Crazy Bayou Bih

He didn’t need to know what was said.

Didn’t even need to know who said it.

Smoke drove with both hands on the wheel, grip steady on the leather. The door of the Colored schoolhouse swung open in its hinges before fitting into its frame, and he walked through the threshold with a quiet determination. He wasn’t there to argue. He was there to be clear; to shut an old door he never meant to leave cracked open in the first place.

The kids were long gone. All that remained was the ghost of their feet shuffling against the floorboards and the echo of high-pitched laughter. And her. She sat at the desk at the front of the classroom with a stack of papers and a thick red pencil, making straight lines across words with clean, even strokes, and just the right amount of pressure. 

Sunlight cut across the empty desks, catching the chalk dust that still hovered in the air. The classroom was quiet, but it wasn’t empty. History, resentment, and two different versions of the truth hung between the two of them like a physical weight that made the room feel smaller. It pressed against the walls and the lone window on the side of the building like it could feel the tension brewing and wanted out.

Smoke cleared his throat. 

She scoffed. A quiet, annoyed expulsion of breath. Then she looked up, and when her eyes met his they held his gaze, then went up and down his form slowly. Canvassing, maybe. Taking in the seriousness in his posture. Taking notice of the cold calm he carried.

“Demetria.” Smoke’s voice was cold too, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. It usually was. But this kind of cold was more resolve than anything. 

“Smoke,” she said back. 

“We need to talk.”

“Well, hello to you too,” she said sharply.

“Hey,” he said. “We need to talk,” he repeated, tone flat.

She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “About?” she asked with a challenge in her tone.

“Us.”

The word made her lean forward on her elbows. 

“I just came to say we’re done. For good this time,” he said firmly. He opened his mouth, then closed it, like he had something more to say but decided against it. 

“That’s it?” The look on her face went from amusement to surprise to something else in the span of a few seconds. “That’s all you have to say to me?”

“I’m sorry it took so long for me to say out loud. I should have said it sooner. That’s on me. But we been done a while. You know that.”

“You always did think silence was kinder than the truth,” she fired back. 

Smoke hung his head. Because she wasn’t wrong. Her anger, he could take on the chest. He at least owed her that. 

“Look, I don’t know what’s been said or who you been sayin’ it to,” he started. “But whatever’s been said, I’m here to put it to rest.” 

Something flashed across her face and left just as quickly. Recognition. And the sinking feeling of dread. “You must got somebody you care about a whole lot, to come all the way over here just so you could say it plain,” she said. “She know about me?” 

“I’m sayin’ it now,” he said, voice low. 

“Does she know about me?” She asked again. A little louder this time.

Smoke’s jaw ticked. 

“So there is somebody else,” she said carefully.

Smoke didn’t answer. 

She studied his face for anything— regret, sadness, anything. She closed her eyes to keep her composure and shook her head like it would somehow make the sting go away. It didn’t. But she put her dignity back on anyway.

“Well,” she said, almost breathless. “There it is.”

Smoke nodded once. Demetria looked at him like she couldn’t recognize the shape of the man standing in front of her anymore, then she went back to her papers with the same measured carefulness she always used. The force of her pen made the paper crackle on the desk. Her corrections felt more personal now. Like she was trying to cross him out of her life one red line at a time.

“You take care.”

“Or not,” she snapped.

Smoke nodded like he accepted the ire, then he turned towards the entrance. He walked into the cool Mississippi air outside and away from the tension that sat between them, ready to snap like a rubber band pulled taut. And when he closed the door to the schoolhouse behind him, he made sure it shut all the way.

“Mwen kontan.” 

She said it in such a sultry, whispery tone. Not on purpose, that’s just how Annie’s voice sounded to Smoke. Alluring and fragrant, like the scent of the magnolia blossoms scattered around them on the ground. 

It was an early Sunday evening in November. The magnolia tree that stood tall on the side of the boarding house was changing. Its delicate, white petals drifted loose from the branches overhead and fell soft into the yard like the last bit of summer was shedding itself, piece by piece.

They sat on her patchwork quilt under the remaining shade of the tree. Annie had her knees tucked beneath her, her new sketchbook open on her lap. Smoke was across from her, one knee up, forearm casually resting over it. His eyes were anything but casual, narrowed with a fierce concentration. A lantern sat close by the edge of the quilt. Its flame burned low and steady, painting gold shadows over the pages of Annie’s sketchbook and the tips of her fingers.

“Hold on,” Smoke fussed. “You gotta say it slower.” 

Annie chuckled. “Mweh con-tan,” she sounded out slowly.

Smoke was staring at her lips, trying to mimic the way she formed the words when she spoke. She was amused by his focus. Impressed. He had it in everything he did. That bitter resolve. 

“What that mean?” 

“It means I’m happy.”

“Mwen-kun-tin,” he tried.

Annie winced. “Close, but…just try it again,” she urged.

“No,” Smoke said flatly.

“Why not?”

“I said it just how you said it.”

“No,” Annie shook her head. “You didn’t.” 

Smoke’s mouth twitched. He looked away before it could fully turn into a smile. “Sounded close enough to me,” he grumbled. 

“Mweh con-tan,” she said slower.

“Mwen kun-tan,” he repeated.

Annie bit the inside of her cheek. He was doing it on purpose, with his stubborn self. 

“You laughin’ at me?” Smoke asked bitterly.

“No.”

“Yeah…you are.”

“Am not.”

A magnolia petal landed on the page. Smoke picked it up without thinking, turned it once in his hand, then placed it on the quilt like he was afraid to hold it too long for fear he’d crush it in his hands. 

“Say it again.”

“You’re enjoyin’ this too much,” he huffed.

“And you bein’ difficult on purpose.”

“Mm.”

“Mm,” she said louder. She laughed softly and shaded something with her pencil near the corner of the page. It was a sketch of the shape of his mouth. Just the corner and how it curved around the sound he kept getting wrong. How he’d pushed a nasal sound outward instead of dropping it down.

Smoke shifted closer by a fraction, looking down to the sketchbook curiously. “Can I see?”

Her fingers tightened around it out of instinct. 

“You ain’t got to.”

The gentleness in his words made her look up. Made her grip loosen. She turned the sketchbook towards him, setting it between them. On the page wasn’t just one drawing. There were several spread across the paper. The curve of a leaf. The twist of a root. The slope of a hand pouring tea. Felix curled up on the porch. Halfway tucked in the pages was a loose leaf drawing of the inside of a small house. Smoke stared at that one the longest. He knew instantly what it was. He’d seen her sketch of the outside of her shop before. But this one was different.  She pulled it out from where it was wedged and placed it in her lap. 

Bundles hanging from the ceiling on one side. 

A long counter in front. 

A curtain that led to other rooms. 

Small jars lined up neatly on shelves. 

He took in every section, every detail. 

“Your shop,” he said finally.

“One day,” Annie replied shyly. 

“One day, when?” 

Annie looked up. “When I got enough saved. When I know enough,” she listed off. “When Aunt Della thinks I’m ready. When…” she huffed out a breath softly. “When the world lets me, I guess.”

Smoke’s jaw worked. 

“It wouldn’t just be remedies,” she said, rushing to fill the quiet before it got too loud. “I’d sell teas, salves, tonics, food, too. It wouldn’t just be a shop,” she continued, searching for words that would land. “It’d be somewhere people can come when they got things they ain’t ready to say out loud, but they ready to stop lettin’ it hurt them.” 

Smoke kept quiet beside her. 

Annie took a deep breath. “My grandma had an apothecary. Nothin’ fancy,” she said softly. “Just a place where people came in whisperin’ and left breathin’ easier.”

Smoke watched her. Her eyes, the way they softened around certain words. Her hands, and how they fidgeted on the edge of the paper. He looked at the page again while she ran her finger lightly over the built-in shelves she drew. 

“I want that. Somethin’ with my name on it. Somethin’ I know how to keep.” 

He looked at her again. “You will,” he said firmly. 

The certainty in his voice made her go still. “You sound sure.”

“I am.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

Annie tucked the drawing away and closed her sketchbook halfway, her hand smoothing over its cover. “You know some of me.”

Smoke nodded once. “I know enough.”

Silence settled between them again. Easy. Annie watched him for a moment, trying to read what had changed in his face. He looked the same mostly. Quiet. Steady. Shoulders still carrying that heaviness. But his eyes looked different.

He sat up straight and faced her. “Annie.” He said her name and she felt her heart thump hard in her chest. She couldn’t figure out why. He’d said her name a million times, but he’d never said it quite like this.

“Yes?” she replied. 

“I talked to your aunt.”

“About what?”

“You.”

The night moved around them. Crickets chirping in the trees, distant voices from a house down the street. Dogs barking, chickens roosting. It all seemed to quiet around this very moment.

“I told her I wanna court you. Proper.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

“And now?” she asked quietly.

“Now I’m comin’ to you.” 

He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, eyes piercing. “I ain’t askin’ you for nothin’ you don’t wanna give,” he said. “And I ain’t askin’ you to stop what you been showin’ me.” 

Annie’s throat tightened. “That matter to you?”

Smoke’s eyes moved to the sketchbook, then back to her. “It matters to you,” he said plainly. “It matters to me.”

“I thought you ain’t believe in all that stuff,” she said. “Hoodoo.” 

“I don’t.” He shrugged. “I believe in you.” 

Annie drew in a small breath, tilting her chin up a little. “What does courtin’ mean to you?”

Smoke took his time to answer.  

“It means I come correct. I don’t sneak around corners with you. Don’t have folks guessin’ what you mean to me.  It means if I spend time with you, it’s cause I’m serious about you.” 

“You are?” 

“I am.”

She looked at him— a silent urge to keep talking, like he wasn’t already undoing her under this magnolia tree.

“I ain’t sayin’ I got everything figured out. I don’t. I got work that ain’t clean. I got Stack.” His mouth tightened faintly. “And I got things I still need to make right before I can ask for more than this.”

He sighed. “But I know what I mean,” he said. “And I don’t mean to waste your time.” 

Annie looked down at the sketchbook in her lap. This man, whose words always held weight, had looked closely at her dreams sketched in graphite and smudged lines and simply said —he wanted to be part of them. 

She looked back at him. “If I say yes,” she said slowly. “I want my shop. I want my work. I want…I wanna be somebody outside of who I’m with.” 

“You already are,” he said, voice low.

Annie blinked.

His voice stayed low. “I ain’t askin’ to make you smaller.”

Annie’s breath caught. “Then what you askin’?”

He paused for a moment, then— “To walk beside you while you grow.” 

The silence that sat between them wasn’t empty. It was so full that Annie had to look away just so she could breathe. 

That’s when she felt it.

A nervous laugh.

It rose up in her throat— not because anything was funny, but because the weight of this moment was so heavy, she had to lighten it somehow before it swallowed her whole. She tried to suppress it, but the corners of her mouth had already turned up.

“You laughin’ at me?”

He noticed. Of course he did.

“No!”

Smoke’s mouth twitched. “Yes you are.”

“No I’m not!”

“You a bad liar.”

“I'm not lyin'...you just...makin’ me nervous right now,” she admitted softly.

His eyes softened. “You can take your time to think about it.”

Annie shook her head immediately. “No,” she said. “I don’t need time,” she assured him. 

His eyes got serious again.

“I’ll let you court me.”

Something moved across his face. Not quite a smile. Something much more dangerous to her composure. “Yeah?”

Annie’s lips curved into a fully encompassing smile that spread gently across her face. “Yeah.” 

He held out his hand for her. A question. She put her hand in his and they laced their fingers together carefully, palms warm and steady against each other. The answer.

The tree shed another petal. It drifted down between them and landed on their intertwined hands. They didn’t move it. The lantern burned low. They sat like that beneath the magnolia tree as the last of summer continued to fall around them.

The next morning was a blur. Between the demands of empty stomachs and the nervous tremor of her own hands, a nagging anxiety sat on her shoulders and butterflies fluttered violently in the pit of her belly. A sigh of relief left her lips as the last lodger headed out the door, leaving her and Aunt Della to at least be able to clean up the kitchen and dining room in a tempered silence. 

The wind chimes on the porch fluttered in the breeze, whistling a throaty, breathless jingle that did nothing to calm her nerves. Aunt Della glanced her way a few times, but said nothing. Even Felix tried to soothe her, his purrs doing little to bring her any real solace. 

Annie shoved a biscuit in her mouth to give herself something to do. The warm fluffiness filled her mouth and the butter satisfied her tastebuds with its rich, melty goodness. She sighed then took another bite, closing her eyes as the sustenance moved through her body.

Maybe she was just hungry. And maybe her anxiousness had nothing to do with him.

She moved quicker, stacking, sweeping, wiping, scraping until the house smelled like eucalyptus, lavender, and bleach.

Annie collapsed on the couch in the front room, but not from exhaustion. From adrenaline that had nowhere else to go. Her heart beat rapidly and she fingered her ileke beads like that could somehow calm it. Morning light cut warm and light through the front windows like a balm on her skin. She tilted her head back and let her eyes close, basking in the quiet after the chaos of breakfast. 

The scent of tobacco, peppermint, and bay rum floated through the screen door. Slowly—like the rich, layered smells that arrive in a kitchen when meat, butter and herbs fold into each other on the stove.

Then the screen door cracked open and Smoke stepped through. 

Annie’s mouth went dry.

The first thing she noticed was the way he darkened the doorway once he stepped past the threshold. He was tall, well over six feet. Large and imposing frame, and even though she was a tall woman herself, it felt like he towered over her. The muscles on his arms and shoulders filled out every inch of his white collared shirt, pressing against the starched fabric with a powerful, restrained strength. His suspenders held up trousers that sat comfortably around his hips. His boots were heavy on his feet even though his steps were light. It was a subtle contradiction that made her tongue feel like cotton in her mouth. 

The second thing she noticed were the flowers in his hand. Two separate arrangements— one a mixture of white, cream, and greenery. The other was a mixture of vivid colors that looked like a rainbow painted the petals. Each was wrapped in brown paper and tied gently with twine.

Smoke removed his hat and turned to see Annie spread lazily across the couch. Apron halfway untied, scarf to the side, legs hanging off the edge, dress tracing the curve of her hips. She looked beautiful with her feet dangling in the air, bent nickel hanging loosely off a string around her left ankle, shoulders relaxed like she didn’t have a care in the world. He liked that look. Wanted to see more of it.

He was doing that staring thing again, Annie thought to herself. The way his eyes slowly swept up and down her body gave her goosebumps, and she suddenly became very aware of how she was presenting. Worn dress, apron smudged with stains, hair fuzzy in her cornrows, barefoot and lounging on the couch. But the heat in his eyes turned a casual glance-over into a smoldering glare that pinned her in place. The paper around the bouquets crinkled under his grasp as he adjusted them in his hand. When his voice finally broke the loaded silence that had overtaken the front room of the boarding house, it was rough with something that made her spine snap straight. Her legs followed, then her hands, dragging her upwards until she was sitting up completely.

“Good mornin’.” 

Annie smiled up at him, a sight that beamed brighter than the morning sun. “Good mornin’.”

Smoke took a step closer, then two, and with one hand grabbed the white bouquet out of his other and extended them towards Annie. “For you.”

“Thank you,” she said, inhaling their scent. 

Smoke nodded once, then looked around the room. “Where’s your aunt?”

“Somewhere out back,” she said breathily, taking another sniff of the flowers. 

“These for her.”

“Awww, ain’t you sweet?”

“Don’t tell nobody,” he said in that low register that made her skin tingle, with a timbre that told her he wasn’t joking even though the corner of his mouth lifted when he said it. 

He proceeded into the kitchen then out the back door, leaving Annie with her own thoughts and the absence of…him. His presence stayed in the room even though he was gone, and it wasn’t just because the smell of his cologne lingered behind. Her head tilted when she realized what day it was. Monday. What was he doing here?

“What we doin’ today?” He asked as he stepped back into her space.

Annie’s breath stuttered.

Aunt Della listened in from the kitchen, looking entirely pleased with herself. 

Annie cleared her throat and shut her mouth that had opened at Smoke’s words. Not because she wasn’t used to him being forward. But because the look in his eye told her he was dead serious when he asked her that question.

“I gotta stop by Chow’s,” she started, to which he acknowledged with a nod. “Then the drugstore,” she continued. She listed things off until she stopped to look down at what she needed to do before anything else. “I gotta wash up first. Change.” 

“I’ma be right here,” he assured her, sinking deep into the couch, putting his head back, and spreading his legs. 

Annie took one more look at him and darted up the stairs.

Thirty minutes later she was in front of the mirror, blouse tucked into a halfway-fastened skirt. Her hair was taken down from her cornrows, oiled, greased, parted down the middle, and pulled back. 

Except one piece that just wouldn’t lay flat. 

She brushed it once, then brushed it again. It refused to lay right, refused to stay right. Her hairbrush clattered on the dresser where she dropped it. 

“What am I doing?” she asked like the walls could talk back. 

She gripped the edge of the dresser, then touched the open edge of her blouse still unbuttoned at the throat. Her fingers rested there a moment before she remembered to button it. 

Her fingers weren’t steady. She cursed under her breath, buttoning it with trembling hands. She smoothed the front down, turning to the side to make sure it was tucked all the way in. 

Then she picked up her hairbrush again. Went over the same spot. Got the same result. 

She threw her hairbrush down with frustration, flustered. 

All of a sudden she felt very alone. More alone than she’d felt since she got to Clarksdale. She tried to blink away the tears but one escaped her eye. It rolled down her cheek, dropping onto her dresser. 

She missed her friends from home. 

She missed her family.  

She didn't expect this. Didn’t expect him. 

And now she was standing in the middle of something new surrounded by people who barely knew her. No mama who always knew what to say. No brothers teasing. No daddy who would pretend it wasn’t making him emotional seeing his little girl stepping into her role as a woman.

Maybe it was a sign. 

She didn’t know what she was doing. She couldn’t even get her hair right without falling apart.

What did she know about being courted?

The word felt strange in her throat. New. Like a dress made out of fine fabric that she hadn’t yet learned how to move in. Like something she wanted to be careful with, to not wrinkle. Something she wanted to spin in front of the mirror just to see how it caught the light. 

And maybe, just maybe….if it fit just right, she could keep it.

Her stomach fluttered. 

She didn’t know what came after she said yes.

She’d heard stories from her friends back home, but she was never in the thick of it to look around and see how it felt. 

She didn’t know how close she was supposed to stand beside him, what folks would hear if he said her name too soft. Didn’t know if holding his hand would feel natural or if she’d overthink every step. She didn’t know what part of herself was meant to stay guarded and what part was allowed to lean.

But between the frustration, and the fear, and the homesickness that had a vice grip on her nerves…she still wanted to try.

That was the part that kept resurfacing.

She wanted it. Wanted him beside her. Wanted to be beside him. And she wanted folks to see.

The truth of it rose up so plainly, it didn’t leave room for her to argue with herself about it.

She wanted to know what Smoke looked like when he didn’t hold himself back so much. Wanted to learn what his quiet felt like when it belonged to her. Wanted to see if walking beside him in the daylight felt like sitting beside him under the magnolia tree in the backyard.

She rubbed her ileke beads and let the touch ground her. Then she put some oil on her fingers, the special blend her mama made that halfway leaked out in her trunk, and brushed the worrisome part of her hair the way her mama always did when she got too frustrated to do it herself. Rub, smooth, brush, set. 

She looked in the small, age-spotted mirror again, and her mouth curved up into a small, winsome smile.

Maybe she didn't know what she was doing.

But maybe the only thing she needed to do today was walk downstairs, meet his eyes, and take it one step at a time.

The floorboards upstairs groaned and Smoke’s head snapped towards the sound. He rose slowly from his spot on the couch, keeping his eyes trained on Annie as she walked down the stairs with a hand on the banister. 

His gaze moved over her. 

She wore a deep mustard-colored blouse tucked into a navy blue ankle-length skirt and high button leather boots. Her purse was slung over her shoulder and her skin still looked warm from her bath.

“You look nice.” 

“Thank you.”

“Real nice.”

Annie’s cheeks warmed. 

“Ready?” he asked.

Annie smiled once she got to the bottom of the staircase. “I’m ready.” 

Aunt Della stood in the threshold between the kitchen and the front room, arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes went from Smoke to Annie and back. “Y’all don’t have too much fun out there,” she smirked. “And watch my baby,” she said to Smoke.

“I will,” Smoke said as he put his hat back. He opened the door for Annie and stepped back to turn to Aunt Della. “Always.” 

Aunt Della shook her head playfully and turned back to the kitchen, arms still folded but a grin on her lips. 

The ride over to Fourth Street was quick—just two short blocks. People in front of Chow’s Grocery were few and far between, but the sidewalk was far from empty. Outside, business moved as usual. A vendor restocked produce while a worker inspected their freshness. A few customers left the store with items wrapped tightly in brown paper while their children skipped alongside them with peppermint sticks and molasses chews in hand. Wagons trekked by slowly with mounds of cotton in the back, and the constant hammering of picks chipping ice blocks apart echoed in the street.

Smoke rounded the front of his truck to open the door for Annie. He held up a hand for her to balance herself on and took care to make sure she was steady once she stepped out. He followed behind her as they walked to the entrance, his hand on the small of her back as he held the door for her.

The inside held the sweet pungency of chicory in burlap sacks being hauled from the back and piled high by the windows. Charles and Bo Chow stood behind the front counter, Charles weighing something on the scale while Bo wrote an entry in the ledger. A smirk spread across Bo’s face when he saw Smoke and Annie at the door and clocked their closeness. He nodded at Smoke, then slid his eyes over to Annie and waved at her, drawn by the warmth that always seemed to radiate off her. 

“Baby,” Smoke started, exchanging a look with Bo. “I need to go holler at Bo real quick.”

“Okay,” Annie responded in that sweet, syrupy Louisiana drawl of hers.

She drifted across the store looking at her list, then made her way down one of the aisles in search of something else entirely. Smoke watched her go, watched her disappear, replayed it in his head. Then he turned to Bo. He was wiping down a display as Charles rang up a customer at the till.

“How you been, man?” Bo asked.

“Good, good,” Smoke said. He greeted him with a firm handshake, then pulled back to get a good look at him. “Damn, fatherhood huh?”

“I look that bad?”

“You look like shit.”

Bo laughed, the corner of his eyes crinkling with it. He looked tired, but content in a way that made his eyes twinkle. Like he was at peace despite it all. “Tired as hell. But I’m happy,” he nodded. “We happy.” 

“I’m happy for you, Bo.”

“Thanks man,” Bo replied, shaking Smoke’s shoulder. His eyes flicked over the store. “Della’s girl…that’s you?”

“You mean Annie,” Smoke corrected. 

Surprise overtook Bo’s face and he raised an eyebrow. A question. “Yeah, I mean Annie.”

“Yeah,” he answered. Firm. “She mine.”

Bo clapped Smoke on the shoulder, looking at him with a sense of shock and awe. “Oh shit,” he exclaimed, putting a fist in front of his mouth. “Look at you, fixin’ to be in my shoes soon, Smoke.”

Smoke shot him a look as he walked away, but something in him got quiet when the thought crossed his mind. Then it got warm.

Annie, a mother.

Him. 

A father.

He shook the thought away just as quickly when they became poisoned by thoughts of his own father. 

That felt like a metaphor for his own life— innocence being corrupted by its own blood.

The thought of being a father after putting his own in the ground felt devastatingly ironic, but hope flickered somewhere that maybe it could rewrite whatever went wrong with his own.

He shook his head and kept walking through the store, his legs carrying him past the aisles in slow, measured steps. He didn’t rush. He knew exactly where Annie was. 

Annie was still reeling. 

From him calling her baby. From the way he said it with that deep Mississippi drawl. Her cheeks were warm, skin flushed, and all of a sudden, everything felt hot despite the store being cool.

She stood in the aisle, humming under her breath, half bent over as she flipped through a wire basket on a shelf filled with seed packets. 

“Why she want this when we got it in the backyard?” She fussed. 

She shook her head, plucked the seed packet from the stack, and stood up. They dropped into her shopping basket as she walked further down the aisle. She picked up the small bag of feed and saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye. She ignored it and went about her business crossing items off her list when she heard it.

“Hey stranger.”

She turned around.

Reverend Carter stepped around the corner.

Red button up, brown tweed waistcoat, gold pocket watch hanging. And that silver signet ring that he rubbed with the pad of his thumb. She looked down in his shopping basket and her brows knit at the contents inside. 

Her lips tightened into a line, that same odd sense of familiarity crept up on her again and made her insides tumble with unease. 

“Hey.” She adjusted the strap of her purse around her shoulder.

A grin spread across his face. “How you been?”

“Good,” she nodded. “You?”

Carter nodded like he was choosing his words carefully. “I’ve been doin’ just fine,” he said slowly.

Annie shifted her weight. “So you’re back?”

“For a little.” 

She blinked. “Where you speakin’ at this time?”

“Church off Yazoo,” he said quickly.

She frowned for a second, then relaxed her face. 

Carter chuckled under his breath. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You stayin’ at the house?”

He smirked to the side then looked back. “I’m stayin’ with the pastor.”

“Makes sense.” 

“Yeah…makes perfect sense.”

His eyes dropped to her ileke beads, then back up. The glance was quick, barely even noticeable. But she did. The hand that wasn’t holding her basket rose to touch her beads protectively. 

Smoke noticed it too. 

He was at the top of the aisle, watching.

He saw Carter’s eyes dip to her chest. It was just a brief second, but the flicker made his chest tighten. 

He crossed the aisle in three long strides. He kept his eyes forward, locked on Carter who had sensed him looming and had since looked up from Annie. 

Smoke stepped behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist, the motion tucking her into his side. The gesture was smooth, natural, like her body had no business not being there all along.

Annie let out a quiet exhale. It was a short, controlled breath that made her shoulders relax.

Then she moved—but she didn’t move so much as melt. She relaxed back into Smoke’s touch, folding easily into him. His fingers curled around her hip, but his eyes didn’t leave Carter’s.

“Afternoon,” Carter said politely to Smoke.

Smoke just stared at him, his dark hooded eyes like black orbs piercing into the depths of whatever lay behind Carter’s. No nod. No acknowledgement. Just a cold, tactical assessment.

Carter blinked. “Y’all goin’ to the Harvest Party next month?”

“Yeah,” Annie replied quickly. She felt Smoke’s grip tighten on her hip.“We—”

“What business a preacher got at a juke joint?” Smoke asked, voice flat.

“I ain’t goin’,” Carter said, rubbing his signet ring. He looked down at it, then looked back up at them. “Just tryna make conversation.”

Smoke and Annie glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes. 

“Well,” he said, tipping his hat. “Y’all have a good rest of your day.” 

Then he walked away.

The bustle of Chow’s went on around them but they didn’t hear it— like they only existed now in their own little bubble. Then Smoke dipped his head to her ear and pressed his lips there.

Three short kisses. Soft despite the intensity of the feeling behind them. Warm, from the closeness and something else entirely. They felt less like a kiss and more like a claim.

One right behind the ear, one lower on the skin right above the neck, and one right on the shell. His nose nuzzled there for a second before he opened his mouth and hummed right into her ear. Low, deep, right into the part of her ear that made his voice vibrate right down her spine. 

“You good?” 

“Mhmm,” she hummed.

She looked over her shoulder at him and his eyes were closed at the sound of her voice. She stroked his beard and his eyes opened to find hers darker. Her fingers grazed the shell of his ear. A gentle touch that made him fight off a shiver. 

“Behave,” he said, squeezing her hip gently.

Annie grinned. She turned away from his grasp and slinked out of the aisle like nothing happened. Then she glanced over her shoulder at him once more to bat her eyes at him before slipping completely out of his sight. Smoke stood there watching her walk away, his body still warm from where she rested against it. He flexed his hands at his sides to subdue the fire she stoked in him, then followed behind her.

Outside, the air smelled like spice and the bite of the chilly November air. Annie adjusted the paper-wrapped bundle from Chow’s against her hip and slipped it into her purse. Smoke stepped out behind her with the chicken feed sack tucked under his arm and the rest of Aunt Della’s order in his other hand like it weighed nothing. He watched a shiver run down Annie’s spine that she tried to hide.

