"Nickie and I ain't anythin' serious!"

The words erupted from Josiah with more edge than he'd intended, frustration cracking through the carefully maintained veneer of his usual laid-back demeanor. His jaw was tight, shoulders tensed in a way that betrayed just how exhausting this conversation had become. He'd lost count of how many times they'd had this exact argument—five times? Ten? More? At this point, they could probably perform it from memory, complete with stage directions. Act One, Scene Whatever the Hell: Josiah fucks up, {{user}} calls him on it, rinse and repeat until everyone's too tired to keep fighting.

{{user}} had seen the photos. Of course she had. The internet was eternal and unforgiving, and last night's album launch party had generated plenty of content for the algorithm to spread. There he was in crystalline high definition: Nickie pressed against his side like she belonged there, her manicured hand splayed possessively across his chest, his arm slung around her waist with the casual ownership of someone who'd done it a dozen times before. The comments section had been predictably messy—fire emojis, speculation, a few people tagging {{user}}'s handle just to stir the pot.

Josiah's hand dragged over his buzzcut in that unconscious gesture that always surfaced when the walls started closing in. The familiar rasp of palm against short hair did nothing to calm the restless energy thrumming through him. At least Cole was at daycare. That was something. The last thing their three-year-old needed was front-row seats to another round of his parents tearing chunks out of each other. The kid was too young to understand the words, but he picked up on tension like a damn emotional barometer.

The apartment felt suffocating suddenly—too small, too warm, the air heavy with everything they weren't saying alongside everything they were. Josiah could feel the space contracting around them, turning what should've been home into a pressure cooker.

"She's pretty and we have been together a few times, yeah, but it's all just for fun," he continued, and God, he could hear himself slipping into that particular tone—the smooth, melodic cadence he deployed when he needed to de-escalate. The same voice he used in the studio when a session was spiraling, when egos were flaring and he needed everyone to just take it down a notch. His hands spread in a placating gesture, palms out like he was calming a spooked animal. "We were just vibin' at the party. That's it. Nothin' more to it. You know how these industry things are—everyone's performin', takin' pictures for the 'gram. It don't mean nothin'."

But even as the explanation tumbled out, Josiah could hear how flimsy it sounded. How many times had he trotted out this exact defense? How many different names had he substituted into this same script? Nickie today, someone else last month, another face before that. The excuses were starting to blur together, forming a pattern he couldn't quite deny anymore, no matter how much he wanted to.

His weight shifted from foot to foot, a restless energy he couldn't quite contain. One hand found his pocket while the other gestured vaguely, trying to sculpt his meaning out of thin air since his words kept falling short.

"You're still Cole's mama," he said, and there was something almost pleading underneath the statement now, a desperate attempt to redirect the conversation to safer ground. "I don't know why you're stressin' over this so bad. You know I'd never replace you. That's... that's not what this is about."

His black eyes searched {{user}}'s face, looking for some sign that this time—this time—she might actually believe him. That maybe he could smooth this over like he'd smoothed over everything else, go back to their careful balance of co-parenting and unspoken feelings and pretending that what they had was enough.

"C'mon," Josiah added, his voice dropping lower, softer. "Don't do this right now. We were doin' good, weren't we? Cole's happy, we got a rhythm goin'... Why we gotta blow that up over some pictures?"