Then the shower.
Then back to the bed.
It was nasty.
The kind that makes your soul arch, not just your back. The kind where your body says things your mouth is too scared to admit. The kind that feels like therapy.
Maison didn’t just make love to me. It was like his body was trying to etch me into memory before time ran out. It started slow and he laid me out like I was something sacred. Like the city had given me to him as a gift, and he didn’t want to rush unwrapping me.
My fingers tangled in the sheets, then in his hair. He moved like he wasn’t just trying to please me. He was trying to rewrite something in me.
And he did. He rewrote the part of me that thought intimacy only came after commitment. Because what we had didn’t havea title. Didn’t need years.It was just something we both needed now.
He came up to kiss me, and I could taste myself on his tongue. The moment he slid into me, I felt like I could cry.
It wasn’t just sex. It was release. From grief. From control. From every damn wall I had up when I first arrived in New Orleans. He whispered things into my ear while he moved inside me. Things that were real. Things like:
“I hope you remember what it feels like to be wanted like this.”
“I hope you stop second-guessing how magical you are.”
“Don’t shrink for nobody.”
His hands roamed all over my body. I opened for him in every way. We went slow. We went fast. I rode him until I was shaking, and then he flipped me over like he couldn’t take it anymore.
At one point, we were laughing and breathless, him still inside me, and I said, “We gone fuck around and end up in love one day.”
He looked at me, deep and serious. “That won’t be the worst thing.”
Then he kissed me again.
And again.
And again.
Until it was morning.
Until we were wrapped in sheets and silence, skin stuck together, hearts beating like second lines in the streets outside.
Until we were both too spent to speak, but somehow everything had been said.
14
Lyrix
I did one last walk-through of the hotel room like I always do. Not because I’m organized, but because I’m the girl who leaves behind earrings, chargers, perfumes, pieces of herself in hotel drawers like she wasn’t raised better.
Maison was already downstairs loading my bags into his car. He offered to do the last sweep for me, but I needed to do it myself. Not just for the stuff. But for the memory.
I walked over to the vanity, my lip gloss still sitting there from last night. I smiled.
Then the bed. Lord, the bed. Still messy with tangled sheets and tangled feelings.
I glanced at the couch that we sat on like we were a couple who forgot we weren’t supposed to be one. The whole room was quiet but still so sacred.
But it was the balcony that called to me, so I stepped outside.
The New Orleans air wrapped around me like a goodbye hug I wasn’t ready for. Below, the city moved like it always did. I gripped the railing with both hands and looked out over the streets that changed me.
