Chapter Four

Baby Mama

“Where’s my baby?” I called out as soon as I stepped into Samir and Morgan’s backyard. No one had answered the door after I’d rung the bell twice, but before I could pull out my phone to call someone, joyous screams of laughter led me around the side of the house.

Morgan’s two girls, LeeLee and Pooh, along with Amani, wore soaked swimsuits and were screaming their heads off as Samir chased them around the yard, shooting jetted streams of likely cold water out of a bulky water gun as the kids jumped in and out of the spray of the sprinklers in the center of the yard. It was obvious that none of them had heard my question, so I turned toward the house to go look for Morgan. Chilling on a lounger under the awning attached to the house, Morgan used her free arm to wave a hand and catch my attention. I headed straight for her, dropping my keys onto the wicker patio table and immediately reaching for the sleeping infant in her arms. She gave her up without a fight, shaking out her arm as she sat up and reached for the canned margarita on the table, taking a long drink before sighing and sitting back.

“Hey, Leese,” she murmured, removing the burp cloth from her shoulder and placing it on the table near her drink.

“Hey girl, hey,” I chirped, shooting her a quick grin before allowing my gaze to naturally return to the cherub in my arms.

Sanai was the newest addition to Samir and Morgan’s household, bringing their combined brood to four. Although she wasn’t who I’d been referring to when I’d asked about “my baby,” I never hesitated to scoop her into my arms whenever I came by to drop off or pick up Amani. At three months, she was a juicy, sepia-toned bundle of sweet-smelling love, and shockingly an exact replica of Amani when he was her age. She looked so much like my son that I’d fallen in love with her the moment I saw her wrinkled face at the hospital. Thankfully, Morgan wasn’t put off by my attachment to Sanai, and let me love on her as often as I wanted.

“Girl!” Morgan suddenly exclaimed, startling me enough that Sanai twitched in my arms. When I glared at her, she gave me a sheepish grin. “My bad. I just wanted to tell you that you killed your set last night!”

I gave her a surprised look. That was interesting. It wasn’t unusual for Morgan to visit Sanity, but no matter how many times I told her it wasn’t necessary, she usually let me know when she’d be there.

“You finally listened to me?!” I teased.

Laughing, she rolled her eyes. “Nah, girl. I went out with some girlfriends last night, and one of them suggested we go there on a whim. You know I’m not rolling through without announcing myself.”

“Which I still don’t understand,” I chuckled, bending my neck to nuzzle Sanai’s neck.

Instead of acknowledging what I’d said, she waved a hand at me. “Anyways, we’re talking about your set. That song! Oh my god!” Dropping her head back, she made a pained face. “It was sexy as hell. I was so wet.”

Widening my eyes, I turned to look at Samir, who wasn’t paying us any mind.

“Uh...”

Morgan snapped her head forward, eyes wide as they focused on me. “Was that too much information?”

Immediately, I nodded. No matter how close we’d grown in the two years since she and Samir had made things official, I did not need to know about my ex’s girlfriend getting aroused as I danced semi-naked on stage.

Bursting into laughter, Morgan covered her face. “I’m sorry, Leese.”

I loved Morgan.

I really, really did.

But Lord did she make my head hurt sometimes.

The line between being good friends and simply being two women who’d sat on the same dick at different times wasn’t thin in the least, but Morgan seemed to have made it one of her life goals to long-jump over it as often as I would allow. For the most part, I let it fly. Morgan was a few years older than Samir and I, and cool as hell. At thirty-five, she was well into her career as a registered nurse, spending ten years at Texas Children’s before trading in the twelve-hour shifts for a less demanding, but just as fulfilling, position as a school nurse for a newly built elementary school.

The two met six months after Samir and I decided that we were better off as friends, and spent the next six months pretending that they weren’t falling in love with each other. Morgan was a divorced mother of two beautiful little girls, nine-year-old Lillian, who everyone called LeeLee, and Patience, also known as Pooh, who was five just like Amani, but a few months older. I saw with my own eyes how well the kids got along. LeeLee and Pooh treated Amani like he was the little brother they’d always wanted, and that plus the way Morgan loved on my baby and never treated him different than her girls was enough for me to mark them as okay in my mind. And it was nothing to give my blessing when Samir came to me and said he and Morgan wanted to move in together. I trusted him to protect our son, and Morgan hadn’t given me anything to be concerned about.

