“You settling in?”
“As much as I can I guess.”
I let the silence linger a little before blowing out a thick cloud of smoke to fill my space in the perfect ringed circles. “You know, you took that throne so that makes us Opps now, but we don’t have to be.”
I could picture her while we talked too. Probably sitting somewhere expensive in Colombia with a drink in her hand, jewelry on, hair perfect, looking beautiful and sad at the same time. That was Victoria for you though just beautiful and sad. Victoria was mentally unstable when it came to loving somebody and it’s almost like she imprinted on people. All I did was give her a chance and she wanted everything I had including my wife. She was the type of woman when her emotions were unbalanced you didn’t know what she would do. If I let that shit fly, that might be something I’d end up regretting for the rest of my life.
“You eating?” I asked.
That made her laugh softly. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because you love to cook a bunch of food from of your culture while you dancing around and shit.”
“And you know that because?”
“Because I pay attention and you did it in my condo. I don’t forget nothing, you know that.”
She got quiet again. “You shouldn’t call me if you don’t mean it,” she finally said.
“Mean what?”
“Any of this.”
I looked out into the dark again. “I mean I’m checking on you. What is there to mean?”
“That’s not enough.”
“For right now it is but you always want more. That’s the problem.”
Her breathing changed a little on the other end. “Do you miss me?” she suddenly asked.
I shook my head. There it was, that emotion and it was too easy.
“Victoria…”
She cut me off. “No… answer me.”
I leaned my elbows against the rail. “You was never mine to miss like that. I’m not sure what I was supposed to miss. I knew you for a short amount of time and I helped you. That wasn’t enough.”
She got quiet because it was the truth. I never promised her shit. I never told her I wanted her and never acted like she had some special place in my life. That was all shit she made up in her own head because I was nice to her when nobody else was.
“You cared about me though,” she said quietly.
“I did.”
“Do.” She corrected me.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I do.” Shit I’d tell her whatever she wanted to hear right now without taking it too far. She got quiet again, so I finished talking. “And that’s why you should stop making things harder than they got to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I said.”
“Easy for you to say,” she whispered. “You got everything.”
I looked at the sparkling pool and thought about my wife downstairs and my baby coming. My whole future was sitting in that house behind me. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I do.”
She didn’t answer right away. Then she sighed. “I’m tired, Dom.”
