Lord, have mercy on his soul.
The showerhead didn't so much break as reveal its true bastard character.
It had been giving me warning signs — a wheeze on Tuesday, a full stop and reluctant restart on Wednesday — and by Thursday morning it made a sound and died, badly, screamingand sputtering, granting me in total, about forty seconds of lukewarm water before going completely silent.
I stood in the clawfoot tub, clad in sweat — harboring all of Louisiana’s heat in that single sweat droplet that slipped down in between my shoulder blades. Or so it felt like.
The showerhead looked back.
“Fine,” I said.
Darlene didn't even blink when I told her. Made a face that said this had happened before, waved her hand, told me to use her shower. Little yellow house past the garden, side door unlocked, towels under the stairs, she'd be in town until noon. She did warn though that the bathroom door didn’t always close fully — which I dismissed almost outright. I would be alone — the door could be full-blast open for all I cared.
Darlene's house was small and immaculate and smelled like the same rose I'd noticed on her the first day, which meant either she grew them or she'd been wearing the same perfume for so long it had become architectural. Photographs covered the mantelpiece — grandchildren, a man I assumed was her late husband, a younger Darlene standing in front of Grace Eternal with a shovel, which raised questions that I wasn’t in the mood of unearthing.
The bathroom was at the end of a short hallway, yellow tile, a window above the tub with frosted glass that let in the morning light without letting in the street. Clean. I supposed Darlene followed the age old saying to a “t” — cleanliness is next to godliness.
I closed the door — it didn’t want to stay closed — it opened with a slow, theatrical yawn. Tried again — popped open after a few seconds.
I stared at it, hands on my hips.
“Whatever,” I muttered. “Stay difficult.”
I undressed, stepped in the tub and pulled the curtain closed. The water ran hot immediately.
“Show off,” I muttered, but quickly realizedhotwasn’t exactly what I needed when the temperature outside was a solid 90 degrees. Hot turned to lukewarm, and lukewarm turned to cool.
I stood under it for longer than I needed to. Water ran down my body, washing away more than just the sweat and the dirt.
This was a thing I did when I could — stayed in the shower past the point of utility, let the heat work on the knot I carried permanently between my shoulder blades, let the sound of the water be the only sound. My father had believed in short showers. Efficiency. Showers were for getting clean, not for whatever he imagined I was doing in there, which was apparently a moral concern. I had never figured out the specific theology of it. That is not until I had learned of showerheads withsettings.Particularly pressure settings. Suddenly my father’s concerns had gained some ground.
Darlenedidhave one of thosefascinatingshowerheads.
Did I dare?
Judah had three things to collect from Darlene's house and had been told, in the tone she used when she wasn't asking, to do it before noon.
The day was hot, and he wanted to do this quick — in, out — on his way. The spare ledger, storage keys and June receipts she said she’d left on the kitchen table.
He let himself in through the side door and went straight to the kitchen. Ledger on the shelf. Keys on the hook. He reached for the folder on the table.
But then a sound drifted from down the hall, faint at first. A sigh, maybe. A moan — if he was feeling generous.
He paused, fingers hovering over the folder, his head tilting toward the noise. Darlene was supposed to be in town, and therefore, the shower wasn't Darlene, which was both a relief and the direct opposite of it.
He let his eyes roam the room until they landed on the one thing that didn’t belong in Darlene’s sunset house. A jacket. Leather — entirely unsuitable for Louisiana, but he’d noticed it before. Mercy had been carrying it around yesterday — and the day before that.
He walked to the living room where she’d left it draped over the couch back and reached for it. The black stood out against Darlene’s sun-painted furniture, a mean slash in an otherwise tranquil setting. The shoulder was worn smooth, cool against his fingers. He raised the jacket to his nose and inhaled. Under the waxy bite of worn leather, he picked upher. Vanilla. Citrus. Tuberose.
It was an expensive aroma. He closed his eyes, his thumb stroking the worn shoulder of the leather. He imagined her someplace that wasn’t St. Francisville — maybe running through a department store, some high-end boutique, late for something, and getting caught in a fresh spray of Armani’sMy Way.
But the image shifted, unbidden, to something darker, more immediate — the steam-filled bathroom down the hall, where that sound had come from. He became suddenly aware of his cock against his denim, half hard already.
Judah lowered the jacket, left it where he’d found it.
The house was empty save for that rhythmic patter of water; the pull was magnetic.
He moved silently down the hall, the floorboards creaking faintly under his weight, each step drawing him closer to the cracked door of the guest bathroom. The air grew thick with humidity, carrying that same scent — vanilla and citrus, now mingled with soap and diluted further by water.
