The grass in Trent’s yard stayed patchy even after the last rain. Dirt kicked up when they dragged the plastic chairs into a crooked triangle near the busted grill. A box fan in the window rattled but didn’t push real air. The heat sat on them anyway. Mosquitoes found ankles. Somewhere, a siren wound past and faded under a passing streetcar’s ring.
Trent leaned back until the chair popped and then eased forward again so it wouldn’t crack. “Whole summer,” he said, toe nudging a bottle cap into the dust, “and nothing.”
Javi lay stretched on the other chair, an arm thrown over his eyes. “Because it’s boring as fuck.”
Saul had his phone in his palm, head down, thumb idle on a dead screen. He didn’t look up until Javi said, “That’s ’cause Saul ran off all the hoes.”
Saul snorted and lifted his eyes over the phone. “The only girls we’d have hanging out with us was Mia and Zoe,” he said. “That’s two girls and three of us. I see a math problem.”
Javi grinned without moving his arm. “Not if Mia was down with getting flipped. Which she could’ve been if you ain’t scare off the hoes.”
Saul sucked his teeth. “If Mia was down for that, she would’ve did it.”
Trent made a face and shook his head. “I don’t think I’d be into doing that anyway.”
Javi dropped his arm and shoved Trent’s shoulder, not hard, just enough to make the chair skid an inch. “That’s the type of pussy ass shit I expect you to say.”
Trent righted the chair and went quiet. The fan rattled again and settled. Somewhere next door a dog barked like it was tired of hearing itself.
Saul laughed once and then let it go. “Man, we need a car,” he said. “So we can get out of New Orleans and shit.”
Trent stared at him. “You got car money?”
“It don’t gotta be a Hellcat,” Saul said.
“I’m not about to be caught in no trash ass car,” Javi said, sitting up now, chain catching the light before the sun dipped behind a cloud.
“So, you’d rather be caught on the bus?” Saul said.
Javi shrugged, mouth twisting. He didn’t argue.
The yard smelled like cut grass and hot plastic. A neighbor’s fryer burped grease. The light through the fence slats drew lines across the dirt, ants walking them like it was a job.
Saul flicked his phone awake and wiped a thumb across the screen. “I got a few hundred I could spare,” he said.
Trent sat forward. “You serious?”
Saul nodded, eyes on the phone now for real. “It ain’t like other people don’t share cars.”
Javi cleared his throat, thinking out loud without giving anybody the credit. “It’d be better to be able to get around when I want.”
Trent scratched at a mosquito bite on his calf. “I got like two hundred,” he said.
They let that number sit. Wind moved the low oak leaves and then quit. A moped growled past on the street and blew a sweet trail of smoke over the fence. Javi swatted the air like he could move the smell.
Saul opened Facebook Marketplace and started the hunt for a cheap car.
~~~
Angela and Paz’s new place smelled like lemon cleaner and cardboard. Hum pressed through the screens, heat sneaking in around the window unit’s cough. Mireya shifted the strap of her tote higher on her shoulder and knocked, hip set, thighs bare where the shorts cut high, top pulling her chest up appreciatively.
The lock clicked. Angela cracked the door, eyes running head to ankle and back with a grin already forming.
“Bitch, since when you started wearing shit like that?”
Mireya lifted one shoulder, breezing past her into the cool. “Laundry day.”
“Mm-hmm,” Angela said, letting the door scrape shut with her foot. “Convenient.”
Paz sat on the couch with a pair of scissors and a roll of contact paper, knees pinning a stack of flattened IKEA instructions. She looked over her shoulder as Mireya came in. One eyebrow went up, the slow type of judgment that didn’t bother dressing itself.
“That’s nice,” Paz said. “Expensive, but nice.”
Mireya sank into the armchair across from them, crossing her legs. “Good thing it was a gift.”
Angela nudged Paz with her elbow, laugh ready. “Look, she got a man paying for her shit already. Caine ain’t been gone but two minutes.”
