🦢

Jada Wilson wasn’t the type of girl who liked to lose. 

It wasn’t because she was mean, and it wasn’t because she thought she was better than everybody else. She liked working hard and seeing results. If she studied for a test, she expected a good grade. If she auditioned for something, she expected the spot. If she walked into a room, she expected to leave an impression. Most of the time life made sense to her because effort and reward usually moved together. Teachers remembered her because she participated. Boys noticed her because she was pretty. People gravitated towards her because she was funny. None of that felt complicated. 

It felt earned.

That was probably why Anissa “Annie” Landry irritated her so much.

She didn’t dislike her at first. At first Annie was barely a blip on her radar. Nothing more than another smart girl in her Honors Biology. They sat near each other, partnered on projects occasionally, and shared enough classes that familiarity came naturally. Jada liked her then. Everybody liked Annie. The problem was Annie seemed completely unaware of the effect she had on people. Teachers, classmates, and even complete strangers trusted her, confided in her, and listened when she spoke. Annie never seemed to chase attention, yet attention found her anyway.

By October, most of the freshman class already knew whose names lived at the top of the grade rankings. Annie. Jada. Malcolm. Sometimes another student slipped into the conversation, but those three stayed there consistently enough that everybody noticed. Jada noticed because she cared. Annie only seemed to notice only when somebody pointed it out.

Jada could admit that she paid more attention to Annie than Annie ever paid to her. Annie shrugged off good grades like they were nothing to celebrate, like success was something that simply found her whether she reached for it or not. She didn’t treat life like a competition. In fact, Jada found it frustratingly difficult to tell whether Annie ever competed for anything at all. Every conversation she had with Annie left her feeling like she was in a race by herself. Annie never bragged, gloated or rubbed anything in anybody’s face. If she had, Jada might’ve found it easier to straight up dislike her. Instead, Annie never seemed to fight for attention, yet attention found her anyway. That made everything worse.

And then there was Elijah “Smoke” Moore. 

She had World History with him and Stack, and found herself gravitating toward him. It wasn’t just because he was fine. All the girls thought he was fine as hell. Stack too. The difference was that after a while, his looks stopped being the thing she noticed first. He was quiet without being shy, smart without showing off, and funny whenever he actually felt like talking. She mentioned him in conversation casually enough that nobody thought much of it, including Annie. Looking back, she wasn’t even sure when curiosity became attraction. She started looking for him in crowded hallways and listening for his laugh across cafeterias. Which would’ve been embarrassing if it hadn’t happened to half the girls at school. It was the fact that he didn’t react to her the way other boys did. Most boys either flirted immediately or spent so much time trying not to stare that it became awkward. Smoke did neither. There was a quiet confidence about him. A steadiness that felt older than seventeen. The kind of confidence that never needed announcing.

He talked to her like everybody else. He remembered things she told him. Laughed at her jokes. Held entire conversations without once making her feel like he was trying to impress her or fuck her. At first she found it refreshing. Then she found it confusing.

The more time she spent around him, the more she paid attention to him. She noticed that the “quiet reputation” people gave him wasn’t entirely true. Smoke wasn’t shy. He just didn’t waste words. So when he did speak, people listened. There was a steadiness to him she didn’t find in other boys their age. 

Mike was sweet. 

Isoo was funny. 

Stack was…Stack. Impossible to ignore. 

But Smoke was something different. Being around him felt easy, and she wanted more of it. More of him.

By the middle of freshman year she started doing things she’d never admit to out loud. Lingering after class. Choosing seats closer to him when she could. Finding reasons to continue conversations that should’ve ended five minutes earlier. The frustrating part was that Smoke never treated her like a girl he was trying to avoid. He talked to her. Laughed with her. Sat beside her in class when the seating chart put them together. If he’d been rude, she probably would’ve gotten over her crush on him. 

Instead, he was kind. 

And kindness left far more room for imagination than rejection ever could.

If somebody had watched them from a distance, they probably would’ve assumed he liked her. Hell…she almost convinced herself of the same thing.

But she never expected Annie to factor into the equation.

One afternoon after school, a crowd of students lingered outside waiting for rides while the Mississippi heat rose from the pavement in visible waves. Stack was in the middle of a story and Smoke stood nearby having his own conversation with Mike. Jada walked over and joined them, enjoying the small satisfaction of making Smoke laugh at something she said. 

Then something happened. Something that anybody else would’ve overlooked. It should’ve been forgettable. Instead it became one of those memories that stayed rent free in her mind for years. 

Stack yelled something from across the parking lot and Smoke turned. Jada expected him to look at his brother. Instead his attention drifted somewhere over her shoulder. The movement was subtle enough that most people would’ve missed it, but she didn’t. She followed his line of sight and when it landed, her heart dropped. Annie stood near the curb with Pearline and a few other girls, her backpack hanging from one shoulder laughing at something one of them said. Smoke was looking right at her. Annie wasn’t flirting. She wasn’t loudly trying to get anyone’s attention. In fact, she looked completely unaware that Smoke was even looking hee way at all. 

Jada glanced back toward him and felt something in her chest tighten unexpectedly. His expression hadn’t changed much. There was no grin. No obvious reaction or giveaway that would’ve made the answer easy. What she saw instead was interest. Pure interest. The kind that settled naturally and comfortably, like he’d found exactly what he was looking for without meaning to. When Jada looked back, Annie looked up. Her and Smoke’s eyes met for barely a second before surprise crossed her face in that honest, unguarded way people managed when they weren’t expecting to be seen. Smoke looked away first and the moment disappeared so quickly that nobody else seemed to notice it had happened. The conversation picked right back up. Everything went back to normal as though a five-second interaction in a parking lot hadn’t just rearranged something inside her.

And Jada couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d just seen. 

The truth landed harder than she wanted it to. Smoke liked Annie. And not in the casual way boys claimed to like half the girls at school. It wasn’t in the temporary way crushes came and went every few weeks. He liked her. Liked her.

The part Jada couldn’t understand wasn’t that Smoke liked somebody. It was that the somebody was Annie. Annie wasn’t louder than anybody else. She wasn’t chasing him. Half the time she seemed completely unaware of him. And yet, out of all the girls walking those hallways every day, his attention found her.

Why Annie? 

The question stayed with Jada long after that afternoon ended. Not because she thought Annie wasn’t pretty, smart, or worth liking. Annie was all of those things. What bothered her was that she couldn’t figure out what Annie had that made Smoke look at her differently. 

The more she watched them over the following months, the more that question followed her around, and the harder it became to pretend she didn’t already know the answer. Once she noticed it, she started seeing it everywhere—in the way Smoke listened when Annie talked, in the way his attention settled on her naturally no matter who else was around, and in the quiet consistency of his choices. There were no grand gestures, no public declarations, nothing dramatic enough to become gossip. What existed between them was built from a hundred small moments most people would’ve overlooked and a hundred more that Jada couldn’t stop noticing.

At some point she started testing it. Nothing obvious or anything she couldn’t explain away afterward. A comment here. A joke there. Sitting a little closer than necessary. One time at a party she picked up Smoke’s cup and took a sip while she was talking, mostly because she could. Smoke didn’t notice. Annie didn’t react the way she envisioned. The conversations kept moving. At first she thought she’d proven nothing. Later she realized she’d proven exactly what she’d been afraid of. Neither of them acted like there was anything to compete for because they belonged to each other already.

That was the part Jada hated most.

Whatever existed between them had been there long before either one of them said it out loud.

Life eventually moved on the way life always did. High school ended. Annie left for North Carolina during their senior year and, for a while, it felt like she took part of the town with her. It wasn’t because people sat around talking about her every day, but because certain stories suddenly stopped being told. People changed. 

Smoke most of all.

Jada noticed that too.

The version of Smoke everybody knew after Annie left wasn’t an angry one. If anything, he became quieter. More closed off. He still laughed when something was funny, showed up when people called, and still worked, helped, and handled business the way he always had. But something about him felt absent, as though a door had closed somewhere inside and nobody knew how to open it again.

But life carried Jada away too, before she had much time to dwell on it. College came next. An engagement. Then a marriage. Neither lasted the way she’d hoped. By the time she moved back home and started building a career in real estate, she was older, smarter, and considerably less interested in fairy tales.

Then she ran into Smoke again.

One of his construction crews had been working on a property she was helping list and for a second she thought she hadn’t recognized him. Then he looked up and gave her a half smile and just like that, she was sixteen again. The attraction came back embarrassingly fast. Older now. More controlled.

But still there.

The difference was that adulthood gave her advantages she hadn’t possessed in high school. She didn’t have to sit around wondering whether a boy liked her. She could simply ask him to dinner. So she did. One dinner turned into another. Then another. At some point the conversation drifted toward old classmates the way it always did when people got older.

