream of cum spurted all over her vulva.

A noise in another part of the house startled them.

The insects outside stopped buzzing and trilling.

Smoke wasted no time yanking on his underwear and shirt. Annie helped him out of the window and tossed him his socks, shoes, and pants. They kissed once more before she yanked the wood out of the windowsill.

Smoke ran fast without looking back, his pants and shoes in a bundle as he raced through the woods in his underwear with fireflies glowing around him. He threw back his head and laughed.

Annie was all his.

And he loved her.

Part 5 soon come....

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The young woman sat atop a plush stool in front of the mirror, tears glittering her eyes—but she had to push all emotion down for now. Today was supposed to be a big day. Droves of flowers. Swarms of family—and people she’s never seen a day before in her life. Every little girl's big dream coming to fruition. Behind her in the mirror, she could see her folks moving about the room, trying to finish last minute details or simply busying themselves so much that it caused the stress to rise in her system. And tears were glittering her eyes.

She'd thought about today since before she could remember. The dress. The cake. The first dance. The man at her side.

Her mind droned on over all the things that felt imperfect and incomplete now that her dream had seemed to swarm her without noticing, and without even realizing, her exhausted body began to weep.

Above her, the woman halted—brush along her temple, unmoving and apprehensive.

“Do you need a second,” the makeup artist whispered, cautious of her volume as to not bring attention to her state, but the young woman just released an exhausted laugh and shook her head. Her family and friends were still moving around wild behind her, and she hated that it took someone who knew nothing of her life to notice her state—to care.

“I’m fine,” she punctuated with sorrow. Inhaling a deep, shaky breath, she stared back at herself once more. This had all happened so fast: the meeting of the fathers; the drafting of the contract; the planning of the wedding. She'd had little to no input in any of it. And she still had yet to see the face of her groom. One hour until she was set to be married, and she had no idea who she was committing herself to—but she had no choice in the matter.

Her daddy—Mississippi’s soon-to-be first Black governor. And her soon-to-be husband’s family—major donors to his widely successful campaign. They have shares in several major businesses out of the state—Nissan Motor Co., Howard Industries, Southern Tire Mart—and somehow, without the young woman knowing it, her parents had made the decision to offer her up as thanks for all their assistance along the way. But she viewed it as payment.

Everyone knew the Moore's. 30 years ago, they were into shady and illegal bullshit, and now it was far more shady with legal loopholes and connections to sustain them. With her having the Moore last name, they were almost guaranteed protection for the rest of time; Her daddy just had to win his election next month, and she had to say yes at the altar.

“Anna Mae,” she heard a shrill voice shout from behind her. Looking through the vanity mirror, she saw her mother, wide-eyed and stressed. As the older woman turned toward the makeup artist, her tone became more pleasant but clearly very annoyed. She pointed at the young woman, flailing. “I thought she was supposed to be done by now,” she questioned, talking as though her daughter was not even there.

The makeup artist swallowed thickly, hands moving toward the eyeshadow palette with haste.

“Almost,” she offered. “We took a small break to regroup, but I can have her done in fifteen.”

“Fifteen?! She’s supposed to be seeing her fiancé in five,” the older woman condemned, her high-pitched voice cracking with anger. But the information she had offered sparked the young woman’s attention. She looked up as her mother and the makeup artist consulted, agreeing that everything will be completed in the nick of time. She felt as if she were a child; She was talked over, completely disregarded as if she weren’t there at all. Clearing her throat, she finally spoke up.

“I’m going to meet him before the wedding,” she wondered aloud, voice quiet, showcasing how apprehensive she still was about the whole ordeal. Her mother, standing over her and peering down like she’d been personally inconvenienced by the sound of her voice, rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Anna Mae,” she began, looking down at her watch with an annoyed huff. “In two minutes and fourteen seconds, you will be meeting your fiancé. We won’t have time to dress you before then, but your robe will suffice for now.”

And with that, she exited the room as if she hadn’t entered like a tornado bringing rain. The makeup artist continued, pity filling out every muscle in her face, and the young woman’s eyes dampened once more before assuming the role she’d unknowingly been given at birth.

Stone-faced, the man clenched his fists while peering through the window. Outside, flowers were being delivered and guests would soon be arriving too, but inside this room, he would be meeting his fiancée for the very first time.

He bit back a snarl, stuffing down his emotions. This had to be done. This was for the family. For legacy. For future. For himself. For his brother. What had to be done had to be done, and he knew he was the only one right for the job. Across the room, his twin stood at attention, eyes just as sharp but with a lighter air due to his ease and carefree nature. On the couch sat the Moore family lawyer, their primary council, and their father. The oldest of the three Moore's smirked with a deep evil grin, shades concealing his eyes.

"This gon' be perfect for us," he barked in laughter, words going out into a void. Everyone in the room sat detached, barely hanging on to the moment at hand, but he was ecstatic. "I had a dream about this shit here," he exclaimed. "Yes, sir, I did! 'Fore y'all was born, me and y'all mama used to talk 'bout this." Smiling silly and faraway like time had finally caught up with him, the man looked toward his oldest son, suddenly sentimental. "She used to say 'Eli, our boys gon' be something important some day,' and look at you now. I just wish she could see it."

The twins—too similar and too different at the same time—shared a look. One that said they'd been hearing the same shit all their lives. One that said they wished they mama would've shacked up with another man. One that sent apologies back and forth for how differently their father saw them when they were so similar.

The oldest swallowed thickly when his twin diverted his eyes, leaving him to do the same. He went back to watching the window, dreaming that all of this would resort in a better life far away from his daddy's rule—but he knew better.

Big Eli commanded attention. He was resilient in a way that struck fear in the hearts of every cop, judge, and politician in the state of Mississippi, and if he was forcing his son into something like this, it was because he knew this would last; He'd made it so.

His son only cared about doing what needed to be done. He held no regard for the other family or for the young woman he'd be bound to. The way he saw it was that they were trying to settle a debt, and he was just coming to collect.

Across the room then, the door opened, but he refused to turn around just yet. Through the window, he watched as the world moved, not even caring for what was going down behind him. The situation was enough to pull an exasperated laugh from him.

"Eli Moore," one man uttered, boastful and solid in a politically correct way.

"Henry Laveau," the other man guffawed, shaking the outstretched hand laughably before turning to greet his wife. "Michelle, it’s lovely to see you again," he offered, toning down his rowdy nature and bowing his head. His attention rose quick when meeting the next set of eyes, fully straightening his posture and stepping forward with a hand offered in her direction. "And it's even lovelier to finally meet the young woman my son is to marry," he smiled devilishly, licking his lips at her appearance.

The young woman held her head high, eyes piercing through him. Not once did they lower to his hand. Not once did she motion to shake it. She just held his eye contact with a straight face, showing her disdain for the situation.

"Feisty one I see," he laughed off, pulling his hand back and smoothing down his hair. Across the room, the younger twin allowed a laugh to escape his lips, and for the first time since she'd entered the room, the woman allowed her eyes to take in the space around her. Along with her mother, father, and their lawyer was Eli Moore, two people sitting on the couch who looked like advisors or lawyers themselves, and two other men nearly identical to each other. The one who'd laughed stepped to the older man's side.

"I'm Elias. But folks call me Stack," he prattled while his eyes traveled down the length of her satin robe. She noticed the way he focused on the dip of her waist, the curve of her hips, and it made her cross her arms underneath her chest and settle her weight onto one foot. She rolled her neck, annoyed and refusing to interact before her mother spoke up behind her.

"Don't be rude, Anna Mae," the older woman argued, pushing her forward, causing her to stumble slightly.

"I'm Annie," she choked out, scowl deepening when the man's smile widened.

I know they don't think I'm about to marry this goofy ass fool, she yapped to herself, but before the thought could linger, the other young man across the room turned in her direction. When their eyes met—both full of a unique mixture of fear and anger and obligation—they stayed right there on each other.

Although it would soon be offered, Annie required no explanation for who the man was. They both carried the same weight, the same disgust. As much as she wanted to drift her attention away, something about him held her in place.

"This my oldest—Smoke," Eli boomed. Smacking his hand against his son's shoulder when he moved to stand in front of Annie, he looked over at him with proud eyes. "Y'all make a nice lookin' couple, don't it," he laughed, but Annie's nostrils flared, and her arms closed around herself impossibly tighter.

She was set to marry this strange man and enter into a strange family all because of her parents and their lack of care for her wellbeing and desires.

"Can we get a second alone," she all but demanded, eyes trained ahead. Around them, everyone threw out looks of confusion, glancing toward the time on overly expensive watches or the documents in their hands. Things had to be neat and in order, and none of them had time to dilly dally.

"You're getting married in thirty minutes, baby girl," her father stepped close. He broached with caution, attempting to pull her eyes toward him, but she refused to stop looking at Smoke, at the ruffle between his brows. "You gotta sign that contract before we do anything else," Henry reasoned, but she was hearing none of that.

"I know that, daddy," Annie snapped, emotion welting in her chest, "but I will not allow you to force me into a marriage before I even get a chance to talk to my future husband alone."

The Moore men watched with differing layers of amusement. Eli looked as if he were realizing Annie's attitude would either be a gift or a curse in the long run. Stack chuckled as if he hadn't expected so much energy out of someone of her background—but loving it nonetheless. And Smoke swallowed as if he weren't sure what he was even allowed to feel.

He tracked her every movement. The narrowing of her eyes. The clenching of her jaw. The bobbing of her throat. The swaying of her robe when she shifted. Annie looked toward everyone, expecting them to move toward the door and honor her command, and when Smoke saw her neck roll one last time before everyone put their feet in motion toward the door, his eyebrows raised in what could only be described as him being impressed.

When the door closed, the room settled in a deafening quiet.

She leveled him with a look that could kill.

"My daddy might think I'm stupid," Annie began, stepping forward into Smoke's personal space. She cursed him with her eyes, spoke ill on his name without even having to say the words outright. "He may think I am, but I ain't no little girl. I know what yo' family do. I know why we gettin' married. But that don't mean I gotta like it." Her nostrils flared—large and round, bearing her anger—but the man refused to speak.

"So you ain't gon' say nothing?" Annie threw in question, only to watch as Smoke blinked—once. "Impossible," she rolled her eyes, crossing her arms tight, and emotion grew in the man’s chest.

Something dark and wanting yet full of despair and anxiety.

"Look, neither of us want this," Smoke grumbled, eyes falling away from her body. "My daddy ain't give me no say in this. He told me this was happenin' probably around the same time yo' folks told you. But just because we gettin' married don't mean I'm gon' try to control you the way they control us. I ain't that type of man, and I can tell you clearly ain't that type of woman," his voice tapered off, giving Annie the chance to be offended.

Her face screwed up, and her head reared, and her mouth spat her lividity.

"What the hell does that mean—"

"I'm just sayin'," he breathed, stepping forward. His hands raised at his sides, almost as if he were approaching a frightened animal. He sighed, hating the position they were in but knowing what needed to be done. "Let's get through this together and figure out later what’ll be best for both of us movin' forward, alright?"

Annie was skeptical. She didn’t trust many people—especially those her daddy worked with—and she hardly trusted any men. But as she looked Smoke in the face, something in her stomach flared, something in her leg twitched.

Rolling her shoulders back, she spoke confidently.

"What’s your real name," she questioned with strength, eyes unwavering once more.

Smoke swallowed. His veins bulged. His hands shook. His muscles tightened.

“Smoke ain’t good enough for you,” he threw back, and he immediately knew answering a question with a question was not something a woman like Annie would put up with.

“I’m not marrying you if I don’t know the name your mama gave you,” she roared, eyebrows tight. “You say you wanna get through this together and figure shit out, but if you don’t even want me to know yo’ name, then we ain’t finna do shit!” At that, the young, fiery woman turned on her heels. Her robe lurched with the movement, and Smoke was far too caught up in the flash of thigh he received to notice her moving toward the door in a hurry. When her hand was around the doorknob, preparing to put an end to the whole affair, Smoke came up behind her and pressed his chest to her back. His hand covered hers on the knob.

“It’s Elijah,” he breathed in her left ear, relishing in the visible presence of a shiver down her spine. And when she spoke his name back, voice curling around each syllable with care, his body immediately ignited in a similar reaction.

~~~~~

The terms of the contract were simple: Elijah Moore and Anna Mae Laveau were to be wed in an effort to settle Henry Laveau’s debt to Big Eli and the Moore Family; And the contractual marriage would be null and void if Henry Laveau's campaign were to fail.

~~~~~

The twins, as always, had taken to watching the room—standing with their heads held high in their designated spots at the altar. Stack was directly behind his brother, scoffing internally at how packed the room was.

"Eli know he wrong for lettin' them Laveau's do yo' wedding like this," he grunted, rolling his eyes at a woman who was making her way to her seat on their family's side. "We don't even know most the people in this damn room. Look at that bitch over there," he whispered, pointing down the aisle, "wearin' black at somebody wedding like she ain't got no sense."

"Mhm," the older twin all but blew smoke from his nose. His nostrils flared as the last few people trickled in—late and loud. He thrived off punctuality, off order, and he couldn’t resist looking down at his watch and willing this sham of a wedding to commence.

Lace and tulle drooped off every surface. Long-stemmed bouquets flaunted their beauty. As the last guest made their way to their seat on the Laveau side, the overhead lights dimmed just slightly before the strum of a harp reverberated across the space.

As grand as the venue, so was the size of the wedding party—but as Smoke’s eyes narrowed upon each arm-locked couple walking down the aisle, his anticipation for the bride grew deep in his chest.

After one pluck of a harp string, he had to remind himself that this was just business. After another pluck, he had to remind himself that this wasn’t some fairytale where he got the girl and the acclaim in one swing of a sword to the throat of some devious dragon. He hardly knew Annie, had had only one—very heated—conversation with her. But his throat bobbed when the doors at the back of the venue opened to reveal the soon-to-be governor ushering in the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. His hands twitched at his sides, begging him to reach out for her.

Anna Mae kept her eyes locked on Elijah. Each step she took, she willed herself to not look away. She needed to see every emotion pass over his face. She needed to remind herself that even if she had no say in getting married, she was not going to allow her husband to run all over her. But her attempt to intimidate him with eye contact failed as her own gaze turned soft—just for a flash of a second before reverting.

And his gaze shifted to match her softness without faltering.

~~~~~

“We are gathered here today to witness the union of Elijah Moore and Anna Mae Laveau,” the officiant squawked, hearty voice blanketing the room. Ceremonially, the minister droned on, but the young pair could hardly pay attention to the words he spoke. They were in their own heads about what the future would hold upon saying I do, and every few seconds they attempted to communicate with the other telepathically, overthinking the inevitable.

I hope you Moore’s don’t ruin me, Annie spoke to herself. She exhaled deeply, eyes drifting to the man directly behind her groom. At least it seems like I got the more serious twin. And I can’t lie that he’s a beautiful man. Maybe this will all work out in the end? Who the hell am I kidding? My daddy did this for him, and like always I’ll end up being miserable.

This isn’t real, Smoke reminded himself as his heart swelled while watching his bride. This ain’t real, and this wedding is fake. But even if it is, I’ll at least make sure she’s happy.

Each of them held emotion in their eyes, conflicted by all that was happening around them—to them. They held hands when prompted. They spoke when willed. And when it came time to bestow the title of husband and wife upon them, they leaned in and kissed each other like they’d done it a thousand times over.

~~~~~

The reception was a blur.

People were everywhere. Asking for pictures. Giving unwarranted advice. Congratulating them. Saying how proud they were. They hardly got a second to themselves that wasn’t full of other people prying into their lives, so when it came time to leave the venue for the hotel that had been set up for the pair, Smoke and Annie had no idea what to do.

