Idrove through the city’s crooked grid like a storm-tossed leaf, my heart sick with defeat as I careened past dim alleyways and flickering neon signs. The streets melted into a blur of dark asphalt and splintered pavement.

    I wasn’t entirely sure what I was chasing.

    Reprieve?

    Or perhaps a taste of grace?

    Maybe, a glimmer of rity?

    Beneath all the panic and shame, however, one primal truth pulsed relentlessly: I had to go home.

    Not my ce, but home, which was a weathered house a few blocks from Magazine Street in the lower Garden District, where ancient trees bowed low like steadfast guardians, and the air always hinted at freshly cut grass intermingled with theforting aroma of Cajun cooking.

    Nothing extravagant—a simple white pboard structure, crooked shutters that had been painted the same fading green since my childhood, and a weathered garden hose, its cracked rubber contouring the worn steps for the past thirty years.

    The porch screens murmured in the gentle wind, echoing the same soft creaks they’d offered for decades, while the magnolia tree out front—Mama’s cherished beacon—burst with blooms.

    My father was on the porch, his chair tipped back just enough, a paperback (probably a mystery) cradled in one hand. Next to him on a wrought iron table was a longneck beer cocooned in a battered Saints koozie that had seen too many summers.

    Lou Walker had taught me about restoring the old—and also creating the new. A retired carpenter and union man, he was inspoken and the best father anyone could ever ask for.

    His broad shoulders, thick hands, and calloused knuckles spoke of years inbor. His face, etched with the sun’s bronzed scars and the gentle furrows of grief, told the story of a lifetime weathered with honesty and integrity.

    Our eyes met, and in that unspokenmunion, he offered no questions—only a solemn nod toward the chair beside him.

    “Beer?” he asked.

    I shook my head and sank into the wrought iron chair. I’d sat right here with my father when I was a child, a teenager, and even as an adult. I’d done my homework here while he read a book, listened to a game. I’d drunk my first beer here with him—because he wanted me to learn to drink at home and not at a bar with friends.

    I’de here because I was seeking refuge from the relentless tempo of my thoughts…of guilt, of loss.

    For a long time, we simply listened to the steady chorus of cicadas and the intermittent hiss of a passing streetcar.

    “Something’s broken,” he stated, looking me in the eye. It wasn’t a question.

    I exhaled a bitter sigh. “Yeah.”

    He took a slow, measured pull from his beer. “You kill somebody?”

    I arched an eyebrow. “No.”

    “Well, hell. Then you still got time to do worse.”

    Against my better judgment, I let out a dryugh—augh that carried memories of countless evenings, the same worn chair, and the same father who saw right through me.

    “I…remember during Easter Parade, there was a woman? We were in the Marigny and you asked?—”

    He nodded. “The girl with the underwear store.”

    I chuckled. My father would chop his tongue off before he said the word lingerie.

    “Yeah.”

    “She was special.” Another statement.

    “Yeah.”

    “You fucked it up.” He still wasn’t asking.

    “Yeah.”

    “What did you do?”

    “Like you said, I fucked it up with…Naomi, that’s her name,” I admitted, the confession heavy with regret. “Fucked it up bad. Real bad.”

    He nodded like he’d known all along. “Your mother and I thought something was going on—but then you never said anything so….”

    “We were dating…casually.”

    “That mean you were sleeping with her.” Dad drank some beer and set it down on the table.

    I gave a slow, uncertain shrug. “It was more than that…I just didn’t know then.”

    Dad ran a hand over his jaw. “I’m getting a picture here. You let her go and now she’s gone and you want her back.”

    “She said she loved me.”

    “That must’ve been nice to hear,” Dad said wryly. He knew how I’d been since Lia.

    I groaned and dropped my face in the palms of my hand. There was something about being with my parents that always made me feel like a teenager, like someone who could make mistakes, like I didn’t have to hold the world on my shoulders.

    “So, she said she loved you, and you ran like someone lit a firecracker under your ass.”

    I raised my head and fixed him with a stare full of silent protest.

    He huffed and gave a quick shake of his head. “You in love with her?” This time, he wasn’t making a statement.

    I remained silent, the question lingering in the space between us.

    A low sound escaped him, resonant and disappointed. “You having trouble admitting it?”

    Another question.

    I stared absentmindedly at the sidewalk, watching shadows stretchzily over pavement I once whizzed down on my bike as a carefree child.

    “I didn’t know I did. Not until I lost her.”

