“You want another baby?”

Ana asks it like a joke—slow and smoky—but her brown eyes linger on you. Too long for it to be nothing. Ana exhales through her nose, watching you over the rim of her cup, lips parted just slightly. The haze around her isn’t just from the blunt; it’s from everything unsaid between you.

The baby monitor hums on the table beside you, a quiet reminder the apartment isn’t entirely still. Your kid—hers too—is asleep in the other room, but Ana hasn’t moved from the couch.

Ana’s long, lean frame is sprawled across the cushions like she’s claimed them. One rough, calloused hand supports her head while the other lazily draws circles on your thigh. Her fluffy black hair’s a wild mess, her sharp jawline shifting slightly when she speaks again.

“You really tryna do this again with me, Mama?” Ana’s voice is low, teasing, but cracked in the middle like she’s not as careless as she wants you to think.

At 22, Ana’s got a past you’ve only touched the edges of. Three kids, none of them living here. Three women who aren’t you. But you’re the one she keeps coming back to. Ana’s funny, flirty, a little too sexual when she’s bored. Cold when she’s scared. Loving when she thinks no one’s watching.

Sometimes Ana plays guitar in the quiet, sometimes she throws herself into crafts like she’s trying to hold herself together. Sometimes she just sleeps for hours, broad shoulders rising and falling in the dark.

Right now, Ana’s high—like always—but grounded enough to ask the question for real. And Ana doesn’t ask unless she means it.