7. The Invitation
SEVEN
THE INVITATION
NAILAH
The tacos were gone. The Styrofoam containers closed and stacked on his hood. The sky had gone full purple, streetlights buzzing orange along Northside Drive, and neither of us had moved.
His thigh was touching mine now. Full contact. Warm through denim. And I was thinking about the roach conversation, how easy it came out of my mouth: Kirkwood. Off Memorial. The way he'd said that's fifteen minutes from my studio and let the math sit between us.
Fifteen minutes. This whole time.
"You wanna follow me?" I said.
His head turned. Cap low. Eyes catching the streetlight.
"Where?"
"My place." I slid off the hood. My keys already in my hand. "You said you'd kill the roaches."
He smiled. Slow. That jaw shift that started in the muscle and crawled upward until it reached his eyes. "I don't see any roaches out here, Nailah."
"Maybe they're inside."
He was off the hood before I finished the sentence.
I drove home with him in my rearview. Black Escalade. Headlights steady two car lengths back. Patient. Following me through Memorial and left onto my street, past the coffee shop that closed at six, past the neighbors with the loud windchimes, into the driveway of my apartment building.
My hands were steady on the wheel but my chest was doing something new. A hum underneath the calm. An awareness. I was about to let a man into the space I'd built to be alone in. My safe space.
No man had been in this apartment in over a year.
I parked. He pulled in beside me. Got out. Looked at the building the way a photographer looks at everything: noting the light, the angles, the story the brick and the ivy told.
"Cute spot," he said.
"It's mine." I unlocked the front door. Led him up the one flight of stairs. Unlocked my apartment. Pushed the door open and let him walk in first.
I wanted to watch him enter my world the way I'd entered his.
His shoulders filled my doorframe.
He stepped inside and something rearranged in my apartment.
The proportions shifted. My living room, which always felt spacious, suddenly had a center of gravity it hadn't owned before.
Him. Standing on my rug with his hands in his pockets, looking at my bookshelf, my plants, the terracotta pots on the windowsill catching the last of the evening light.
"You read all these?" He tilted his head at the shelf. Toni Morrison. Octavia Butler. Zora. A whole row of romance novels with cracked spines.
"Every one."
He pulled one out. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Turned it in his hands. The spine was held together with love and tape. "This one's been through it."
"Read it four times."
He slid it back. Gentle. Respectful of the space. Respectful of me.
I set my keys on the hook by the door. Kicked off my shoes.
Watched him take in my apartment: the cream couch with the knit blanket thrown over the arm, the candles clustered on the coffee table–unlit but fragrant–the kitchen visible through the half wall where a bottle of wine sat uncorked from two nights ago.
"Wine?" I asked.
"Yeah."
I poured two glasses. Red. The good one Bria bought me for my birthday that I'd been saving for something worth opening. Handed him one.
He took it. Our fingers touched on the glass. His eyes found mine.
This is different.
In the studio, everything was charged from the moment I walked through the door. The amber hallway, the charcoal walls, the tools on the rack. That space was designed for intensity. Every surface was a trigger. Every silence was loaded.
But here, in my apartment, with the ceiling fan clicking overhead and the neighbor's dog quiet for once and the evening air coming through the cracked window... here was just two people. Drinking wine. Standing in a kitchen. Breathing the same air.
And I wanted him just as badly in this soft light as I'd wanted him in that dark room.
More.
I wanted him more.
Because this was real. This wasn't a session with a start and an end and rules about who spoke first. This was a man in my apartment on a Wednesday evening because we'd eaten tacos together and I wasn't ready to let him leave.
That realization settled warm behind my sternum.
You want him. Not the room. Not the dynamic. Him.
"Come sit," I said. Walked to the couch. Curled into the corner of it with my wine and my legs pulled up. He sat beside me. Close. His arm stretching across the back of the cushions behind my head. His body angled toward me. Open.
"This is nice," he said. Looking around again. "Feels the way you feel."
"What does that mean?"
"Warm, intentional, everything in here was chosen." He nodded at the plants. "Even those. You picked every one."
I had. The snake plant. The pothos trailing from the shelf. The orchid on the kitchen windowsill that I'd been nursing back to health for three months.
He caught me looking at the orchid. Smiled.
"Your flower," he said. Quiet.
"My flower."
