"Kenney...what are you doing here?"
I ran a hand over my leftover hairdo from the day before and looked back into the kitchen at Sammie, who was sitting at the table, totally involved in her snacks. The girl loved her snacks. When I watched Kenney walk out of the rec center the day before, I figured that was just that. So I tucked the little heartstring that had somehow gotten pulled out of place neatly back where it came from and went on about my day.
But now here he was...at my doorstep.
Life.
I shook my head at the circus of it all and stepped back to let him in. There were toys all over the place.
"Tenney!" Sammie called like he was Norm from Cheers, and waved. "Hi Tenney!" She had the sweetest voice. If you ever wanted to feel like someone thought you were the greatest ever, all you had to do was swing on over to our place.
Kenney smiled. "Hey Charlie Brown." He said it so softly that she probably didn't hear him. She waved again, anyway, before turning back to her snack. It was good that she was strapped into her booster seat or she probably would have tried to jump down and run over to him, not realizing how high up she was.
"Kenney...what are you doing here?" I asked again, thoroughly confused.
"I came over to check on you."
I smiled and took another step back. "Your aunt told me to stay away from you."
He grinned. "She told me to stay away from you, too. And yet, here we are..." he gave me a quick hug. "She's not the boss of us."
I just stared at him. I didn't know what else to do.
"Jasmine told me where you were staying." He answered the unasked how the hell do you know where I live question. "She had to have known that I would come out here when she told me..." His confidence waivered, I guess mistaking my surprise for my not wanting him to be there.
"Kenney..." I hugged him again, hard.
"Tenney!" Samantha repeated from her little front row seat in the kitchen.
"I'm just...really happy to see you." I grinned dazedly up at him.
He grinned back. "I'm happy to see you, too."
"You are?"
"Yeah, of course." He cleared his throat excessively. "But a brotha is a little parched." He dramatically tapped at his throat and cleared it some more.
I smiled and walked toward the kitchen. Kenney closed and locked the door behind him and followed. When he walked past Sammie, he gave her the secret shortcake handshake. That must have been something that he and Drama thought up the night we left them alone with the baby.
Guys.
"Kenney, how did you even get in here? We have a gate."
He kind of looked at me for a minute, realizing that he may have just made me feel like we weren't as safe as I thought we were in there.
"Jasmine told me that you had a gate, and that visitors could either call you from the gate or dial the code...and Shayna gave me the code..." He looked like he was definitely having second thoughts about the surprise visit now. "I hope that's ok..."
I nodded and turned to busy myself in the refrigerator, using the door to hide my face. "We have milk, water and juice."
"Hey," he put his hand on my arm and I turned back to him. "I'm serious. Are you ok with me being here?"
"Yeah Kenney," I tried to give him a real, not nervous smile, but I was an incredibly nervous person by that time. "I just didn't expect to see you at my door, that's all. I'm so happy to see you. I missed you so much Kenney."
Telling the whole truth was my new thing.
He smiled, confidence renewed. "Juice." He chuckled when I handed him a juice box and handed it right back to me. "Water." After I handed him the glass, he clinked Samantha's sippy cup and sat down next to her at the table. "Wow. This one got big." He picked up the sippy cup that she "accidentally" dropped on the floor and handed it back to her. That was her new game. She just laughed and laughed. I started to tell Kenney to rinse it off first, but then let it go. Five second rule.
"Yeah, she's almost three now."
Kenney shook his head. "Time flies."
"Yeah," I caught his eyes. "It does." When he quickly looked away, I changed the subject. "Why don't you go in the other room and find a movie or something while I clean up this mess?" I looked at Sammie and made a funny face at her. She laughed and made one back.
"I have a better idea," Kenney wiped Sammie's hands and mouth off with a napkin and took her out of her booster seat. "Why don't you two go relax and I'll clean up." He handed her to me and added, "Might as well, while you have the help." I couldn't argue with him there.
Sammie and I were kicked back watching The Wire when Kenney finally wandered in and joined us on the couch. His timing couldn't have been worse. He walked in just in time to see pure hell unfold across my TV screen. I shook my head and almost teared up. Whatever was going on, there were little kids all over the place, drugs, crazies...a real freaking nightmare. Hamsterdam is what they called it. This episode was worse than the one where Wallace died, and Wallace was my dude. This literally looked like my worst nightmare on tape.
I hadn't been paying close enough attention to the show to fully understand what the heck was going on, and made a mental note to find out when that episode was coming on again later. I was totally into it by the time Kenney walked in, though, and hadn't even been thinking about him at all until he came in and sat down next to me. That's when I quickly put two and two together, and my eyes involuntarily grew huge as I wondered how much of that was Kenney...and Jasmine...back in the day. I tried to think of a way to change the channel without being obvious about it, and I also tried not to gawk over at him as he sat down, but he said my name.