“Cold?”

“A little.”

“Here.”

Smoke shrugged off his jacket and laid it over Annie’s shoulders as they walked towards his truck. The smell wafting from King’s Tamales Stand next door stopped Annie in her tracks as a man working the booth shouted his prices to folks passing by and wrapped hot tamales in paper. Warm masa, spice, meat steamed softly inside of corn husks. Steam curled up from a heavy pot blackened by use and hit the inside of the tin roof of the stand that had a crooked hand-painted sign attached to the front.

Smoke glanced at Annie. “Hungry?” 

Annie looked at him with those wide brown eyes of hers. Then her stomach answered before she got the chance. She scoffed, looking down at it like it betrayed her thoughts, then back up at Smoke. 

Smoke’s mouth twitched. “Come on.” He shifted the sack higher beneath his arm and stepped towards the stand. “How many you want?” 

“One.”

“Just one?”

Smoke looked towards the tamale man. “We’ll take four.”

Annie blinked. “Four?”

Smoke looked back at Annie. “I’m hungry, too.” 

The man behind the stand grinned like he’d seen this before. “Two for the gentleman, one for the lady now, and one for when she gets hungry later.”

“Exactly,” Smoke agreed.

Annie scoffed, looking away before a smile broke out on her face.

“Hot?” the man asked.

Smoke looked back at Annie again. She lifted her chin, offended despite herself. “Hot.”

Smoke looked back to the grinning man and nodded once. “Hot.”

“You think I wouldn’t like hot?”

“I didn’t know that’s why I asked.”

“You forget where I’m from?”

“I remember.”

The tamales came wrapped in paper, steam rising as the man passed them over to Smoke. He paid, coins dropping clean in the man’s palm. “Enjoy,” he said as they turned down the sidewalk. 

They walked a little ways down the side of the building, stopping by a patch of shade where the street noise softened around them. Smoke set Aunt Della’s things carefully by his feet, then handed Annie her tamales. He unwrapped his own with easy hands. Annie watched him without meaning to. The way he carefully peeled back the husk. The way the steam curled around his fingers. The way he took the first bite and let it sit in his mouth before he started chewing. He chewed once, twice, then nodded faintly to himself. 

“That good?”

“Mhmm.” He took another bite. 

Annie unwrapped hers, holding it carefully between her fingers as the heat bled through the paper. The first bite was soft and smoky. The cornmeal was tender, but not enough to fall through her fingers. The meat was rich with salt, pepper, and something earthy underneath. She chewed thoughtfully, her mouth analyzing every flavor. Smoke was already on his second tamale, but was chewing slower now, watching her. 

“What?” she asked.

“You makin’ a face.”

“I’m thinkin’.”

Smoke’s brows knit together. “About a tamale?”

“Mhmm.”

His mouth curved. “That so?”

“Absolutely.”

She took another bite, slower this time. “It’s good.”

Smoke nodded but kept his eyes trained on her for the—

“But.”

“I knew it.”

Annie smiled faintly. “It could use a lil’ more depth.”

“Depth?”

She nodded. “Depth.”

Smoke looked down at his half-eaten tamale then back up at Annie. “It’s a tamale.”

“And?”

Smoke looked amused now. He tilted his head. “What would you do to it?”

Annie shifted her weight. “I’d give it somethin’ to round out the pepper,” she said. “So it don’t just sit on top.”

Smoke just looked at her. “You always this particular?”

“With food? Yes.”

“And everything else?”

Annie opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked down at her tamale, then back at him. And when she spoke, her words came out softer than she expected them. “I know what I like.”

Smoke’s gaze hadn’t left her. “Good.” He took another bite, slowly. The cornmeal broke apart clean between his teeth. A long chunk of saucy meat landed on his tongue and he slurped it down his mouth without breaking eye contact.

“You starin’.”

Annie blinked. “Am not.”

“What you lookin’ at then?”

“You got somethin’ on your face.”

He ran a hand through his beard. “For real?” 

“It’s gone now.”

He couldn’t ignore the mirth in her eyes. She looked away, unwrapping the last tamale with more attention than it needed. The corner of Smoke’s mouth lifted. 

“Where I’m from, folks put more life into they food,” she said, turning back to him.

“More life?”

“Yep.”

“What that mean?”

“It means…” she said, looking towards the street like she could find the words there. “Food should taste like somebody remembered where they came from when they made it.”

“You sayin’ the people who made this…forgot where they came from?”

“No.” She smiled into her food. “They just knew wherever they was goin’ didn’t like it hot!”

Smoke huffed a laugh. Fourth Street moved around them, unconcerned. And the tension from inside of Chow’s softened into something easier. Something with steam, spice, and a little more kick. 

“I’ll make sure to let King know.”

Annie swatted his chest. “Smoke, don’t you dare!” 

When they were done eating, Smoke gathered Aunt Della’s order again and Annie threw the empty wrappers into a nearby waste barrel. She wiped her fingers against her handkerchief, the taste of pepper and cornmeal still heavy on her tongue. 

They left their items from Chow’s locked in Smoke’s truck, which he left in front of the grocery store at Annie’s insistence. Annie enjoyed the scenery as they walked leisurely towards the next stop on her list of errands. Smoke enjoyed the scenery too— her. Her hair, tucked into a thick bun, had tendrils hanging down the sides of her face that blew with the wind. One kept sticking to the shell of her ear, tickling her when it hit just right. The beads tucked under the neckline of her dress rattled if she moved a certain way. And she still had his jacket on to shield her from the wind. The sight of her walking around with his suit jacket draped over her shoulders did something to him that he couldn’t explain and didn’t want to. 

They neared the crossroad where Fourth Street met Issaquena, the street lined with shops for personal and grooming services. Luella’s Dressing Room & Alterations, Ritzy’s Beauty Salon, Brown’s Barbershop, and others sat along a row of close-knit brick and wooden storefronts with mended awnings and handmade signs.

The noise of the street got louder as they approached the block where Luella’s and Ritzy’s stood across from the barbershop. Or maybe it was just the noise in Annie’s head. She walked closest to the sidewalk with Smoke right beside her, watching her closely. His hand would find her lower back if he saw her steps falter or slow. They dodged some kids roughhousing, a stand or a low hanging sign, a crack in the sidewalk.

The area in front of the barbershop was full of men standing on lampposts smoking cigarettes, people watching, and chatting each other up. Suspenders loose or off, hats sitting low, legs bent, feet on the brick barbershop building while they waited their turn. The striped pole outside spun slowly with the wind. The smell of shaving soap, pomade, and hot comb smoke drifted upwards from the barbershop and the beauty salon across the street. The men outside let their eyes wander when Annie approached them on the sidewalk— and froze when they saw Smoke right next to her. Conversations paused, necks craned slowly. Smoke guided her through the crowd that parted for them with his hand at her back. The men acknowledged him, some giving him daps, others giving a firm nod. Some said a few polite words, tipping their hats and greeting them both as they walked by. But Smoke kept his hands on Annie. Always on her. 

Sunflower Music was painted in gold lettering on a black wooden sign that hung perpendicular to the sidewalk. The awning was a muted red, the color faded by the sun and wear, and stuck out of a narrow brick storefront with tall display windows in the front. Folks walking by would just stop and stare at what was inside— sheet music, instruments, phonographs, a lone Columbia Graphophone. Stacks of records displayed like treasure. Once the shop bell guided them through the door, the smell of paper, varnished wood, and cigars turned the crisp winter air to something with more bite. The space was long and spread out. Wooden floors. Pressed-tin ceiling. Ceiling fans turning slowly overhead. Most of the displays were spread out across the walls except a few items that were secured behind glass cases and oak cabinets shined to a mirror finish. 

A musician tested out strings by the wall where the instruments were displayed. A few church mothers Annie recognized from First Baptist Missionary were flipping carefully through church hymn sheet music displayed in stands on the other side of the shop. 

The owner stood by one of many phonographs with a record in his hands. He placed it in one, cranked the machine, and dropped the needle, all in one smooth, practiced motion. The customer standing next to him waited for the beat to drop. The record spun, the sound cracked slightly, then the smooth sound of a brass band spread throughout the room. Annie paused. The customer bopped his head to the fast-paced, soulful music coming from the phonograph speakers. 

Then the cornet solo hit.

Annie stilled entirely. 

The sound of conversation faded away, even the pointed looks of the church mothers who recognized her walking hand-in-hand with Smoke, she paid no mind. The familiarity of the music made her chest twist painfully. It sounded like home. Felt like it too. Like street musicians, second line parades, and rain hitting tin roofs during summer storms. 

“Annie?” he asked, voice low. He touched the small of her back.

Once she caught her breath, she whispered, “Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied, blinking back the tear that threatened to drop from her left eye. “Just reminds me of home.” She blinked and she could see it clearly. A rickety old shack. The fierce, stubborn, woman who lived inside who felt more like a spirit than a memory. “My great-grandmama,” she said a little softer. “Before she passed…she loved listening to the cornet. I don’t know why but that was the only instrument that made her face light up no matter how out of it she was.”

Smoke rubbed her lower back and they moved deeper in the store but Annie felt like she was walking through water. They ended up by the stack of records which stood close to the instruments along the wall. 

“That’s the thing about music,” he said. “It has a way of bringin’ you back to somebody, even after they long gone.”

Annie exhaled sharply. She went through the Vaudeville records but she wasn’t really looking. Smoke stood by her side, facing her, waiting. 

“We lost her to the hurricane. Back in ‘15.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“She wouldn’t leave.” Her voice cracked. 

“What you mean?”

Annie took a deep breath.

“She lived deep in the bayou. Water filled with gators,” she chuckled, shaking her head. “She knew the storm was comin’ before it did. Said if the water’s fixin’ to take her she ain’t gon’ run.” 

Annie looked towards the window like the memory called her there for some reason. “She said she had somebody on the other side waitin’ on her.” 

Smoke nodded once, eyes patient. “You know who?”

“No,” she said. “She was sold downriver ‘fo she could remember anyone.”

“Damn,” Smoke whispered. 

She smiled. It was faint, like it was pushing through the grief. “She was alone her whole life…’til she started having babies.”

“How many?”

“Fourteen.”

Smoke whistled low.

Annie hummed. “She was somethin’ else.”

The memory of her great-grandmother flashed quickly through her mind like a blur. Eyes that looked different…older than her age, and much younger at the same time. Her frail hands dragging a stick through swamp mud, leaving marks that looked less drawn than remembered.

“What was her name?”

Annie blinked and it was gone. Her hand rose to her ileke beads again, then she looked up at Smoke with the softest, widest, brown eyes, and the tenderness in them made him sigh. 

“Antoinette,” she said finally. Like the name pulled something out of her that made her hesitate to say it out loud.

Smoke rubbed her shoulder, pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. 

Annie put a hand on his chest, leaning into his touch. 

They let the silence sit between them for a few moments. Let the quiet ache until it dulled into something easier to move on from.

“Anyway,” she said finally, pulling herself together. “Let’s get what I came here for.” Her fingers walked the records in search of the ragtime one Aunt Della wanted.

“What kinda music they listen to, over there in France?”

“They liked a lot of the stuff we brought over.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Our regiment had a band and everything.” 

“Were you in it?” She teased.

His mouth twitched. “Nah.” 

The musician testing out guitars hit a chord with a slider that made Smoke’s hand tap once against the record box before he caught himself. He looked at Annie and she was already looking at him. 

“What?” he asked.

Annie arched her brow. “You like that?”

“It’s nice.”

“Why?”

Smoke exhaled. “It’s slow. Got a little ache to it.”

Annie chuckled low.

The guitar player took his slider off and played something a little louder, a little faster, a deep Blues riff.

“You like this one, too?” 

“This more Stack’s style.”

“Mmmhmmm.”

“What?”

“It’s more Stack’s style but your hand been tappin’ away since he started playin’.” 

Smoke looked down at his hand then back to Annie. “Don’t mean I can’t enjoy it.”

“You right,” she smirked. “But you tappin’ along like you know this song by heart.”

“I do.” 

Annie frowned. “From where?”

“My daddy.” He paused. Looked down. Sighed. “He played the guitar.”

“Oh,” she mouthed. She heard something in his words even though his voice was steady. Pain. Shame. Guilt. Loss. Whatever it was, it weighed heavy.

His jaw tightened. “Back then…” he drifted off. “The music felt kinder than the man.” His eyes found her again.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

Annie rubbed his arm, then pulled it around her. The gesture made his shoulders relax, and she wrapped her arms around his chest. “Elijah,” she whispered up to him.

His name on her lips felt as warm as her hand on his chest. 

“Hmm,” he answered, looking off into the distance.

She rubbed his back. “You alright?” she asked quietly.

He looked down at her, then wrapped his arms around her tighter. 

“Yeah,” he said into her hair. He inhaled her scent—jasmine, rosewater, and vanilla.

Annie didn't push. Just let him stay in the moment a little longer, with her to hold onto.

Across the room, one of the church mothers cleared her throat entirely too loud, and just like that the tenderness snapped. Smoke and Annie both frowned, then looked over with expectant gazes. One cold, one more curious but still annoyed. The church mother’s mouth snapped shut and she scoffed, turning back around. Smoke and Annie both laughed as they walked towards the register, his arm around her shoulder.

“I’ma get an earful on Sunday ‘cause of you,” Annie joked, lacing her fingers with the ones hanging over her shoulder.

“They need to mind they own business,” Smoke said. Loudly. Right towards where they were congregating off to the side by the sheet music.

Their heads snapped over immediately.

Annie swatted his chest.

“What?”

“Lord,” she mumbled. “You was just tellin’ me to behave and you out here talkin’ crazy.”

“Tell the truth, shame the devil. Ain’t that what they say?”

“Smoke!” She tried swatting at him again. This time he caught her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. Annie rolled her eyes but she couldn’t stop a grin from spreading on her face.

“Nuh-uh,” his voice dropped low, right by her ear again. “You know my name.”

Her breath hitched.

“Mhmm,” he drawled.

They stepped to the register. 

“Find everything you were lookin’ for?” The clerk asked. 

The words sat between them. Smoke looked at Annie.

“Yeah,” Annie said. “Just this.”

“This a good record,” he remarked. “Classic.” He set the W.C. Handy record in its sleeve, then wrapped it twice in newspaper.

Annie listened.

“His band still play around town, in Tutwiler, and down in Mound Bayou.”

Smoke’s jaw clenched, then unclenched. Annie saw it. Saved it for later.

“Bayou?” she asked.

“Mound Bayou. All black town, just a little ways south of here,” the clerk remarked. 

Annie nodded curiously.

The clerk slipped the record in a brown paper bag. “That’ll be 75 cent.” 

Smoke had it in the man’s hand before Annie could pull out her pocketbook. He watched her hesitate and shot her a look that dared her to pull her own money out. That’s all she needed to see to keep her hand right where it was— wrapped tightly in his. 

Smoke kissed her hand again before grabbing the bag.

“Y’all have a nice day,” the clerk said.

They turned to leave a few minutes later, bags between them as they fell in step beside each other. They didn’t talk much, but their hands stayed laced, like they both needed to touch the piece of themselves they just shared. When they stepped out of the building and the noise of the street came back, the moment didn’t disappear. It just followed them out into the cold. The chilly air whipped wildly across their faces, but it did nothing to cool the heat rising between them, or the thrum that sat underneath all the tension.

A month went by, but not quietly.

The air got colder. November flew by like a gust of wind off the gulf where Annie used to catch crabs with her brothers when she was a little girl. The house got louder. Out of towners, people trying to get up North before the snow up there delayed the trains. Blackbird got busier. Annie kept storing her money in the tea tin that fit perfectly under the floorboard in her room. Soon she’d have to get a bigger one, she thought to herself. And find another hiding place.

Annie’s lessons with Aunt Della continued behind padlocked doors. 

Dress fittings at Luella’s became less frequent as her Harvest Party look came together. 

Smoke got busy, too. Quiet meetings on the outskirts of town. Trips to Memphis and business at Moon Lake. He came around the boarding house even more. This time he didn’t need to feign usefulness.

Meetings under the magnolia tree became their ritual. Every Sunday when the afternoon stretched its arms out into evening he’d come around back. Like clockwork, he’d show up, the side fence creaking open before he stepped through. They’d sit outside and talk until the mosquitos got too bad.

It became a place where they shared pieces of themselves. 

A place where ordinary conversation became sacred. 

Nellie, Pearline and Gigi squealed when she finally told them about Smoke. And time with them became more frequent too — nights, afternoons, or mornings in town before the roads got too crowded. 

As long as it didn’t touch Sunday night. 

Those belonged to Smoke.

“Louisiana,” Gigi started. Casual, like she was just asking about the weather. “You ain’t mounted that horse yet?” 

The words cut through the laughter, the sound of peas dropping in a bowl, even the phonograph that played soft jazz from the corner. Somebody choked mid-chuckle. Everybody turned to look at Annie, then froze. Three sets of eyes stared at her with a glittering curiosity that made her palms feel clammy in that moment. Gigi tapped her foot on the floor impatiently. Pearline fiddled with her hands. Nellie looked at Annie like she could read the answer in her face. But Annie wasn’t bothered. In fact, she was a little amused. This wasn’t a new question.

The four of them were sitting around the kitchen table after congregating at Nellie's house following their weekday bible study. Nellie’s mother took one long look at the four of them lounging around the front room and put them to work. She set a bowl and some peas on the kitchen table and walked out the room without another word. A pot of greens soaked on the counter. Pepper and onion sat chopped in a cast iron for later. Flour still sat in the cracks of the table from breakfast. 

She sighed softly. “No.” 

“Why not?” 

“She said she ain’t ready, y’all,” Pearline chimed in for her. “She say this every time y’all ask this question.” Then quieter. “It ain’t always like what them singers be goin’ on about.”

“Maybe not for you,” Gigi rebutted. “But you ain’t mountin’ a stallion.”

“More like a donkey,” Nellie joked.

Annie snorted. Even Pearline laughed under her breath. 

“So y’all just been kissin’?” Gigi probed.

“Mhmm.”

“You let him…touch you?” The question came from Nellie.

Her body flushed warm at the thought. Annie looked over to Nellie. “No.”

“Shame,” she sighed. “He look like he know what to do with his hands.” 

“Mhmm,” Gigi agreed.

“He should know,” Pearline said matter-of-factly. “Him and his brother done ran through half the town.”

“More than half,” Nellie muttered.

Annie sighed. Rolled her eyes.

“Stack more than Smoke,” Nellie confirmed. 

“Don’t I know it,” Annie replied.

“I heard Stack got a mean appetite,” Gigi said slyly.

That made Pearline gasp. “Gigi!” 

“What?” Gigi asked incredulously. 

“Please,” Pearline insisted in a hushed tone.

Annie shook her head. “Oh my God,” she protested. “I don’t need to hear this about my man’s brother.”

“Your maaaan,” Pearline teased playfully. Annie smiled.

“I heard Smoke manhood so big, it touches your soul,” Nellie said.

Annie’s head turned towards Nellie. “Who told you that?”

Nellie shrugged. “Is it true?” 

Annie shrugged.

“Every woman in town want a piece of them twins, I’m just surprised you ain’t took a bite yet.” 

“Not even a nibble?” Gigi asked. She looked shocked.

Annie chuckled low. “Not even a nibble.”

“But you seen it, though? Felt it? Backed up on him and let it poke you a little?”

“No,” she said. “I ain’t seen it.”

“But you felt it.” Gigi’s eyes grew wide. “It’s big ain’t it?” 

“He walk around like it’s big,” Nellie said plainly.

The room exploded with laughter, squeals, and giggles. Annie fumbled with a pea. 

“What’s big?” A voice rang out from the other room.

Nellie froze, then groaned and rolled her eyes when she realized who was talking.

“Awww don’t sound too happy to see me lil’ sis,” she continued. She stepped into the kitchen, t-strap heels clacking against the floorboards. Nice dress, nicer stockings, hair styled differently than Annie had seen in Clarksdale or New Orleans. Baby on her hip and another child at her waist, vice grip on his shirt like she was trying to keep him from running off or touching something he wasn’t supposed to.

Nellie rolled her eyes again and kept on shelling peas. “Hey Verity,” she said flatly. She looked up and her eyes softened when she saw her niece and nephew. “Look at how big you are!” she exclaimed. 

“Aunt Nellie!” 

Verity released the little boy and he ran over to give his aunt a hug. She adjusted her grip on her daughter, bouncing the babbling toddler on her hip. 

“Baby,” Verity said calmly with that mom warning underneath, “gon’ and help your daddy outside.”

The little boy rushed out the front door, leaving just the girls in an awkward silence before they quickly changed the subject. 

“Hey Verity,” Gigi and Pearline said together. Verity greeted them back, staring curiously at the stranger sitting at her mother’s kitchen table. 

“Verity,” Nellie started. “This is Annie, she’s new, from Louisiana. Annie, this is my sister Verity. She’s in town from Chicago.” 

Annie wiped off her hands on her apron and held out her hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, Verity.”

“Nice to meet you too, Verity. My goodness, you’re so pretty.” 

“Thank you,” Annie beamed.

Verity looked around the room. At each woman’s face individually. “What was y’all in here talkin’ about?” She asked like she’d already heard too much.

“Nothing,” Nellie said firmly.

Verity’s eyes narrowed.

“Men,” Gigi admitted bluntly.

Nellie shot her a look, to which she just shrugged and kept shelling her peas.

“What about ‘em?” Verity asked as her baby grabbed the collar of her dress. She untangled her fingers carefully while waiting for someone to say something.

“Annie here got herself a suitor already,” Nellie called out. “Smoke Moore.”

The look on Verity’s face said that she was busy putting a name to a face before it finally clicked. “Oh, one of the twins!” She wiped drool off her baby’s lips before it dripped on her clothes. “So they both came back from the war,” she remarked. “That’s good.”

Nellie rolled her eyes. “She done forgot about everybody she grew up with.” 

“Did not! They’re both so much younger than me.”

“You’re only 27.”

“And I been in Chicago for the past seven years,” she quipped. “How old are they now?”

“21,” Gigi answered.

“Babies,” she whispered, pinching her daughter’s cheek.

“Anyway, do you mind? Us babies,” Nellie said sarcastically, “tryna talk here. About somethin’ you don’t need to know nothin’ about.”  

Verity sighed. She was older, but still young enough to remember being where they were. Young and unmarried. Always being in a position to be told or met with judgment. Mostly from the women closest to her. 

She’d moved to Chicago and was met with a different type of perspective. The social scene was different, much different, probably something that’d make her mother clutch her pearls if she heard the lasciviousness that was considered normal, and that she had a taste of it before she met her husband. 

So, she knew all about flirtation and temptation. About men who only knew how to talk pretty, men who knew how to be tender, and men who confused possession with care. And behind the venom in her words, she could hear something more vulnerable in her little sister’s tone. So, she pulled up a chair at the table, put her baby between her legs, and went to work shelling peas. They worked together in silence for a while. Nothing except the occasional sigh, the sound of the baby hitting the table with her palms, and the house creaking and settling around them.

“Anyone else seein’ anybody new?” Verity asked.

Nobody replied. The air in the tiny kitchen held an uncomfortable type of tension. But it wasn’t anything unique. It was generational. A hesitance that usually exists in the gap between women just becoming and women who’d already been in their shoes. 

“How’s your husband, Pea?” 

Pearline cleared her throat. “He good,” she responded. She kept her head down while Verity looked at her knowingly. 

The front door practically flew open with all the energy of a hyper five-year-old boy. He took his shoes off by the door then ran down the hallway. 

Another person stepped in. His steps were much slower, but his energy was just as powerful in a measured, grown man kind of way. All six heads in the kitchen turned at once. Skin the color of chestnuts, bulky shoulders, broad chest, piercing light brown eyes that could stop a woman mid-sentence. He took off his hat to reveal a head full of low-cut slicked down hair. His three-piece suit matched the sharpness of Verity’s dress like a lid to a pot. He flashed a smile and damn near every woman at the table gulped hard. 

He waved his hand to greet everyone. “Hey y’all.” His voice was deep and gruff. A hint of southern twang in it, like the South had somehow rubbed off on him but he wasn’t born and bred here. 

“Hey,” everybody said back. 

Verity smiled, clearly unshaken by his presence because this was her husband. 

“Can you take the baby? She gettin’ fussy and I’m tryna help the girls with supper.”

“Sure.” He crossed the room to the kitchen and planted a kiss on her waiting forehead, then grabbed his daughter from her lap. 

“Thank you.”

“Hey sugar plum,” he cooed. He spoke softly to his daughter. She giggled and rested her head in the crook of his neck as he took her down the hallway.

Once they heard the click of a door shutting in the distance, the kitchen could finally exhale.

“That’s your husband?” Gigi asked breathlessly, looking towards the hallway like she needed him to reappear out of thin air. “Girl he is too fine!”

Verity grinned. “That’s my man,” she said proudly.

“Where you find him at?” Gigi continued. “And do he have any brothers?”

Annie kept her thoughts to herself as she snapped a pea under her thumb. While they sized him up her thoughts drifted over to Smoke. How his smile was easy when he showed it. How he didn’t show it to anybody but her. The way he’d walk in and suck the air out the room. The way his muscles filled out his clothing. Her breath sped up at the thought. She felt flushed. Hot all of a sudden, all over again.

Verity laughed at Gigi’s remarks and shook her head. “He do, but he’s the only good apple in the bunch.”

“Lord,” Annie chuckled.

Verity looked over at her expectantly.

“I got nothin’ but brothers,” she explained. “Got one, maybe two of them decent. The rest ain’t got the sense God gave a goose.” 

Everyone at the table laughed, the tension easing into something more relaxed. 

“It would take God and all his disciples to drill some decency into ‘em,” Pearline let slip out.

“Pearlie!” Nellie gasped at the revelation. Sweet little Pearline with her lace gloves, quiet eyes and her perfect posture like she was afraid that if she didn’t stand up perfectly straight someone would come behind her with a ruler to put her back in line. 

She shrugged casually, clearly pleased with herself. 

“Gigi,” Annie kept on shelling peas. “You ever see Will again?”

Gigi made a sound like she was vomiting and Annie broke out in laughter. 

“Verity,” she looked at her. “This man had the worst smelling feet I’ve ever smelled in my life!”

“Not smelly feet.”

“A horse’s hoof smells better than that man’s feet,” she grimaced. “Besides,” she smirked like her face held a secret she’d been dying to tell. Her voice got low. “I’ve been keepin’ company with Rodney again.”

“Not surprised,” Nellie mumbled.

“Who’s Rodney?” Annie asked.

Nellie answered for her. “Just the man she been stuck on since we was kids.”

“Ohh….” 

“I ain’t stuck. He’s just familiar.”

“More like that hmmhmm” she gave the table a knowing look, “is familiar.”

“Hush!” Gigi swatted Nellie’s shoulder. “It’s reliable.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with goin’ back to an ol’ reliable.” Annie whipped her head around. The voice came from Verity.

“That’s right,” Gigi agreed smugly.

“Annie ain’t even done nothin’ with that twin of hers yet.” 

Annie rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”

“Why not?” Verity asked.

She huffed a small breath out her nose. “Just waitin’ for the right time.” 

“You waitin’ til the party huh?” Gigi asked with a grin. “All that liquor runnin’ through you will loosen you right on up,” she teased.

Annie shook her head, laughing.

Pearline spoke up quietly. “Don’t let the liquor make you do anything you don’t wanna do.”

“I ain’t,” Annie said.

“You keep it for yourself until you good and ready to give it away.”

“Exactly,” Pearline said. “And if he really cares, he won’t mind. Not one bit.”

“My husband waited a whole year for me to let him in. Didn’t pressure me. Didn’t make me feel bad. Didn’t make it ‘bout his needs,” Verity recalled. “What matters is what he does when wantin’ you, means he gotta take it slow.”

Her words landed. 

“Do he know?” Her voice was small. Pearline’s. “That you a virgin?”

Annie exhaled sharply. “I ain’t told him,” she confessed. 

Pearline spoke again. “And…he ain’t tried nothin’?” 

“We ain’t been alone like that,” she said softly while fumbling with the hem of her apron. “And I ain’t found the right time to tell him yet.”