The first kiss they shared together lingered in their minds as they rode the elevator. The number of each floor illuminated slowly, ticking by as they stood shoulder to shoulder. Annie was the first to shift her eyes away from their reflection in the closed doors and to the man’s face. When Smoke looked over at her, her breath grew shaky.

“We have a lot to talk about,” he admitted reluctantly, voice groggy from exhaustion and too much talking for a man like him. He watched with anticipation as the young woman nodded.

“Not tonight though,” she huffed, pulling at her fingers and twisting the new jewelry her ring finger now held. Gazing down at it, tears of disbelief caused her to shudder. “I’m sure you’re a wonderful man,” Annie began, words barely above a whisper, “but I’m gonna need some time for this to feel real.”

Elijah understood, of course he did. He had been saying it himself all day, and he would never want to press her toward any emotion. They’d been put into a difficult position by people who were meant to care for them. But now, it was up to themselves to make the best of a weird situation.

That night, Smoke slept on the couch in the suite, allowing Annie the king-sized bed to herself. And there, she laid on her back, eyes wide open as she thought about how her life had been fully imagined for her, how she had been shaped and molded by her parents to be a perfect doll that they could handle in whatever way they saw fit. She didn’t want that for herself any longer, and if she was going to be married to this man, it was seriously time for her to start making sound decisions for her own life.

With the room-serviced breakfast in front of them, the young pair, avoided conversation and each other’s eyes by stuffing their mouths with food. Smoke looked past Annie, eyes toward the window, but the young woman kept her head on her plate. The silence wasn’t fully uncomfortable. There was an understanding there: they were tired, exhausted, fed up of being pawns, but there was also the truth that they had to make the best of what was now.

Mississippi’s gubernatorial election would be in one month, and there’s no way Annie’s father could lose. With the Moore’s on his side, it was nearly guaranteed, so she knew there’d be no way out of this. She thought the null and void clause couldn’t save her.

But nothing is ever guaranteed.

“You want kids,” she asked first, hoping to gauge what his reaction said about how tight of a leash this marriage would hold on her.

Smoke’s ears perked up immediately, eyes drifting over with intention. He swallowed his last bite, paying attention to how Annie’s shoulders had squared off.

“I think so,” he breathed, straightening his spine. When a questioning look passed over her face, he continued. “I think I’d be a good father. Think I’d be able to give my children what my daddy couldn’t give me and Stack. But the situation is important to consider.”

“What do you mean,” the woman wondered, brow crooked.

“You,” he admitted. “If you don’t want kids, I ain’t gon’ force you. If you don’t want to birth children, then we can look into adoption or something. I want children, but they ain’t something I need if the circumstances don’t align for everybody involved. You included.”

The young woman swallowed and willed her face to remain neutral. It was a bare minimum answer, what any decent person would say, but it meant the world to her. He didn't need to know all that just yet.

“Where we gon’ live,” Annie asked next. She hardly gave his last answer time enough to breathe before she was expecting more of him, but Smoke didn’t back down or shy away. He pushed his plate to the side before speaking.

“I like the home I live in now. It's big with plenty of space for the both of us, but I want something that’s ours. So when all this newly married energy dies down, I'd like to find something perfect for the both of us." He watched her every move: the sharpness of her eyes, the shifting of her body, the shine of her ring finger when she moved to drink from her glass of water. She was his wife; He was her husband. He'd always wanted a life of his own; Someone—besides his brother—to love and protect and care for. He just hadn't expected it to happen like this. "What you think of that," he questioned, desperate to know what was happening behind those eyes.

Annie breathed through her nose, sighing as she mulled the question over. She'd learned so much about the woman she wanted to be through her mother's silence, through her complacency. She'd learned so much about the man she wanted as her husband through her father's boastfulness and unpredictability. She liked Elijah's quiet demeanor. She believed him to be honest, hoped it so.

"I think I'd like that," she answered simply, glass in her hand as she watched him closely.

~~~~~

As the days ticked closer to Henry Laveau’s projected victory, Anna Mae and Elijah’s connection grew stronger. Conversations about the hard stuff grew to include things that allowed the pair to understand each other as individuals. They weren’t concerned with their parent's, colleague's, or community's opinions. It was just them—newly married and hoping for the chance to make their forced relationship something mutually beneficial.

~~~~~

During the weeklong hotel stay, Smoke arranged for Annie’s things to be moved into his home. It was large—but not overstated. Homey—but not stuffy. It smelled like him, felt like that dangerous calm she’d been recently introduced to and was quickly growing to appreciate.

Her first night in his home—their home—Smoke cooked for her, showed her around, explained that she’d have her own bedroom for her upmost comfort. The fact that he cared so much meant the world to the young woman, but as she walked through the home, part of her wanted to stop him, admit what her heart had been feeling since the moment they first met. Elijah made Annie's heart flutter. Elijah made Annie feel safe—comfortable—and part of her had grown used to him sleeping in the same room, even if he’d spent the entire mini honeymoon on the couch across from her. She liked the sound of his breath or when he would shift from his left side to his right. She liked knowing he was near.

So that’s how they ended up here.

Annie abandoned the room Smoke set up for her with all the things that had previously brought her comfort before they’d met. Then she tiptoed down the hallway and two doors down. Standing before the man’s bedroom door, she knocked solidly and kept her eyes forward.

“Everything okay,” Smoke asked as soon as the door was opened. His words were rushed and worry drenched his eyes, but all Annie could focus on was the lack of shirt covering his upper body.

Her eyes slipped down his chest, falling over the peaks and valleys of a part of him she hadn't yet seen.

“Ye-yeah,” she coughed out, ridding her mind of those thoughts. She pointed in the direction of her bedroom, nervous yet determined. “It’s very nice, but I think I’d be a little more comfortable if we slept together. I mean, like—like if I stayed in your room—if you’re okay with that—obviously.” The suggestion came out jumbled and lacking the confidence the young woman normally possessed. She was embarrassed to be asking such a thing, upset at herself for seemingly not being able to sleep without the young man anymore. She wanted to laugh at her own self—and her reaction to the new person in her life—but as she went to do so, Smoke was already holding the bedroom door more open and allowing her entry.

Annie blinked in shock and a tiny bit of awe before entering, her shoulder lightly brushing against Smoke’s chest. A shudder ran through him and his stomach tightened. The husband would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought of the wedding more times than he should’ve, if he said he hadn’t thought of the one kiss they’d ever shared. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't been sat up in bed with Annie on his mind. But as he closed the bedroom door behind him and watched his wife step quietly toward the bed, his breath caught itself on the way out.

“I don’t know if I can sleep without you in the same room anymore,” Annie laughed embarrassedly, shuffling under the covers on the far side of the bed. The way she settled herself brought a goofy smile to Smoke’s face because he couldn’t deny the comfort they had brought out of each other. A week ago, they didn’t even know each other’s names, and here they were, sharing space like they always had. “Have I ever told you that you smell really good,” the woman questioned. She moved the comforter to her nose and took a deep inhale.

“No, you haven’t,” Elijah smiled, sitting next to her on the bed. “But I could tell because when we hugged earlier you wouldn’t let me go.”

“Okay, but that has more to do with you feeling good than smelling good,” Annie laughed, unsuccessfully trying to deflect. She tossed her head back as her giggles continued. They snuffed out the room's nervous energy, surrounding the young couple in warmth.

Her husband grinned in victory at having her erupt into a fit of laughter, soon moving to shift under the covers with her. He faced her, head cradled by his palm, and when he reached out, he tangled his other hand in her nightgown.

“You feel good, too.”

It was simple and honest.

And with an ease that neither of them quite understood, it lit Annie ablaze.

Nothing had been clearly determined when the married pair shuffled closer to each other. Nothing had been decided when their bodies inevitably collided.

Annie’s hands found themselves at the back of Smoke’s head, fingers running through his hair and holding his face close to hers. She shivered when his palms laid residence to her waist and right under the curve of her breast, and when he shuddered a breath—warm and timid against her lips—she pulled him in.

The kiss was passion-filled and drenched in tension that had been growing for days. Between shared meals and quiet laughs. Between calls from family and updates on business and how bad the polls had tanked.

They had been inching closer to each other in ways only the two of them could understand, but now they were in a fully private space with no real care in the world besides each other. Before now, they had used their newness as an excuse to not explore what was right in front of them. But they were ready to touch each other like they’d been avoiding. They were to taste and feel and experience. They were ready to let themselves fall under the spell of their desire.

And there was no turning back.

Their breaths turned hot, and when Annie’s mouth opened to Elijah’s tongue, a heady need overcame her.

Smoke, trying his best to listen to his wife’s direction, allowed his hand to drift up the length of her thigh. Rough fingers traversed skin softer than what he felt worthy enough to experience, toying with the laced edge of her gown.

