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We danced a little.

He kept his hand on my thigh under the table.

Kissed me.

Called me beautiful.

All that good married-people shit that had me thinking, Okay then. Maybe tonight this nigga about to act like he remember how we ended up with four kids.

Then we got home.

Avery was still there with the kids. Everybody was good, nobody had burned the house down, and after she left and we finally got everybody settled back down, me and Xavier went upstairs.

I put on my lingerie.

And…

Same.

Old.

Shit.

I sucked my teeth and reached for another piece of bacon.

Me and Nesha had gone to Victoria’s Secret a few days before, and I bought this cute little black set. One of them ones with the ass out and the little heart-shaped cutout in the back.

Cute as fuck.

Xavier normally liked shit like that.

And I knew I looked good in it too.

Listen.

I had four babies by thirty-two.

Zion was eight. Amari was six. Michael was three. And Serenity was four months old.

I was five-six and sitting somewhere around one-seventy-five, damn near one-eighty depending on what I ate that week. Thick as hell. Size eight jeans when the material wanted to cooperate with me, medium or large shirts depending on the titties, because these double-Ds had a mind of their own.

Serenity had left me with some extra weight, especially around my stomach, but shit, she was four months old. I wasn’t expecting my body to snap back in seventeen minutes.

Still, I’d been in the gym since I got cleared.

Me and Nesha stayed in the gym.

That was my bitch.

We’d been locked in since high school, and somehow ended up grown, married, with kids, living two doors away from each other. Nesha was an accountant, and her husband Tyrell was a steamfitter. They did pretty good for themselves too. They’d been together since high school, had their five-year-old son Chance, and finally got married last year.

Nesha was a redbone, thick like me, except she was shorter, so her thick looked thick thick. Bitch ain’t have no stomach either.

I hated her for it.

Respectfully.

I had called her two weeks after having Serenity like, “Why the fuck my stomach still look pregnant?”