Chapter 14
mad
. . .
Why hadn’t Washington counted my tardiness against me? That man forgot nothing, and the punctuality section of our contract was exhaustive. Well, if he wasn’t angry, this girl would be a reformed self-snitch.
Well into the evening, I’d wanted to brush the back of my hand against his forehead. He’d been so sweet, trying to protect me around Bridget. As if he knew?
No. He wouldn’t have let her slide at the funeral for calling me childfree. For the insinuation. Not a chance.
In the worst-case scenario, he’d make her look dumb in front of her mimosa crew.
Best-case scenario? The same thing. An entire monologue thesis, except he would’ve finished her with a side of Crystal Hot Sauce and a mic drop.
In retrospect, the best-and worst-case scenarios might need to be flipped.
Since I would’ve loved to see him slay her ass.
But speaking of women who acted a plumb fool because of money, I wondered if he would feel me when I gave the brief description of my decision to create Francisco Philippe vases for Omari.
Yeah, he’d understand, right? As the car smoothed over the Crescent City Connection, the bridge’s lights blurred into streaks.
I shifted in my seat, rehearsing what I’d say.
So, I’d begin, because every intellectual convo began with that two-letter word.
Omari commissioned me to make a few fake vases.
Then he’d ask me to elaborate on the fakeness of the situation.
Nope. Not gonna do it.
Note to self: the only mention of fake includes us … our relationship. Fake and forced.
“Where are we going?” I asked ten minutes later.
The streetlight hit that head with such perfection that my chest thumped.
I found myself captivated by this man. My entire body was ready to commit anarchy.
Lawd, why did he mention how I once massaged Dome Daddy?
So disrespectful to my lady areas, which wanted to remain incognito.
Washington stopped in the parking lot of a suspicious, boxy warehouse. No windows. A few cars. The only streetlight cast a dim glow half a block away, leaving his sexy bald head sitting in a lonely shadow. I crossed my arms. “Where are we?”
“Rage room.”
“Why?”
Washington got out of his rented Range Rover.
I remained frozen when he came around to open the passenger door.
“C’mon, Maddy.” He flashed that calm, dangerous grin that once made juries melt. “This is where you get to expel the remnants of hatred that you have for me.”
“Remnants?” I parroted, crossing my arms. “Uh-uh. Black people don’t do rage rooms. We’re … too civilized.”
He untwisted my arms and pulled me out of the car and against him. Before I could speak, he’d thrown me over his shoulder. I slapped his back and biceps, but it was no use.
“Wash, be honest. You’re angry that I didn’t come clean about vandalizing your vehicle? This is the NOPD’s secret, off-campus police station where you and Detective Frick and Frack are gonna interrogate me until I crack?”
“Campus or station, which is it, Maddy?” He carried me toward the nondescript building, his cologne playing a dangerous, intoxicating game with my mind. “And who is Frick … oh. You should choose one title or stop. Stop works. The detective was Rook, last time I checked.”
In order to protect myself from corrupt questioning, I unsheathed my talons, ready to scratch that beautiful face. Not the beard. One mustn’t take things out on the beard, with its scent of cocoa butter and testosterone. Nor the bald head. I’d never be that mad at him.
The doors burst open, and two couples exited. One energetic couple giggled and bragged that they “owned” that room. The other were more chill, as though their rage room still contained their ragey-time or sexy-time.
Washington placed me down with a chuckle that rumbled his six-pack and me.
Minutes later, he’d paid the attendant, and we’d dressed in protective gear before entering room five.
Inside, I glanced around. Graffiti walls.
A perfectly good box television. Just needed a new antenna.
At least, that’s what I thought. A fax machine from a different era.
Actually, murdering the fax machine made sense. Who knew how to use those?
I turned, then focused on the plexiglass where people could watch. Okay, so the other couple didn’t get it in.
“It’s a forty-five-minute session. Get your hatred out.
” Washington smirked, handing me an aluminum bat.
“Time’s running out. With these prices, you gotta be on your last residuals of hate for me because I couldn’t afford the hour option after your spiteful ass removed the tags on that dress, without my consent. ”
“Mm-hmm.” Firming the baseball in my hand while stepping toward the fax machine, I muttered, “You’re lucky they made you wear safety gear. Or I’d swing at your head.”
“Objection,” he deadpanned. “Judge immunity.”
“Overruled.”
The first crash satisfied me from head to toe. The telephone handset flew into the air, and I owned the fax machine. “That’s what you get. So loud! So ridiculously hard to use.”
“You press FAX and dial the phone number, Maddy. Besides, this is about me, not the fax machine.”
“What about the paper? Which way do you insert the paper, Washington?” I growled, swinging the bat again. Crunch. The entire fax machine bounced on an old-school one-armed desk chair. That was about to get it too.
“Not bad.” He picked up a steel pipe and destroyed a simple black blender. Glass exploded against the wall, glittering into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Hey!” I snarled, kicking the desk. The metal legs scraped across the floor. “That’s a KitchenAid. When we met and started making smoothies, we had a KitchenAid. Disrespectful ass!”
Washington stomped on the blender’s handle, what remained of it. “Damn thing cost twenty dollars! Couldn’t put too much frozen fruit in it.”
True, but did I care? Yes. Way too much. Guilt had sucked me dry for once appreciating the lavish comforts life provided. My small home-based business hadn’t been enough to satisfy me, and I opened that expensive store in the Quarter. And … I had wanted our own private plane.
“Okay,” I nodded, bashing my bat into a porcelain sink. A crack webbed the white, glassy texture. “This is for your judgy ass sermons about my triannual wine subscription when your golf club deliveries mysteriously multiplied.”
