“I love you, Navy.”
All I could do was stare at him.
“You still love me?” he asked.
Dropping my eyes, I softly uttered, “You know I do, Lake. My love for you is why I pushed you away, why I’ll continue to push you away.”
“You can push—” He shrugged. “But I ain’t budging. Not ever again.”
I had opened my mouth to respond when a knock on the passenger side window made me jump. Turning my head, I found myself face to face with Heidi. Lakeland let the window down, and I asked, “What’s up?”
“Dinner’s ready. Ma told me to come find you, and I need you to convince her that that damn puppy don’t need to sit at the table with us.”
I had to smile at her annoyance. “You don’t like little Bitch? I think she’s adorable.”
“Yeah, she’s cute as hell, but I ain’t breaking bread with her little furry ass. That’s some pure Caucasian shit right there.”
Through giggles, I said, “Be right there.”
Before I could exit Lake’s truck and follow Heidi, he rested a hand on my arm. “Navy—”
“I’ll think about it, Lake,” I offered.
“Will you think about this?” he asked, and then his mouth was covering mine, and the memory of how this had always felt kicked in. That, plus the fact that I hadn’t touched a man since we were together three years earlier made me grab the collar of his coat and try to pull him across the center console. In what felt like milliseconds, my hand was in his pants, his hand was in mine, and we were stroking each other, panting, whimpering, and filling the warm air of the vehicle’s interior cabin with our natural scents. Then he let his seat back, yanked his pants down over his ass, and as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do, I struggled out of my own pants and climbed onto his lap, sliding my panties to the side and easing down on his shaft as he gripped my ass. We both released tortured moans upon contact. He felt so good that I forgot we were parked in front of my mother’s house or that my family was waiting on us. All I cared about was that Lakeland was inside of me, how I’d missed this, how right this was, and how badly I needed it. As he massaged my breast through my blouse, I threw my head back and sighed, riding him nice and slow.
“Navy,” he groaned, a frown on his handsome face as he began to thrust upward.
“Ohhhh,” I hissed, lowering my head to kiss his lips and neck.
“I missed you so much, baby,” he said, as I trailed kisses from his neck back to his mouth. “So much…”
“Uh!” I replied.
Grabbing my hips, he closed his eyes and moaned my name repeatedly as the sound of him invading my pussy again and again played around us.
When it was over, I still straddled him as we stared at each other, our breathing labored, love being transmitted between us in the silence.
“Uh…we should go in,” I eventually managed to say.
He reached up and rested his hand on my cheek. “Yeah.”
After making a pit stop in the bathroom, we both walked into the dining room, and on weak legs, I made my way to the furthest seat I could find from Lakeland’s.
5
Lakeland
“Father, we come to you inconspicuously and with ripened hearts, humbly apprehending your face, our transitions laid bare before you. We anticipate your absolute congruence as we concurrently ask that you reach down and conscious our extrapolated ways. Lift our circumcisions. Fix our disembowelments, as they discombobulate our entrancements, and erase our interments that we know not what we menstruate! Oh, Lord…give us this day, our accoutrements as we set forth to do your inevitable calisthenics! Ah! Oh, Lord… we pray…we pray that your will be done as it is in the affirmations of the sun. For we are clandestine to your will and only your will. In your mighty mighty name, amen.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing at Navy’s late grandmother’s “friend”, Deacon John-Fred’s, blessing of the food as I raised my head. Heidi was fighting so hard not to laugh that she was in tears.
“Uh…thank you so much for saying grace, Deacon,” Navy’s mom said.
“It was my insubordination, Gina,” Deacon John-Fred returned, with a proud bow of his head.
Mrs. Gina gave him a smile. “Okay…well, eat up, everyone!”
“Who?” Aunt Princess shouted.
“She said it’s time to eat, Auntie,” Junior yelled.
“Yeah, I’d like some tea, baby. Now whose boy are you?”
I’d heard Junior explain to her who he was about five times, but he did it again without hesitation and without an attitude.
Navy had made sure to sit far away from me, and that messed with my head, made me feel like our conversation in my truck and what followed it hadn’t made a difference. The logical thing for me to do would’ve been to leave—to leave her mom’s house and to leave Navy alone, but love wasn’t logical. I was a doctor, a surgeon. I had everything in the world going for me, but it meant nothing without her.
