Chapter 25 Miz
25
MIZ
W e’re really doing this . Kal, who does everything so attentively, enters me with as much care as I would expect him to, as I have imagined him doing lately, as if he doesn’t want to take even a second of this for granted. Holy mother of God. I never knew my body held the answers to the questions that have lived in his, that he is finally asking me, more and more earnestly, as he sinks in deeper. And I am answering him as completely, as fully as I can without splintering into nothingness. These questions and answers that have no words attached to them, and yet they make complete sense. I take him in with my body and give all of mine to him, not sure whether either of us will get out of this alive. He digs his fingers into me, firing up all my nerves.
“Have we done this before?” I manage to ask in bursts and gasps. He nestles his face into my neck, hiking my thigh higher up his side. No, of course not. I’m trying to remember every moment of this, but the more we roll into each other, the more we slip and slide with our heat, the more I feel a terrifying loss of control over my body, my voice, and my brain, giving over to a riptide of nothing but yes yes yes to everything, whatever it is you’re doing.
“I’m making love to you,” he groans in response.
Did he just say that out loud? Oh shit. Oh. My. God.
“Is that okay?”
“Yes you should you should…”
“Because I do, Miz. Love you. So much, nefse .”
That’s it. Hearing Kal call me his soul , and knowing —no, feeling —at a cellular level how much he means it by how he holds me, as if he needs my permission for his every breath, for his soul, unhinges me. I shatter into a sweet black void. I don’t know how many eons later, somewhere in that delicious darkness while he’s still draped over me, I feel the reverberations of his voice.
“ Techawechi, ” he says, teasing me.
I can feel his smile against my skin. He knows I find the expression—the way people toss it at you to invite you to talk, chitchat, shoot the shit, be interesting —so annoying. I smack his butt. Talk? I just sang a whole opera for you—wasn’t that interesting enough? He lifts his head to look at me. We take each other in, staring in wonder, as if we can’t believe the other has been here all along. He rolls me on top of him, closes his eyes and sighs, tucking his hands behind his head. I watch him as his breathing slows gradually, my chin propped on his chest.
“ Psst …” I say, swiping my fingers along his hairline as if I’m waking a baby. He hums. I hold his nose. His heartbeat continues its steady rhythm under my chest. “Don’t fall asleep on me.”
“Not sleep. Only dreams.”
“About?”
“Happiest day of my life.”
“Actually, Kal, it’s the evening,” I say with a smile.
“I should have picked you up properly.”
“Well, you started to, but then you had to try the mattress, and the rest is history.”
“We should have left together, kissed some knees on our way out.”
“Huh?”
“Our wedding day.”
“Oh!” The wedding tradition, he means, the whole charade where the couple, when departing from the bride’s house, first have to make as if they must hit the floor to kiss their parents and other close family elders’ feet, before compromising for the knees only because the elders insist. “Who cares?” I bunch my fingernails over his kneecap and slide them open. He buckles but holds fast. “We can kiss our own knees just fine. Or each other’s.” I run my hands up the inside of his leg. “I actually have sensitive knees.”
“Runners tend to.”
“ Very sensitive. They get so offended if you don’t kiss them.”
He licks his lips, looking down at my knees like a thirsty man at a stream. What I’m really hoping is he’ll get sidetracked about 50 percent of the way there and decide to pay a visit to another very sensitive spot. “I got you,” he says. He lifts my leg up gently and bends to kiss one knee; then he rolls me over so he can kiss the other. I shiver with the pleasure of it, my toes curling. He continues to kiss me up the inside of my thigh. I let my legs fall open like a well-loved notebook.
—
“When did you get so bendy?” Aimé asks me on Sunday, two weeks later, when she catches me folding my body in the sauna in my condo building, where we are broiling after a run. We have the whole hot box to ourselves. She is laid out on the top bench, happy to have lived to see another rest and recovery day after a gruelling ten-kilometre-total week. I am at the far end of the bottom bench, my feet stretched up against the wall, feeling the gentle burn on the tips of my toes.
Aimé had looked at me funny when she caught me stretching before we set out on our run too. Not too different from the look I’ve been giving myself on every reflective surface since that night, feeling almost too shy to meet my own eyes. Who are you, lady? The Miz Aimé knows is a walking contradiction who spends her days mobilizing and stretching people but doesn’t do shit for herself. Well, things change. So much. Never in my life have I interrupted a guy before his job was done between my legs so that he would be on and in me when I tipped over. But with Kal, I had forced him to pause mid-swirl to pull him up to me. I already missed his heat, the weight of him pinning me down, the lemony sweat of him sating my tongue.
I sit up on the sauna bench and groan, belatedly putting one ankle over the opposite knee and leaning forward, as if it’s the external rotation of my hip joint, and not the memory of Kal, that’s got me vocalizing. “There’s somebody new been stretching me out,” I say.
Somebody new but also not new at all , I add to myself, grinning. Each time Kal and I get together, it gets less scary, more addictive. When he first started to go down on me though, doing a U-turn from my knees, my mind had gone into total panicked overdrive. Oh my god, Kalkidan Legesse’s mouth is about to be on my stuff (freshly showered, thank god), and there’s not going to be any coming back from this, no more being only friends again! Right, as if we hadn’t decimated that point of no return earlier. But this felt like a whole other level of boundary breaking. And he took his time working his way there too, so I had plenty of opportunity to put on the brakes. Opportunity, yes. Motive, zero. I just prayed, Please, God, let him be good at it.
“Oooooooh,” Aimé says, flipping onto her side, eagerly wiggling her fancy pedicure, another reward for her training, like her designer run outfits and overpriced shoes and specialty socks that have L and R on them. “Who? But wait, is Kal okay with it?”