And as his fingers retreated to give Annie a second to collect herself from the moans quaking her, she uttered an honest please, and he gave her everything she’d been wanting.

~~~~~

One month—the time between the wedding and the election—and the hopeful politician had tanked in the polls, the republican nominee skyrocketing in the public’s favor.

It had been hanging over the heads of both families, lingering in every corner of their minds. Henry was concerned with his duty to Mississippi and his potential legacy as the first Black governor of the state. Michelle was anxious about her duty as his wife, what new and challenging tasks his position could spring onto her. Eli worried about his investment in the Laveau’s, how this could tank him if it went sideways. But Annie and Smoke were only worried that if Henry Laveau didn’t win, their marriage would be annulled.

As the votes were tallied for each county, anxiety flooded their bodies. Fear coursed through their veins.

They made up their minds, just as the decision was about to come in, that no matter what happened, they’d always make their way back to each other.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

word count: ~5,600

a/n: i'm like soooo obsessed. i hope y'all enjoyed!!! send me requests fr thoo

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December 3th 1999

The day their daughter came into this world and changed their life forever.

Winter Moore.

:

:

:

December 3th 2000.

1:30

First birthday and to say that her parents weren't excited?

Well that would be understatement..

“It's my baby girl's birthday, stack..” Smoke said through tears as he stopped decorating for a moment, it was finally hitting him at that moment that their baby girl was growing up.

“Smoke, don't cry man, you know seeing you cry makes me cry.” Stack spoke up softly as he stepped over to him, pulling him into a tight hug.

—-

It was just a year ago that they were in a hospital room, Annie almost squeezing his hand to death and Elijah trying his hardest not to pull it away as he comforted her the best he could.

And then the crying came.

She came into this world crying and it broke his heart in that moment he vowed that she’ll never cry like that again

“It's a girl!” the doctor said excitedly as they handed her over to the midwife, Elijah watched closely, breathing heavily before refusing back to Annie.

“You heard that baby?” he whispered to her with a shaky chuckle as he pressed his forehead against hers, “it’s a girl.. We got a baby girl,” he kissed her check softly as the midwife placed their daughter on Annie's chest.

Elijah felt his heart melt in that moment, she had Annie's whole face and had his eyes.

Annie let out a weak chuckle as she looked down at their daughter, breathing shakily as she rubbed her cheek with a thumb.

“She's real pretty..” she muttered softly as she tilted her head, smiling faintly. Elijah let out an amused hum as he kissed her cheek once more. “She gets it from her beautiful mother.” he gently touched their daughter's cheek, fast asleep she was.

“What’s her name, Mrs.Moore?" the midwife asks softly, entering the quiet moment between the new family.

Elijah and Annie had made a deal in the beginning of their relationship that they’ll take turns naming their kids when it came to that point.

And now it's that time.

“I like winter,” she said softly as she looked at the midwife. “She looks like a winter to me.” Her gaze went back to their baby girl.

Winter.

“Winter moore..” Elijah muttered gently as he started grinning , wiping away tears “I like that.” he said after a moment.

–

11:30 pm December 3th, she was born close to midnight. Yeah she definitely a winter.

Elijah watched and paid close attention to the midwife explaining how to change her diapers.

Like he was about to change an engine.

Stack enters the room with a big bag of gifts and food for Annie. “Wheres my niece at?” he asked almost immediately as he placed the bags on the nearby chair. “Just forget about me then, huh?” Annie spoke up with sarcasm , raising her eyebrows at him.

Stack lets out a small chuckle and walks over to her. “Of course not sis, wouldn't have my niece without ya.” he chuckled as he walked over with her food and gave her a chaste kiss on her cheek. “I got you that sushi you’ve been craving.” he muttered with a smirk as he wigged the bag in front of her.

Annie lets out an amused huff. “You remembered.” she beamed as she took the bag before he could taunt her any further.

He chuckled and gave a small nod before pausing as he saw smoke with the baby. He meets his eyes having a silent conversation with his brother.

“Thats her?”

“Yeah it's her.”

Stack let out a shaky laugh as he stepped towards the bassinet, he lightly touched her check (after washing his hands of course) “she stole your whole face annie” he chuckled as he glanced at Annie before looking back at her. “Whats her name?” he asked after a moment, keeping his gaze on his niece who he is absolutely going to spoil to death.

“Her names winter, winter moore.” Smoke said softly with a small smile as he looked at his brother.

He gives a small nod. “Isn’t it a little on the nose, no?” he started , immediately in the mode to tease them. “You know? Winter, and she's born in December?’ he said with a smirk as he looked at them and Annie met his gaze with a deadpanned expression and Elijah chuckled quietly, reluctantly agreeing with him.

“Well I like it, it fits her.” Annie said after a moment, chuckling gently as she thought about the irony of it.

“It does, I'll admit that.” he hummed as he looked at them. “Oh! I brought the camcorder.” he said as he walked over to the bags from earlier and started it up.

“Of course you did.” Elijah muttered softly as he kissed Annie's cheek.

Stack spent the rest of the night and early morning with them, taking pictures and recording little moments with them.

__

THE PRESENT

“I aint crying man,” Smoke says as he wipes away tears. “My eyes just sweating is all.” he muttered with a huff as straightened up.

Stack looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “right, right..” he said as he glanced at the decorations, holding back a laugh.

“Let's finish decorating before your wife says something..” He whispered to him quickly as he went back to the other side of the living. “Need to get that grill going soon before everyone and they mama start showing up.” he added as he picked up the silver strings.

“Yeah, you right.” Smoke said with a small chuckle as he refocused on setting up the table, wiping away a few stray tears.

:

In the kitchen.

Annie and pearline are seasoning up the meat for the grill, Mary helps with cutting up the vegetables and Sammie is playing with his little cousin.

“Snow,you want this or that?” Sammie asked softly as he held up the banana and veggie baby food. Sammie gave her the nickname snow cause of her being born in December, Soon the nickname just stuck.

Winter stares at the baby food with intense interest as if she was really deciding before she points to the banana one. “See, I knew you would pick this one.” Sammie muttered with a chuckle as he put away the veggie one and grabbed a spoon.

Annie watched with a chuckle as she shook her head, she was listening to their conversation, finishing up cutting up the chicken. “She doesn't like anything else but that banana, been trying to get her to like that veggie mix.” Annie says gently with a soft huff as she washed her hands.

“Well I wouldn't either, shit looks like diarrhea.” Pearline spoke up as she carried the pan of hotdogs and burger patties outside.

Mary and Sammie started laughing immediately. “Don’t let smoke hear you cussing, no cussing around his baby girl..” Annie says gently with a chuckle as she checks on the cake.”almost done..”she muttered softly before moving to the living room to check on the twins, see if they’re almost done.

She pauses, her gazing landing on the decorations and the birthday banner hanging to the side. “Well, this could be better.” She spoke up , leaning against the frame as she looked at them.

Stack and smoke immediately turned to face her, both looking a little guilty.

“Oh come on Annie, it gives a homey feel, gives very much family.” Stack called out as he looked at them, up on the ladder.

Annie looked at him with amusement

“We’re trying to hurry up,baby..” smoke muttered gently as he moved over to her, gently kissing her cheek. “Where’s little snow?” He hummed , rubbing her side as he glanced into the kitchen.

“Lil Sammie is feeding her.” she answered, smiling softly.

“Ain’t delta slim,supposed to be here grilling for us?” Annie asked after a moment, following behind smoke as he headed to the kitchen wanting to see his baby girl.

“He should be here any minute.” Stack spoke up from the living room as he finally got the sign right .

Annie chuckled at his words and gave a small nod as she watched stack for moment before refocusing on smoke.

“Let me take over ,lil Sammie.” He asked gently with a hum as he patted Sammie’s back.

Winter lets out a cooing noise. “Dada..” as she lifts her arms forgetting all about the baby food, smoke chuckles softly and picks her up anyway. “Yeah princess, it's dada.”he says gently as he pecks her cheeks.

“Just forget about me huh?” Sammie chuckles as he pokes winter's cheek as he moves around them, going to help stack. Smoke lets out an amused huff as he rocks her gently.

—

*knock,knock*

“I got it,” Sammie calls out as he steps away from the decorations, moving towards the front door. “What took you so long , old man?.” he asks with a small smile as he helps Delta slim.

Delta slim lets out a chuckle and adjust the cupcakes he brought (just in case)

“Well traffic was a bit-” he started to say until he noticed smoke looking at him with a raised eyebrow. ‘Right that no cussing rule..my bad Smoke.” he says with a huff as he glances at Sammie who's holding back a laugh as they move to the kitchen.

“Ayee, now that grill can get started.” stack says moving the last tray of meat to the back yard. “Cause I am starving waiting around for yall.” he muttered underneath his breath as he started the grill up.

“Coulda been had that grill going, yall aint have to wait for me to do that naw.” delta slim said with a huff, giving winter a kiss on the head as he passed by her and smoke, heading to the back yard, winter let out a giggle at the kiss which caused smoke to start smiling.

“That's what I was trying to tell them,slim.” Annie spoke up , as she looked at the twins. “But you know how they get.” she added with a giggle as smoke looks at her with an raised eyebrow, mary nods in agreement, looking at stack with a smirk.

“Yall aint got to gang up on a brotha.” stack says sarcastically, kissing Mary's head as he looks at the others.

“Oh please, they hardly ganging up on yall.” pearline says as she steps back inside. “I’ll say that's light work.”

“The lightest of work , mind you.” Slim said from outside as he put the hotdogs on the grill, everyone started laughing even little winter , the twins though.

They both got the same mug on their face.

—

2:23

“You know..something smells like it’s burning..” Sammie spoke up as sniffs the air.

“Something do smell like it’s burning..” Pearline muttered as she glanced outside, “ well it ain’t the grill.” she added shortly after seeing everyone outside.

“Go ask Annie if there’s something in the oven.” He asked as he stood up, going to check the oven anyway. “Boy, why would I ask her when you're doing it anyway.” She immediately said with irritation as she crossed her arms.

Sammie pauses as he sees the smoke. “Now, boy I know you hear me talking to yo—“ Pearline started before stopping in her tracks.

“That’s the cake ain’t it.”

“Yup..”

They both looked at each other. “I ain’t telling her.” She said immediately as she held her hands up.

“Oh very mature.” He says with a huff before going to turn the oven off.

Sammie coughs as he opens the over, quickly covering his mouth with his shirt. Pearline makes a stank face as the smell fills the kitchen, she moves to the windows to let the smoke out.

Sammie sighs as he looks at the overly burnt cake. “Would’ve thought the oven was on high..” he muttered with disbelief as he placed it on the stove.

Not even a full thirty seconds later.

“I swear something smells burnt..” Elijah muttered as he walked inside.

“Man nothing burning,you over reacting as usual smoke.” Stack says following right behind the twin before getting hit by the smell of burnt chocolate.

“That shit stank..” he coughed, earning a glare from smoke before smoke sighs and stepped further into the kitchen.

“Not my baby cake, oh lord..”he huffed as he looked at the cake, he had spent so much time making it from scratch. “I swear I told someone to remind me..” he muttered to himself as he stared at the burnt cake with disappointment.

“Should’ve put on a timer..” he sighed as he rubbed his cheek before carrying the pan to the trash and scraping the burnt cake straight into it.

Stack grew stiff, immediately recalling his twin telling him to remind him to check on the cake. he glanced at Sammie and Pearline as they got started on fanning the smoke detector before he slowly started backing away.

“Why my house smelling like that?.” Annie spoke softly with disbelief as she carried in the grilled chicken.

They all turned to look at her, except smoke who was still scraping the burnt cake out the pan.

“Um..the cake got burnt..”stack muttered as he rubbed the back of his head, glancing at Annie while he stood there like a deer caught in headlights.

Sammie and Pearline looked at each other , relieved that they didn’t have to tell her.

“I forgot about the cake , baby..” Smoke spoke up with a sigh , genuinely mopping right now as he placed the messed up pan on the counter. “I’ll buy you a new pan tomorrow.” He added as he crossed his arms.

Annie watches Elijah for a moment, sighing gently as she walks over and places the pan of grilled chicken on the stove.

“We’ll still make sure the day is special,papa..” she said softly and rubbed his back.

—

“Alright time to sing happy birthday!..” Annie says with a giggle as she carries out a plate with one cupcake on it.

A small smile grows on Elijah's face , still a little disappointed that he messed up his baby's first birthday cake but he’ll learn to deal with it. He sits at the table , holding his baby girl who’s gripping his chin right now. “Dada, dada..” she cooed gently,bouncing in his lap before noticing the cupcake quickly forgetting all about him.

“See, those cupcakes came in handy.” Delta slim spoke up as he moved over to the table.

Smoke chuckles at delta slim. “Guess you really thought ahead..” he says with a laugh.

Stacks soon came around with the camcorder ready. “Yall better sing happy birthday on key, I swear..” he warned playfully as he narrowed his eyes at everyone before settling the camera on winter and the cupcake.

“Well imma sing on key, I don’t know about the rest of yall though.” Sammie hummed as he cleared his throat, ready to show off.

Everyone lets out a laugh at Sammie’s words.

“Preacher boy, we get it, you can sing...” Pearline says softly with a giggle as she shakes her head, moving to stand beside him as they get ready to sing happy birthday.

While everyone is singing happy birthday, smoke fights back tears as it starts to really hit him.

His baby girl really is growing up.

Man ain’t ever been the emotional type but ever since Annie came into his life and ever since then it’s been an adventure and he wouldn’t trade it for anything in this world.

“Alright snow, time to blow out the candle..” Annie said gently with a warm expression as all of them watched winter, stack making sure it’s on her adorable face.

Winter looks at the candle before glancing at her mama like “yall really expect me to blow this candle out?”

Elijah chuckled as he peeped the look his daughter was giving, he sighed before blowing the candle out for her.

Winter immediately claps and giggles clearly gotten what she wanted out of him.

—

I hope you guys enjoyed!I feel like my writing is definitely getting better 🤍 also had to cut this a little short cause it was about to reach 3k words and i genuinely wanted this be short (well, as short as it could be😭)

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Full lips all bunched up in a pout. Eyes more narrow than a sewing needle stitching a hemline back in her house. Fingers gripping the rolled tobacco cigarette tight.

Annie Moore watched her estranged husband Elijah "Smoke" Moore pretend to act unbothered on the second-floor, looking down at the mighty fine juke joint he and his twin Stack cobbled together in a day.

That big nigga was fuming up there, all on account of Beau Willie approaching her for a plate of fried catfish, and her mama's red rice recipe carried all the way over from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

There was plenty of fish to fry, pots of greens to stir, fried potatoes to season, and plenty of people to buy plates and eat them in Club Juke.

Annie wiped her brow with a folded towel next to the fryers and pretended not to notice her man hawking her from above. She gave Beau Willie two big slices of white bread with hot sauce, and pointed out the Irish beer, and Italian wine available to purchase with it. Her best friends Millie and Alberta helped cook and serve, and they all tapped their feet to the music swirling throughout the transformed sawmill. Two of Millie's older daughters stood nearby, watching and learning, and every now and then, the women would let them cook a batch of fish and sell some plates. Grace Chow the grocery store owner, also helped serve and sell liquor while gossiping with them.

"That man keep starin' at you, he gonna have his eyes fallin' outta his head," Millie whispered.

Grace giggled. Annie rolled her eyes and popped the cap of Beau Willie's beer with a bottle opener for him. Handed him the drink.

"There ya go, Beau Willie. You enjoy all that and come back for more when you ready," she said.

"You know I'll be back for your cookin', Annie. Every time," Beau Willie said with a voice deeper than the Mississippi River.

Brawny and handsome, Beau Willie worked the cotton fields like most of the colored people inside the juke. He was her first boyfriend. The first boy to ever kiss her.

Delta Slim belted out some tunes on his harmonica and tickled the piano keys, and Lloyd Allen played the lead guitar. The dancing crowd added the extra percussive beats. Preacher Boy Sammie stood next to the legend and played along with his guitar respectfully, not trying to outplay his elders, just keeping the rhythm steady with his strumming. A fiddler and two sibling banjo players waited offside for their turn to perform.

Annie served a few more plates and propped herself next to Grace against the counter filled with liquor bottles and high-priced hooch. She rightfully assumed Smoke and Stack stole all that shit. Smoke came to her house with pockets so fat and full of cash that she knew he'd been up to no good again. Wasn't no need to question or fuss with him about his criminality. He was going to do what he wanted.

A soft shiver went up her spine.

Lord, that man put it on her earlier that day! Twice. It was like old times with them. Argue and fight, and then fuck the disagreement away.

An undercurrent of disappointment simmered in her blood for his abandonment of their marriage after the loss of their baby. He begged her to run off to Arkansas with him after they robbed several banks in Clarksdale, and she refused to leave their baby behind in the ground they buried her in. That gravesite was holy, and she didn't want to leave her kin behind either. Smoke grew bitter about his pain. Selah, their baby girl, had meant everything to him. He couldn't wait to be a father and the first time he held her, the tears wouldn't stop flowing. They never stopped flowing after her death.

Annie did all she could when Selah grew sick. Asked every ancestor she knew by name and then some for help, wrung her hands with High John the Conqueror root as she beseeched God to grant her one holy favor: save her daughter from a too soon homegoing.