“He gon’ wear you out once he get his hands on you,” Gigi said dramatically. “You know that right?”

“I believe it.” And she did.

“Whew, chile,” Nellie drawled. “I’ma say a prayer for you. And for your—” 

“Eleanor!” Verity snapped.

Annie snorted.

Verity looked over at Annie, eyes warm. “You’ll find the right time,” she assured.

The kitchen was a little quieter after that. Just the sound of knuckles cracking, shells snapping open, peas hitting the bottom of the bowl, throaty jazz still coming from the corner. And a glaring question that hummed underneath the noise. 

“Do you want to…you know, with him?” Pearline asked.

Annie stopped shelling for a moment and looked to the side to collect the whirlwind of thoughts that spun around in her head. 

Her and Smoke had been having outings. Not running into each other by chance, not catching a glimpse across the sidewalk. Together. In public. On purpose. It was mostly whatever it was she wanted to do. Smoke liked it that way.

They tucked into their own little routine as what was blossoming between them slowly became familiar. Since her conversation with Aunt Della she hadn’t taken the time to sit down and think about what exactly it was or where it was going to go. All she knew is that in this new rhythm with him…it felt right. 

He’d touch her gently. Carefully. Like he was holding onto something fragile. But even the slightest contact sent shivers down her spine. 

A hand at the small of her back.

He’d lean in close when he needed to say something to her. Always did.

But sometimes he’d drop his mouth right by her ear just to hear her gasp under her breath.

He’d wrap his hands around her waist and she swore she forgot how to breathe. 

But she didn’t move away.

His desire for her was palpable. 

He was hungry. 

She could see it in his eyes and feel it in his restraint. 

But he was tender with her, like he was dousing his own desire until she was ready to cross that bridge, and that ignited her curiosity for more like a spark lit in a dry room.

She knew she was in trouble when she started to notice the absence of certain things. His closeness. His touch. The feeling that came from it.

She thought about his mouth a lot. What it felt like pressed against hers. The way his tongue would trace the seam of her lips like a man standing at a threshold, waiting to be invited in. 

Her thoughts usually stopped there because they were too overwhelming. 

Kissing wasn’t new to her. Desire wasn’t either. Not entirely. 

She’d heard things. Sensed them. She wasn’t naive in an ignorant way. 

But as the baby of the family, and the only girl, she’d been crowded. She was always loved and protected. But love and protection always felt like being watched and managed by people who assumed they knew what was best for her.  

Then Smoke came along. He unsettled her because he didn’t hover. He waited. With his quiet attention and something deeper that sat underneath the surface. 

He listened.

He chose her. 

He made space for her to choose herself. 

And for a girl who spent her whole life being guarded, space felt dangerous. 

It felt like freedom. 

Freedom to be held but not held back.

She wanted to step into it, the new version of herself that was emerging from sheltered beginnings.

Craved it.

Craved him.

Badly. 

Even though she didn't fully know what that meant, she wanted to be close. Wanted to experience everything that came along with that closeness.

And it wasn’t just a physical thing. It was a primal, desperate ache that rose from the depths and swept through her body, hitting every single nerve ending along the way.

She even started dreaming about him. It was always the same one. She’d wake up in a mess of her own making—nightgown clinging to her curves, sheets damp. Then she’d spend the rest of the day feeling a dizzying pulse between her legs, like her heart had found a new home there.

It was like his soul had floated to hers while she was sleeping, and wanted to make sure she was ready for the day she finally just...let go. 

He didn’t need to know what was said.

Didn’t even need to know who said it.

Smoke drove with both hands on the wheel, grip steady on the leather. The door of the Colored schoolhouse swung open in its hinges before fitting into its frame, and he walked through the threshold with a quiet determination. He wasn’t there to argue. He was there to be clear; to shut an old door he never meant to leave cracked open in the first place.

The kids were long gone. All that remained was the ghost of their feet shuffling against the floorboards and the echo of high-pitched laughter. And her. She sat at the desk at the front of the classroom with a stack of papers and a thick red pencil, making straight lines across words with clean, even strokes, and just the right amount of pressure. 

Sunlight cut across the empty desks, catching the chalk dust that still hovered in the air. The classroom was quiet, but it wasn’t empty. History, resentment, and two different versions of the truth hung between the two of them like a physical weight that made the room feel smaller. It pressed against the walls and the lone window on the side of the building like it could feel the tension brewing and wanted out.

Smoke cleared his throat. 

She scoffed. A quiet, annoyed expulsion of breath. Then she looked up, and when her eyes met his they held his gaze, then went up and down his form slowly. Canvassing, maybe. Taking in the seriousness in his posture. Taking notice of the cold calm he carried.

“Demetria.” Smoke’s voice was cold too, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. It usually was. But this kind of cold was more resolve than anything. 

“Smoke,” she said back. 

“We need to talk.”

“Well, hello to you too,” she said sharply.

“Hey,” he said. “We need to talk,” he repeated, tone flat.

She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “About?” she asked with a challenge in her tone.

“Us.”

The word made her lean forward on her elbows. 

“I just came to say we’re done. For good this time,” he said firmly. He opened his mouth, then closed it, like he had something more to say but decided against it. 

“That’s it?” The look on her face went from amusement to surprise to something else in the span of a few seconds. “That’s all you have to say to me?”

“I’m sorry it took so long for me to say out loud. I should have said it sooner. That’s on me. But we been done a while. You know that.”

“You always did think silence was kinder than the truth,” she fired back. 

Smoke hung his head. Because she wasn’t wrong. Her anger, he could take on the chest. He at least owed her that. 

“Look, I don’t know what’s been said or who you been sayin’ it to,” he started. “But whatever’s been said, I’m here to put it to rest.” 

Something flashed across her face and left just as quickly. Recognition. And the sinking feeling of dread. “You must got somebody you care about a whole lot, to come all the way over here just so you could say it plain,” she said. “She know about me?” 

“I’m sayin’ it now,” he said, voice low. 

“Does she know about me?” She asked again. A little louder this time.

Smoke’s jaw ticked. 

“So there is somebody else,” she said carefully.

Smoke didn’t answer. 

She studied his face for anything— regret, sadness, anything. She closed her eyes to keep her composure and shook her head like it would somehow make the sting go away. It didn’t. But she put her dignity back on anyway.

“Well,” she said, almost breathless. “There it is.”

Smoke nodded once. Demetria looked at him like she couldn’t recognize the shape of the man standing in front of her anymore, then she went back to her papers with the same measured carefulness she always used. The force of her pen made the paper crackle on the desk. Her corrections felt more personal now. Like she was trying to cross him out of her life one red line at a time.

“You take care.”

“Or not,” she snapped.

Smoke nodded like he accepted the ire, then he turned towards the entrance. He walked into the cool Mississippi air outside and away from the tension that sat between them, ready to snap like a rubber band pulled taut. And when he closed the door to the schoolhouse behind him, he made sure it shut all the way.

“Mwen kontan.” 

She said it in such a sultry, whispery tone. Not on purpose, that’s just how Annie’s voice sounded to Smoke. Alluring and fragrant, like the scent of the magnolia blossoms scattered around them on the ground. 

It was an early Sunday evening in November. The magnolia tree that stood tall on the side of the boarding house was changing. Its delicate, white petals drifted loose from the branches overhead and fell soft into the yard like the last bit of summer was shedding itself, piece by piece.

They sat on her patchwork quilt under the remaining shade of the tree. Annie had her knees tucked beneath her, her new sketchbook open on her lap. Smoke was across from her, one knee up, forearm casually resting over it. His eyes were anything but casual, narrowed with a fierce concentration. A lantern sat close by the edge of the quilt. Its flame burned low and steady, painting gold shadows over the pages of Annie’s sketchbook and the tips of her fingers.

“Hold on,” Smoke fussed. “You gotta say it slower.” 

Annie chuckled. “Mweh con-tan,” she sounded out slowly.

Smoke was staring at her lips, trying to mimic the way she formed the words when she spoke. She was amused by his focus. Impressed. He had it in everything he did. That bitter resolve. 

“What that mean?” 

“It means I’m happy.”

“Mwen-kun-tin,” he tried.

Annie winced. “Close, but…just try it again,” she urged.

“No,” Smoke said flatly.

“Why not?”

“I said it just how you said it.”

“No,” Annie shook her head. “You didn’t.” 

Smoke’s mouth twitched. He looked away before it could fully turn into a smile. “Sounded close enough to me,” he grumbled. 

“Mweh con-tan,” she said slower.

“Mwen kun-tan,” he repeated.

Annie bit the inside of her cheek. He was doing it on purpose, with his stubborn self. 

“You laughin’ at me?” Smoke asked bitterly.

“No.”

“Yeah…you are.”

“Am not.”

A magnolia petal landed on the page. Smoke picked it up without thinking, turned it once in his hand, then placed it on the quilt like he was afraid to hold it too long for fear he’d crush it in his hands. 

“Say it again.”

“You’re enjoyin’ this too much,” he huffed.

“And you bein’ difficult on purpose.”

“Mm.”

“Mm,” she said louder. She laughed softly and shaded something with her pencil near the corner of the page. It was a sketch of the shape of his mouth. Just the corner and how it curved around the sound he kept getting wrong. How he’d pushed a nasal sound outward instead of dropping it down.

Smoke shifted closer by a fraction, looking down to the sketchbook curiously. “Can I see?”

Her fingers tightened around it out of instinct. 

“You ain’t got to.”

The gentleness in his words made her look up. Made her grip loosen. She turned the sketchbook towards him, setting it between them. On the page wasn’t just one drawing. There were several spread across the paper. The curve of a leaf. The twist of a root. The slope of a hand pouring tea. Felix curled up on the porch. Halfway tucked in the pages was a loose leaf drawing of the inside of a small house. Smoke stared at that one the longest. He knew instantly what it was. He’d seen her sketch of the outside of her shop before. But this one was different.  She pulled it out from where it was wedged and placed it in her lap. 

Bundles hanging from the ceiling on one side. 

A long counter in front. 

A curtain that led to other rooms. 

Small jars lined up neatly on shelves. 

He took in every section, every detail. 

“Your shop,” he said finally.

“One day,” Annie replied shyly. 

“One day, when?” 

Annie looked up. “When I got enough saved. When I know enough,” she listed off. “When Aunt Della thinks I’m ready. When…” she huffed out a breath softly. “When the world lets me, I guess.”

Smoke’s jaw worked. 

“It wouldn’t just be remedies,” she said, rushing to fill the quiet before it got too loud. “I’d sell teas, salves, tonics, food, too. It wouldn’t just be a shop,” she continued, searching for words that would land. “It’d be somewhere people can come when they got things they ain’t ready to say out loud, but they ready to stop lettin’ it hurt them.” 

Smoke kept quiet beside her. 

Annie took a deep breath. “My grandma had an apothecary. Nothin’ fancy,” she said softly. “Just a place where people came in whisperin’ and left breathin’ easier.”

Smoke watched her. Her eyes, the way they softened around certain words. Her hands, and how they fidgeted on the edge of the paper. He looked at the page again while she ran her finger lightly over the built-in shelves she drew. 

“I want that. Somethin’ with my name on it. Somethin’ I know how to keep.” 

He looked at her again. “You will,” he said firmly. 

The certainty in his voice made her go still. “You sound sure.”

“I am.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

Annie tucked the drawing away and closed her sketchbook halfway, her hand smoothing over its cover. “You know some of me.”

Smoke nodded once. “I know enough.”

Silence settled between them again. Easy. Annie watched him for a moment, trying to read what had changed in his face. He looked the same mostly. Quiet. Steady. Shoulders still carrying that heaviness. But his eyes looked different.

He sat up straight and faced her. “Annie.” He said her name and she felt her heart thump hard in her chest. She couldn’t figure out why. He’d said her name a million times, but he’d never said it quite like this.

“Yes?” she replied. 

“I talked to your aunt.”

“About what?”

“You.”

The night moved around them. Crickets chirping in the trees, distant voices from a house down the street. Dogs barking, chickens roosting. It all seemed to quiet around this very moment.

“I told her I wanna court you. Proper.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

“And now?” she asked quietly.

“Now I’m comin’ to you.” 

He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, eyes piercing. “I ain’t askin’ you for nothin’ you don’t wanna give,” he said. “And I ain’t askin’ you to stop what you been showin’ me.” 

Annie’s throat tightened. “That matter to you?”

Smoke’s eyes moved to the sketchbook, then back to her. “It matters to you,” he said plainly. “It matters to me.”

“I thought you ain’t believe in all that stuff,” she said. “Hoodoo.” 

“I don’t.” He shrugged. “I believe in you.” 

Annie drew in a small breath, tilting her chin up a little. “What does courtin’ mean to you?”

Smoke took his time to answer.  

“It means I come correct. I don’t sneak around corners with you. Don’t have folks guessin’ what you mean to me.  It means if I spend time with you, it’s cause I’m serious about you.” 

“You are?” 

“I am.”

She looked at him— a silent urge to keep talking, like he wasn’t already undoing her under this magnolia tree.

“I ain’t sayin’ I got everything figured out. I don’t. I got work that ain’t clean. I got Stack.” His mouth tightened faintly. “And I got things I still need to make right before I can ask for more than this.”

He sighed. “But I know what I mean,” he said. “And I don’t mean to waste your time.” 

Annie looked down at the sketchbook in her lap. This man, whose words always held weight, had looked closely at her dreams sketched in graphite and smudged lines and simply said —he wanted to be part of them. 

She looked back at him. “If I say yes,” she said slowly. “I want my shop. I want my work. I want…I wanna be somebody outside of who I’m with.” 

“You already are,” he said, voice low.

Annie blinked.

His voice stayed low. “I ain’t askin’ to make you smaller.”

Annie’s breath caught. “Then what you askin’?”

He paused for a moment, then— “To walk beside you while you grow.” 

The silence that sat between them wasn’t empty. It was so full that Annie had to look away just so she could breathe. 

That’s when she felt it.

A nervous laugh.

It rose up in her throat— not because anything was funny, but because the weight of this moment was so heavy, she had to lighten it somehow before it swallowed her whole. She tried to suppress it, but the corners of her mouth had already turned up.

“You laughin’ at me?”

He noticed. Of course he did.

“No!”

Smoke’s mouth twitched. “Yes you are.”

“No I’m not!”

“You a bad liar.”

“I'm not lyin'...you just...makin’ me nervous right now,” she admitted softly.

His eyes softened. “You can take your time to think about it.”

Annie shook her head immediately. “No,” she said. “I don’t need time,” she assured him. 

His eyes got serious again.

“I’ll let you court me.”

Something moved across his face. Not quite a smile. Something much more dangerous to her composure. “Yeah?”

Annie’s lips curved into a fully encompassing smile that spread gently across her face. “Yeah.” 

He held out his hand for her. A question. She put her hand in his and they laced their fingers together carefully, palms warm and steady against each other. The answer.

The tree shed another petal. It drifted down between them and landed on their intertwined hands. They didn’t move it. The lantern burned low. They sat like that beneath the magnolia tree as the last of summer continued to fall around them.

The next morning was a blur. Between the demands of empty stomachs and the nervous tremor of her own hands, a nagging anxiety sat on her shoulders and butterflies fluttered violently in the pit of her belly. A sigh of relief left her lips as the last lodger headed out the door, leaving her and Aunt Della to at least be able to clean up the kitchen and dining room in a tempered silence. 

The wind chimes on the porch fluttered in the breeze, whistling a throaty, breathless jingle that did nothing to calm her nerves. Aunt Della glanced her way a few times, but said nothing. Even Felix tried to soothe her, his purrs doing little to bring her any real solace. 

Annie shoved a biscuit in her mouth to give herself something to do. The warm fluffiness filled her mouth and the butter satisfied her tastebuds with its rich, melty goodness. She sighed then took another bite, closing her eyes as the sustenance moved through her body.

Maybe she was just hungry. And maybe her anxiousness had nothing to do with him.

She moved quicker, stacking, sweeping, wiping, scraping until the house smelled like eucalyptus, lavender, and bleach.

Annie collapsed on the couch in the front room, but not from exhaustion. From adrenaline that had nowhere else to go. Her heart beat rapidly and she fingered her ileke beads like that could somehow calm it. Morning light cut warm and light through the front windows like a balm on her skin. She tilted her head back and let her eyes close, basking in the quiet after the chaos of breakfast. 

The scent of tobacco, peppermint, and bay rum floated through the screen door. Slowly—like the rich, layered smells that arrive in a kitchen when meat, butter and herbs fold into each other on the stove.

Then the screen door cracked open and Smoke stepped through. 

Annie’s mouth went dry.

The first thing she noticed was the way he darkened the doorway once he stepped past the threshold. He was tall, well over six feet. Large and imposing frame, and even though she was a tall woman herself, it felt like he towered over her. The muscles on his arms and shoulders filled out every inch of his white collared shirt, pressing against the starched fabric with a powerful, restrained strength. His suspenders held up trousers that sat comfortably around his hips. His boots were heavy on his feet even though his steps were light. It was a subtle contradiction that made her tongue feel like cotton in her mouth. 

The second thing she noticed were the flowers in his hand. Two separate arrangements— one a mixture of white, cream, and greenery. The other was a mixture of vivid colors that looked like a rainbow painted the petals. Each was wrapped in brown paper and tied gently with twine.

Smoke removed his hat and turned to see Annie spread lazily across the couch. Apron halfway untied, scarf to the side, legs hanging off the edge, dress tracing the curve of her hips. She looked beautiful with her feet dangling in the air, bent nickel hanging loosely off a string around her left ankle, shoulders relaxed like she didn’t have a care in the world. He liked that look. Wanted to see more of it.

He was doing that staring thing again, Annie thought to herself. The way his eyes slowly swept up and down her body gave her goosebumps, and she suddenly became very aware of how she was presenting. Worn dress, apron smudged with stains, hair fuzzy in her cornrows, barefoot and lounging on the couch. But the heat in his eyes turned a casual glance-over into a smoldering glare that pinned her in place. The paper around the bouquets crinkled under his grasp as he adjusted them in his hand. When his voice finally broke the loaded silence that had overtaken the front room of the boarding house, it was rough with something that made her spine snap straight. Her legs followed, then her hands, dragging her upwards until she was sitting up completely.

“Good mornin’.” 

Annie smiled up at him, a sight that beamed brighter than the morning sun. “Good mornin’.”

Smoke took a step closer, then two, and with one hand grabbed the white bouquet out of his other and extended them towards Annie. “For you.”

“Thank you,” she said, inhaling their scent. 

Smoke nodded once, then looked around the room. “Where’s your aunt?”

“Somewhere out back,” she said breathily, taking another sniff of the flowers. 

“These for her.”

“Awww, ain’t you sweet?”

“Don’t tell nobody,” he said in that low register that made her skin tingle, with a timbre that told her he wasn’t joking even though the corner of his mouth lifted when he said it. 

He proceeded into the kitchen then out the back door, leaving Annie with her own thoughts and the absence of…him. His presence stayed in the room even though he was gone, and it wasn’t just because the smell of his cologne lingered behind. Her head tilted when she realized what day it was. Monday. What was he doing here?

“What we doin’ today?” He asked as he stepped back into her space.

Annie’s breath stuttered.

Aunt Della listened in from the kitchen, looking entirely pleased with herself. 

Annie cleared her throat and shut her mouth that had opened at Smoke’s words. Not because she wasn’t used to him being forward. But because the look in his eye told her he was dead serious when he asked her that question.

“I gotta stop by Chow’s,” she started, to which he acknowledged with a nod. “Then the drugstore,” she continued. She listed things off until she stopped to look down at what she needed to do before anything else. “I gotta wash up first. Change.” 

“I’ma be right here,” he assured her, sinking deep into the couch, putting his head back, and spreading his legs. 

Annie took one more look at him and darted up the stairs.

Thirty minutes later she was in front of the mirror, blouse tucked into a halfway-fastened skirt. Her hair was taken down from her cornrows, oiled, greased, parted down the middle, and pulled back. 

Except one piece that just wouldn’t lay flat. 

She brushed it once, then brushed it again. It refused to lay right, refused to stay right. Her hairbrush clattered on the dresser where she dropped it. 

“What am I doing?” she asked like the walls could talk back. 

She gripped the edge of the dresser, then touched the open edge of her blouse still unbuttoned at the throat. Her fingers rested there a moment before she remembered to button it. 

Her fingers weren’t steady. She cursed under her breath, buttoning it with trembling hands. She smoothed the front down, turning to the side to make sure it was tucked all the way in. 

Then she picked up her hairbrush again. Went over the same spot. Got the same result. 

She threw her hairbrush down with frustration, flustered. 

All of a sudden she felt very alone. More alone than she’d felt since she got to Clarksdale. She tried to blink away the tears but one escaped her eye. It rolled down her cheek, dropping onto her dresser. 

She missed her friends from home. 

She missed her family.  

She didn't expect this. Didn’t expect him. 

And now she was standing in the middle of something new surrounded by people who barely knew her. No mama who always knew what to say. No brothers teasing. No daddy who would pretend it wasn’t making him emotional seeing his little girl stepping into her role as a woman.

Maybe it was a sign. 

She didn’t know what she was doing. She couldn’t even get her hair right without falling apart.

What did she know about being courted?

The word felt strange in her throat. New. Like a dress made out of fine fabric that she hadn’t yet learned how to move in. Like something she wanted to be careful with, to not wrinkle. Something she wanted to spin in front of the mirror just to see how it caught the light. 

And maybe, just maybe….if it fit just right, she could keep it.

Her stomach fluttered. 

She didn’t know what came after she said yes.

She’d heard stories from her friends back home, but she was never in the thick of it to look around and see how it felt. 

She didn’t know how close she was supposed to stand beside him, what folks would hear if he said her name too soft. Didn’t know if holding his hand would feel natural or if she’d overthink every step. She didn’t know what part of herself was meant to stay guarded and what part was allowed to lean.

But between the frustration, and the fear, and the homesickness that had a vice grip on her nerves…she still wanted to try.

That was the part that kept resurfacing.

She wanted it. Wanted him beside her. Wanted to be beside him. And she wanted folks to see.

The truth of it rose up so plainly, it didn’t leave room for her to argue with herself about it.

She wanted to know what Smoke looked like when he didn’t hold himself back so much. Wanted to learn what his quiet felt like when it belonged to her. Wanted to see if walking beside him in the daylight felt like sitting beside him under the magnolia tree in the backyard.

She rubbed her ileke beads and let the touch ground her. Then she put some oil on her fingers, the special blend her mama made that halfway leaked out in her trunk, and brushed the worrisome part of her hair the way her mama always did when she got too frustrated to do it herself. Rub, smooth, brush, set. 

She looked in the small, age-spotted mirror again, and her mouth curved up into a small, winsome smile.

Maybe she didn't know what she was doing.

But maybe the only thing she needed to do today was walk downstairs, meet his eyes, and take it one step at a time.

The floorboards upstairs groaned and Smoke’s head snapped towards the sound. He rose slowly from his spot on the couch, keeping his eyes trained on Annie as she walked down the stairs with a hand on the banister. 

His gaze moved over her. 

She wore a deep mustard-colored blouse tucked into a navy blue ankle-length skirt and high button leather boots. Her purse was slung over her shoulder and her skin still looked warm from her bath.

“You look nice.” 

“Thank you.”

“Real nice.”

Annie’s cheeks warmed. 

“Ready?” he asked.

Annie smiled once she got to the bottom of the staircase. “I’m ready.” 

Aunt Della stood in the threshold between the kitchen and the front room, arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes went from Smoke to Annie and back. “Y’all don’t have too much fun out there,” she smirked. “And watch my baby,” she said to Smoke.

“I will,” Smoke said as he put his hat back. He opened the door for Annie and stepped back to turn to Aunt Della. “Always.” 

Aunt Della shook her head playfully and turned back to the kitchen, arms still folded but a grin on her lips. 

The ride over to Fourth Street was quick—just two short blocks. People in front of Chow’s Grocery were few and far between, but the sidewalk was far from empty. Outside, business moved as usual. A vendor restocked produce while a worker inspected their freshness. A few customers left the store with items wrapped tightly in brown paper while their children skipped alongside them with peppermint sticks and molasses chews in hand. Wagons trekked by slowly with mounds of cotton in the back, and the constant hammering of picks chipping ice blocks apart echoed in the street.

Smoke rounded the front of his truck to open the door for Annie. He held up a hand for her to balance herself on and took care to make sure she was steady once she stepped out. He followed behind her as they walked to the entrance, his hand on the small of her back as he held the door for her.

The inside held the sweet pungency of chicory in burlap sacks being hauled from the back and piled high by the windows. Charles and Bo Chow stood behind the front counter, Charles weighing something on the scale while Bo wrote an entry in the ledger. A smirk spread across Bo’s face when he saw Smoke and Annie at the door and clocked their closeness. He nodded at Smoke, then slid his eyes over to Annie and waved at her, drawn by the warmth that always seemed to radiate off her. 

“Baby,” Smoke started, exchanging a look with Bo. “I need to go holler at Bo real quick.”

“Okay,” Annie responded in that sweet, syrupy Louisiana drawl of hers.

She drifted across the store looking at her list, then made her way down one of the aisles in search of something else entirely. Smoke watched her go, watched her disappear, replayed it in his head. Then he turned to Bo. He was wiping down a display as Charles rang up a customer at the till.

“How you been, man?” Bo asked.

“Good, good,” Smoke said. He greeted him with a firm handshake, then pulled back to get a good look at him. “Damn, fatherhood huh?”

“I look that bad?”

“You look like shit.”

Bo laughed, the corner of his eyes crinkling with it. He looked tired, but content in a way that made his eyes twinkle. Like he was at peace despite it all. “Tired as hell. But I’m happy,” he nodded. “We happy.” 

“I’m happy for you, Bo.”

“Thanks man,” Bo replied, shaking Smoke’s shoulder. His eyes flicked over the store. “Della’s girl…that’s you?”

“You mean Annie,” Smoke corrected. 

Surprise overtook Bo’s face and he raised an eyebrow. A question. “Yeah, I mean Annie.”

“Yeah,” he answered. Firm. “She mine.”

Bo clapped Smoke on the shoulder, looking at him with a sense of shock and awe. “Oh shit,” he exclaimed, putting a fist in front of his mouth. “Look at you, fixin’ to be in my shoes soon, Smoke.”

Smoke shot him a look as he walked away, but something in him got quiet when the thought crossed his mind. Then it got warm.

Annie, a mother.

Him. 

A father.

He shook the thought away just as quickly when they became poisoned by thoughts of his own father. 

That felt like a metaphor for his own life— innocence being corrupted by its own blood.

The thought of being a father after putting his own in the ground felt devastatingly ironic, but hope flickered somewhere that maybe it could rewrite whatever went wrong with his own.

He shook his head and kept walking through the store, his legs carrying him past the aisles in slow, measured steps. He didn’t rush. He knew exactly where Annie was. 

Annie was still reeling. 

From him calling her baby. From the way he said it with that deep Mississippi drawl. Her cheeks were warm, skin flushed, and all of a sudden, everything felt hot despite the store being cool.

She stood in the aisle, humming under her breath, half bent over as she flipped through a wire basket on a shelf filled with seed packets. 

“Why she want this when we got it in the backyard?” She fussed. 

She shook her head, plucked the seed packet from the stack, and stood up. They dropped into her shopping basket as she walked further down the aisle. She picked up the small bag of feed and saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye. She ignored it and went about her business crossing items off her list when she heard it.

“Hey stranger.”

She turned around.

Reverend Carter stepped around the corner.

Red button up, brown tweed waistcoat, gold pocket watch hanging. And that silver signet ring that he rubbed with the pad of his thumb. She looked down in his shopping basket and her brows knit at the contents inside. 

Her lips tightened into a line, that same odd sense of familiarity crept up on her again and made her insides tumble with unease. 

“Hey.” She adjusted the strap of her purse around her shoulder.

A grin spread across his face. “How you been?”

“Good,” she nodded. “You?”

Carter nodded like he was choosing his words carefully. “I’ve been doin’ just fine,” he said slowly.

Annie shifted her weight. “So you’re back?”

