Adair’s respect for him didn’t shrink. It grew because this kind of vulnerability between men wasn’t common. Especially nottheirkind of men. Black men taught to eat pain for breakfast and hide everything that didn’t come with a punchline. To hear Tate say he hurt the woman he loved and didn’t know how to fix it—that hit different.
Adair realized something then: they weren’t just two men dealing with relationship drama. They were two men who had never been taught how to sit with grief. How to say, “I’m sorry” andmeanit without trying to buy their way back in. How to hold space for the women who held them down without making it about their own redemption.
He’d known Tate his whole life. They’d fought together. Lied for each other. Damn near raised each other but this was the first time he’d seenthisversion of him—the version that didn’t need to be the coolest or the hardest in the room.
Just a man who was tired of making the same mistake and calling it love. It honestly made Adair check himself too.
So, he sat in this moment of vulnerability, recognizing that Tate was trying and gave him space to do that. Testing something out in front of him before he tried to fix it with Narri.
Tate poured heavy into both glasses. “To the dumbest niggas in the room.”
Adair raised his. “To the ones who know better now.”
They clinked and drank in silence. No more words for a while. Just two men sitting in what they lost. Sitting in what they hoped they could rebuild—Black men—quiet in the aftermath of love they almost got right. Trying, maybe for the first time, to figure out what it meant to show up the right way.
Before it was too late.
Men who got handed love and were finally learning how to hold it.
2:47AM
The living room was dark except for the glow of the muted TV still running sports reruns. The bottle of Henny was half gone, and Tate had disappeared at some point without saying goodbye. Adair barely remembered him leaving.
What he did remember, though, was passing out on the couch, heart heavy and chest cracked open from everything they’d said. Shared. Felt.
He stirred to a sound. A shift in air. A presence.
And when he opened his eyes?—
Sabine was standing over him.
Not yelling. Not speaking.
Just looking at him like he had lost his damn mind.
Her curls were pulled up in a bun, hoodie half-zipped over what looked like pajamas. No makeup. Purse strap hanging loose from her shoulder. But it wasn’t her outfit that made him sit up fast.
It was her face.
“Baby…” he started automatically, voice thick from sleep and liquor. Then he looked at the wall clock. It was damn near three in the morning. “What’s wrong?” he asked, blinking the haze from his eyes, still not convinced he wasn’t dreaming.
Sabine just looked at him. That tight look she got when she was seconds away from saying something she couldn’t unsay. Or…whipping his ass.
“You called me,” she said finally.
Adair sat up straighter. “What?”
“You FaceTimed me.”
“I—what?” He looked around, saw his phone facedown on the coffee table and grabbed it.
2:27 AM — Missed FaceTime Call: Sabine
2:29 AM — Missed Call: Sabine
2:31 AM — Are you okay?
2:37 AM — Adair, answer the phone.