“I’m thinking of youuuuu. In my sleepless solitude tonightttt…”
Lauren felt a streak of devastation collide with her soul. She hadn’t known exactly when Demi had met Charlie, but this song, this rendition of it, it put a motherfucking time stamp on the entire affair. Lauren remembered when Demi had suddenly begun playing the song in his car out of the blue years ago. She had gotten in his car one day to run to the pharmacy, and to her surprise, Mariah Carey had come crooning through the speakers. She had questioned it then. She had known him so well that she knew it wouldn’t be something he would normally listen to. He had lied back then, telling her he was thinking of sampling the song for an artist, but now she knew. It was a song he had heard Charlie sing. A tear fell from Lauren’s eyes. Her heart pounded. She wanted to log off, but she couldn’t. Trauma and heartbreak were cruel that way. Just when you thought you were growing, the smallest detail would reveal a new part of you that hadn’t healed yet. It hurt to hear Charlie singing this song, yet still, it was beautiful. The pure emotion from this damn girl.How is she this vulnerable in a world this cold?Lauren thought. She envied that. The weakness. The softness. She had never been that girl. She was strong, and swift, and striking, and successful, but she realized as she watched the girl whom Demi had fallen for, that all he wanted was a woman who was soft. A woman who could make a man weak. Demi knew how to be strong. He didn’t need Lauren to reinforce his strength. He needed one like Charlie who made him feel something different. Lauren realized now that she never had a chance in her marriage. If Charlie had the ability to make humans feel this way with sound, she couldn’t imagine how deeply Demi hadfallen into a trance with her in his arms. The song was beautiful, and the way she played the song, giving it her own sound, made it completely unique to Charlie. Lauren knew where this heartbreak was coming from. She heard the throaty emotion that was breaking Charlie. She knew the rasp came from what she was feeling in real-time. Charlie was beautiful. Her talent was breathtaking, and as Lauren tilted the glass to her lips, she finally felt acceptance. Lauren didn’t want anything less than the feeling Charlie was singing about.
Lauren sent a star emoji into the cyber verse and then clicked out of the live, but not before noting that there were five hundred thousand people watching. Charlie was a fucking star. She was Demi’s North Star, and she envied them. He was lost right now, but she knew he would find his way back to Charlie because she shone bright enough for him to navigate through this pain. Lauren’s doorbell rang, and she lugged her sadness to the door. They answered it. She and her grief. Bound to one another. She feared it would be this way forever. The pair inhabited these walls, like lovers. She was sure they would be inseparable ‘til death do them part. Damn, how had her life become this dismal? As soon as she looked up into the eyes of this intruder, this unannounced visitor, she felt like help had arrived. The look of concern in his eyes was hard to decipher. Was he worried about her or himself? He was lost. She was sure of it. He wasn’t supposed to seek her, yet here he was. Here they were. He made her feel like Charlie’s song. Instantly. He was soothing after a burn. He was the peroxide after a cut. The bandage after a break.
She didn’t say anything. Neither did he. She wanted him to speak first so that she didn’t say the wrong thing.
“You’re in my head, Lo,” he said. She crossed the threshold out into the cold, out into the wild with him. She reached up and pulled him near, palming the back of his neck as she pulled himdown into her space. Forehead to forehead. “You have no idea how bad I got it for you.”
“So have it bad then,” she whispered. She caressed his entire aura. The back of his neck, the side of his face, the lobes of his ears, as she stared at him with need. “I don’t have a lot right now, Nyair. I see everything you’re thinking; so, if you came over here to tell me I’m about to lose this, too, just don’t.”
“I got to, Lo,” he said.
“You don’t,” she protested.
“What would you have me do, Lo? I chose a life. I made a vow,” Nyair said. “What do you want from me? I have an addiction, Lauren. To sex.” She gasped. It should have scared her, but it turned her on instead. “I want it when I want it, and I can’t control it. I’m hard just thinking about the way you get wet for me.” He gritted his teeth, and Lauren was breathless because she felt it, she felt him, hardening by the second as he placed his hands around her waist and pulled her closer. If he was addicted, she was too. Even the sound of this confession made her crave him. Her pussy was alive with need, nectaring in this very moment as his dick pressed into her. “Sex leads to drugs and alcohol. It leads to lying and late nights, ecstasy, and endless orgasms. I lived a lifestyle that was dangerous, Lo. People get hurt when I let this shit get out of control. A girl I was responsible for lost her life behind this shit.”