“For a little.” 

She blinked. “Where you speakin’ at this time?”

“Church off Yazoo,” he said quickly.

She frowned for a second, then relaxed her face. 

Carter chuckled under his breath. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You stayin’ at the house?”

He smirked to the side then looked back. “I’m stayin’ with the pastor.”

“Makes sense.” 

“Yeah…makes perfect sense.”

His eyes dropped to her ileke beads, then back up. The glance was quick, barely even noticeable. But she did. The hand that wasn’t holding her basket rose to touch her beads protectively. 

Smoke noticed it too. 

He was at the top of the aisle, watching.

He saw Carter’s eyes dip to her chest. It was just a brief second, but the flicker made his chest tighten. 

He crossed the aisle in three long strides. He kept his eyes forward, locked on Carter who had sensed him looming and had since looked up from Annie. 

Smoke stepped behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist, the motion tucking her into his side. The gesture was smooth, natural, like her body had no business not being there all along.

Annie let out a quiet exhale. It was a short, controlled breath that made her shoulders relax.

Then she moved—but she didn’t move so much as melt. She relaxed back into Smoke’s touch, folding easily into him. His fingers curled around her hip, but his eyes didn’t leave Carter’s.

“Afternoon,” Carter said politely to Smoke.

Smoke just stared at him, his dark hooded eyes like black orbs piercing into the depths of whatever lay behind Carter’s. No nod. No acknowledgement. Just a cold, tactical assessment.

Carter blinked. “Y’all goin’ to the Harvest Party next month?”

“Yeah,” Annie replied quickly. She felt Smoke’s grip tighten on her hip.“We—”

“What business a preacher got at a juke joint?” Smoke asked, voice flat.

“I ain’t goin’,” Carter said, rubbing his signet ring. He looked down at it, then looked back up at them. “Just tryna make conversation.”

Smoke and Annie glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes. 

“Well,” he said, tipping his hat. “Y’all have a good rest of your day.” 

Then he walked away.

The bustle of Chow’s went on around them but they didn’t hear it— like they only existed now in their own little bubble. Then Smoke dipped his head to her ear and pressed his lips there.

Three short kisses. Soft despite the intensity of the feeling behind them. Warm, from the closeness and something else entirely. They felt less like a kiss and more like a claim.

One right behind the ear, one lower on the skin right above the neck, and one right on the shell. His nose nuzzled there for a second before he opened his mouth and hummed right into her ear. Low, deep, right into the part of her ear that made his voice vibrate right down her spine. 

“You good?” 

“Mhmm,” she hummed.

She looked over her shoulder at him and his eyes were closed at the sound of her voice. She stroked his beard and his eyes opened to find hers darker. Her fingers grazed the shell of his ear. A gentle touch that made him fight off a shiver. 

“Behave,” he said, squeezing her hip gently.

Annie grinned. She turned away from his grasp and slinked out of the aisle like nothing happened. Then she glanced over her shoulder at him once more to bat her eyes at him before slipping completely out of his sight. Smoke stood there watching her walk away, his body still warm from where she rested against it. He flexed his hands at his sides to subdue the fire she stoked in him, then followed behind her.

Outside, the air smelled like spice and the bite of the chilly November air. Annie adjusted the paper-wrapped bundle from Chow’s against her hip and slipped it into her purse. Smoke stepped out behind her with the chicken feed sack tucked under his arm and the rest of Aunt Della’s order in his other hand like it weighed nothing. He watched a shiver run down Annie’s spine that she tried to hide.

“Cold?”

“A little.”

“Here.”

Smoke shrugged off his jacket and laid it over Annie’s shoulders as they walked towards his truck. The smell wafting from King’s Tamales Stand next door stopped Annie in her tracks as a man working the booth shouted his prices to folks passing by and wrapped hot tamales in paper. Warm masa, spice, meat steamed softly inside of corn husks. Steam curled up from a heavy pot blackened by use and hit the inside of the tin roof of the stand that had a crooked hand-painted sign attached to the front.

Smoke glanced at Annie. “Hungry?” 

Annie looked at him with those wide brown eyes of hers. Then her stomach answered before she got the chance. She scoffed, looking down at it like it betrayed her thoughts, then back up at Smoke. 

Smoke’s mouth twitched. “Come on.” He shifted the sack higher beneath his arm and stepped towards the stand. “How many you want?” 

“One.”

“Just one?”

Smoke looked towards the tamale man. “We’ll take four.”

Annie blinked. “Four?”

Smoke looked back at Annie. “I’m hungry, too.” 

The man behind the stand grinned like he’d seen this before. “Two for the gentleman, one for the lady now, and one for when she gets hungry later.”

“Exactly,” Smoke agreed.

Annie scoffed, looking away before a smile broke out on her face.

“Hot?” the man asked.

Smoke looked back at Annie again. She lifted her chin, offended despite herself. “Hot.”

Smoke looked back to the grinning man and nodded once. “Hot.”

“You think I wouldn’t like hot?”

“I didn’t know that’s why I asked.”

“You forget where I’m from?”

“I remember.”

The tamales came wrapped in paper, steam rising as the man passed them over to Smoke. He paid, coins dropping clean in the man’s palm. “Enjoy,” he said as they turned down the sidewalk. 

They walked a little ways down the side of the building, stopping by a patch of shade where the street noise softened around them. Smoke set Aunt Della’s things carefully by his feet, then handed Annie her tamales. He unwrapped his own with easy hands. Annie watched him without meaning to. The way he carefully peeled back the husk. The way the steam curled around his fingers. The way he took the first bite and let it sit in his mouth before he started chewing. He chewed once, twice, then nodded faintly to himself. 

“That good?”

“Mhmm.” He took another bite. 

Annie unwrapped hers, holding it carefully between her fingers as the heat bled through the paper. The first bite was soft and smoky. The cornmeal was tender, but not enough to fall through her fingers. The meat was rich with salt, pepper, and something earthy underneath. She chewed thoughtfully, her mouth analyzing every flavor. Smoke was already on his second tamale, but was chewing slower now, watching her. 

“What?” she asked.

“You makin’ a face.”

“I’m thinkin’.”

Smoke’s brows knit together. “About a tamale?”

“Mhmm.”

His mouth curved. “That so?”

“Absolutely.”

She took another bite, slower this time. “It’s good.”

Smoke nodded but kept his eyes trained on her for the—

“But.”

“I knew it.”

Annie smiled faintly. “It could use a lil’ more depth.”

“Depth?”

She nodded. “Depth.”

Smoke looked down at his half-eaten tamale then back up at Annie. “It’s a tamale.”

“And?”

Smoke looked amused now. He tilted his head. “What would you do to it?”

Annie shifted her weight. “I’d give it somethin’ to round out the pepper,” she said. “So it don’t just sit on top.”

Smoke just looked at her. “You always this particular?”

“With food? Yes.”

“And everything else?”

Annie opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked down at her tamale, then back at him. And when she spoke, her words came out softer than she expected them. “I know what I like.”

Smoke’s gaze hadn’t left her. “Good.” He took another bite, slowly. The cornmeal broke apart clean between his teeth. A long chunk of saucy meat landed on his tongue and he slurped it down his mouth without breaking eye contact.

“You starin’.”

Annie blinked. “Am not.”

“What you lookin’ at then?”

“You got somethin’ on your face.”

He ran a hand through his beard. “For real?” 

“It’s gone now.”

He couldn’t ignore the mirth in her eyes. She looked away, unwrapping the last tamale with more attention than it needed. The corner of Smoke’s mouth lifted. 

“Where I’m from, folks put more life into they food,” she said, turning back to him.

“More life?”

“Yep.”

“What that mean?”

“It means…” she said, looking towards the street like she could find the words there. “Food should taste like somebody remembered where they came from when they made it.”

“You sayin’ the people who made this…forgot where they came from?”

“No.” She smiled into her food. “They just knew wherever they was goin’ didn’t like it hot!”

Smoke huffed a laugh. Fourth Street moved around them, unconcerned. And the tension from inside of Chow’s softened into something easier. Something with steam, spice, and a little more kick. 

“I’ll make sure to let King know.”

Annie swatted his chest. “Smoke, don’t you dare!” 

When they were done eating, Smoke gathered Aunt Della’s order again and Annie threw the empty wrappers into a nearby waste barrel. She wiped her fingers against her handkerchief, the taste of pepper and cornmeal still heavy on her tongue. 

They left their items from Chow’s locked in Smoke’s truck, which he left in front of the grocery store at Annie’s insistence. Annie enjoyed the scenery as they walked leisurely towards the next stop on her list of errands. Smoke enjoyed the scenery too— her. Her hair, tucked into a thick bun, had tendrils hanging down the sides of her face that blew with the wind. One kept sticking to the shell of her ear, tickling her when it hit just right. The beads tucked under the neckline of her dress rattled if she moved a certain way. And she still had his jacket on to shield her from the wind. The sight of her walking around with his suit jacket draped over her shoulders did something to him that he couldn’t explain and didn’t want to. 

They neared the crossroad where Fourth Street met Issaquena, the street lined with shops for personal and grooming services. Luella’s Dressing Room & Alterations, Ritzy’s Beauty Salon, Brown’s Barbershop, and others sat along a row of close-knit brick and wooden storefronts with mended awnings and handmade signs.

The noise of the street got louder as they approached the block where Luella’s and Ritzy’s stood across from the barbershop. Or maybe it was just the noise in Annie’s head. She walked closest to the sidewalk with Smoke right beside her, watching her closely. His hand would find her lower back if he saw her steps falter or slow. They dodged some kids roughhousing, a stand or a low hanging sign, a crack in the sidewalk.

The area in front of the barbershop was full of men standing on lampposts smoking cigarettes, people watching, and chatting each other up. Suspenders loose or off, hats sitting low, legs bent, feet on the brick barbershop building while they waited their turn. The striped pole outside spun slowly with the wind. The smell of shaving soap, pomade, and hot comb smoke drifted upwards from the barbershop and the beauty salon across the street. The men outside let their eyes wander when Annie approached them on the sidewalk— and froze when they saw Smoke right next to her. Conversations paused, necks craned slowly. Smoke guided her through the crowd that parted for them with his hand at her back. The men acknowledged him, some giving him daps, others giving a firm nod. Some said a few polite words, tipping their hats and greeting them both as they walked by. But Smoke kept his hands on Annie. Always on her. 

Sunflower Music was painted in gold lettering on a black wooden sign that hung perpendicular to the sidewalk. The awning was a muted red, the color faded by the sun and wear, and stuck out of a narrow brick storefront with tall display windows in the front. Folks walking by would just stop and stare at what was inside— sheet music, instruments, phonographs, a lone Columbia Graphophone. Stacks of records displayed like treasure. Once the shop bell guided them through the door, the smell of paper, varnished wood, and cigars turned the crisp winter air to something with more bite. The space was long and spread out. Wooden floors. Pressed-tin ceiling. Ceiling fans turning slowly overhead. Most of the displays were spread out across the walls except a few items that were secured behind glass cases and oak cabinets shined to a mirror finish. 

A musician tested out strings by the wall where the instruments were displayed. A few church mothers Annie recognized from First Baptist Missionary were flipping carefully through church hymn sheet music displayed in stands on the other side of the shop. 

The owner stood by one of many phonographs with a record in his hands. He placed it in one, cranked the machine, and dropped the needle, all in one smooth, practiced motion. The customer standing next to him waited for the beat to drop. The record spun, the sound cracked slightly, then the smooth sound of a brass band spread throughout the room. Annie paused. The customer bopped his head to the fast-paced, soulful music coming from the phonograph speakers. 

Then the cornet solo hit.

Annie stilled entirely. 

The sound of conversation faded away, even the pointed looks of the church mothers who recognized her walking hand-in-hand with Smoke, she paid no mind. The familiarity of the music made her chest twist painfully. It sounded like home. Felt like it too. Like street musicians, second line parades, and rain hitting tin roofs during summer storms. 

“Annie?” he asked, voice low. He touched the small of her back.

Once she caught her breath, she whispered, “Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied, blinking back the tear that threatened to drop from her left eye. “Just reminds me of home.” She blinked and she could see it clearly. A rickety old shack. The fierce, stubborn, woman who lived inside who felt more like a spirit than a memory. “My great-grandmama,” she said a little softer. “Before she passed…she loved listening to the cornet. I don’t know why but that was the only instrument that made her face light up no matter how out of it she was.”

Smoke rubbed her lower back and they moved deeper in the store but Annie felt like she was walking through water. They ended up by the stack of records which stood close to the instruments along the wall. 

“That’s the thing about music,” he said. “It has a way of bringin’ you back to somebody, even after they long gone.”

Annie exhaled sharply. She went through the Vaudeville records but she wasn’t really looking. Smoke stood by her side, facing her, waiting. 

“We lost her to the hurricane. Back in ‘15.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“She wouldn’t leave.” Her voice cracked. 

“What you mean?”

Annie took a deep breath.

“She lived deep in the bayou. Water filled with gators,” she chuckled, shaking her head. “She knew the storm was comin’ before it did. Said if the water’s fixin’ to take her she ain’t gon’ run.” 

Annie looked towards the window like the memory called her there for some reason. “She said she had somebody on the other side waitin’ on her.” 

Smoke nodded once, eyes patient. “You know who?”

“No,” she said. “She was sold downriver ‘fo she could remember anyone.”

“Damn,” Smoke whispered. 

She smiled. It was faint, like it was pushing through the grief. “She was alone her whole life…’til she started having babies.”

“How many?”

“Fourteen.”

Smoke whistled low.

Annie hummed. “She was somethin’ else.”

The memory of her great-grandmother flashed quickly through her mind like a blur. Eyes that looked different…older than her age, and much younger at the same time. Her frail hands dragging a stick through swamp mud, leaving marks that looked less drawn than remembered.

“What was her name?”

Annie blinked and it was gone. Her hand rose to her ileke beads again, then she looked up at Smoke with the softest, widest, brown eyes, and the tenderness in them made him sigh. 

“Antoinette,” she said finally. Like the name pulled something out of her that made her hesitate to say it out loud.

Smoke rubbed her shoulder, pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. 

Annie put a hand on his chest, leaning into his touch. 

They let the silence sit between them for a few moments. Let the quiet ache until it dulled into something easier to move on from.

“Anyway,” she said finally, pulling herself together. “Let’s get what I came here for.” Her fingers walked the records in search of the ragtime one Aunt Della wanted.

“What kinda music they listen to, over there in France?”

“They liked a lot of the stuff we brought over.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Our regiment had a band and everything.” 

“Were you in it?” She teased.

His mouth twitched. “Nah.” 

The musician testing out guitars hit a chord with a slider that made Smoke’s hand tap once against the record box before he caught himself. He looked at Annie and she was already looking at him. 

“What?” he asked.

Annie arched her brow. “You like that?”

“It’s nice.”

“Why?”

Smoke exhaled. “It’s slow. Got a little ache to it.”

Annie chuckled low.

The guitar player took his slider off and played something a little louder, a little faster, a deep Blues riff.

“You like this one, too?” 

“This more Stack’s style.”

“Mmmhmmm.”

“What?”

“It’s more Stack’s style but your hand been tappin’ away since he started playin’.” 

Smoke looked down at his hand then back to Annie. “Don’t mean I can’t enjoy it.”

“You right,” she smirked. “But you tappin’ along like you know this song by heart.”

“I do.” 

Annie frowned. “From where?”

“My daddy.” He paused. Looked down. Sighed. “He played the guitar.”

“Oh,” she mouthed. She heard something in his words even though his voice was steady. Pain. Shame. Guilt. Loss. Whatever it was, it weighed heavy.

His jaw tightened. “Back then…” he drifted off. “The music felt kinder than the man.” His eyes found her again.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

Annie rubbed his arm, then pulled it around her. The gesture made his shoulders relax, and she wrapped her arms around his chest. “Elijah,” she whispered up to him.

His name on her lips felt as warm as her hand on his chest. 

“Hmm,” he answered, looking off into the distance.

She rubbed his back. “You alright?” she asked quietly.

He looked down at her, then wrapped his arms around her tighter. 

“Yeah,” he said into her hair. He inhaled her scent—jasmine, rosewater, and vanilla.

Annie didn't push. Just let him stay in the moment a little longer, with her to hold onto.

Across the room, one of the church mothers cleared her throat entirely too loud, and just like that the tenderness snapped. Smoke and Annie both frowned, then looked over with expectant gazes. One cold, one more curious but still annoyed. The church mother’s mouth snapped shut and she scoffed, turning back around. Smoke and Annie both laughed as they walked towards the register, his arm around her shoulder.

“I’ma get an earful on Sunday ‘cause of you,” Annie joked, lacing her fingers with the ones hanging over her shoulder.

“They need to mind they own business,” Smoke said. Loudly. Right towards where they were congregating off to the side by the sheet music.

Their heads snapped over immediately.

Annie swatted his chest.

“What?”

“Lord,” she mumbled. “You was just tellin’ me to behave and you out here talkin’ crazy.”

“Tell the truth, shame the devil. Ain’t that what they say?”

“Smoke!” She tried swatting at him again. This time he caught her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. Annie rolled her eyes but she couldn’t stop a grin from spreading on her face.

“Nuh-uh,” his voice dropped low, right by her ear again. “You know my name.”

Her breath hitched.

“Mhmm,” he drawled.

They stepped to the register. 

“Find everything you were lookin’ for?” The clerk asked. 

The words sat between them. Smoke looked at Annie.

“Yeah,” Annie said. “Just this.”

“This a good record,” he remarked. “Classic.” He set the W.C. Handy record in its sleeve, then wrapped it twice in newspaper.

Annie listened.

“His band still play around town, in Tutwiler, and down in Mound Bayou.”

Smoke’s jaw clenched, then unclenched. Annie saw it. Saved it for later.

“Bayou?” she asked.

“Mound Bayou. All black town, just a little ways south of here,” the clerk remarked. 

Annie nodded curiously.

The clerk slipped the record in a brown paper bag. “That’ll be 75 cent.” 

Smoke had it in the man’s hand before Annie could pull out her pocketbook. He watched her hesitate and shot her a look that dared her to pull her own money out. That’s all she needed to see to keep her hand right where it was— wrapped tightly in his. 

Smoke kissed her hand again before grabbing the bag.

“Y’all have a nice day,” the clerk said.

They turned to leave a few minutes later, bags between them as they fell in step beside each other. They didn’t talk much, but their hands stayed laced, like they both needed to touch the piece of themselves they just shared. When they stepped out of the building and the noise of the street came back, the moment didn’t disappear. It just followed them out into the cold. The chilly air whipped wildly across their faces, but it did nothing to cool the heat rising between them, or the thrum that sat underneath all the tension.

A month went by, but not quietly.

The air got colder. November flew by like a gust of wind off the gulf where Annie used to catch crabs with her brothers when she was a little girl. The house got louder. Out of towners, people trying to get up North before the snow up there delayed the trains. Blackbird got busier. Annie kept storing her money in the tea tin that fit perfectly under the floorboard in her room. Soon she’d have to get a bigger one, she thought to herself. And find another hiding place.

Annie’s lessons with Aunt Della continued behind padlocked doors. 

Dress fittings at Luella’s became less frequent as her Harvest Party look came together. 

Smoke got busy, too. Quiet meetings on the outskirts of town. Trips to Memphis and business at Moon Lake. He came around the boarding house even more. This time he didn’t need to feign usefulness.

Meetings under the magnolia tree became their ritual. Every Sunday when the afternoon stretched its arms out into evening he’d come around back. Like clockwork, he’d show up, the side fence creaking open before he stepped through. They’d sit outside and talk until the mosquitos got too bad.

It became a place where they shared pieces of themselves. 

A place where ordinary conversation became sacred. 

Nellie, Pearline and Gigi squealed when she finally told them about Smoke. And time with them became more frequent too — nights, afternoons, or mornings in town before the roads got too crowded. 

As long as it didn’t touch Sunday night. 

Those belonged to Smoke.

“Louisiana,” Gigi started. Casual, like she was just asking about the weather. “You ain’t mounted that horse yet?” 

The words cut through the laughter, the sound of peas dropping in a bowl, even the phonograph that played soft jazz from the corner. Somebody choked mid-chuckle. Everybody turned to look at Annie, then froze. Three sets of eyes stared at her with a glittering curiosity that made her palms feel clammy in that moment. Gigi tapped her foot on the floor impatiently. Pearline fiddled with her hands. Nellie looked at Annie like she could read the answer in her face. But Annie wasn’t bothered. In fact, she was a little amused. This wasn’t a new question.

The four of them were sitting around the kitchen table after congregating at Nellie's house following their weekday bible study. Nellie’s mother took one long look at the four of them lounging around the front room and put them to work. She set a bowl and some peas on the kitchen table and walked out the room without another word. A pot of greens soaked on the counter. Pepper and onion sat chopped in a cast iron for later. Flour still sat in the cracks of the table from breakfast. 

She sighed softly. “No.” 

“Why not?” 

“She said she ain’t ready, y’all,” Pearline chimed in for her. “She say this every time y’all ask this question.” Then quieter. “It ain’t always like what them singers be goin’ on about.”

“Maybe not for you,” Gigi rebutted. “But you ain’t mountin’ a stallion.”

“More like a donkey,” Nellie joked.

Annie snorted. Even Pearline laughed under her breath. 

“So y’all just been kissin’?” Gigi probed.

“Mhmm.”

“You let him…touch you?” The question came from Nellie.

Her body flushed warm at the thought. Annie looked over to Nellie. “No.”

“Shame,” she sighed. “He look like he know what to do with his hands.” 

“Mhmm,” Gigi agreed.

“He should know,” Pearline said matter-of-factly. “Him and his brother done ran through half the town.”

“More than half,” Nellie muttered.

Annie sighed. Rolled her eyes.

“Stack more than Smoke,” Nellie confirmed. 

“Don’t I know it,” Annie replied.

“I heard Stack got a mean appetite,” Gigi said slyly.

That made Pearline gasp. “Gigi!” 

“What?” Gigi asked incredulously. 

“Please,” Pearline insisted in a hushed tone.

Annie shook her head. “Oh my God,” she protested. “I don’t need to hear this about my man’s brother.”

“Your maaaan,” Pearline teased playfully. Annie smiled.

“I heard Smoke manhood so big, it touches your soul,” Nellie said.

Annie’s head turned towards Nellie. “Who told you that?”

Nellie shrugged. “Is it true?” 

Annie shrugged.

“Every woman in town want a piece of them twins, I’m just surprised you ain’t took a bite yet.” 

“Not even a nibble?” Gigi asked. She looked shocked.

Annie chuckled low. “Not even a nibble.”

“But you seen it, though? Felt it? Backed up on him and let it poke you a little?”

“No,” she said. “I ain’t seen it.”

“But you felt it.” Gigi’s eyes grew wide. “It’s big ain’t it?” 

“He walk around like it’s big,” Nellie said plainly.

The room exploded with laughter, squeals, and giggles. Annie fumbled with a pea. 

“What’s big?” A voice rang out from the other room.

Nellie froze, then groaned and rolled her eyes when she realized who was talking.

“Awww don’t sound too happy to see me lil’ sis,” she continued. She stepped into the kitchen, t-strap heels clacking against the floorboards. Nice dress, nicer stockings, hair styled differently than Annie had seen in Clarksdale or New Orleans. Baby on her hip and another child at her waist, vice grip on his shirt like she was trying to keep him from running off or touching something he wasn’t supposed to.

Nellie rolled her eyes again and kept on shelling peas. “Hey Verity,” she said flatly. She looked up and her eyes softened when she saw her niece and nephew. “Look at how big you are!” she exclaimed. 

“Aunt Nellie!” 

Verity released the little boy and he ran over to give his aunt a hug. She adjusted her grip on her daughter, bouncing the babbling toddler on her hip. 

“Baby,” Verity said calmly with that mom warning underneath, “gon’ and help your daddy outside.”

The little boy rushed out the front door, leaving just the girls in an awkward silence before they quickly changed the subject. 

“Hey Verity,” Gigi and Pearline said together. Verity greeted them back, staring curiously at the stranger sitting at her mother’s kitchen table. 

“Verity,” Nellie started. “This is Annie, she’s new, from Louisiana. Annie, this is my sister Verity. She’s in town from Chicago.” 

Annie wiped off her hands on her apron and held out her hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, Verity.”

“Nice to meet you too, Verity. My goodness, you’re so pretty.” 

“Thank you,” Annie beamed.

Verity looked around the room. At each woman’s face individually. “What was y’all in here talkin’ about?” She asked like she’d already heard too much.

“Nothing,” Nellie said firmly.

Verity’s eyes narrowed.

“Men,” Gigi admitted bluntly.

Nellie shot her a look, to which she just shrugged and kept shelling her peas.

“What about ‘em?” Verity asked as her baby grabbed the collar of her dress. She untangled her fingers carefully while waiting for someone to say something.

“Annie here got herself a suitor already,” Nellie called out. “Smoke Moore.”

The look on Verity’s face said that she was busy putting a name to a face before it finally clicked. “Oh, one of the twins!” She wiped drool off her baby’s lips before it dripped on her clothes. “So they both came back from the war,” she remarked. “That’s good.”

Nellie rolled her eyes. “She done forgot about everybody she grew up with.” 

“Did not! They’re both so much younger than me.”

“You’re only 27.”

“And I been in Chicago for the past seven years,” she quipped. “How old are they now?”

“21,” Gigi answered.

“Babies,” she whispered, pinching her daughter’s cheek.

“Anyway, do you mind? Us babies,” Nellie said sarcastically, “tryna talk here. About somethin’ you don’t need to know nothin’ about.”  

Verity sighed. She was older, but still young enough to remember being where they were. Young and unmarried. Always being in a position to be told or met with judgment. Mostly from the women closest to her. 

She’d moved to Chicago and was met with a different type of perspective. The social scene was different, much different, probably something that’d make her mother clutch her pearls if she heard the lasciviousness that was considered normal, and that she had a taste of it before she met her husband. 

So, she knew all about flirtation and temptation. About men who only knew how to talk pretty, men who knew how to be tender, and men who confused possession with care. And behind the venom in her words, she could hear something more vulnerable in her little sister’s tone. So, she pulled up a chair at the table, put her baby between her legs, and went to work shelling peas. They worked together in silence for a while. Nothing except the occasional sigh, the sound of the baby hitting the table with her palms, and the house creaking and settling around them.

“Anyone else seein’ anybody new?” Verity asked.

Nobody replied. The air in the tiny kitchen held an uncomfortable type of tension. But it wasn’t anything unique. It was generational. A hesitance that usually exists in the gap between women just becoming and women who’d already been in their shoes. 

“How’s your husband, Pea?” 

Pearline cleared her throat. “He good,” she responded. She kept her head down while Verity looked at her knowingly. 

The front door practically flew open with all the energy of a hyper five-year-old boy. He took his shoes off by the door then ran down the hallway. 

Another person stepped in. His steps were much slower, but his energy was just as powerful in a measured, grown man kind of way. All six heads in the kitchen turned at once. Skin the color of chestnuts, bulky shoulders, broad chest, piercing light brown eyes that could stop a woman mid-sentence. He took off his hat to reveal a head full of low-cut slicked down hair. His three-piece suit matched the sharpness of Verity’s dress like a lid to a pot. He flashed a smile and damn near every woman at the table gulped hard. 

He waved his hand to greet everyone. “Hey y’all.” His voice was deep and gruff. A hint of southern twang in it, like the South had somehow rubbed off on him but he wasn’t born and bred here. 

“Hey,” everybody said back. 

Verity smiled, clearly unshaken by his presence because this was her husband. 

“Can you take the baby? She gettin’ fussy and I’m tryna help the girls with supper.”

“Sure.” He crossed the room to the kitchen and planted a kiss on her waiting forehead, then grabbed his daughter from her lap. 

“Thank you.”

“Hey sugar plum,” he cooed. He spoke softly to his daughter. She giggled and rested her head in the crook of his neck as he took her down the hallway.

Once they heard the click of a door shutting in the distance, the kitchen could finally exhale.

“That’s your husband?” Gigi asked breathlessly, looking towards the hallway like she needed him to reappear out of thin air. “Girl he is too fine!”

