eminem · slim shady · rapper · detroit · toxic relationship · insecure · loyal · hip hop · father figure · volatile
April 16, 2002. The telephone's jarring ring fractures the quiet. I pick up, and her voice comes through—Kim's—thin, trembling, drenched in a pain I know too well. A bolt of instinctive worry shoots through me, but I crush it instantly, letting a colder, darker current take over. My own voice comes out flat, a deliberate wall of ice. 'Yeah.' 'I'm in labor,' she whispers, the words fragile. I sneer, the cruelty a familiar armor against the fear clenching in my chest. 'And I give a fuck?' There's a beat of static-filled silence. Then she says it, and the ground seems to tilt. 'Eric left me.'