Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Thea yawned and stretched on the vast, massive mattress, breathing in the smell of lime, mint, and the crisp softness of clean sheets. The wide-shouldered man lying in deep slumber beside her emitted the body heat of a large bear, soothing her into a cocoon of warmth.
She smiled to herself. He is like a big lion . He was caring, doting, prone to licking and biting, and obsessed with his glorious mane of hair—and protective and loyal to anyone in his chosen tribe.
After the many orgasms in the shower, Draven had toweled her off, eaten her out once more as she attempted to balance on the sink counter, and carried her to his bed. There, they cuddled and wrote notes to each other all night, eventually passing out from exhaustion.
Thea grabbed at the sheet of paper they used last night to communicate back and forth, so she could read and reminisce.
“ So, why the pearl necklace? ” He had written.
She had played with the pen before responding, “ My parents sent me to spend a lot of weekends with my grandparents growing up. My grandmother had lost most of her hearing, so they always used subtitles on the TV and wrote notes to each other. My grandfather’s family used to work in the production of silent movies, and he would run these old tapes in his dusty attic. We would sit side by side and watch and eat popcorn. ”
“ He made outdated silent movies my favorite. The dramatic acting. The outfits. ” She smiled softly. Her grandfather instilled in her a love for old, “classic” things. “ Grandpa knew I was having trouble fitting in at school, and he would point to the women on screen who always wore pearls and elaborate, classy dresses. He told me, ‘Nobody can disrespect someone in pearls.’ And I believed him. ”
She knew it sounded silly, but when she looked at Draven, she saw how seriously he absorbed her written words. “ So, there I was, a fourth grader wearing a strand of pearls every day after that. ”
From there, the old movies and the over emotive Lucille Ball shaped her retro style of dressing . Once Thea saw vintage 1950s cocktail dresses, and how they poof-ed out at the skirt, she fell in love.
Draven smiled and wrote, “ No one made fun of you for it? ”
She rolled her eyes. “ Of course, they did. A nine-year-old in pearls? Duh. But I never told Grandpa. He was so happy seeing me wear them, and that was enough .”
“ That’s how I feel about my grandmother, Mimi, ” Draven wrote back. “ I would do anything for her. She was my strand of pearls. ”
“ Is she still around? ”
“ Yeah. I visit her a lot. She got diagnosed with dementia several years ago, so she lives in a nursing home. It’s been rough . Maybe we can visit her together sometime? I got her a foosball table. She loves to defeat new people. The woman is competitive as hell. ”
Thea smiled. “ When you guys play, you let her win, don’t you? ”
Draven scoffed dramatically and wrote, “ Mimi is a foosball legend. She vanquishes all .”
Thea underlined her note, “ You let her win, don’t you? ”
Revealing nothing, Draven grinned at her with so much affection in his eyes that she knew he would do anything for his grandmother’s happiness, including purposefully losing at foosball.
Thea shook herself from the flashback of their notes over the span of the previous night.
Now, in the soft morning light, Thea’s gaze raked over the magnificent male beside her on the bed. Last night, she had learned so much more about him, falling even harder for him than before.
He loved cooking and soap operas and action comedies, where the normal average person who was least likely to become an action hero was tasked to save the world. He cheered for underdogs. He fought imposter syndrome. He made money to survive but played music to live. He used humor as a defense mechanism because he worried others did not want or care to hear his true thoughts and feelings.
Draven had written, “ There comes a time when being underestimated or being viewed as a stereotype starts to sink in and poison you. It’s a lot of back and forth of ‘I want to prove to them I’m not what they think’ and ‘Why waste energy trying to prove who I am to people who will never change? ’”
As a deaf child raised in a hearing family with other hearing children, Thea had never felt two sentences better represented her than what he wrote.
She had held his hand in her left one as she wrote back, “ I understand that completely. Growing up, I always felt like people expected me to be the shy, wallflower deaf kid. My parents put me in public schools for most of my childhood, thinking that was the way for me to learn lip-reading, which is so ridiculous. Only about thirty-five percent of English can be read on the lips, and it’s extremely difficult.”
