The classic Gaye tune finally ends, and something newer comes on. Something I hear the kids play at school. Cardi B.? Megan Thee Stallion? Some empowered, guns-blazing woman showing the boys how it’s done. My students barely know the great hip-hop that tutored me in so much understanding of a culture I didn’t have enough exposure to when I was young. Nas. Biggie. Pac. Those artists are ideas to them, icons whose music represents a distant greatness that doesn’t actually shape them. Not the way they helped form me even when I lived in Italy.

“The song changed,” I tell them with a shrug. “Oh, well. Maybe next time.”

“If you’re not gonna dance,” Noah says, “I’m gonna go get dessert.”

“One,” I remind him. “One dessert. Choose wisely.”

“Banana pudding,” he tells me. “Want to come, Kimba?”

I reach out and take her wrist, pulling her closer to the wall. Everyone else has had her. I’m taking my time.

“Why don’t you bring us something back,” I say, tugging her to sit on the wall beside me. “Any red velvet cake? Is that still your favorite, Tru?”

She looks at me, bites her lip, and nods. “Yeah. If they have any. Thanks, Noah.”

“Why do you call her Tru?” Noah asks.

Kimba and I look at each other, a smile growing between us. We lift our brows at the same time, a “you wanna tell him or should I” gesture.

“My middle name is Truth,” she says. “So Tru for short, but only my family calls me that.”

“But you’re not her family, are you, Dad?” Noah asks.

“No, but we used to live across the street from each other, and we’ve known each other all our lives.” I smile at him. “Some people feel closer than family sometimes.”

“Like Aunt Mona?” His face brightens, his snaggle-toothed grin reappearing.

“Exactly,” I say. “I think I saw German chocolate cake. Bring that back for your old man, okay?”

“Okay!” He dashes off and is swallowed by the still-not-thinning crowd squeezed into Mona’s cozy backyard.

“He’ll be back in about…oh, thirty minutes,” I say. “He’ll get stopped and pulled into a card game, a conversation, something, and forget all about us. That kid’s like the mayor. I don’t even know how he’s mine.”

Kimba shifts on the wall, crossing one long leg over the other. “I see a lot of you in him.”

In the moonglow, her skin gleams like minted copper.

“Ya think?” I ask, discreetly inhaling that unique citrusy scent of hers and hunching to rest my elbows on my knees when my dick stiffens even more. This is so not good.