“If you’re coming over to argue—”
“I’m not coming over to argue. I’m coming over because I’m tired of doing this from a distance and I’m tired of the unfinished conversations, I’m tired of all of it.” A pause. “Just send the address.”
I stood in my apartment and looked at the ceiling for a second.
Then I texted her the address.
She showed up forty five minutes later and when I opened the door she walked in and stood in the middle of my living room, looked around at my space and then looked at me and we started talking. Really talking. The way we hadn’t talked in years. About prom, about the year and a half of silence after, about all the times since then that we had avoided each other and never fully landed. About what we actually were to each other underneath all the history and the complication and the back and forth.
She talked. I talked. We went back and forth in the way that only people who actually knew each other could and somewhere in the middle of all of that the talking stopped being the point.
“What all that said, what we gone do Bri?” I asked as she sat on my bed and looked me in my eyes.
“Right now, I want to feel you. Then we can finalize everything else later. I’ve missed you so much. I think about, and dream about how you made my body feel. I wanna feel it again.” She said, not holding back at all. I had to look in her eyes and see if she was serious. She stood up, and started taking off all of her clothes. I was froze and couldn’t do anything other than stand there. This girl was so damn fine, a nigga was in a daze.
She was all the way in.
And so was I.
I lifted her off her feet, kissed her like I’d never get another chance, then I gave her exactly what she’d asked me for. It had been years since I’d felt Bri, and it was better than I could have imagined. I didn’t know if it was all of the love that I had for her, or if the shit was just this damn good, but here I was again. I gave her everything I had because I wanted her ass to keep coming back. The moans, the faces she made, that was some shit I wanted to have everyday.
Afterward we laid in the quiet of my room and she had her head on my chest. I had my hand on her back and neither one of us said anything for a long time. The city was doing its thing outside my window and in here everything was still.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. Quiet. Like she was saying it to herself as much as to me.
I didn’t respond right away.
But I held on tighter.
And for right now, that was enough.
I left Brielle’s spot around noon feeling better than I had in a long time and I wasn’t gonna sit here and try to fake like I wasn’t. A nigga had been on cloud nine the last two days for real.
We hadn’t put a name on anything. We hadn’t had that conversation and I wasn’t pushing for it because pushing Bri had never once gotten me anywhere. We both understood what it was, and it didn’t have to be explained. What I knew was that for the last two days I had been sleeping in her bed and waking up next to her. It felt like something I could get used to even though I knew it was probably the most dangerous thing I could do to myself right now.
Before I left I gave her five hundred dollars and told her to go do something for herself today. She tried to give it back and I didn’t let her. I knew how women liked them spa days, getting their nails and feet done and shit. She looked at me for a second with an expression that was somewhere between appreciating it and wanting to say something about it.
That was Bri learning how to be in my world without fighting every part of it and I respected that even if I knew it wasn’t gonna last forever.
She didn’t know any details about the fight tonight. She knew Gutta had offered it to me, but I hadn’t told her the details of this one and I wasn’t going to. That part of my life I needed to keep away from her for as long as I could. Not because I was hiding something but because watching her watch me in that cage the night of the Champ fight had done something to me that I didn’t need happening again before every fight I took. I needed my head clear tonight.
I went home, showered, ate, got my hands wrapped and my mind right. Being with Bri was giving me a feeling that I could do anything right now. I wasn’t nervous or nothing about this fight. I already knew I was about to win. That wasn’t a question.
—
Gutta pulled up at eight.
We rode in my car and Gutta talked the whole way there about Simone which I let him do because it kept the energy in the car loose and I needed that going into a fight. I honestly feel like Gutta whole problem is rejection. Simone hasn’t given in like the other girls and that’s what makes this nigga want her more. He ain’t never talked about a female do damn much in his life. This is some different shit.
“I want Simone so damn bad that I haven’t even thought about that good pussy having ass old bitch not even once. Well, I think about her but I don’t want nobody but Simone.”
“Wait, what nigga? Never mind,” I was about to ask him about an old bitch but decided against it. His ass was on some other shit. But I couldn’t help but laugh.
Every fighter had their pre fight ritual and mine was quiet confidence but Gutta’s energy had always been the right kind of noise for me. Never too much, never distracting, just present. Exactly what I needed right now.
“So you really feeling her, is what I’m gathering.” I said when he took a breath.
“I been feeling her. She’s the one that’s been taking her time.”