When it came to describing the co-parenting relationship I shared with Samir, blessed was putting it mildly. Samir was one of my dearest friends, and everything we did together just...worked. We met as teenagers, when we both joined the same dance company in Dallas, and became fast friends.

Okay, so maybe not everything we did together worked. After years of being told we were perfect for one another, we tried the relationship thing. It was cool in the beginning because we already shared so many interests as friends that it seemed like a natural progression for us to become romantic. For a while, it felt effortless. That while lasted a good two years before we realized that we were phoning it in. Our romantic partnership was draining the life out of our friendship, and when we sat down and discussed which relationship we’d rather salvage, friendship was the unanimous decision. That was after I’d moved to Houston with him, and although I was in a new city with almost no one of my own, I didn’t want to leave.

I’d made great friends and loved my job at Sanity, not to mention, I made a ridiculous amount of money for the number of hours I clocked. It wasn’t easy work, but it was satisfying, and it pulled on the years of training that I had. It was what some would call a win-win.

Except, the thing about sex work is that it made it difficult to find meaningful romantic relationships. So while Samir had met and fallen in love with Morgan, I had gone on a string of unsuccessful dates with stupid men who projected their fetishes onto me, and ignorant women who assumed that, because I was fresh out of a loving relationship with a man, I was only into girls as an extended performance. As if I was incapable of separating my job from my personal life. As if I couldn’t in any way be a bisexual woman. Tired of that bullshit, I removed myself from the dating pool and stuck to surface-level hook ups every now and then when my toys weren’t enough.

“Hey,” Morgan whispered, touching my arm and breaking me out of my thoughts. “I’m going to go put Sanai in her crib and I’ll be right back to help wrangle the three musketeers.” Slipping her hands underneath the slumbering baby, she lifted Sanai out of my arms and went into the house.

As soon as the screen door clicked shut, Samir came running over, a giggling Amani tucked under one arm like a sack of potatoes, Pooh hanging limply from his other arm, and LeeLee clinging to his back with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. Stopping in the grass, he shook his body from side to side, causing the kids to shriek with laughter. Pooh and Amani began to twist and kick, trying to free themselves, while LeeLee dropped her hands from Samir’s neck to his torso, digging her fingers into his sides and tickling him mercilessly.

Samir, who was the most ticklish person that I knew, fell to his knees, allowing the two youngest to slip out of his grasp and join in with the tickling. When he started screeching as he twisted and writhed on the grass, I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. I couldn’t even offer him any assistance because I was physically weak with laughter.

“Uncle!” screamed Samir. “Uncle!”

The three giggling terrors ignored his cries of defeat and continued attacking him.

“Hey!”

Everyone froze at the sound of Morgan’s stern voice. I hadn’t even noticed that she’d reentered the backyard, but she stood in front of the sliding door, sans Sanai, hands on her hips as she faced the cluster of tiny ticklers. Her eyes were narrowed as she moved closer to the group.

“I know y’all heard him say Uncle. Come up off of him!”

She lunged, and the kids shrieked and jumped back before taking off into the yard, heading for the sprinklers. Morgan crouched over Samir, taking in his heavy breathing.

“Did you pee on yourself?”

Bending forward, I hollered.

Samir frowned up at her.

“What?! Hell no! Why would you ask me that?”

She gestured at his wet shorts.

He sucked his teeth. “Why you tryna play me, man?”

Morgan cracked up and reached for his hand to help him to his feet. Once he was righted, she turned to reclaim her seat, only to be pulled back when he refused to release her hand. He tugged her toward him, placed a hand at her neck, and kissed her. It was so damn sweet.

“Awww,” I cooed, hugging myself. “Y’all are so cute.”

Morgan’s smile was wide when she finally dropped down into her chair.

“You got here just in time,” Samir informed me, picking up Morgan’s drink and gulping it down. “I’ve been trying to get them in the house for an hour.”

“More like two hours,” Morgan corrected. “Sanai done woke up from her nap, had a bottle, and went right back to sleep in the amount of time you’ve been ‘trying’ to corral them.”

“You’re losing your touch?” I asked, tilting my head back to look up at Samir, who rolled his eyes at my question.

