Let the Lover Be

by Sheree L. Greer

  “Well, what have you been doing?”

  Genevieve shrugged but didn’t turn around.

  “Figures,” Kiana said. “Leave me the fuck alone then. I’m always alone anyway. I should be used to it by now.” She lifted the bottle of Southern Comfort and guzzled from it. The liquor, warm and thick and sweet, coated her throat, slowly rolling down to the very core of her, a fire pit growing in her belly.

  “You’re not alone,” Genevieve said. She faced Kiana, looked down at her. “You’ve got people who care about you. You’ve got your sister. You’ve got…you’ve got me.” She put her hands on her hips. “Regardless of how you’ve treated me, and even against my own best judgment, I’ve been with you.”

  Kiana laughed. She swigged from the bottle. “You haven’t been with me, V. You’ve been hovering over me,” she said. She didn’t know why she used Genevieve’s nickname; it just came out. She recalled that first morning she woke up in Genevieve’s apartment. My friends call me “V,” she had said. Kiana swallowed. Is that what they were? Friends? She shook her head, confusion mounting. She almost lost her train of thought. “You’ve been hovering. Looking down at me like I’m some kind of traffic jam or car crash.”

  Genevieve knelt on the floor but kept her distance. Her eyes darted from the bottle of SoCo to Kiana and back again. “That’s not how I’ve tried to be, Kiana. I was broken just like you once, baby. A billion pieces, jagged pieces that cut me, sliced me on the regular, but I—”

  Kiana cut her off. “Your smug little smile and all your lame ass sayings about faith and love and survival and all that other bullshit that don’t mean nothing to me right now…” She struggled to continue, her voice bitter and hard. “…and your pity. Your fucking pity.” Her face cracked, the tears came. “I don’t need it. I don’t need it from Michelle. I don’t need it from Karyn. I don’t need it from you. I need…I need someone to come close. I’m so tired of being alone,” she choked out the words. “I’m…so…tired…of…being…”

  Genevieve crawled forward. She slid the bottle of liquor from Kiana’s hands. She sat, holding the Southern Comfort with both hands. Kiana cried still, her body slumped forward in the absence of the bottle’s stability. Her shoulders shook as she cried. Genevieve stared at the bottle; she licked her lips and took a deep breath. Kiana choked on a sob and looked up at Genevieve. Their eyes locked. Their chests heaved with the same labored breathing. Neither one of them blinked; neither one of them moved.

  Kiana couldn’t read Genevieve’s mind, but she didn’t have to. She looked into Genevieve’s honey eyes, the desperate way she clutched the bottle, and she knew everything there was to feel: Fear. Loneliness. Confusion. Disappointment. Hope. Need. Desire. Exhaustion. A list of feelings on one hand, yet just words on the other. Words that could be spoken or not, written or erased. They were meaningless. It all was. Everything meant nothing.

  Kiana closed her mouth and held her breath. She reached out her hand, but it seemed to move in slow motion, her arm aching as she pushed through layers of time, of memory and pain. Genevieve brought the bottle to her lips, just beyond the reach of Kiana’s fingertips. She took one sip. A small one.

  Kiana gasped. She knew it for sure now, and she knew that Genevieve knew it, too.

  Nothing mattered.

  The burden of knowledge pressed down on both of them, and Kiana understood that coming together was the only way to keep from being crushed into oblivion. She pushed through the thickness of the air between them. She snatched the bottle from Genevieve, but Genevieve snatched it back. She drank from it, the thick amber liquor seeping out the corners of her mouth, snaking down her neck. Kiana swiped at the bottle again, yanking it from Genevieve’s grasp.

  They tussled for control of the bottle. It shook and twisted and turned between them, Southern Comfort splashing up from inside, splattering across their faces until Kiana gripped it from the bottom. The bottle tilted, and the liquor poured out onto Genevieve’s chest, drizzling between her breasts and staining the front of her dress. Genevieve snatched the bottle and tossed it behind her. Kiana dove onto her tongue first, her mouth sucking at Genevieve’s neck and shoulders, tongue lapping at the mounds of her cleavage.

