There was this silence neither of us would dare break. I was sure he was scouting for an opening, as was I.
“Come on, Patrice,” Phillip said. “Time to go.”
“You’re right, baby. I think we’re being asked to leave in body language.” They laughed as they exited the apartment.
In my peripheral sight, I caught glimpses of them going by, but my focus was entirely on him…in tunnel vision.
“Come here,” he said. It sounded like a command and at the same time, it was my wish. He pushed the door closed behind him. His smile was gone. “You been looking for me?”
I approached him with hesitation. “Yes.”
“Why?” I wondered why he was questioning me. Didn’t he know?
“Because you belong with me,” I said, squarely facing him. “Why?” I searched his eyes for softness and saw remnants of hard feelings.
“Because I belong with you.” I touched his sleeve.
“That wasn’t enough before. What’s going to be different this time, Zoë?” He took a step closer to me.
“We’re different this time. We realize the value of what we have together and we’re not going to blow it.”
“It’s ‘we’ now, is it?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here,” I took his hand in mine, while holding his hard stare
“I don’t know why I’m here. I guess I’m just a damned fool. What if you change your mind again when we have our next argument or we disagree? What will you do…leave me again?”
He pulled his hand away.
I wasn’t expecting the challenge. I thought I would just be welcomed back with open arms and here he was questioning my intentions. A single thought popped into my mind while he was grilling me. He doesn’t believe in us anymore. And it dawned on me that, like me, he’d never been in love before.
“You’ve never loved anyone before me, have you?”
“It doesn’t matter if anyone came before you. I love you. I’ve given you everything I’ve got in here.” He patted on his chest firmly for emphasis. “And it hasn’t been enough for you. Ever since I laid eyes on you, I haven’t been able to look at another woman, but you let another man put his hands on you.”
I turned away from the hurt in his eyes. Now I knew the source of it. He made me feel weak and compromised for being with Michael. He did want to make me pay for hurting his pride and I was.
“I only feel close to a handful of people and that finally includes my family. There was only room for one more and that was you. It didn’t come with conditions; it came with being a part of something bigger than myself. I don’t want you to pull me back into your illusion of love and as soon as it starts looking a little different from your imagination, you walk away. The reality is that sometimes love will make you cry, it will make you feel ten feet tall, invincible even. It will make you wonder if you ever really knew it at all. Most of the time, love will make you crazy. Anyone in his right mind would never choose love. It chooses us.” My king had abdicated his throne for a soapbox and I became frustrated while listening to, what I realized were, words of fear. He was afraid to take another chance and I didn’t like to see him fear anything. But I was not going to be the fall guy. He’d been complicit in a fishing expedition that delivered me right into his hands.
“In the beginning,” I said. “We were both learning our way and you have to admit it all started with a big lie …and a strong physical attraction. You went looking for the person who hurt Madonna and you found me. And I needed to be found. We didn’t have a manual to tell us what to do. Somewhere along the way, we fell out of infatuation and into love…out of make-believe and into reality. It helped us grow, Humphrey. This is real.”
I made the first move toward him. It was breaking my heart that he was holding back. Our roles had reversed. He had given up on us and I realized he was my one and only. It became clear that this was about more than just a simple break-up. This was about grief and being afraid to get too close with someone because you didn’t want to mourn the loss of him or her someday. I could tell he was thinking of how to go on from where we were and I wanted to help fill in those blanks.
My hands slid up his torso, from his waist to his chest, across his crumpled linen shirt and rested on his shoulders. “I’m sorry for the hurt I caused you and I accept your apology for the hurt you caused me,” I said, laid my head against his chest and listened to the sound of his breathing and his heart beating—they were both steady and sure. When I felt his hands grasp my waist, a smile welled up in my heart. I was making progress…so I pressed harder toward the mark.
“Let’s wipe the slate clean. We’ll start all over again, just like…”
“Hush…,” he husked out. “and give me a kiss.”
He pulled me in so abruptly that my elbows stuck out at an odd angle while my hands remained on his broad chest. Tenderly, he moved his lips back and forth across mine, each time deepening the kiss a little more. The deeper it became, the deeper my love reached. The king of my heart reigned again and inside, I sent up a triumphant shout. He bent over to better accommodate me and my hands clasped behind his head, savoring the kiss that sealed our fate.
“I love you, Zoë…so much that I don’t think I could handle another break up. I want you to be sure.”