It wrecked Smoke.

He turned bitter, surly, and prone to drinking all day and night. The resentment in his eyes when she could cure ailments in other people, but not her own child, festered like an infection full of pus in his spirit. He said not one word to her, even though she sensed that negative energy clinging to him.

Her sorrow buried itself in her chest and she stumbled around each day numb for many months. They were not good to each other. He got it in his head to leave, like going away would banish Selah from their collective memory. She cursed him out. Beat her hands on his chest. How could he up and leave their child? Who was going to take care of her grave? Talk to her? Let her know they loved her beyond the veil of life?

He didn't skip off in the night when he left. That big gorgeous man looked Annie straight in her face and told her he couldn't stay. If he did, he feared he would turn into his father. A sullen, abusive man.

"Go on then," she said, "You scared to handle your feelings like a man, then leave. I'll stay and honor her and make a life with this pain."

He winced, and she turned her back on him, prepared an herbal remedy for a customer who was due to come by that day.

Smoke left her.

She had the community's support and sympathy. Built a business using the conjuring and medicinal skills she learned from her grandmother and Smoke's mother, Taiwo, both Hoodoo women. Taiwo nurtured her growth of knowledge until her passing two years ago. Annie stayed rooted in her power and fierce determination to keep her people thriving in Clarksdale.

She snuck a sip of the good hooch and squeezed her eyes shut from the burn that scorched her throat.

"Ooh, wee! That is some strong corn liquor," Annie gasped, patting her chest.

Millie cackled and sipped it like a pro, the moonshine sliding down her gullet like water.

"I don't know how you do that," Annie said with wonderment on her face.

"Y'all can't be drinking up the supply," Smoke said.

Annie jumped at the sound of her husband's voice. He'd moved in stealth down from the top floor to the main one. Grace wandered off to check on her husband, Bo.

"You ain't paying enough to be worried about me taking a drink when I want one," Annie joked.

"Thought I paid you in other ways that ain't got nothing to do with cash money," he teased, sliding his tongue across his top lip.

Millie smirked and lifted freshly cooked fish from the fryers and dumped them on some paper to drain. Annie wiped her hands and called one of the teen-aged girls over from the back to take over her spot.

"Where you going?" he asked.

"Going to mingle and let people know we got a hot batch ready. Why you stressing me?"

"As long as you're doing that and not flirting with customers."

"Flirting with who?"

Annie put a hand on her hip. Eyed him up and down.

Smoke glanced around. The crowd wasn't paying attention to him.

"Summa these menfolk might have some amorous intentions toward you that they shouldn't," he said.

She slanted her head and waited for him to continue. He snuck a glimpse of her chest. Annie wore her good bra tonight. Her breasts sat high like mountain peaks and looked voluptuous in her new velvet green dress with the few sparkly sequins she sewed into it. She gave enough cleavage with her beads falling down the center of her breasts guiding inquisitive eyes to the Promised Land. Green was Smoke's favorite color on her. Every man watched her work the floor all evening looking like a Hoodoo queen.

Her heavy hips and high riding backside cast spells on other men as she passed them by, and that worried Smoke in that sexually charged environment. Just because they made love hours ago didn't mean he had her safely tucked in his pocket. And he knew that. He'd been gone much too long to think other men hadn't plotted to scoop her up. It was one thing for her to be out of sight/out of mind while he was up north and not faced with other suitors pursuing her. Quite another to witness it full on in person. That's why he chased the back of her dress every chance he got when she went to wandering in the juke.

His reconciliation with her was still tenuous. By his facial expression, she knew he was having flashbacks of sticking his thick dick in her deep, gushy pussy, and he worried that some other man would dare to wet his dick in it, too. It kept him on his toes. Territorial. He'd already shot two men who tried to steal his liquor when he first arrived in town. If a man tried stealing his wife's pussy…there'd be a funeral in the morning.

Smoke didn't answer her question any further about flirting and cut his eyes away from her face. She slunk around him, draped her arms across his shoulders from the side, and stared up into the brown eyes he once gave their baby girl.

"What you worried about, Elijah?" she purred playfully.

"Ah, woman, get on and handle your business."

He tried to act nonchalant, but his eyes darted back and forth to clock anybody waiting to approach her when she moved away from him.

She kissed his cheek and sauntered off, glancing back to catch him watching her. Sure enough, three other men did the same, grinning at the seductive way she swung her hips. They looked elsewhere when Smoke turned their way, going in the opposite direction of her.

"How you folks doing? We got some fresh fish hot and ready. Some Creole potato salad, too! Don't be shy about getting seconds or thirds…hey Earline! I love that dress on you! Shake it, sis! Casper, let some other fellas get a chance to dance with her…hey Ora Lee! I ain't seen you out in a long time, girl!"

Annie circled the extensive building interior. Smoke's twin brushed past her on swift legs with Mary tailing him in her expensive pale satin dress. The juke stayed turned up, with Delta Slim leading the charge. People drank, ate, and had a damn good time.

Smoke stayed watching her, and she decided to ruffle his feathers.

"Oscar, don't you owe me a dance?"

She tapped a man's shoulder, and he showed all his teeth, so happy to hold her hand and swing her out on the floor. Her left arm casually rested on his slim shoulders, and he loved the feel of her near him.

"Aw, Miss Annie, I been waiting all night for a chance to dance with you."

He was only a couple of years older than her, searching for a wife, and he'd been pestering her to go out even though she told him she was still married…for seven years straight. With no word from Smoke, she started keeping company with Oscar briefly two years ago, but the bones she threw after their third picnic date told her they were not evenly yoked. They also told her Smoke wasn't dead. And if he wasn't dead, he was bound to come home someday. She let Oscar down easy, but he never gave up hope. He dated around, but yearned for her still. It showed in the way he held her while they danced. Annie kept it short and chaste.

"Thank you," she said.

"Why you running off, Annie? You think I'm scared of that runaway husband that showed up out the blue?"

She grinned.

"I got more fish to cook and some money to make," she said.

"Don't be shy coming my way again," he said, winking at her.

His buddy had a different idea.

"Nigga, you oughta be scared. Them Smokestack twins ain't to be tested if you want to stay healthy. You ain't hear about them fellas that tried to steal from Smoke today?" his buddy said.

Annie slipped away from the conversation and checked on Smoke, who still stood up high overlooking the railing. Lips poked out again, but he wasn't taking the bait.

She returned to her post after using the privy outside and washing her hands. Stack's trickster self found himself caught in the middle of a heated conversation within a circle of young women who didn't look happy with him.

"What I miss?" Annie said.

Alberta nodded over toward Mary, who sipped a glass of wine at the far end of the food table, watching Stack like he'd vanish into thin air if she didn't keep her eyes glued to him.

"Stack called those ladies field bitches, and they heard Mary say she'd beat up every one of them over him," Alberta said.

"Oh, Lord," Annie sighed.

One woman wagged her finger in Stack's face and spoke loud enough for Mary to hear.

"Her mama was a field bitch too!"

Millie went over to help get the argument under control. Stack looked somewhat remorseful, but maybe it was because the darker Black women were lighting his ass up. They didn't play that shit.

Alberta inched closer and lowered her voice.

"You see that gal right there? The one fussing the most? She's Grace Latimer's niece. Her sister Jessie left town seven months after Stack left. He was messing with her and Mary at the same time. They say she had two of his babies. Twin girls. Her people carried her off to Pittsburgh and got her married up quick. They were too scared to confront Stack about it. Now that's a rumor, so don't go telling folks you heard that from me."

Annie studied the young woman cursing Stack out.

"Does he know he has children by Jessie?" Annie said.

"Like he would care if it's true. He a rolling stone, that one. I wouldn't be surprised if he got a heap of babies all over the states the way he sweet talks women out they drawers."

Annie glanced over at Mary again. She stayed watching her great love with twisted lips and heat in her eyes. Annie felt bad for her. It made her wonder about Smoke. Were there babies out there in Chicago with his last name attached to them? No, she would've known. Felt it. Her small bag of bones would've told her as well. She prayed for that man to come back home safe, and he did. Took him a long time, but she had him back for herself.

Stack smoothed over the argument, apologized, let the women have free drinks on him, and they rolled their eyes and went about their business partying. He shuffled away to join the rougher men gambling with their Chinese guests in a back room, his gold-rimmed teeth gleaming. Mary huffed loudly, then flounced off into the crowd.

"Whew, I don't want that kinda love coming after me," Millie said, "She sticking to him like a haint in the graveyard."

"She shouldn't even be here," Alberta interjected. "He keeps telling her to go, but she won't leave. What if that sheriff come 'round here to check this place out and they see her? Ain't enough bribery money in this world to keep them crackas from killing him or us if they think she white. Her too. God rest her mama's soul, but she ain't doing us no good being here," Alberta said.

"She knows, but she don't care," Millie said.

Annie fixed plates quietly.

"Annie, maybe you should talk to her. She listens to you. She your play cousin anyway," Millie said.

"Ain't nothing I can say to her that will change her mind. Y'all know I'm married to Stack's other half. I loves me some Smoke, so I know what she's feeling inside. Can't explain it to y'all what it's like being in love with a Moore man. They cut from a different cloth."

"Oh, so they be up in them guts having y'all speaking tongues then," Millie teased.

Annie guffawed and grabbed onto her friend's arm to hush her. The women laughed together and Annie sighed afterward.

"All they got is this one night," Annie said. "We're safe enough in here with our people. Stack gotta decide what he gonna do with her on his own is all I'm saying. I'll talk to her in a little bit. But we got work to do."

Annie supervised the cooking, fanned herself, and chatted up the patrons buying liquor. She couldn't stop grinning at everything and everybody. The festive atmosphere hadn't been in Clarksdale like that for years. People needed the release from toiling in the fields and their troubles.

She took another walk to cool off. The sweat between her breasts and thighs got to her. She fanned herself down in a corner and gazed at the dance floor where folks stomped feet and threw hands up in the air.

The scent of tobacco wafted near her nose.

Smoke found his way next to her. He handed her a small mason jar half-filled with wine. He held another for himself.

"For a job well done," he said.

They clinked the jars together, and she sipped the white wine. He did the same after tossing his cigarette. The sweet liquid tasted good. Not too dry, nor overly sweet.

"You look beautiful, Annie. I meant to tell you that before we got here…but we got busy and…"

"Thank you," she said.

He took their empty jars away and handed them to a young man walking past and asked him to drop them off over at the liquor table to be washed.

"Would you like to dance, Mrs. Moore?" he asked her.

"I would love to, Mr. Moore."

A faint perceptible smile turned up one side of his mouth. She delighted in the rare sight of seeing his dimples. One would think only Stack had them with the lack of smiles Smoke gave freely. So stingy.

He threaded his fingers with hers and purposely walked to the center so everyone would see they were together. The strut in his step gave away his pride at having her by his side. If other men didn't take the obvious hint that she was back with her husband, the gun openly displayed on Smoke's side would deter them.

When he pulled her in close for a down home slow drag, her breasts rested on his wide chest where they were meant to be. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and those muscular ones of his circled her waist. He'd taken off his tweed jacket and the heat from him gripped around her as tight as his arms. They rocked their bodies together and his eyes latched onto hers.

Smoke didn't need words to speak what he felt. He snaked his hips and pressed into her tight.

Love looked right into her eyes through him. So raw and intimate. She almost had to turn away from his intense gaze.

"Baby, you're the finest woman in here," he whispered in her ear.

He let the tip of his tongue swipe the shell of her ear and spoke her name slowly, like an incantation. The hair of his mustache tickled her face the way she remembered, and he rubbed on her Rubenesque shape. Smoke loved him some full-figured women and although she had been a slender teenager when they first met at a church revival gathering, he took one look at her mother and saw the future of what Annie would become. It probably helped that she'd grown plump round titties already, but he'd zeroed in on her like a hummingbird to nectar.

His prediction came true. She filled out in the hips and rump. Her breasts turned buxom. He became an ass man and a lover of big tits.

Smoke liked how snug they were against him in that moment because his dick already poked at her through his trousers. She slid a hand down and palmed that third leg.

"Hey, now," he said, looking around.

"You think your dick the only one hard out here?" she said.

He lowered his hand on her waist and slapped her ass.

"Play around with me, woman, and I'm liable to take you in a room upstairs and bend you over again. You want me to make another big mess inside you?"

Annie covered his mouth with her hand, shushing him.

He pulled it away.

"What? You can talk dirty to me, but I can't give it right back to ya?"

She threw back her head and beamed, feeling tingles all over from the raspy tone of his voice. He gently placed his lips on her neck and sucked on it while stroking her bare arms. His fingertips ignited her flesh and when he finally kissed her, she didn't hesitate to slide her tongue against his. Her heart thumped with the excitement of their lips touching and fired off sparks everywhere on her body. When the man started lifting and separating her ass cheeks, kneading them like he had biscuits to make, she had to shut him down, or else he'd take her right there on the dance floor.

"I gotta get back to work, Elijah—"

"Mmm hmmm."

She pulled his hands away from her backside reluctantly. He slapped her rump again playfully.

"When we get back home, I'll get them big legs around me again," he teased.

He grabbed onto his dick and showed her the bulge ready for her. She waved a hand to shoo him away, but he held her from behind and pressed his temple against hers, swaying to the music. He gently tugged on the soft abundance of her belly and held it while putting his tongue in her ear again.

"You my woman, understand? My wife."

"Yes."

He patted her rump, and she meandered over to the food, playing with her protective haint blue beads, and giving herself time to collect her thoughts about Smoke. She grinned until her cheeks hurt; her husband's touches still lingered over the skin of her arms and midsection.

"Love looks good on you, Annie," Millie said.

Annie patted her friend's hand and calculated the amount of food left to cook. Plates were moving, but the liquor not as quick while folks danced. They would have to lower prices on the booze. Smoke wouldn't like that. The man wanted to make a profit, not break even…or worse. Surveying the crowd, if Club Juke could maintain its current capacity week after week, they would be alright.

She checked the trays of uncooked fish left. Not enough. Millie and Alberta noticed it, too. There was a tub of extra fish on ice in Smoke's truck.

"We need to get the rest from the truck…Hampton, come help me bring the fish in," Annie asked a young man standing idly by the table watching the dancing.

"I can get it for you, Annie," Beau Willie said.

He tossed a bottle of Irish beer into a waste bin.

"That's alright Beau Willie, Hamp can help me—"

"I got it," he said.

He headed out the side door, and Annie followed. She paused at the door's threshold and glanced over her shoulder. Smoke and Stack spoke to each other on the landing of the stairs leading to the second level.

She slipped outside and the balmy fall air felt hot and sticky on her skin.

"The truck's over there," she said, pointing.

He ambled over and she followed behind him.

A crow sat on the truck. Annie stared at it. The bird's eye shine announced its presence. It was odd to see a lone crow like that at night. Normally they did communal roosting hidden away. They preferred safety in numbers, and the anomaly of seeing one crow wide awake and watching her sent Annie's intuition into overdrive.

A pale white moon attracted her attention, and she turned to look at Club Juke in its entirety, surrounded by dense trees. The music bubbled out from it, and so did all the laughter inside. They were isolated from everyone in Clarksdale. The sawmill was the perfect property to buy.

The crow kept watching her.

It stretched its wings with a couple of loud flaps and then settled into observing her and Beau Willie. She touched her beads. The crow seemed familiar to her, like from some dream she had recently, one that woke her up in the middle of the night panting. Smoke had been in the dream with her. It had been so real that she could smell his skin and the cigarette smoke on his clothes. The crow spoke to her like a friend in that dream and told her not to worry. Her man was coming home soon.

Annie shook her head. Focused on the task at hand.

"It's up in there, Beau Willie," she said.

He pulled the tarp back and climbed onto the truck. He picked up the heavy tub of fish Smoke bought from Bo Chow and left it on the edge before jumping down on the ground.

"Thank you for helping me," she said.

"No problem, Annie. Always happy to help."

Beau Willie peered at her with softness in his deep-set eyes. Recently widowed, he cared for his four young children with his mother's help. His grown face still held the boyish charm she fell for as a teenager.

"Annie, can I ask you something personal?"

"What?"

"Is he staying for good this time?"

Annie wiped the back of her neck and turned to head back. He clasped her hand and held her in place.

"I'm not tryin' to be disrespectful to your husband. We both know who he is and what he does. You deserve better, Annie. Someone who won't run out on you when things get tough or even when bad things happen. I loved you first. He stole you from me—"

"Nobody stole me, Beau Willie."

"Then why him? Huh?"

"You and I were so young when we dated. You had plenty of girlfriends after me and married a good woman—"

