by Hawk, Maya
“You had this catered?” She scrunches her face at me as if I’ve committed some atrocious crime. Lauryn glides across the room toward the balcony, tugging the door open with all her might.
“I don’t cook.” I shut the door before following her outside.
She leans against the balcony railing, peering toward the night traffic below. Cascades of ebony curls spill down her shoulders and swirl around her face, framing the smile she’s trying to fight. “Why are you treating this like some special occasion?”
“Because it is a special occasion.” I stand back, watching her. I’m in a trance. Mesmerized really. “I’ve waited a long time to see you again.”
Every part of that final summer we shared is forever engrained in my memory. I replay those days sometimes, when I can’t sleep or when I have a rough day at the hospital. They make me happy. Mostly. Everything about that summer was magical right up until the very end.
Lauryn spins to face me and rolls her dark eyes, biting away a smile as she takes a seat. She lifts the cover and sets it aside as I retrieve a chilled bottle of Moscato and pour her a glass.
She’s wearing skintight jeans and a white sleeveless blouse that flows when she moves. She changed before coming over. A gentle breeze carries the scent of her gardenia perfume across the table. It’s same one she wore back in high school. Marc Jacobs or some shit like that.
She still cares. She totally fucking cares.
“How are you liking Miami so far?” I slice a piece of filet mignon and fork it, waiting until she responds before bringing it to my mouth.
“I hate it.” She takes a bite of the grilled balsamic chicken I had made especially for her. She had an obsession with balsamic vinegar back in the day, pouring it over her salads, veggies, and meats like it was common table salt. She chews slowly, and I catch her closing her eyes for a brief moment as if she’s enjoying it. “I’m moving the first chance I get.”
“Aw, it’s not that bad.” I slice another chunk of steak.
“I thought it’d feel like vacation.” She bats away a bug that flies over her plate. “So far it’s just really, really hot. And humid.” She lifts her dark hair off her neck, and I swear it’s swollen in size since she got here.
“You’ll get used to it.” My is heavy, coating her with the weight of my thoughts. “I’d love to show you around sometime. Show you all the city has to offer.”
She takes a sip of wine. “No matter. I’m moving to New York the first chance I get.”
“New York? What’s in New York?”
“James.” She takes another sip. Her wine is dwindling, and I refill it without so much as asking. I know she needs it.
“Of course.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
Fucking James.
“He works in New York,” she explains, not that I asked. “I’m just waiting for an opening in his region and then I’m gone.”
We finish our dinner in silence, polishing off the bottle of wine. She avoids my stare like the plague, which leads me to believe it has the power to dismantle the hard exterior she puts on around me.
“You’re fucking gorgeous, you know that?” I can’t think of a better way to break an awkward silence than to hurl an unexpected compliment her way. “You were always pretty, Lauryn. But now? Seeing you all grown up?”
I don’t finish my thought out loud; instead I bask in her beauty and get lost inside my head for a moment. Lauryn is a multicultural beauty. She’s all curves and edges. Perfection harvested from the best of both worlds. Her legs are long and shapely and her shoulders pull back just enough to make her chest rise and fall a bit when she sighs. The cupid’s bow shape of her full upper lip, the one I used to devour that summer after high school, is still beautifully arched and defined. Her nose points narrowly, and her almond eyes are hooded with long, dark lashes.
Lauryn shifts in her seat, standing up as if she needs a break from the heat of my stare. She ambles over toward the balcony ledge, staring down. The sky is pitch black now, lit up by a few hard-to-see stars and the lights of downtown Miami.
“You can learn to love it if you try hard enough.” I step beside her and plant my elbows on the railing.
“It’s not about the city.” She sighs.
“Is it because I’m here?” I’ve never been good at beating around the bush. Some say it’s a weakness. I say it’s my greatest strength.
“No.” She’s lying. I know she is. “How’s your mom?”
I see through Lauryn like glass. She’s not asking about my mom at all. She’s asking about her dad. And it’s not because she cares either. She wrote him off along with me that summer. But she’s always been one to let curiosity get the best of her. Some things never change.
“You’re not missing anything.” I pull in a sharp breath and hang my head. “He’s still an asshole if it makes you feel better, I’m pretty sure he’s been fucking around on Mom since…”
I don’t finish my sentence. I don’t have to.
“Why would that make me feel better?” she fires back. Her chocolate eyes are darker than ever, maybe intensified by years of resentment.
“I don’t know. Justice?”
I’ve tried to imagine what justice might mean to Lauryn and her mom. To Lauryn, finding out a woman, who was essentially her second mom, had destroyed her family as she knew it was nothing short of traumatic. To her mother, finding out her best friend of twenty years was sleeping with her husband, and that they were going to run off together and get married, was earth shattering.
“Shutting me out was never the answer.” My voice is low, rumbling deep in my chest. She’s angry with me, but I’m angry too. We deal with our anger in different ways though. She likes to shut people out. I like to face my problems head on.
“You knew.” Her words are guttural. “You knew all along. You knew it was going on for years, Sutton, and you never said anything. You could’ve stopped it. You could’ve at least warned us.”