Chuckling, he shook his head. “Nah, man. I really thought I had them this time. I didn’t expect LeeLee to start tickling me though. That threw a wrench in my plans.” He gestured at me. “But now that you’re here, they have no excuses. Bath time for everyone!”

“You’re welcome,” I offered with a gracious dip of my chin.

“Mmhm, go ahead and grab one of those towels.” Samir pointed to the colorful stack of fluffy bath towels in the center of the round table. “You know the drill.”

Laughing, I nodded and did as I was told. I did, indeed, know the drill. Standing to my feet, I stepped off of the stone patio and shook out the towel, grabbing an end in each hand and stretching the towel lengthwise as I spread my arms wide. Morgan and Samir did the same, and we all stood in a line while Samir whistled to get the kids’ attention. Pooh glanced our way first and immediately began to run our way, followed by Amani and then LeeLee. Pooh launched at Morgan, who immediately wrapped the giggling girl in the towel, sweeping her off of her feet in a dramatic fashion that had peals of laughter bursting out of Pooh’s lips.

LeeLee headed right for Samir, jumping into the air only to be caught and swung in a circle as Samir wrapped her up like a burrito with only her head and feet exposed. The smallest of the three, Amani, reached me last, jumping at me with his arms spread open just like mine. As he clung to me, I draped the towel across his body like a toga and rubbed vigorously as we all headed into the house. After being in the yard for however long, my baby smelled like a puppy and had blades of grass all over his legs and in his hair. He needed a bath before we could go anywhere, but Samir spoke without me having to say a word.

“Let’s go, Amani. It’s bath time, baby boy.”

“Okay.” Amani wriggled in my arms. “I gotta go take a bath, Mommy.”

As soon as I knelt to set him down, he took off running toward his father. Samir scooped him up and carried Amani and LeeLee toward the stairs with Morgan right behind them, still holding Pooh.

“We’ll be right back,” Samir tossed over his shoulder before disappearing up the second flight of stairs.

We’d done some variation of this routine enough times that I knew I had around thirty minutes to chill before my son would be ready to leave with me. I didn’t even mind the wait. Amani loved the time he spent with his father so much that he used to have full-on tantrums if Samir tried to get him ready before my arrival. We learned early on that Amani needed to lay eyes on me to accept that it was time for him to leave his father’s side. It saved us plenty of headaches—and tears—to just build an extra half hour into our exchange times, and it had actually benefited our relationship as parents. Seeing Samir and me spend time together as a family, but not as a couple, had been so healthy for all of the kids.

As a child of two people who could never agree on anything but abandoning their only child to be raised by her grandmother, I never would have believed in my wildest dreams things could be so...amiable between non-coupled parents. Add to that Morgan’s determination to help us in any way, and just imagine Big Sean’s “Blessings” playing on a steady loop in the soundtrack of my life. I sat on the couch, picked up the remote from the coffee table, and turned on the latest episode of Abbott Elementary. Just as the show came to an end, my exuberant baby boy came barreling down the stairs, headed for me at full speed. Bracing myself for impact, I scooted to the edge of the sofa and spread my arms as I had with the towel outside. To my surprise, Amani screeched to a halt at my knees and climbed in my lap, wrapping his arms around my shoulders as he kissed my cheek.

“Hi, Mommy.”

Looping my arms around his tiny body, I hugged him to me and rocked him from side to side. “Hey, my baby. I missed you.”

Amani leaned back, bringing his hands to my face as he gazed at me; his warm brown eyes that were so much like his father’s were dipped low, making his expression appear almost studious. His normally tawny skin had taken on a light caramel hue from the sun, and his thick brown hair was damp and smelled like cocoa butter.

“I’m hungry,” he stated, his tone matter-of-fact.

That was so far from what I expected to come out of his mouth that I cracked up laughing.

“I’m gonna feed you, greedy boy. We’re going to a barbecue.”

Gasping, he jumped out of my arms and ran across the living room to grab his sneakers. He was sitting on the floor in front of me, one foot planted on the ground, the other in the air, waiting for me to lace his shoe, when Samir came down the stairs.

“You heading out?”

“Yep. There’s a barbecue at the Thomas residence and we’ve been invited.”

“Aww, man,” Samir whined. “I know Mr. Thomas put his foot in that! I’d tell you to bring me a plate but...” He trailed off with a sigh.