"They weren't you, Annie. I've had you in my heart for a long time. If he doesn't stay this time like he didn't before…then give me a chance to rekindle us. I can give you a family already. I work hard…look after my kin. I ain't never stopped loving you. Even when you chose him over me, I held you here…"

He touched his heart.

"He's my husband. What you want, Beau Willie, is what I caint give. Maybe…maybe if Smoke never came back…maybe if he'd been killed or thrown in prison and stuck on a chain gang for life…maybe if something like that happened…our bond would be broken. But that man is a part of me and planted so deep in my soul that there ain't nothin' that you or any other man in that juke can say to change my mind different. I would walk through hell with him. Do you hear me?"

"He already put you through hell, Annie. Left you all alone, for all those years—"

"But he back now," she said, shifting her weight onto one foot.

She hated Beau Willie in that instant. He had the audacity to bring out the niggling twinges of doubt into her mind about Smoke.

The click of a revolver behind them snapped them to attention.

"You heard her, Beau Willie. I'm back now. I suggest you take that fish into the juke and stay the fuck away from my wife," Smoke said.

Beau Willie blinked rapidly and stepped back from her.

"No need to have that out, Smoke," Beau Willie said.

"Why not? I come outside and see another man propositioning my wife to leave me, and what am I supposed to do? Let that shit fly? I should blast holes in you right now, but I got a business to run. Pick that fish up, nigga, and go."

Beau Willie glared at Smoke. He didn't dare look at Annie again. Smoke aimed the gun at the man's head.

"I can take you out clean or painful. Your choice," Smoke said.

Beau Willie lifted the metal tub of iced fish and trudged back into the juke.

Smoke holstered his gun and faced Annie.

They stared at one another in silence.

"How much you hear?" she asked.

"Everything."

Her tongue worried the roof of her mouth as her eyes welled up.

"You really staying, right?" she said.

"You let that nigga get in your head?"

Annie closed her eyes. Tilted her head back slightly so no tears would fall.

"I'm staying," he reassured her.

She nodded her head once, afraid the knots in her stomach would find a way to take root in her chest.

"You believe me, dontcha, baby?"

"Like you told me back at my place. I believe what I can see," she said.

She left him outside and returned to the makeshift kitchen to oversee the cleaning of the fish. Smoke did his rounds on the floor, and she fought the anxiety of worrying about him and his plans. Her grandmother always told her people showed you who they were, and she could believe in what Smoke did. Not what he said.

Delta Slim beckoned for Sammie to take center stage with pride in his voice. The young man was finally getting his chance to sing.

"Tell them who you are…" Delta Slim said.

Sammie shyly and sweetly introduced himself, and Annie couldn't help but smile at how precious he was to the Moore family. He was her family, too, and he glanced at her briefly. She nodded her head for him to show the world his gifts and Sammie started singing something he never shared before and the hairs on her neck and arms raised up.

Immediately, a tunnel vision warped her reality and Annie pushed out her breath to keep herself from having a panic attack and passing out.

Sammie.

His guitar.

Annie stared at the walls as Sammie wailed out the blues with Delta Slim perched on stage like a proud Poppa. She could see the people shouting and encouraging Sammie to let loose, and when he held a long note, his voice ripped through the ceiling and Annie sensed there were more people in the sawmill than the ones she could physically see. Some unseen entity darted past her skin, touching her like bird wings fluttering in the air. High above, perched on a rafter, the crow from outside gazed down at her. The surge of power in the room engulfed the entire juke.

Smoke looked in her direction, just as shocked by the music and Sammie's voice and also by the triumphant way the people danced. Grace and Bo also twirled in time to the blues music that wrapped everyone in a cloak of revelry and freedom to be who they be.

Annie gasped, wildly overstimulated by the unseen. She touched the top of her head, feeling the sensation of an overwhelming presence.

It freed her.

She locked eyes with Smoke far across the room and he strode forward, zigzagging through the crowd on a direct path to her. The weight of Sammie's music slowed everything in her mind down and her husband's movement seemed even slower. She moved from around the counter and lunged for him, pushing through sweaty people, needing to get to her man.

Smoke reached for her, and she cradled his face.

"I need you. Here with me," she said.

"I ain't going nowhere."

Their lips crashed together, tongues battling to subdue the other in a frenetic exchange of energy and desire. He entwined their fingers and pulled her through the crowd, heading for the stairs. The music had risen to a crescendo that vibrated on her skin with an intensity that should've burst into flames.

Smoke pulled her up the stairs and into a room that he used for himself, that he planned to make his office if the juke proved profitable. He slammed the door shut behind them.

He spun her around and helped her take off her dress, unhooked her bra, and pushed her onto an old cot covered in a coarse blanket. Smoke undressed quickly, and the music rose through the floor.

"Somebody take me…in your arms tonight…!"

Sammies mature voice thundered below them.

The only thing Smoke had on was the mojo bag she made for him and his metal dog tags from the war. His dick pointed at her and dripped pre-cum. He barely gave her time to pull off her panties before his erection parted her slick labia and sank into her.

"Oh…Jesus!" Annie shouted.

Her man was down in that bottom.

He cradled her breasts and stretched his mouth around her areola, sucking to his heart's content. She wrapped her thighs around him and he gave her more of the deep dick she'd been craving for seven years.

"This is my pussy," mumbled into her ear.

The weight of him smothered her in scorching heat and his steady heartbeat.

He dropped to his knees and spread her legs, licking his wide tongue against her labia, giving extra tender care to her clit. Daddy was hungry and made her a sopping wet mess. He took his time until there was nearly a puddle under her.

"Turn over," he said, helping her move into the position wanted.

She placed herself on her hands and knees. He plunged his tongue inside her entrance and she squealed. Rubbing on her ass, he stood and inserted that thickness between his legs back into her, grunting and cussing up a storm. Her pussy felt exquisite to him by the sounds he moaned out. She was as hot and gushy as he wanted. He angled himself so he could watch her titties hang and smack together with each powerful thrust. Annie was so wet that her pussy sounded like it was having its own conversation taking his dick in the small room.

He climbed on the cot with Annie and pulled her onto her knees. She spread her thighs wide. He took back shots, holding her arms behind her, and Annie's tits bounced like crazy, forcing throaty moans from him. The pounding of the rhythm below them matched the pounding Smoke gave her pussy. The frenzy of his dick going in and out pulled lustful cries of pleasure from her lips. He palmed her breasts and rolled his fingers across her big nipples.

"You coulda been getting this pussy all the time," she said.

He clutched onto her tits, squeezing them, before gripping her arms tight, delighting in her titties shaking and arousing him more.

Annie squeezed her walls around his girth and he shouted her name.

"Pussy so good…Annie…"

She took control and pulled away from him.

"Whatchu doing? I need that shit…" he gasped.

She pushed him onto his back and climbed on top of him. Her thighs spread and wedged against his hips. Her breasts rested on his chest. He fondled them and stared up at her.

"I love you, Elijah. I never stopped loving you. All these years…I never once wanted any man the way I wanted you."

He thrust up, and she snapped her eyes closed. He stretched her like no other, and it felt incredible.

"Elijah…"

He thumbed her clit, allowing the slick wetness from her pubic hairs to coat the button every man wanted to push on her since Smoke had been away. She lowered her head and kissed him. His lips were so fluffy and soft against her mouth. The taste of her pussy there pleased him. He licked his lips as she tasted herself.

"I love you…hear me, woman? I love you. Don't let one of these niggas get killed tryna take you from me."

"No one can take me from you."

"You sure?"

She stopped moving.

"You think I'd want anyone else?"

She spread her hands on the wide planes of his chest. Traced two fingers down the path below his belly button of soft hairs that led to the wild pubic bush surrounding his dick.

He didn't answer, trusting the sincerity in her eyes.

"All I ever wanted was you…just you, Elijah. And when you left me…"

He lifted himself to face her and held his hands around her waist and backside.

"Shhh…shhh. Don't cry, Annie. Baby, please…I don't ever want to make you cry again. I promise."

He kissed away each teardrop that fell from her eyes. The soft pecks built up her confidence in him and she breathed easier. His voice stayed soft.

"I told you I missed you and wanted to be with you…I also want us to try for a baby again. Build our family," he said.

"You do?"

"Yes. That is…if you want that, too."

She hugged him tight.

"I do…I do!"

She wept so hard her eyes blurred. Smoke gave her one of his rare smiles, and her heart nearly burst with joy.

Annie rocked on him, pleasuring herself and him. Smoke held her breasts and sucked on her nipples.

"Oh…damn…Elijah…you're making me…oh Jesus!"

Annie came hard, and it rocked her world. Smoke massaged her breasts and watched her face transform with the rapturous climax. He grazed his teeth across a nipple and she shuddered, exalting in the sensations cascading all across her skin.

"We can try for a baby right now," he said.

He flipped her back over onto the small cot and she yelped as he tossed her legs over his biceps.

"Will you let me put another baby in you, Annie?"

"I sure will," she gasped, nearly out of breath.

His dimples melted her. He got down to business, too. Touching her skin all over, kissing her throat and whispering words of love in her ear. He licked on her nipples and stared at her fullness.

"Touching you is like touching the beauty of the night sky, Annie. You my jewel…my most precious thing in this world. Without you…I ain't fit to live."

"Hush now…"

"Nah, I want you to hear me."

"I want you to show me."

He grinned and pumped that thickness into her slowly, letting her feel every inch. Her mouth parted, and he pressed his forehead against hers.

"Ooh…Elijah…baby…"

Her pants came faster, and the groans from him aroused her to new heights. He hunched over her and every muscle flexed for her. Their sweat mingled and his strokes curled her toes. He lowered her legs and thumbed her clit, watching his dick go in and out. His lips poked out and his face carried a serious expression.

She recognized that look.

He was about to cum.

"Annie…baby…I'm getting close…"

She fondled her own breasts, and it created more tension for him. His eyes darted from her pussy to her tits. The way his eyes narrowed, she knew it was going to be a big load.

"Annie!"

"Yes!"

"I'm cummin'!"

He threw his head back and roared her name, his thumb faithfully rubbing her clit until she spilled over into a new release. His dick throbbed inside her and she matched the pulses squeezing her walls around him to milk every drop of cum.

"Fuckkkk!"

His hoarse cry drowned out her whimpers of pleasure. Her pussy kept throbbing around him until the last surge of her orgasm quieted down enough where she could move again.

"Elijah?"

His eyes watered. Tears fell down on her. The tone of his voice trembled.

"I'm sorry, baby…for everything…"

"My love…it's okay…you're here with me…we're here together," she said.

"I can't give you back those seven years…"

"Shhh…stay with me here…in this moment… in the right now."

He twisted his head to the side in shame. She pulled it back to look at her.

"We here," she said

He kissed her forehead.

Smoke snuggled around her until they were in a tight spoon together. He played with a breast and listened to her breathing calm down. The music below them kept going and Annie didn't want to leave his arms ever again. She shifted her position, and Smoke rested his head on her breasts. Stroking his hair gently, she snatched that tiny moment of peace for themselves, forgetting about everything and everybody in the juke.

Annie cleaned herself up as best she could with the buckets of water Smoke brought up from a well out behind the juke. No one paid attention to him or questioned why he needed to tote water and clean rags upstairs. He cleaned himself up, too, and they rejoined the dancing below.

She floated.

Making love to him grounded her and pushed away any doubt.

He was going to stay with her.

She hoped they had conceived a little one. Lord knows he put enough semen in her over the course of a day to open a whorehouse. She laughed at the thought.

Smoke made his rounds, checking in on everything before he slipped his hand over hers to dance one more time.

She nuzzled her face against his cheek, pulling an open smile from his face. It was such a shock that even Delta Slim had to look twice to make sure it was real.

She hooked her arms around her husband's neck, swayed with him in time to the music and their own internal rhythm. Part of his mojo bag peeked out from his vest. She touched it. Early that morning, she had fed it, prayed over it, recharged it with her love and that of her ancestors to protect him.

"Blood of my blood…bone of my bone…," she whispered.

"You putting a root on me, woman? I told you… I'm home for good. Forever," he said.

"Forever ever?" she teased.

"For always."

"Ashe," she affirmed.

"What that mean again?"

"And so it is."

"I like that."

"Me too."

"Annie?"

"Yes, Elijah?"

"I love you."

He kissed her softly. Kissed life back into her.

The music played on, and for a few hours, it did seem like forever.

A.N.:

Wanted to put out a short Smoke/Annie fic to practice getting Annie's voice for another fic. I plan to write more about these two. How they met. Had their first child etc. This short is connected to my "Choose One" longer fic. You may recognize a speculative figure lurking in the story if you've started reading "Choose One." Enjoy!

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Smoke left Aunt Cheryl’s without a second glance backwards.

The gravel crunched beneath the truck tires as he pulled onto the road, the familiar stretch of Mississippi highway unfolding beneath a sky slowly bleeding gold into orange. His knuckles ached every time he tightened his grip on the steering wheel, a steady reminder of the punch he’d thrown and the argument that had come before it. The pain should have made him feel foolish.

Instead, it mostly made him feel tired.

The entire afternoon weighed on him. Annie’s tears. Her yelling. The way she’d looked at him like he had personally ruined eight years of her life. How she stood in the middle of Aunt Cheryl’s yard and told him she’d spent all those years waiting for him to fight for her.

Then Stack’s voice showed up right behind the memory.

You punched him because she grabbed that suitcase again.

Smoke swore under his breath.

Unfortunately, his brother hadn’t stopped there.

The first person she reached for wasn’t you.

That part irritated him most because Stack had said it with the confidence of somebody who already knew the answer. Smoke had wanted to tell him he was wrong, and say Isoo got punched because he should’ve kept his fucking mouth shut. He wanted to tell him it had nothing to do with Annie. The problem was every time he replayed the moment in his head, he arrived at the same conclusion Stack already had.

The punch was never about Isoo.

His jaw tightened.

The road curved gently ahead. Smoke followed it automatically, barely paying attention to where he was going. He’d driven these roads his entire life. He could’ve found his way home blindfolded. His eyes drifted toward the passenger seat. The mixtape sat there. Quiet. Innocent. Like it hadn’t caused a damn thing. Annie’s handwriting stretched across the cover exactly the way it always had. Uneven in places. Slanted slightly to the right. Familiar enough that he recognized it before he’d even registered what he was holding.

Two weeks.

That’s what she said. Two weeks making the fucking thing. Choosing songs while thinking about him. The thought annoyed him, confused him. Then irritated him again because confusion felt entirely too close to hope.

His phone vibrated against the center console. Smoke glanced at the screen and sighed. He knew where this conversation was headed.

LEWIS JONES.

For a moment he considered letting it ring. Then he answered. “Uncle Lewis.”

“You done?”

The corner of Smoke’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Done what?”

“Actin’ stupid.”

A laugh escaped him before he could stop it. Small. Brief. Then it was gone. 

“Depends.”

“On?”

“How bad do his face look?”

The answer came without hesitation. “Bad enough.”

Smoke nodded once. “Aight.”

Silence stretched between them. One of the things Smoke appreciated most about Uncle Lewis was the man’s refusal to fill every empty space with noise. Most people got nervous when conversations slowed down. They rushed to fill the gaps with questions, opinions, or advice nobody asked for.

Lewis never did. 

The older man let the silence breathe before speaking again. “You know everybody saw through that shit, right?”

Smoke looked out the windshield. “Saw through what?”

“You ain’t punch that boy ‘cause he butted in.”

There it was. Smoke should’ve known. He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and watched a pair of headlights pass in the opposite direction.

“You ain’t even know that boy was there half the afternoon.”

Smoke huffed quietly. “That ain’t true.”

“Who you lyin’ to?” 

The question came so quickly Smoke almost laughed.

“You been mad for a long time.”

The words sank in a little deeper. Lewis wasn’t talking about the cookout anymore. Smoke knew it. Lewis knew it. Hell, everybody who loved him knew it.

The older man sighed softly through the phone. “You ever get tired?”

Smoke frowned. “Of what?”

“Being mad.”

The question caught him off guard, because it wasn’t complicated. For a while all he heard was the hum of tires against pavement and the low growl of the engine beneath him. Eventually he shrugged. “I guess.”

Lewis made a low sound. The kind that meant he wasn’t buying the answer. “You know how many arguments me and Cheryl survived because one of us was too stubborn to shut up?”

A smile tugged briefly at Smoke’s mouth. “Too many.”

“Exactly.” A pause followed. Then Lewis added quietly, “You know how many we survived because one of us was too stubborn to talk?”

The smile disappeared. Smoke’s eyes turned to the passenger seat again. To the mixtape and Annie’s handwriting. He looked back at the road. Neither man spoke. The silence stretched longer this time. Thoughtful and heavy at the same time.

“You know what I keep thinkin’ about?” Lewis asked eventually.

Smoke already knew. Still— “No, sir?”

“That girl flew all the way back to Mississippi.”

Smoke swallowed.

Lewis continued. “Three states.”

The truck rolled forward through the fading evening light.

“Three states and two weeks makin’ some CD.”

Smoke let the words sit with him.

“You think folks do that for somebody they don’t love?”

The question sat heavy between them. The answer coming fast. No. Of course not. But saying it out loud felt dangerous somehow. So he didn’t.

Lewis didn’t push either. He never had to, but he still continued— “You ain’t gotta forgive her tonight.”

