Chapter 2
Lauren
For the first time in days, I wasn't unlocking Malcolm’s door. I needed my own air. I stepped onto the reflective hardwood, and allowed the silence to wash over me.
“I missed you home,” I said out loud.
I kicked off my heels, letting out a long breath as my arches finally touched the cool floor. I dropped my leather totes on the entryway bench and walked straight into my bathroom.
I leaned against the cold marble of the vanity, flipping on the overhead LED lights. The brightness was unforgiving, cutting through the lingering amber romance of the restaurant and forcing me to look at myself.
"Lauren, you are a piece of work," I mumbled to the glass.
I leaned in closer, tilting my chin up. The second I got in front of a well-lit mirror, the inspection began. I wasn't beating myself down, but I was definitely picking. My skin looked good, and my silk press was still holding its bounce. My eyes locked right on my jaw.
Yep. There they were.
The little underground bumps that wouldn’t go away to save their damn lives.
I reached into my vanity drawer, pulled out my trusty tweezers and went to work.
"Damn, I shouldn't have eaten them sweets," I muttered, shaking my head as I opened the magnifying mirror.
The chocolate lava cake had been heaven on my tongue, but my body kept receipts.
Having PCOS meant my hormone levels loved to play games with me.
It made losing weight a constant, uphill battle where I had to work twice as hard as everyone else just to keep my body right, and it brought along the one thing I despised the most: the stubborn, disrespectful chin hairs.
I tilted my head back, catching the light. Two thick, dark little strands were poking through right under my chin.
"Gotcha, bitch," I whispered.
I clamped the metal tips down around the root of the first hair and pulled.
Honestly, plucking them was kind of fun.
It was a strange, therapeutic ritual. But as I lined up the tweezers for the second one, I looked at the dark strand held in the metal tips and let out a dry laugh.
This PCOS shit really had me in the mirror at midnight feeling like a whole dude, hunting down a beard before bed.
“Don’t be dramatic Lauren.”
“I’m tryin’ not to be.”
“And why would my sister say I was settling?”
“Laurie, I think your bored,” I mimicked Layla's tone out loud to my reflection
“Girl, I don’t know what she was talking about.”
I paused, realizing I was talking to myself. Then, I cleaned the tweezers, wiped my chin, and just stared at my reflection.
The physical distraction faded, leaving me right back where I started: trapped inside my own head.
"He's a good man, Savannah," I joked. "A really good man."
I couldn't even lie to myself. I don’t know what my problem was.
We were good and there was nothing wrong.
The sex was on point, and the man knew how to handle me.
Ever since we locked back in, he had been putting in real, intentional work.
He was dialed in, and checking off every single box a woman could ever dream of having fulfilled.
Malcolm wasn't the one messing this up. He was doing everything he was supposed to do, exactly how he was supposed to do it.
Which meant the sabotage was coming entirely from inside the house.
I was.
I was the one holding us back, but I just kept getting this feeling I couldn’t describe. I was the one building walls the second he laid his heart out on the table over dessert. He’d looked at me with so much vulnerability, and I had brushed it off.
“Yeah, girl. You fucking up.”
I sighed.
I loved Malcolm.
I really did deep down, and I genuinely wanted this relationship to work. I didn't want to sabotage a beautiful thing because of the ghosts in my closet. I just needed to get out of my own damn way. I was overthinking, over-analyzing, and letting the past dictate my present.
"You're just in your head too much," I whispered, looking back up at the mirror. "That’s all it is."
I turned off the blinding lights, leaving the bathroom in shadow. I needed to sleep. I needed to turn my brain off, stop projecting my old baggage onto a man who filled my gas tank and started my showers, and just let myself be loved.
I walked into my dark bedroom before flopping onto the bed and turning on the TV.