Verity grinned. “That’s my man,” she said proudly.

“Where you find him at?” Gigi continued. “And do he have any brothers?”

Annie kept her thoughts to herself as she snapped a pea under her thumb. While they sized him up her thoughts drifted over to Smoke. How his smile was easy when he showed it. How he didn’t show it to anybody but her. The way he’d walk in and suck the air out the room. The way his muscles filled out his clothing. Her breath sped up at the thought. She felt flushed. Hot all of a sudden, all over again.

Verity laughed at Gigi’s remarks and shook her head. “He do, but he’s the only good apple in the bunch.”

“Lord,” Annie chuckled.

Verity looked over at her expectantly.

“I got nothin’ but brothers,” she explained. “Got one, maybe two of them decent. The rest ain’t got the sense God gave a goose.” 

Everyone at the table laughed, the tension easing into something more relaxed. 

“It would take God and all his disciples to drill some decency into ‘em,” Pearline let slip out.

“Pearlie!” Nellie gasped at the revelation. Sweet little Pearline with her lace gloves, quiet eyes and her perfect posture like she was afraid that if she didn’t stand up perfectly straight someone would come behind her with a ruler to put her back in line. 

She shrugged casually, clearly pleased with herself. 

“Gigi,” Annie kept on shelling peas. “You ever see Will again?”

Gigi made a sound like she was vomiting and Annie broke out in laughter. 

“Verity,” she looked at her. “This man had the worst smelling feet I’ve ever smelled in my life!”

“Not smelly feet.”

“A horse’s hoof smells better than that man’s feet,” she grimaced. “Besides,” she smirked like her face held a secret she’d been dying to tell. Her voice got low. “I’ve been keepin’ company with Rodney again.”

“Not surprised,” Nellie mumbled.

“Who’s Rodney?” Annie asked.

Nellie answered for her. “Just the man she been stuck on since we was kids.”

“Ohh….” 

“I ain’t stuck. He’s just familiar.”

“More like that hmmhmm” she gave the table a knowing look, “is familiar.”

“Hush!” Gigi swatted Nellie’s shoulder. “It’s reliable.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with goin’ back to an ol’ reliable.” Annie whipped her head around. The voice came from Verity.

“That’s right,” Gigi agreed smugly.

“Annie ain’t even done nothin’ with that twin of hers yet.” 

Annie rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”

“Why not?” Verity asked.

She huffed a small breath out her nose. “Just waitin’ for the right time.” 

“You waitin’ til the party huh?” Gigi asked with a grin. “All that liquor runnin’ through you will loosen you right on up,” she teased.

Annie shook her head, laughing.

Pearline spoke up quietly. “Don’t let the liquor make you do anything you don’t wanna do.”

“I ain’t,” Annie said.

“You keep it for yourself until you good and ready to give it away.”

“Exactly,” Pearline said. “And if he really cares, he won’t mind. Not one bit.”

“My husband waited a whole year for me to let him in. Didn’t pressure me. Didn’t make me feel bad. Didn’t make it ‘bout his needs,” Verity recalled. “What matters is what he does when wantin’ you, means he gotta take it slow.”

Her words landed. 

“Do he know?” Her voice was small. Pearline’s. “That you a virgin?”

Annie exhaled sharply. “I ain’t told him,” she confessed. 

Pearline spoke again. “And…he ain’t tried nothin’?” 

“We ain’t been alone like that,” she said softly while fumbling with the hem of her apron. “And I ain’t found the right time to tell him yet.”

“He gon’ wear you out once he get his hands on you,” Gigi said dramatically. “You know that right?”

“I believe it.” And she did.

“Whew, chile,” Nellie drawled. “I’ma say a prayer for you. And for your—” 

“Eleanor!” Verity snapped.

Annie snorted.

Verity looked over at Annie, eyes warm. “You’ll find the right time,” she assured.

The kitchen was a little quieter after that. Just the sound of knuckles cracking, shells snapping open, peas hitting the bottom of the bowl, throaty jazz still coming from the corner. And a glaring question that hummed underneath the noise. 

“Do you want to…you know, with him?” Pearline asked.

Annie stopped shelling for a moment and looked to the side to collect the whirlwind of thoughts that spun around in her head. 

Her and Smoke had been having outings. Not running into each other by chance, not catching a glimpse across the sidewalk. Together. In public. On purpose. It was mostly whatever it was she wanted to do. Smoke liked it that way.

They tucked into their own little routine as what was blossoming between them slowly became familiar. Since her conversation with Aunt Della she hadn’t taken the time to sit down and think about what exactly it was or where it was going to go. All she knew is that in this new rhythm with him…it felt right. 

He’d touch her gently. Carefully. Like he was holding onto something fragile. But even the slightest contact sent shivers down her spine. 

A hand at the small of her back.

He’d lean in close when he needed to say something to her. Always did.

But sometimes he’d drop his mouth right by her ear just to hear her gasp under her breath.

He’d wrap his hands around her waist and she swore she forgot how to breathe. 

But she didn’t move away.

His desire for her was palpable. 

He was hungry. 

She could see it in his eyes and feel it in his restraint. 

But he was tender with her, like he was dousing his own desire until she was ready to cross that bridge, and that ignited her curiosity for more like a spark lit in a dry room.

She knew she was in trouble when she started to notice the absence of certain things. His closeness. His touch. The feeling that came from it.

She thought about his mouth a lot. What it felt like pressed against hers. The way his tongue would trace the seam of her lips like a man standing at a threshold, waiting to be invited in. 

Her thoughts usually stopped there because they were too overwhelming. 

Kissing wasn’t new to her. Desire wasn’t either. Not entirely. 

She’d heard things. Sensed them. She wasn’t naive in an ignorant way. 

But as the baby of the family, and the only girl, she’d been crowded. She was always loved and protected. But love and protection always felt like being watched and managed by people who assumed they knew what was best for her.  

Then Smoke came along. He unsettled her because he didn’t hover. He waited. With his quiet attention and something deeper that sat underneath the surface. 

He listened.

He chose her. 

He made space for her to choose herself. 

And for a girl who spent her whole life being guarded, space felt dangerous. 

It felt like freedom. 

Freedom to be held but not held back.

She wanted to step into it, the new version of herself that was emerging from sheltered beginnings.

Craved it.

Craved him.

Badly. 

Even though she didn't fully know what that meant, she wanted to be close. Wanted to experience everything that came along with that closeness.

And it wasn’t just a physical thing. It was a primal, desperate ache that rose from the depths and swept through her body, hitting every single nerve ending along the way.

She even started dreaming about him. It was always the same one. She’d wake up in a mess of her own making—nightgown clinging to her curves, sheets damp. Then she’d spend the rest of the day feeling a dizzying pulse between her legs, like her heart had found a new home there.

It was like his soul had floated to hers while she was sleeping, and wanted to make sure she was ready for the day she finally just...let go. 

He didn’t need to know what was said.

Didn’t even need to know who said it.

Smoke drove with both hands on the wheel, grip steady on the leather. The door of the Colored schoolhouse swung open in its hinges before fitting into its frame, and he walked through the threshold with a quiet determination. He wasn’t there to argue. He was there to be clear; to shut an old door he never meant to leave cracked open in the first place.

The kids were long gone. All that remained was the ghost of their feet shuffling against the floorboards and the echo of high-pitched laughter. And her. She sat at the desk at the front of the classroom with a stack of papers and a thick red pencil, making straight lines across words with clean, even strokes, and just the right amount of pressure. 

Sunlight cut across the empty desks, catching the chalk dust that still hovered in the air. The classroom was quiet, but it wasn’t empty. History, resentment, and two different versions of the truth hung between the two of them like a physical weight that made the room feel smaller. It pressed against the walls and the lone window on the side of the building like it could feel the tension brewing and wanted out.

Smoke cleared his throat. 

She scoffed. A quiet, annoyed expulsion of breath. Then she looked up, and when her eyes met his they held his gaze, then went up and down his form slowly. Canvassing, maybe. Taking in the seriousness in his posture. Taking notice of the cold calm he carried.

“Demetria.” Smoke’s voice was cold too, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. It usually was. But this kind of cold was more resolve than anything. 

“Smoke,” she said back. 

“We need to talk.”

“Well, hello to you too,” she said sharply.

“Hey,” he said. “We need to talk,” he repeated, tone flat.

She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “About?” she asked with a challenge in her tone.

“Us.”

The word made her lean forward on her elbows. 

“I just came to say we’re done. For good this time,” he said firmly. He opened his mouth, then closed it, like he had something more to say but decided against it. 

“That’s it?” The look on her face went from amusement to surprise to something else in the span of a few seconds. “That’s all you have to say to me?”

“I’m sorry it took so long for me to say out loud. I should have said it sooner. That’s on me. But we been done a while. You know that.”

“You always did think silence was kinder than the truth,” she fired back. 

Smoke hung his head. Because she wasn’t wrong. Her anger, he could take on the chest. He at least owed her that. 

“Look, I don’t know what’s been said or who you been sayin’ it to,” he started. “But whatever’s been said, I’m here to put it to rest.” 

Something flashed across her face and left just as quickly. Recognition. And the sinking feeling of dread. “You must got somebody you care about a whole lot, to come all the way over here just so you could say it plain,” she said. “She know about me?” 

“I’m sayin’ it now,” he said, voice low. 

“Does she know about me?” She asked again. A little louder this time.

Smoke’s jaw ticked. 

“So there is somebody else,” she said carefully.

Smoke didn’t answer. 

She studied his face for anything— regret, sadness, anything. She closed her eyes to keep her composure and shook her head like it would somehow make the sting go away. It didn’t. But she put her dignity back on anyway.

“Well,” she said, almost breathless. “There it is.”

Smoke nodded once. Demetria looked at him like she couldn’t recognize the shape of the man standing in front of her anymore, then she went back to her papers with the same measured carefulness she always used. The force of her pen made the paper crackle on the desk. Her corrections felt more personal now. Like she was trying to cross him out of her life one red line at a time.

“You take care.”

“Or not,” she snapped.

Smoke nodded like he accepted the ire, then he turned towards the entrance. He walked into the cool Mississippi air outside and away from the tension that sat between them, ready to snap like a rubber band pulled taut. And when he closed the door to the schoolhouse behind him, he made sure it shut all the way.

“Mwen kontan.” 

She said it in such a sultry, whispery tone. Not on purpose, that’s just how Annie’s voice sounded to Smoke. Alluring and fragrant, like the scent of the magnolia blossoms scattered around them on the ground. 

It was an early Sunday evening in November. The magnolia tree that stood tall on the side of the boarding house was changing. Its delicate, white petals drifted loose from the branches overhead and fell soft into the yard like the last bit of summer was shedding itself, piece by piece.

They sat on her patchwork quilt under the remaining shade of the tree. Annie had her knees tucked beneath her, her new sketchbook open on her lap. Smoke was across from her, one knee up, forearm casually resting over it. His eyes were anything but casual, narrowed with a fierce concentration. A lantern sat close by the edge of the quilt. Its flame burned low and steady, painting gold shadows over the pages of Annie’s sketchbook and the tips of her fingers.

“Hold on,” Smoke fussed. “You gotta say it slower.” 

Annie chuckled. “Mweh con-tan,” she sounded out slowly.

Smoke was staring at her lips, trying to mimic the way she formed the words when she spoke. She was amused by his focus. Impressed. He had it in everything he did. That bitter resolve. 

“What that mean?” 

“It means I’m happy.”

“Mwen-kun-tin,” he tried.

Annie winced. “Close, but…just try it again,” she urged.

“No,” Smoke said flatly.

“Why not?”

“I said it just how you said it.”

“No,” Annie shook her head. “You didn’t.” 

Smoke’s mouth twitched. He looked away before it could fully turn into a smile. “Sounded close enough to me,” he grumbled. 

“Mweh con-tan,” she said slower.

“Mwen kun-tan,” he repeated.

Annie bit the inside of her cheek. He was doing it on purpose, with his stubborn self. 

“You laughin’ at me?” Smoke asked bitterly.

“No.”

“Yeah…you are.”

“Am not.”

A magnolia petal landed on the page. Smoke picked it up without thinking, turned it once in his hand, then placed it on the quilt like he was afraid to hold it too long for fear he’d crush it in his hands. 

“Say it again.”

“You’re enjoyin’ this too much,” he huffed.

“And you bein’ difficult on purpose.”

“Mm.”

“Mm,” she said louder. She laughed softly and shaded something with her pencil near the corner of the page. It was a sketch of the shape of his mouth. Just the corner and how it curved around the sound he kept getting wrong. How he’d pushed a nasal sound outward instead of dropping it down.

Smoke shifted closer by a fraction, looking down to the sketchbook curiously. “Can I see?”

Her fingers tightened around it out of instinct. 

“You ain’t got to.”

The gentleness in his words made her look up. Made her grip loosen. She turned the sketchbook towards him, setting it between them. On the page wasn’t just one drawing. There were several spread across the paper. The curve of a leaf. The twist of a root. The slope of a hand pouring tea. Felix curled up on the porch. Halfway tucked in the pages was a loose leaf drawing of the inside of a small house. Smoke stared at that one the longest. He knew instantly what it was. He’d seen her sketch of the outside of her shop before. But this one was different.  She pulled it out from where it was wedged and placed it in her lap. 

Bundles hanging from the ceiling on one side. 

A long counter in front. 

A curtain that led to other rooms. 

Small jars lined up neatly on shelves. 

He took in every section, every detail. 

“Your shop,” he said finally.

“One day,” Annie replied shyly. 

“One day, when?” 

Annie looked up. “When I got enough saved. When I know enough,” she listed off. “When Aunt Della thinks I’m ready. When…” she huffed out a breath softly. “When the world lets me, I guess.”

Smoke’s jaw worked. 

“It wouldn’t just be remedies,” she said, rushing to fill the quiet before it got too loud. “I’d sell teas, salves, tonics, food, too. It wouldn’t just be a shop,” she continued, searching for words that would land. “It’d be somewhere people can come when they got things they ain’t ready to say out loud, but they ready to stop lettin’ it hurt them.” 

Smoke kept quiet beside her. 

Annie took a deep breath. “My grandma had an apothecary. Nothin’ fancy,” she said softly. “Just a place where people came in whisperin’ and left breathin’ easier.”

Smoke watched her. Her eyes, the way they softened around certain words. Her hands, and how they fidgeted on the edge of the paper. He looked at the page again while she ran her finger lightly over the built-in shelves she drew. 

“I want that. Somethin’ with my name on it. Somethin’ I know how to keep.” 

He looked at her again. “You will,” he said firmly. 

The certainty in his voice made her go still. “You sound sure.”

“I am.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

Annie tucked the drawing away and closed her sketchbook halfway, her hand smoothing over its cover. “You know some of me.”

Smoke nodded once. “I know enough.”

Silence settled between them again. Easy. Annie watched him for a moment, trying to read what had changed in his face. He looked the same mostly. Quiet. Steady. Shoulders still carrying that heaviness. But his eyes looked different.

He sat up straight and faced her. “Annie.” He said her name and she felt her heart thump hard in her chest. She couldn’t figure out why. He’d said her name a million times, but he’d never said it quite like this.

“Yes?” she replied. 

“I talked to your aunt.”

“About what?”

“You.”

The night moved around them. Crickets chirping in the trees, distant voices from a house down the street. Dogs barking, chickens roosting. It all seemed to quiet around this very moment.

“I told her I wanna court you. Proper.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

“And now?” she asked quietly.

“Now I’m comin’ to you.” 

He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, eyes piercing. “I ain’t askin’ you for nothin’ you don’t wanna give,” he said. “And I ain’t askin’ you to stop what you been showin’ me.” 

Annie’s throat tightened. “That matter to you?”

Smoke’s eyes moved to the sketchbook, then back to her. “It matters to you,” he said plainly. “It matters to me.”

“I thought you ain’t believe in all that stuff,” she said. “Hoodoo.” 

“I don’t.” He shrugged. “I believe in you.” 

Annie drew in a small breath, tilting her chin up a little. “What does courtin’ mean to you?”

Smoke took his time to answer.  

“It means I come correct. I don’t sneak around corners with you. Don’t have folks guessin’ what you mean to me.  It means if I spend time with you, it’s cause I’m serious about you.” 

“You are?” 

“I am.”

She looked at him— a silent urge to keep talking, like he wasn’t already undoing her under this magnolia tree.

“I ain’t sayin’ I got everything figured out. I don’t. I got work that ain’t clean. I got Stack.” His mouth tightened faintly. “And I got things I still need to make right before I can ask for more than this.”

He sighed. “But I know what I mean,” he said. “And I don’t mean to waste your time.” 

Annie looked down at the sketchbook in her lap. This man, whose words always held weight, had looked closely at her dreams sketched in graphite and smudged lines and simply said —he wanted to be part of them. 

She looked back at him. “If I say yes,” she said slowly. “I want my shop. I want my work. I want…I wanna be somebody outside of who I’m with.” 

“You already are,” he said, voice low.

Annie blinked.

His voice stayed low. “I ain’t askin’ to make you smaller.”

Annie’s breath caught. “Then what you askin’?”

He paused for a moment, then— “To walk beside you while you grow.” 

The silence that sat between them wasn’t empty. It was so full that Annie had to look away just so she could breathe. 

That’s when she felt it.

A nervous laugh.

It rose up in her throat— not because anything was funny, but because the weight of this moment was so heavy, she had to lighten it somehow before it swallowed her whole. She tried to suppress it, but the corners of her mouth had already turned up.

“You laughin’ at me?”

He noticed. Of course he did.

“No!”

Smoke’s mouth twitched. “Yes you are.”

“No I’m not!”

“You a bad liar.”

“I'm not lyin'...you just...makin’ me nervous right now,” she admitted softly.

His eyes softened. “You can take your time to think about it.”

Annie shook her head immediately. “No,” she said. “I don’t need time,” she assured him. 

His eyes got serious again.

“I’ll let you court me.”

Something moved across his face. Not quite a smile. Something much more dangerous to her composure. “Yeah?”

Annie’s lips curved into a fully encompassing smile that spread gently across her face. “Yeah.” 

He held out his hand for her. A question. She put her hand in his and they laced their fingers together carefully, palms warm and steady against each other. The answer.

The tree shed another petal. It drifted down between them and landed on their intertwined hands. They didn’t move it. The lantern burned low. They sat like that beneath the magnolia tree as the last of summer continued to fall around them.

The next morning was a blur. Between the demands of empty stomachs and the nervous tremor of her own hands, a nagging anxiety sat on her shoulders and butterflies fluttered violently in the pit of her belly. A sigh of relief left her lips as the last lodger headed out the door, leaving her and Aunt Della to at least be able to clean up the kitchen and dining room in a tempered silence. 

The wind chimes on the porch fluttered in the breeze, whistling a throaty, breathless jingle that did nothing to calm her nerves. Aunt Della glanced her way a few times, but said nothing. Even Felix tried to soothe her, his purrs doing little to bring her any real solace. 

Annie shoved a biscuit in her mouth to give herself something to do. The warm fluffiness filled her mouth and the butter satisfied her tastebuds with its rich, melty goodness. She sighed then took another bite, closing her eyes as the sustenance moved through her body.

Maybe she was just hungry. And maybe her anxiousness had nothing to do with him.

She moved quicker, stacking, sweeping, wiping, scraping until the house smelled like eucalyptus, lavender, and bleach.

Annie collapsed on the couch in the front room, but not from exhaustion. From adrenaline that had nowhere else to go. Her heart beat rapidly and she fingered her ileke beads like that could somehow calm it. Morning light cut warm and light through the front windows like a balm on her skin. She tilted her head back and let her eyes close, basking in the quiet after the chaos of breakfast. 

The scent of tobacco, peppermint, and bay rum floated through the screen door. Slowly—like the rich, layered smells that arrive in a kitchen when meat, butter and herbs fold into each other on the stove.

Then the screen door cracked open and Smoke stepped through. 

Annie’s mouth went dry.

The first thing she noticed was the way he darkened the doorway once he stepped past the threshold. He was tall, well over six feet. Large and imposing frame, and even though she was a tall woman herself, it felt like he towered over her. The muscles on his arms and shoulders filled out every inch of his white collared shirt, pressing against the starched fabric with a powerful, restrained strength. His suspenders held up trousers that sat comfortably around his hips. His boots were heavy on his feet even though his steps were light. It was a subtle contradiction that made her tongue feel like cotton in her mouth. 

The second thing she noticed were the flowers in his hand. Two separate arrangements— one a mixture of white, cream, and greenery. The other was a mixture of vivid colors that looked like a rainbow painted the petals. Each was wrapped in brown paper and tied gently with twine.

Smoke removed his hat and turned to see Annie spread lazily across the couch. Apron halfway untied, scarf to the side, legs hanging off the edge, dress tracing the curve of her hips. She looked beautiful with her feet dangling in the air, bent nickel hanging loosely off a string around her left ankle, shoulders relaxed like she didn’t have a care in the world. He liked that look. Wanted to see more of it.

He was doing that staring thing again, Annie thought to herself. The way his eyes slowly swept up and down her body gave her goosebumps, and she suddenly became very aware of how she was presenting. Worn dress, apron smudged with stains, hair fuzzy in her cornrows, barefoot and lounging on the couch. But the heat in his eyes turned a casual glance-over into a smoldering glare that pinned her in place. The paper around the bouquets crinkled under his grasp as he adjusted them in his hand. When his voice finally broke the loaded silence that had overtaken the front room of the boarding house, it was rough with something that made her spine snap straight. Her legs followed, then her hands, dragging her upwards until she was sitting up completely.

“Good mornin’.” 

Annie smiled up at him, a sight that beamed brighter than the morning sun. “Good mornin’.”

Smoke took a step closer, then two, and with one hand grabbed the white bouquet out of his other and extended them towards Annie. “For you.”

“Thank you,” she said, inhaling their scent. 

Smoke nodded once, then looked around the room. “Where’s your aunt?”

“Somewhere out back,” she said breathily, taking another sniff of the flowers. 

“These for her.”

“Awww, ain’t you sweet?”

“Don’t tell nobody,” he said in that low register that made her skin tingle, with a timbre that told her he wasn’t joking even though the corner of his mouth lifted when he said it. 

He proceeded into the kitchen then out the back door, leaving Annie with her own thoughts and the absence of…him. His presence stayed in the room even though he was gone, and it wasn’t just because the smell of his cologne lingered behind. Her head tilted when she realized what day it was. Monday. What was he doing here?

“What we doin’ today?” He asked as he stepped back into her space.

Annie’s breath stuttered.

Aunt Della listened in from the kitchen, looking entirely pleased with herself. 

Annie cleared her throat and shut her mouth that had opened at Smoke’s words. Not because she wasn’t used to him being forward. But because the look in his eye told her he was dead serious when he asked her that question.

“I gotta stop by Chow’s,” she started, to which he acknowledged with a nod. “Then the drugstore,” she continued. She listed things off until she stopped to look down at what she needed to do before anything else. “I gotta wash up first. Change.” 

“I’ma be right here,” he assured her, sinking deep into the couch, putting his head back, and spreading his legs. 

Annie took one more look at him and darted up the stairs.

Thirty minutes later she was in front of the mirror, blouse tucked into a halfway-fastened skirt. Her hair was taken down from her cornrows, oiled, greased, parted down the middle, and pulled back. 

Except one piece that just wouldn’t lay flat. 

She brushed it once, then brushed it again. It refused to lay right, refused to stay right. Her hairbrush clattered on the dresser where she dropped it. 

“What am I doing?” she asked like the walls could talk back. 

She gripped the edge of the dresser, then touched the open edge of her blouse still unbuttoned at the throat. Her fingers rested there a moment before she remembered to button it. 

Her fingers weren’t steady. She cursed under her breath, buttoning it with trembling hands. She smoothed the front down, turning to the side to make sure it was tucked all the way in. 

Then she picked up her hairbrush again. Went over the same spot. Got the same result. 

She threw her hairbrush down with frustration, flustered. 

All of a sudden she felt very alone. More alone than she’d felt since she got to Clarksdale. She tried to blink away the tears but one escaped her eye. It rolled down her cheek, dropping onto her dresser. 

She missed her friends from home. 

She missed her family.  

She didn't expect this. Didn’t expect him. 

And now she was standing in the middle of something new surrounded by people who barely knew her. No mama who always knew what to say. No brothers teasing. No daddy who would pretend it wasn’t making him emotional seeing his little girl stepping into her role as a woman.

Maybe it was a sign. 

She didn’t know what she was doing. She couldn’t even get her hair right without falling apart.

What did she know about being courted?

The word felt strange in her throat. New. Like a dress made out of fine fabric that she hadn’t yet learned how to move in. Like something she wanted to be careful with, to not wrinkle. Something she wanted to spin in front of the mirror just to see how it caught the light. 

And maybe, just maybe….if it fit just right, she could keep it.

Her stomach fluttered. 

She didn’t know what came after she said yes.

She’d heard stories from her friends back home, but she was never in the thick of it to look around and see how it felt. 

She didn’t know how close she was supposed to stand beside him, what folks would hear if he said her name too soft. Didn’t know if holding his hand would feel natural or if she’d overthink every step. She didn’t know what part of herself was meant to stay guarded and what part was allowed to lean.

But between the frustration, and the fear, and the homesickness that had a vice grip on her nerves…she still wanted to try.

That was the part that kept resurfacing.

She wanted it. Wanted him beside her. Wanted to be beside him. And she wanted folks to see.

The truth of it rose up so plainly, it didn’t leave room for her to argue with herself about it.

She wanted to know what Smoke looked like when he didn’t hold himself back so much. Wanted to learn what his quiet felt like when it belonged to her. Wanted to see if walking beside him in the daylight felt like sitting beside him under the magnolia tree in the backyard.

She rubbed her ileke beads and let the touch ground her. Then she put some oil on her fingers, the special blend her mama made that halfway leaked out in her trunk, and brushed the worrisome part of her hair the way her mama always did when she got too frustrated to do it herself. Rub, smooth, brush, set. 

She looked in the small, age-spotted mirror again, and her mouth curved up into a small, winsome smile.

Maybe she didn't know what she was doing.

But maybe the only thing she needed to do today was walk downstairs, meet his eyes, and take it one step at a time.

The floorboards upstairs groaned and Smoke’s head snapped towards the sound. He rose slowly from his spot on the couch, keeping his eyes trained on Annie as she walked down the stairs with a hand on the banister. 

His gaze moved over her. 

She wore a deep mustard-colored blouse tucked into a navy blue ankle-length skirt and high button leather boots. Her purse was slung over her shoulder and her skin still looked warm from her bath.

“You look nice.” 

“Thank you.”

“Real nice.”

Annie’s cheeks warmed. 

“Ready?” he asked.

Annie smiled once she got to the bottom of the staircase. “I’m ready.” 

Aunt Della stood in the threshold between the kitchen and the front room, arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes went from Smoke to Annie and back. “Y’all don’t have too much fun out there,” she smirked. “And watch my baby,” she said to Smoke.

“I will,” Smoke said as he put his hat back. He opened the door for Annie and stepped back to turn to Aunt Della. “Always.” 

Aunt Della shook her head playfully and turned back to the kitchen, arms still folded but a grin on her lips. 

The ride over to Fourth Street was quick—just two short blocks. People in front of Chow’s Grocery were few and far between, but the sidewalk was far from empty. Outside, business moved as usual. A vendor restocked produce while a worker inspected their freshness. A few customers left the store with items wrapped tightly in brown paper while their children skipped alongside them with peppermint sticks and molasses chews in hand. Wagons trekked by slowly with mounds of cotton in the back, and the constant hammering of picks chipping ice blocks apart echoed in the street.

Smoke rounded the front of his truck to open the door for Annie. He held up a hand for her to balance herself on and took care to make sure she was steady once she stepped out. He followed behind her as they walked to the entrance, his hand on the small of her back as he held the door for her.

The inside held the sweet pungency of chicory in burlap sacks being hauled from the back and piled high by the windows. Charles and Bo Chow stood behind the front counter, Charles weighing something on the scale while Bo wrote an entry in the ledger. A smirk spread across Bo’s face when he saw Smoke and Annie at the door and clocked their closeness. He nodded at Smoke, then slid his eyes over to Annie and waved at her, drawn by the warmth that always seemed to radiate off her. 