    Finally, the truth?

    Dad shifted in his old creaking chair. “That’s not love’s fault.”

    I grimaced. It had taken being here with my father to finally admit what was inside me because I’d known that I loved her, had felt it, was afraid of it, didn’t want to know it.

    He gave me a look that bore the weight of years and honest reflection—one that never missed its mark. “You hurt her.”

    Not a question.

    “Yeah. Badly. I…was careless. I was…cruel.”

    “Why?” he asked, frowning.

    “’Cause she scared the fuck out of me, Dad. We were together for nearly a year. And…I was only with her.”

    My father rolled his eyes. “Give the boy a medal.”

    “Dad, I’ve never been in a monogamous rtionship?—”

    “Son, you haven’t been in a rtionship,” he cut me off. “Lia was a long time ago. You were a boy. And as a boy, you decided that you wouldn’t build a life. You built walls. You decided love was a four-letter word andmitment some crap that assholes like me who’ve been married forever believe in.”

    He wasn’t wrong about any of this.

    “You still think that if you don’t name something, it can’t be taken from you?” he admonished.

    I swallowed hard, the heat in my throat a reminder that these burns came not from the weather outside, but from the realization inside.

    “Was she the first since Lia?” he asked gently.

    “First that mattered,” I admitted.

    His head moved in a slow, solemn nod. “Then you’ve been grieving longer than you even realized.”

    When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “Your mama has been haranguing me to talk to you for a while now. But I told her, you’ve got a sensible head on your shoulders, and you’ll get there when you get there.”

    I scowled. “I got there.”

    De Walker had once been a nurse. She ran our home with a blend of fierce love, a generous ssh of pepper sauce, and a set of rules you were destined to break, even if you hoped otherwise.

    Since retiring, she’d started to volunteer and had taken up painting—mostly watercolors that danced with soft cityscapes and wildly vibrant bursts of flowers.

    These days, when I think about her, I picture her out back (the front porch was Dad’s and the back hers), either tending to her garden and offering the roses her characteristic, frank opinions on the oppressive humidity, or painting said roses.

    I was close to my parents—my siblings, nearly ten years and then some, younger than me, were more like kids I was responsible for than siblings. I didn’t talk to them about my life—I asked them about theirs.

    Ryan was grinding away through grueling medical school, and Ka was in New York, chasing dance, life, and survival.

    “So, you know now that you love Naomi. But she doesn’t want you anymore ‘cause you’ve been a jackass?”

    “It’s worse than that,” I said regretfully.

    I knew when he found out everything that went down he’d call me worse things than a jackass.

    “Son, you’ve been a downright asshole,” Dad confirmed what I thought he would do when I was done with my sordid tale.

    “I never meant to hurt her.”

    “Bullshit!” Dad snapped. “You didn’t care what happened to her as long as you were shielded. Don’t dress up your intention in noble words when it’s simply selfish fear masquerading in a nice suit.”

    I knew that talking to my father wouldn’t be a ‘there, there, son, everything will be alright’ session—oh, no, Dad would take a piece out of me, and if Mama were here, hell, she’d throw something at me.

    “I broke her and…seeing her hurting…fuck. I can’t stand it.”

    With a familiar gentleness, he reached over and ced a thick, weathered hand on my shoulder. “Well, the truth is when we love someone, we hurt when they do.”

    “She’s not going to believe me when I tell her how I feel, Dad.”

    “Not at first,” he agreed. “But the moment you show up—truly show up—that’s what will make all the difference.”

    “She deserves better.”

    “Then give her better. Look, you made choices as a boy after Lia, now it’s time to make them as a man. You can’t give her grand speeches or empty gestures. You’ve got to give her respect. A steadfast, unyielding presence.” He fixed me once again with a prating gaze. “If you want to truly love someone, you have to be brave enough to let them see where it hurts.”

    The porch fell into a reflective quiet once more.

    Fireflies began their nightly dance at the edges of the yard, and I could catch the delicate scent of Mama’s night jasmine, its perfume as soft and mysterious as twilight.

    “Is she worth it?” he asked, his toneden with challenge.

    I didn’t hesitate. “She is.”

    “Then stop hiding behind ghosts. Go out there and earn your damn life.”

    “Yeah, Dad.”

    And in that moment, I vowed to change.

    No more half-truths.

    No more love lived only in fragments.

    No more running from whatever light might dare to shine upon me.

    I was going to, as my father said, earn my damn life.