Page 140 of Steel

After kissing Ms. Anita’s forehead, I made my way out the front door and headed to my car. Something was pulling at me. I didn’t know what it was, but it was heavy. I figured it was the weight of this whole situation. So much had happened to me in the last year. I had a baby and lost my best friend in the process. I’d been thrown into single fatherhood, just winging that shit. I found out I had a child with the former love of my life. Now I was navigating being a father of two and rekindling an old flame.

I couldn’t take another fucking thing happening to me.

With a heavy sigh, I backed out of the driveway and headed for the compound.

I sat behind my desk,putting in my notes for the day. I’d been busy with meetings all morning long, and I was beyond ready to go to lunch. During my first meeting on the lodge, there was a code management because two of the adolescent girls started fighting. I was in the middle of doing an assessment when I heard screaming.

Everybody went running, and when I got there, two girls were going blow for blow, hitting anybody that got in the mix. The staff couldn’t break them up, and it eventually took ten of us to pull them apart. Turns out they were fighting over one girl stealing another’s clothes then lying about it.

Petty shit.

I was too happy to finish my assessment and get the fuck out of there.

As I put in the last of my notes, there was a knock on my door.

“Come in!” I called, not bothering to look up from the computer.

The door opened, and when I finally made eye contact, there was my man standing with a big ass bouquet of flowers and a bag of food. I smiled as I stood and walked over to him.

“Hey, baby,” I said, slipping my arms around his waist.

“Hey, my love.” He leaned in and kissed my lips as he closed the door. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

He handed me the flowers. “These are for you.”

“Thank you, baby. They’re beautiful.”

While he pulled the food from the bag, I went to replace last week’s flowers with these. Since we rekindled, he sent me weekly flowers. Every time they were delivered, or he brought them to me, it made my day. As I walked past him to round my desk, he gave my ass a hard slap.

“Shit!” he said, grinning.

“Did you have to slap it that hard?”

“I mean, the way it’s sitting up in those pants, it was begging for it. Besides, you don’t say shit about me slapping that shit when it’s clapping against my thighs.”

I playfully rolled my eyes because he was telling the truth.

“Whatever,” I said, opening my container of food. “Oh. My. God. Is this from your grandma?”

“It is.”

I was a fanatic of Ms. Rebecca’s cooking. That woman could burn in the kitchen like nobody’s business. Every time I ate at her place, I had to take a plate home, and it never made it there.

“I love your grams.”

“Everybody loves Grams. How’s your day been?”

“Ugh! This morning was a nightmare. After a fight on the unit, I’ve been in back-to-back meetings. I’m so ready to go home right now.”

He nodded. “Is this what you wanna do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, you see yourself doing this long term? What about that youth health and wellness center you wanted to open back in the day?”

I smiled at the fact that he actually remembered that.