It was like a record had scratched as Lauren’s eyes widened and her breathing hitched.
“Come in, Ny.”
Nyair had expected her to pull back at the revelation of his sins. Instead, she pulled him nearer. She led the way inside, took his coat, and then paved the way to her couch.
“Tell me. Tell me everything you think is going to scare me away,” she said. “Nothing scares me anymore. Nothing. Not the girlfriend who died in the car accident when you wereyounger. Not the sex addiction or the drugs and alcohol that led you to God. Not the failed NFL career. Nothing. If my situation doesn’t scare you off, yours can’t make me blink.”
His surprise was understandable. He didn’t share his past with many.
“I looked you up. Even the sealed records. I know already, Ny. You don’t have to pretend to be this perfectly saved man. You don’t have to redeem your past here. You can have desires here. You can just be here because some days that’s all I’ll be able to do. Just be. It’s so much easier to just be when I’m with you,” Lauren said. “Is it just me? Cuz I’m pretty sure I’m losing my mind. I just watched a video of Charlie singing a love song to my ex and I wished them well, so I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my mind. Tell me I’m crazy, Nyair. Tell me I’m going through depression and that I’m not really in love with you, but that this is some kind of trauma bond.”
“I can’t tell you that,” Nyair said. Lauren stopped breathing. He took her hand. “I walked away from the church today, Lo.”
And just like that, Lauren was terrified. That was a big step, too big of a step. She hadn’t asked for that. She would never require that of him.
“Why would you do that?” she asked. “Why would you do that?” She screamed it this time.
“Because I don’t have any indication when I’ma get my fill of you,” he admitted. “And I don’t think it’s the trauma. I think it’s servitude. I think it’s companionship. I think it’s trust. And I can’t get the taste of you off my tongue. I think about it all the time. My mouth waters if I think about it too hard, Lauren. Like now, I just want to hear you begging in my ear.”
“Begging for what?” she asked. It was rhetorical. She just wanted to hear him say it, because God knows, she wanted to beg for that dick. She knew he was ready. It was calling to her.Her womanly influence enticing him without doing anything at all.
“For me.”
“You don’t even know how bad I want you,” Lauren scoffed. “But I don’t want you to give up your life for me. So much of what I love about you is wrapped up in your faith. You see me as more than a mother who lost a son because you trust God to see me through this. How am I supposed to feel good about you just giving up your whole life? For what? So that we can keep fucking on the low? So you can make me cum when I’m sad? What makes this okay? How can I have you without you losing everything?”
“You’d have to be…”He paused.
“Have to be what?” She was insistent. If he knew what she needed to become to make this easier for him, he needed to tell her. Because the way he made things easier for her was worth whatever adjustments came with the territory.
“The shit I want to do with you is supposed to take place between a man and his wife, Lo.”
The dread that crossed her face couldn’t be hidden. To go there again. To trust the very institution that had failed her before. Was he asking what she thought he was asking?
“I don’t…I don’t know what to…are you asking…why does it have to be so…” She had a hundred questions, but none were brave enough to force themselves out of her mouth.
“All of that,” Nyair said for her. “I asked myself all of that before I drove over here and here’s what I think. I think you should believe me when I tell you that I’m stuck. My every thought for the past few months has led back to you. Before DJ passed away. If I’m honest, before you were even divorced, I thought of you more often than I should have. You’re beautiful. You carry your shit so beautifully. Your career, your motherhood, your marriage— when you were in one. You carryall these things like a queen. You command people, and I’m stuck when you enter my space. I’m so focused on you. I want to be so precise with you, and I know the timing is bad and you’re grieving, so I’m not asking you for a microwave commitment. But for me to do this, I do need to make a commitment, Lo. I do need to tell you that I love you…”
“Nyair…”
“I know it doesn’t make sense that we’ve come to this, but this is where I am with it,” Nyair said.