“Whatever happened to Annie?” Jada asked.

The reaction was immediate. Something closed. Smoke took a drink and looked away. “She live in North Carolina.”

Jada laughed. “I thought y’all would’ve been married with twenty kids by now.”

Smoke didn’t laugh. The silence that followed answered more than words ever could. A few minutes later he changed the subject entirely.

Jada never brought Annie up again. Later that same night she asked if he was seeing anybody.

“No.”

“You lookin’?”

“No.”

The answer should’ve discouraged her. Instead she smiled. “Well, lucky for you, neither am I.”

The arrangement that followed worked because neither of them pretended it was anything else. They spent time together. Ate dinner once in awhile. Called sometimes. Shared her bed often enough. Smoke was kind to her. Respectful. But from the beginning he made one thing clear. 

He didn’t want a relationship. 

He told her more than once that she deserved somebody capable of giving her what she wanted. More than once he told her that if she found that person, she shouldn’t let him stand in the way of it. 

Jada heard every word. 

The problem was…she kept hoping. 

Not because Smoke encouraged it, but because she thought time might. She thought consistency might. She thought enough good days stacked together could eventually become something neither of them planned. Maybe that was foolish. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, she had started believing they still had time.

Then Mary called the day of the cookout.

Jada had been at the showing she was covering for a colleague. The conversation started normal enough, which should have been her first warning sign. Mary was never normal when she had gossip. By the time she finally got to the point, Jada wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Bitch, Annie’s back!”

Suddenly all those years she hadn’t spent thinking about high school came rushing back at once. The words settled somewhere unexpected. Surprising. The surprise lasted exactly three seconds before Mary delivered the second piece.

“The cookout at Pearline’s aunt house… it’s a party for Annie coming back home.”

That was the moment everything else disappeared. The noise of the clients asking about square footage faded into the background. The showing stopped mattering. Even Mary’s voice asking her what she was going to do became distant as another thought slid immediately into place. 

For the first time since hearing Annie’s name, she wasn’t thinking about high school anymore.

She was thinking about Smoke. 

He had been acting strange. Distracted. Quieter than usual. Looking at his phone more than normal. Now she understood exactly why he hadn’t seemed like himself. Some old shit came back up…. I ain’t figured out what to do with it yet. The pieces connected so quickly that Jada almost laughed.

Annie.

By the time she pulled into Aunt Cheryl’s yard, she already knew who she was looking for. The problem was she hadn’t expected to find them standing together.

And she for damn sure hadn’t expected to find them holding hands.

Smoke was holding Annie’s hand. 

On its own, that didn’t mean anything. 

People touched, hugged, and got caught up in conversations and forgot who was watching. 

What unsettled her was everything wrapped around the gesture. 

The look that had passed between them before Smoke finally let go. The way neither of them seemed aware of anybody else until she spoke. The strange sense that she’d walked into the middle of something already in progress.

For a moment nobody said anything. 

The sounds of the cookout continued around them as though nothing unusual had happened. Children ran through the yard screaming over water guns. Two men at the dominoes table accused each other of cheating. Mrs. Cheryl was threatening bodily harm if they didn’t quit acting stupid. The music changed somewhere behind her. Life continued moving. 

Yet standing there, looking between Smoke and Annie, Jada couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d interrupted a conversation neither of them had wanted to end.

The hand didn’t bother her nearly as much as Smoke’s face had. Over the past year she’d seen him tired, irritated, amused, distracted, and halfway asleep after a fourteen-hour workday. She’d seen him fresh off job sites and fresh out of the shower. She’d seen him after bad days and worse weeks. What she’d just seen standing across from Annie felt different.

There had been a lightness to him she couldn’t remember seeing, as though some invisible weight had disappeared without warning. Now the distracted silences, the moments he’d stared at his phone and seemed somewhere else entirely, made perfect sense.

What unsettled her more was how he looked at her. The surprise on his face had disappeared quickly enough.

The irritation hadn’t.

It was subtle. Most people would’ve missed it. Smoke wasn’t expressive enough for dramatic reactions. But Jada had spent too much time learning his moods not to recognize one when she saw it.

Every time she spoke, his attention drifted back toward Annie. When Annie looked away, his eyes followed her. And when he did look at Jada? 

The expression wasn’t warm.

It wasn’t guilty either. It looked closer to frustration. Like she’d walked into the middle of something he wasn’t finished with yet.

The realization settled heavily in her chest. She recognized that look too.

From high school.

Back when she’d stand beside him talking and catch him looking over her shoulder at Annie. When she’d convince herself she imagined it. 

Back when she still thought being patient would eventually change the outcome.

Still, Jada smiled. She had spent too many years learning how to smile through discomfort to stop now. 

“Annie.” Her voice came out warm and easy, exactly the way it was supposed to. “It’s been a long time.”

Annie smiled back automatically, but there was a delay to it that immediately caught Jada’s attention. She looked like somebody still trying to catch up to a conversation everyone else had already started. “Yeah. It has.”

“When did you get in town?”

“Thursday.”

“No kidding.” Jada adjusted the strap of her purse and glanced briefly toward Smoke before looking back at Annie. “Smoke didn’t tell me you were back.”

The sentence left her mouth easily enough, but she knew exactly why she’d said it.

She wanted to see. 

So Jada watched Annie carefully. The confusion arrived first, then recognition. Then something else. 

Jada recognized that look because she’d worn versions of it herself before. The moment when information rearranged itself into understanding. If she was being completely honest, some small, selfish part of her wanted Annie to understand. Wanted her to know she wasn’t just another person at the cookout. That Smoke existed in her life too.

Maybe that made her petty or even insecure. Maybe it made her exactly the same girl she’d been in high school. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t deny the small flicker of satisfaction when she saw it finally click for Annie.

Whatever Annie had expected when she came back to Mississippi, this wasn’t it. Jada watched her expectations crumble behind her eyes and Jada immediately felt guilty for her own smugness that followed. It wasn’t Annie’s confusion she enjoyed. It was the confirmation that she wasn’t invisible. For years she’d been the girl standing on the outside of whatever existed between Annie and Smoke. Now, for the first time, Annie was being forced to acknowledge that Jada occupied space in his life too.

Across the yard, movement caught her eye. Mary had finally wandered close enough to be useful and dangerous at the same time. The woman was carrying a red cup and looking entirely too pleased with herself. One glance toward Stack confirmed he had already figured out exactly who was responsible for this shit. Pearline looked ready to strangle somebody. Probably Mary. Maybe Stack. Maybe Jada. Possibly all three.

Jada almost laughed.

Almost.

Because standing there between Smoke and Annie, she had the uncomfortable feeling that this situation was about to become everybody’s problem.

“No kidding... Smoke didn’t tell me you were back.”

Annie wasn’t sure how to respond to that. The statement felt simple enough on the surface, but something about it snagged in her chest.

Jada laughed softly and shook her head.

“Then again, he ain’t really been himself lately.”

The comment was delivered so casually Annie almost missed it.

Almost.

Annie looked toward Elijah before she meant to. His attention was already on her.

Not Jada.

Her.

The conversations around them hadn’t stopped, but something in his posture had changed. His shoulders were tighter now. His expression quieter. Like he was listening to a conversation he couldn’t quite hear but already knew he wasn’t going to like the ending of.

Annie tried to focus on what Jada was saying to her. She really did. Jada was standing right there asking normal questions in a normal voice, smiling the same way she always had, and nothing about the interaction should have felt strange. 

People moved on. People dated. People built lives. Eight years had passed since Annie left Mississippi. She knew all of that. She understood it so completely that she almost became angry at herself for struggling with something that should have been obvious.

Still, her attention kept snagging on small things she couldn’t seem to ignore. The ease in Jada’s posture. The familiarity in her voice. And now that one sentence kept replaying itself in Annie’s head.

He ain’t really been himself lately.

It wasn’t what Jada had said. It was how she’d said it. Like she knew what normal looked like. Like she’d been close enough to notice the difference.

But Elijah wasn’t looking at Jada at all. Every time Annie glanced up, his eyes found her again. Concern. Like he could see something growing and didn’t know how to stop it.

Annie couldn’t process that at the moment. She couldn’t stop noticing that nobody around them seemed surprised Jada was standing there. Not Stack and definitely not Pearline. The realization arrived gradually, settling into place one piece at a time.

Jada wasn’t visiting Elijah’s world. She was already a part of it.

“Mississippi must seem different now,” Jada said with a small laugh.

Annie looked at her. “What?”

Jada smiled. “I said Mississippi must seem different now.”

“Oh.” Annie forced a smile. “Yeah.”

