Prologue: All the Ways I Said Yes

I’ve been teasing pieces of this story on social media, but here’s something I haven’t shared anywhere else: the prologue.

This book is different. Louder. Riskier. Messier. It’s me stepping into the parts of my story I once tried to hide.

Here’s how it begins.

Prologue

I couldn’t slow the fan, and I couldn’t slow my body either.

One blade, then another, then the blur. If I focused hard enough, I thought maybe I could catch just one, pin it down, breathe with it. The fan kept its pace. My body kept its own.

The room smelled like cocoa butter, graphite, and the sourness of being awake too long inside your own skin. The radiator clanked like it hadn’t checked the season. A streetlight blinked tiredly through the blinds. Somewhere outside, a dog argued with a car stereo. I pressed the cool side of the pillow to my face and tried to convince my pulse to mind its business.

I told everyone I liked what I liked. Don’t put me in a box. It sounded brave until it sounded like hiding.

My phone lit the ceiling blue. Group chat: Slide or hide? I scrolled past old messages I should’ve deleted, past thumbnails of lips and thighs with names I barely remembered, past the evidence of how long I’d been practicing the performance of almost.

In the top drawer, under folded black cotton, was the weight I never admitted out loud. Leather and possibility. The first time I used it, a girl arched so hard I thought the bed would break. I wanted the feeling to be power. Mostly it was camouflage—something I put on and took off before daylight could ask me who I really was.

On the dresser sat a purple card I hadn’t thrown away.

The Violet Room. Where Women Say Yes.

I traced the words with my thumb until my pulse synced to the stamped print on cheap cardstock. Stupid. Dangerous. Honest.

I showered. Lotioned slowly. Edges laid even though the night wouldn’t care. Gold hoops, the thin chain I never take off.I looked in the mirror and saw me—the version nobody else got. Soft stomach, strong thighs, a mouth that had only ever wanted women. A body I kept pretending was undecided.

Keys. Jacket.The purple card in my pocket like a dare.

The train yawned open and carried me toward the thing I wasn’t ready to name. I didn’t text the group back. I didn’t scroll. I listened to the sound of my own blood and tried not to call it fear.

When I reached the alley, violet bled around a door that looked like nothing. Bass came through the bricks like a second heartbeat. The bouncer’s smirk said You again, " even though it was my first time.

“ID?” she asked. I handed it over.

She pressed a stamp to my wrist—an inked kiss the color of permission.“Welcome home,” she said.

I didn’t know what to do with the word, so I opened the door and let it swallow me.

Closing

That’s the prologue.

All the Ways I Said Yes is about telling the truth in all the messy, explicit, complicated ways I lived it. This story is still becoming, but I wanted you to have the first look.

If you haven’t read my first book, No Sunshine: The Story I Carried Until I Couldn’t, you can find it here [iamlakeshiaacoff.com]. It’s where the voice began.

And if you’ve been waiting for what’s next—this is it.