“Hell yeah. Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Sensitive as he is? He doesn’t know, does he? Maybe it’s better that he doesn’t.”
“Okay, slow down. He knows,” I say. Oh, he knows a lot. For someone who’s been (he claims) out of commission in the bedroom department for years. Liar, liar, boxers on fire. But I can’t force out of him what he doesn’t want to tell. And I’m not sure I want to know, either. I’m good to just send a telepathic thanks, girl , to whoever she is/they are out there. Even if it is Muna.
“You think he’s seeing someone too?” Aimé says.
I don’t know why she’s so concerned about Kal when I’m the one who’s bringing the tea. “He is,” I say levelly, enjoying this way too much. I feel my voltage spiking again, remembering how Kal had flowed up to me once I managed to drag him away from my very happy place, eyelids hooded with renewed desire, mouth glistening, kissing me all the way up. How naked I felt holding the gaze of eyes that had really seen all of me now.
Aimé snaps her fingers in the general direction of my face. “Yoohoo, I’m waiting. Who is he? Give me the specs. And do you know anything about Kal’s girl, or are you guys keeping your side action on a strictly need-to-know basis?”
Side action makes me grin ear to ear again. Which round was it? The third? The fourth? Because of course, by then, I had already told him my favourite position. My back to his front, his hands greedy on my breasts, his leg curved around my hip, his teeth grazing my neck.
Whoosah! I turn my focus back to Aimé.
“You could say that. Who is he? Hmm, where do I begin?” I pretend to contemplate the question. “So, he’s this guy. He’s good not just to me but to my people, even the ones he hasn’t met. Like my mom. Without expecting a word of thanks or acknowledgement from her, he helped out so much to make her big trip back home smooth. Limo service to the airport, excess baggage allowance, on-the-spot upgraded seats—his family has so many more loyalty points accumulated between them than I will in my lifetime. He even helped me shop for all the gifts she asked me to buy, renting a car for the day. And when she left, he really showed up for me because I was miserable. He came to the airport, stayed out of the way and then spent the whole day with me. He’s just so sweet. The way he loves his family, feeds all his roommates. And, get this, not only is he a quiet sleeper, he lets me have all the sheets! And he’s got these cheekbones, oh my god. And he always, literally always, smells like lemony shoe polish. And looking at him, he doesn’t look very sturdy, you know? But when he holds you, really holds you, he’s just so fucking solid. And strong, Jesus! He’s got surprising strength, let me tell ya.”
I giggle, remembering the first time he tried to lift me and how that went. I sigh dreamily. “No one makes me feel as accepted as he does.”
I know Aimé has put two and two together because she’s teary-eyed and her hand is over her heart. “Is this individual,” she says, her voice shaky, “by any chance known as Kiki to his family?”
“Aims!” That’s information that no one in Canada knows except for me, and which I’ve sworn Aimé to total secrecy about. With the Drake song everywhere last summer, it had got really hard to keep my mouth shut about it. I was so tempted to even make it Kal’s ringtone in my contacts.
I cover my face with my hands like monkey see no evil. “But…yeah, he is,” I squeak.
Aimé’s hands flutter in the air. “You two crossed over!”
I peer at her through my fingers. “Pearly gates, baby!” I squeal in excitement.
Her eyes go full-on puppy dog. “I’m so happy! This is so beautiful.”
“Say what? Is it too hot in here?” I was expecting a stern I warned you about this , what are you doing, this is your good friend, are you ready for the consequences ? All of the above. Basically, all the things I’ve been trying not to say to myself, not Disney levels of swooning.
“I’ve wanted this for you for so long.”
“I don’t know why. I mean, your girl has never been one to go unserviced for an extended period.”
“Come on, you know what I mean. That you’re finally in a serious relationship!”
“Whoa, Nelly!” I push my hands down. “Slow down.”
“Look at you, married before me!”
“Time out, time out. We are definitely not ‘married.’ We’re just—”
“But did you hear yourself just now? You gave me zero dirty details. Like, was his junk as advertised through those flimsy wraps and skirts and tights he used to march all up and through the stage in?” She hunched up her shoulders and flipped her palms. “I dunno.”
I sway, twisting my body girlishly. “For the record.” I lower my voice to a hush. “Yes.”
“Eee!” Aimé shrieks, bopping in place. “Win and win!”
“I feel weird gossiping about his junk,” I say, chewing my thumbnail. I can feel him in my mouth, the taste of him, for hours afterward, and the heat and thickness of him in my hand, how pantingly weak he becomes when I take my time teasing him, circling and flicking him until he quivers to be inside me again.
“Of course, you do. This is Kal, not just some dude. It’s special. Maybe this is how the real thing was meant to happen for you.”
“Again, hold your horses. Look into my eyeballs. We. Are. Just…” I had anticipated she’d interrupt, but she leaves me hanging with a daring look in her eyes. “Us. With a bit extra.” I know it’s not nothing. It’s precisely because it could never be nothing with Kal that I’ve not messed with Kal in all this time. Not that we ever had a window of opportunity early on in our friendship, since he was already hardcore taken.
Aimé very obviously mouths the word boyfriend . “Mmm,” I say, preferring lover . But I concede. “Boyfriend-in-progress.”
“Ohkaay,” she singsongs. “Are you guys on the same page about that?”
“Absolutely.” Then of course, I zip through my mental storage for any tendencies Kal might have shown that he might be under the wrong impression. Red flags. Fine, he called me nefse , his soul, but so what? That’s practically clichéd. While inside me though ? Okay, that was a wtf. And that daydream afterward, reimagining our wedding? Cringe. But that was just him redirecting the scene as if it were a play. Perfectly natural thing for him to do.
Still, Aimé’s words have put me on hyperalert.