Then we parted, and he looked down at me and adjusted himself in his slacks.
“B?”
“Yes, Dr. Long?” I asked with a sly grin on my face.
“I’mma miss you too.” He placed a kiss on my forehead and turned to go back into the airport. I flopped down in the seat, admittedly wet from the kiss. Just as we pulled away from the curb, I got a notification.
Husband: I see you landed. I’ll see you soon, ma. Love you.
I wanted to take my phone and snap it in half over my knee like the Hulk. But instead, I just sent a cute, politically correct, wife-like response.
Me: Love you more, handsome. I’ve missed you.
From his message, I could see his location, and he had already made it home. I closed my eyes and lay my head against the window for the entire ride, trying to decompress. The driver could have been taking me to his dungeon, and I wouldn’t have known a thing.The car slowed to a halt, and I opened my eyes to see the outside of my home.
“Thank you,” I said as he opened the door and then went around the back to grab my bags.
Typing in the code on the keypad, I pushed open the door and didn’t even try to find Tim. I left my things at the bottom of the stairs, then made a beeline for the guest bathroom and started undressing. I even used one of the new toothbrushes in there to brush my teeth. I was wrecked. Had Tim been standing at the door with a black light, I would have lit up like a Christmas tree. I had to get every trace ofhimoff of me.
I showered, gargled, washed away my sins, wrapped a towel around my body and another around my head, and went upstairs to throw on a dress, expecting to see him in our room.But he wasn’t there, and when I passed the office he wasn’t there either, so I went in search of my husband.
I found him in the den, watching the Milwaukee Bucks, his leg kicked up on the ottoman, with a drink.
When he turned to me, his eyes scanned my body in a way that made me feel exposed. It was almost like he was examining me. Like he hadn’t expected me to come back in one piece.
“Well, hey,” I said as I neared him.
He stretched his arm out and invited me into his lap, where I sat across him. He stared at me for a beat too long. The dramatic silence made my pulse race.
Then he kissed my lips quickly and brought me closer to him. I lay against his chest, with my mind racing and my thoughts confusing me.
“Breeze…” he said after a while.
“Yes?”
“I mean what I said when I told you I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
My heart smiled at his words, and for a second, nothing else in the world mattered.
“You will,” I assured him.
We watched the game and laughed the night away. We even made a couple of bets before we retired to bed just after midnight. I thought that I would be first, but Tim was snoring before I could even turn off the lamp on my side of the bed. I lay there just listening to him breathe. Then, I turned toward the nightstand and grabbed my phone from it.
Unlocking the phone, I went to my messages, clicked on Quentin’s name, and typed “goodbye.” But then I decided against it. This wasn’t some whirlwind love affair; it didn’t require formalities and a big breakup. We didn’t need “closure.” There was no need to reiterate what we had already known whenthis started. So instead, I deleted our message thread, went to his contact, and blocked him.
Putting it back on my nightstand, I closed my eyes and prepared to go to sleep. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life chasing a new high when I had been high every day of my life since middle school. That was what mattered. But I wasn’t in denial by any stretch of imagination. I knew that I could block Quentin from my phone, from my marriage, and even from between my legs. But in my mind? He had a permanent residence.
Epilogue
Quentin
6months later
“You know my favorite thing about you, big brother?” Quiana asked as she leaned close to my mirror and swiped the edge of her lip to fix her lipstick.
I scoffed, “What Qui?”
“That you just let me drag you around, and you never tell me no,” she giggled, turning to the side to see how her outfit looked.
