18. Asha
Asha
Itexted Cee from two blocks away. Done with the client. I'm on Kingston, near the pharmacy.
He pulled up four minutes later. I got in the back seat, put my bag on my lap, checked my reflection in my phone screen. Hair redone. Face composed. Nothing out of place. A woman coming back from a home visit.
"How'd it go?" Cee asked, pulling into traffic.
"Good. She wants to rebook."
"Cool."
The drive home was fifteen minutes. I sat in the back seat looking out the window at Crown Heights passing by, the physical memory of Omar's hands on my body still running through me. My skin was still warm from it. My legs were still shaking if I let them.
I crossed my ankles and kept still.
Supreme was home when I got upstairs, dressed like he was going somewhere. Grey suit, open collar, his watch on, cologne probably but I wouldn't know because I stopped noticing years ago.
"There she is." He came across the room and kissed my forehead. "I made us a reservation at that Italian place you like. The one in Park Slope."
"Oh, that sounds nice." I smiled. "Let me shower and change real quick."
"Take your time, baby. We got an hour."
I went to the bathroom, locked the door, turned the shower on as hot as it would go.
I stood under the water with my eyes closed.
Omar's fingerprints were still on my hips if I pressed hard enough.
I washed my body, stood there until the water started to cool.
Then I got out, dried off, did my makeup, picked a dress from the closet that Supreme liked because it showed my shoulders.
My reflection stared back at me from the bathroom mirror. Same face. Same body. Same woman who'd been lying underneath Omar Baptiste forty-five minutes ago making sounds she hadn't made in fourteen years. Nobody looking at me would know. That was the whole point.
Supreme held the door for me on the way out.
Cee drove us to Park Slope. The restaurant was nice, candlelit, somewhere people came to celebrate things.
Supreme pulled my chair out. I sat down, opened the menu while he ordered a bottle of wine without looking at the list because he always ordered the same one.
"You look beautiful tonight," he told me across the table.
"Thank you, Premie."
"Nah, for real." He reached over and took my hand. His thumb rubbed circles on my knuckles. "You know how lucky I am? Having you here with me? Most niggas out here don't got nobody worth coming home to."
I squeezed his hand back. "You're sweet."
"I ain't sweet, baby. I'm honest." He grinned. "There's a difference."
The food came. He talked while we ate, running through a deal he was putting together with some distributor upstate, the margins, the logistics, the personalities involved.
He was animated, hands moving while he talked, pausing to eat, then picking up where he left off.
He was good at this part. The dinner, the conversation, the performance of being a man who took his woman out.
"You listening to me?" he asked, catching my eyes drifting.
"Of course I am." I speared a piece of pasta. "You were saying the margins don't work unless he moves at least sixty units a month."
He pointed at me with his fork. "See? That's why I love you. You actually hear what I'm saying." He took a sip of wine. "Most people just nod and wait for their turn to talk. But you? You're with me."
"Always," I said.
His phone rang twice during dinner. Both times he checked the screen, silenced it, put it back down. "That can wait," he said. "Tonight's about us."
The third time it rang he answered it. His face changed. The warmth stayed on the surface but something colder moved behind his eyes.
"I said tomorrow," he told whoever was on the other end. "Handle it or I'll find somebody who can." He listened for a second. "Then make him understand. I don't care how."
He hung up, put the phone face down on the table, and picked up his wine glass like nothing had happened. "Sorry about that, baby."
"It's fine." I cut another piece of pasta. "Everything okay?"
"Just people being stupid." He waved his hand. "You know how it is. You give a nigga one job and he find seventeen ways to fuck it up."
I laughed because that was what the moment required.
He grinned back at me, pleased with himself, pleased with the evening, pleased with the woman sitting across from him laughing at his jokes while his phone sat face down on the table holding whatever conversation he'd just had about making someone understand.
I smiled and told him that was nice. His hand found mine across the table again.
His thumb on my knuckles, rubbing those slow circles.
Omar's thumb pressing against my pulse at the coffee shop flashed through my mind.
His hands gripping my thighs, pulling me closer.
The sound he made when he came, my name buried in my neck.
I ate my pasta and held Supreme's hand and smiled.
We got home just before eleven. Supreme was in a good mood from the wine, the dinner, the feeling of having shown me a good evening.
He loosened his collar on the way up in the elevator, his hand on the small of my back, his thumb tracing lazy circles there too.
Always touching. Always marking territory.
I changed in the closet while he got ready for bed. When I came out in one of his t-shirts he was already propped up against the headboard, waiting.
Tonight's performance was a new variation. Supreme had been watching something on his phone earlier in the week, some video that gave him ideas, because he started by telling me to sit at the foot of the bed facing him.
"Just watch me, baby. Just look at me."
I kept my eyes on him, wishing I was anywhere but there. How the hell could I go through this when I knew where I wanted to be and who with?
He pulled himself out of his boxers and started working his hand over his dick while I sat there cross-legged at the foot of the bed giving him my full attention. His head went back against the headboard.
"Tell me what you see," he groaned.
"I see you, Premie." I made my voice low, breathy. "I see all of you."
"Yeah? What else?"
Lord.
"I see the most powerful man in Brooklyn," I said, finding the script, delivering it the way he needed to hear it. "Taking what's his."
"Fuck yeah." His hand moved faster. "Keep going."
"Nobody else got what you got." I leaned forward slightly, giving him the angle he liked. "Nobody else could handle all that. That's why I'm here, baby. Because I'm the only one who can."
His eyes rolled back. He was close. His breathing came in hard bursts. "Say my name."
"Premie," I breathed.
"Again."
"Premie."
He came with a groan that rattled the headboard, his whole body going rigid for three seconds before he went limp. His hand was still wrapped around himself, his chest heaving, his eyes glazed.
"Damn, baby." His voice was heavy, spent. "You're incredible. You know that?"
"You're the incredible one," I told him, my voice soft, adoring and completely empty behind it.
I didn't know how long I could keep pretending to be on board with his kink but I had to tell myself it was better than being made to have sex with him.
If all he wanted from me was to watch him wank and get himself off then I had to grin and bear it. Only until it was time to cut and run.
He wiped his hand on the sheet beside him, so I'd be washing those sheets tomorrow. He pulled me against his side, kissed the top of my head, told me I was everything. His breathing slowed within minutes. His grip on my waist loosened. His body went heavy and his mouth fell open.
I lay there until his arm was dead weight across me, then carefully slid to my side of the bed. He didn't stir. Out cold, one leg hanging off the mattress, the used sheet bunched under his hip.
I lay there in the dark. Supreme's arm found me in his sleep, heavy across my waist, pulling me back against him. I let him and lay there with his body pressed against my back, his breathing slow and wet against my neck. I closed my eyes.
I let myself go back to the apartment. Omar's apartment.
The wall where he'd pressed me. The bed where he'd laid me down.
The way he'd looked at me before he touched me, like he needed to see all of me first. The way he'd said I missed you, every fucking day while he was inside me, and meant it.
His hands on my hips, his mouth on my collarbone, the way he'd held still when he first pushed inside me because the feeling was too much for both of us.
Supreme snored against my neck. His arm tightened around my waist.
I was living two lives now. One of them was real. One of them would kill me if it ever found out about the other.
I closed my eyes tighter and went back to the apartment.
I stayed there until I fell asleep.