  Kiana pushed Genevieve’s dress up her hot thighs. Genevieve opened her legs wide to welcome Kiana between them. They kissed, sucking the liquor off each other’s tongues and licking each other’s lips. Genevieve pulled at Kiana’s shirt, buttons popping off in the effort. Kiana hurriedly unbuttoned the ones that remained and shrugged the shirt off her shoulders. She reached down and pressed her hand against Genevieve’s pussy. It throbbed against her palm. She moved her thong aside and dipped her fingers inside.

  Genevieve didn’t stop her this time. She reached above her head and searched for the bottle of Southern Comfort. When she finally gripped it, she brought it to her face, sitting up to drink. Kiana paused her exploring fingers and watched her. The muscles trembling in her stomach, the vein pulsing in her neck. Kiana took the bottle from her and sipped from it, her fingers slick and sticky around the neck of the bottle. On her knees, chest heaving while she drank, she watched Genevieve sit up completely and pull her dress over her head. She flung it away, her bare breasts rounded and full. She pulled at the front of Kiana’s pants, and she scooted forward on her knees. The last of the Southern Comfort sloshed around the bottom of the bottle.

  Kiana bent down to kiss Genevieve, the remnants of the liquor warm and sweet on their tongues. Kiana grabbed Genevieve’s hair, jerked her head back, and held it tilted, the length of her neck stretching, her breasts pointed up from the deep arching of her back. Kiana took another sip of booze before gripping near the mouth of the bottle and slanting it sideways over Genevieve’s neck and chest. She poured Southern Comfort between Genevieve’s breasts, watching the thick amber liquid slowly drip down in crooked lines that rolled over Genevieve’s heaving breasts and quivering stomach, the muscles showing themselves in each panting breath.

  Kiana licked her lips and poured more. Southern Comfort, velvet smooth, found the curves of Genevieve’s breasts, dripped from her rigid nipples. When the bottle was near empty, Kiana shook it, holding it by the bottom, drops spattering Genevieve’s lips and chin. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue like trying to catch raindrops. A last errant drop landed on her forehead like an anointing.

  Kiana dove in, sucking the liquor from Genevieve’s skin, her tongue licking and lapping, her lips kissing and teeth biting. Genevieve moaned from somewhere deep inside her, the sound carnal and wild in Kiana’s ears. Kiana matched the noise; she sighed and moaned, cried and whimpered as Genevieve gave herself, gave all of herself. In the darkness of it all, the carpet burning knees and elbows, the air moist with sweat and liquor and tears, fingers pumping and aching, nails scratching and teeth biting, Kiana and Genevieve found each other, crashed into each other.

  When Kiana finally buried her face between Genevieve’s thighs, she discovered a sweetness, a thickness, an intoxication that rivaled any drink she’d ever had. Genevieve twisted and turned against Kiana’s mouth. Kiana, light-headed and dizzy with pleasure, smothered herself in the depth of Genevieve, losing her breath but continuing, suffocating but welcoming the terror, drowning, dying, but not caring at all.

  Genevieve burst with a rush of wet that Kiana desperately swallowed, the waves of the climax matching her own. She cracked open, shattering into a million pieces, her own wetness soaking the carpet beneath her trembling thighs.

  Kiana rolled onto her back. She looked up at the window and around the room. Moonlight poured into the darkness of the room and reflected a pale, disappointed light on the empty bottle of Southern Comfort and the pile of sweaty sorrow that was her and Genevieve, their bodies intertwined, their legs and arms a tangled, limp mess.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Saturday

  Kiana’s head crashed like cymbals when she opened her eyes. She forced herself to sit up. The room was bright with morning sun and musty with the smel
l of sweat and booze. Confused, she searched the room for answers, for clues, to what, she didn’t quite know. She looked down at herself, naked and sticky. She panicked. Her mind went from blank slate to flashing faces, yellow-eyed Medusas and spiky-haired demons. She closed her eyes, squeezed them so tight it hurt her face. The darkness swirled behind her eyes, the bed floating on a river of blood.

  She opened her eyes, darkness prevailing, flames curling up around the edges of the mattress. A hand shot up from beside the bed, grabbing her, her thigh burning from the touch. She swatted it away. Genevieve’s voice. Inaudible whispers. Michelle’s laughter, rising up and shaking the entire room, the rumble of it cracking the furniture, shattering the windows, and crumbling the walls. Genevieve, covered in blood, appeared at the foot of the bed and crawled toward her on all fours, screaming her name, her voice like sirens.

