Chapter 10 A Dick What?
A Dick What?
August
What the hell just happened?
I’m parked on a street I don’t recognize, watching Harlee walk away from my car like she’s done this a hundred times.
Like my passenger seat hasn’t been holding her warmth for the last hour, like my mouth doesn’t still remember her, like I’m not sitting here with my hands locked around the steering wheel trying to pretend I’m fine.
Her curls bounce with every step, catching the last lazy glow of a streetlight, and it tugs at my chest in a way I don’t appreciate. Not pain, exactly. More like a reminder that my wiring is still my wiring, no matter how many years I’ve spent trying to keep it under control.
This is not who I am.
I’m the guy who walks a woman to her door.
The guy who texts you good? and actually means it.
I remember coffee orders. I listen. I show up.
It’s not a performance, it’s just the way my mother raised me, the way my abuela reinforced it, the way my whole chest tightens when someone I care about looks like they’re carrying too much.
Somewhere between sushi and orgasms, I turned into a man sitting in silence, still tasting her, still confused, still not invited back in.
“Fuck,” I mutter, because I hate not knowing where things tilted. I keep replaying the night like there’s a different camera angle that’ll make it make sense.
The worst part is my brain is already trying to build a whole life off one night. Breakfast routines. Inside jokes. Harlee’s shoes by my door like they belong there. A soft little life that would have me acting domestic on accident and smiling like an idiot.
Lover-boy software. Legacy version. Buggy as hell.
And I’m not saying I know her, not really.
I’m not pretending I cracked her history from one date and a few conversations.
I’m saying I recognize what it feels like when something sparks and your first instinct is to smother it before it burns you down.
I’ve done that move. I’ve watched other people do it.
That doesn’t mean I know why she ran, it just means I know what it feels like to want something and still step backward.
So tonight either meant nothing and I’m being dramatic…
Or it meant something and we both felt it, and she decided to close the door before it could become a problem.
Great.
I start the car and pull off before I can sit here long enough to become a stalker with good intentions.
Five minutes later, I realize I’ve made a second mistake: I don’t know where the hell I am.
The street signs might as well be in Morse code.
Cookie-cutter houses, tidy lawns, porch lights that look like they’ve never seen a bad decision in their life.
Somebody has Christmas lights still clinging to their gutters like a bad habit, and the neighborhood is so quiet it feels like it would call the cops if I breathed too loud.
The fucking suburbs.
Jesus Christ.
I reach for my phone without thinking and hit air. Right. My phone is sitting on my kitchen counter because we left like the night was on fire and I didn’t stop to grab anything but my keys and my pride.
“No GPS. No phone. And I’m wandering the suburbs at four in the morning,” I mutter, tapping the wheel like it’s going to give me directions out of pity.
I pick a direction and drive until the skyline crawls back into view, until the lake flashes its familiar dark shine, until the city looks like my city again.
Normally that settles me. Tonight, it doesn’t.
Harlee is still there, sitting in the back of my mind like she rented space. She’s in the faint trace of her scent clinging to my shirt, in the way my hand keeps remembering the small of her back, in the exact moment she looked at me like she meant the kiss and then looked away like she didn’t.
It wasn’t supposed to matter.
I wasn’t trying to sleep with her, not intentionally. I wanted her to have a good night. A light one. One where she didn’t have to carry her whole life on her shoulders with both hands. I wanted to give her something soft and easy and fun, something that didn’t come with a receipt or a catch.
We talked. Like actually talked. No titles. No money. No brand deals. Just two people letting time fall apart. It felt easy in a way I haven’t felt in years, like I could be August without being August Valdez-James.
Then, on the way back, something shifted. The vibe went flat, like a needle slipping off a record, and I kept telling myself it was just the hour, just exhaustion, just that awkward moment when the night ends and reality starts creeping back in.
By the time we pulled up to her place, she looked at me like she’d remembered a rule I didn’t know existed.
“That’s not how this works,” she said.
And before I could even ask what this meant, she was already stepping out of the car. Gathering herself. Resetting like she’d never been in it. Like she hadn’t just kissed me like gravity was real.
I don’t chase women to their door.
But I also don’t let them walk away like I’m nothing.
