Chapter 13 Monique #3
She’d told only a handful of people that, and most of them were in her family. Everybody else got the abridged version, for their comfort. Maurice got it all out there with the darkness for cover and the bay glowing around them.
That usual response, the careful voices and pitying looks, deciding she was fragile, never came.
He just held her hand. “What about their father? The family?”
She scoffed. “Nathan? He split when we lost our house. Blamed me, like I had control over the markets.” Shaking her head, she remembered the fights about using her father’s military death benefits to save the house that he wanted but they could never afford.
And more fights about him slow-walking the divorce he demanded.
“He’s around, but fifteen years on and he’s still trying to—I don’t know, and I don’t care.
My kids know they can’t count on him or his people. ”
“His people? What about yours?”
Up ahead, her people were bobbing along the sea, moving forward without her.
She dropped her head and picked at her nails.
“It’s complicated” was all she could manage.
Being the only child of an only child of an only child hadn’t given her a chance to learn the language of extended family and connection.
She had always been ready to try, though.
“You’re not alone, Monique.”
“You sound like Dr. Tedrow. And I know. That’s why I joined a support group, why I go so hard for my girls. This trip… I don’t want anyone to feel like I do.”
“And what is that?” He wiped her cheek. “What do you feel?”
Her body trembled. If she whispered, just loud enough for Maurice and the moon to hear, it might not be so scary. Alone. Afraid.
He wrapped his arms around her. “Beautiful, don’t cry.”
She didn’t realize she had been crying.
“Tell me about your kids,” he said, lips pressed against her temple and them sitting as close as they could.
Monique leaned into him and his warmth. This man who treated her as if she were as fragile as a robin’s egg and as tough as steel all at the same time.
“Jasmine and Justin.” Her chest filled with air and love. “They’re nineteen. They both should be at school, but Jay stayed home… for me.”
Maurice caressed her hand. “Your diagnosis must have been hard on them.”
Throughout this whole ordeal, Monique only thought about what cancer was doing to her kids. Never had there been a time where she focused on herself. Jasmine and Justin had always been her motivation. “I tried not to let it affect them.”
The list of what she could control grew smaller and smaller every day. It was a tough realization. Letting go was an even tougher practice. But she was improving. That’s why she was on this trip, in this boat, and sitting beside this man.
“When the people we love are hurting, we’re afraid and hurting too.
” He took her hand in his, sliding his muscular fingers between hers.
Maurice rested their intertwined hands on his thigh, letting their knees touch.
“Not sharing that fear and pain is impossible, no matter how much we try to keep it to ourselves.”
She’d heard that before. In sessions and at home.
“I love them so much. I’m trying, little by little, to let them go. To show them that I’m okay so they can go. But…” She pulled back and met Maurice’s eye. “It’s a different kind of lonesome when you’re the one that’s sick.”
Maurice slow-nodded like he understood.
“Doesn’t matter how many times Auntie Deb pops up unannounced, ‘just checking in,’ or how many grocery deliveries are left on my front step. How many ways you say it, being the one that folk worry about don’t sit right with me. I’m grateful, but I don’t know, maybe I’m just proud.”
“I don’t think it’s a pride thing. I think life moved for you in a way that trained you to not ask for help. To always be seen as capable and competent. So, getting sick seems like failure instead of a fluke.”
She let out a dry laugh “I thought we were in Puerto Rico and that you were Maurice Martin.”
He shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“You sound like one of my therapists, that’s all.”
“Then they’re pretty good.”
“I guess. But don’t tell him I said that. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Maurice laughed and squeezed her hand tighter. “My lips are sealed.”
“Already, we’ve got secrets, huh?” She gave him a soft shoulder-check while inching herself closer to him.
Being near him heated her from the inside, moist and warm.
He was a human radiator. Maybe it was her emotions and reawakened lady bits, but Maurice was the only one who’d inspired this sensation, ever.
“I like that.” He moved closer. “I like you.”
“You don’t even know me.” And she didn’t know him either, but that didn’t stop her from wanting him. He was close with Tommie and Don trusted him. Auntie Deb doted on him. Mr. Turner respected him.
“But I want to.”
The boat rounded the outside of the mangrove tunnel and glided back toward the dock. The other boats ahead of them, their lanterns floating over the slick black sea like fireflies in the night, a path leading to somewhere Monique had never been before.
For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t afraid.