Chapter 13 #4
Reaching over, Nahla grabbed the throw cover at the end of the bed. She stood and made her way to Cannon. Silently, she sat in his lap and used the throw to cover them both.
Cannon immediately wrapped his arms around her.
He kissed her neck and said, “I’m sorry I woke you.”
She turned in his arms so that she was facing him. “You didn’t wake me. I am glad I’m up, though.”
“You need to rest, Nahla. We’ve got a long day ahead.”
“You look more tired than I am.”
Cannon chuckled. “I’m straight.”
She gazed at him without responding for several seconds. Eventually, she said, “You never get much sleep, do you?”
He kissed her neck again. “Nah, not really.”
Nahla stood then turned to face Cannon. “Get in bed with me.”
Instead of denying her as she thought he would, Cannon stood and followed her to the bed. She got comfortable first then reached out for him. Cannon got in bed, rested his head on her chest, and wrapped an arm around her waist.
They lay there silently for quite some time, Nahla caressing his face, and Cannon staring into the darkness. She knew they hadn’t ended on the best of terms before she went to sleep that night, but she hated to think she was the reason he didn’t get any sleep that night.
Nahla was caught in her thoughts about Cannon when he broke their silence.
“La, I’m sorry ’bout—”
“Nope.” She shook her head, still tracing his beard with her finger.
“What you mean, nope?” he asked.
“I mean, you’re not apologizing to me for anything. If anyone needs to apologize, it’s me. And I do apologize, Cannon. I care about you so much, and the last thing I wanted to do was make you feel like I view you as a story. I don’t.”
Cannon lifted his head and looked at her.
“Nah, you didn’t deserve how I—”
“I said no, Cannon. We can finish that conversation later. Not at four in the morning when your eyes are begging for some rest. Lay back down.”
He did as he was told, resting his head back on her chest. His being that close to her heart made her acutely aware of her heartbeat. It was steady and calm, nothing like a few minutes ago when she thought he wasn’t there with her.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?” Cannon asked.
“My heartbeat,” she replied. Cannon nodded.
“Do you know that when I realized you weren’t beside me, I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest?
The second you touched me, everything inside me calmed down.
I noticed my body had the same reaction the morning everyone was blowing my phone up about the press conference—and again, today, when the second press conference was released.
“I didn’t need coffee to regulate me. I needed you. When I’m with you, I don’t feel anxious or afraid. I just feel protected and cared about. That’s what you do for me. You calm everything down. I appreciate that more than you know, Cannon.”
Pressing a kiss to her bare chest, he said, “And I appreciate you more than you know. Bein’ the person who can do that for you makes me happy as hell, La.”
She bit her lip. She wished she could bring him that kind of peace. She had a man whose mere presence got her together, and she wanted to be able to return the favor.
She decided to lean into her gift of storytelling to try and lull her man to sleep.
“Have I ever told you about the first article I ever wrote?” she asked.
He nodded against her soft skin. “Yeah, the op-ed about police.”
“No, that was my first published piece of work, but my first ever story was one no one ever got to see.”
Cannon adjusted his body so that he was facing her.
“I’m intrigued,” he said with a smirk.
Nahla grinned and kissed his lips.
“I was twelve years old,” she continued. “And a girl at my church had gotten pregnant. She was fifteen. So many of the adults—including my parents—were whispering about her as if she were the problem, when the truth was, a grown man was the father.
“They kicked this girl out of the choir. They made her stand before the congregation and repent for her sins. The messed-up part was that it seemed they wanted her to ask for their forgiveness, not God’s.
That and the fact that those crazy ass people were acting like she was capable of ‘tempting’ a grown and married man into sex with her had me pissed.
“I quit the choir as an act of solidarity. My parents tried to force me to continue, but I handled that quickly.”
Cannon chuckled. “How did you handle it?”
“The choir director gave a solo. Instead of singing when I got the mic, I said, ‘Emilee Preston did nothing wrong, and y’all need to be asking for her forgiveness.’”
Cannon laughed lightly. “I can see a nine-year-old you doin’ that fasho.”
Nahla shrugged. “I’ve always been who I am,” she said. “But anyway, my parents were so upset with me. They put me on punishment for forever and told me to never get in grown folks’ business again.”
Nahla chuckled as her fingers slowly moved through Cannon’s hair, grazing his scalp slightly.
“That didn’t sit right with me either, and that statement became the focal point of my issue.
It wasn’t grown folks’ business, because Emilee was a child.
They were treating her like an adult who consented to an affair when she was actually a child who was sexually assaulted.
I didn’t have all that language at the age of twelve, but I knew that situation wasn’t right.
“My choral solo didn’t settle me the way I thought it would, so I did what felt natural. I wrote about it. By the time I finished, I had a three-page-long article titled Monster Deacon: How Grown Folks Business Hurts Children.”
“Aye, that’s a cold ass tile for a twelve-year-old to come up with,” Cannon said.
His tone was lazy, and his breathing was becoming slower.
Nahla smiled and kept going. She told him all about how she missed the bus after school one day, walked to the library, and made several copies of her story.
She gave one to Emilee, and they remained friends until the day her parents moved her away.
“My father eventually found one of the copies and flipped out. That situation is probably why they were so disappointed when I wrote the op-ed. That was when I really started to identify as a writer. From the very beginning, I knew I didn’t want to do the safe stories.
I wanted to cover the issues that got the stagnant riled up.
I wanted to write the stories that made bad people uncomfortable.
“As soon as I was old enough to choose for myself, I stopped going to that church. Luckily, I was smart enough to blame the people and not the Lord. That’s why I still tune into the online service with the church I joined in Atlanta. I want to be careful joining another church home around here.”
Once she finished that story, she told him a few more about her life experiences.
With each story, Cannon was engaging less and less, and Nahla’s voice dropped lower and softer.
She could feel Cannon’s body slowly unwinding against hers as she continued, and at some point, his responses faded.
There were no more small hums, and the hand he had been using to rub her stomach had fallen loosely at her side.
Nahla glanced at him. His eyes were closed, his mouth was parted just a little, and his breathing was slow and even.
She realized as she watched him that this was the first time she had ever seen him sleep.
She vowed from that moment on that she would not fall asleep on him anymore.
She would, instead, make it a point to help Cannon settle enough to rest every night they spent together.
She could only imagine the experiences and pain he carried with him that hindered him from getting a good night’s rest. She knew his insomnia went deeper than just being a “night owl.”
Nahla sighed and kissed his cheek. She would never stop wanting to know him better, but she could commit to waiting until he was ready to tell her. She could commit to never chasing his story again.
As she sat there, staring into the darkness, her own eyes felt heavy. She allowed herself to drift off with a satisfied smile on her face. It had been one hell of a day, but in the end, they took a step closer to each other, and she knew it.