The conversation continued around her, but Annie found herself looking past Jada and toward Pearline. The glance was brief. It didn’t need to be longer. Something flickered across Pearline’s face the moment their eyes met, and Annie felt her stomach drop before her mind fully caught up.

Suddenly the entire day looked different.

Pearline sitting on the edge of the bed while Annie changed clothes for the hundredth time. Her listening to her talk about Elijah. Her watching her spend an entire afternoon slipping back into old memories she should have known better than to trust.

None of those moments had felt unusual at the time. Standing here now, they rearranged themselves into something else entirely.

Pearline looked away first.

And that hurt more than anything Jada had said.

Annie smiled automatically when somebody laughed at a joke she hadn’t heard. The expression felt strange on her face. Around her the cookout continued without interruption. Auntie Max was waving a paper plate around while telling a story loud enough for half the neighborhood to hear. Everything looked exactly the same as it had fifteen minutes ago, yet everything felt completely different now.

She looked toward Elijah before she could stop herself and immediately regretted it.

He was still looking at her. 

He wasn’t really talking anymore. Stack had said something. Mary laughed. Jada answered somebody’s question. Elijah hadn’t reacted to any of it. His attention remained fixed on Annie, his expression growing more troubled the longer she stood there pretending everything was fine.

Concern sat plainly across his face now, and the sight irritated her more than it should have. Concern meant he knew something was wrong. Concern meant he could see it happening. Concern meant he was watching her fall apart in real time.

That was the final straw.

Because Annie could handle disappointment. She could handle awkwardness. She could even handle finding out Elijah had moved on. 

What she couldn’t handle was standing here feeling exposed. 

Feeling foolish. 

Feeling like the only person who hadn’t known what was happening. 

The humiliation crept in quietly, attaching itself to every memory she’d made since getting off the plane. Every conversation. Every question. Every moment she’d allowed herself to hope for something she had never said aloud. By the time she finally spoke, her voice sounded perfectly normal.

“Excuse me.”

Nobody would have noticed anything wrong. Nobody except Elijah and Pearline.

Annie saw it immediately when Elijah straightened and took a small step forward. The movement was instinctive, the kind people made when they sensed trouble coming. For a second it looked like he might say something. Explain something. Stop her. Annie didn’t give him the chance.

“Y’all enjoy yourselves.”

The smile never left her face as she turned toward the house. She heard Pearline call her name before she reached the steps, but she kept walking anyway. The screen door opened and closed behind her, muting the sounds of the cookout almost instantly. Only then did she allow herself to stop pretending she was fine.

The bedroom door clicked shut behind her, muting the noise from the backyard without silencing it completely. Music still drifted faintly through the floorboards. Every few minutes a burst of laughter floated up from downstairs, followed by the low hum of conversation and the occasional shout from Aunt Cheryl whenever somebody touched food they weren’t supposed to touch. The sounds were familiar enough to be comforting. Instead they made Annie feel trapped. The cookout was still happening. Everybody was still down there. 

The world hadn’t stopped just because hers suddenly felt off balance.

She crossed the room and dragged her suitcase onto the bed. The zipper caught halfway open and she jerked it harder than necessary, dislodging the contents inside. A shirt disappeared into one corner. A pair of jeans landed on top of it. One sandal followed before she stopped and stared at the mess she’d created. Nothing about it resembled packing. The blue sundress she’d rejected earlier that morning still hung over the chair near the window. Seeing it there brought back the memory of standing in front of Pearline’s mirror for nearly an hour while her friend laughed and told her she looked fine. At the time she’d told herself she was nervous about coming home. Looking at the dress now, she realized that hadn’t been entirely true. 

Nobody spent forty-five minutes deciding what to wear to a family cookout unless some part of them cared who might be there.

The thought followed her to the dresser. The bottle of tequila sat exactly where she’d left it earlier, half-forgotten beside a hairbrush and a tube of lip gloss. For a second she just stared at it. Then she twisted the cap off and took a long swallow straight from the bottle.

The liquor burned all the way down, sharp enough to make her wince. She stood there waiting for it to do something useful. Numb her. Distract her. Slow her thoughts down. Instead the burn faded almost immediately and left everything else untouched.

Jada’s face remained exactly where Annie had left it.

So did the sound of her voice.

Smoke didn’t tell me you were back.

That was the problem. 

Jada had said them the way people said ordinary things, the way people spoke when they weren’t thinking twice about what they were revealing. There had been familiarity in the statement. History. Conversations Annie hadn’t been a part of. Enough conversations that her return to Mississippi had become information Jada expected to have. Annie took another drink and walked toward the window before she could think too hard about it.

The backyard stretched beyond the trees in patches of movement and color. She couldn’t make out individual faces from here, only clusters of people gathered around tables and lawn chairs while smoke drifted lazily upward from the grill. Somewhere down there Elijah was probably sitting beside Jada.

The thought arrived uninvited and irritated her immediately.

Smoke could date whoever he wanted. He wasn’t married. He wasn’t obligated to explain himself to her. Eight years was a long time. Long enough for people to build entirely different lives.

She knew that.

She believed that.

The problem was that knowing something and feeling it turned out to be two very different things.

Every time she tried to reason her way through it, her mind circled back to the same uncomfortable place. Not that Elijah had moved on, it was that she’d spent the entire day realizing she never had.

She took another shot. The tequila burned less this time, or maybe she was just getting used to it.

What she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about was Jada.

It was because it was Jada.

The same girl who always seemed to be measuring herself against Annie back in high school. The same girl who smiled while making comments that left Annie wondering whether she’d imagined the insult. The same girl who spent years trying to figure out why Smoke paid attention to Annie and not her.

Annie closed her eyes. Immediately she hated herself for thinking it. It wasn’t fair. Elijah didn’t know any of that.

Not really.

He knew Jada the same way everybody knew Jada. Funny. Smart. Beautiful. He hadn’t been standing beside Annie during those hallway conversations. He hadn’t seen the looks. He hadn’t felt the subtle edge hiding beneath the smiles.

Still, the thought lingered.

Did he know?

Annie stared back out the window.

Didn’t he know how she felt about Jada? Didn’t he know she’d never really trusted her? Didn’t he know enough about Annie to know that this, out of everything, would fucking hurt?

The questions sounded ridiculous the second they formed, because what exactly was Elijah supposed to do with information like that?

Avoid a woman for eight years because his high school girlfriend didn’t like her?

The idea was absurd. Annie knew it was absurd. Yet somehow that didn’t stop it from hurting. 

The truth was she hadn’t spent the day grieving what Elijah had with Jada. She’d spent the day imagining what might still exist between her and Elijah. That was the part she couldn’t forgive herself for. 

Not the jealousy.

The hope.

That truth settled over her slowly as she sat on the edge of the bed. The photographs. Geneva talking about Elijah carrying her inside when she fell asleep on his shoulder. The way everybody at the table had spoken about them like they were inevitable. The way Elijah had looked at her after learning she never wanted to leave. 

The warmth of his hand around hers. 

None of those moments would’ve mattered if some part of her hadn’t been carrying hope onto that plane from North Carolina. She hated admitting that, even to herself. Hope felt childish at twenty-five. Hope felt irresponsible after eight years. Yet the evidence sat all around the room. The dress she’d changed out of three times. The suitcase she’d never fully unpacked. The mixtape buried somewhere among her things. She hadn’t come to Mississippi looking for closure. 

She’d come looking for possibility, and now she felt stupid for pretending otherwise.

Another swallow of tequila disappeared before she realized she’d picked up the bottle again. The burn barely registering anymore. What did register was the growing discomfort that had nothing to do with Jada and everything to do with Pearline. 

The longer Annie sat there, the more the last two days began rearranging themselves. Pearline encouraging her to come. Pearline listening to every story about Elijah. Sitting on the edge of the bed that morning while Annie changed clothes. Watching her spend an entire afternoon slipping back into old memories she should’ve known better than to trust. 

None of those moments had felt strange when they happened. Looking back now, they felt different. Heavier. Like pieces of a puzzle she hadn’t realized she was assembling.

Annie stared at the bedroom door and tightened her grip on the bottle. She didn’t know exactly how long she’d been sitting there, but she knew Pearline well enough to know what would come next. 

Pearline hated conflict. Hated disappointing people even more. There was no chance she was leaving Annie up here alone. Sooner or later those footsteps would come down the hallway. Sooner rather than later the door would open. The thought should’ve prepared her. 

Instead it made the hurt settle deeper. 

Because for the first time since walking into the house, Annie stopped thinking about Jada standing beside Elijah and started thinking about her best friend downstairs, the one person who had known exactly how much hope Annie had carried back to Mississippi and said nothing at all.