He stopped and stared at me. “Okay. I’ll own that.”
“You’d stand there, Mr. Supreme Court of Shine!
” One more hit and I was a certified sink abuser.
“And you lecture me like your word was going on a minute order. All I saw?” I snorted.
“A man. A super-judgy man with a shiny scalp, who basked in the glory of handing down the verdict and … and the Vaseline.” Nice. That one just came to me.
“Madison.” Washington’s cautionary growl hit that Creole baritone that could melt me out of my panties.
I grimaced. “Okay, stricken from the record. The Vaseline joke was inappropriate. Accurate, but inappropriate.”
Head tilted, he smiled, while I glared at him and went postal on that sink again. Another chunk broke off. “And this is for showers that lasted three hours. What? Did you coat your empty follicles with a whole organic conditioner?”
He hit me with a lethal smile, then shook his head muttering that he never showered for three hours. “You good now?”
“Nope. I’m still on how, while pampering your follicles, you’d sing, and I mean sing, not rap.”
“Madison, don’t mention—”
“Lil Wayne’s Lollipop. Who were you fantasizing about hitting those high notes in the shower, huh?”
“YOU!” Washington caught me mid-swing and turned me to him.
The next thing I knew, his mouth was all over mine. Wild and overdo. This kiss was an explosion of tastes: the tang of tongues, the heat of a fight, and good loving.
In the middle of shards and broken glass, with SZA playing like we were at a trap remix of therapy, I was tugging him, scratching him, and loving him.
Maybe it was the adrenaline, or how he yanked and tugged me.
He pushed me against the wall so hard that I gasped.
“Damn, Maddy, I apologize.”
“Boy, shuddup,” I growled, asserting my dominance while his chest crushed me against the cold wall.
We were supposed to be smashing glass … not lips.
The bat clattered out of my hands. His lips crashed onto mine again. Harder this time. That kiss had enough clapback to outshine any emotional damage he should’ve ever felt about my bald head jokes.
My hands coasted over his head, rubbing my precious, my love.
“I knew you still loved Dome Daddy.”
“Don’t call yourself that,” I said between breathless kisses and bursts of laughter.
“Still mad?” he asked, biting my bottom lip hard enough for me to say Hell yes.
“Big Mad,” I groaned.
“Do something.”
I did. I yanked the collar of his safety vest, my tongue twining around his.
We kissed like people who had no business remembering how amazing it used to be. My hips hit the workbench; his hands slipped between my thighs.
“Wash, no.”
“Yes.”
“Not here.” I wondered aloud, “You think those couples had separate rooms?”
“What?” Washington asked, massaging my hips.
“The couples. I was sure they raged or, you know.”
He grabbed my entire face with his hands and kissed the stupidity from my lips. Cleared my mind enough to make me dumber than a second go. And yet, I had already forgotten what we were talking about.
“Hey, your time isn’t up!” The attendant shouted as we ran out faster than some thuglets up to no good. In the car, hearts a little more wrecked, we were too quiet and giggly. Foreplay.
New Orleans lights blurred past. His hand brushed mine on the console. I tangled my small fingers into his larger ones and breathed in heady anticipation.
As we turned into the drive, the familiar brick facade caught in the headlights. Opulent. Black shutters. Washington was out of the car before I finished my thought. He hadn’t stopped the engine.
“The car,” I said when he opened the passenger door. “Wash, you left the engine …” This achy craving made me forget what engines did when they were on.
“When the keys disappear, it should turn off.” His eyes locked on me, and my insides became liquid lava.
“Mm-hmm,” I agreed, even if neither of our brains was situated correctly.
He leaned in. All that silence, all that heat, snapped me into place. His mouth found mine, low, slow, and with reverence.
I kissed him back. A familiar, effortless action that needed no thought. Yes, I hadn’t breathed straight in three years. Hadn’t had a full inhale or a full exhale.
Washington gently tugged me toward him, the taste of his lips on mine as he unsnapped my seatbelt.
One kiss turned into another as he tugged me up to my feet, gripping my behind, bringing me flush against him.
Then three more. Each one messier, hotter, and more delirious than the last as we stood within the open passenger door.
Washington paused, and hell, I was confident he hadn’t inhaled like this since we last loved each other.
His eyes were on me, soft and assessing, his fingers sunk in my hair. Did he worry I might vanish?
He leaned in closer, deepening the kiss, one arm around my waist, the other reaching past me to close the passenger door.
Wanting this, I strutted forward. This man belonged to me. Always had. I was gonna have him. Right now. One step away, I tripped over a paver.
“Damn, girl, I got you.” Washington stopped short of closing the door and caught me.
He wrapped me in his arms, and a breathless laugh escaped me. Still, the sensation of his lips on mine and the sudden pull in my chest tangled me up. Elijah.
Our son had tripped over this exact paver right before our last vacation.
I stared at my ex-husband as he offered a slow, devastating smile, a smile that once used to steal the air from my lungs. That damn smile always crushed me. Crushed my entire day until I had a taste of him. Yesss. I needed a taste of … him.
But I panicked. My body pulled from his arms, and my fingers flew toward the passenger door handle as if it were the eject button on temptation.
Half logic. Half crazy. The door stood wide open.
Beckoning me. Dang. The inside of that car was steamier than a sinner’s confessional.
Before I could act, Washington’s mouth was on mine, his hands anchoring my hips.
Yet, I clung to that door, wanting to get back into that car because of that house.
Walking into our house? Hell, even being carried inside was emotional arson.
I couldn’t do it.