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“Babe?”

The woman turned in my direction when Maliah looked my way. I stopped a few feet away from her.

“Ma?” I questioned.

MALIAH

I looked from Tahari to the woman sitting on the sidewalk. I was certain that I had heard him wrong. Did he just fucking say Ma, as in his mother? I squinted my eyes and studied the woman. Beneath all the dirt on her face, I could see clearly how they favored. I remembered asking him about her once. He’d told me his father put her out before he died, but he hadn’t said much else, and I hadn’t pushed him. I’d assumed there was a reason he didn’t want to talk about her. I just never imagined I’d meet her sitting outside a grocery store. The woman squinted up at him. Her eyes moved over his face, and for a second, she looked confused.

“Theo?” she questioned in a raspy tone.

Tahari didn’t answer. She leaned forward to study him more closely. Then her mouth fell open.

“Oh my God. Tahari?”

She reached for the wall behind her and tried to push herself to her feet. Her elbow caught the bottle sitting beside her, sending it rolling across the sidewalk. Clear liquid spilled from its open mouth, and the sharp smell of vodka reached me before the bottle stopped against the curb.

“Aw, fuck!” she snapped, while looking down at it. “Goddammit!”

She bent toward the bottle, lost her balance, and caught herself against the wall. I instinctively stepped forward to help her, but Tahari put an arm out in front of me.

“Don’t,” he said quietly.

I stopped right in my tracks. His mother straightened up and looked at him again.

“Baby, is that really you?”

I turned toward Tahari, expecting him to say something, but he was staring at her. His jaw was tight, and his eyes were wet. I’d seen him angry before. I’d seen him worried and frustrated. I’d even seen him scared for me, but I had never seen him look this hurt.

“Look at you,” she said while reaching toward his face. “You real grown up now.”

She wore a slight smirk on her face with her last comment, and something about it didn’t sit well with me. Tahari moved back before she could touch him. Her hand hung in the air for a moment before she lowered it. I tightened my grip on the grocery bag. I didn’t know what to say or whether I should say anything at all. A few minutes ago, I’d stopped because I saw a woman sitting outside in the cold and wanted to help her. Now I was standing between Tahari and a part of his life he’d never told me about. A part of his life that he looked like he tried to forget about.

His mother glanced at me, then back at him.

“Who this? Your girlfriend?” she asked with a slight attitude.

She had this entitled tone to her voice, and I wasn’t feeling that shit. Tahari swallowed, but he still didn’t answer. I moved a little closer to him without reaching for his hand. I wanted him to know I was there, but I didn’t want to decide for him how this moment was supposed to go. I was following whatever lead he wanted to go with. His mother took another unsteady step toward us.

“Tahari, baby, say something to me.”

He looked down at the spilled vodka, then back at her face, and I watched the hurt in his eyes turn into something I couldn’t read. Tahari stared at her for so long that I wondered if he was going to answer at all. His mother stood in front of us, swaying slightly, waiting for him to say something. I could smell the vodka on her breath now, and when she reached toward him again, he stepped back.

“Take care of yourself,” he said.

His voice was so flat that I looked up at him. There was no anger in it, no warmth either. He sounded like he was speaking to somebody he’d passed on the street. His mother blinked. “Tahari⁠—”

“And by the way, if you haven’t heard, Theo is dead,” he cut her off.

Her mouth fell open.

“What?”

Tahari didn’t repeat himself. He placed his hand against the small of my back and gently turned me toward the parking lot.

“Come on, baby.”

I looked over my shoulder as we started walking. His mother was still standing in the same spot, staring after him.