“Baby,” Smoke started, exchanging a look with Bo. “I need to go holler at Bo real quick.”

“Okay,” Annie responded in that sweet, syrupy Louisiana drawl of hers.

She drifted across the store looking at her list, then made her way down one of the aisles in search of something else entirely. Smoke watched her go, watched her disappear, replayed it in his head. Then he turned to Bo. He was wiping down a display as Charles rang up a customer at the till.

“How you been, man?” Bo asked.

“Good, good,” Smoke said. He greeted him with a firm handshake, then pulled back to get a good look at him. “Damn, fatherhood huh?”

“I look that bad?”

“You look like shit.”

Bo laughed, the corner of his eyes crinkling with it. He looked tired, but content in a way that made his eyes twinkle. Like he was at peace despite it all. “Tired as hell. But I’m happy,” he nodded. “We happy.” 

“I’m happy for you, Bo.”

“Thanks man,” Bo replied, shaking Smoke’s shoulder. His eyes flicked over the store. “Della’s girl…that’s you?”

“You mean Annie,” Smoke corrected. 

Surprise overtook Bo’s face and he raised an eyebrow. A question. “Yeah, I mean Annie.”

“Yeah,” he answered. Firm. “She mine.”

Bo clapped Smoke on the shoulder, looking at him with a sense of shock and awe. “Oh shit,” he exclaimed, putting a fist in front of his mouth. “Look at you, fixin’ to be in my shoes soon, Smoke.”

Smoke shot him a look as he walked away, but something in him got quiet when the thought crossed his mind. Then it got warm.

Annie, a mother.

Him. 

A father.

He shook the thought away just as quickly when they became poisoned by thoughts of his own father. 

That felt like a metaphor for his own life— innocence being corrupted by its own blood.

The thought of being a father after putting his own in the ground felt devastatingly ironic, but hope flickered somewhere that maybe it could rewrite whatever went wrong with his own.

He shook his head and kept walking through the store, his legs carrying him past the aisles in slow, measured steps. He didn’t rush. He knew exactly where Annie was. 

Annie was still reeling. 

From him calling her baby. From the way he said it with that deep Mississippi drawl. Her cheeks were warm, skin flushed, and all of a sudden, everything felt hot despite the store being cool.

She stood in the aisle, humming under her breath, half bent over as she flipped through a wire basket on a shelf filled with seed packets. 

“Why she want this when we got it in the backyard?” She fussed. 

She shook her head, plucked the seed packet from the stack, and stood up. They dropped into her shopping basket as she walked further down the aisle. She picked up the small bag of feed and saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye. She ignored it and went about her business crossing items off her list when she heard it.

“Hey stranger.”

She turned around.

Reverend Carter stepped around the corner.

Red button up, brown tweed waistcoat, gold pocket watch hanging. And that silver signet ring that he rubbed with the pad of his thumb. She looked down in his shopping basket and her brows knit at the contents inside. 

Her lips tightened into a line, that same odd sense of familiarity crept up on her again and made her insides tumble with unease. 

“Hey.” She adjusted the strap of her purse around her shoulder.

A grin spread across his face. “How you been?”

“Good,” she nodded. “You?”

Carter nodded like he was choosing his words carefully. “I’ve been doin’ just fine,” he said slowly.

Annie shifted her weight. “So you’re back?”

“For a little.” 

She blinked. “Where you speakin’ at this time?”

“Church off Yazoo,” he said quickly.

She frowned for a second, then relaxed her face. 

Carter chuckled under his breath. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You stayin’ at the house?”

He smirked to the side then looked back. “I’m stayin’ with the pastor.”

“Makes sense.” 

“Yeah…makes perfect sense.”

His eyes dropped to her ileke beads, then back up. The glance was quick, barely even noticeable. But she did. The hand that wasn’t holding her basket rose to touch her beads protectively. 

Smoke noticed it too. 

He was at the top of the aisle, watching.

He saw Carter’s eyes dip to her chest. It was just a brief second, but the flicker made his chest tighten. 

He crossed the aisle in three long strides. He kept his eyes forward, locked on Carter who had sensed him looming and had since looked up from Annie. 

Smoke stepped behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist, the motion tucking her into his side. The gesture was smooth, natural, like her body had no business not being there all along.

Annie let out a quiet exhale. It was a short, controlled breath that made her shoulders relax.

Then she moved—but she didn’t move so much as melt. She relaxed back into Smoke’s touch, folding easily into him. His fingers curled around her hip, but his eyes didn’t leave Carter’s.

“Afternoon,” Carter said politely to Smoke.

Smoke just stared at him, his dark hooded eyes like black orbs piercing into the depths of whatever lay behind Carter’s. No nod. No acknowledgement. Just a cold, tactical assessment.

Carter blinked. “Y’all goin’ to the Harvest Party next month?”

“Yeah,” Annie replied quickly. She felt Smoke’s grip tighten on her hip.“We—”

“What business a preacher got at a juke joint?” Smoke asked, voice flat.

“I ain’t goin’,” Carter said, rubbing his signet ring. He looked down at it, then looked back up at them. “Just tryna make conversation.”

Smoke and Annie glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes. 

“Well,” he said, tipping his hat. “Y’all have a good rest of your day.” 

Then he walked away.

The bustle of Chow’s went on around them but they didn’t hear it— like they only existed now in their own little bubble. Then Smoke dipped his head to her ear and pressed his lips there.

Three short kisses. Soft despite the intensity of the feeling behind them. Warm, from the closeness and something else entirely. They felt less like a kiss and more like a claim.

One right behind the ear, one lower on the skin right above the neck, and one right on the shell. His nose nuzzled there for a second before he opened his mouth and hummed right into her ear. Low, deep, right into the part of her ear that made his voice vibrate right down her spine. 

“You good?” 

“Mhmm,” she hummed.

She looked over her shoulder at him and his eyes were closed at the sound of her voice. She stroked his beard and his eyes opened to find hers darker. Her fingers grazed the shell of his ear. A gentle touch that made him fight off a shiver. 

“Behave,” he said, squeezing her hip gently.

Annie grinned. She turned away from his grasp and slinked out of the aisle like nothing happened. Then she glanced over her shoulder at him once more to bat her eyes at him before slipping completely out of his sight. Smoke stood there watching her walk away, his body still warm from where she rested against it. He flexed his hands at his sides to subdue the fire she stoked in him, then followed behind her.

Outside, the air smelled like spice and the bite of the chilly November air. Annie adjusted the paper-wrapped bundle from Chow’s against her hip and slipped it into her purse. Smoke stepped out behind her with the chicken feed sack tucked under his arm and the rest of Aunt Della’s order in his other hand like it weighed nothing. He watched a shiver run down Annie’s spine that she tried to hide.

“Cold?”

“A little.”

“Here.”

Smoke shrugged off his jacket and laid it over Annie’s shoulders as they walked towards his truck. The smell wafting from King’s Tamales Stand next door stopped Annie in her tracks as a man working the booth shouted his prices to folks passing by and wrapped hot tamales in paper. Warm masa, spice, meat steamed softly inside of corn husks. Steam curled up from a heavy pot blackened by use and hit the inside of the tin roof of the stand that had a crooked hand-painted sign attached to the front.

Smoke glanced at Annie. “Hungry?” 

Annie looked at him with those wide brown eyes of hers. Then her stomach answered before she got the chance. She scoffed, looking down at it like it betrayed her thoughts, then back up at Smoke. 

Smoke’s mouth twitched. “Come on.” He shifted the sack higher beneath his arm and stepped towards the stand. “How many you want?” 

“One.”

“Just one?”

Smoke looked towards the tamale man. “We’ll take four.”

Annie blinked. “Four?”

Smoke looked back at Annie. “I’m hungry, too.” 

The man behind the stand grinned like he’d seen this before. “Two for the gentleman, one for the lady now, and one for when she gets hungry later.”

“Exactly,” Smoke agreed.

Annie scoffed, looking away before a smile broke out on her face.

“Hot?” the man asked.

Smoke looked back at Annie again. She lifted her chin, offended despite herself. “Hot.”

Smoke looked back to the grinning man and nodded once. “Hot.”

“You think I wouldn’t like hot?”

“I didn’t know that’s why I asked.”

“You forget where I’m from?”

“I remember.”

The tamales came wrapped in paper, steam rising as the man passed them over to Smoke. He paid, coins dropping clean in the man’s palm. “Enjoy,” he said as they turned down the sidewalk. 

They walked a little ways down the side of the building, stopping by a patch of shade where the street noise softened around them. Smoke set Aunt Della’s things carefully by his feet, then handed Annie her tamales. He unwrapped his own with easy hands. Annie watched him without meaning to. The way he carefully peeled back the husk. The way the steam curled around his fingers. The way he took the first bite and let it sit in his mouth before he started chewing. He chewed once, twice, then nodded faintly to himself. 

“That good?”

“Mhmm.” He took another bite. 

Annie unwrapped hers, holding it carefully between her fingers as the heat bled through the paper. The first bite was soft and smoky. The cornmeal was tender, but not enough to fall through her fingers. The meat was rich with salt, pepper, and something earthy underneath. She chewed thoughtfully, her mouth analyzing every flavor. Smoke was already on his second tamale, but was chewing slower now, watching her. 

“What?” she asked.

“You makin’ a face.”

“I’m thinkin’.”

Smoke’s brows knit together. “About a tamale?”

“Mhmm.”

His mouth curved. “That so?”

“Absolutely.”

She took another bite, slower this time. “It’s good.”

Smoke nodded but kept his eyes trained on her for the—

“But.”

“I knew it.”

Annie smiled faintly. “It could use a lil’ more depth.”

“Depth?”

She nodded. “Depth.”

Smoke looked down at his half-eaten tamale then back up at Annie. “It’s a tamale.”

“And?”

Smoke looked amused now. He tilted his head. “What would you do to it?”

Annie shifted her weight. “I’d give it somethin’ to round out the pepper,” she said. “So it don’t just sit on top.”

Smoke just looked at her. “You always this particular?”

“With food? Yes.”

“And everything else?”

Annie opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked down at her tamale, then back at him. And when she spoke, her words came out softer than she expected them. “I know what I like.”

Smoke’s gaze hadn’t left her. “Good.” He took another bite, slowly. The cornmeal broke apart clean between his teeth. A long chunk of saucy meat landed on his tongue and he slurped it down his mouth without breaking eye contact.

“You starin’.”

Annie blinked. “Am not.”

“What you lookin’ at then?”

“You got somethin’ on your face.”

He ran a hand through his beard. “For real?” 

“It’s gone now.”

He couldn’t ignore the mirth in her eyes. She looked away, unwrapping the last tamale with more attention than it needed. The corner of Smoke’s mouth lifted. 

“Where I’m from, folks put more life into they food,” she said, turning back to him.

“More life?”

“Yep.”

“What that mean?”

“It means…” she said, looking towards the street like she could find the words there. “Food should taste like somebody remembered where they came from when they made it.”

“You sayin’ the people who made this…forgot where they came from?”

“No.” She smiled into her food. “They just knew wherever they was goin’ didn’t like it hot!”

Smoke huffed a laugh. Fourth Street moved around them, unconcerned. And the tension from inside of Chow’s softened into something easier. Something with steam, spice, and a little more kick. 

“I’ll make sure to let King know.”

Annie swatted his chest. “Smoke, don’t you dare!” 

When they were done eating, Smoke gathered Aunt Della’s order again and Annie threw the empty wrappers into a nearby waste barrel. She wiped her fingers against her handkerchief, the taste of pepper and cornmeal still heavy on her tongue. 

They left their items from Chow’s locked in Smoke’s truck, which he left in front of the grocery store at Annie’s insistence. Annie enjoyed the scenery as they walked leisurely towards the next stop on her list of errands. Smoke enjoyed the scenery too— her. Her hair, tucked into a thick bun, had tendrils hanging down the sides of her face that blew with the wind. One kept sticking to the shell of her ear, tickling her when it hit just right. The beads tucked under the neckline of her dress rattled if she moved a certain way. And she still had his jacket on to shield her from the wind. The sight of her walking around with his suit jacket draped over her shoulders did something to him that he couldn’t explain and didn’t want to. 

They neared the crossroad where Fourth Street met Issaquena, the street lined with shops for personal and grooming services. Luella’s Dressing Room & Alterations, Ritzy’s Beauty Salon, Brown’s Barbershop, and others sat along a row of close-knit brick and wooden storefronts with mended awnings and handmade signs.

The noise of the street got louder as they approached the block where Luella’s and Ritzy’s stood across from the barbershop. Or maybe it was just the noise in Annie’s head. She walked closest to the sidewalk with Smoke right beside her, watching her closely. His hand would find her lower back if he saw her steps falter or slow. They dodged some kids roughhousing, a stand or a low hanging sign, a crack in the sidewalk.

The area in front of the barbershop was full of men standing on lampposts smoking cigarettes, people watching, and chatting each other up. Suspenders loose or off, hats sitting low, legs bent, feet on the brick barbershop building while they waited their turn. The striped pole outside spun slowly with the wind. The smell of shaving soap, pomade, and hot comb smoke drifted upwards from the barbershop and the beauty salon across the street. The men outside let their eyes wander when Annie approached them on the sidewalk— and froze when they saw Smoke right next to her. Conversations paused, necks craned slowly. Smoke guided her through the crowd that parted for them with his hand at her back. The men acknowledged him, some giving him daps, others giving a firm nod. Some said a few polite words, tipping their hats and greeting them both as they walked by. But Smoke kept his hands on Annie. Always on her. 

Sunflower Music was painted in gold lettering on a black wooden sign that hung perpendicular to the sidewalk. The awning was a muted red, the color faded by the sun and wear, and stuck out of a narrow brick storefront with tall display windows in the front. Folks walking by would just stop and stare at what was inside— sheet music, instruments, phonographs, a lone Columbia Graphophone. Stacks of records displayed like treasure. Once the shop bell guided them through the door, the smell of paper, varnished wood, and cigars turned the crisp winter air to something with more bite. The space was long and spread out. Wooden floors. Pressed-tin ceiling. Ceiling fans turning slowly overhead. Most of the displays were spread out across the walls except a few items that were secured behind glass cases and oak cabinets shined to a mirror finish. 

A musician tested out strings by the wall where the instruments were displayed. A few church mothers Annie recognized from First Baptist Missionary were flipping carefully through church hymn sheet music displayed in stands on the other side of the shop. 

The owner stood by one of many phonographs with a record in his hands. He placed it in one, cranked the machine, and dropped the needle, all in one smooth, practiced motion. The customer standing next to him waited for the beat to drop. The record spun, the sound cracked slightly, then the smooth sound of a brass band spread throughout the room. Annie paused. The customer bopped his head to the fast-paced, soulful music coming from the phonograph speakers. 

Then the cornet solo hit.

Annie stilled entirely. 

The sound of conversation faded away, even the pointed looks of the church mothers who recognized her walking hand-in-hand with Smoke, she paid no mind. The familiarity of the music made her chest twist painfully. It sounded like home. Felt like it too. Like street musicians, second line parades, and rain hitting tin roofs during summer storms. 

“Annie?” he asked, voice low. He touched the small of her back.

Once she caught her breath, she whispered, “Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied, blinking back the tear that threatened to drop from her left eye. “Just reminds me of home.” She blinked and she could see it clearly. A rickety old shack. The fierce, stubborn, woman who lived inside who felt more like a spirit than a memory. “My great-grandmama,” she said a little softer. “Before she passed…she loved listening to the cornet. I don’t know why but that was the only instrument that made her face light up no matter how out of it she was.”

Smoke rubbed her lower back and they moved deeper in the store but Annie felt like she was walking through water. They ended up by the stack of records which stood close to the instruments along the wall. 

“That’s the thing about music,” he said. “It has a way of bringin’ you back to somebody, even after they long gone.”

Annie exhaled sharply. She went through the Vaudeville records but she wasn’t really looking. Smoke stood by her side, facing her, waiting. 

“We lost her to the hurricane. Back in ‘15.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“She wouldn’t leave.” Her voice cracked. 

“What you mean?”

Annie took a deep breath.

“She lived deep in the bayou. Water filled with gators,” she chuckled, shaking her head. “She knew the storm was comin’ before it did. Said if the water’s fixin’ to take her she ain’t gon’ run.” 

Annie looked towards the window like the memory called her there for some reason. “She said she had somebody on the other side waitin’ on her.” 

Smoke nodded once, eyes patient. “You know who?”

“No,” she said. “She was sold downriver ‘fo she could remember anyone.”

“Damn,” Smoke whispered. 

She smiled. It was faint, like it was pushing through the grief. “She was alone her whole life…’til she started having babies.”

“How many?”

“Fourteen.”

Smoke whistled low.

Annie hummed. “She was somethin’ else.”

The memory of her great-grandmother flashed quickly through her mind like a blur. Eyes that looked different…older than her age, and much younger at the same time. Her frail hands dragging a stick through swamp mud, leaving marks that looked less drawn than remembered.

“What was her name?”

Annie blinked and it was gone. Her hand rose to her ileke beads again, then she looked up at Smoke with the softest, widest, brown eyes, and the tenderness in them made him sigh. 

“Antoinette,” she said finally. Like the name pulled something out of her that made her hesitate to say it out loud.

Smoke rubbed her shoulder, pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. 

Annie put a hand on his chest, leaning into his touch. 

They let the silence sit between them for a few moments. Let the quiet ache until it dulled into something easier to move on from.

“Anyway,” she said finally, pulling herself together. “Let’s get what I came here for.” Her fingers walked the records in search of the ragtime one Aunt Della wanted.

“What kinda music they listen to, over there in France?”

“They liked a lot of the stuff we brought over.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Our regiment had a band and everything.” 

“Were you in it?” She teased.

His mouth twitched. “Nah.” 

The musician testing out guitars hit a chord with a slider that made Smoke’s hand tap once against the record box before he caught himself. He looked at Annie and she was already looking at him. 

“What?” he asked.

Annie arched her brow. “You like that?”

“It’s nice.”

“Why?”

Smoke exhaled. “It’s slow. Got a little ache to it.”

Annie chuckled low.

The guitar player took his slider off and played something a little louder, a little faster, a deep Blues riff.

“You like this one, too?” 

“This more Stack’s style.”

“Mmmhmmm.”

“What?”

“It’s more Stack’s style but your hand been tappin’ away since he started playin’.” 

Smoke looked down at his hand then back to Annie. “Don’t mean I can’t enjoy it.”

“You right,” she smirked. “But you tappin’ along like you know this song by heart.”

“I do.” 

Annie frowned. “From where?”

“My daddy.” He paused. Looked down. Sighed. “He played the guitar.”

“Oh,” she mouthed. She heard something in his words even though his voice was steady. Pain. Shame. Guilt. Loss. Whatever it was, it weighed heavy.

His jaw tightened. “Back then…” he drifted off. “The music felt kinder than the man.” His eyes found her again.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

Annie rubbed his arm, then pulled it around her. The gesture made his shoulders relax, and she wrapped her arms around his chest. “Elijah,” she whispered up to him.

His name on her lips felt as warm as her hand on his chest. 

“Hmm,” he answered, looking off into the distance.

She rubbed his back. “You alright?” she asked quietly.

He looked down at her, then wrapped his arms around her tighter. 

“Yeah,” he said into her hair. He inhaled her scent—jasmine, rosewater, and vanilla.

Annie didn't push. Just let him stay in the moment a little longer, with her to hold onto.

Across the room, one of the church mothers cleared her throat entirely too loud, and just like that the tenderness snapped. Smoke and Annie both frowned, then looked over with expectant gazes. One cold, one more curious but still annoyed. The church mother’s mouth snapped shut and she scoffed, turning back around. Smoke and Annie both laughed as they walked towards the register, his arm around her shoulder.

“I’ma get an earful on Sunday ‘cause of you,” Annie joked, lacing her fingers with the ones hanging over her shoulder.

“They need to mind they own business,” Smoke said. Loudly. Right towards where they were congregating off to the side by the sheet music.

Their heads snapped over immediately.

Annie swatted his chest.

“What?”

“Lord,” she mumbled. “You was just tellin’ me to behave and you out here talkin’ crazy.”

“Tell the truth, shame the devil. Ain’t that what they say?”

“Smoke!” She tried swatting at him again. This time he caught her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. Annie rolled her eyes but she couldn’t stop a grin from spreading on her face.

“Nuh-uh,” his voice dropped low, right by her ear again. “You know my name.”

Her breath hitched.

“Mhmm,” he drawled.

They stepped to the register. 

“Find everything you were lookin’ for?” The clerk asked. 

The words sat between them. Smoke looked at Annie.

“Yeah,” Annie said. “Just this.”

“This a good record,” he remarked. “Classic.” He set the W.C. Handy record in its sleeve, then wrapped it twice in newspaper.

Annie listened.

“His band still play around town, in Tutwiler, and down in Mound Bayou.”

Smoke’s jaw clenched, then unclenched. Annie saw it. Saved it for later.

“Bayou?” she asked.

“Mound Bayou. All black town, just a little ways south of here,” the clerk remarked. 

Annie nodded curiously.

The clerk slipped the record in a brown paper bag. “That’ll be 75 cent.” 

Smoke had it in the man’s hand before Annie could pull out her pocketbook. He watched her hesitate and shot her a look that dared her to pull her own money out. That’s all she needed to see to keep her hand right where it was— wrapped tightly in his. 

Smoke kissed her hand again before grabbing the bag.

“Y’all have a nice day,” the clerk said.

They turned to leave a few minutes later, bags between them as they fell in step beside each other. They didn’t talk much, but their hands stayed laced, like they both needed to touch the piece of themselves they just shared. When they stepped out of the building and the noise of the street came back, the moment didn’t disappear. It just followed them out into the cold. The chilly air whipped wildly across their faces, but it did nothing to cool the heat rising between them, or the thrum that sat underneath all the tension.

A month went by, but not quietly.

The air got colder. November flew by like a gust of wind off the gulf where Annie used to catch crabs with her brothers when she was a little girl. The house got louder. Out of towners, people trying to get up North before the snow up there delayed the trains. Blackbird got busier. Annie kept storing her money in the tea tin that fit perfectly under the floorboard in her room. Soon she’d have to get a bigger one, she thought to herself. And find another hiding place.

Annie’s lessons with Aunt Della continued behind padlocked doors. 

Dress fittings at Luella’s became less frequent as her Harvest Party look came together. 

Smoke got busy, too. Quiet meetings on the outskirts of town. Trips to Memphis and business at Moon Lake. He came around the boarding house even more. This time he didn’t need to feign usefulness.

Meetings under the magnolia tree became their ritual. Every Sunday when the afternoon stretched its arms out into evening he’d come around back. Like clockwork, he’d show up, the side fence creaking open before he stepped through. They’d sit outside and talk until the mosquitos got too bad.

It became a place where they shared pieces of themselves. 

A place where ordinary conversation became sacred. 

Nellie, Pearline and Gigi squealed when she finally told them about Smoke. And time with them became more frequent too — nights, afternoons, or mornings in town before the roads got too crowded. 

As long as it didn’t touch Sunday night. 

Those belonged to Smoke.

“Louisiana,” Gigi started. Casual, like she was just asking about the weather. “You ain’t mounted that horse yet?” 

The words cut through the laughter, the sound of peas dropping in a bowl, even the phonograph that played soft jazz from the corner. Somebody choked mid-chuckle. Everybody turned to look at Annie, then froze. Three sets of eyes stared at her with a glittering curiosity that made her palms feel clammy in that moment. Gigi tapped her foot on the floor impatiently. Pearline fiddled with her hands. Nellie looked at Annie like she could read the answer in her face. But Annie wasn’t bothered. In fact, she was a little amused. This wasn’t a new question.

The four of them were sitting around the kitchen table after congregating at Nellie's house following their weekday bible study. Nellie’s mother took one long look at the four of them lounging around the front room and put them to work. She set a bowl and some peas on the kitchen table and walked out the room without another word. A pot of greens soaked on the counter. Pepper and onion sat chopped in a cast iron for later. Flour still sat in the cracks of the table from breakfast. 

She sighed softly. “No.” 

“Why not?” 

“She said she ain’t ready, y’all,” Pearline chimed in for her. “She say this every time y’all ask this question.” Then quieter. “It ain’t always like what them singers be goin’ on about.”

“Maybe not for you,” Gigi rebutted. “But you ain’t mountin’ a stallion.”

“More like a donkey,” Nellie joked.

Annie snorted. Even Pearline laughed under her breath. 

“So y’all just been kissin’?” Gigi probed.

“Mhmm.”

“You let him…touch you?” The question came from Nellie.

Her body flushed warm at the thought. Annie looked over to Nellie. “No.”

“Shame,” she sighed. “He look like he know what to do with his hands.” 

“Mhmm,” Gigi agreed.

“He should know,” Pearline said matter-of-factly. “Him and his brother done ran through half the town.”

“More than half,” Nellie muttered.

Annie sighed. Rolled her eyes.

“Stack more than Smoke,” Nellie confirmed. 

“Don’t I know it,” Annie replied.

“I heard Stack got a mean appetite,” Gigi said slyly.

That made Pearline gasp. “Gigi!” 

“What?” Gigi asked incredulously. 

“Please,” Pearline insisted in a hushed tone.

Annie shook her head. “Oh my God,” she protested. “I don’t need to hear this about my man’s brother.”

“Your maaaan,” Pearline teased playfully. Annie smiled.

“I heard Smoke manhood so big, it touches your soul,” Nellie said.

Annie’s head turned towards Nellie. “Who told you that?”

Nellie shrugged. “Is it true?” 

Annie shrugged.

“Every woman in town want a piece of them twins, I’m just surprised you ain’t took a bite yet.” 

“Not even a nibble?” Gigi asked. She looked shocked.

Annie chuckled low. “Not even a nibble.”

“But you seen it, though? Felt it? Backed up on him and let it poke you a little?”

“No,” she said. “I ain’t seen it.”

“But you felt it.” Gigi’s eyes grew wide. “It’s big ain’t it?” 

“He walk around like it’s big,” Nellie said plainly.

The room exploded with laughter, squeals, and giggles. Annie fumbled with a pea. 

“What’s big?” A voice rang out from the other room.

Nellie froze, then groaned and rolled her eyes when she realized who was talking.

“Awww don’t sound too happy to see me lil’ sis,” she continued. She stepped into the kitchen, t-strap heels clacking against the floorboards. Nice dress, nicer stockings, hair styled differently than Annie had seen in Clarksdale or New Orleans. Baby on her hip and another child at her waist, vice grip on his shirt like she was trying to keep him from running off or touching something he wasn’t supposed to.

Nellie rolled her eyes again and kept on shelling peas. “Hey Verity,” she said flatly. She looked up and her eyes softened when she saw her niece and nephew. “Look at how big you are!” she exclaimed. 

“Aunt Nellie!” 

Verity released the little boy and he ran over to give his aunt a hug. She adjusted her grip on her daughter, bouncing the babbling toddler on her hip. 

“Baby,” Verity said calmly with that mom warning underneath, “gon’ and help your daddy outside.”

The little boy rushed out the front door, leaving just the girls in an awkward silence before they quickly changed the subject. 

“Hey Verity,” Gigi and Pearline said together. Verity greeted them back, staring curiously at the stranger sitting at her mother’s kitchen table. 

“Verity,” Nellie started. “This is Annie, she’s new, from Louisiana. Annie, this is my sister Verity. She’s in town from Chicago.” 

Annie wiped off her hands on her apron and held out her hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, Verity.”

“Nice to meet you too, Verity. My goodness, you’re so pretty.” 

“Thank you,” Annie beamed.

Verity looked around the room. At each woman’s face individually. “What was y’all in here talkin’ about?” She asked like she’d already heard too much.

“Nothing,” Nellie said firmly.

Verity’s eyes narrowed.

“Men,” Gigi admitted bluntly.

Nellie shot her a look, to which she just shrugged and kept shelling her peas.

“What about ‘em?” Verity asked as her baby grabbed the collar of her dress. She untangled her fingers carefully while waiting for someone to say something.