Pearline didn’t knock.

The door opened slowly before Annie could tell her not to come in, and the look on her face was so familiar Annie almost hated her for it. Concern. Caution. The expression Pearline wore whenever she thought somebody was about to make a bad decision.

Unfortunately for both of them, Annie had already made several.

Neither of them spoke at first. Pearline’s eyes moved from the open suitcase to the tequila bottle resting beside Annie’s leg before finally settling on Annie herself. Annie knew exactly what she saw. Red eyes. A half-packed suitcase. Clothes scattered across the bed. One sandal near the bathroom door and the other somehow buried beneath a blouse sleeve hanging halfway out of the luggage. The packing wasn’t real. Annie knew it. Pearline probably knew it too. She’d managed to put three shirts into the suitcase and somehow remove four. Every few minutes she found herself folding the same piece of clothing she’d already folded before throwing it into a different corner of the room.

“How much of that you done drank?”

Annie glanced down at the bottle. “Enough.”

Pearline sighed and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

The sound made something tighten in Annie’s chest.

“You ain’t finna leave.”

Annie laughed under her breath and reached for another shirt. “The hell I’m not.”

“You drunk.”

“I’m buzzed.”

“Annie.”

“I’m grown.”

Pearline rubbed a hand across her forehead.

The movement irritated Annie so bad. The careful voice irritated her. The patience irritated her. The concern irritated her. All of it felt like somebody trying to calm her down before she’d even been allowed to be upset. 

She shoved another armful of clothes into the suitcase and immediately regretted it when the zipper refused to cooperate. The tequila bottle found its way back into her hand before she even realized she’d reached for it.

Pearline watched her struggle with the suitcase for another minute before speaking again.

“I was gonna tell you.”

Annie stopped. She couldn’t help it. The words settled somewhere deep enough to hurt.

Slowly she looked up. “No you wasn’t.”

“I was.”

“When?”

Pearline opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

Annie laughed. The sound wasn’t pleasant. “Exactly.”

“I didn’t know how.”

The answer hit Annie harder because it sounded honest. Honest and useless at the same time. She looked away before Pearline could see it landed. 

Outside Annie could hear laughter. She hated them for laughing. 

“You could’ve started with the truth.”

“I didn’t know what the truth was.”

Annie took another swallow from the bottle. The burn was gone. “What truth?”

Pearline hesitated. “Them.”

The word sat between Annie and Pearline.

“I thought they was just fuckin’.”

Pearline shifted from foot to foot. “It didn’t look serious.”

Didn’t. Past tense. Annie heard it. Her stomach dropped.

“What changed?”

Pearline froze.

The hesitation told Annie almost everything.

“What changed, Pearline?”

For a second it looked like Pearline might refuse to answer. Then she sighed. “I saw them Thursday.”

Annie frowned. 

Thursday.

The word rolled around in her head before settling into place. The restaurant. That strange feeling she’d had all night. The uncomfortable certainty that somebody familiar was nearby. The way she’d caught herself looking around for no reason she could explain.

Pearline acting strange afterward. Starting a sentence and never finishing it. Looking at her like she wanted to say something before changing her mind.

The pieces connected so quickly Annie almost felt sick. “He was there.”

Pearline didn’t answer.

“He was there with her.”

Still nothing. The silence told her everything she needed to know.

Annie stared at the bottle in her hand before taking another drink. The tequila was more than half gone now. At some point she’d stopped counting. Her face felt warm. Her thoughts felt loud. Every emotion she’d spent the last eight years carefully suppressing seemed determined to show up all at once.

“You saw them and still said nothin’.”

“I wanted to.”

Annie laughed.

The sound came out sharp enough to make Pearline flinch.

“No you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t, ’cause if you did, you would’ve.”

“I really did, Annie.”

Annie shook her head and looked away.

Outside, the yard erupted into laughter after. The sound drifted through the screen window and landed in the room like an insult.

She took another swallow from the bottle.

“Fuck, Pearline, I could’ve handled him messin’ with ANYBODY else.”

Pearline’s face changed immediately.

“Annie—”

“No. I’m serious.” She laughed again and wiped at her eyes. “I could’ve handled some random girl.” The words tumbled out before she could stop them. “Some girl from Jackson. Memphis. Atlanta. Hell, California.”

Pearline stayed quiet.

“But Jada?” Annie shook her head. “Jada of all people?”

The room fell silent, because Pearline knew. Maybe not every detail.

But more than enough.

Enough to remember the little imsults disguised as jokes. The competition Annie never agreed to participate in. The way Jada always seemed to know exactly where she stood with Elijah. Enough to understand why hearing her name hit differently.

“You should’ve told me from jump.” Annie looked down at the bottle in her hand. “You should’ve told me the second you saw them.”

Pearline sighed. “She ain’t hate you, Annie.”

“Don’t do that shit.” The warning came fast. “Please don’t sit up here and act like you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about.”

Pearline looked away.

Exactly.

“That’s what I thought.” Annie laughed and immediately wished she hadn’t, because now she sounded bitter.

Maybe she was.

“I know it sound stupid.” Her voice cracked. “I know he don’t owe me shit.” Another laugh. Smaller this time. “And I know he got every right to move on.” She stared toward the window. “But for some reason hearin’ it’s Jada make me sick to my fuckin’ stomach.”

The confession hung between them. Raw. Embarrassing.

Honest.

“And that’s why I’m mad at you.”

Pearline frowned.

“Cause you knew that.” Annie looked back at her. “You knew exactly how that was gonna hit me.”

Annie sank onto the edge of the bed and looked down at the shirt in her hands. At some point she’d stopped packing and started moving things around just to keep her hands busy. The same shirt had gone into the suitcase three separate times and somehow kept ending up back on the bed. The tequila wasn’t helping anymore. It had moved past the point of making her feel better and settled into that dangerous place where every thought felt louder than it should.

“You know what the crazy part is?”

Pearline looked up. “What?”

Annie laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “I still would’ve came.”

For a minute neither of them said anything.

Annie picked up the shirt and started folding it. Then unfolded it. “I would’ve still got on the plane.”

The words surprised her because she hadn’t realized they were true until she’d said them out loud. She would’ve come for Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Lewis. For Geneva and Auntie Max. For Pearline. For Stack. For the cookout. For every piece of home she’d spent years pretending she didn’t miss. And somewhere in that list sat Elijah too. Not that she expected anything from him. Or because she thought eight years could disappear in a weekend. But because he mattered whether she wanted him to or not.

Pearline watched her carefully.

Annie laughed again and wiped at her face. “That’s the part that got me.” She looked down at the bottle. “You should’ve told me anyway.”

Pearline lowered her eyes. “I thought if y’all talked—”

“There you go.” The words came out tired more than angry. Annie shook her head. “That’s the part you keep missin’.”

Pearline started to talk, then stopped.

Annie looked toward the window where the sounds of the cookout drifted in through the screen. “You keep tellin’ me what you thought.”

Her voice cracked. “What about me? What about what I wanted?”

Pearline’s face tightened immediately.

Annie hated herself a little for saying it. The regret didn’t make it less true. “You knew.” The words came quieter now. Which somehow made them worse. “You knew and watched me get off that plane.”

Silence.

“You knew and watched me talk about him.”

Pearline looked away.

“You knew and sat on this bed while I changed clothes fifty fucking times.”

The tears finally came. Hot. Embarrassing. Impossible to stop.

“And you still brought me here.”

Pearline looked devastated now.

Good.

A terrible thought. An ugly thought. One Annie hated the second it crossed her mind. But it was there anyway. 

“You watched me hope.”

The room seemed to shrink around them as Annie’s words settled into the space between them. Outside, somebody shouted something followed by laughter. The sound drifted through the screen window and disappeared into silence neither woman seemed willing to break.

Pearline stared at her. Then something in her expression changed.

Exhaustion.

“You think I wanted this?”

Annie looked away.

“You keep talkin’ like I sat around plottin’ on how to hurt you.”

“I ain’t say that.”

“You don’t gotta say it.” Pearline wiped at her face with the heel of her hand before crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “For two fuckin’ days I’ve been watchin’ this happen knowin’ eventually you was gonna look at me exactly like this.”

Annie didn’t answer because she was looking at her exactly like that.

“You think it was easy watchin’ you get off that plane smilin’?” Pearline laughed once, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “You think I didn’t know why you was really nervous?”

“Pearline—”

“No. Let me finish.” The words came out sharper than anything she’d said all evening. “You wasn’t nervous about no cookout and you know it.”

Annie looked down at the shirt twisted in her hands.

“You talked about him the whole ride from the airport.” Pearline’s voice softened again. “You talked about him while you unpacked.” 