I gently broke away. “I don’t ever want to be without you again.”
“You still want the fairy tale?” “Only if you will be my king.”
His lips were on mine again putting an even bigger hold on my heart.
He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out my engagement ring and slid it back onto my finger. “My queen.”
He hands laid claim to my body and strummed it with knowing. All the erogenous places he’d helped me discover were his to explore.
“My love…” His lips traveled across my breast, his tongue encircling the nipple through thin cotton.
“Yes,” I whimpered.
“My love…” I kissed his lips, his eyes, his face, with slow deliberate touches.
“Yes,” he answered.
Our clothes were removed in a heated rush and I was filled with him. Our need consumed us like a brush fire in a drought- stricken field. It heated our flesh and melded us into one entity moving toward completion.
We stayed in bed all day fi different ways to show how much we missed each other and how much we wanted to stay together. Night had fallen, by the time the hunger for food demanded our attention. We ordered takeout and opened a bottle of wine.
He said, “I don’t believe in long engagements. So will you marry me for Christmas?”
“Excuse me, but aren’t you homeless and unemployed?” I asked.
He smiled. “I’ve already sublet the apartment. As for work, you’ve worked me so hard this past year, I think I’ll take some time off to settle down and start a family. What do you think?”
“I think that sounds just like a dream.”
And he said, “A dream that’s going to come true.”
Epilogue
“Humphrey. How long are you going to be out there?” I called to him from the back door.
“Give me about half an hour and I should be finished with this last piece.”
“I think you should come right now.” “I just need a few more minutes.” “We don’t have that long.”
He came out of the garage behind Phillip’s house, the one he’d transformed into an art studio, and stepped onto the brick walk to make eye contact with me.
“We’ve got to go, baby,” my trembling voice, raised to a decibel higher than necessary.
“Oh, shit,” he said and ran toward the house.
Phillip and Patrice were living in the house in Baltimore and we’d become quite the double-dating bunch. Humphrey and Phillip were the best of friends and I was a happy woman. It seemed everybody had what they wanted: Phillip was teaching at a private black college, Patrice had set up a private practice at an area hospital, Humphrey and I were preparing for the birth o
f our first child. We were one big happy family.
“Zoë,” Humphrey said for the third time while patting his pockets for car keys that were on the hook at the front door.
I took him by the hand, snatched the keys off the wall and led him to the car out front.
“We don’t have our bag,” he said. “You can bring it later.”
Ever since we found out about the baby, he’d become a flurry of paintbrushes and canvasses. Once he’d acquired the use of the garage, I would have to call for him to come home or get used to spending a lot of time at Phillip’s.
Humphrey was in the process of preparing for his first art show ever. Without his father’s criticism, he flourished as a painter and in a short period, his works were showing promise of true genius. With his personal demons exorcised, he’d been able to open a doorway to his emotional freedom and it led him right to creativity. And he had talent. All the things he’d suppressed and tried to wrestle on his own became fodder for his artistic expression. His show was being hailed as de rigueur for the Baltimore art scene and it hadn’t even opened yet.
All of that seemed so trivial on the evening we drove to Mercy Hospital and welcomed our little baby into the world. Everyone we loved surrounded us. I was told they had the waiting room locked down that night. And the waiting was not in vain. It took eight long hours of natural childbirth to bring Chance Elijah Pearson into the world.
The sight of Humphrey holding his son for the first time was priceless and touched my heart so that I didn’t think it could contain the love that swelled within its confines.
“Thank you, Zoë.” He blessed me with his smile and bent down to kiss my tired brow.
“It was my pleasure. …well, not all pleasure, but when I look back on this day, all I want to remember is how much love I felt for you and our baby.”
I looked over at my husband while he marveled at our little creation. There was so much feeling in his eyes, as he adored our son with chubby pink cheeks and a shock of red hair, like his mama. I couldn’t imagine my life without either of them in it. Thank God, I didn’t have to.
“I can’t believe I’m a mother. I don’t have any words of wisdom to pass along or motherly advice. All I have to give him is my love.”
“He’s blessed to have two grandmas with all the wisdom he needs. But don’t sleep on the importance of love. Sometimes love is all you need.”
“I hope it never ends.” My voice had turned groggy with exhaustion and contentment and I surrendered to it, with my husband and child providing the best picture to dream about.
The End
Sometimes Love Page 24