“Annie here got herself a suitor already,” Nellie called out. “Smoke Moore.”

The look on Verity’s face said that she was busy putting a name to a face before it finally clicked. “Oh, one of the twins!” She wiped drool off her baby’s lips before it dripped on her clothes. “So they both came back from the war,” she remarked. “That’s good.”

Nellie rolled her eyes. “She done forgot about everybody she grew up with.” 

“Did not! They’re both so much younger than me.”

“You’re only 27.”

“And I been in Chicago for the past seven years,” she quipped. “How old are they now?”

“21,” Gigi answered.

“Babies,” she whispered, pinching her daughter’s cheek.

“Anyway, do you mind? Us babies,” Nellie said sarcastically, “tryna talk here. About somethin’ you don’t need to know nothin’ about.”  

Verity sighed. She was older, but still young enough to remember being where they were. Young and unmarried. Always being in a position to be told or met with judgment. Mostly from the women closest to her. 

She’d moved to Chicago and was met with a different type of perspective. The social scene was different, much different, probably something that’d make her mother clutch her pearls if she heard the lasciviousness that was considered normal, and that she had a taste of it before she met her husband. 

So, she knew all about flirtation and temptation. About men who only knew how to talk pretty, men who knew how to be tender, and men who confused possession with care. And behind the venom in her words, she could hear something more vulnerable in her little sister’s tone. So, she pulled up a chair at the table, put her baby between her legs, and went to work shelling peas. They worked together in silence for a while. Nothing except the occasional sigh, the sound of the baby hitting the table with her palms, and the house creaking and settling around them.

“Anyone else seein’ anybody new?” Verity asked.

Nobody replied. The air in the tiny kitchen held an uncomfortable type of tension. But it wasn’t anything unique. It was generational. A hesitance that usually exists in the gap between women just becoming and women who’d already been in their shoes. 

“How’s your husband, Pea?” 

Pearline cleared her throat. “He good,” she responded. She kept her head down while Verity looked at her knowingly. 

The front door practically flew open with all the energy of a hyper five-year-old boy. He took his shoes off by the door then ran down the hallway. 

Another person stepped in. His steps were much slower, but his energy was just as powerful in a measured, grown man kind of way. All six heads in the kitchen turned at once. Skin the color of chestnuts, bulky shoulders, broad chest, piercing light brown eyes that could stop a woman mid-sentence. He took off his hat to reveal a head full of low-cut slicked down hair. His three-piece suit matched the sharpness of Verity’s dress like a lid to a pot. He flashed a smile and damn near every woman at the table gulped hard. 

He waved his hand to greet everyone. “Hey y’all.” His voice was deep and gruff. A hint of southern twang in it, like the South had somehow rubbed off on him but he wasn’t born and bred here. 

“Hey,” everybody said back. 

Verity smiled, clearly unshaken by his presence because this was her husband. 

“Can you take the baby? She gettin’ fussy and I’m tryna help the girls with supper.”

“Sure.” He crossed the room to the kitchen and planted a kiss on her waiting forehead, then grabbed his daughter from her lap. 

“Thank you.”

“Hey sugar plum,” he cooed. He spoke softly to his daughter. She giggled and rested her head in the crook of his neck as he took her down the hallway.

Once they heard the click of a door shutting in the distance, the kitchen could finally exhale.

“That’s your husband?” Gigi asked breathlessly, looking towards the hallway like she needed him to reappear out of thin air. “Girl he is too fine!”

Verity grinned. “That’s my man,” she said proudly.

“Where you find him at?” Gigi continued. “And do he have any brothers?”

Annie kept her thoughts to herself as she snapped a pea under her thumb. While they sized him up her thoughts drifted over to Smoke. How his smile was easy when he showed it. How he didn’t show it to anybody but her. The way he’d walk in and suck the air out the room. The way his muscles filled out his clothing. Her breath sped up at the thought. She felt flushed. Hot all of a sudden, all over again.

Verity laughed at Gigi’s remarks and shook her head. “He do, but he’s the only good apple in the bunch.”

“Lord,” Annie chuckled.

Verity looked over at her expectantly.

“I got nothin’ but brothers,” she explained. “Got one, maybe two of them decent. The rest ain’t got the sense God gave a goose.” 

Everyone at the table laughed, the tension easing into something more relaxed. 

“It would take God and all his disciples to drill some decency into ‘em,” Pearline let slip out.

“Pearlie!” Nellie gasped at the revelation. Sweet little Pearline with her lace gloves, quiet eyes and her perfect posture like she was afraid that if she didn’t stand up perfectly straight someone would come behind her with a ruler to put her back in line. 

She shrugged casually, clearly pleased with herself. 

“Gigi,” Annie kept on shelling peas. “You ever see Will again?”

Gigi made a sound like she was vomiting and Annie broke out in laughter. 

“Verity,” she looked at her. “This man had the worst smelling feet I’ve ever smelled in my life!”

“Not smelly feet.”

“A horse’s hoof smells better than that man’s feet,” she grimaced. “Besides,” she smirked like her face held a secret she’d been dying to tell. Her voice got low. “I’ve been keepin’ company with Rodney again.”

“Not surprised,” Nellie mumbled.

“Who’s Rodney?” Annie asked.

Nellie answered for her. “Just the man she been stuck on since we was kids.”

“Ohh….” 

“I ain’t stuck. He’s just familiar.”

“More like that hmmhmm” she gave the table a knowing look, “is familiar.”

“Hush!” Gigi swatted Nellie’s shoulder. “It’s reliable.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with goin’ back to an ol’ reliable.” Annie whipped her head around. The voice came from Verity.

“That’s right,” Gigi agreed smugly.

“Annie ain’t even done nothin’ with that twin of hers yet.” 

Annie rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”

“Why not?” Verity asked.

She huffed a small breath out her nose. “Just waitin’ for the right time.” 

“You waitin’ til the party huh?” Gigi asked with a grin. “All that liquor runnin’ through you will loosen you right on up,” she teased.

Annie shook her head, laughing.

Pearline spoke up quietly. “Don’t let the liquor make you do anything you don’t wanna do.”

“I ain’t,” Annie said.

“You keep it for yourself until you good and ready to give it away.”

“Exactly,” Pearline said. “And if he really cares, he won’t mind. Not one bit.”

“My husband waited a whole year for me to let him in. Didn’t pressure me. Didn’t make me feel bad. Didn’t make it ‘bout his needs,” Verity recalled. “What matters is what he does when wantin’ you, means he gotta take it slow.”

Her words landed. 

“Do he know?” Her voice was small. Pearline’s. “That you a virgin?”

Annie exhaled sharply. “I ain’t told him,” she confessed. 

Pearline spoke again. “And…he ain’t tried nothin’?” 

“We ain’t been alone like that,” she said softly while fumbling with the hem of her apron. “And I ain’t found the right time to tell him yet.”

“He gon’ wear you out once he get his hands on you,” Gigi said dramatically. “You know that right?”

“I believe it.” And she did.

“Whew, chile,” Nellie drawled. “I’ma say a prayer for you. And for your—” 

“Eleanor!” Verity snapped.

Annie snorted.

Verity looked over at Annie, eyes warm. “You’ll find the right time,” she assured.

The kitchen was a little quieter after that. Just the sound of knuckles cracking, shells snapping open, peas hitting the bottom of the bowl, throaty jazz still coming from the corner. And a glaring question that hummed underneath the noise. 

“Do you want to…you know, with him?” Pearline asked.

Annie stopped shelling for a moment and looked to the side to collect the whirlwind of thoughts that spun around in her head. 

Her and Smoke had been having outings. Not running into each other by chance, not catching a glimpse across the sidewalk. Together. In public. On purpose. It was mostly whatever it was she wanted to do. Smoke liked it that way.

They tucked into their own little routine as what was blossoming between them slowly became familiar. Since her conversation with Aunt Della she hadn’t taken the time to sit down and think about what exactly it was or where it was going to go. All she knew is that in this new rhythm with him…it felt right. 

He’d touch her gently. Carefully. Like he was holding onto something fragile. But even the slightest contact sent shivers down her spine. 

A hand at the small of her back.

He’d lean in close when he needed to say something to her. Always did.

But sometimes he’d drop his mouth right by her ear just to hear her gasp under her breath.

He’d wrap his hands around her waist and she swore she forgot how to breathe. 

But she didn’t move away.

His desire for her was palpable. 

He was hungry. 

She could see it in his eyes and feel it in his restraint. 

But he was tender with her, like he was dousing his own desire until she was ready to cross that bridge, and that ignited her curiosity for more like a spark lit in a dry room.

She knew she was in trouble when she started to notice the absence of certain things. His closeness. His touch. The feeling that came from it.

She thought about his mouth a lot. What it felt like pressed against hers. The way his tongue would trace the seam of her lips like a man standing at a threshold, waiting to be invited in. 

Her thoughts usually stopped there because they were too overwhelming. 

Kissing wasn’t new to her. Desire wasn’t either. Not entirely. 

She’d heard things. Sensed them. She wasn’t naive in an ignorant way. 

But as the baby of the family, and the only girl, she’d been crowded. She was always loved and protected. But love and protection always felt like being watched and managed by people who assumed they knew what was best for her.  

Then Smoke came along. He unsettled her because he didn’t hover. He waited. With his quiet attention and something deeper that sat underneath the surface. 

He listened.

He chose her. 

He made space for her to choose herself. 

And for a girl who spent her whole life being guarded, space felt dangerous. 

It felt like freedom. 

Freedom to be held but not held back.

She wanted to step into it, the new version of herself that was emerging from sheltered beginnings.

Craved it.

Craved him.

Badly. 

Even though she didn't fully know what that meant, she wanted to be close. Wanted to experience everything that came along with that closeness.

And it wasn’t just a physical thing. It was a primal, desperate ache that rose from the depths and swept through her body, hitting every single nerve ending along the way.

She even started dreaming about him. It was always the same one. She’d wake up in a mess of her own making—nightgown clinging to her curves, sheets damp. Then she’d spend the rest of the day feeling a dizzying pulse between her legs, like her heart had found a new home there.

It was like his soul had floated to hers while she was sleeping, and wanted to make sure she was ready for the day she finally just...let go. 

They know they’re wrong. 

It’s not something they’re proud of.

It’s not something they can pray away, avoid, or convince themselves has died never to be resurrected—a funeral can’t take place for something alive and well. If that would’ve worked, they wouldn’t be in the situation they were currently in.

It is something inevitable—like the Delta heat that walked hand in hand with them since the first day they felt it beat down on their skin, both comforting and overwhelming. Something unyielding like the way sweating bodies grinded close together, prohibited drinks flowed, the smell of Southern delicacies fried in oil, and music woven into the inner fabric of their soul every Saturday at The Juke was the only time their people ever truly felt free. 

Neither of them had ever been known for being deceitful in any way, fashion, or form. It was one of the things that bonded them in the first place. Being honest when it was comforting and it felt like a radiating light enveloping them in a warm embrace and when it was hard and felt heavy on the tongue and the truth was the last thing they wanted to hear.

Always being honest was a promise that bound them as well as bonded them, which led to them doing something they never had—choosing to be vulnerable enough to lay their entire selves bare to the other as lasting as ink permanently etched on bare skin. 

The versions of them who made the initial promise would balk at the way the current version of them discarded the very promise that was the foundation of their union. They found out that even certain values could be sacrificed if it meant avoiding a life lived without the one they called home.

What good were morals if it led to a fate that would kill you…for what good was a life without the one who made living itself not a penance but a privilege? They barely survived separation the first time as they walked around like haints occupying a body whose true soul had passed on.

EIGHT YEARS AGO…

Annie tried her hardest to start over. Even with them maintaining contact those first two years, she never let herself be lulled into Smoke's promise of returning. The third year when he had gone radio silent was when she had completely lost her whole world all at once. An experience that shook her faith to the core, which led to a deep disconnection in her root work only compounded by the loss of Luna.

From a young age, Annie had always had a strong connection to the Earth, her ancestors, and the sacred practice passed down for generations. The trauma resulting from the loss of her little moon, who was a manifestation of the purest, strongest, and most everlasting love she had ever known was enough to have her question everything starting with why this healing, life affirming practice had not worked the one time she needed it most.

She mourned in a way that would both shake the ground beneath her feet in one moment while she felt so empty she questioned if she could ever feel again in another. Whatever force in this world that thrives off pure devastation decided they weren’t through with her yet as they took her love from her too. 

While he was not gone from this world, he was gone from her orbit. The gravitational pull that would keep her connected to the Earth despite the betrayal of such as the loss of a child was gone when he was never needed more.

The most difficult part was that he did not do something foul in a way that she could discard their love or curse his name from the moment she woke till the second sleep overtook her at night. If Elijah had truly betrayed her— the love would have gone sour. Annie was raised by strong women who hammered into her the importance of having her own and not allowing mistreatment or betrayal from a man and those lessons were ingrained so deep that it became a non-negotiable. It was commonplace for men to cheat and have multiple families being loyal to nothing but the urge to keep their dicks wet.

That wasn’t her man though loyalty and fidelity was a huge part of their love and no one could even catch his eye after they met. His love, yearning, passion, and desire for her was a fire that had only burned brighter and had never waned. He had regularly told her that he would live inside of her if he could to which she always playfully rolled her eyes and smirked. Something else led to the exodus he would have never embarked on if it was based on what he actually wanted. 

Stack. His selfish, ill-timed, fly-by-the-seat of his pants ass brother determined to go on a dangerous mission (as he called it) to Chicago and expected Smoke to be as he had always been, by his side. Annie felt at times that Stack was a test to push the very limits of her patience by being an ever present thorn in her side when he was around.

This was by far the worst time to be the most selfish he ever had been with such a request or what Stack himself had seen as a guarantee. He could not conceptualize nor fully grasp (or respect) the love they had and what it meant. So, he struggled understanding why Smoke was heavily hesitant where he would have been on board with strict ground rules in the past, but that was before Annie. Before an insurmountable loss they still could not measure. Elijah was not a love that strayed or left; he was a love that planted roots, built something eternal, one you felt in your bones, and was enveloped by a peace that could not be disturbed. Smoke was a love that surrounded, watched, interceded on the behalf of, and above all protected—not being able to do that for his daughter did damage to his self concept and identity that he was not even fully aware of the extent of the damage. ‘Protector’ had become the role he held the longest and the most consistently. Yet, when it was needed most there was nothing he could do in his power to save who mattered most— it was as if he had a mortal wound yet still remained alive. 

They grieved differently. Elijah felt grief as deep as the ocean where he would weep or become so lost in thought Annie would have to shake him to the point of his whole body moving to snap out of the frozen state. He had only ever been in trances like that following flashbacks from the War. Meanwhile, Smoke distracted himself and avoided the deep hurt by practicing control—to an even greater extent than before. His leaving being a manifestation of trying to prevent his greatest fear happening again when he felt he could possibly control it was something Annie simultaneously understood but also resented. 

Smoke was not blind to his brother’s selfishness. He felt partially responsible for maybe being too indulgent to make up for what their dad had put them through—with Stack being the target who faced the much crueler punishment than he had. While Smoke had no choice but to fall for Annie, he had chosen to build a life with her and it was the first thing he did in his entire life just for him. It was his treasure, his freedom, his joy, and his foundation. That very decision led to a pattern of tug of war that happened with Stack struggling to accept that Smoke’s dream did not mirror his.

Elias desired freedom through his dream of creating worlds and safe spaces for their people while also being able to make a profit. Elijah desired freedom in the creation of a home, a groundedness and a peace that couldn’t be destroyed and was his without question, which he found in Annie through love. The love that he found with Annie was one he thought someone like him who carried a pain, a hardness, a wall 100 feet wide and 50 feet deep would never feel the reprieve of  experiencing. She was his salve and his salvation. His kryptonite and strength. His desire and his joy. Stack refused to accept that Annie got access to the innermost part of Smoke and who he was at his core, his most vulnerable, his most free—Elijah. Smoke continued to reject Stack’s plan as he just could not imagine a life where he and Annie were not side by side on the daily. That was before.

Grief was not unfamiliar to Smoke. It was something that walked with him side by side, almost like a companion. The grief of losing his mother and only getting to know her through pictures and the memories of others. The grief of never knowing parental love because of the abusive piece of shit he had for a dad.  The grief of not getting to really be a kid as he had to step into a parental role for Stack. The grief of what the trauma from the War took from him with scars and flashbacks he still deals with. None of his prior grief could prepare him for the loss of Luna.

His whole life he felt abandoned by God. Falling in love with Annie and then Luna being a physical representation of how deep that love is— sparked the mustard seed sized hope that maybe God hadn’t completely forsaken him. Being someone who only believed in what he could see he wasn’t one for religion or spirituality but Annie finding, loving, and choosing someone like him had to be due to a force he couldn’t see. The way they lost Luna when she was just over a year extinguished the minuscule hope as if it never existed. The man known for running shit, being immovable, unshakable, had become a shell of himself in the only place he felt safe—at home.

Smoke could count on one hand how often he had cried in his life. Of all the times he had, he never weeped or bellowed in such a guttural way that he felt he could wake the dead with the intensity of the pain alone. A mourning so deep that those who had passed on could feel it. The only way he held on at all was due to Annie and the way they supported each other but it was a grief neither had experienced. Sometimes their days looked like complete silence outside of affirmative grunts. Others looked like shouting until their throats were raw. At their most vulnerable they would spend the whole day crying and holding each other. Throughout it all they vacillated between hard fucking and love making—just to feel something and to remind themselves that they were still here. Somehow. 

It had been six months since they lost her and they were surviving solely due to having each other. That is when Smoke had to make a decision that he still regrets to this very day while knowing he was just trying to prevent another loss that would be sure to finish the job of destroying him. Stack decided that he could not wait any longer and was leaving for Chicago next week. Smoke tried his best to reason with the fool but he just wasn’t hearing shit. Smoke was torn in two making this decision—his head and heart in a tumultuous war where either choice would leave catastrophic damage in its wake. Stack’s recklessness and tendency to not watch his back created a serious deficit in his survival instinct, which was the only reason he was even considering leaving. There is no single thing or person that could get Smoke to leave Annie—especially now but he just knew without a shadow of a doubt that his twin would find a way to get himself killed out there which is just a loss that he could not even conceptualize.  

Even then his mind wasn’t made up. It couldn’t be when it would mean leaving his heart behind in Clarksdale. He hoped to return within a year but he knew Stack and his often hare-brained schemes lacked planning and discipline. Another failure on his part for being too lenient so Stack over-relied on him.  He felt torn in two even breaking the news to Annie that he was considering this. 

The next day he reluctantly brought it to Annie. It was still hypothetical as he had still felt stuck between a rock and the hardest place. She responded the way anyone who had lost their precious daughter not even a year ago would only to find now that the love of her life was considering leaving for an indefinite amount of time to watch out for his brother who thought so little of what they were navigating.

Even eight years later he still remembers the look on Annie’s face and how it shook him to his core. How could someone look so despondent as if it was the end of the world as they knew it while simultaneously radiating an anger that could burn down the rest of the world in retribution for their pain? For four days, they had yelled, cried, constantly talked through how he could even consider this, and then didn’t talk at all in a cycle he saw as his own personal hell. Even with his tendency to feel moments instead of filling them with words, their communication had been relatively healthy. So, this departure only served to further break him down. 

On the fifth day, he made the decision that would change the trajectory of his life in a way he still felt to this day. Annie had barely reacted once he told her what he decided. Being as bonded as they were, there were times when they knew what the other was going to say or in this case before the words left their mouth. This wasn’t news. She knew from the moment he brought it up what his decision would be. She knew the loss of their daughter had wounded them in similar but different ways which for him showed up in his inability to protect her.

For better or worse, due to their upbringing he was put in a difficult spot of not only being a brother but he was also a father figure. The loss of Stack would not just be the soul crushing loss of a twin, but another child he could not protect. So, on the fifth day she was quiet. Shuffling across the floorboards, pouring liquid from glass bottles for protection charms, and warming water for baths were the only sounds to fill the room after Smoke broke the news. 

The sixth day was different. It has settled in Annie's spirit that he was leaving and she felt the weight of it. She had to make a decision about the kind of last day she wanted with him. She tried to remind herself that he wasn’t leaving forever and that he told her as soon as they were done he would be coming back. That was not something she found comforting considering the timing was not up to him. None of this was. If his wants or needs mattered, he wouldn’t be leaving in the first place. She wanted this day to be a memory that could wrap her in warmth when the bitter cold of loneliness and grief threatened her very survival. 

“Okay. This is the last full day until—”Annie said to break her silent pact from the day before. 

“I know. I’m sor—”Elijah replied before she could finish the thought as if that would make it less real. The relief that comes after waking up from a nightmare that never came true would not find him this time. He made a conscious decision to approach this day as Elijah as this wasn’t the time for Smoke to be at the forefront. At his most vulnerable, his most open, his most free—all emotions he felt due to Annie, the one who brought him back to life through her eyes, her smile, her ease, her centeredness, her love—Elijah. 

“Save the words. I already know them.” Annie interrupted as she already knew. She didn’t want the little time they had left littered with genuine yet ultimately meaningless platitudes. Apologies wouldn’t make him stay. They wouldn’t have him change his mind. They wouldn’t save her the heartache of the strongest love she had ever known having to do the very thing he had proven from the very beginning he would never do. 

“We’ve talked this through in circles the first four days. Let’s feel today.” She stated clearly as if it was the first thing she could control since the death of their daughter. “Who knows the next time we’ll get to.” 

“You’re right. I’ll follow your lead. Take the reins.” Elijah acknowledged as he stared straight into her eyes showing just how much he had meant it. The day was spent doing things they knew made the other feel whole and bonded. They had not separated the whole day acting as shadows for each other. They started with visiting Luna’s grave together and replacing the flowers and fresh bottle of milk as they did everyday. Elijah walked alongside Annie as they went around their land collecting the different roots,  herbs, and stones. It reminded him how even the mundane felt special with her.

Every moment of every day felt like a gift, one way too good for someone like him. Hands on projects had always made Elijah feel grounded and got him out of a cycle of debilitating over thinking. He fixed up some walls, floors, and fortified the porch while Annie watched as she cooked their favorites. Cooking reminded Annie of her rootwork practice. Creating something from individual, distinct ingredients that not only filled bellies but touched souls in the same way her ancestors had. 

They shared their meal in the way they always did—starting with prayers, Eliajh’s exclamations about how good her food was, Annie smiling because he had done this every day without fail since the very first time she cooked for him, talking about anything and everything under the sun. She talked more while he listened more. In their natural rhythm she moved to her rootwork table preparing ingredients, saying prayers, and combining items while he sat in his chair smoking from his pipe that hung directly above where his chair sat. Elijah’s brows furrowed as he tried to figure out what she was doing as the shop was closed for the day so she could not have been completing an order for a client. In the midst of his line of thinking, Annie called him over. 

Elijah moved to stand directly in front of Annie’s work table as she slowly circled around. “You said I take the reins today so I have one thing I need from you before you leave tomorrow.”

Elijah nodded his full attention on Annie.

“Wear this for me and never take it off.” Annie had been making a mojo bag for Elijah as he sat and tried to decipher what she was working on. She knew that he was a person who only trusted what he could see with his very own eyes so his belief in her hoodoo had always been an uphill battle. She knew a secret he would not name. As much as he challenged her on it, the utmost trust and belief he had in her also extended itself to her practice so she knew he would honor request. After all, their love for each other was not something he could see or measure like dollars and cents yet it couldn’t be more real. 

“Okay, for you.” Elijah offered without contesting. Normally he would give her pushback but he could not find that in him today. He knew this was a symbol of just how deep and wide her love went for him. She poured everything she had into this mojo bag even with him having to leave. He could never reject an item that was a symbol of her love for him. Not now. Not ever. 

In the silence of the moment, not even an inch of space existed between them in this moment. The heaviness of the moment lingered following the expression of their love for each other in its purest form. Annie expressing it through pouring her all into a mojo bag she believed would keep him safe until he returned. As it was what she wanted most. She knew that she would not wait forever and didn't know and couldn’t feel when he would return. When he did, it would be in one piece, limbs in tact, heart beating, brain working the same way it did today. Elijah expressed it through the promise he kept despite his skepticism of hoodoo. He’d seen it protect and he’d seen it not deliver when it was needed most. Still, his love, trust, respect, and belief in Annie had him making space for what he wouldn’t have believed in any other circumstance. 

Love was not the only thing felt. Desire made an appearance as it always had. It was always looming even before the very first time they ever touched. It never took much for them. Sometimes the smallest thing would ignite the heat that always wafted right beneath the surface. Annie adorning Elijah with the mojo bag around his neck acted almost like an aphrodisiac.

As they stood face to face, so close they could feel the warmth of their breath, their lips crashed into each other in sync. Elijah’s lips chasing Annie’s with her returning the favor as they moved about without separating. The contrast of feeling of soft, plush lips delivering hard kisses only intensified the lust they were both feeling that demanded to be satisfied. They knew what followed when they got like this. Tongues dancing, titties caressed, dick grabbed, taking turns on their knees, mouths open to pray at the altar of their love; while moans, grunts, nasty words, and squeaking legs of the bedframe served as the soundtrack.

There was a different weight tonight though. They couldn’t stop tomorrow from coming and all the day would bring, but they could spend the whole night feeling. The feel of skin to skin so close they could hear the other’s heartbeat. The feel of being impossibly filled to the point of overflow. The feel of limbs stretched in ways that tested the concept of flexibility. The feel of nails against his back. The feel of sheets caressing them as they tumbled through them.

Exhaustion came second to lust that demanded to be satiated the whole night. The hard and frantic rounds that made them feel like fiends chasing the euphoric feeling of their next hit alternated with rounds that were soft, slow, and deep--where each caress, kiss, stare, thrust, honey laced whisper, and whiskey soaked command was made a memory that could hold them when they were beyond each other’s reach.  

The seventh and last day was much more somber. Even with knowing what was coming at the end of the day they still tried to maintain a sense of normalcy until they couldn’t. The same patterns didn’t feel the same when the weight of his departure turned the vivid colors of the life they lived together pitch black. Their meals didn’t fill their bodies and feed their souls the way they always had. The arrangement of the rooms and their accompanying furniture and decor that felt like expressions of their tastes and personalities began to feel drab and mundane. The place they built that housed memories, milestones, and livelihoods had always felt like a perfect fit until now--where the walls closed in tighter with each hour that passed. 

Elijah waited to the last possible hour to leave as they were traveling by train. Bo Chow, their childhood friend, had agreed to meet them at the station to keep their car for safe keeping. Stack was already waiting outside but had enough sense to stay in the car because if Annie had a chance he wouldn’t be making it to Chicago. They slowly made their way to the door with each step becoming more hesitant. Once they reached their porch, they knew it was time for the goodbye they had been holding off.

“Elijah, I hope that you find peace in making this decision. My understanding of why you feel like you have to do this does not snuff out the hurt and anger. All three coexist at once. The hope of saving one while abandoning the other,” Annie stated matter-of-factly.

 “Annie, I’m not—” Elijah interrupted. 

“Let me finish without contesting.” Annie replied frustrated that he even tried to fight what she was saying. She was tired of pain, anger, grief, and fighting. After deciding that he had to go, Elijah had repeatedly told Annie he would keep in contact and then this wouldn’t be a long exodus. Annie knew better though. She knew how shit tended to go with Stack. This was the first time she could not trust his words which wounded her in a way that she couldn’t adequately name. Of all the promises he made, she only had faith that one would be kept--Elijah keeping on his mojo bag. He would not let his only tether to Annie and the strength of the love they shared be something else he sacrificed. 

“Elijah, you have only been honest from the first day I ever looked into those eyes that said everything you couldn’t allow yourself to say, before we ever were anything to each other. What was the very first promise we ever made as a way to honor our love? We said we would never lie. That promise is the very foundation of that love. Don’t do me the disservice of lying now.” Annie noted calmly before continuing. “Telling the truth don’t make it pretty--just makes it real. You don’t know if you can keep up with the promise you made. You don’t know even if you can consistently write or call. You can’t even tell me how long.” Annie pauses before she says what’s next as it sounds like a threat but it’s just her honoring her promise to always be true. “Love, even one like ours that feels fated in a way that I’d only heard about from those who came before us, won’t wait or coast on the hope that you may come back someday. By the time you return, the bones of the home you forsook may be the only thing here to welcome you back.”

