I watched her face fill with this disappointment. That flash of something real before and raw. The composure came back down like a curtain.
Marcus said something to her, she turned toward him and smiled then said something back. I watched her take his arm and move further into the room and I turned back to Kyla. Whatever she had been saying, I wasn’t listening at all, but I responded like I had been paying attention the whole time.
Twenty minutes later I felt my phone buzz in my jacket pocket.
Brielle.
I glanced at the screen and put it back in my pocket and kept talking to the city councilman who had been telling me about his son who wanted to box.
It buzzed again.
And again.
And again.
I excused myself from the conversation and stepped slightly to the side and looked at my phone.
Ten texts. Back to back. The preview of the first one said so you just gone sit there and act like and I didn’t need to read the rest to know exactly what energy those ten messages were coming in at.
I put my phone back in my pocket.
And I smiled.
Not at her anger. Not at the situation. But at the feeling of knowing that Brielle Devereaux who had spent years making me feel like I was never going to be enough for her world was standing across a room watching me exist without her and feeling every single thing she had put me through a hundred times over.
Kyla touched my arm. “You good?”
“I’m great, my love.” I said.
And I meant it. Everything other than her being my love. I had to put on an act just for the night.
I reached for him before I even opened my eyes. The time we’d just had together was what I needed. It wasn’t the way that I had to pretend when I was with Marcus. Everything with Street was real. Too damn real for my liking.
My hand moved across the bed to the side where he had been, I felt nothing but cold sheets and I knew before I was fully awake what was going on. I opened my eyes anyway. Looked at the empty space beside me like if I looked at it long enough, it was going to change what it was.
He was gone.
I laid there for a minute and let that sit on me. The room was still dark, early morning quiet outside the window, and the sheets on his side were cold enough that he hadn’t just left. He had been gone for a while. Long enough for any warmth he left behind to disappear completely.
I picked up my phone off the nightstand.
I called his phone three times, back to back. No answer. Was he tied up? Was he at home sleep?
I sat up, pushed my hair back and looked at the ceiling. I told myself not to feel this the way that I was feeling it. Told myself I had no right to be in my feelings because I was the one who had come here. I was the one who had crossed a line I had no business crossing when I had somebody at home. I was the one who had chosen to be in this bed tonight and now I was sitting here at four in the morning reaching for a man who had already walked out while I was sleeping.
Almost the same thing I had done to him four years ago.
I got myself up, dressed in the dark and moved quietly through the hallway. This was really the damn walk of shame that I wasn’t expecting to be the ending to my night. I stopped at Simone’s door. I pushed it open slow and she was on her side of the bed with Gutta’s arm thrown over her and I almost left without waking her. Almost.
“Simone.” I kept my voice low.
She stirred.
“Simone.” I touched her shoulder.
She turned over and squinted at me in the dark. “Bri? What time is it?”
“Early. I’m leaving. Walk me to the door?”