Absolutely nothing.
The food was good, but then again, Mrs. Gina could always burn. Being around Navy’s family never failed to make me smile. They were real, genuine, nothing like the uptight world my parents had built for me, a world I wanted nothing to do with. They’d never approved of Navy, or as they’d put it, her lack of pedigree. Never mind the fact that she was brilliant and beautiful. She’d been in grad school when we split, pursuing a masters’ degree in mathematics, and was breezing through the coursework. Her smile could brighten a room more than the Christmas tree full of lights in her mother’s living room, and I was convinced her laughter could save the world. She was different now, subdued, sad, maybe even a little broken, but she was still Navy. My Navy was still inside of her, and I loved her. I would always love her, rain or shine.
Schizophrenia could be managed. It wouldn’t go away, but it wasn’t necessarily fatal. What couldn’t be managed was the hole she left in my heart when she pushed me away. What was fatal was the pain I carried every second I had to be without her.
Navy
I hugged the last of my cousins and turned to see that the only stragglers left in my mother’s house were me and Lakeland. Through a sigh, I said, “It was good to see you, Lake. It wasn’t easy for me, but I can’t deny that you’re a sight for sore eyes. I—we, I don’t want you to be confused because of what happened in your truck. I still—”
“Navy, be sure to lock up for me when you leave! I’m headed to bed!” my mom shouted from somewhere in the house.
“Okay, Ma! Tell Bitch I said goodnight!”
“I will!”
“Your mom is a trip. A dog named Bitch?” Lakeland asked through a smile.
I shrugged. “Whatever makes her happy.”
“What would make you happy, Navy?”
“Lake, don’t—”
“It’s a simple question, baby.”
I dropped my shoulders and sighed. “What I want more than anything in this world is for things to be like they were…before. Us together in our apartment, me living a happy, normal life.”
“It can be like that if you’ll let it.”
“I can’t not have this disease, Lake. It isn’t going away.”
“But you can have me—us. You can have us. You can get back in school, take some online courses if you want. You can move back in with me. I got us a house now. And…” He dropped onto one knee. “You can marry me.”
As I clamped a hand over my open mouth, I heard my supposed-to-be-in-bed mother shriek, “Navy Jane, if you say no, I’m whooping your whole, complete ass!”
Lakeland and I both laughed and then I fixed tearful eyes on the beautiful ring he held out to me, shifted my gaze to his handsome face, and couldn’t find the words to answer him.
“I love you, Navy, have loved you virtually since I first laid eyes on you back in high school. I can’t stop loving you. You are embedded in my soul, baby, and I need you. I want to love and support you. I want to be there for you, to protect you.”
“Protect me from who? Myself?”
“If I have to, if that’s what it takes. I just want you, baby. All I want is you, no matter what that means, no matter how hard things might get.”
With tears flooding my face, I admitted, “I love you, too.”
He stared at me, pleading with his eyes.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’ll marry you.”
“Oh, thank God!” That was Ma, who was now standing directly behind me. So I first hugged her, then Lakeland.
“Thank you, Navy,” he said, gently kissing my lips.
“Thank you, Lake. Thank you so much.”
Just then, my mother’s tiny puppy ran into the living room, yapping all the way. While folded in Lakeland’s arms, I heard her sing, “There’s my little Bitch!”
A southern girl at heart, Alexandria House has an affinity for a good banana pudding, Neo Soul music, and tall black men in suits. When this fashionista is not shopping, she’s writing steamy stories about real black love.
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Also by Alexandria House:
Them Boys Novella Series:
Set
The McClain Brothers Series:
Let Me Love You
Let Me Hold You
Let Me Show You
Let Me Free You
Let Me Please You (A McClain Family Novella)
The Strickland Sisters Series:
Stay with Me
Believe in Me
Be with Me
The Love After Series:
Higher Love
Made to Love
Real Love
Short Stories:
All I Want
Should’ve Been
Merry Christmas, Baby
Baby, Be Mine
Always My Baby
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All I Want: A Christmas Short Page 2