I spent the morning in the garage.
New bumper, new headlights, new taillights. Bolt-ons on the engine side that I'd been sitting on for two weeks waiting for the right day to install. When I pulled the Tahoe out into the driveway and looked at it from the street it looked like a different truck. Cleaner. More intentional. The kind of vehicle that matched where things were going now instead of where they'd been.
I cleaned up, went inside, and sat at my desk.
610k in the LLC account. I'd looked at the number enough times that it had stopped feeling real, which I'd been told was a sign you needed to actually start moving it. I had plans — album budget, acting classes for Rue, getting my family out of East Highland before the neighborhood decided it wanted something from Gia. Each one of those things had a number attached to it and I'd been running the math all week. None of it was reckless spending. All of it was infrastructure. That distinction mattered to me.
I also had a mock-up coming back from Ben Baller on the chain.
I had somewhere to be at six. I got up and started getting ready.
* * *
I knocked on Maddy's door at six on the dot.
Her dad answered. We shook hands and he asked how things were going and I told him good. Her mom came out of the kitchen and she had that energy mothers get when they've already decided they like someone — warm, a little chatty, asking questions she already knew the answers to. I answered all of them. I didn't mind. They were easy people to be around and I could tell they'd spent a long time worrying about who Maddy brought home.
We stood in the living room for a few minutes. Her dad asked about the music. I gave him the short version and he nodded and said something about hard work paying off that was corny but genuine and I appreciated it.
Then Maddy came downstairs.
She had on a black dress I hadn't seen before, heels, hair down. She smelled good from across the room. She looked at me and waited.
"Wow," I said.
She smiled. She came over and took my hand.
"Where are we going?"
"Surprise."
Her mom said something about a reasonable hour. I told her of course. Maddy rolled her eyes and I shook her dad's hand again and we walked out to the Tahoe.
She looked at the truck when we got to it.
"Did you do something to it?"
"A few things."
She looked at it for another second and then got in.
* * *
I took her to a seafood restaurant in LA that June had mentioned offhand once. The kind of place with no pictures on the menu and candles on the table and a wait staff that didn't rush you. We got a corner table and ordered and the conversation just moved.
We talked about a lot of things. At one point I asked her if she still just wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, which she'd said once a long time ago in a way that always felt like a placeholder. She laughed.
"I mean. Maybe eventually." She thought about it. "But I think I could do something with fashion. Like styling or maybe the business side of it. I don't know exactly."
I nodded. That tracked with her. The way she moved through stores, the way she put things together on herself, the way she looked at other people's outfits like she was already editing them in her head. It wasn't just good taste. It was something more focused than that.
"You'd be good at that," I said.
She looked at me like she wasn't sure if I was serious. Then she decided I was and said, "Yeah. I think so too."
We ate and talked and I didn't think about the album or the label or any of it for two hours straight. That almost never happened anymore.
* * *
After dinner I took her to a fashion exhibit downtown. I'd looked it up after she mentioned fashion at the table a rotating installation, designers and archival pieces, the kind of thing she'd actually want to see rather than just tolerate because I'd picked it.
She went quiet when we walked in. Not bad. just focused, she was actually taking things in. She stopped in front of certain pieces for longer than others and I stood next to her and didn't rush any of it.
"Okay this is insane," she said at one point, grabbing my arm, looking at a display.
We moved through the last room slow. I waited until we were walking before I stopped her.
"Be my girlfriend."
She turned and looked at me.
"Yes," she said.
She kissed me. I grabbed her ass while kissing her, and she laughed against my mouth.
Then she pulled back just enough to put her lips near my ear.
"I want you to fuck me."
I kissed her neck. "Let's go."
* * *
I got us a room at a hotel downtown. High floor, city outside the windows. We took the elevator up and she was quiet the whole ride, that particular kind of quiet that has a point to it.
The second the door closed she turned and kissed me. I kissed her back and walked her into the room.
She dropped to her knees and pulled my dick out and kissed the tip. Then she spit on it and took it in her mouth, wet and messy, into it. I let her go and then stopped her before I got too close.
I picked her up and put her on her back on the bed and kissed her again. Then I worked my way down. She was already wet. She moaned loud and grabbed the sheets and came, and I kept going until she made a sound like she was annoyed about it in the best way.
I fucked her missionary. She was wet enough that it just slid in easily, and she exhaled sharply and pulled me in with her legs. We found a rhythm. She was loud about it, and I didn't mind at all.
She pushed me back and climbed on top. Started slow and then not slow. Her hands were on my chest and her head was down and her hair fell around her face. She came again and stayed there for a second before she moved.
I was close so I flipped her over and bent her forward and came inside her. She stayed still after. Just breathed.
Then she laughed quietly.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing." She turned over and looked at me. "That was really good."
"Yeah it was."
She settled against my chest. I looked at the ceiling. The city lights were coming through the curtain, everything quiet up here above all of it.
After a while she said, "Jordan."
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you asked me."
I put my hand on the back of her head.
"Me too," I said.
She fell asleep first. I lay there in the dark for a while not thinking about anything specific. Just the room and the city outside and the weight of her next to me. It was a good kind of nothing. The kind you don't want to move out of.
Eventually I fell asleep too.