"Tashi..." Kenney's eyes locked with mine. "You know I can't watch this sh...stuff." He caught himself and looked over at Sammie, silently asking me why I was showing it to the baby, anyway. Kenney had never been able to handle watching anything that involved little kids in bad situations, and I never knew why it bothered him so much – more than the average person – until that night with Jasmine.
"Sorry, sorry..." I quickly flipped channels, finally settling on Teletubbies, which always put Sammie to sleep. "I just...have to catch up on my shows when I can."
I snuck a peak at Kenney and then quickly looked away. He did the same to me. Samantha let out a huge yawn and then crawled from my lap to Kenney's and fell promptly asleep. Kenney chuckled and sat back with her to watch the show.
Enough time had passed in total silence to make me think that Kenney had fallen asleep, too, and I started writing a mental checklist of everything that I could get done before either of them woke up.
Kenney caught me by surprise, though, when he looked up from the baby and said "You know I'm still yours, right?"
I choked on the gum that I accidentally swallowed and coughed for a good five minutes before responding. Kenney just watched me, amused.
"What?"
"Ride or die, darlin'. I still love you like that. Me and you to the end."
"Whoa..." I put my hands out like there were too many marbles scattering all over a table.
I didn't know what to say, but I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was by what he said. He had been saying things like that to me the whole time I'd known him. He had always been the one to throw everything down on the table, while I had always been the one to play my hand close.
As if reading my thoughts, he shrugged and said "Just thought I'd throw it all out there and see what you picked up."
I nodded and again looked down as if his words were cards spread out across a table between us, mentally skimming what was out there for me to pull from. We had been playing this game for years.
Here. This one looked safe...
"So...you're not seeing anyone?"
"No. You?"
"No." I looked down at the sweetest baby in the world as she sighed deeply and shifted in her sleep.
"Just this one, huh?" He tried to look down at her, too, but her head was tucked right under his chin.
I smiled and nodded. "Yeah."
"So...Collin is..."
"Not my problem anymore."
Kenney nodded. "Interesting answer."
I wished that I could give him a better one. "Yeah..."
Kenney continued to nod silently and looked back at the TV. Then he looked back at me. "And you think it's over this time because..."
"Because he held a gun to my baby's head." Kenney jerked and started to sit up. Remembering the baby, he stayed where he was. "He held a gun to my baby's head, told me that he was going to kill her and then locked me in the closet."
Kenney watched my lips silently, like he was reading the words that I was saying as they floated out of my mouth and formed sentences across my face. I knew what was going through his mind. There was no doubt by the look on his face, and I knew that feeling Sammie's tiny little heartbeat next to his only added ten more emotions to that. I reached out to take her, but Kenney put a hand up to stop me.
"No, she's ok."
Hmm...this was new.
I sat back down. "He's crazy as hell, Kenney, and I just can't fuck with him anymore." I maintained eye contact with him when I said it, and I meant it. Fuck him.
Kenney just nodded and looked at me like Duh. Glad you finally recognize. Instead of throwing his two cents in, though, he covered the baby's ears.
"Ouch!" He flinched like I had just burned his ears, too.
I chuckled. "Just sayin'."
He nodded. "I hear ya."
This really was a new Kenney. Maybe he had been taking anger management classes or something. Actually, it was more like the old Kenney had finally come back. Maybe all that time away from me and my dumb shit had done him some good. Or maybe he was just calm because there was a sleeping baby on him. Who knows?
"So...my turn." I figured since we were asking questions... "What happened with you and Deidra?"
Kenney looked totally caught off guard. But he didn't break eye contact with me when he said, "She got pregnant by someone else."
Now I was totally caught off guard. "Daaamn Gina..."
"I know, right. I thought it was my baby, so I was going to marry her. Turns out it wasn't, so I didn't." He continued to look at me. "Why did you call the police on Collin?"
I looked away from him and didn't answer.
"Did he hurt you?"
"Yes."
"And the baby?"
"No." I looked back into his eyes.
"What happened?"
"He..." Where would I even start with this one? Kenney waited patiently. I knew if I moved him past the question, he would only find a way to get right back to it. Besides, the whole truth was my new thing, right? "He...used to stay out all night on Tuesdays and Saturdays..."
Kenney tilted his head and looked at me like this story was about to be dumb as hell. He was right.
"So I made that me and Sammie's date night. One night he actually did come home, before me...and he thought that..." My voice trailed off and I looked at Kenney like I didn't want to talk anymore. He just sat there and waited. If there was ever a quiet game between the two of us, Kenney would win hands down every time. "Collin thought that I was with you that night."
"Um...why would he think that?"
"Well, he thought that I took Sammie to see you because...he thought...you were her father..."
The look on Kenney's face told me that I could have dropped the mic right there and walked off the stage.
"What?"
"He did." I nodded. "He might still think that. I'm not exactly sure."