Smoke stared ahead.

“You ain’t gotta fix everything tonight either.”

The road stretched empty before him. Fields on one side. Trees on the other. Home getting closer with every mile.

“But don’t spend another eight years punishin’ yourself.”

Something about the way Lewis said it made Smoke’s chest tighten unexpectedly. Yourself. The distinction mattered more than Smoke wanted to admit. Because if he was honest, truly honest, the years hadn’t only hurt Annie. They’d hurt him too. More than he’d ever admit.

The truck grew quiet again. The sky darkened another shade.

Eventually Lewis cleared his throat. “You headed home?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good.”

Smoke waited.

Lewis chuckled. “Go home.”

“That’s yo’ advice?”

“Yep.”

Smoke rolled his eyes. “You called me for that?”

Uncle Lewis chuckled. “I taught you construction. Might as well teach you common sense too.”

Despite himself, Smoke laughed. “Yes sir.”

The word left before he thought about it. A habit nearly as old as he was. For a minute he considered ending the call. Instead, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. 

“Thank you.”

The line went quiet. Then Lewis answered simply. “Welcome, son.”

There was a tightening in Smoke’s chest. It wasn’t that Uncle Lewis had never called him ”son” before. He had. A handful of times over the years. Usually when Smoke showed up to help with a project around the house or worked alongside him on a jobsite. Small moments. Easy moments. The kind that never seemed important until later. But hearing it now felt different. Maybe because there hadn’t been many men in Smoke’s life who earned the right to say it.

His father certainly hadn’t. Most of Smoke’s memories of his own father involved whiskey on his breath, anger in his voice, and the sound of boots crossing a porch that made two little boys tense before he even opened the door.

Uncle Lewis had been the opposite. Patient where his father had been cruel. Steady where his father had been unpredictable. The man who taught him how to frame a wall, read a tape measure, show up on time, and finish what he started. Uncle Lewis handed him his first construction job and expected him to work for every dollar of it. He was who Smoke thought about whenever people talked about good fathers.

His throat felt tight suddenly. “Yes sir,” he said again.

For a while neither of them spoke. Then, like always, Lewis broke the tension before it could become something either of them had to acknowledge.

“Get home safe.”

“I will.”

“And Smoke?”

“Yeah?”

Uncle Lewis paused. “Listen to that damn CD.”

The line went dead before Smoke could answer. For the rest of the drive, Uncle Lewis’s words followed him home. Not about Isoo or even the part about Annie. It was Uncle Lewis’ question that stayed with him.

You ever get tired?

At the time Smoke had brushed it off. Gave him a half-answer and kept driving. But the farther he got from Uncle Lewis and Aunt Cheryl’s house, the harder it became to ignore. Somewhere between North Carolina and Mississippi, between missed calls and unanswered letters, pride and hurt and eight years of silence, carrying it all had become exhausting.

And for the first time, Smoke found himself wondering what it might feel like to finally put some of it down.

By the time Smoke pulled into his driveway, the anger had given way to something heavier than it had been when he left the cookout. It still sat in his chest, still burned every time he replayed parts of the afternoon, but it no longer felt sharp. Sharp things cut quickly. This felt more like a weight. Something dense and stubborn that had followed him all the way across town and climbed into the truck beside him.

The engine idled for a moment after he parked. Smoke rested both hands on the steering wheel and stared through the windshield at the dark outline of his house. Usually coming home felt like relief. Quiet. Predictable. A place where nobody needed anything from him for a few hours. Tonight it felt different. Maybe because he knew exactly what was waiting on the passenger seat. And Stack’s voice had still managed to survive the entire drive.

You punched him because she grabbed that suitcase again.

Smoke exhaled slowly through his nose.

The worst part wasn’t that Stack had said it. The worst part was that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He replayed the argument, Annie calling for Isoo, and the look on her face when she said she wanted to leave. He still arrived at the same conclusion. The punch hadn’t been about Isoo. It hadn’t even been about whatever smart ass shit came out of Isoo’s mouth. It had been about Annie reaching for somebody else when everything inside him had been screaming for her to stop running to any and everything, but him.

Eventually he killed the engine and climbed out. The house was quiet when he stepped inside. Not peaceful, quiet. Empty quiet. The kind that made every creak of the floorboards sound louder than it actually was. Uncle Lewis and Aunt Cheryl’s house had always been full. Full of people, conversations, and yelling from one room to another. Even when nobody was talking, there was always the feeling that somebody might start. Smoke’s place wasn’t like that. Most days he preferred it. Tonight it gave him too much room to think.

The mixtape landed on the kitchen counter while he headed for the refrigerator. He opened the door and stared inside, as though something useful might appear if he gave it enough time. A container of leftovers sat on the top shelf beside eggs, sandwich meat, and vegetables he’d bought because he told himself he was going to start eating cleaner. None of it looked particularly appealing. Smoke shut the refrigerator and got pissed all over again.

Aunt Cheryl had probably made enough food to feed half the county. There had been ribs, potato salad, baked beans and rolls. Even Pearline’s nasty ass Mac and cheese was there. And at least five desserts. Normally he’d have left carrying enough leftovers to survive the next several days. Instead he’d left carrying a bruised hand and a damn mixtape.

“Ain’t even get to bring no fuckin’ plate home.”

The complaint sounded stupid the second it left his mouth. Unfortunately, that didn’t make it less true.

For half a second he considered getting back his truck, driving to Aunt Cheryl’s, and fixing himself a plate like a grown man with priorities. Then he pictured Annie sitting in that house, Stack there with a stupid ass look on his face, and Aunt Cheryl looking at him like she had a sermon ready.

Hell nah.

A little while later he found himself standing over the stove making a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. The entire situation felt ridiculous. He’d spent the afternoon arguing with Annie, punching Isoo, getting lectured by Stack, and receiving life advice from Uncle Lewis, only to end the night standing in his kitchen cooking like a man who hadn’t just had his entire emotional foundation kicked in. The sandwich wasn’t terrible. It also wasn’t Aunt Cheryl’s ribs.

Smoke ate anyway.

Afterward he grabbed a beer, stared at it for a second, then put it back. The whiskey seemed like a better idea. He poured himself a glass and carried it into the living room. A few minutes later, he looked down and found it untouched. His attention kept drifting back to the kitchen counter. To the mixtape. That pissed him off too.

At some point he found himself wiping down countertops that weren’t dirty. Then reorganizing a drawer that hadn’t bothered him in months. Then checking laundry that didn’t need checking. 

The thought arrived slowly enough to make him feel stupid. He was avoiding the mixtape. A grown ass nigga avoiding a CD. Worse, Annie would probably find it hilarious. That thought alone nearly made him put the fuckin’ thing in the CD player just out of spite.

Instead he took a shower.

The hot water should’ve helped. Usually it did. Construction work had a way of settling into muscles and joints. A shower could wash away most of a hard day. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough hot water in Mississippi to wash away Annie. She showed up anyway—crying, yelling, and saying she’d waited. 

And she called him Elijah. 

That always stayed with him. Most people call him Smoke now. Some folks probably forgot Elijah existed. The nickname had become easier over the years. Simpler. Safer. Smoke belonged to everybody. Smoke was the man people expected him to be.

Elijah belonged to Annie. 

Always had.

After the shower, Smoke dried off and pulled on a pair of sweatpants before catching sight of his hand in the bathroom mirror. The knuckles looked worse now than they had at Aunt Cheryl’s. Adrenaline had carried him through the drive home, but it wasn’t doing him any favors anymore. Swelling had already begun to set across the back of his hand, and purple bruising was working its way beneath the skin.

“Shit.”

He flexed his fingers once and instantly regretted it. The punch felt good for about three seconds. Now it just hurt like hell.

Smoke dug through the bathroom cabinet until he found peroxide and a box of bandages his mom had practically forced him to buy after splitting his hand open at a construction site a few months earlier. At the time she’d fussed at him for nearly twenty minutes about keeping basic first-aid supplies in the house. Standing here now, pouring peroxide across busted knuckles, he hated admitting she might’ve had a point. A few minutes later he found himself sitting on the edge of the bathtub while the antiseptic fizzed against broken skin. The sting should have kept his attention. Instead, his mind wandered right back where it had been all evening.

Annie.

It seemed like no matter what he was doing, every road eventually led back to her. The tears. The yelling. The way she’d looked at him in the middle of the yard. Then, inevitably, his thoughts landed on the part he hated most.

Isoo.

The punch? Nah. Not even the argument that led to said punch. It was the moment before it. The moment Annie grabbed that suitcase and looked past him. Smoke lowered his head and rubbed a hand across his jaw. By the time he’d wrapped the worst of the damage and tossed the used bandages into the trash, he was in a perpetual state of irritation. Because Stack had been right. And so was Uncle Lewis.

A cigarette seemed like a logical next step. Then whiskey. Then sitting on the back porch convincing himself he wasn’t thinking about the mixtape while doing exactly that.

The Mississippi night wrapped around him warm and familiar. Crickets chirped somewhere beyond the fence. A dog barked in the distance. His neighbor several houses over was playing music low enough that only the bass reached him. Smoke sat there until his cigarette burned almost to the filter and the whiskey glass sat empty beside him.

Eventually he ran out of things to do. He’d exhausted every distraction available.

The house felt different when he walked back inside. It was later now and the whiskey had finally done its job. But now there was no avoiding the fact that Annie’s mixtape was still sitting exactly where he’d left it. Waiting. Patient in the way Annie never was. Smoke shook his head and picked it up off the counter. The plastic case felt surprisingly light in his hands. His thumb brushed across the writing on the cover before he could stop himself.

For Elijah.

Never Smoke.

The version of him she always seemed able to find no matter how deeply he buried it. For a moment he simply stood there staring at the words. Then Uncle Lewis’s voice echoed in his head.

Listen to the damn CD.

Smoke sighed heavily. “Yeah, yeah.”

He wasn’t entirely sure whether he was answering Uncle Lewis or Annie.

Maybe both.

The disc disappeared into the stereo. Smoke stood there with one hand resting on the shelf beside it, seriously considering taking it back out. The thought lasted right up until he remembered the few hours of his evening had been spent avoiding it.

Enough was enough. He pressed play and static crackled softly through the speakers.

Then Annie’s voice filled the room. “Elijah, if you’re listenin’ to this, it means you finally stopped bein’ hardheaded.”

Smoke froze. All he could do was stare at the stereo. Then Annie laughed. Not a big laugh or one of the loud ones that made everybody else join in. This was smaller, the one that usually appeared when she thought she’d gotten away with something. Her voice came through the speakers again, pleased with herself.

“Good.”

A click followed.

Seconds later the opening notes of Can We Talk came through the living room.

Smoke closed his eyes and laughed despite himself. “Oh, she got jokes.”

The song continued playing.

Track 1: Can We Talk

The opening notes of Can We Talk filled the room as Smoke leaned back into the couch. At first he listened the way most people listened to old songs. Half paying attention. Half letting familiarity do the work. The melody was recognizable, pulling up memories he hadn’t thought about in years. He could already hear Annie laughing at herself for choosing it. Shit, he was laughing too. Of all the songs she could’ve started with, she picked the one that practically came with a flashing sign attached to it.

The thing was though, the joke stopped being funny about halfway through. The song didn’t change, but he did.

The longer he listened, the harder it became to separate the music from the message underneath it. Annie had never been the type to do anything halfway when she cared. If she baked a cake, she spent three days finding the right recipe. If she bought somebody a gift, she’d somehow remember a throwaway comment they made six months earlier and build the entire thing around it. Every meaningful thing Annie had ever done came with intention attached to it. Looking back, maybe that was why the last eight years had hurt so much. Neither of them had ever stopped caring enough to become indifferent. 

They’d simply found different ways to carry the hurt.

Smoke clenched his jaw until the muscle ticked, then leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. The whiskey sat forgotten on the coffee table. At some point he’d stopped drinking it. He wasn’t sure when. His attention had been entirely on the stereo, which was annoying because it meant Annie had managed to hijack his evening without even being in the room.

A bitter laugh escaped him. That sounded about right.

The song continued playing, and with every passing minute Smoke found himself thinking less about the argument at the cookout and more about the years before it. Not the breakup or the misunderstandings. The good parts. 

Annie stretched across his couch with textbooks scattered around her. Annie stealing fries off his plate after claiming she wasn’t hungry. Her singing along to songs she only knew half the words to and making up the rest with complete confidence. There had been a time when talking to her felt as natural as breathing. Somewhere along the way they’d lost that. Or maybe they hadn’t lost it at all. Maybe they’d simply buried it beneath years of pride, hurt, and assumptions until neither of them remembered where it was.

By the time the song ended, Smoke hadn’t moved in several minutes. The room felt quieter afterward, though that probably had more to do with the absence of Annie’s chosen soundtrack than actual silence. He sat there waiting without meaning to. Waiting for the next song and for whatever she’d decided came next, because curiosity had quietly replaced resistance along the way.

Annie’s voice returned before the next track started. Something in his chest tightened. It wasn’t the recording itself. It was how normal she sounded. She wasn’t crying, there wasn’t any anger in it or heartbreak.

Just Annie.

There was amusement in her voice before she even spoke, the same amusement she’d carried since she was fourteen years old and entirely too pleased with herself. “Before you start rollin’ your eyes, yes, I know that one was obvious.”

Smoke shook his head and rolled his eyes despite himself. 

There she was. 

Since she’d stepped back into Mississippi, he wasn’t thinking about the woman standing in Aunt Cheryl’s yard with tears streaming down her face. He was hearing the girl he’d fallen in love with. The girl who always had something to say, and who could make him laugh when he was trying his hardest not to.

Annie laughed softly on the recording. “If I gotta suffer through eight years of your stubbornness, you can survive one Tevin Campbell song.”

The smile lingered longer this time. She wasn’t wrong, because she’d always known exactly which nerve to touch. Or maybe hearing her like this reminded him of something he’d forgotten. The Annie sitting safely inside this recording wasn’t trying to win an argument. She wasn’t defending herself and not asking him to choose between his version of the past and hers. She was simply trying to talk to him. Really talk to him. And judging by the fact that he was sitting alone in his living room listening this closely, it was working. 

The knowledge came over him slowly as Annie exhaled on the recording and fell quiet for a moment. She hadn’t made him a playlist. She’d built him a conversation.

And Smoke was finally listening.

Track 2: Truth Is

The silence that followed Annie’s recording didn’t last long. A few seconds later another song began to play.

Smoke recognized Fantasia instantly. That alone made him sit back. Annie had always loved Fantasia. Not casually either. That girl treated Fantasia songs like scripture. Back in high school, he’d spent an entire semester listening to Annie defend her against people who insisted she sang too many sad songs. Annie always disagreed.

“They ain’t sad,” she’d argued one afternoon from the passenger seat of his car. “People just don’t like the truth.”

At the time he’d rolled his eyes and told her she sounded fifty years old. At sixteen, he’d thought she was being dramatic. At twenty-six, he wasn’t so sure.

The song continued playing while Smoke leaned back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. At some point he’d stopped treating the mixtape like background noise. His attention remained fixed on every word, every transition, every choice she’d made. Annie had spent two weeks putting this thing together. Two weeks deciding what came first and what came next. Nothing about that sounded accidental.

Which meant Truth Is was here for a reason. The message wasn’t difficult to understand.

The truth is. Three simple words. Words capable of ruining an otherwise peaceful evening.

Smoke closed his eyes.

The memory arrived before he could stop it.

It was years ago. Long enough that he couldn’t remember the exact date anymore. Stack had talked him into going out after work. A restaurant on the other side of town. Some female Stack was messing with at the time had a cousin or a friend she insisted would be perfect for him. Smoke remembered almost none of the details now. Not her name, what she ordered, or what they talked about.

He only remembered the feeling.

The woman was beautiful. Smart too, and easy enough to talk to. The conversation never stalled. She asked questions and listened to the answers. By every measurable standard, the night should’ve been a success. Stack certainly thought it was. The first thing out of his mouth the next day had been, “So when you seein’ her again?”

Smoke remembered shrugging. Remembered saying, “I don’t know.” At the time he’d blamed work, timing, then the fact that he wasn’t looking for anything serious. The same excuse he’d been feeding everybody for years. Listening to Fantasia now, he found himself wondering if that had ever really been true, because the part he remembered most wasn’t the woman.

It was the moment she’d laughed.

For one brief second she’d tilted her head back and smiled, and before he could stop himself he’d thought about Annie. The thought had simply appeared. 

Uninvited and Automatic.

Annie would’ve laughed louder. Annie would’ve made fun of him afterward. Annie would’ve stolen something off his plate and then argued about why it didn’t count as stealing.

