Prologue #2
He knew I couldn’t fall asleep if the closet door were open, which side of my neck was more sensitive, and when I was lying about being okay.
He even knew when I actually needed him to leave me alone instead of asking me what was wrong twenty times.
There were things about me I’d probably forgotten telling him, but somehow, Smoke remembered them.
He took one last pull from the blunt before tossing the roach off the hill. He blew the smoke out as his thumb rubbed slowly over my thigh through my jeans. “What’s up?”
I shook my head, finishing off the spiked cider in my cup. “Nothing.”
“There you go wit’ that shit.”
“What shit?”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of gum, and popped it into his mouth. “Thinkin’ too damn hard and then sayin’ nothin’.”
“I don’t do that.”
“You been doin’ it for weeks, Lacey.”
I looked back toward town, and we sat there quietly for a while.
The wind moved through the trees behind us, and a few dead leaves scraped across the pavement below.
The lights around the high school football field came on even though the season had ended the week before.
I was still excited, but sitting on that hill with Smoke made leaving feel a lot more real.
“You could still come with me,” I said.
His hand stopped moving, and I knew the answer before he said anything. I hated myself a little for asking the question anyway. “Solace.”
“I’m just saying.”
“And I’m tellin’ yo’ ass what I been tellin’ you. I’m not comin’.”
“You could find construction work anywhere.”
“That ain’t the problem.”
“I know.”
“Then why the fuck you keep bringin’ this shit up?”
Because I wanted him to give me a different answer, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I looked at him. “Anthony and Keyana can come to L.A. too. We can get a place big enough for all of us.”
Smoke’s face tightened, and his arm dropped from around me. “See, that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout. You tryna make this shit work for you without even thinkin’ ’bout what the fuck I got goin’ on.”
“Babe, you know that’s not true.”
“Yeah, it is. You got this whole shit figured out in yo’ head. You got the job, you wanna go to L.A., so now me, my brother and my baby sister ‘posed to pack our shit up and follow you?”
He shook his head and looked away from me, and I watched his jaw tighten. “My mama ain’t been home in four days, Lace. She missed pickin’ Key up from school Tuesday, and Ant called me ‘cause they ain’t have shit in the house to eat. Tell me who else was ‘posed to handle that.”
Truthfully, I didn’t have an answer.
“They thirteen and nine,” he continued. “I can’t just disrupt they lives and pack us up. Who gon’ look out for my mama, Lacey? Who gon’ try to help her put the bottle down and lay off these fuckin’ drugs? Huh?”
“I don’t know.” My throat tightened. “I just… I just keep thinking there has to be a way you can have your own life too.”
Smoke looked at me for a long moment. The look he gave me made me regret the words immediately. “This is my life. They part of it.”
I sighed and stared down at my hands. “I know. That came out wrong.” Smoke wasn’t yelling at me, but somehow the harder edge in his voice felt worse. “I want you to want something outside of this place too.”
He scoffed, “Who the fuck said I don’t?” I just looked at him. “I tell you all the time I wanna work for myself,” he continued. “I wanna get my own crew and stop makin’ other niggas money doin’ shit I know how to do myself. I want a house. I got shit I wanna do.”
“In Bellhaven.”
“So the fuck what? ‘Cause it ain’t no big city, it ain’t shit?”
I didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t hurt him. He watched me long enough to find it anyway. “I didn’t say that.”
“You ain’t gotta.”
“Don’t do that shit.”
“Do what?”
“Turn this into me thinking I’m better than everybody because I wanna leave!”
“I ain’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” His mouth twitched, and I shoved him again. “Asshole.”
This time he caught my hand and kept it. I tried to pull away, but he tightened his fingers around mine and brought my hand to his mouth. He kissed my knuckles, and just like that, some of the tension left me.
“I want you to go,” he told me. “You been talkin’ ’bout gettin’ outta here since we was kids, Lace. Especially after watchin’ yo’ Pops lose that fight wit’ cancer, I know you need a fuckin’ break from this town. You need to go see some shit, live a little. I ain’t tryna be the reason you don’t.”
I frowned. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. You got yo’ degree. Got that lil’ fancy ass job you won’t shut up ‘bout.”
“Marketing analyst is not fancy.”
“Whatever the fuck it is.”
“You don’t even know what I do.”
“Make PowerPoints and tell people shit they already know.”
My mouth fell open. “Fuck you.”