Paz’s mouth tugged into a smile that stopped halfway. The joke set but didn’t land. She looked back down, cutting the tape with a careful zip that said she was thinking about other conversations, other little flags that added up to a picture.
Mireya let her eyes travel the room. “Y’all really made this place look good.”
It was mid-renovation pretty. A throw draped over an old couch like a disguise. Two plants trying to recover from a move. The fan on the bookshelf clicking once every few turns. Through the thin window, a bus sighed and pulled off, heat shimmying over the street like it belonged there.
Angela flopped beside Paz. “I didn’t know landlords were so damn strict about this. All I wanted to do was paint one wall and that old ass white man about had a heart attack.”
Mireya shook her head. “Couldn’t be me. I wouldn’t even joke about painting. But a company in Florida owns my place. They’d send me a letter just for asking.”
“Figures,” Angela said, rolling her eyes.
Paz cut a square of liner and pressed it into a drawer she’d dragged onto the coffee table. “Heard you quit the boutique,” she said, voice neutral on the surface, something sharper under it. “The new job must be paying you really good.”
Mireya felt the look before she met it. She gave a slow nod. “Yeah. I moved to full-time. We get overtime every week, too.”
“And you still got that other job,” Paz said, not lifting her eyes.
Mireya let the question hang in the air like it wasn’t a question. She lifted her water from the side table and took a small sip. “Yeah.”
Angela waved a hand through the space between them the way you fan smoke off a stove. “Okay, okay. If the back of your closet is starting to look like that”—she pointed at the outfit, grin returning—“then you need to start sharing your clothes with us again.”
Mireya laughed, tension loosening by an inch. “I don’t know if we all wear the same size still.”
“I can make it work,” Angela said, already standing to measure imaginary hems against her waist.
The AC hiccuped and pushed a tired string of cold that died near the kitchen doorway. A pan clanged in the sink where somebody had left noodles to starch up. Outside, a siren turned on itself and kept going until it faded behind buildings.
Mireya felt the room again—tighter now, warmer. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and caught Paz watching, the scissors idle, the stare direct and quiet.
Angela kept talking, asking about what else she had hiding in the closet.
Mireya’s gaze slid back to Paz. The smile from earlier hadn’t returned. Paz’s eyes stayed on her, steady, measuring. Mireya held the look just long enough to register it and then turned her attention to the window, to the stripe of sun edging the sill, to the city doing what it always did—breathing, taking, asking.
Mireya didn’t move. She glanced at Paz one more time. Paz was still staring.
~~~
Laney sat in a camp chair with the faded mesh biting the backs of her thighs through her jeans, the heat slicking her shirt to her lower back. The grill popped and sighed in the no-fence stretch of backyard that was hers and Caleb’s together, smoke lifting and flattening when the breeze got lazy. She held a sweating wine cooler by the neck. Two sips were gone. The rest had warmed to syrupy.
Caleb stood over the grill with Tommy, Marcus, and Daniel, each with a pair of tongs like that made them official. Tommy handled the meat with that clean, quiet way he did everything. Flip, set, lid down. No extra talk. Caleb talked enough for both of them, cap backwards, laughing at his own joke before anyone else caught it.
On the patio, Gabrielle leaned toward Bri, telling the Augusta story she always told when the sun got good and the bugs started making themselves known. “I had to get out,” she said, teeth bright, wrist cutting little shapes in the air. “Atlanta let me breathe a little.”
Bri laughed into her cup. “We tried to stay in Tallahassee for a minute.” She wrinkled her nose. “Didn’t take. I said, ‘Nope,’ and brought my behind back home soon as we got married.”
Aisha had her sandals hooked on two fingers, toes cooling in the grass. She peered over her shoulder at Laney. “Didn’t you get a scholarship back in high school? For softball, right? I swear I remember that when I was a freshman.”
Laney tipped the bottle to her mouth and let a small swallow sit on her tongue before she gave a nod. “Mm-hmm.”
Gabrielle turned, eyebrows up. “I didn’t know you played sports, girl. You never struck me as the type. You been holding out!”
