I could bet that the words slipped out before she could stop them, and I watched colour flood her cheeks in the dashboard’s blue glow. She looked mortified.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked, leaning slightly closer without meaning to.
“Good,” she said quietly, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her. “It’s… good.”
Her lips were slightly parted, and I found myself staring at them, wondering what they would feel like. What they would taste like.
“Kelechi,” I said, her name scraping up my throat like broken glass.
She looked up at me then, and the expression in her eyes made my heart stutter. There was fear there, yes, but also something that looked a lot like… want. The same that I’d seen at the bar when I had told her to be curious instead of scared.
I lifted my hand slowly, giving her time to pull away, and tucked a strand of her braid behind her ear. My fingertips grazed her cheek, and she leaned into the touch almost unconsciously.
“Marley?” she breathed, her eyes fluttering closed.
“Princess,” I murmured.
When she opened her eyes again, they were dark and uncertain.
“I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
“You don’t have to understand everything,” I said, my thumb brushing the line of her jaw. “Sometimes you just have to feel it.”
She didn’t move away. If anything, she leaned in, drawn by the same invisible force that was pulling me towards her. I could feel her breath against my lips, could see the way her pulse was racing in the hollow of her throat.
“We shouldn’t,” she whispered, but she didn’t pull away.
“Probably not,” I agreed, my voice barely audible.
The distance between us was disappearing, inch by careful inch. I could feel the heat radiating from her skin, could see the way her eyes kept flicking down to my lips. My heart was pounding so hard.
Just as our lips were about to meet, her phone rang, loud and jarring in the intimate silence. We sprang apart like we’d been burned, both of us breathing hard.
She fumbled for her phone with shaking hands, and I saw a woman’s contact photo lighting up the screen.
“I have to…” she said, her voice unsteady.
“Yeah,” I said, running a hand through my hair and trying to get my bearings. “Of course.”
She answered on the fourth ring, her voice instantly transforming into something more formal.
“Hello, mummy. Good evening, ma,” she said, and I could hear the slight breathlessness she was trying to hide.
I leaned back in my seat, giving her space, but unable to help myself from listening. Her side of the conversation was fascinating. The way her whole demeanour shifted, becoming more deferential, more… contained.
“Yes ma, I’m fine. Just… just doing some late-night reading,” she said, glancing at me with wide eyes as the lie tumbled from her lips.
I bit my knuckle to keep from laughing. Late-night reading indeed.
“No ma, just school and the library,” Kelechi continued, her eyes staying on mine. There was something almost conspiratorial about the way she was looking at me, like we were sharing a secret.
Which, I suppose, we were.
“Yes, I’m being a good girl. Of course, ma,” she said, and this time I couldn’t suppress the quiet snort of amusement that escaped me.
She shot me a look that was part embarrassment, part amusement, her lips twitching as she tried not to smile while talking to her mother.
Good girl, I thought, my mind immediately going places it had no business going.