  Kiana opened her eyes and sat up, panting, the pain in her head like crashing cymbals, the air stale with sweat and the funk of wet carpet. She wiped at her face, her fingers aching and sticky. She looked around the empty room and down at the bed, down at herself. The bed was a twisted collection of crumpled sheets, stiff and stained in places. Her breasts were bare with red splotches and teeth marks along the heft of them, around her dark, puckered nipples.

  Glass shards littered the bedside table; a brown inkblot blossomed from a dent in the wall above the lamp. Her eyes burned as she surveyed the room, fear bubbling up from the pit of her stomach. Something rose up, something foul and sour. Her teeth chattered, and the walls of her mouth watered, the saliva warm and bitter. Kiana’s face flushed, sweat beaded at her temples, and something grew inside her, full of gas and bile, something expanding into her chest, burning and churning, yet pushing up solid and persistent.

  She turned her head to the side of the bed just in time.

  A belch of vomit exploded from her stomach, shredded gray chunks and spongy clumps of pink, burnt orange slime swirled in thick, liquid brown. She gagged at the smell of it, the sight of it. Heaving and yacking again, elastic strings of spit with red-tinted bubbles hung from her trembling lips to the stinking pile of vomit on the floor, the splatters on the base of the nightstand. Her face on fire, tears stinging her eyes, and stomach lurching, she collapsed over the side of the bed, slipping in her own refuse.

  She pushed herself up, naked and weak, half-crawling, half-walking toward the bathroom, her hands and arms slick with sweat and vomit. It came again, an acidic balloon of sour, expanding in her stomach and pushing up her ribcage, pushing apart the bones, swallowing her breath. She wretched, and a trembling hand flew to her mouth, covering it. She tried in vain to hold it, but the putrid mixture erupted from her throat and burst through her fingers and shot out her nose, spraying into the air and dripping down her arm. Vomit burned her tongue and the inside of her nostrils.

  Horrified and choking, she tried to run. Her foot kicked at an empty bottle; her ankle caught on her discarded pants. Her arms flailed as she pitched forward and barreled toward the half-closed door of the bathroom, the force of her trip pushing it open.

  The door slammed against the sink, and Kiana hit the cool tile of the bathroom floor. She belched again, a bubble of acrid spit bursting at her lips. The floor, solid and cold, calmed her frantic heartbeat and chilled her burning skin. She slept.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kiana’s phone sat silently on the nightstand. Kiana stared at it as if in a trance, as if she could will it to ring. She glanced at the clock. It had been two hours since the cleaning woman had found her, snoring in a pool of her own vomit on the bathroom floor.

  The woman, sepia-skinned with dark eyes, cursed in French as she had run Kiana a bath. She had gently helped her into the tub, muttering under her breath. While Kiana soaked, silent and beyond ashamed, the woman had cleaned the room—the vomit and broken glass, the strewn clothes and soiled sheets. Kiana, afraid to close her eyes, stared straight ahead at the light green tile and timed her breathing to the fat, slow bulbs of water that dripped from the bathtub faucet. The sound of the door slamming had jolted her from her trance, and she jumped up from the tepid water. She yanked open the bathroom door, and though naked and dripping with water, she rushed to the desk and side table, finally finding her wallet.

  She snatched all the cash she had left and ran to the door. She opened it and spotted the woman walking down the hall, cartwheels squealing. Kiana called out to her; the woman didn’t turn. She made it to the elevators. Kiana had called out to her again, wanting to thank her, wanting to give her money, but the woman hadn’t turned around. She simply crossed herself quickly, the same gesture Genevieve made at the passing ambulance, and pushed her cart into the elevator.

  Thinking of Genevieve snapped her back to the present. She put her hand on her phone and pulled it back. Kiana smoothed the front of her T-shirt and drummed her fingers against her thighs, never taking her eyes off her phone. Ring. Ring. Ring. She reached for it again, then stopped. She returned her hands to her jeans, rubbing her palms against them until they were warm. She couldn’t call again. She shouldn’t. Ten times would be considered crazy and obsessive, so she had no concept of what the twenty calls she had made to Genevieve in the past two hours would be considered.