Laney rolled one shoulder.
At the grill, Caleb didn’t look up, just spoke through the lid smoke. “That’s because Laney was too dumb to go to college.” Then, to Tommy, a grin sharpened, “No offense, bro.”
Tommy didn’t answer. He glanced over once at Laney, a look that held and said nothing, then settled the tongs again, pulling a line of burgers to the hotter side.
Laney let the bottle rest against the chair arm. The cicadas pressed in. Somewhere next door a dog barked and a cat screamed.
“What schools?” Bri asked. “You had to have a few.”
Laney shifted, the chair creaking. “GT, UGA, Oklahoma, UT, Florida, Clemson, FSU, Oregon.” She lifted the bottle, took a barely-there sip. “A bunch of other ones, too.”
Daniel snorted and elbowed Tommy like they were closer than they were. “You could’ve had one of them wives everybody on X stay lusting over.”
Tommy lifted an eyebrow. The man’s laugh died by itself.
“Where were you gonna go?” Gabrielle asked, bright again, like she was ready to plan a life that didn’t happen. She cut her eyes at Caleb. “You never told me Laney could’ve gone to school with us.”
Laney stared at the bead of condensation sliding down the label. “GT or UGA,” she said, voice low.
Gabrielle aimed it back at the grill. “Well?”
Caleb flipped a burger that didn’t need flipping. “Because she didn’t.” He pointed with the tongs across the smoke line toward Laney and Tommy. “They were married by the time I graduated.”
Aisha flashed Laney a sweet smile that didn’t land right. “Well, nothing wrong with getting yourself a good man and raising a family instead.”
Laney tipped the bottle back and finished it in two quick gulps. Sweet stuck at the back of her throat. She stood, the chair scraping the concrete pad. The men didn’t break their formation. Grease hissed. A drop fell and flared. Tommy’s hand shifted to move the steak without looking like he was hurrying it, discipline even with heat in his face.
Gabrielle and Bri went back to their college talk, Atlanta and traffic and the restaurants that closed before they were ready to leave. Daniel said something to Marcus about the price of brisket and got an amen. Caleb held the lid with his forearm and cracked it to show flame, proud of fire like he made it himself.
Laney brushed a mosquito off her forearm and glanced across the yard where the boys had turned the empty flower bed into a basepath, dust kicked up and sticking to their calves. A head-first slide ended with a skinned elbow and a triumphant yell. She felt the sound in her chest before she heard it.
She moved closer to the grill, the heat slick on her arm as she leaned toward Tommy. “You need me to bring anythin’ out?” Her voice stayed easy.
Caleb waved her off. “We got it.”
Tommy finally looked at her again, a half beat longer than before. His face didn’t change, but his eyes took quick inventory—her bottle gone, the way she had set her mouth. He adjusted the vent on the lid and set the tongs down in their place.
Laney angled her body so only he would hear her. “I’m gon’ check on the boys,” she muttered, and started toward the basepath.
~~~
The bar’s lights ran low and tired. Neon buzzed near the jukebox, a thin hum under the rasp of the ice machine and the soft scrape of a barstool two tables over. Caine sat in the back corner with his forearm on the sticky table, glass sweating into a ring. His second drink sat barely touched. He rolled the cold against his palm and watched Rylee shoot hers back, face scrunching on the burn, then tap the empty shot glass heel-down, satisfied.
“Slow down,” he said, voice easy.
Rylee set the glass on its side and blinked at him, then waved the bartender with two fingers. “I’m good.”
“You good?” His eyebrow tipped up. He held her stare, steady, amused.
“Yeah.” She let her head sink into the booth cushion, hair slipping over her shoulder. “’Cept Ainsley out here causin’ shit.”
Caine took a small drink, let it sit on his tongue before he swallowed. “What kind of shit?”
“She swear I want her man.” Rylee checked a thumbnail, then looked at him again. “Like I got time for that. She postin’ all vague on her story, actin’ like I’m thirsty.”
He laughed. It slid out quick and low.
