Mutual Appreciation #3
“Always. What’s the meaning of this one,” she asked, tracing the script, the delicate lettering with a small music note beside it.
“Zion, Tre, Simone, and I all have it,” I told her. “Same design, different spots.”
She traced it again. “When did you get them?”
“Years ago. We were all doing our own things. Zion was finishing school in New York, Tre was preparing to go on tour, Simone looking at colleges.” I paused. “Simone wanted us to promise we’d stay connected no matter what.”
“That’s beautiful. And very Simone.”
Her fingers walked up my arm then down the side of my ribs, finding another one and tracing it.
“Find the melody,” she read aloud.
Every muscle in me went tense. She’d found the words inked between my arm and my ribs, hidden where no one would see them unless they were exactly where she was.
“What does that mean?”
My first instinct was to deflect. Tell her it was a lyric. The lie was right there on my tongue. But then I looked at her face, and something in me cracked.
“Those were my mother’s last words,” I said finally.
Alyssa went completely still. When she spoke again it was barely above a whisper. “Her last words?”
“Yes.” I stared at the ceiling. “She just kept repeating it. Find the melody. Find the melody. Even as my father carried her to the ambulance.”
“Do you know what she meant?”
“No. My father probably did. They had their own language. By the time I thought to ask him, he was already too broken. Too far gone. Then he left.”
She was quiet a long time, her finger still tracing the words. “You know,” she said, “maybe you’re already doing it.”
I looked at her, not understanding.
“The way you’ve led your family. Made sure they were all okay. There’s a rhythm to that. A melody.”
I didn’t want to respond to that, so I didn’t.
We just lay there in the quiet. She was the first person I’d ever told about that tattoo.
About my mother’s last words. And it had been easy to tell her at first. Then it wasn’t.
And I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
She didn't push for more. She just laid her palm flat over the words like she was keeping them warm, and let the quiet live.
After a while her breathing slowed, and she was asleep inside ten minutes. I didn't move. I didn't want to wake her, and I didn't want to sleep.
I couldn’t stop staring at her.
I lay there and let the night play back.
Thought about when I'd first put my mouth on her, when her thighs tensed and she offered me an out, as if I wasn’t salivating at the idea of tasting her.
Her whole body bracing like she expected to be treated like she was too much.
Like that part of it wasn't hers to want.
I'd made a decision right then, that she was going to unlearn that.
However many times it took. I hadn't slowed down and paid attention to every sound she made to prove anything.
That first lick hit, and I knew there was no way I was coming up until she fell apart.
I needed more of her. I wanted her to feel how good she tasted.
The more she moved and moaned, the more I lost myself. I wanted her to drown me in it.
She'd seemed surprised by it, and that surprise told me everything about the years behind her.
Then later, the way she'd cried from being looked at. Undone, because I held her face and let her see that I wanted her. She'd braced against it like it was a setup, and then she'd let herself believe it, and that cracked something open in her so fast she couldn't stop her tears.
You don't get like that on your own. Somebody starves you to that.
Someone has a woman like her in his house, in his bed, with that body, and that mind, and that heart, and treats her like a fixture.
Touches her without seeing her, taking what she gives and handing her back nothing, until she forgets she was supposed to be wanted at all. Until it feels foreign.
I lay there and the anger that boiled up in me had a dead man's name on it.
Malik Chambers had this. Had the whole of her and had let it go to waste like it was nothing.
The thought of his hands on her while making her feel small created a rage I hadn't felt in a long time.
I wanted him alive again just long enough for him to know that the woman he'd starved was lying in another man's bed, sated and safe and asleep, and that man knew precisely what he was holding.
I made myself breathe it down. He didn't get any more of her. Not even my anger.
I'd been with a lot of women. I won't pretend otherwise. I knew what good was. I knew what it was to enjoy somebody and wake up the next morning unchanged.
I'd never once lain in the dark afterward and felt rearranged. She thought I was the one who'd given her something tonight. She had no idea she'd handed me the thing I'd spent half my life making sure nobody could reach.
I pulled her in tighter. She was mine to care for now. Even if I couldn't say it out loud yet. Even if I had no clue what I was supposed to do with that.