Another breath. “You talked about him when we went to breakfast.” Another. “You talked about him every time his name came up like you was tryin’ real hard to convince yourself it didn’t matter.”

The tears Annie had been fighting rose all over again.

Pearline shook her head. “And every time I thought about tellin’ you, I’d look at your face and think maybe I was wrong. Maybe Smoke and Jada wasn’t serious. Maybe they would’ve ended whatever they had goin’ on by now. Maybe y’all could finally sit down and talk.”

Annie swallowed hard. The words should’ve made her feel better. Instead they somehow made everything worse. For the first time since the argument started, she could see exactly how Pearline had convinced herself to stay quiet. Not that she thought she knew best, but she wanted the same impossible thing Annie wanted.

“I was hopin’ too, Annie.”

Annie closed her eyes.

The confession hit differently than everything else Pearline had said. Anger she knew how to carry. Embarrassment too. But this felt heavier. It forced her to acknowledge something she’d been trying very hard not to look at. Pearline hadn’t been trying to hurt her. Pearline had been hoping right alongside her, building entire possibilities out of half-finished conversations and old memories that she wanted so badly for them to be true.

Pearline looked down at her hands. “Remember when I told you I left my charger at Stack’s apartment?”

Annie frowned. The question felt random enough to pull her briefly out of her own misery. “Yeah.”

“I ain’t leave no damn charger.”

Annie stared at her while her facial expression said DUH.

Pearline laughed once and shook her head. “I went back and straight up asked him.”

The room grew quiet.

“I wanted to know if what I saw was real.”

Annie’s stomach tightened.

Pearline rubbed her palms against her jeans. “I asked Stack straight up.”

“What’d he say?”

“That Smoke and Jada wasn’t together.”

The answer came immediate. Like she’d replayed the conversation a hundred times already.

“He said they wasn’t serious. Said they wasn’t in no relationship.”

Despite herself, Annie almost laughed.

Pearline kept going. “I asked him twice.” The confession sounded pathetic now. “I kept askin’ different ways hopin’ he’d tell me somethin’ else.”

Annie looked away.

“Cause if he would’ve told me they was serious…” Pearline swallowed. “If he would’ve told me Smoke was in love with that girl or plannin’ a future wit’ her or somethin’ like that, I’d have told you right then.”

The words settled heavily between them.

“Shit, Annie, I would’ve told you before we even got to Cheryl’s house.” Pearline’s voice cracked slightly. “That’s why I didn’t know what to do.”

Annie stared at the floor because that sounded exactly like something Pearline would do—convince herself this was reasonable. It sounded exactly like something done with love that still managed to hurt anyway.

“You still didn’t let me choose.” 

The words came out quiet. 

Pearline’s shoulders dropped. For a second she looked as tired as Annie felt. Her mouth opened slightly before closing again. Whatever explanation she’d been holding onto all evening seemed to collapse beneath the weight of those six words.

Annie reached for another pile of clothes and shoved them into the suitcase harder than necessary. The zipper caught again. Frustrated, she yanked at it. Something beneath the clothes came loose, and a plastic case slid free, tumbling across the comforter before bouncing onto the floor near her feet.

Both women looked down.

The mixtape.

Not the mixtape Elijah made her all those years ago. Not the one she’d refused to listen to all those years ago, but somehow carried with her through college, breakups, apartments, and every version of herself she’d become after leaving Mississippi.

This was a new one.

The one she’d spent weeks putting together before coming home. The one hidden beneath folded shirts because she hadn’t been brave enough to admit why she’d packed it in the first place.

For a long moment neither woman moved. Then Annie bent down and picked it up. 

Pearline’s eyes followed the plastic case before lifting back to Annie’s face.

Something flickered there. Understanding. Somehow Annie hated that most of all, because now Pearline knew. 

Not that she still loved Elijah.

But how much.

The truth settled quietly between them. Annie wrapped her fingers around the mixtape, tucked it beneath her arm, grabbed the suitcase, and forced the zipper closed.

“Annie—”

“Fuck all y’all.”

Pearline took a step forward. “Annie.”

“No.” She wiped angrily at her face. “I came down here lookin’ stupid as fuck.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.” Her voice cracked hard enough to make her wince. “I did.”

The tears started again. Hot. Humiliating. Impossible to stop.

“And I blame you for lettin’ me.”

Pearline flinched.

Annie hated herself for saying it. Hated herself even more for not taking it back.

Then she grabbed the suitcase handle and headed for the door before Pearline could stop her.

Smoke kept his eyes on the house long after Annie disappeared inside.

Around him the cookout continued without interruption. Some old head at the dominoes table accused a young nigga of cheating. Again. Tired of hearing Aunt Cheryl fussing, Uncle Lewis stepped in and threatened to throw both of them out of the yard if they didn’t shut the fuck up. Children ran through the grass screaming while music drifted lazily from the speakers near the patio. 

The normalcy of it all felt strange considering how quickly the afternoon had changed. Ten minutes ago he’d been standing beside Annie listening to her laugh. Now she was inside the house and Pearline had gone after her wearing the same expression people wore when they already knew trouble was waiting on the other side of a door.

He replayed the last few minutes in his head whether he wanted to or not. Annie’s hand in his. Jada’s voice. The way Annie’s guard went up the moment she understood Jada wasn’t standing there as an old classmate. The look she’d given Pearline afterward stayed with him most. There had been hurt in it. Confusion too. But beneath both sat recognition, like she’d suddenly understood something nobody had bothered to explain to her.

Smoke didn’t know every piece of what had just happened, but he recognized the result. Annie thought he and Jada were together. Not casually seeing each other. Together-together. The certainty settled heavily in his chest because it explained the expression he’d seen on her face before she walked away.

What unsettled him wasn’t that she’d misunderstood the situation.

It was that seeing him with another woman had hurt her at all.

Somebody shoved a plastic cup into his hand.

Stack.

“The good shit,” his brother said before dropping back into his chair.

Smoke glanced down at the bourbon. Aunt Cheryl only brought it out for family and special occasions. Under different circumstances he probably would’ve appreciated it. Instead he took a swallow and tasted almost none of it.

A few minutes later he found himself reaching for a cigarette.

The lighter clicked.

Smoke took a slow drag and watched the front porch through a haze of smoke that did absolutely nothing to settle his nerves.

Beside him, Jada smoothed a hand over her blouse and adjusted her position in the chair.

“Thought you had a showing today.”

The question made her blink. “I did.”

“You said you wasn’t comin’.”

“I changed my mind.”

Smoke nodded once, but his attention had already drifted back toward the house. The answer sat wrong with him for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. She hadn’t called. Hadn’t texted. Some part of him couldn’t stop wondering whether things would’ve unfolded differently if he’d known she was coming. The thought irritated him. Jada hadn’t done anything wrong by showing up to a public cookout. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that the afternoon had veered off course the moment she stepped into it.

“You mad I’m here?”

That pulled his attention back to her.

“No.”

The answer came easily because it was mostly true. He wasn’t mad she came. He just couldn’t understand why she hadn’t mentioned it. Over the last year they’d fallen into routines. Nothing serious. Nothing that required explanations. Still, telling somebody you were showing up somewhere after saying you weren’t seemed like information worth sharing.

Jada studied him for a moment. “You ain’t really looked at me since I walked over here.”

The words were light. Teasing. At least they tried to be.

Smoke glanced at her. “What?”

“You keep starin’ at that house.”

His jaw tightened around the cigarette. The expression vanished almost immediately, but not before Jada caught it.

He knew she did. Over the last year she’d gotten good at reading him.  Unfortunately, Annie had always been better.

Before Jada could say anything else, Mary wandered over carrying a red cup and entirely too much satisfaction. Stack noticed her at the exact same time.

“There she go.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Oh Lord.”

“Nah.” Stack pointed directly at her. “Nah. Bring yo’ ass over here.”

Smoke looked between them. Mary suddenly became very interested in her drink. That alone made him suspicious.

“You ain’t change your mind.”

Jada’s eyes flickered. “Elijah—”

“You was already comin’.” The words landed quietly. “You could’ve told me.”

The silence that followed was answer enough.

Something tightened in his chest. He turned his attention to Mary. “What you do?”

“I ain’t do shit.”

“That’s a muthafuckin’ lie.” Stack exclaimed.

“It ain’t.”

Stack laughed. “Jada just magically decided to show up after tellin’ my brother she wasn’t?”

Jada’s head turned. Mary looked away. Smoke’s eyes narrowed. The silence lasted a little too long.

“Mary.”

“I was just talkin’.”

“There it is.” Stack threw his hands up. “There it is right there. That’s the shit I be talkin’ about. You stay runnin’ yo’ fuckin’ mouth.”