The comparison lasted all of three seconds. The date never stood a chance after that.

Smoke rubbed a hand across his mouth.

The song continued. Another memory surfaced. Then another. Different women. Different years. Different cities. Every single one ending exactly the same way. Nothing wrong with them. Nothing he could point to and say that’s why this didn’t work. Just a persistent feeling that something wasn’t there.

Or maybe somebody.

The thought crept up on him so gradually he almost missed it. For years he’d told himself Annie was the exception. The first love. The one that got away. The person everybody compared others to for a little while before eventually moving on. The problem was “a little while” wasn’t supposed to last eight years. “A little while” wasn’t supposed to survive multiple relationships, birthdays, holidays, and entire stages of life. “A little while” wasn’t supposed to follow somebody into adulthood.

Yet Annie had.

The song was still playing when Smoke lowered his head and stared at the floor. Across the room, the stereo glowed softly in the darkness. The house felt smaller now. Quieter. Like Annie was sitting somewhere nearby saying all the things neither of them had been brave enough to say before.

Truth is.

The words echoed through his head. Not the lyrics—the title. The confession hidden inside it, because the longer he listened, the harder it became to ignore the possibility that Annie wasn’t the only person this song belonged to. Maybe that was why it bothered him. Why he hadn’t reached for the whiskey in nearly twenty minutes, because for the first time all night, the mixtape wasn’t asking him to think about Annie.

It was forcing him to think about himself and that was a much harder conversation.

Track 3: Garden (Say It Like Dat)

The transition into the next song happened so smooth Smoke almost missed it. Almost. SZA’s voice eased through the speakers, and he understood Annie wasn’t done telling the truth.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

Of course she picked this one. Of all the songs on the radio, Annie had always gravitated toward the ones that sounded like confessions. Songs that peeled back ugly feelings people normally tried to hide. Songs that admitted things most folks would’ve rather kept to themselves.

Garden was one of those songs.

Smoke reclined a little further into the couch. Outside, the Mississippi night continued without him. Crickets. Distant traffic. The dog was still barking. The sounds filtered through the screened window above the sink, familiar enough to disappear into the background. His attention remained fixed on the stereo. On what Annie was trying to say. At first he thought the song was about vulnerability. It was about fear.

There was a difference.

What it meant became clear slowly. The way most important things did. Piece by piece. Memory by memory.

Smoke found himself thinking about a night during their sophomore year. Football practice had run late, leaving him sore, exhausted, and running almost entirely on instinct by the time he finally met Annie outside the library. She’d talked nearly the whole walk home, telling him about a history article she’d read, Pearline getting written up in chemistry for arguing with the teacher, and some recipe she'd seen on a cooking show that she was convinced she could make better.

Smoke had listened the way he usually did after practice. One-word answers. A nod here. A quiet laugh there. Enough to let her know he was listening. Or at least he’d thought so.

Along the walk Annie got quiet. He barely noticed at first. She always had something to say. The silence felt strange enough that he eventually looked over at her.

“You alright?”

She shrugged.“Mhm.”

“You sure?”

“I’m fine.”

Smoke frowned. He knew better. Annie wasn’t the type to stop talking unless something was bothering her. 

He tried again. “What happened?”

“Nothin’.”

The answer annoyed him instantly because it was obvious she was lying. They went back and forth for nearly twenty minutes, Annie insisting she was fine while Smoke insisted she wasn’t, until she finally stopped walking altogether. He’d taken another few steps before he looked over. She wasn’t beside him anymore. When he turned around, Annie was standing in the middle of the sidewalk staring at the ground.

“You still like me?”

The question caught him so off guard that he laughed. It wasn’t that it was funny, it didn’t make any sense to him.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Where’d that come from?”

She shrugged again, refusing to look at him. “I don’t know.”

Smoke walked back toward her. “Annie.” “You serious?”

Another shrug.

He remembered reaching out and tipping her chin up until she finally looked at him. “Of course I still like you.”

“You do?”

“Man, what…” He laughed again, shaking his head. “I thought that was obvious.”

She searched his face for another second before finally smiling, small and almost embarrassed. “Okay.”

Then, just like that, she started walking again.

At sixteen, Smoke thought that had settled it.

He’d chalked the whole conversation up to Annie overthinking things the way Annie sometimes did. He never stopped to ask what had made her question it in the first place. Didn’t consider that spending one evening distracted by football and fatigue had been enough to make her wonder if she’d done something wrong. Sitting in his living room now, listening to a woman who had flown across state lines carrying a mixtape and eight years’ worth of unresolved feelings, Smoke felt that memory differently. Back then he’d blamed Annie’s insecurities. Now he wondered if he’d been looking at them wrong the entire time.

Maybe Annie wasn’t asking because she doubted him. Maybe she was asking because she needed to hear it. Needed confirmation, reassurance, and needed something he wasn’t particularly good at giving. Now, he wondered how many times she’d needed words and never gotten them. Because if there was one thing Annie had been asking for their entire relationship, it wasn’t grand gestures, gifts or promises.

It was words.

And words had always been the thing Smoke struggled with most.

Track 4: Damage

The next song started before Smoke could talk himself into getting another drink. He recognized the voice. But the artist? No idea. Couldn’t have told anybody if they paid him. But he’d heard the song plenty of times on the radio. At the time, he’d never paid much attention to it. 

Now he did.

That seemed to be happening a lot tonight.

By the second verse, Smoke was on his feet. He didn’t mean to stand. He just found himself moving. Restless. The same way he’d been restless beneath the pecan tree earlier. The way he’d been restless sitting on the porch pretending he wasn’t thinking about Annie while thinking about nothing else. He crossed into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, one hand rubbing absently across his jaw.

The song continued—and unfortunately, so did his memory. 

Standing in Aunt Cheryl’s yard crying.

“I came to yo’ house so excited to see you.”

The words hit differently now than they had a few hours ago. At the time he’d been too busy defending himself to really hear them.

Now he couldn’t stop hearing them.

“You acted like you couldn’t wait for me to get the fuck outta Mississippi.”

Smoke closed his eyes, because that wasn’t what happened. He knew that. Annie knew that now too. At least part of it. But knowing she misunderstood him didn’t erase the hurt she’d carried all these years. For years he’d been focused on the fact that Annie left. Focused on the unanswered phone calls, unreturned letters… silence. The feeling of being abandoned. He’d spent so much time staring at his own wound that he’d never stopped to consider hers. Didn’t stop to think about what it must’ve felt like walking out of his house that day believing she was saying goodbye to somebody she loved.

Believing he didn’t care.

Smoke exhaled slowly and looked down at his bandaged hand. The irony wasn’t lost on him. All afternoon he’d accused Annie of running, but the more he thought about it, the less that word fit. Annie hadn’t run from hard things. She stayed through grief, through loneliness. Shit, she’d spent seven years carrying around his mixtape.

Seven years. 

Through college. Through apartments. Through every version of herself she’d become since leaving Mississippi. She’d been too afraid to listen to it. Too afraid it would confirm the thing she’d feared most. That he’d already said goodbye. Yet she kept it anyway. Like some part of her couldn’t bear to hear him let her go, but couldn’t bring herself to let him go either.

That wasn’t somebody running. That was somebody hurting. The thought lingered long after the song ended. Smoke found himself looking at the damage between them and recognizing something he’d spent almost a decade avoiding.

Not all of it belonged to Annie.

Some of it belonged to him too.

That—that left him restless.

Smoke pushed himself away from the kitchen counter and crossed the living room without thinking. He grabbed his cigarettes off the end table, slipped through the back door, and stepped onto the porch. The night air met him immediately, thick with humidity and the familiar chorus of crickets beyond the fence. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the porch railing, hoping the nicotine would quiet the thoughts Annie had spent the last four songs stirring up.

Track 5: Say Yes

By the time Smoke came back inside, the cigarette had done absolutely nothing to help. The night had grown later while he stood on the porch. The sounds of the neighborhood had thinned considerably. The dog that had been barking earlier was finally quiet. The bass from music farther out disappeared. Even the crickets seemed softer now.

The house felt still when he stepped back through the door. Still and entirely too empty. Smoke shut the door behind him and stood there for a moment, looking towards the stereo. Part of him considered calling it a night. 

The smarter part. 

The part that understood Annie had already managed to drag him through memories he’d spent years avoiding. Unfortunately, the smarter part hadn’t been winning much tonight. A few minutes later he crossed the room and sat back down. He pressed play on the stereo remote. The stereo clicked. Then Annie’s voice returned. For a moment she didn’t say anything. Smoke could hear movement in the background. Paper rustling. A quiet breath. 

When she finally spoke, her voice sounded different. Softer. “You know what’s really embarrassing?” 

A soft laugh escaped her. Smoke could hear the smile in it, because sometimes Annie laughed when she was nervous.

“I almost didn’t put this song on here.” A pause followed. “Actually, that’s a lie.” Another small laugh. “I knew I was gonna put it on here. I just kept trying to talk myself out of it.”

Smoke’s attention shifted completely on the stereo. Her voice sounded less playful. More exposed.

“I think what bothers me most is that I know better.” The words came quietly. “I know people probably gonna hear this and think I lost my mind.” Another pause. “Maybe I have.”

Smoke dragged a hand over his chin.

“I called you.” The words landed softly. “I tried to talk to you.” A longer pause. “And you made it real clear that whatever we used to be ain’t what we are now….”

Smoke closed his eyes.

“Maybe that’s true.” Her voice dropped. “There really is no us anymore.” 

The sentence sat between them.  Heavy. Honest.

“But…” A breath. “If somebody asked me today.” Another breath. “Knowing all that.” 

The next words came without hesitation.

“I’d still choose you.”

Smoke stared at the floor.

“I’d still say yes.”

The click sounded. Then the song began. Smoke closed his eyes. For a long moment he didn’t move. Didn’t think. He didn’t do much of anything except listen. The music filled the room, wrapping around everything Annie had just admitted.

I’d still choose you.

The words lingered because they carried a weight he wasn’t prepared for. Yet here Annie was. Still choosing him.

The thought followed him into memories of her. 

Annie asleep on his shoulder during a movie she’d sworn she wanted to watch. The way she’d automatically reach for his hand whenever they crossed a crowded room. How she’d laugh when something genuinely caught her off guard. How she’d curl her feet beneath her whenever she sat on the couch. 

The way she’d say his name.

After she gave herself to him that first time, it was like a dam broke. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Every stolen moment, every quiet hour they managed to find, he wanted her again and again—wanted to feel the way her body softened and fit against his, the way her breath would catch as she cried out his name while her fingers would dig into his back like she was trying to keep him there forever. He had never known hunger like that. He couldn’t get enough of her skin, her scent, her warmth, or the quiet sounds she made when it was just the two of them and the rest of the world disappeared.

Smoke rubbed a hand across his jaw. 

That was the part nobody ever talked about. It wasn’t just the attraction or the chemistry. It was the familiarity. The comfort. The ease of being understood without having to explain himself. Even as kids, Annie had a way of making his world feel quieter simply by being in it.

His mind went there anyway. Annie now. Grown ass woman. Hips thicker, body filled out in all the right ways. She had that steady confidence in her voice on the tape now, even with the tiredness underneath. He wondered how it would feel to take his time peeling her out of her clothes, no more rushed teenage shit. Slow. Thorough. Learning every new inch of her.

He could picture it— her looking up at him without that old nervousness, hands sure as hell when she grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down. The way she’d probably arch into him, legs around his waist, knowing exactly how she wanted it. Deep strokes. Heavy breathing. The kind of sex that came with history and hunger and the quiet understanding that they’d already lost too much time.

There had only ever been one person for him. The only person who felt woven into the fabric of his life so completely that imagining a future without her felt unnatural. The only person who understood his silences without demanding explanations, and who could sit beside him for hours without needing to fill every quiet moment. Somehow, she had always managed to make a room feel less empty simply by existing inside it.

Smoke let out a slow breath, trying to shake the image.

It wasn’t just about sex. It never had been.

Annie.

The name moved through him quietly.

The song continued playing. Smoke lowered his head and stared at his hands. One knuckle was still swollen beneath the bandage. His skin still carried the faint scent of cigarette smoke.

The house remained empty. Yet for the first time all night it didn’t feel quite as lonely. Maybe because Annie’s voice still lingered in the room. Or maybe because she’d just admitted something he’d spent trying not to admit himself.

Given the chance, he’d still choose her too.

He’d say yes.

Track 6: Made For Me

The last song ended, but Smoke didn’t reach for the remote. He remained where he was, forearms resting on his thighs, staring at nothing in particular, letting the last few minutes sink in. The house had gone completely quiet again. The clock above the stove ticked steadily behind him. The ice in his abandoned whiskey glass had melted into cloudy water. Outside, the darkness pressed against the windows.

It was late.

Later than he’d thought. The mixtape had stolen most of his night. The thought should’ve made him mad. Instead, he found himself reaching for the remote before he could talk himself out of it.

The stereo hummed softly.

Then Annie laughed.

The sound caught him off guard. It wasn’t loud, but it was familiar. The kind of laugh that always sounded like she was smiling at her own thoughts.

“You know what annoys me…again?”

Smoke shook his head. Despite everything, the corner of his mouth twitched. Annie had been starting conversations that way for most of her life. “You know what annoys me?” usually meant Annie was about to say something she’d spent entirely too much time thinking about.

“I spent years trying to figure out what was wrong with me.”

The smile disappeared. His attention fully on the stereo.

“I thought maybe I was comparing everybody to some impossible version of you that didn’t even exist anymore.”

Something tightened in his chest. Her words didn’t surprise him. The older he got, the harder it became to ignore how often he’d done the same thing.

The recording continued.

“But the older I got…” Her voice softened. “The more I realized there wasn’t nothin’ wrong with me.”

The room seemed to grow quieter.

“I was just lookin’ for you.”

The click sounded. Then the song began. Smoke leaned back slowly against the couch. For a long moment he didn’t do much of anything except listen. The song floated through the room while his attention slipped somewhere he usually tried not to let it go.

Years. Entire years. Twenty-six wasn’t old. At least that was what everybody kept saying. Yet somehow adulthood had arrived anyway. Careers. Responsibilities. Bills. Funerals. Relationships. Life kept moving whether you were ready for it or not. That was the strange part. Somewhere inside all those years, Smoke had convinced himself he’d eventually wake up one day and Annie would stop being the standard. The way people claimed first loves were supposed to fade. Time, distance, and life were supposed to handle it. 

Instead, life kept handing him reminders. Jada had been a good woman. She was funny. Easy to talk to. Pretty. He enjoyed being around her, and for a while he’d convinced himself that was enough.

So he tried. 

He tried to ignore the feeling that something wasn’t quite clicking. Tried to believe that whatever he’d shared with Annie belonged to another lifetime, another version of himself that had long since grown up and moved on. But every time he started thinking maybe this could work, something held him back.

It wasn’t anything Jada did. That was the problem. She’d done nothing wrong. Yet every goodbye came too easily. A few days could pass without seeing her and it never really bothered him. When she left, he missed her company, but never her presence.

Annie was different. She could leave a room and somehow take the room with her. Annie wasn’t perfect. Lord knew she wasn’t. She overthought things. Jumped to conclusions. Held onto hurt longer than she should’ve, and when she got angry enough, she could say things sharp enough to leave scars. Yet somehow none of that changed the fact that she’d always felt right.

Right.

Such a simple word. But it explained more than all the others combined. 

Annie fit.

It wasn’t that loving her had been easy. Quite the opposite. There had been moments when loving Annie felt like the hardest thing he’d ever done. But even then, she still felt right. Like the missing piece of a conversation he’d been having his entire life. Like somebody he’d been searching for long before he knew enough to search.

The song continued. Smoke lowered his gaze toward the floor. For years he’d told himself he was protecting his peace. Protecting his heart and himself from disappointment.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

Maybe he’d simply been protecting a place nobody else had ever managed to reach. A place Annie had occupied so completely that every attempt to replace her had failed before it truly began. The thought should’ve bothered him.

Instead, it felt suspiciously close to relief.

For years he’d told himself there had to be a reason nobody else ever felt right. There had to be a reason he kept comparing Jada and other women to somebody who lived three states away. A reason eight years had passed and Anissa Marie Landry still occupied more space in his head than she had any right to.