Finishing Amani’s shoe, I stood to my feet and stretched. “But what?” It was almost dinner time and there was nary a pot to be found on the stove in the kitchen. There was a question on the tip of my tongue, but Samir had already anticipated it.

“One of Morgan’s old coworkers from Texas Children’s is having a birthday dinner, and it’s kid friendly.” He made a sour face that made me laugh.

“I take it you don’t want to go.”

“Hell no! This is one of her bougie friends. Her husband is cool, so I know I’ll have someone to talk to, but the food is about to be nasty as hell. I’m considering making a sandwich before we leave.”

Laughing, I waited for Amani to give his father a hug and kiss before reaching for my hand.

“Good luck with that,” I offered. “I’ll be sure to eat an extra rib in your honor.”

Samir walked us to the front door, shaking his head. “That’s cold-blooded, man.”

“It is what it is,” I laughed. “See you later.”

Outside I opened the backdoor of my compact sedan and stood on watch as my baby climbed into his booster seat and buckled himself in without my help. Closing the door, I slid behind the wheel and backed out of Samir and Morgan’s driveway. I was barely out of the neighborhood when my phone rang and Mercedes’s name flashed across my dashboard screen. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I met eyes with Amani, who grinned toothily and waved at me.

“Hi, Mommy!” he shouted, as if a playground separated us instead of merely two feet.

“Hey, my baby.”

I pressed a button on my steering wheel to answer it and quickly spoke before she had an opportunity to.

“You’re on Bluetooth and my baby can hear you.”

The sound of my friend sucking her teeth confirmed that my warning was well placed. Clearly she was about to say something that little ears need not hear.

“Hey, Tee Tee baby!”

“Tee Tee ’Cedes!”

Another glance at the rearview and I watched Amani’s eyes light up. A grin took over my face as I let them talk. There was something about people having genuine love for your child that just brought so much peace to your soul.

“Mommy!”

Pulled out of my thoughts, I quickly glanced at Amani through the mirror before making a left turn at the light.

“Yes, baby?”

“Can I go spinnanight at Tee Tee ’Cedes’s when Malik comes from break?”

“When he what?” I asked chuckling. I’d clearly missed some key information in their little chat.

Mercedes laughed. “The boys will be with their dad this week, but they get back Friday and ’Mani can come spend the weekend with us. Or just one night, if you or Samir have plans.”

“Please, Mommy?” Amani asked, giving me puppy-dog eyes and a poked-out lip like a true master manipulator, aka a seasoned toddler.

I thought about it as I navigated onto the highway.

“You don’t work next weekend?”

“Nope. I’m off and was thinking about taking the boys up to Six Flags on Saturday with my sister and her kids. ’Mani can just go with us.”

Mercedes’s sister had five kids under ten, and the thought of all those kids at the big theme park had me skeptical. “Which one?” Referring to which park location she was thinking of.

“San Antonio, chile,” Mercedes said with a quickness. “I’m not traipsing all over Arlington with eight babies. Even if three other adults will be there too.”

I laughed at the fact that we were on the same page.

“That’s fine with me. Put his season pass to good use so that I’m not paying all this money for nothing.”

“Exactly!” Mercedes agreed.

We laughed together before I called out to my son.

“You can go, baby.”

He cheered, pumping his little fist into the air as if he’d just finished first place in a 10k marathon.

“Is that what you called for?” I asked after the line fell silent for more than a minute.

“Yep!” she exclaimed. “Now that that’s out the way, what y’all about to get into?”

“We’re heading to the Thomases’ for a barbecue.”

“Oh,”Mercedes drawled suggestively. “Going to kick with the in-laws, huh?”

“Girl, fu—” I caught myself and laughed. “I almost cussed you out. You can go right to Lucifer’s lair. Quickly and with haste.”

Her amused cackling exploded in my ear, causing me to roll my eyes in response.

“Yeah, okay.”

The jokes I got behind my friendship with Poppa were no different than the ones I’d received for me and Samir. What was it that made people think two adults couldn’t be just friends? Never mind the fact that Samir and I did eventually get into a relationship. Before that, we were strictly friends and nothing else, and honestly, I think the constant inquiries from everyone around us were what made the idea seem plausible to us.

This time around, I knew better. All opinions from outsiders were simply ignored.