We talked about a shoot he'd done that morning: a woman celebrating her fortieth birthday, wanted portraits draped in red. His voice went soft when he described it. The pride. This was what he loved about his work: witnessing women remember themselves.
I told him about the Bria situation at work, how she kept side eyeing me about my "new pillow" theory and I was running out of deflections.
"Just tell her," he said.
"Tell her what? 'Hey Bria, I've been sneaking off to play in a man's studio'?"
He laughed. Head back. Hand on his chest. That full body laugh I'd seen at Malik's dinner from across the table. But up close, in my apartment, with his knee touching mine and the sound of it filling my living room, it was a different thing entirely. Intimate. Mine.
"Tell her you're seeing someone," he said. "You don't have to explain what we do. Just that I exist."
That I exist.
"Do you?" I asked. Quieter now. Setting my wine on the table. "Exist? In my life? Outside of that room?"
His hand moved from the back of the couch to the back of my neck. Warm. His thumb finding the short hair at my nape. Tracing circles there that made my eyes want to close.
"I'm in your apartment right now, Nailah.
" His voice low. "On your couch. Drinking your wine.
Looking at your books. I've been here for an hour and I haven't tried to leave once.
" His thumb pressed into the tension at the base of my skull and my whole body softened toward him. "I exist wherever you let me."
I turned into him. Shifted my body on the couch until my knee was over his thigh and my face was close enough to count the freckles on his jaw. His hand stayed on my neck. Holding. Present.
"I want you here," I said. "I want you in my space."
Something moved behind his eyes. That cracked open thing that lived behind the composure. The softness he only showed me.
"Yeah?" Barely above a whisper.
"Yeah."
He leaned in.
His mouth found mine gentle. Slow. Lips pressing against mine with a tenderness I hadn't known his mouth was capable of. His hand cradling the back of my head. His other hand finding my waist, resting there.
I kissed him back. Matching his pace. Letting it be unhurried. Letting my mouth open against his in increments, tasting the wine on his tongue when it slid against mine. The warmth of it spreading through my jaw, my neck, my shoulders dropping from where they'd been held tight.
Oh.
This was what I'd been missing.
His hand sliding from my waist to my hip, pulling me closer because gravity alone wasn't enough. Me climbing into his lap because the couch was too wide with any space between us.
I straddled him. My knees on either side of his hips.
His hands finding both of my thighs. My arms draping over his shoulders, fingers lacing at the back of his neck.
We kissed and kissed and kissed without urgency, without destination, without the ticking clock of a session ending or a door that needed to stay locked.
His mouth left mine. Traveled to my jaw. My ear. The space just below it where my pulse kicked fast. He pressed his lips there and stayed. Breathing me in the way he always did. That deep inhale that used to make me self conscious but now made me press closer.
"You smell good," he murmured against my neck. "Always."
I tilted my head. Gave him more of my throat. Not because he commanded it. Because I wanted his mouth there. Because it felt good and I was allowed to want things that felt good.
His hands slid up my thighs. Under my shirt. His palms flat against my ribs. Warm. Wide. Holding me together from the inside out.
"Is this okay?" he asked against my skin.
"Everything you're doing is okay."
He pulled back to look up at me.
"You're beautiful," he said.
"You always say that."
"Because it's always true." His thumbs stroked my ribcage. Slow circles. "But right now," He shook his head. "You're something else, Nailah."
I kissed him again because I didn't know what else to do with the feeling expanding in my chest. Kissed him deeper this time.
My tongue finding his. My hips shifting forward in his lap, pressing into him, feeling him hard beneath me and not doing anything about it.
Just acknowledging. Just knowing we were both here.
Both wanting. Both choosing to stay in this moment instead of racing toward the next one.
His dick was thick and obvious beneath me, pressing up through his jeans, and every time I shifted my weight his breath caught.
I could feel the heat of him through the layers between us.
Could feel my pussy getting wetter every time his hips rolled up involuntarily, his body answering mine before his brain could regulate the response.
I ground down. Once. Slow. Deliberate. Felt the ridge of him press against my clit through the denim and my breath stuttered.
His hands gripped my hips. Squeezed. Held me there.
"Nailah." His voice was tight. Controlled. Warning.
"I know," I said against his mouth. "I'm not starting anything. I just..." I rolled my hips again. The pressure against my clit sending heat up through my stomach. "I just want to feel you."