She smacked his arm with the back of her hand. “What you laughin’ at?”
“Because who gives a fuck?” He tilted his head, mouth slanting.
“I do,” she said, sitting up straighter. “I might be a lotta things, but I ain’t runnin’ behind nobody else’s man.”
He set his glass down and moved it an inch, then another, lining the water ring to the edge of the coaster. “This shit some first world problems.”
“Well, I live in the fuckin’ first world, Caine.” She stared at him like she wanted him to push. Her cheeks held a slow heat from the liquor.
He lifted both hands off the table, palms out, lazy surrender. “I’m saying it don’t matter because either you want him or you don’t. And if your friend thinks that, then you ain’t really doing a whole lot to change why she would think you’d do that.”
Rylee’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”
He let a beat pass. The song on the jukebox rolled into another verse nobody asked for. Ice clattered into a metal bin behind the bar. He thought about saying it plain. He let it go.
“It mean you mad about it,” he said, voice flat. “I wouldn’t get mad about no shit I ain’t doing.”
She blinked through it, the liquor softening her edges. “Whatever. You don’t understand what I’m dealin’ with.”
The bartender slid a fresh shot down. Rylee caught it without looking, a clean snatch at the lip, and held it a second. She turned the glass, watching the light run through the amber, then glanced at her phone face-up by the salt shaker. AINSLEY lit the screen and blinked away. Rylee flipped the phone over with a quick tap of her fingernail.
“She been messy all week,” Rylee said, not quite to him. “She post a song, then a quote, then go quiet.”
“Let her,” Caine said.
Rylee sucked her teeth. “Folks swear I’m in they business when I’m mindin’ mine.” She raised the shot, paused, and tapped the rim to the table. “Ain’t even looked at her damn man.”
Caine dragged a napkin through the damp ring and balled it under his thumb. “Then you straight.”
“Mm.” She didn’t agree or disagree. She threw the shot back. The swallow tugged her mouth sideways and she hissed air through her teeth. “Whole friend group actin’ funny”
A couple near the door argued under their breath. The ceiling fan clicked on every third spin. Somewhere oil popped in a fryer even though the kitchen was closed. Rylee set the empty down and bored a groove in the cardboard coaster with her nail. She kept her eyes on that while she talked.
“She text me this morning,” she said. “Said, ‘If you want him just say that.’ I said, ‘Girl, be for real.’ Then she sent a whole paragraph. I ain’t read it.”
“I don’t blame you,” Caine said.
Her laugh came out a breath. “Yeah, alright.”
He shrugged. “You the one mad.”
“I ain’t mad,” she said, then kicked his ankle under the table like she needed the touch to prove it. “I’m annoyed.”
He looked at her foot and back at her face. “Same shit.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned back. The booth cushion sighed. Sweat had beaded where her hair touched her neck and she tucked it up with her fingers, wrist flashing. She watched him watch her and smirked like she won something small.
“You ain’t gon’ tell me I’m right?” she asked.
“You ain’t ask me,” he said.
She chewed the inside of her cheek, then broke into a grin that didn’t stay long.
Her phone buzzed again under her palm. She pressed it still and left it. The bartender drifted near, drying a glass with a rag that had given up. Rylee lifted two fingers without looking his way.
Caine nudged his own glass and took the smallest sip. “You finished?”
“With you?” She snorted. “Please.”
He smiled a little.
She looked at her reflection in the dark window and fixed her gloss with one swipe of her thumb. The neon threw a soft red line over her cheekbone and faded at her jaw. She checked him again, like she wanted to catch judgment and couldn’t find it.
Rylee tapped the rim of her empty shot with one fingernail. The sound was tiny and sharp. She slid out of the booth, a small wobble in her weight shift, and braced a hand on the table to steady herself.
“I’m gonna get ’nother drink,” she said, already turning.
Caine snorted a short laugh through his nose as she walked off, then leaned back and let the neon buzz fill the empty space she left at the table.
could be a muse for Mireya's future. if not, and Caine don't crack this bitch, time to move on. respectfully.