“See? I know exactly what you do.” I laughed despite myself, and he tugged my hand until I leaned into him. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and kissed the side of my head. “I want you to go handle yo’ shit, baby,” he said with a deep sigh. “For real.”
I swallowed. “What about us?”
He was quiet for a second, then chuckled. “Like you been sayin’, you only movin’ to a new city. You ain’t goin’ to fuckin’ Australia.”
“It can still change things.”
“Shit. Only if we let it.”
I looked up at him. “You really think it’s that simple?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t, and that was the problem. Smoke had never lived anywhere but Bellhaven.
Neither had I until college, and even then I’d only been ninety minutes away with dorms, meal plans, and holidays that always brought me home.
This was different, though. I wanted to build something.
I wanted the career I had worked for. I wanted to live somewhere with buildings taller than the normal.
I wanted happy hours and restaurants I hadn’t been eating at since I was five.
I wanted to walk into rooms where nobody knew me and make them learn my name. I wanted to find out who I was when Bellhaven wasn’t telling me who I’d always been. And I wanted Smoke. I just didn’t know how to want both without eventually being forced to choose.
He tilted my chin up. “Where you at?”
I smiled faintly. “I’m right here.” He studied my face before leaning down and kissing me.
I kissed him back immediately. His hand slid beneath my coat and around my waist, pulling me closer.
I wrapped both arms around his neck and kissed him deeper, tasting spiked apple cider and the weed he’d smoked.
He pulled away just enough to look at me. “Stop thinkin’ so much. Let’s go to my crib.”
I raised an eyebrow. “For what?” He looked at me like the answer was obvious, and I smiled. “You really think you’re so irresistible.”
“You know this dick makes yo’ ass weak. C’mon.”
I rolled my eyes, but I still followed him down the path that led from the top of the hill.
Smoke kept my hand in his as we made our way back toward the street, and we walked the few blocks to Ash Street together.
By the time we reached his place, I was cold enough to hurry inside as soon as he unlocked the door.
Smoke had been renting the small townhouse for almost a year, and even though he complained about everything wrong with it, he’d fixed half the place himself.
The loose kitchen cabinet was gone. The living room had new flooring, and he’d replaced the bathroom vanity after the old pipes leaked.
The first time I’d walked inside after he moved in, I’d joked that he was practicing for the house he kept saying he would build for us one day.
We didn’t make it much farther than the front door tonight. I barely got my coat off before his hands were on me, and I laughed against his mouth as he backed me into it. “Damn. Can I take my sneakers off?”
“Nah.”
“Smoke…”
His mouth moved down my neck, and my argument disappeared with it. His hand slipped beneath the hoodie, rough palm warm against my skin. I closed my eyes. I wanted to live in this moment forever, but I knew it wasn’t possible.
I wouldn’t have his hands on me whenever I wanted them, wouldn’t fall asleep with him buried against my back or wake up to him pulling me closer because I’d drifted too far across the bed.
There wouldn’t be random nights at his place that turned into mornings, quick kisses when I caught him around town, or sex just because we had twenty minutes and somewhere private.
The thoughts landed so suddenly that my eyes flew open and Smoke noticed. He lifted his head. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Solace.”
“Just… fuck me.”
He stared at me for a second longer, checking to see if I was about to start crying, before he leaned down and kissed me hard. His tongue pushed into my mouth as he reached down and yanked the heavy hoodie straight up over my head, dropping it on the floor next to my purse.
He unclasped my bra from behind with one hand, tossing it aside so his palms could cup my breasts, squeezing them until I let out a sharp breath against his mouth.
He used his thumbs to rub across my nipples until they hardened, then leaned down to take my left nipple into his mouth, sucking hard while his teeth scraped lightly over the tip.
“Baby,” I groaned, grasping the sides of his face.
“You still thinkin’ too hard?” he muttered against my chest, his free hand already undoing the button of my jeans.
“No,” I whimpered, arching my back off the door as he slid his hand down inside the front of my underwear.
His fingers were already slick when he slipped two of them between my lips, sliding them up and down through my wetness.
He let out a low grunt against my collarbone when he felt how soaked I was.
He pushed his middle finger inside me, slow at first to feel the heat, then pushed his second finger in while his thumb went straight to my clit, rubbing in firm, steady circles.
I let my head drop back against the wood, biting down on my lower lip.
“Mmm! God…”
“Mhm. Lemme hear you,” he whispered, pumping his fingers in and out of me with a wet, heavy rhythm.