Chapter 14 #2
I smile at the text. It’s just like Miriam to get straight to the point. When she’s not rambling from nerves, she doesn’t waste words and only says what she means.
Thank you, Doe. I’m good. Got scared for a minute but I’m okay since she is.
Miriam
It’s okay to share your feelings. You don’t have to keep them in around me. I would freak out if something happened to my father. He knows nothing about home remedies or taking care of himself.
The tension in my shoulders dissolves.
I appreciate you. What did you end up watching?
Miriam
I fell asleep on a baking show. Never made it to a movie.
Redo soon? I’ll bring popcorn and a pillow.
Miriam
Nice try, Romeo. You’re not sleeping here.
Romeo. That’s a first.
I’m far from romantically inclined, but I would climb a balcony outside of Miriam’s room just to mess with her.
Do I get a nickname now? I’m flattered. Also, you’re real cold, bestie.
Miriam
Cold as the sofa bed you won’t be sleeping on.
I let out a laugh and pocket my phone. Julian stares at me with a knowing grin.
“Miriam, I take it?”
I nod. “I was at her house last night when my mom called.”
Jalisa blew up my phone yesterday and invited herself over last night. I nearly missed my flight getting her out of Steel House.
Under normal circumstances, I’d welcome her open legs with open arms. But my mom was my priority last night.
And before she called you?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I frown at Julian, who smirks and rests his chin on his fist. “Get your head out of the gutter. We were on her sofa bed eating dinner, fully clothed and showered.” That sounds wrong. “Separate showers.”
“And why were you two eating dinner on a sofa bed after separate showers?”
“I don’t know, counselor. Because we got tired after a day of shopping for her house and painting her room. Don’t cross-examine me. Save your legal tricks for daddy’s law firm.”
He always does this whenever Miriam comes up.
“We’re friends,” I add.
“How many friends have you spent nonsexual time with for a day—”
“A day and a half. I came over on Friday.” Shit. I roll my eyes at the low rumble rattling his chest. Here we go.
“My apologies. It all sounds…cozy.”
A grin flashes across his face, but he conceals it with the rim of his kiddie cup.
It’s the same look I gave him three years ago, after he told me Ella and her kids were staying with him.
She was going through a bad divorce, and his sister offered up his Georgetown townhouse as temporary housing.
She left out the part that Julian still lived there and often came home between his stints in London.
He showed up one night.
She was in his bed.
And they lived happily ever after.
They fell in love, which is different from Miriam and me. I care for her—a lot—but there’s no “us,” and there never will be.
“Save your dad speech for your kids,” I jab. “I like talking to her, and I’m happy she’s in Buffalo with her sister and finally has her head out of a book. Nothing sexual is going on, unless you consider arranging encyclopedias on a bookshelf foreplay.”
A small part of me is relieved that Miriam and I never went through with our one-night stand.
At some point, I always grow tired of the person I’m sleeping with.
It feels too much like monogamy, and that’s not a diagnosis I want in my life right now.
If we fucked, it would change everything.
I doubt we’d be as close as we are. She’d go back to being a stranger, someone lost in a long line of forgotten women. Losing her isn’t an option.
I never told Julian about what happened three years ago for the simple fact that I don’t want to hear his dumb conspiracy theory about me becoming Russell Wilson like he did.
My pops still pursues my mom like he did back in college.
He hasn’t slowed down after thirty years of marriage.
They met at twenty, conceived me during Freaknik at twenty-three, and tied the knot the same year.
I’m not anti-commitment, but I’m not in a rush to settle down.
It’s why I never had a girlfriend and haven’t switched up my routine to accommodate one. A relationship isn’t top of mind because it’s not a priority.
Being a professional rugby player is my commitment.
We’re busy during the preseason, we travel during the regular season, and we keep busy during the off-season.
I’ll reach peak age to play once I turn thirty this year.
There’s still a lot I want to accomplish without a partner or family tying me down.
I have enough responsibilities as captain, and with Steel House.
“I watched you watch Miriam for years. My high school yearbooks always went missing and magically appeared in your room.” Julian chuckles and shakes his head. “You’re different with her. Less impulsive.”
Miriam is still the finest woman to walk the earth. I don’t know what it is about her that makes time stop, but I felt it when I first spotted her at the ripe age of eleven. Julian was a freshman in high school, and he took me to an anime club that met across from a science class.
That’s where I saw her.
Thick-rimmed glasses.
Curly hair.
Oversized sweater.
A pile of books in her hands.
My pops mistook my newfound interest in shadowing Julian during his extracurricular activities as an excitement for higher learning. But it was always her.
She still tilts the room without trying.
No matter how much charm I put on display or how hard I worked to earn her attention, she never saw me.
Now that we’re good friends, I won’t sacrifice the years we’ve spent getting to where we are for a nut.
She’s too precious, and I’d hurt her if I tried to be someone I’m not.
Someone who wants to commit and slow his life down for love.
“I’m good with what we are,” I say. Going back to a life of watching her only in glimpses won’t work for me.
Julian drops his cup in the sink. “If you don’t want to explore what could be, keep doing you. Just be careful. All of that time together has a way of changing a man’s tune.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
His grin widens. “I told myself the same thing. Now I have a wife, three kids, and am researching minivans.” He pats my shoulder on the way out of the kitchen. “Don’t let a hard head make for a soft ass.”
“We’re just friends!” I call out.
“Famous last words!” he volleys back.