Chapter 14 Maurice #2
“I’m good,” he said. “Just…” He toyed with his silverware. “A lot to process.”
Her mouth quirked. “Yeah. I get that.”
Did she know that he’d been replaying their kiss in his mind on a loop? That he could still feel the ghost of her hands on him? That every cell in his body wanted to lean closer, to close the small distance between them, to find out if her mouth still tasted like salt and sweetness?
He forced his attention to his plate and put food into his mouth. Food that he couldn’t taste.
“Give him some time,” Auntie Don said from down the table, voice louder than her tone might have intended. Maurice looked up and met her eyes.
Time. That was something he didn’t have a lot of. The day after tomorrow, Monique would go back to Chicago, and he would go back to Newark. And everything they’d shared would join the realm of memory. Beautiful but bygone.
Under the table, Monique’s hand brushed his. Her fingers passed over his, hidden from the others. Their secret.
Mr. Turner was telling a story now about USO dances of the late fifties and how he’d stepped on his then dance partner’s feet so much that he was blacklisted. The table erupted in laughter. Mrs. Turner said, “Their loss, my gain.” Her face was soft with love despite the boasting.
Maurice watched them. Sixty years, and she still leaned in when he talked.
Still was the first to laugh at his jokes.
Still looked at him like he was hers. Maurice’s chest tightened.
That’s what loving looked like. Easy affection.
A comfortable intimacy of two people who’d chosen each other and kept choosing each other.
He’d never thought anything like that could be his.
He never let himself want it, because wanting was dangerous.
Want led to disappointment. Want meant giving someone the power to leave.
But Monique’s hand was still on his, and he was starting to think that maybe want wasn’t the enemy he’d made it out to be.
The meal continued. Plates cleared. Someone mentioned dancing, and the energy shifted. People pushed back from the table and moved toward the center of the restaurant, where the floor in front of a small band had been left open.
Monique stood. Maurice followed, because his body had apparently decided her gravity was the only one that mattered.
As the dance floor filled, the band shifted from the bright, up-tempo tunes that had played under their meal to something slow and sweet, guitar-forward with an unmistakable pulsing beat that was more felt than heard.
The string lights that crisscrossed the restaurant swayed in the breeze coming through the open windows, bringing the bay up to them.
The dance floor had sections of glass cut out in the floorboards, and Maurice watched the water splashing against the posts in blue-green blasts.
Cassie and Taurion swayed, holding onto each other like if they let go, they’d fall. Between their laughter and stolen kisses, they looked like a young couple discovering they were in love. The Turners were in a similar pose; the moment, the location, the occasion, seemed to turn back time.
Tommie and Lanie too. His hands on her waist. Her arms around his neck.
Aunt Deb kissed Don’s hand as they passed and joined the others.
Maurice stood at the edge of it all with Monique beside him. The small space between them electrified with that foretelling of a seismic change.
“You wanna?” he asked, soft, testing, nodding his head toward the others.
Turning to him, she took his hand. This was becoming his new, most favorite thing—holding Monique’s hand. The soft smile on her lips and in her eyes told him she liked it too.
“When I clod all over your feet, remember that you asked for this,” she said, allowing him to lead her to the dance floor and into the sea of bodies warmed by the music.
He placed his hands on her waist. She was solid and real under his palms. Closer. He needed to be closer but couldn’t move.
She laughed, sliding her hands up to his shoulders and pulling him nearer, close enough that he could feel her chest rise and fall as she breathed. “This isn’t a Sadie Hawkins dance, my guy.”
He choked out a laugh as she slid her hands from his shoulders to rest on his chest.
“Stop thinking so much.”
Thinking was all he could do for so long. It was how he made sense of this senseless world. Thinking was how Maurice had survived. He didn’t know how to turn it off.
Her hand went to the back of his neck, fingers pressing hot against his skin, and his thoughts broke apart, scattering and exploding with light.
Every move she made, from her breath to her heartbeat, reverberated through his body as they swayed. Maurice didn’t know if they were standing or dancing, or if they were following the beat. All he knew was that Monique fit against him like an obvious answer to a question he didn’t know he’d asked.
“You’re still thinking too much,” she said, resting her cheek against his shoulder. Her breath fanned over his chest, making his nerves misfire. “What are you thinking about?”
Everything. About how her waist curved under his hand into the gentle swell of her hips.
About the rest of Song of Songs and doves’ eyes and gardens and pomegranates.
About how he’d spent his life training himself not to want and forgotten it all in just two days.
About how his body responded to her with a low, insistent heat that he couldn’t control.
“Not sure.” He took a deep breath and started over. “That’s not true.”
“Then tell me what is.” She leaned back and their eyes met.
The music changed into something sultry. The lights dimmed, or maybe he could only focus on Monique and how she pressed herself closer. All of her against all of him. Her breasts against his chest. Her hips plumb against his.
“This feeling. What’s happening between us. I want it to be true.”
“Me too.” Monique placed her thigh between his legs like they were creating a dovetail joint. The feelings that bum-rushed him were just as strong, just as beautiful. His body responded. Immediate. Inevitable. Heat and pressure and want that he couldn’t hide even if he tried.
He went still. Monique felt it; he knew she had from the small catch in her breath, from the way her fingers flexed against his neck.
She didn’t pull away. “Maurice,” she said. His name in her mouth sounded like an invocation and felt like permission.
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t.” Her hand moved to his jaw, turning his face toward hers.
“Don’t apologize for being human.”
Human. That was one thing the state said kids like him could never be.
First, he was an at-risk youth, then a super-predator and a thug.
And then they called him killer, convict, and felon, before adding inmate to the list. Never human.
Never child, not even when his name and picture were plastered all over the Philadelphia Daily News.
This time, he knew he was frozen. Standing there in a euphoria that she’d inspired, but he was ill-equipped to make a move in one direction or another.
Her eyes held his, steady and sure. “Walk with me.”
They left the music and the lights and the knowing looks.
Walked down the steps and onto the landing where the bay reflected the lanterns in amber and gold like paint smears on a dark canvas.
They found a rocky wall near the water and sat, watching another group of visitors set out to experience magic.
“You wanna talk about it? About what has you so deep in your head?” Monique’s voice was soft, like she was offering comfort and not condemnation. “I figured we shouldn’t”—she jerked her head toward the restaurant—“do it in front of our entire family.”
Right. The family who were definitely watching. Tommie was probably taking notes to mess with him later.
His throat tightened, and he struggled to clear it. He liked it here, in the quiet of the rainforest. It made it feel like his issues were microscopic, like those plankton, maybe?
Monique didn’t touch him. He didn’t reach for her, even though he wanted to. God, he wanted to simply hold her hand. But he wasn’t sure if he could say all that needed to be said if he started touching her.
“Last night, I promised you later, Monique, and you deserve to be able to make an informed decision about…”
“Us?”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to assume anything.” His heart lifted at the prospect, even though he had no idea how to be an us.
Taking in a long, deep breath of sea air, he told her everything.
About how he was a sad, scared kid, couch surfing and squatting with his mom until he met Tommie and the Lanes.
About Tommie’s dad, who, in his own quiet way, had been the first man who had shown him love.
About how his mother was being abused while he was being loved on.
He told her all the things he didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate thirty-some-odd years ago. Not that there was anyone who could do anything about it back then.
“And that’s how you ended up in prison?”