I knelt in front of him, trying as hard as I could to contain my own smile. “This is serious. You’re finally opening up to me, and it is not a laughing matter, Patrice Denis.”

“Okay, bébé,” he said, and I almost regretted pushing us to get back to the conversation, because he looked so content just then. And I wanted to keep him like that for a little longer.

I turned around again, knowing it’d be easier for him to say the rest if we were like this. “So we got there, and it was so awkward. I didn’t know him very much, so the conversation went to what every conversation does with Afro-Latinx males. He commented on my muscles, asked if I had a girl and then ignored me. My um...” His voice changed then and his arms tightened around me, any humor completely gone now.

“He asked my mother to go up with him somewhere.”

I wanted to sob for him, because I heard the shame clearly then.

“Baby,” I said as I tried to turn, but he kept his arms on me and rested his forehead on the back of my head.

“Let’s just stay like this,” he pleaded. “She told me before we went there she wanted to ask him for some help with money for college, and knowing her, she would do whatever it took. When she left with him, I sat there feeling like my skin was crawling.” His voice was clogged, and the need to turn around and hold him was so intense I shook in his arms. “When she came down, my father made a point of looking straight at me, as if to let me know this was how the world worked. Right as we were about to leave, I saw a woman and two teenage girls coming into the lobby, with a ton of shopping bags. He walked right over to them like we didn’t exist. My mom and I just stood there until they went up to their room.”

He sighed then, sounding exhausted. “My mom and I didn’t say a word on the train, but a few days later she left a bank statement on my bed. He’d wired fifty grand to her, which in the end was not even a third of what we needed.” He exhaled, voice strangled again. “As far as I’m concerned, he never gave me anything. My mother paid for every cent we ever got from that man.”

“Can I turn around now?” I asked, needing to look at his face. He let go and I turned around so fast I almost elbowed him in the face.

I kissed him and wrapped my arms around his neck. “You’re amazing and so is your mother. I can’t even imagine. I’m so sorry my father disrespected you and your mother today like that.”