"What?"
Kenney just kept saying that. I had no idea what was going through his mind right then. The baby stirred, and I did take her this time, and laid her down on the loveseat. When I sat back down next to Kenney, he said it one more time.
"What...?"
I nodded and Kenney sat up.
"Why...?"
I shrugged. "He always thought we were doing something behind his back. Always. Even when you were way out of the picture..."
Kenney and I locked eyes, and then he looked away first.
"Tashi..."
I cut him off. "So...that's what he thought. And he went ballistic. And I ran and locked us in the bedroom, called the police and then locked us in the bathroom."
Kenney looked devastated.
"Mike said it was bad. Real bad. Bad enough to tell Aunt Jasmine to go get you. He wanted her to...try to talk to you. Because he could tell that you weren't ...safe." Kenney took my hand. I always wondered how they ended up on my doorstep. "He said you told them nothing happened and that you had called them by mistake. And then he said Collin...spit blood in your face." The words that he spoke even felt like acid on my tongue. "Mike said that Collin was the one bleeding, not you..."
I dropped his hand and dropped my eyes. I couldn't deny the truth. Kenney's face turned red, but his demeanor didn't change.
"Jasmine said that you might take it better if we showed up instead of her, so she sent all of us to come get you. Shayna and Drama came all the way down here." He took my hand again. "That's the only reason they were here. They came all the way down here for you. We love you so much, Tashi." I kept my eyes lowered. "We thought...you just needed help leaving. That he wouldn't let you leave..."
"Yeah..."
"But you wouldn't go, no matter what we said or did."
"I know."
"Why?"
"I...don't know."
We locked eyes again and Kenney let go of my hand. Time didn't stand still, but went straight back to that place. We were both right there...living it all over again.
Kenney put his hand on my leg. "I'm glad you finally left."
I squeezed his hand. "Me, too."
"So..." he continued and I realized that I had wandered into a game of 20 Questions, just like old times. "So..." he began again, "...you know about me?"
He pulled his hand away and sat back in the chair, waiting for my reaction.
I nodded.
"Where did Jasmine take you that night?"
"To her women's group."
"I thought so. And what did she say?"
"Everything."
He nodded thoughtfully. "So...you know?" I nodded. "About me...and Aunt Jasmine?"
"Yes, I know. Kenney..." He looked at me. "I know about the baby, too."
He looked away.
"Kenney," I reached out and took his hand. "I love you. Thank you for helping me." It was something that I had wanted to say to him since the night that I heard their story.
He smiled. "I love you, too. So much." And I knew he meant it.
"I'm so sorry that I took you through all of that. I had no idea..."
He nodded. "It's ok."
I always loved the way he said "It's ok." Like he completely and totally forgave every single time, one hundred percent of the time. What an amazing person.
"Natasha?"
"Yes?"
He looked as wide open as I felt.
"I...have to go."
"Oh." I felt my ears droop all the way down to the floor like Eeyore's.
"My plane leaves soon."
"What?" I chuckled. "What the hell, Kenney?"
"I just...wanted to see you before I left. I'm actually on my way to the airport right now. Rental car..."
"Ok..." The perfectly typical way to end a perfectly typical conversation with him.
One day, I was going to tell somebody our story. And it was going to be the craziest, most Alice in Wonderland thing they've ever heard. I always felt like Alice in Wonderland when I was with Kenney. Like...what...the hell...is this? Our story just always seemed to disrupt sooo many other stories. There was always something else going on every time we were about to be on.
Always, every single time.
"I love you."
"I love you, too, Kenney." I stood up and he followed me to the door, glancing over at the still sleeping Samantha on his way past.
"I'm glad you two are safe."
He hugged me, but it was one of those hugs, and a shiver went up my spine. It had been a while. I pulled away first and hoped that he hadn't felt it.
"Me, too." And I meant that.
"See you soon," he leaned in like he was about to kiss me and I involuntarily took a quick step back. He looked at me for the longest time. When he reached his hand out toward me, I flinched. He quickly pulled his hand back. "Are...you ok?"
"Kenney..." I started shaking. For no reason at all, I was right back in a very uncomfortable space. A space that had me always afraid to say anything that would...upset whoever I was talking to at the time. Maybe, because I had only ever had such strong feelings for Kenney and Collin, it seemed to only happen when I felt like I was about to tick one of them off.
Kenney peeped everything that was happening right away...everything...and also backed up. How messed up was it that even after all we'd been through, I would still think that Kenney was about to hit me because I wouldn't kiss him. Jasmine was right. I definitely needed to get it together before I let Kenney anywhere near my mangled up heart.
Kenney put a gentle hand on my arm, and took a more cautious step toward me, smoothing his hand over my hair and kissing the top of my head. "It's ok. Let's talk more often, ok?"
I nodded. "Ok."
I would definitely be ok with that.