“I can tell.”
She grabbed Dakoda’s face and kissed his forehead before heading back toward the door. I opened it for her, and she stepped across the hall toward her apartment. I watched long enough to see exactly which unit she went into before my eyes dropped to the box of groceries sitting beside Lyrius’s door. Dude must have come back and left it, and my jaw tightened immediately. Yeah . . . Lyrius and I were definitely going to have a conversation about niggas playing house around my damn son.
“Mama!” Dakoda shouted, making me turn toward the apartment door just as Lyrius pushed inside, balancing a cardboard food box against her chest. “You back!” Little man hopped down from the chair so fast he almost slipped. He took off running toward her while I stood over the stove, stirring the spaghetti sauce.
“Hey, baby.” Lyrius laughed tiredly as he wrapped himself around her legs. “You had fun with daddy today?”
“The best!” Dakoda grinned. “We went to the park and got dinosaur nuggets, and I got to feed Ali, and we cleaned up all my toys!”
“That definitely sounds like the best day.” She looked over at me and smiled softly, then her eyes moved around the apartment.
“Thanks for helping him clean up.”
“No problem.”
“Somebody left these outside the door. You know who they came from?” She adjusted the box in her arms before setting it down on the counter.
I glanced down at the groceries like I didn’t know exactly where they came from. “Nah.”
“Mama, we making spaghetti!” Dakoda interrupted proudly.
Lyrius smiled. “You cooking?”
“It’s just spaghetti,” I muttered.
“The only thing you know how to cook,” she teased lightly. I sucked my teeth under my breath, but she wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t a cooking type of nigga. My foster mama made sure Jaylen and I knew enough to survive in the kitchen before she passed, though. We knew how to make spaghetti and breakfast food, justenough to feed ourselves whenever Pops got stuck at the gym late training fighters.
“Well, thank y’all,” she said while pulling her cardigan off. “I don’t know what I was going to do for dinner, ’cause I’m exhausted.”
“You look exhausted,” I replied before I could stop myself. Her eyes lifted toward mine for a second before she looked away.
“You mind if I shower before dinner?”
“Nah, go ahead. I got Dakoda.” I nodded toward the grocery box that was going straight into the damn trash. “And I’ll take care of that.”
“Aight.”
“Hurry back.” Dakoda grabbed onto her hand before she could disappear down the hallway.
“I will.” She smiled down at him, and I watched her walk off, ass bouncing in her scrubs before turning back toward the stove. I opened the fridge, looking for the shredded cheese and noticed the stack of bills pinned beneath a magnet on the side. It was the standard shit. Electric. Internet. Rent reminder. None of them were overdue, but the shit still didn’t sit right with me. I pulled my phone out and snapped pictures of every last one before texting them to Jaylen.
Me:
Handle these.
Jaylen:
Damn.
You over there paying bills already?
I snorted.This nigga.
Jaylen:
You gon’ be laying pipe next.
Me: