“Soz.”
She presses on. “Look… I know myself. I can’t do clingy, lover, messy bollocks. I don’t like to be anyone’s anything. Hate the idea of it. I’ll break out in hives. I already am actually. Look!”
She waves her arm in my face and I flick it away.
“So basically,” I clear my throat. “All I heard is…bullshit, bullshit…blah blah blah, I have attachment issues. More bullshit. That right?”
“I’m serious! Hives, Jabari!”
“Right.” I swallow. “So the solution is… pretend nothing happened?”
“It’s the cleanest option.”
“It’s bullshit,” I say quietly.
She doesn’t deny it. She just meets my eyes at last and there’s tired there. Real tired.
“Jabari… it’s not simple,” she says. “I’m barely holding my own life together. I don’t have the bandwidth to survive you as well.”
“So what?” I ask. “We just go back to mugging each other off like always?”
“It’s what we’re good at.”
Silence again as she gets up to join Zaza. But I stand too.
“Fuck that.” I pull her close. “Unfortunately for you Francine. I don’t plan on letting you go that easily. Like I said you should’ve been careful with who you gave it up to.”
She stiffens for half a breath.
Then her body gives her away.
I pull her a little closer. Our hips brush. She pretends it doesn’t set her alight.
“You know,” I murmur, leaning in, “being like this is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
Her lips curl. “Wrong. What got us into this is self-indulgence.”
I can’t help the smirk that tugs at my mouth. “And lust.”
She snorts. “Lack of self-control.”
“Maybe loneliness,” I say.
That makes her look up. “Are you lonely, Jabari?”
The question cracks right through my chest. I swallow, “…Yeah.”
She studies me. “Why is that?”
I exhale, forehead dipping to her shoulder, the familiar scent of her pulling me under with flash backs of the night before.
“I self-isolate a lot,” I admit, the words quiet against her skin. “I like being alone. Or at least I thought I did.”
Her hand hesitates… then lifts, resting lightly on my arm.
It’s nothing.
It’s everything.