It wasn’t because something was wrong with him. He wasn’t stuck, he didn’t believe. He'd simply spent years looking for something he’d already found once. 

Annie was right. Maybe she had just been looking for him. And maybe he’d been looking for her too.

The thought lingered. Then, before he could stop it, another one followed.

Maybe she was made for him too.

Not maybe.

She was.

Track 7: Thinking Out Loud

The track began so quietly Smoke almost missed it.

For a second he simply sat there, one arm stretched across the back of the couch, eyes half-lidded from exhaustion and whiskey and the emotional beating Annie had spent the last several hours delivering through a collection of songs. The house had gone quiet around him hours ago. The kitchen clock ticked steadily somewhere behind him. Outside, the night pressed against the windows in a blanket of darkness broken only by the occasional passing headlights.

Then the opening notes drifted through the speakers. Smoke’s eyes opened completely. Recognition arrived immediately. Not because he remembered the title. Shit, if somebody had asked him what the song was called, he probably couldn’t have answered. But he knew the song. More importantly, he knew exactly where he knew it from.

A slow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he could stop it.

“Man.”

The word escaped quietly into the empty house.

Out of every song Annie could’ve chosen, somehow she’d found this one.

The memory came so fast it almost felt like being pulled backward through time. One minute he was twenty-six years old sitting in the middle of his living room. The next he was fourteen years old standing inside Rollers Skating Rink with rented skates laced too tight around his ankles and half the church youth group packed inside.

The place smelled like floor wax, popcorn, sweat, and stale nacho cheese. Colored lights swept across the rink while music echoed through speakers that had probably been outdated before any of them were born. Every few minutes, somebody crashed into somebody else, and laughter erupted from somewhere across the building.

Smoke had spent most of the evening regretting coming. Skating wasn’t his thing. If he’d had his way, he’d be sitting at home. But his mama informed him that sitting in the house all weekend wasn’t a personality trait and practically shoved him out the door. Stack had spent the entire ride there acting like the church had personally organized the event for his entertainment.

Unfortunately, the night had gone exactly the way Stack wanted. He was in his element. He was showing off and making a fucking fool of himself while a cluster of girls laughed at everything he said. Every time Smoke looked up, Stack was somehow at the center of another conversation.

Smoke had no interest in any of that. He’d been perfectly content skating slow laps around the edge of the rink and counting down the minutes until their mama decided they’d stayed long enough.

Then the youth pastor announced a partner challenge.

Looking back now, he couldn’t remember what the challenge actually was. He couldn’t tell you the rules, the prize, or whether anybody even won. What he remembered was standing near the wall when the youth leader started pairing people together and noticing there weren’t enough partners left.

The youth leader barely finished explaining the challenge before everybody started scrambling for partners. Stack wasted no time, calling dibs on a girl before half the room even understood the rules. Across the rink, Pearline laughed as one of the girls from church grabbed her arm and claimed her for their team. Within seconds everybody seemed to have found somebody. 

Everybody except Smoke and Annie. 

Smoke noticed it at the exact same time Annie did. Her eyes met his briefly before darting away.

Neither moved.

The youth leader looked between them and laughed. “Boom, there you go.”

Annie dropped her gaze to her skates. Smoke rolled his eyes.

The youth leader sighed dramatically. “Y’all act like I told you to get married.”

That only made things worse. 

A few minutes later they found themselves skating side by side. The awkwardness lasting all of ten minutes. Annie talked too much for awkwardness to survive around her. Every time the conversation threatened to die, she dragged it back to life with another question. Another observation. Another completely random thought that somehow made perfect sense inside her head. By the third lap she’d gotten him talking. By the fourth they were arguing about music. By the fifth Smoke found himself looking forward to whatever ridiculous thing was about to come out of her mouth next.

The crazy part was that Annie wasn’t even trying. She wasn’t flirting, showing off, or doing any of the things girls usually did when they wanted his attention. She was simply being herself. At one point she started skating backwards while carrying on an entire conversation.

Smoke stared at her. “You gon’ break yo’ neck.”

“I’m fine.”

“You ain’t even lookin’.”

“I know where I’m goin’.”

“Do you?”

Annie laughed. The sound followed him halfway around the rink. 

The music changed a few minutes later.

Smoke didn’t think much of it at first. Songs had been rotating all night. Some people cheered when they recognized one. Others groaned dramatically before continuing whatever conversation they were already having. The speakers crackled slightly as the next track started, and for a second nobody paid much attention.

Then Annie gasped. The sound caught his attention.

“Oh, I love this song.”

Smoke glanced toward the ceiling speakers before looking back at her. “Nah.”

Annie blinked. “Nah what?”

“I ain’t skatin’ to this.”

Her expression shifted instantly. Confusion first. Then suspicion. “Why?”

Smoke pointed vaguely toward the music overhead. “Cause this some white people shit.”

She shot him such an offended look that he almost laughed.

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“If you actually listened to the words, they’re beautiful.”

Smoke snorted. “Aight.”

“No. Not aight.” Annie folded her arms.

The movement nearly threw her off balance and she corrected herself with an irritated little skate adjustment that only made her look more annoyed.

“Sorry, this ain’t Lil Wayne. 

Now it was Smoke’s turn to be offended. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with Weezy F. Baby, girl.”

“Of course you’d say that. Every song can’t be about sex, selling drugs and threatening people, you know.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

“There is when it’s all you listen to.”

“It ain’t all I listen to.”

“Sure it ain’t.”

The argument continued for another lap around the rink before Annie finally threw her hands into the air.

“You know what? Forget it.”

Smoke didn’t like that tone. “What?”

“I’m done arguing with you.” Then she pointed toward the center of the floor where couples were beginning to gather. “I’m gonna skate by myself.”

The words shouldn’t have mattered. Looking back now, Smoke knew that. She wasn’t leaving, going home, or disappearing. She was moving maybe twenty feet away. Yet something unpleasant sat low in his stomach anyway.

Annie started pushing off before he could fully understand why.

For the first time all evening, the thought of her not being beside him felt wrong. The thought arrived quietly. So quietly that fourteen-year-old Smoke almost missed it. Somewhere over the last hour he’d gotten used to her. The questions, her laughter and used to looking over and finding her beside him. The idea of spending the rest of the night without any of that suddenly felt far less appealing than it should have.

“Annie.”

She stopped and turned. “What?”

Smoke regretted speaking, because now he had to explain himself. His ears felt warm.

“I mean…”

Annie waited. One eyebrow slowly rising.

“If you wanna skate…”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “You wanna skate to the white people  music?”

Smoke rolled his eyes. “Man, shut up.”

Annie laughed. “No, answer the question.”

The smile she was trying to hide made it difficult to stay annoyed.

Smoke shook his head. Then finally looked at her. “I wanna skate… with you.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them. Before he could make them sound cooler, or could pretend they meant something else.

For a moment Annie just stared at him. She wasn’t laughing or teasing him. Just looking. Then something flickered in her expression. Surprise. The honest kind. Then, slowly, she smiled. The smile was different from the others she’d given him all night. Smaller…softer. Like she’d suddenly become aware of something she couldn’t quite name.

Without saying another word, she held out her hand. Smoke looked at it for half a second before taking it. Her fingers were warm.

That was all.

Nothing dramatic happened. The lights didn’t get brighter. The music didn’t swell. Nobody stopped skating. The world continued exactly as it had thirty seconds earlier. Yet Smoke became painfully aware of the fact that he was holding Annie’s hand. The awareness followed him straight into the slow skate.

Around them, teenagers paired off beneath the colored lights while the song echoed through the speakers. Some couples talked. Others didn’t. A few boys looked like they’d rather be anywhere else.

Annie looked delighted. She quietly sang along to parts of the song under her breath, mouthing words she clearly knew by heart. Smoke pretended not to notice. He noticed. Every single time.

“See?” she asked after a minute.

Smoke frowned. “See what?”

“The lyrics.”

He groaned. “Oh Lord.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“They aight.”

Annie gasped dramatically. “‘Aight’?”

“They ain’t Lil Wayne.”

That earned another laugh. The sound landed deep in his chest.

The song continued. The conversation flowed. At some point Annie stopped trying to convince him the song was amazing and started talking about something else entirely. A teacher she didn’t like. A test she thought she’d failed. Pearline threatening to fight somebody earlier that week.

Smoke couldn’t remember most of it anymore. What he remembered was how easy it felt. The strange comfort of it. The way an hour had somehow turned into two without him noticing. How being around Annie required less effort than being around almost anybody else.

That was the part that stayed.

Her.

The way her eyes lit up when she talked about something she cared about. How she laughed with her whole body, and she always looked directly at whoever she was speaking to. The way she made ordinary things feel interesting simply because she was the one talking about them. And somewhere along the way, he found himself wishing the night wouldn’t end. The thought surprised him enough that he almost looked around to make sure nobody had heard it. When the song finally faded and another one took its place, Annie released his hand and skated ahead a few feet before turning back toward him.

“You survived.”

Smoke rolled his eyes. “Barely.”

Annie laughed again, then she reached out and grabbed his wrist. “C’mon.”

Before he could ask where they were going, she pulled him towards the middle of the rink.

To this day, Smoke couldn’t even remember what they were supposed to be doing the rest of the night. But he remembered everything about Annie that night. Her laughing, singing along to a song he’d spent years pretending he hated. Annie grabbing his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

And maybe that was the night it started.

A week later he would be standing in a crowded school parking lot listening to Jada talking about something, when Stack yelled from across the pavement.

He’d turned automatically. Not towards Stack—

Towards Annie.

She stood near the curb laughing with Pearline, her backpack hanging from one shoulder. The sight of her found its place in his chest with the same ease it had at Rollers. Familiar. Comfortable. Natural.

Annie looked up. Their eyes met. Surprise crossed her face first. Then a smile. Small and quick before it disappeared again.

Smoke looked away before she did, but the feeling stayed.

Looking back now, Smoke he’d spent years mistaking the feeling for coincidence. The parking lot after school. Football games on Friday nights. Church on Sundays. Cookouts at Aunt Cheryl’s house. Hallways crowded with students rushing to class. 

Somehow his eyes always found Annie.

At the time, he never questioned it. Annie had simply become part of the landscape of his life. As familiar as Stack, his Mama, and Uncle Lewis. As familiar as home. If he arrived somewhere and she was there, his attention naturally went her way sooner or later. If she wasn’t there, he noticed that too.

Back then he thought it meant nothing.

Now he knew better.

A fourteen-year-old boy standing beneath colored lights at a skating rink had looked at a shy girl with a quick smile and a laugh he couldn’t seem to get enough of. Somewhere between arguing about music, holding her hand, and wishing the song would last a little longer had quietly taken root inside him.

It wasn’t love—yet. Just the first fragile beginnings of it. The kind of feeling that grows so slowly you don’t notice it’s happening until years later, when you look up and find it’s woven itself through nearly every important memory you have.

Smoke leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. A fourteen-year-old boy had taken Annie Landry’s hand and thought the night was better when she was in it.

And whether he’d understood it or not, he’d been looking for her ever since.

Sometime during the night, Smoke fell asleep. He wasn’t entirely sure when it happened. One minute he had been lying on the couch staring at the ceiling while Thinking Out Loud drifted through the speakers. The next he was fourteen again, with Annie’s hand in his and her laughter ringing through the air. Even asleep, the memory lingered.

The sound of music pulled him back toward consciousness.

Slowly.

Reluctantly.

Smoke frowned before he even opened his eyes. Sunlight pressed against his eyelids. His neck ached from sleeping on the couch. One arm had gone numb during the night and the stiffness in his shoulders reminded him that thirty-minute naps and sleeping in an actual bed were two very different things.

Music continued as he laid there listening without really hearing it. His mind was still caught somewhere between sleep and memory. Then different lyrics rolled through the room and his eyes finally opened.

My face turns to gold

Hoping to find my way home

This place I don't know

No yellow brick road to follow

The living room looked different in daylight. The whiskey glass still sat on the coffee table. His bandaged hand rested against his stomach. The CD case remained exactly where he’d left it the night before. Smoke pushed himself upright and rubbed a hand across his face.

The song continued. Unfamiliar to him. At least he thought it was. Frowning, he looked toward his phone. It was lying face up on the coffee table with the screen illuminated.

Spotify.

The CD must’ve ended hours ago. At some point the stereo had switched back to the playlist he’d been listening to earlier while he spent half the evening finding excuses not to press play.

Mmm, take me home, let’s make love, real love

Take me home, let's make real love, real love

Take me home, let's make real love, real love

Take me out of the blue

Smoke glanced at the screen.

Green Papaya — Lianne La Havas

The title meant nothing to him. Still, he found himself listening to the words. Really listening.

Our hearts overgrown

Longing for peace of our own

Found heaven in you

Promise to be pure and true

The house remained quiet except for the music and the occasional creak of old wood settling beneath the morning heat. Sunlight spilled through the windows, painting bright rectangles across the floor while the song floated through the room with an easy warmth that reminded him entirely too much of Annie.

Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop listening.

Still mountains to climb

We will survive, still got time

Or maybe everything reminded him of Annie now.

The thought would’ve pissed him off yesterday. This morning it felt suspiciously close to acceptance.

Smoke leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The lyrics continued, soft and thoughtful and intimate in a way that felt less like a performance and more like a conversation. Not a desperate one.

Just someone who knew another person completely.

My partner-in-crime

Hoping you'll love me till we die

The kind of knowing that couldn’t be built overnight— that came from years. The kind that came from paying attention.

And suddenly he thought about Annie knowing he hated tomatoes, but loved tomato sandwiches. How he ate slowly, always taking twice as long as everybody else to finish a meal. How, when he was angry, she never pushed him to talk. She’d simply sit beside him in comfortable silence because she knew her presence mattered more than her words. She remembered the houses he used to draw in the margins of his notebooks. She knew he always reached for the corner piece of cornbread. She could tell when he was lying before he’d even finished the sentence.

She knew him. 

The truth quietly fell into place. Even after everything that had happened, and the years between them, Annie still knew him. His gaze went towards the CD case again. Towards the careful handwriting on the front—to the evidence of an entire night spent listening to a woman explain herself in every way she knew how.

Something shifted. Not another revelation. Those had come all night long. A decision. Clear, certain and simple. Smoke stood so quickly he nearly knocked the coffee table with his knee.

He needed to see her, not call or text. See her. 

Today. 

Now. 

Before fear had another chance to talk and pride convinced him to stay home. Before he could come up with a single excuse not to go. The urgency surprised him. One minute he was sitting on the couch and the next he was looking for his keys. 

The kitchen counter. Nothing. Coffee table. Nothing. End table. Nope…not there either.

Smoke frowned. “Where the fuck…”

He checked the kitchen again. Then checked the coffee table again. Then stopped. The keys were already in his hand. For a moment he simply stared at them. Annoyed. Half awake. Entirely too tired to be trusted.

A laugh escaped him. His shirt was still missing. He was standing in the middle of his house wearing nothing but sweatpants and determination.

He didn’t care.

For the first time in years, he knew exactly what he wanted. And for once, he intended to do something about it.

Then came the knock. Three soft taps against the front door. Smoke froze, he thought he’d imagined it. Then the sound came again. Softer this time. His heart kicked hard against his ribs. Because somehow he already knew. The distance between the living room and the front door had never felt longer. He crossed it anyway. Slowly at first. Then faster. His hand closed around the knob. For one brief second he simply stood there. Then he opened the door—

And there she was.

Morning sunlight spilled across the porch behind her. She stood there with her braids pulled into a high ponytail and a pale yellow dress that made it entirely too easy to stare. The color shouldn’t have done anything for him. It was just yellow. Yet somehow it made her look more beautiful against her smooth chocolate skin. Brighter. Like she’d carried a piece of the morning with her. 

Her hands were clasped loosely in front of her, fingers lacing and unlacing together while uncertainty flickered across her face. It had been a long time since he’d seen Annie look this nervous around him. Then again, maybe she wasn’t nervous around him. Maybe she was nervous about what came next.

Neither spoke. They simply stared at each other. Two people who had spent eight years carrying the same thing in different ways.

Then Annie swallowed. A small smile appeared.

“Hi.”

Smoke forgot every single thing he’d planned to say.

End Note: Y'all know Smoke is about to fuck Annie into a coma, right? Right. K, byeeee! ✌🏾💜

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