Tonight, I did both, and it’s sitting in my chest like a stone.
It’s just after five when I step into my condo, and the first thing that hits me is her. Not physically, not literally, but in the air.
A warm blend of pineapple and lavender and something sweet I can’t name, lingering like the place is still holding its breath. I stop with the door half-closed behind me and stand there for a second, breathing in evidence like an idiot.
“It was just a night,” I tell the empty space.
My voice doesn’t believe me.
My phone is right where I left it on the kitchen counter. When I pick it up, the screen lights.
5:12 a.m.
Alarm in less than an hour. Sleep isn’t happening. My brain is already booked.
So I do what I always do when life gets too loud: I move.
Bathroom. Cold water. Teeth brushed like I’m scrubbing a crime scene. Running gear goes on by muscle memory, and before I can think too hard, I’m downstairs and outside, letting the morning air slap me into something closer to functional.
I run until my lungs burn and my thoughts quiet down to a manageable hum. It doesn’t fix anything, but it gives me the illusion of control, which is apparently my favorite drug.
When I get back, the condo smells like lemon cleaner. Reset. Sterile. Like nothing messy ever happens here. It’s supposed to feel like relief. Today it feels like punishment.
I head into my bedroom and stop short.
Folded neatly on the dresser like a dare are Harlee’s panties. Soft pink. Lacy. Delicate enough to make a man forget the Lord is watching, and bold enough to feel like she left them on purpose. I stare at them like they’re going to testify.
“Real mature,” I say to nobody.
They remain smug.
It’s not lust that tightens my chest. Not exactly. It’s the fact that she left a piece of herself behind without leaving herself. It’s the fact that my space still feels like her, but she doesn’t feel like mine to reach for.
I pick up my phone again and open our thread.
Morning. Eat something.
I stare at it for longer than I should, then I hit send because I’m not a coward. I’m just careful, and that’s not the same thing no matter what Kelley says.
Delivered. Unanswered.
Of course.
Then my phone buzzes again, and my heart does something stupid before my eyes even register the name.
Sadie.
I answer, forcing my voice into something that sounds like a man who slept.
“August,” she says, and even her tone sounds like a calendar alert. “Where are you?”
“The meeting with the charity in South America starts in thirty minutes,” she continues. “They are waiting. You are not.”
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Sadie, I need a favor.”
“At ten a.m.? This can’t be good.”
“I need a personal day.”
There’s a pause, just long enough for her to make a face on my behalf.
“A personal day,” she repeats like she’s tasting the phrase for poison. “You don’t take personal days.”
“I do today.”
Another beat, then her voice shifts. Softer, sharper, loyal.
“Okay,” she says. “Consider everything rescheduled. Go be a person. Don’t die.”
“I’ll try.”
“And August?”
“Yeah.”
“Whatever it is you need to do,” she says, “make sure you find some time to actually use this personal day.”
I almost laugh. Almost.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say.
Over the next week, I keep it short and controlled. I tell myself it’s maturity, not pride, and that I’m not the kind of man who floods a woman’s phone because she went quiet.
Still, silence has a way of turning small concern into a habit if you let it.
Three days later, after I notice the read receipts, I send the next one anyway, more annoyed at myself than at her.
You don’t have to answer. Just checking your pulse.
Two days after that: You good.
The receipts light up like tiny confirmations that she’s alive and choosing silence on purpose. That should make it easier to let it go.
It doesn’t. It just makes it clearer.
By Thursday morning, I’m running on fumes, my patience thin, my body sore from the gym, and my mind caught in that stupid loop where I keep telling myself to stop thinking about her while I’m actively thinking about her.
So I do what I’ve done since I was a kid and didn’t have words for my feelings.
I run home.
The Dominican Republic wraps around me the second I step off the plane. Heat. Salt. Diesel. Flowers. Life.
My abuela is waiting near baggage claim, small and sturdy, eyes sharp enough to cut through my bullshit from across the airport.
“Ay, mi nieto,” she says, pulling me into her arms. “Qué pasó? You look tired, mijo.”
“I’m fine,” I answer automatically.
She makes a sound that says she’s raised liars before. “Claro.”