She added, “ In the public hearing school, everyone expected me to be slow in classes, teachers told me I would have trouble keeping up. So, I worked harder than anyone else. I studied until my eyes stung each night. I had the highest grade point average at my school. One teacher accused me of cheating. I sent that teacher my college transcripts after graduating with my Bachelor’s. All A’s. 4.0 GPA. ”
Draven had bitten his lip and written, “ Damn, that’s hot .”
They had fooled around some more on his bed, but when she mounted him and stroked his cock against the junction between her thighs, aligning him with her entrance, he shook his head and said something.
He wouldn’t write it down, but she strained to understand the shapes of his mouth. It looked like, “ When you are ready .”
She was ready for sex with him now, but he distracted her with his fingers and mouth until they fell asleep.
Thea smiled to herself again as she watched him sleep. His hair was bunched in sexy bedhead spikes around his pillow. I like this man . A lot.
She grabbed at her phone and texted her friend group chat. “ Draven and I got together last night ,” she sent, holding her phone to her chest as excitement bubbled behind her ribcage.
In mere minutes, her phone buzzed with new messages.
Elisa: “ OMG, tell us everything! Scale of 1 to 10, how good? Scale of 1 to 10, how big? ”
Fifi: “ Good for you, Thea! After Alec, you needed a rebound. Proud of you for dipping your toe into hookup culture, lol .”
Thea’s smile dipped into a soft frown as she read their reactions.
Elisa: “ A one-night stand with your roommate/landlord is a bit messy, but we applaud your wild child status. After everything that went down with Asshole Alec—yes, that is his new legal name—you deserved to let your hair down and have some frivolous fun! ”
Frivolous fun? Thea glanced back over to Draven, a pang rattling in her chest. He had drawn a heart in the shower. They had stayed up writing notes back and forth. This was more than a hookup. As a finance major, she knew when she was fully invested.
Thea clarified in text, “ No, we’re actually together. Like a relationship .”
Fifi sent back almost immediately, “ You and Draven?!?!? Is this a different man named Draven? Not ‘Medusa’s Tears’ Draven? ”
“ How many other Dravens are there in California? ” Elisa wrote. “ Thea, what do you mean you guys are in a relationship? You mean just a rebound, exclusive, friends-with-benefits relationship? ”
“ I like him ,” Thea sent back, her fingertips furiously typing. “ It is not a rebound. ”
“ Babe ,” Fifi messaged. “ You and Alec were together for years. You just broke up less than a month ago .”
“ We were over before that, ” Thea replied. “ Draven is not a rebound to me .”
“ Thea, he doesn’t speak sign language ,” Elisa texted.
“ He is learning it .”
“ For how long? ” Fifi asked.
Fifi’s words triggered a box of emotion Thea had long ago locked away.
Years of group projects where her peers were not interested in providing Thea “playbacks” and “explanations” of what the others talked about, so they submitted things without her. Years where her hearing friends invited her to movies but not the ones with subtitles on the screen. Years where her co-workers said they did not have the time to “recap” meetings or phone calls for her, so they would handle those tasks themselves. People acted like it was too much effort to include her.
What happened when Draven realized it was too much effort to keep learning sign language to talk to her?
What if he drops me too?
* * *
When Draven awoke, his bed smelled like grapefruit. His heart felt like a stomach after a buffet—painfully full with no regret. He reached over to pull Thea into his arms but found the bed empty. Glancing around in alarm, he frowned at her absence.
Then, he saw the note.
“ Your breakfast is on the kitchen table .”
Grinning but also disappointed that he couldn’t make her breakfast this morning since she beat him to it, he strode down the hallway and to the kitchen.
He staggered at the banquet.
On the long, dark wood table, Thea laid back, legs spread, wearing nothing but the skimpiest of lacy, light pink lingerie. She had left pieces of their favorite cereal over her chest and abdomen, and she munched on some of them after getting hungry from waiting for him to wake.
Staring at his sexy-as-hell roommate—who had a big heart, goofy sense of humor, and love of the same sugar-ridden cereal—Draven noticed she wore one other item in addition to the erection-invoking lingerie. Her pearl necklace; the one that made her feel less like an outsider. Her shield. Her security blanket.
Nude and covered in cereal, she smiled at him, spread her legs wider, and continued munching on some of the pieces.
He thought to himself, “ I might love this enigma of a woman .”