Mary looked offended. “How was I supposed to know she’d actually come?”

Stack stared at her. Then at Jada. Then back at Mary. “You serious?”

The pieces settled into place one by one. Smoke looked at Jada. Then Mary. Then back toward the house.

Something tightened in his chest.

Pearline still hadn’t come back outside. The front door remained closed. The upstairs windows remained dark. From where he sat, the entire house looked still. Meanwhile his mind kept returning to Annie’s face. Not the smile she’d forced before excusing herself. The look right before it. The moment she’d looked from Jada to him and then toward Pearline. The hurt in her eyes had been so quick most people probably would’ve missed it.

He hadn’t.

That was the problem. He hadn’t missed any of it. Not the confusion, the disappointment, or the moment it all clicked.

The feeling settled heavy in his stomach because he knew exactly what she’d seen. Maybe not every detail. Maybe not the history. But enough. Enough to think he and Jada were something they weren’t. Enough to believe she’d shown up in Mississippi only to discover he’d moved on.

The thought bothered him more than it should have.

Life kept moving around him, but Smoke couldn’t. Every few seconds his eyes found the house again. The cigarette burned down between his fingers. The bourbon now gone.

Stack watched him do it. Then he sighed. “You need to go talk to her.”

“Pearline with her.”

“For now.”

Smoke leaned back in his chair. “What that supposed to mean?”

“It mean Annie upstairs cussin’ Pearline the fuck out right now.”

Despite everything, a small smile threatened at the corner of his mouth.

Stack pointed toward the house. “You know I’m right.”

Unfortunately, he was.

The smile disappeared as quickly as it came.

Smoke rubbed a hand across his jaw and looked back toward the front door. The longer Annie stayed inside, the worse the feeling became. Something closer to dread. Annie had spent eight years running from difficult conversations. He knew because he’d spent eight years wishing she’d stayed for one.

Then the front door opened.

Every thought in his head disappeared at once.

Annie stepped onto the porch with a suitcase in one hand and a plastic case tucked beneath her arm.

Before he realized what he was doing, Smoke crushed the cigarette beneath his sneaker, set the cup on the nearest table, and started walking.

“Annie.”

Smoke was calling her name halfway across the yard before he realized people were starting to watch. At first it was only a few people. Aunt Cheryl paused beside the grill with the tongs still in her hand. Geneva lowered her cup. Maxine turned away from whatever story she had been telling. Then more heads began to turn because Annie was not exactly subtle carrying a suitcase through the middle of a family cookout, and neither was the look on her face. Even from thirty feet away he could see she had been crying, and the sight settled heavy in his chest before he could prepare himself for it. Pearline had barely made it back onto the porch behind her, wiping at her own face, and Stack was already moving toward her with concern written plainly across his. Whatever had happened upstairs had gone bad enough to leave both women in tears.

Smoke was not surprised. The moment Annie had looked at Jada, then at him, then at Pearline, he had known something was coming. What surprised him was how quickly everything had unraveled. Less than an hour ago she had been laughing beside him beneath the shade tree. Less than thirty minutes ago he had been standing there holding her hand without thinking about it. Now she was heading toward the driveway with a suitcase like she planned on disappearing before sunset, and the familiarity of that made something old and bitter twist inside him. Annie leaving before a conversation could catch her was not new. He knew that move. He had lived with the damage of it for eight years.

“Annie.”

She didn’t stop. The suitcase rolled awkwardly through the grass as she continued toward the driveway, and whether she genuinely hadn’t heard him or was pretending not to hear him didn’t matter. Smoke knew her too well to believe either would be enough to stop him.

“Anissa!”

That stopped her.

When she finally turned around, the look on her face hit him hard. The tears were obvious. The anger was not. That lived deeper, somewhere behind the red eyes and tight jaw, tangled up with something older and far more familiar. It was the same hurt he had caught a glimpse of before she disappeared into the house, only now it wasn’t masked anymore. The music still played behind them. Somebody laughed near the dominoes table before realizing nobody else was laughing. Children ran through the yard with a water guns bigger than them. Life kept trying to continue around them, but Smoke could feel the whole cookout slowly holding its breath.

“Can we talk?”

The laugh that left Annie wasn’t loud, which made it worse. Loud would have been easier. Loud would have given him something obvious to answer. Instead, she sounded tired, like someone who had finally run out of ways to be disappointed.

“Oh, now you wanna talk?”

The words landed uncomfortably because he knew exactly what she meant. Not the sentence itself. The accusation underneath it. When she finally called him after eight years. Eight years of missed conversations and assumptions. Eight years of silence neither one of them had been able to outrun. 

Smoke opened his mouth, but Annie was already shaking her head.

“No. Don’t do that.”

His brow furrowed. “Do what?”

“Act like this ain’t exactly what you wanted.”

Confusion flashed across his face before frustration followed close behind it. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

Annie stared at him as though she couldn’t decide whether he was lying or genuinely that oblivious. Then she laughed again, wiped angrily at her face, and pulled something from beneath her arm and threw it at him. The plastic case struck his chest hard enough that instinct took over before thought could. Smoke caught it automatically and looked down. For a moment, he didn’t understand what he was holding. Then his eyes moved over the case, the handwriting, the familiar shape of something he had once given her in another lifetime, and it dawned on him slowly.

Annie pointed toward it before he could speak.

“I made that for you.”

Smoke looked down at the plastic case.

The words came out sharper than she probably intended, not because she was trying to hurt him, but because she was already hurting and had nowhere else to put it.

“I spent two damn weeks makin’ that.” Annie laughed. The sound was ugly. “Ain’t that some shit?”

She wiped angrily at her face. “I’m twenty-five years old makin’ a mixtape.” Annie shook her head. “I brought it all the way from North Carolina.”

Her voice dropped. “I brought it because some stupid part of me thought…” The sentence died there.

Annie laughed again. “Never mind.”

Around them the cookout had grown noticeably quieter. Smoke was aware enough that Aunt Cheryl was no longer pretending to focus on the grill. Geneva had stopped mid-conversation and Maxine stood beside her with her mouth pressed into a tight line. He was aware enough that Mary suddenly looked like she regretted every decision she had made that afternoon, and Jada had gone completely still in her chair. Annie didn’t seem to notice any of them, or maybe she did and simply couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Go ’head,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the backyard. “Maybe you and your girlfriend can listen to it together.”

Smoke’s jaw tightened immediately. “Jada ain’t my girlfriend.”

The look Annie gave him was so full of disbelief it almost would’ve been funny under different circumstances. “Please.”

“Please what?”

“Don’t.”

He took a step closer. “Don’t do that.”

The hurt in her face deepened, and Smoke knew before she even spoke that whatever came next had been sitting inside her for years.

“Oh, now we don’t wanna do that?”

The memory hit him before he could stop it. The conversation. The frustration. The moment he had shut something down instead of opening it, thinking silence would keep them from making things worse. Annie saw the recognition cross his face and nodded once, her eyes shining with a kind of hurt that made his stomach tighten.

“What happened to ‘we ain’t doin’ that, huh?’”

This time there was no laughter in her voice. No sarcasm either. Just eight years of hurt finally finding somewhere to go. Around them, the cookout kept trying and failing to pretend nothing was happening. Aunt Cheryl had completely abandoned the grill now. Geneva stood beside her with one hand pressed against her chest. Across the yard, Stack had reached Pearline and was asking questions she clearly was not answering. Even the dominoes game had stopped, the players still seated around the table with untouched tiles between them.

Annie wiped angrily at her face again and shook her head. The tequila had blurred the edges of her embarrassment enough to make honesty feel easier than silence, but Smoke could see the cost of it. She looked exposed. Furious about it. Hurt because of it. Still, she stood there with the suitcase in one hand and the rest of the cookout watching while years of silence crowded up behind her.

“You know what pisses me off the most?”

Smoke didn’t answer. The question felt rhetorical.

“Everybody knew but me.”

The words hung there longer than Annie intended. Once they left her mouth she couldn’t take them back. It felt like saying them out loud made the humiliation feel real in a way it hadn’t five minutes ago. She looked past Smoke toward the crowd gathered behind him. Pearline stood beside Stack with red eyes and a guilty expression. Aunt Cheryl had completely abandoned the grill. Geneva looked like she was debating whether to intervene or pray. 

Everybody.

Everybody had apparently known except the one person standing in the middle of it.

“Pearline knew. Stack knew. Mary’s ass obviously knew.”

“Why I gotta be in this?” Mary called from somewhere behind Smoke.

“Cause yo’ ass always in everythin’.”