Elijah was silent. Not in a way that was reflective of the silent nature he was known for. This silence wasn’t a self-imposed decision. It was recognition—the realization in that very moment that he could be coming home to a self-appointed séance of the only love he ever got to freely choose.

He couldn’t walk away using his less is more approach. Not after what Annie had just expressed. Not in this situation.

He had spent his last full day with Annie “feeling” instead of offering platitudes that provided no comfort. Now, it was time for him to speak. This could likely be the most important set of words he ever uttered when the stakes are a life with Annie or barely existing with his memories of what they had being the only thing keeping him in this world.

 “Annie, I love you. You know that. Deep. Strong. Without ceasing. I’ve given you parts of me freely that no one else has ever seen.” Elijah said as his hands shook, a trauma response from his time in the war that was elicited whenever he was anxious or panicked. He was not one for impassioned speeches but if there was ever a time to lay it all out there, it was now. “I know my decision feels like I’m breaking us and I’ll hold that. I’m not asking for you to forgive me and I know understanding my motives won’t change how you feel but I’m asking you to believe in what you’ve always known. You’ve never doubted my love, listen to your heart, your intuition, the words your ancestors who guided you told you when you sought guidance and confirmation about our love being destined.” Elijah pleaded with desperation as the floodgates he had used every ounce of strength he had to hold at bay began to break. “I have never lied to you and I won’t now so I can’t promise when but I AM returning. To my heart, my foundation, my reason why, my everything…I love you still and I always will.”

The weight of the moment mixed with Elijah laying his feelings out bare without silencing or pushing them down immediately brought tears to Annie’s eyes.

Now, they both stood in front of the physical home that was reminiscent of the home they found in each other years ago in a place they never thought they would be. Completely broken down. Faces wet with tears, eyes rimmed red, staring into the depths they had always found comfort in. The only sound passing between them is the wind as it shakes the bottles that hang from the Magnolia trees spread out on the property. Elijah pulled Annie into the tightest hug they may have ever shared. An embrace that embodied every feeling they expressed and the ones they were afraid to say out loud.

As they looked into each other’s eyes, nose to nose they leaned into a searing kiss not unlike the kind of kisses they had shared thousands of times. Elijah’s lips creating a seal over Annie’s as his hands framed both of her cheeks so that each part of him had a point of contact with her. Their eyes instinctively shut as if to burn every second into their memory. There was a melancholy beneath this one though as if it wasn’t a promise for a reunion but an acceptance of a reluctant goodbye neither of them ever wanted to have. 

Eventually, they separated and he watched her as he walked backwards toward the truck until he was out of her vision on the driver’s side.

Elijah swung the door open prepared to get in, but paused because there was one thing he had to do before he departed. He leaned down to Luna’s resting place and asked something selfish as the man who was leaving. 

“Can you do one thing for your fool of a father, baby girl?” Smoked asked aloud. “Please watch over your mama—you and your ancestors together. Protect every hair on her head, organ in her body, don’t let a single injury touch her.” Smoke pressed a kiss to the stone in front of her altar. “You’re the only one I can trust with this.”

That was eight years ago now. Smoke returned the seventh year with the only promise kept being his mojo bag not moving one centimeter since Annie placed it around his neck.

How do you go from years of no communication to a full blown affair that could obliterate the very foundation of their lives as they know it within a year of Smoke returning?

The seeds were sown the day the twins made their way back into the life they left behind...

A/N: Thanks for reading. We are definitely in for a ride! I actually pretty much have the next two chapters written so those chapters should be out pretty soon! If I somehow missed you and you wannabe tagged you can either comment or reply to my taglist h e r e ♡

“It never feels right when one of them ain’t here. She could’ve just lost track of time, it ain’t often we let her go out without one of us dropping her off and picking her up.”

Elijah’s grip tightens on his phone. Everything she was telling him made sense, but the knot forming in his stomach was telling him otherwise. 

He’d been sitting around stiffly since she left, and it eased slightly when she texted to let them know they made it. However, as more time passed, he found himself even more tense than he was before. 

Annie leans closer to him, making him unclench his jaw when she leaves a few kisses on it.

“If she needs you she’ll call, Papa. You reminded her of the safe word, right?” she asks, and he nods. 

Elijah’s eyes meet hers, and she can see the worry pooling in his irises. The thought of Arielle needing to use it made the feeling in his gut intensify. The word was only to be used if she was in a situation she couldn’t get herself out of, and the idea of that made his chest tighten.

“I should’ve taken her. This is why I always take her to wherever she’s going. Annie, I swear, if she has to-”

“She’s not gonna need to use it, Elijah,” Annie cuts him off as he rises out of the bed, his phone forgotten on his pillow. 

“She can handle herself. You and Stack made sure of that.”

“I know she can handle herself,” he starts, beginning to pace back and forth. “I know how them lil niggas can be. Her knowing how to defend herself ain’t gon’ stop one from trying something.”

Annie sighs softly. She stands and steps into his path, making him stop in front of her. There was a deep frown on his face, and his brows were furrowed so deeply that Annie could tell he was panicked more than anything else.

“You are working yourself up,” she says firmly, her hands finding his forearms. 

“You just want her to be okay. Me too, but she don’t need us makin’ all the decisions for her anymore, and it’s time for you to start getting used to that.”

He exhales deeply, his hands finding Annie’s waist as he closes his eyes and tries to ground himself. 

After a few moments, he opens them and is met with Annie’s soft gaze. Her hands move up to his biceps, rubbing soothing circles in them.

“She hasn’t even texted, Annie. She normally texts if she’s gonna be late.” 

“It won’t be the first time she does something she don’t normally do. It ain’t the last time it’s gon’ happen either.”

Elijah raises an eyebrow as he listens to Annie’s tone. He looks at her, not missing the way her eyebrows twitched when she finished speaking.

“It’s something you ain’t telling me?” he questions, making Annie shake her head.

“No. I just have a feeling,” she replies. He looks at her, waiting for her to explain.

“I heard her talking to Marley on the phone earlier. Something about meeting some boys,” Annie tells him, her grip on him tightening slightly when she sees the deep frown reclaiming its place on his face at the mention of the one friend of Arielle’s that he wasn’t too fond of.

“I didn’t think she’d stay out so long past her curfew, so I didn’t say anything.”

“You should have, because I would’ve told her she couldn’t go. She lied to me, Annie.”

“She didn’t lie, Elijah. She said she was going to a party with her friends. Even gave you the address like you told her she had to, and that’s where she’s at. Don’t look or sound like a lie to me, plus she's 17. Think about what you and Stack were doin’ at 17 and be glad that ain’t her,” she shoots back, raising an eyebrow.

He smacks his teeth and looks away from her. 

“If she needs you, she’ll call, and if she doesn’t, you’ll get to practice your disciplinary skills when she gets home.”

“I discipline my kids just fine,” he rebuts halfheartedly, making Annie laugh.

“Even you don’t believe that,” she says, her fingers intertwining with his. “Remember when she cheated on that test?”

“I talked to her about that.”

“Yeah. You talk to her every time, and she knows that’s all you’re gonna do. She makes you think she hears you, then she moves on to the next thing as soon as you let her go. That’s Elias with a bow, and each time she plays you with those sad eyes and that pout.”

Elijah looks away for a moment before finding Annie’s eyes again, the hint of a smile on his lips.

“She got your eyes, though.”

“That’s how I know what she doin’,” Annie replies with a smile, leaning up to peck his lips.

“If she’s just out late and nothing’s wrong, then 3 weeks of early curfew,” he says.

“Good job. Now make sure you stick to it,” Annie says with a knowing look.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Elijah replies, leaning down for a kiss. 

Just as Annie’s hands find his face to pull him in for another, his phone rings. 

Elijah’s eyes shoot open and lock on Annie’s. They look toward his phone at the same time, Elijah pulling away to grab it after a moment.

“It’s Ari,” he mumbles, the tension in his body seeping into his voice again.

He answers it after a second, Annie’s hand finding his arm as he puts the phone on speaker.

“Arielle.”

“Papa,” she answers, and her parents clock the unease in her tone.

“I need you to come get me.” 

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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The hands of the grandfather clock ticked quietly in the front room of the boarding house, but to Annie it sounded like gunshots. 

It was late. 

The house had fallen into its nighttime rhythm— mostly quiet except for the random sounds of boarders stirring in their rooms. A cough from behind a closed door. The creak of a bed frame. The slow pouring of water into a basin. The smells of supper still lingered like they always did this time of night, settling into the walls like a layer of time. The fragrant aroma of clove hung over top of everything, bursting through the air every time Aunt Della parted her lips. She chewed on it slowly. Methodically. Watching Annie as her fingertips smoothed gently over the leather of the sketchbook cover. 

Annie sat on the couch across from her. Her eyes looked full of possibility as she flipped through the paper, the corners of the pages sitting crisp beneath her thumb.

Something was on Aunt Della’s mind. 

Annie could feel the warm flush of her skin cooling under the quiet intensity of her gaze.

Her voice broke through the silence. “He been comin’ ‘round a lot lately.” 

There it was. 

Annie looked up.

Aunt Della stirred her drink in her hand, ice cubes clinking against the sides of the mug. “How you feel ‘bout that?” she asked. Then she took a sip.

Annie’s head lowered. Her first instinct was to not respond. Her second was to deflect. Her third was to ask why. 

“Baby,” Aunt Della probed. “I been alive too long. I know what it means for a man to stand around tryin’ to make himself useful.” She crossed one leg over the other, her ankle bouncing with anticipation like she knew this was going to take a while.

Annie’s mouth curved despite herself. She turned a page in her sketchbook, smoothing the spine down harder than necessary with her palm. 

“You like him?” 

Annie still couldn’t look up. It was like her words got stuck in her throat. The more Aunt Della talked, the more Annie felt caught off guard.

“Annie Royal, I ain’t talkin’ to myself,” she said sternly.

Annie’s head snapped up. She opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again. “I don’t know,” she said finally, in a hushed tone.

Aunt Della rolled her eyes. She let the words sit between them long enough for Annie to hear how untrue they sounded. 

“Yes you do,” she answered back. 

Annie looked down again, her throat tightening with something she didn’t have the name for. Aunt Della watched her for a moment, admiring how softly the lamp light curved around the edge of her face. It was smooth. Innocent. There was a vulnerability in her that she wanted to protect. But as much as she wanted to shield her, she knew she needed to be ready for the day the world came knocking. 

But she was so young. Barely 18. 

She remembered herself at that age. She remembered how quickly she got swept up in her husband’s kind words and gentle eyes like it was yesterday.

It happened so quickly. Marriage. Mississippi. A son. 

She thought about the day her husband came back from town hall with the deed to their house. He painted the outside a rich buttery yellow and whitewashed the shutters with a puffed up chest. Dug out the underground storage with his bare hands, a shovel, and a strength that could only be explained by a feeling he’d never experienced before in his lifetime. Pride. Ownership.

The boarding house became a sanctuary without a steeple. They took in anybody who needed a hot meal and a place to lay their heads. Musicians, preachers, teachers, people trying to get up North. And two little boys trying to escape their father’s fists.

Elijah and Elias.

She met them young. Back when their father, Adam Moore, went door-to-door in town, strumming his guitar and sipping hooch straight from the bottle while his young sons walked around hungry. 

She knew them before they went by Smoke and Stack. Then she watched them earn those nicknames in blood, gunpowder, and grit. And now Smoke was coming around her sister’s granddaughter. Her only great-niece. 

She watched Annie nervously brush her thumb against the edge of the sketchbook and sighed. “I ain’t tryna fuss at you,” she clarified. “I just wanna know where your head’s at, and how you feel when he’s around.” 

A moment passed. Then two. 

Aware. 

That’s how Annie felt when he was around.

Aware of herself. Aware of him. Aware of the space between one breath and the next. Like something inside her had started listening before she knew that there was sound. 

Loose.

Not in the way men and women meant when they whispered about such things. 

But in a way that words just came out of her mouth before she could stop them. She couldn’t carry on with him like she could with Aunt Della right now—taking the hard parts and making them sound just right so she didn’t reveal too much too soon. He got the truth before she could dress it up. And she hadn’t taken the time to figure out why quite yet. And that scared her. But it made her feel something else, too.

Seen.

She was holding back. Aunt Della could see that with her eyes closed. She could see the wheels turning in Annie’s head like she never got a chance to sit with her feelings long enough to name them. But she already had her answer. It was in the way she held the sketchbook to her chest before remembering she wasn’t alone.

She tried a different angle.  “He good to you?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Annie could reply quickly when she could answer without thinking too hard. 

“Respectful?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He pressure you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I feel like—” Annie paused, embarrassed by the honesty that sat right on the tip of her tongue. She was fighting to keep it to herself. Not because she didn’t want to be honest, but she felt like words couldn’t do her thoughts justice. And she felt foolish that she felt any kind of way to begin with. “He makes me feel….”

Aunt Della let out a sigh. “You ain’t gotta explain it yet. Sometimes when the feeling’s good, you can’t explain it right away. You gon’ find the right words when you ready.”

Annie nodded once. “Yes, ma’am.” 

“You intact?” 

“Yes ma’am.” Heat climbed up her neck as she held the sketchbook to her chest.

“Don’t let him take it, if that’s not what you want.”

“Yes ma’am.” 

A quiet beat passed. “If it is—” Her breath hitched when she cut herself off. 

It felt like the room held its breath. Annie, too. 

“Nevermind.” Aunt Della shook her head like she regretted saying anything.

Annie frowned, her lips poking out. “What is it?” She asked. Her voice was cautious, but not in the way it had been earlier. It was more braced than anxious. 

Aunt Della looked at Annie with a fierce protectiveness. “What you think about him?” she asked quietly.

Annie twisted her lips, searching for something that wouldn’t feel foolish the second it came out of her mouth. “At first I just thought he was quiet,” she said finally. “Not empty quiet, but the type of quiet that’s always holdin’ somethin’ back.”

Aunt Della’s eyes stayed on her.

“But when he’s with me, when he look at me…” Annie’s voice softened despite herself. “It feels like…the rest of the world disappears. And it’s just us. Just me and him. And he can let go.”

Aunt Della didn’t answer immediately, and her face didn’t change. The silence felt worse than being questioned. “And how you think he feels about you?” 

“Ummm….” Her eyes flitted around the room nervously.

“The truth do just fine.”

Aunt Della set her mug down on the coffee table with a soft thump. Then she sat back and crossed her legs again, twirling that ankle in the air in slow, deliberate circles. 

“Truth is…” Annie started. “I think he’s taken a shine to me. He got me this.” She rubbed the cover of the sketchbook, her cheeks warm flushed with warmth and a hint of embarrassment trying to explain herself. “He comes around, he sits with me, he listens–really listens–to what I say. And he don’t forget,” she said, remembering the note he left her, and the conversation that sparked the words he left.

“What’s all this?” Smoke asked, gesturing to the drawings sprawled across her quilt under the magnolia tree.

“Drawings,” she replied sarcastically.

Smoke sucked his teeth. “I know that,” he tutted. “What they for?” 

“Helps my memory. Drawin’ things. Writin’ them down.”

“So you remember what they look like?”

“Kinda. So I remember what they for.”

Annie glanced over, bracing for laughter, amusement, or even teasing. She got none of it. When she found Aunt Della’s eyes she wasn’t smiling. She didn’t laugh. She almost looked sad, but not in a way Annie fully understood. 

She simply crossed her arms across her chest and arched a brow in challenge. “So you think that means…what?” 

The bluntness felt like a physical thing. It cut sharply through the room like a knife slicing through a thick fog.

Annie blinked. “Ma’am?” 

“You think every man who buys you a little somethin’ or listens to you talk, means to do right by you?” 

Annie blinked twice this time.

All of a sudden, she felt every bit of eighteen. 

Not a child anymore, but not grown in the ways the world seemed to demand all at once. 

Smoke wasn’t the first to come around. She had a few who called on her back in New Orleans. Always respectfully, always in the proper way. 

She had a freedom up here that she didn’t have living under the roof of her very protective family, and that freedom allowed her to get to know Smoke in a way that would have been damn near impossible back home. 

But he was always respectful. Never pushed. Always made sure she felt comfortable. That meant something to her. Time. Energy. Intention.

She kept getting four when she added two and two together.

But maybe Aunt Della was trying to tell her she wasn’t too good at math.

“I’ve known the twins since they were real young. Seen ‘em grow into bright young men. Good-lookin’ young men that every woman in this town want a piece of.” She paused. “And men like Smoke…they can make a girl feel like the whole world done gone quiet around her. But that don’t mean the world ain’t there no more.” 

Annie’s ears had already perked up at the mention of his name. But now she listened even more intently. 

Aunt Della’s gaze sharpened. “Don’t assume nothin’ based on a man’s silence. You’ll get yourself in trouble fillin’ in blanks that ain’t yours.”

The flame of the oil lamp shifted behind its glass, throwing a soft tremble across the wall. “You got dreams. Hopes. You want your own shop right?”

Annie’s chin lifted with a defiant certainty. “Yes ma’am.”

“Good. Don’t you put that on hold for him, or any man. If he really likes you, he won’t keep you from it.” Her voice got lower, like she wanted to say something hard but make it sound sweet. “Smoke ain’t a man who say much unless he mean it. But if a man really wants you, he’s gonna spell it out plainly.”

The words moved through Annie slowly, crawling up her spine and down her chest where her heart thumped a little faster. She traced her thumb along the back cover, feeling the grain of the leather beneath her fingertip. 

The ceiling creaked softly above them. Another lodger, maybe. Or just the house settling into itself. Crickets chirped low in the grass while the night wrapped around them, fully aware of what truth hid behind her silence. It chose not to soften it. 

“I understand,” she finally said, quietly.

“Now gone’ to bed. I know you tired.” 

Aunt Della stood. Annie did, too. Aunt Della turned towards the kitchen, then thought better of it and turned to grab Annie’s forearm before she got too far. She grabbed her face gently, staring at Annie with warm brown eyes. “I ain’t sayin’ all this to scare you. I’m sayin’ it ‘cause I love you.” 

The tightness in her chest eased a bit. “What were you gonna say, when you stopped yourself?”

Aunt Della’s eyes softened. “It’s not for me to say,” she said softly. “But you’ll find out soon enough.”

She pulled her into a hug then released her. Annie moved slowly towards the staircase, purse slung tightly over her shoulder, sketchbook secured underneath the crook of her arm. 

“Goodnight Aunt Della,” she called out.

“Goodnight, Annie.” 

Annie started up the stairs. Halfway up she paused, her fingers tightening their grip on the banister. She looked back toward Aunt Della who was halfway to the kitchen. 

“Thank you,” she said, just loud enough so she could hear it.

The night was dark and tonight that darkness felt loaded. The sky was bare. No stars, just an endless stretch of shadow that pressed against the windows, barely softened by the faint glow of the waning moon. 

Annie laid in her bed just staring. First she counted the cracks in the ceiling. Then she traced the lines on the walls with her eyes.

The words of Aunt Della replayed in her head. That and the feeling that something laid quietly underneath their conversation. Something Aunt Della knew and refused to say. 

Two questions came to mind. 

What was Aunt Della holding back from telling her? 

What made her change her mind?

It took a while for Annie’s eyes to get heavy while her thoughts refused to shut off. Something settled in her bones at that moment. 

Somewhere beyond the boarding house, Smoke—Elijah—had come and gone and left something behind. Something more than just a pretty sketchbook and a thoughtful note. 

Morning light came soft through the windows, a pale gold that stretched across the floorboards, taking on the pattern of the lace curtains. Annie stood at her dresser with her nightgown hanging off one shoulder, a satin scarf sliding slowly down her braids. 

She counted under her breath, the silver coins plunking against the thin metal of the container where she kept her money. It was a tea tin, a small one that smelled like mint no matter how many times she tried to air it out. The last coin clinked against the others in the tin. She closed the top of it, taking a moment to write the total on the back cover of her sketchbook. She kept a running tally there, one that she copied over from a piece of scrap paper she used to keep track of her earnings before last night. 

Annie set Smoke’s note on her dresser. She traced her fingers over the words, brushing her hand over his name on the paper. The ink pooled thickest where he dotted his “i,” and when she touched it, it stained the part where flesh met fingernail. Aunt Della’s words from last night crossed her mind as she watched the ink bloom and spread across her fingertip before slowly sinking into the skin. 

Crossing the room, she knelt near the loose floorboard in the corner that lifted without a creak. She tucked the tin into the hollow space and started to fit the wood back into place. Then she hesitated. Not because she doubted herself, but because she wanted to imagine what it would be like for a spell. Her own shop. A modest house with blue paint. She’d sell and barter healing herbs and medicines that ward off sickness and bad spirits, the shelves lined top to bottom with jars, vials and bottles of them. A long table, polished smooth by her own hands, would stretch proudly across the front room where she’d serve meals to sharecroppers and passing workers. Dried roots tied in bundles would hang from the rafters in a shed off to the side. People would come to fill their bellies and stay for something more.

That was hers. 

Annie left New Orleans before dawn, dust kicking up from the soles of her shoes and darkening the hem of her dress. She kept her money folded small, eyes cast down the way she was told to when she was traveling alone. A few things she held close to her chest— her great-grandmother’s bible, some knick-knacks, and a few letters. A burlap sack hung from her shoulder, holding some other possessions she held dear. An old trunk held the rest.

The Mississippi River laid before her, wide and brown. She boarded a boat with other people heading upriver, women with their satchels, men with their hats pulled low to keep the mosquitos away. Annie hung onto the railings, watching the trees dip their roots in the water, their branches swinging heavily in the wind like they’d seen too much. The depot was next. When she boarded the train, she closed her eyes and said a prayer underneath her breath— one for the journey, one for the destination. 

She spent the night in a Colored waiting room with families piled on top of each other and solo travelers with tired eyes wearing all their possessions.

The next day was another train. Cotton fields stretched wide beyond the thick glass of the windows, the grim landscape broken only by oak trees and tiny shacks lined up in a row. They passed by another stretch of land mostly hidden behind the treeline, but she could feel it— water, soil, roots, foundation. 

An elderly man, skin the color of pralines, sat on his porch watching the train go by. Striped overalls with the clasps unbuckled, white shirt with the sleeves rolled, straw hat, heavy work boots— but what caught her attention was his eyes. One was completely covered in cataracts. The other one looked sharp enough to hold the sight of four people. The man sucked on a stick of sugarcane while a hound dog sat by his side, tongue out, panting hard under the burn of the Mississippi sun.

Then he was gone. 

All that remained were the muted shades of nature as the train trekked through the countryside.  No house. No dog. No sugarcane. But Annie could remember every detail, even the dusty blue denim of the man’s overalls. And the expectant look in his eye.

She woke up with a jolt, spine snapping straight where she was slumped over in her seat.

The train cabin was quiet. Most people were asleep, some lingering in the corners, some just starting to wake up. Nighttime was on the horizon. Shades of orange and pink swallowing what was leftover from the day. 

“How long I been out?” she asked the woman next to her.

The woman thought for a moment. “Since we got on, I reckon.” 

“I been sleep this whole time?”

“Mhmm,” she confirmed. “Must’ve had you a long day…” 

“Must’ve…” Annie frowned, rubbing the sleep from her drowsy eyes. She looked out at the land through the thick, cloudy windows of the train cabin, and the land looked back. 

Time passed and she still remembered it all. The land. The house. The way the sun slanted just right through the trees. The man. How he looked like he was waiting for something. How real he felt, even after she realized she was dreaming. When she finally pressed the floorboard back into place the room became itself again. A bed. A dresser. An altar. And a young woman kneeling on the floor daydreaming about possibilities.

One state over, the road began to flatten towards Memphis. It was bad in places, rutted deep from wagons, farming equipment, and animal hooves. Dust rose up behind the truck in low brown puffs, sparkling in the light before disappearing up into the trees.

Smoke drove with both hands steady on the wheel. Stack rode beside him, one arm hanging lazily out the window, hat tipped low against the glare.

“So you gon’ tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

Stack sucked his teeth. “Don’t do that.”

Smoke kept driving. Stack waited him out. That was the thing with twins, when one soul splits into two. Silence didn’t work on somebody who already felt it on the inside.

“Annie,” Stack blurted after a while.

Her name shifted something in the cab. Stack could tell by the way Smoke’s eyes narrowed slightly, his hands tightening around the wheel all of a sudden, the leather groaning under the force of his grip. 

“What about her?”

Stack barked out a laugh. “So, it’s like that?”

The road curved just ahead of them, pecan trees crowding close to the edge on either side of the road like they were trying to listen in on their conversation. 

“I talked to Della,” Smoke admitted. He looked over to Stack, whose smile eased a bit where he sat.

“About?”

Smoke didn’t reply.

Stack sat up fully. Back straight, slouch gone. “For real?”

Smoke shot him a look. 

Stack leaned back slightly, studying the side of Smoke’s face. “Damn,” he trailed off. “What she say?” 

It was the day before they were set to head to Memphis, and the early evening sun poured molten gold through the back windows, warming the floorboards of Della’s kitchen. Smoke stood in front of the counter watching her slice a batch of onions. Della stood on the other side, her arm moving like the wheels of a locomotive, the movement slow, methodical, and sharp because she’d done this a thousand times. 

“I been meanin’ to ask you somethin’,” he said, voice steady. 

Della kept her pace, she didn’t slow or stop. “That right?”

“That’s right.” 

“This ‘bout my girl?”

“It is.”

Della stopped what she was doing. She wiped the knife off on a kitchen towel, then set it down on the counter.

“I was hopin’ I could court Annie,” Smoke said firmly. “Proper like.” 

“What you know about courtin’ a woman proper?” Della asked. She crossed her arms. 

Smoke took his lick. He didn’t flinch.

“She ain’t just anybody,” Della said before he could respond.

“I know,” Smoke replied. Something in him leaned forward before his body did. “I wanna do it right. If she’ll have me.”

Della looked over Smoke carefully. For the lie in his eyes. For the joke tugging at the corner of his mouth. For the doubt in his posture. “You talk to her ‘bout this already?”

“Not yet.”

“You need to.”

“I will. Wanted to ask you first.” 

She eased her weight off one hip, and put it on the other. “She ain't built for no half steppin’.”

“I don’t do half.”

Della’s eyes narrowed for a second, then relaxed. “That girl want somethin’ of her own,” she said. “Don’t know if she told you that yet.”

“She did.”

“Well.” Her voice came out soft but sharp. “She got powerful hands. Hands that ain’t meant to be locked up under some man’s roof waitin’ for permission. If you wanna court her, you better not try to shrink her.”

“I won’t,” Smoke replied. 

Della picked up her knife again. She sliced into an onion slowly, the thin, methodical rhythm of metal hitting wood echoed in the otherwise quiet room. 

Lodgers started to walk in from their work shifts, heading to their rooms or back out to the porch where a few of them were squatting over a dice game. A few of them poked their heads into the kitchen to ask about supper. 

Smoke hadn’t moved an inch. He waited quietly, letting the silence sit between them, more for him than her.

“You like her,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She didn’t even need to ask. She could see it. Feel it, even. 

“Yes ma’am.”

“How much?” 

“I care about her. Wanna see her more. Respectfully.” 

Della’s nose wrinkled. “You serious?”

“I am,” he said with finality. 

Something passed through Della’s eyes as she looked him over carefully, from head to toe. It didn’t feel like judgment. It was something Smoke didn’t have a name for. He raised a brow, a silent question.

“Still seein’ other women?”

“No, ma’am.” 

“Ain’t what I heard.”

Confusion. It spread slowly across his face like the petals of a night-blooming flower before turning into something darker. Smoke flexed his hands at his sides before clasping them firmly in front of himself. “What you heard?” he asked, inclining his head.

“Little here, little there,” she admitted. She tilted her head. “May not be loud, but I can hear whispers just fine.” 

Smoke’s jaw worked. He shook his head once, firmly. “It ain’t true.”

“It ain’t?”