Shut Up & Listen

6. Mrs. Midnight

"I'm not— pulling away." He mumbled.  "I know I'm not present. And I don't know how to be. Okay? If that's what's stopping you—"

"Why wouldn't that stop me? Why should being absent not be a deal breaker?"

"Can I finish? I get it. That's why I never brought up commitment before. But I'm ready now. I been working through some things and it took me a few years. But, I'm ready."

"Well what if I need a few years to work through my shit?"

"Then you take your few years and I'mma be right here. Giving you whatever you need. Whatever you want. I can prove to you that i'm here now."

"You can prove it to me?"

He nodded, "Let me take Three for a minute. Long as you need."

"It's different for mothers than fathers, Cecil. I can't just give my child away and live life."

"Yes you can. He will be fine with his daddy."

"You wouldn't be able to handle it."

"I bet I could."

"Cecil. Don't do this to prove something to me. Do it to prove something to Three. He need to know he has a father who is always going to be there for him. You can either prove that or you can prove the opposite. There is no in between." She told him. "And if i'm still not ready to be in a relationship with you afterwards, don't just—"

He sighed, bouncing his leg underneath the table. "It's not a trick to get you to like me, Cheyenne. I promise. I just want to be better than my father was."

"Your dad wasn't absent."

"You think I left home because life was perfect?" He matched her facial expression. "It took me a minute to realize that I was passing on to my son what I got from my dad. I see it now and I don't want my boy to feel how I felt. I don't want him to keep feeling what I felt. And hopefully he'll forgive me."

She thought for a second after hearing him out. "Fine, two months. Two months." She nodded, "I'll have an answer for you in two months."

"To marrying me?"

She nodded. "But you gotta court me." She rolled her neck and puckered her lips at the end of her sentence. "And." She popped her tongue, "You have to ask C3 too. As his daddy."

"Okay. Deal."

Cheyenne sat back in her seat, sliding her hands from his just to hold one back out at the center of the table. "Shake on it." She smiled.

He clasped hands with her softly. "It's shook on."

"You never talk about being adopted. It's like you were always an Adebanjo." Lonnie joked.

"Damn, you really ain't been around that long." Colin's eyes grew knowing what Lonnie said was far from his truth.

"Well, how did you meet 'em?"

Cole looked up, the way you do in remembrance, and began to tell the story. "It was 2012..."

[...2012]
Cole ran home from school... late. Only by three minutes, but late is late in Dre's house. Before he even got to the front stairs, Dre was standing at the front door waiting for Cole with a thick leather belt already worn down from previous scoldings. Nervous, he turned his back to his foster father, clasping his hand into the soft flesh of Kobe's, pulling him in for a bro hug. "Aight, I'll see you tomorrow." Kobe said into Cole's ear, watching every move of the olive skinned man standing at the front porch running the belt along his hands as he impatiently waited.