  Her head ached, a dull throb at the base of her skull. She scratched at her scalp then bit at the inside of her cheek. She glanced across the room at the desk. Her flask lay on its side, a glint of sunlight catching the curved bottom. She swallowed against a tickling itch at the back of throat. She grabbed her phone and left the room.

  The hotel lobby was busy. Families in small huddles of antsy children and bored adults, inching forward in lines, checking in and checking out. Kiana glanced over her shoulder at the bar. The bartender, an unfamiliar face with pale white skin and yellow blond hair, nodded hello in her direction while drying glasses with a white towel. She forced a smile and walked quickly toward the glass doors, rushing out to the street as if being chased. Her phone rang, vibrating against her ass. She yanked it out of her back pocket, praying it was Genevieve.

  “Hi, Karyn,” Kiana said. Her throat hurt from throwing up all morning. It sounded like she’d eaten a bowl of gravel for breakfast.

  “You sound terrible,” Karyn said.

  “I know. I feel terrible.” Kiana looked up and down the street, automatically eyeing the liquor store. A woman carrying a purse and cloth grocery bag struggled with her purchases, three bottle necks clearing the top of the brown paper bag, and scurried to a waiting cab. Kiana turned away from the liquor store and walked in the opposite direction.

  “I thought you were coming home. I waited for you to call with flight information. I called you. I’m trying to let you figure this thing out for yourself, but—”

  “I miss you,” Kiana interrupted. She meant to apologize, but it felt wrong and obvious. Of course, she was sorry; she had been sorry for years. Silence met her declaration. “Karyn? Are you there?”

  Karyn cleared her throat. A door creaked and snapped shut. She had gone out to the front porch. Kiana closed her eyes for a moment, seeing her. Karyn was beautiful. Graceful and tall, serious and caring. She saw her walking toward the top step of the cement porch, no shoes, her toes, painted bright red or coral pink, curled over the edge. A breeze blew, Kiana heard it rustle against the receiver, and she imagined it catching Karyn’s hair, sandy brown and straightened, a few strands escaped from her ponytail and sailing in the wind.

  “I’m here,” Karyn said. “I miss you, too.”

  Kiana took a deep breath. She walked along the street, moving through throngs of tourists and sliding past tables covered in beaded souvenirs and T-shirts, bootleg CDs and handcrafted incense holders. “I’m tired of apologizing,” she said. A streetcar whirred past, and Kiana felt it in her teeth. Her head pounded and jaws ached.

  “What did you say? Kiana, I can’t hear you,” Karyn said.

  “I said, I’m tired of apologizing.” Kiana cupped her hand around the bottom of her cell pho
ne, trying to block out the street noise. “I’m tired of apologizing, and I can only imagine how tired you are of hearing me do it.”

  “Where is all this coming from? Are you all right?” Karyn’s voice rose in pitch. The wind blew again, covering her voice with whooshes and whistles.

  “I’ll call you back,” Kiana said. She stopped at the crosswalk and searched up and down the street. She looked up; she had walked to the river.

  “No! Don’t go!” Karyn said. She heard the creak of the screen door, the clack of it closing behind her. “Kiana, you’re scaring me. Kiana?”

  “Yeah,” Kiana said. “I’ve got to go.” She crossed the street as the walk signal lit up, a rush of Asian tourists snapping random pictures crowding her as she walked.

  “Don’t. Kiana, talk to me,” Karyn said, her voice sounded desperate.

  “Karyn?” Kiana stopped at the entrance to the Riverwalk.

  “Yes?”

  “How do you do it? How do you make it?” Kiana continued into the park, walking across the path and grass, stopping at the rocks near the bank.

  “What?” Karyn asked. “How do I make what? What are you talking about? Look, just come home. Come home today. Whatever the time. Whatever the cost.”

  “How do you make it without Mama?” Kiana said. “I miss her. I miss her all the time.” Her voice cracked. The pressure of holding back her tears squeezed at her brain, her head about to explode.

  “Kiana? Why are you asking me that?” Karyn said. Her voice trembled with uncertainty and fear. “Just come home. We’ll talk all about it. Me and you. We’ll figure it out.”

  The tears fell. The crushing pain in Kiana’s head intensified, a sharp pain like lightning flashed across the top of her head. “I didn’t even know her, Karyn. I didn’t even know her, and I miss her so much. You knew her! You got the chance to know her! How do you make it with her gone? How do you—”