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“Promise me you’ll do whatever you need to be happy. If for any reason I’m not here to make you happy...promise me, you’ll still find a way to be.”
“Sometimes the people we think we need so much and that we think we can’t live without, they end up leaving us. And guess what? We live anyway.”
With her waterlogged eyes, Tahli landed a kill shot. “I don’t care if I wanna fuck everybody up and down this street, in this mothafuckin’ street…” she pointed at the concrete, shutting Vin’s eyes temporarily. “You will stand there and you. Will. Take that shit.” She jabbed a finger in his chest with each word.
Ex-fuckin-actly!
“You took this shit too far, Tahli.”
You cheated on your wife, had a baby on her, lied and hid the baby for over 10 years, and she went too far?
“It’s self-sabotage, man. Anytime shit gets a little scary, you go and do something to jeopardize it all. Because deep down, Dalvin, you don’t think you deserve the life you’ve worked hard to achieve.
“I can’t wait until he brings his pretty-boy ass back over here. As soon as he starts talking, I’m a tell him to shut his Dorcas up,” Abby jibed. Paige rumbled with laughter.
“Goddamn, how many C-List R&B singers Vin got in his back pocket? Dave Hollister…Robin Thicke…Nigga starting a record label or something?”
You have to create chaos in your peace. Because chaos is your norm. You mistook your chaos for your peace. You don’t fuck up because you want to. You fuck up because fucking up is comfortable for you.”
“Let me come back home, Tahli. Please. Look at this shit with Doll... The kids need me. They need us. Tahli, I need you. You gonna, fuck…” Vin panted heavily, squeezing his head.
Yeah this nigga deserves to hurt!
“I’m so interwoven throughout Tahli, I’m in her fucking DNA. You might as well have put that ring on my fucking finger.”
“But your husband…the person you vowed in front of God to at least try to work all shit out with. Sickness and health and all of that morbid shit. You just threw that shit away in a flash.”
Love like her and Dalvin’s was a meteor strike. Love like her and Drew’s was attainable. People that had love had that version.
Maybe we go slower… Maybe we communicate more. But I want you. Do you want me?”
Drew please hang it up!
“We were fucking doomed, Vin!” Tahli cackled. “Talking about parachutes, and shit.” “Fucking parachute had a hole in it,” Vin chuckled off. Tahli slapped her knee, rolling in giggles. “Now we’re in fucking therapy!
Because one of the best ways to spot a woman who was once a girl of a mother who abandoned her, is to watch a woman glued to her ideas of perfectionism. The fear of attachments. The trust issues. The desire for external validation. The absolute need to control your life now because you had no control over such a huge part of it for so long. The unrealistic ideals and goals set for yourself and those around you, wrapped up in boss bitch, take-no-shit mentality.”
“No matter how this shit ends. You are my baby love for life. My dream. My light. My reason. My strength and my mothafuckin’ weakness.” He kissed her lips, and she let him. “My parachute,” he breathed onto her mouth and Tahli fell into his.
“And I know that you think I can’t be happy if I’m with you. Because I thought that, too. That I’d look at you and be reminded of what you did. But you not being there reminds me, too.” Tahli sniveled. “Taking you out of the equation doesn’t help me, Vin. Your absence is too big.
Fighting against how much I still love you has been like swimming against the fucking current. I’ve been swimming nonstop for two years, and baby, I’m exhausted.”
The shit they had was unbreakable. Vin had never witnessed it. His examples of love had been murky. Tahli’s was better, but not perfect. But what had found them that summer of ’08 was unexplainable. It was beyond unexplainable…it was downright outrageous.
“I get it now, Vin. The house had to burn down.” “What?” He cleared his throat. “The house,” she insisted. “Our house literally had to burn down, baby. So, we can rebuild it from the ashes.”
I said this. Literally the first thing that happened after was Drew breaking up with her. That was the first turning point.
Too painful to have been a dream. Too outrageous not to have been a miracle. Real life. Real love. The kind made for parachutes.
“Munch. Well, really Jay. He said Jay just randomly told him one day, not long before he passed, that whether it was a boy or girl, Jay’s first kid was being named Terran. Asked Munch what he thought of it.”
“Promise me you won’t listen to me. You know me best, Vin. Promise me you’ll never give up even when I do. Promise you’ll never stop fighting. When I’m stubborn or if I run. If ever pull a Cree Autumn. Come and find me and remind me that we can get through anything. That you believe me when I say right now, there is nothing that will ever make me want to live without you.”
“Because that’s what parachutes is about, Vin. Not just about saving us from the fall but saving us from the impact. When we’re crashing to the ground too fast to stop it, the parachute is there to do it. So we never die. Our love can’t die, Dalvin.” He grasped her hand, kissing it tenderly. “It won’t die. That’s a fucking parachute promise.”