The response came from so many directions at once that a brief burst of laughter rippled through the yard before disappearing just as quickly. Annie wasn’t laughing. The knot in her chest had only grown tighter. Every time she replayed the afternoon in her head she found something new to be embarrassed about. Every conversation. Every look. Every moment she’d spent thinking she was simply reconnecting with old friends while apparently everybody else was aware of something she wasn’t.

“I spent all day lookin’ stupid.”

“You wasn’t lookin’ stupid.”

The answer came immediate. Too immediate. Annie laughed and pointed at him. “There you go.”

Smoke frowned. “There I go what?”

“That thing you do.”

“What thing?”

“When I tell you somethin’ and you decide it ain’t true just ‘cause you don’t like hearin’ it.”

His jaw tightened. “Annie—”

“No.” Her voice cracked hard enough that she hated it. “You asked to talk. So let’s talk.”

The yard went quiet again. Annie looked at him for a long moment before shaking her head. “You know what makes this shit worse?”

Smoke waited.

Annie laughed without humor and glanced toward Jada. “Her.”

Jada visibly stiffened.

“Annie—”

“No. Cause ain’t nobody finna sit here and act confused.”

The alcohol had long since stopped making her feel better. Now it was just making honesty easier.

“Outta everybody, Elijah?” Her eyes landed on Jada again. “Her?”

Smoke frowned. “What that supposed to mean?”

Annie laughed. “See? That’s exactly what I mean.” She wiped at her face. “You ain’t even know.”

The words weren’t really directed at him anymore. “You never paid attention to none of that.”

Smoke’s brow furrowed deeper.

Annie shook her head. Her laugh sounded tired. “Why would you?”

The alcohol was doing most of the talking now. Not enough to make her incoherent. Just enough to lower every wall she’d spent years building.

“You don’t know what it felt like bein’ around her.”

Jada stiffened slightly.

Annie noticed. But kept going anyway. “Maybe she didn’t do nothin’. Maybe it was all in my head.” The words sounded doubtful even to her. “But every time she walked into a room, I felt it.”

She looked back at Smoke. “And now I come back home and find out you’re with her?”

The question hung between them.

For a while Annie wanted it to be about Jada. Wanted to be able to point at one woman and blame her for the way her chest hurt. But the longer she stood there, the harder it became to pretend Jada was the real problem.

Jada had simply been the thing that cracked everything open.

The hurt and the truth sat somewhere deeper than that.

The real truth was that seeing Elijah with anybody would’ve hurt. Him being happy and moving on with anybody else would’ve hurt. Seeing him living a life that no longer had room for her would’ve hurt.

Nobody spoke or moved. Everyone seemed to understand at the same time that Annie and Smoke were no longer talking about Jada, or the cookout, or the mixtape in his hand. They had moved backward without warning. Back into the years nobody in that yard had been able to touch for them.

Annie laughed again and shook her head. “You know what North Carolina was like?”

The question caught him off guard. For the first time since she had walked out of the house, uncertainty crossed his face because the answer was no. He didn’t know. Not really. He knew where she had lived. He knew the city she moved to. He knew she had graduated. He knew random pieces gathered over the years through social media, mutual friends, and accidental conversations he pretended not to care about. But he didn’t know what it had been like. Not the real version.

Annie looked away briefly before looking back at him. “I hated it.”

Smoke felt something in his chest twist because that was not what he had expected her to say.

“I hated every fuckin’ minute of it.” Her voice shook now, but she did not look away again. “I didn’t know nobody. I didn’t have Pearline, Aunt Cheryl, Stack. I didn’t have…”

She stopped long enough to swallow, and when she looked directly at him, the rest of the yard seemed to fade around them.

“I didn’t have you.”

Smoke wasn’t prepared for that. He had spent eight years telling himself she had moved forward because that was the only way to make sense of the silence. Annie in North Carolina had become a version of her he could survive imagining. Busy. Happy. Adjusting. Growing into a life that no longer had space for him. But standing in front of him now with tears on her face and a suitcase in her hand, she was telling him something completely different, and the new version did not fit into any of the places he had built for the old one.

For a moment Annie saw it.

Really saw it.

The years she had spent imagining Elijah untouched by her absence suddenly felt less certain. She could see the hurt sitting on him now. Not fresh hurt. Old hurt. The kind people carried so long they stopped noticing the weight of it.

And yet none of it changed what came next. Because understanding that he suffered wasn’t the same thing as knowing he had.

Annie laughed and immediately seemed to hate the sound of it.

Smoke blinked.

“So what, Elijah?”

The use of his name landed exactly the way she intended it to. A warning.

“You think I was supposed to know that?” she asked, pointing at him. “You think I knew what the hell you was feelin’?”

His jaw tightened. “You ain’t ask.”

“Neither did you.”

Stack looked away. Pearline closed her eyes. Smoke felt the hit land exactly where she meant for it to, and the worst part was that she wasn’t wrong. 

Annie wiped at her face again and shook her head, her voice breaking around the edges as the anger started turning into something less controlled.

“You keep standin’ here talkin’ like I wasn’t alone. You think I wasn’t drivin’ around a city I ain’t know? You think I wasn’t callin’ Pearline cryin’? You think I wasn’t sittin’ in my mama’s house every holiday wishin’ I was home?”

Smoke’s expression switched before he could stop it, and Annie saw it. Good, her face seemed to say. Let him hear it.

“You keep talkin’ like I chose all this.” The tears were coming faster now, and she stopped trying to hide them. “I was seventeen. I was seventeen, Elijah. I was a kid. I was scared!”

Smoke closed his eyes briefly, and Annie saw that too. Saw the way his face tightened. Saw something flicker across it before disappearing again. For the first time since this started, she understood that he was not angry because he did not care. He was angry because he did. Maybe because he always had. The answer should have made her feel better. Instead, it seemed to make her furious because if that was true, then eight years suddenly felt even more unnecessary.

“You know what I kept waitin’ on?” she asked.

Smoke didn’t answer.

“I kept waitin’ on you.”

Even Mary looked stunned by that. Annie looked away as soon as the words came out, embarrassment crawling up her throat too late to stop anything now. “I kept thinkin’ maybe one day you’d show up. Maybe one day you’d come get me.”

Smoke stared at her, and the disbelief moved across his face before he could hide it. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe she had waited. He couldn’t believe what she had been waiting for. Annie saw it. Saw exactly what he was thinking. Something passed between them then, heavy and terrible, and for the first time since she got off the plane, Annie looked like she was realizing neither of them had been waiting for the same thing. Neither of them had been telling themselves the same story.

Smoke stood there for several seconds without speaking. He could still hear the cookout somewhere around them. A baby started crying near the patio before someone scooped them up and carried them away. Music drifted from the speakers like it belonged to another yard entirely. Aunt Cheryl probably still standing beside that grill, food getting colder by the minute, but none of it felt real anymore. The only thing that felt real was Annie standing in front of him talking about waiting as though he had simply let her go without trying.

“You waited on me?”

The question came out quieter than he intended.

Annie laughed bitterly. “Yeah.”

Smoke looked away, dragging a hand across his jaw while the hurt he had been holding onto all afternoon changed into something sharper and older. Nothing about this conversation was unfolding the way he had imagined. Not once. Not in eight years. Not today. Not now.

“Annie…” His voice cracked slightly, not enough for most people to notice, but enough for Stack to notice. Enough for Pearline. Enough for Smoke himself. “You think I wasn’t tryin’?”

The confusion on Annie’s face stopped him cold. For a second neither of them moved, and then Smoke realized she genuinely didn’t know. She had never looked more honest or more confused, and the sight twisted painfully in his chest.

“You think I just let you go?”

Annie opened her mouth, then closed it.

“I called you every fuckin’ day.”

The words left him before he could stop them. Annie blinked once, then again, and the color seemed to drain from her face in real time.

“What?”

Smoke laughed, but the sound came out broken. “I called you every day.”

The memory came back all at once. His room. The phone. The ringing. The waiting. The voicemail. Again and again and again until the sound became part of the shape of those months. “I called so much my mama started askin’ if I was goin’ to pay the phone bill.”

The crowd around them seemed to understand at the same time that they were no longer listening to an argument. They were watching two people discover that they had lived through entirely different versions of the same heartbreak.

Smoke couldn’t stop now. Not after eight years. Not after hearing Annie say she had waited. “I wrote you.”

Annie stared at him. “What?”

“I wrote you.” His jaw tightened because the word sounded ridiculous now. Ancient and pathetic and still true. “Letters. Birthday cards. Christmas cards. I sent every fuckin’ thing I could think of.”

Annie looked like she had forgotten how to breathe. Smoke noticed. He simply could not stop anyway.