“I was just a kid,” I say, silently recalling how I’d walked in on her dad fucking my mom across the back of a poker table one Tuesday afternoon. When I tried to confront him about it on his way out of our house that night, he socked me across the face and told me he’d rip my dick off if I so much as breathed a word about it to anyone else. If the shiner wasn’t enough, he also threatened to ban me from ever seeing Lauryn again. That was worse than any kind of physical pain he could’ve inflicted. The affair continued for years. “If I could go back, Lauryn, I’d have said something. I’d have warned you both so you didn’t find out the way you did.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Lauryn leans away from the balcony and eyes the inside of my apartment. “I should go.”
“You just got here.”
“I have to be up early tomorrow.”
“Bullshit.”
Her full lips form a perfect circle, and her arms cross as she pushes past me.
“Why’d you come here?” I chase after her. “You still hate me so much, why’d you come over for dinner?”
“Because you wouldn’t let it go.” She stops dead and turns to face me. Her arms are still crossed, and her face is flushing.
“You’re lying, Lauryn.” I invade her space, closing the gap between us. I reach for her soft face, cupping it in my right hand. “You still miss me. You still care. And it kills you.”
She won’t look me in the eyes.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I add. I run my thumb along her bottom lip before releasing her. “I can’t force you to be a part of my life. I can’t make you forgive me. Shit, the person you need to forgive is your father, but we all know that’s not going to happen. But it’s fine. You can direct your anger at me. I can take it.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” She twists away, reaching for her bag by the console table next to the door. “Goodbye, Sut.”
Sut. She called me Sut.
My lips curl as she slams the door behind her. “She still fuc
king cares.”
FOUR – LAURYN
The nerve of him!
I don’t remember walking home, but suddenly I’m standing in front of my door forcing my key into the lock as if it’s the door’s fault I can’t get into my apartment fast enough. I knew better than to go over there. I knew better than to open up that can of worms.
Couldn’t resist, could we? God, I’m pathetic.
The second the lock clicks, I press my weight against the door and fling it open, kicking off my shoes and tossing my bag into the seat of a chair. Only it lands with a soft thud, and a man’s slight groan.
“Ugh.”
My heart races, and I flip the switch to light up my living room. “Oh, God. James. You scared the shit out of me.”
He stands, clutching the bag I’ve just thrown at him. “Expecting someone else?”
“No, no,” I bat away his words with my hand, as if they’re floating in the air.
“You okay, babe?” James places my purse on the chair and struts over to me. He’s wearing the gray suit I love with the lavender tie I picked out for him last Easter. His cologne permeates the space between us as he draws nearer. My gaze lifts until it finds his, and I’m able to seek refuge in his ocean blue.
“I’m fine. Just had a rough day is all.”
James towers over me, tall and lanky. For a second I appreciate how safe and benign he is. Everything about James is calm and safe. Nothing rattles him, and for that I’m grateful. “Well then, let me make it better for you.”
He pulls me into him, lowering his lips to mine and depositing a kiss that grounds me. There are no electrical currents coursing my veins. There are no butterflies. His love, his kiss, everything about us is just simple and uncomplicated.
I haven’t felt fireworks since high school, when I was head over heels for Sutton Pierce. I’m not sure anything could ever make me feel half the things I felt that summer with him. But for the last ten years, I’ve done nothing but tell myself that an eighteen year old doesn’t know what love is.
James is love.
I think.
“What’d you have for dinner tonight?” He pulls his shoulders back, running his palms up and down the length of my arms. A slow smile claims his face, starting with his eyes, and he stares at me like I’m the best thing he’s seen all week, which would make sense since it’s been a week since I’ve seen him.
“What are you doing back? I thought you were staying in New York this weekend?”
“Oh.” He clears his throat. “I wanted to surprise you. Thought we could mix things up a bit? Break the routine?”
“You meet your quota for last month?”
He nods. “I did. You know what that means.”
“I do.” He’s two big bonuses away from buying my engagement ring.
“I spoke with the district manager yesterday. He thinks there’ll be a spot opening up in the next couple months. Won’t be long and I can take you back to New York. With me. Where you belong.”
I belong with James. His sweet, boring, uncomplicated, and kind nature is one in a million. My heart fluttered at the thought of moving to New York to start our life together. We were going to live it up for the remainder of our thirties and then settle in the burbs and start a family. That was the plan. No more rat race after that. James knows how important it is to me to have a traditional family, to live a simple life.
“I can’t wait,” I muse before slipping out of his grasp. I head back to the bedroom and slip into matching cotton pajamas before removing my makeup and taking out my contacts. I am 100% myself around James, and he loves me anyway.
By the time I emerge, he’s pillaging my cupboards and the microwave is humming.
“Oh, I got some of those crackers you like,” I call out as I fall across the sofa. I flip the station to ESPN and nuzzle up against a pillow while I watch James make his dinner. “The Italian ones with the sea salt and olive oil.”
He glances up from across the island and flashes a smile. “Thanks, babe.”
