“I’m not whispering.”
“Ivy. Yes the fuck you are. What’s up?”
Small pause. “Okay I’m whispering a little.”
“Stop sneaking on the phone before you get yourself into something you can’t get out of.”
She was quiet for a second and I could hear her trying to figure out how to say what she had called to say. That was the thing about her. She was direct in every other area of her life, ran two businesses, made real decisions, moved like somebody who knew her own mind. But when it came to this, when it came to what was between us, she kept arriving at the edge of it and having to work up to the jump.
“I don’t know what you did to me,” she said finally. “I don’t know what this is or where it came from but I’ve never felt like this before. I’m just being honest.”
“I know,” I said. I was smiling hard as hell. I had her ass sneaking off and calling me in the middle of the night.
“That’s all you’re gonna say?”
“What do you want me to say? Be honest. Tell me the real thing.”
Pause. “What real thing.” She asked.
“You know what I’m asking you.”
Do you want me to tell you that I fucked you like that on purpose cause I want you to be mine and mine only? You never been fucked like daddy did, huh?” I teased her.
“No,” she said quietly. “I haven’t. Not like that. Not ever.”
“See.” I shifted in the bed. “Was that hard?”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying. You know what happens if you don’t follow my instructions and act right?”
“What.”
“You might not get it again. And based on what you just admitted, that would be a real problem for you.”
She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and frustration and I felt it move through me like something warm.
“Go to bed Ivy,” I said.
“I am in bed. I just snuck into the guest room to call.”
“Then go to sleep.” I paused and let what came next land exactly how I intended it to. “Go lay down with that lame ass nigga that put that ring on your finger. Get your rest.”
I heard the sound she made when I said it and I hung up before she could respond.
Set the phone down and laid there in the dark with my hands behind my head and stared at the ceiling.
She had called me after one in the morning whispering from a bed inside the house that she was sharing with another man. Had admitted out loud that she had never felt what she felt with me before. Had bribed a florist to find my number so she could call me to tell me to leave her alone, and then stayed on the phone and talked to me like she didn’t want to hang up. And after that, fucked me again.
She was going to do what she needed to do to keep me around. I wasn’t going to rush her timeline because I understood she had a real life to navigate and real decisions to make that came with real weight. But she was going to make those decisions. The engagement was already over whether she had said it out loud yet or not. Some things ended before the announcement caught up.
I closed my eyes.
My mind went where it wanted to go which was straight to her. What this was going to look like when all the noise cleared. When it was just us without the complications and the sneaking and the borrowed time. What it was going to feel like to have her in my space, in my house, in my bed, not for one night in a hotel or ten minutes in a parking lot but just there.
Present. Mine.
I thought about that until sleep pulled me under.