“You think I was sittin’ around muthafuckin Mississippi havin’ the time of my fuckin’ life?” His voice rose for the first time, not much, but enough. “You think I wasn’t lookin’ and waitin’ for you?”

Fresh tears started slipping down Annie’s face, confused now more than angry. Smoke saw them and kept going because the truth had finally cracked open, and if he stopped now, he was not sure he would ever say it again.

“Then one day you stopped answerin’.” His voice dropped again, the sentence wounded in a way anger could not cover. “You stopped callin’ back.”

Annie shook her head slowly like she could not understand what he was saying. “I never—”

“Yeah.” Smoke laughed again, rougher this time. “That’s what I thought too.”

For the first time all afternoon, fear appeared in Annie’s eyes. Not fear of him, but fear of the possibility that something had happened neither of them knew about, because suddenly neither version of the story made sense. Smoke could see her realizing it at the same time he was.

“I never got them.” Her voice was so quiet he almost missed it. “I never got those letters.”

Smoke stared at her, then slowly shook his head. “Yeah, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You had to.”

“Elijah, I didn’t.”

The certainty in her voice chipped away at some of his anger. Not enough to erase it, but enough to confuse it. Annie wiped at her face, looking younger somehow. “My mama would’ve gave ’em to me.”

Smoke looked away because maybe she was right. Maybe she wasn’t. But the problem was that the possibility didn’t change what those years had felt like from his side.

“I called,” he said, quieter now.

“I know.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You don’t.”

At first she answered. He remembered that part too clearly. The strange phone calls where neither one of them knew how to speak naturally anymore but tried anyway. The pauses. The awkward laughs. The ache that settled in his chest every time they hung up. Annie remembered too; he saw it in the way her eyes closed briefly, the way guilt moved across her face before she could hide it.

“You answered,” he said. “Then you got busy. Then you started callin’ back less.”

The silence that followed was answer enough.

“One day I realized I was the only one still callin’.”

Annie flinched. The movement was small, but Smoke saw it, and some wounded part of him was glad she did. He still remembered exactly what that had felt like.

“I wasn’t doin’ it on purpose,” she said.

The defense sounded weak the second it left her mouth. Not because it was not true, but because the truth of it did not undo the damage. Smoke nodded slowly.

“I know.”

Annie frowned. “You know?”

“Yeah.” He looked at her for a long moment, and the anger she seemed to expect was not there anymore. “I know. You was seventeen. You was scared. You was in a new place. You was tryin’ to figure shit out.”

For a second she could not breathe because he was not describing her now. He was describing the girl she had been. The girl he had somehow understood all along. Then his eyes met hers again, and the hurt surfaced in him fully.

“And I knew every one of them reasons,” he said. “But they ain’t stop the shit from hurtin’.”

Everyone remained where they were. The whole yard seemed to understand that this was no longer an argument. This was grief. Eight years of it standing in the middle of Aunt Cheryl’s backyard.

“I kept makin’ excuses for you,” Smoke said, and the confession seemed to surprise even him. Annie’s face crumpled immediately, but he kept going. “I told myself you was busy. I told myself school was hard. I told myself you’d call tomorrow. And then eventually I had to stop tellin’ myself that shit.”

Annie had no answer for that. For the first time since she walked out of the house, she seemed unable to find one. The tequila was not helping her anymore. Whatever warm numbness she had been chasing upstairs had disappeared completely, leaving every emotion exposed and every memory sharper than before. She hated that everyone was watching and seeing her crying. Hated that Elijah was standing in front of her looking just as miserable as she felt. Most of all, she hated that some part of her believed him, because believing him changed things. Not everything, but enough.

“You could’ve came.”

The words left her before she could stop them. Smoke blinked, and Annie immediately looked away because the sentence sounded childish now. Stupid. Still, it was true. It had always been true.

“You could’ve came and got me,” she said, the hurt returning instantly, seventeen-year-old hurt and twenty-five-year-old hurt all tangled together. “You knew where I was.”

Smoke stared at her until the confusion on his face slowly gave way to recognition. Now he understood what she had been waiting for, and somehow that broke his heart worse than anything else she had said.

“You wanted me to come get you?”

Annie laughed through her tears, the sound cracking halfway out. “I don’t know. I just…” She shook her head, struggling to organize a truth that had probably never made sense outside her own chest. “I thought if you loved me bad enough, you’d come.”

The confession settled over them with the weight of something painfully young. Childish. Seventeen. The impossible expectation people place on love when they are too young to understand that love still requires words. The belief that if something is real enough, the other person will somehow know exactly what to do.

Smoke dragged a hand across his face, looking exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the hour or the heat. “Annie,” he said, barely above a murmur. “I was seventeen too.”

The words hit her harder than anything else he had said. In every version of the story she had told herself, Elijah had always seemed older somehow. Stronger. More certain. More capable of handling things. But he was right—he had been seventeen too. Just as lost. Just as scared. Just as heartbroken.

“You keep talkin’ like I knew what to do.” Smoke laughed once, no humor in it, and a few people actually smiled despite themselves because it sounded like him. Real. Unfiltered. “I didn’t know shit. I didn’t know how to fix shit.” His eyes found hers again. 

“I didn’t know how to make you stay.”

The tears Annie had finally gotten under control started again because none of this was supposed to happen. She was supposed to come home, see old friends, survive one awkward conversation with Elijah, and go back to North Carolina pretending she had finally moved on. Instead she was standing in the middle of a backyard realizing neither one of them ever really had.

For one impossible moment, it felt like they were seventeen again. Not because anything had been repaired, but because they were staring at each other with the same unfinished ache they had carried out of high school and into adulthood, and neither one of them seemed to know what to do with it now that it had finally been named. 

Then Smoke broke eye contact, and Annie watched something change in his face. The softness that had been there moments earlier slowly disappeared beneath something older and far more dangerous. The understanding faded next, followed by the grief that had kept his anger tempered throughout most of the conversation. What remained was not rage. It was exhaustion. The kind that settled deep inside a person after carrying the same hurt for so long it stopped feeling separate from them.

Smoke looked at her for a long moment before finally shaking his head.

“You keep talkin’ like I left you.”

The words were not loud, and that made them worse. Annie froze because for the first time all afternoon, she was not sure what her response was supposed to be. Smoke laughed once under his breath and looked away, but nothing was funny. After everything they had just said, he still couldn’t believe they were standing here having this conversation.

“You keep tellin’ this story like I walked away.”

Annie opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Smoke looked back at her. His eyes were red now too, though she was not sure when that had happened. “You talk about North Carolina. You talk about missin’ me. You talk about waitin’.” He shook his head, his voice steady in a way that made every word harder to hear. “But every version of this story end the same.”

Annie tightened her grip around the suitcase handle.

“You leave.”

Smoke didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t even sound angry. If anything, the absence of anger made the words harder to hear. They landed between them with the weight of something he had repeated to himself so many times it no longer felt like an opinion. To him it was simply fact. Annie left. Everything else had happened afterward.

“You leave,” he said again. “You stop answerin’. You stop callin’.”

Annie shook her head immediately. “It wasn’t like that.”

Smoke laughed, and the sound broke halfway through. “See?” His eyes closed briefly. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

Tears gathered again, blurring Annie’s vision. “I was seventeen.”

“SO WAS I!!!!!”

The response came so quickly it startled both of them. Years of hurt sat between them, heavier than anything either one had said before. Smoke dragged a hand across his face and looked away toward the house, toward the trees, toward anywhere but her. When he spoke again, his voice sounded rougher.

“Do you know what the fucked up part is?”

Nobody moved. Nobody interrupted. Stack stood beside Pearline with one hand hovering near her back. Aunt Cheryl had lowered her eyes. Mary had finally stopped fidgeting. Jada sat very still, watching a man she knew in one way grieve a girl he had clearly known in another.

Smoke looked back at Annie, and whatever she saw in his face made her stomach drop.

“All these years…” His voice cracked once before he caught it. “…I thought you knew.”

Annie stared at him.

Smoke laughed again, but this time there was nothing left in it to protect him. “I thought you knew how much I fuckin’ love you.”

The tears hit Annie instantly. Hot. Merciless. Impossible to stop. Smoke nodded slowly, like he had known this was going to hurt them both before he ever said it.

“And somehow…” He swallowed hard, his eyes never leaving hers. “…you still look at me like I’m the one who left.”

The silence that followed didn’t t feel empty. It felt full of every year they had spent telling themselves stories that only held up because the other person had not been there to challenge them. Nobody spoke. 

Annie stared at Smoke, and Smoke stared back, and for the first time since she came home, she realized she had absolutely no idea what happens next.

End Note: I promise we are almost done....cause I can't take it. But let me know what you think in the comments, please! I love every one of your thoughts. 💜

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