“Your beer is in the fridge too. The Boulevard Pale Ale.” I pull a knitted blanket from the back of the sofa and curl up. It’s funny, outside it’s a hundred degrees but inside the air is so ice cold I need a blanket just to stay comfortable half the time. There can never be a happy medium. Not in Miami.
“You’re so good to me.” James returns with a plate and a brown bottle of beer and sits next to me, his eyes glued to the T.V. screen. I should be admiring the way his jaw flexes and tenses while he eats. I should warm over when I catch him glance at me between commercial breaks. I should want to curl up next to him and rest my head in his lap.
Instead, I can’t stop thinking about Sutton.
He looks good after all these years, even better than before if I’m being honest. His eyes are older, wiser. Even the way he talks is slower, more grown up. He’s so fucking smart. And he delivers babies for a living. But he’s still an asshole who had a part in ruining my family, and for that, I can’t allow myself to care about him ever again.
“What’re you thinking about, babe?” James finishes his last bite of his food and pushes his plate back. His hand falls into my lap, and his fingers interlace into mine.
“Nothing.” I force a smile and pray he’s not a mind reader. I feel dirty laying here with my boyfriend thinking about Sutton. Something about it feels wrong, though I’m not in a place where I feel like digging deep enough to find out why. I’m afraid of what I might find if I dig too deep. “Just tired. Thinking about tomorrow. I have to meet with my boss in the morning to go over some new campaign for Arovag.”
“Oh, yeah. So that drug’s finally going live, eh?” He gives me a cockeyed look, and I know exactly what’s on his mind. “Have any samples?”
“James!” I splay my fingers across his chest and push him away. Arovag is a new FDA approved drug proven to enhance the libidos of women. “I don’t need it.”
He reaches over and pulls me into his lap. He has ‘ill intentioned’ written all over his face, and his hands are running the length of my thighs, claiming them inch by inch.
“I know you don’t need it, babe. Just thought, you know, maybe you can take some Arovag, and I can take some Levitra, and we can have some explosive, dynamite sex tonight.”
“You don’t need Levitra,” I laugh.
He smiles and my laughter dies. Ever since starting the long distance thing with him, our love life has died a slow painful death. The traveling takes a toll on his energy, and by the time we see each other, we spend most of the weekend vegging out and relaxing.
But come to think of it, I’m not sure that we’ve ever had clothes-tearing, mind-blowing, up-all-night sex in the all the years we’ve been together.
James’ face grows serious and his hands creep up under my shirt until he finds my breasts. He slips them under the lace cups and fondles them, toying the nipples as his lips lean in to burn into the flesh under my collarbone.
I’m not in the mood, and shit, maybe I do need Arovag, but my mind isn’t there. “James…”
“I miss you, Lauryn, I miss the way you taste, the way you feel,” he breathes his words like a man starved for sex. I mentally calculate how long it’s been since the last time we made love: three weeks, maybe longer? My hands wrap around the back of his neck as I force myself to get into it. I love James. I should want to have sex with him.
He unhooks my bra and pulls my cotton pajama top over my head. I arch my back until my hips are aligned to his, and the bulge of his cock presses through the thick fabric of his dress pants.
I’m feeling nothing down there. Not an inking of warmth or a sliver of desire, but these things take time. It’s a slow burn with James. It’s never been instant. There’s a reason we have a stash of KY Jelly socked away in the nightstand.
My eyes close, and my mouth finds his. I detect a hint of mint that barely covers his stale coffee breath. I try to ignore it. No one has perfect breath all of the time. When you’ve been together as lon
g as we have, you tend to overlook certain things. We’ve just gotten comfortable, that’s all.
“God, Lauryn, I miss this,” he groans as his hands work his belt. He frees his hardness and palms my hips, lifting me up enough to prepare for his impalement.
Impalement. That’s what it always feels like. Like my body is resisting his attempt to insert himself into me. It feels sterile sometimes. Like we’re just going through the motion. I open my eyes and peek at his face. I want to know if he’s really enjoying this. His face is pinched. His eyes are closed. He’s anticipating the way my body will feel the second we come together.
I pull in a deep breath and assure myself it’s going to feel amazing. Sex with him has lately been about as exciting as a Sunday morning in church, but we can change that. We need to try new things. We need to ignite the fire. I’m going to take an Arovag next time we have sex and see if it makes a difference.
James’ hand grips the base of his cock and he rubs the head of it against my sex, back and forth, soft and gentle, just he way he always does. Our sex life is a dull routine – a combination of strategically memorized movements.
Buzz. Buzz.
My phone.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
James groans. His head falls back against the sofa. “Who the hell’s calling you now?”
“Good question.” I’m dying to know. No one ever calls me this time of night unless it’s my boss, and that’s never a good thing. I brace my hands against his shoulders, using them as leverage to get up, but his hands grip into my hips.
“No, no, let’s just keep going,” he begs. It’s a bit of a turn off when a grown man begs from a place of horny desperation and not passionate longing.
“I’m sorry. I have to get this.” There’s a soft lump in my throat. Guilt perhaps. I’m marginally relieved for the interruption. I scamper across the room and dig my phone from my bag. I’ve already missed the call.