Chapter 51 Zainab
ZAINAB
“Prime, I have to get dressed.”
“Then get dressed.”
“I can’t get dressed with your hands on my ass.”
“That’s a you problem.” He squeezed. Both hands. Like he was testing fruit at the grocery store. “I’m just standing here.”
I swatted him away and turned back to the mirror, holding up the emerald wrap dress Mehar picked out for me.
Essence Magazine. ESSENCE. The same magazine I used to steal from the store as a teenager, folding the pages with the prettiest Black women and hiding them under my mattress like contraband. And now they wanted ME on their pages.
The feature was about my story. All of it.
The wrongful arrest. The five years living under my dead sister’s name.
The nightmare of giving birth to twins in a jail cell with no medical help.
And how I turned me and my sister’s cinnamon roll recipe and a dream into Sweet Zin, a commercial baking operation now supplying Zinnamon Rolls to grocery stores and specialty shops in twenty-three states.
Twenty-three states. Sometimes I said it out loud just to make sure it was real.
Dubz’s confession had been verified, corroborated, and accepted by the DA’s office. All charges against me, formally and permanently dropped. No conditions. No probation. No ankle monitor. Nothing. I was free. Actually, legally, completely free.
I cried for two hours. Prime held me for all of it.
I wrote LaLa and told her to call me. We cried together on the phone for a few minutes.
I told her about the trust fund Prime and I set up for her.
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, waiting for her when she got out in eighteen months.
She delivered my babies, helping them make it into the world safely.
There wasn’t enough money in the world to repay that. But we were damn sure gonna try.
She said, “Mami, you don’t owe me nothing.”
I said, “I owe you everything.”
She said, “Just name one of your cinnamon rolls after me. LaLa’s Dulce de Leche Roll.”
I laughed so hard I almost woke the twins.
It’s already on the menu.
Now here I was. Four months postpartum, standing in front of a full-length mirror, trying to squeeze into a dress that fit different than it used to.
“This don’t look right,” I muttered, turning to the side. My stomach wasn’t flat anymore. Wasn’t even close to flat. I had this soft pouch that no amount of waist trainers or tea detoxes was gonna fix because I grew two whole humans in there and my body was forever changed.
My hips were wider. My thighs touched in places they didn’t used to. Stretch marks ran across my belly and my sides like lightning bolts, silver and angry and impossible to ignore.
“I need to find something else,” I said, reaching for the zipper. “This is too tight. I look—”
“You look like the finest woman on the planet and I need you to stop playing with me.”
Prime was leaning against the doorframe. Arms crossed. Eyes doing that slow sweep from my feet to my face and back down again, like he was memorizing every inch.
“Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Looking at me like that. I have to leave in an hour.”
“That’s plenty of time.”
“Prime.”
He pushed off the doorframe and walked toward me, slowly. He knew what he wanted and had already decided he was getting it. I backed up until my thighs hit the edge of the dresser.
“You know what your problem is, Goddess?” He stood in front of me, close enough that I could smell his cologne and the shea butter on his skin.
“You keep looking at yourself through old eyes. You see stretch marks. I see proof that you carried my children. You see extra weight. I see more of you to hold onto.”
His hands went to my waist. Slid down to my hips. Gripped.
“These hips gave me twins.” He pulled me closer.
“This body did what most bodies can’t do.
You created life in a jail cell with no help and you and my babies survived.
You’re a goddamn superhero and you’re standing here worried about a dress fitting the same way it would’ve before you had superpowers. ”
“You always know what to say.”
“Because I always mean it.” He kissed my neck. That spot right below my ear that made my knees stupid. “Now take the dress off.”
“I just put it on.”
“And now I’m taking it off.” His fingers found the zipper. Slow. I felt the fabric loosen around my body, felt the air hit my skin, felt his hands replace the dress with warmth. “Essence can wait.”
“They really can’t—”
He kissed me so deep, and so urgent, that every argument died in my throat and every reason I had to be anywhere other than right here just evaporated.
His tongue slid against mine and I made that sound, the one I couldn’t control, the one that came from somewhere deep and primal and only he could pull out of me.
“One hour,” I breathed against his mouth.
“I only need thirty minutes.”
“You’re so—”
“Shh.” He lifted me onto the dresser. My perfume bottles rattled. Something fell off the edge and I didn’t care what it was. His mouth was on my collarbone, my chest, the tops of my breasts spilling over my bra. He unhooked it with one hand because of course he did.
“These got bigger,” he said against my skin.
“Everything got bigger.”
“I noticed.” He took my nipple in his mouth and my head fell back against the mirror. “I’m grateful for it.”
His hands were everywhere. Stomach, thighs, pulling my panties to the side instead of taking them off because thirty minutes meant no time for formalities. I reached for his sweats and found him already hard, already ready, already done pretending this was going any other way.
When he pushed inside me I grabbed the back of his neck and held on. He groaned against my throat. Deep. Guttural. Like coming home after a long trip and finally sleeping in your own bed.
“Damn, Goddess.”
“Don’t stop.”
He didn’t.
His pace was slow at first. Deliberate. Savoring. Both hands gripping my hips, pulling me to the edge of the dresser, filling me completely with every stroke. I wrapped my legs around him and he went deeper and I swear I forgot my own name.
“Look at me,” he said.
I opened my eyes. His face was inches from mine. Those dark eyes locked on me with an intensity that made me feel like the only woman on the planet.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. Not a compliment. A fact. Delivered the same way he’d say the sky is blue. “Every stretch mark. Every curve. Every pound. All of it. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Say it back.”
“I’m beautiful.”
“Again.”
“I’m beautiful.”
“That’s my girl.” He kissed me and picked up the pace and everything after that was a blur of skin and sweat and sounds I’d be embarrassed about if the babies weren’t napping in the nursery down the hall with the white noise machine drowning out their mama’s lack of self-control.
When it was over, we were on the floor. Somehow. Don’t ask me how. My dress was crumpled under us like a blanket and his sweats were somewhere near the bathroom door.
“I have to redo my hair,” I said, staring at the ceiling.
“Your hair looks fine.”
“My hair looks like I just had sex on a dresser and then fell on the floor.”
“So it looks accurate.”
I laughed. That full body laugh that came from the belly. The kind I didn’t know I was capable of half a year ago when I was sitting in a jail cell wondering if I’d ever laugh again.
He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me. Really looked. No smirk. No jokes. Just Prime.
“You happy, Goddess?”
I thought about it. Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because I wanted to feel it fully before I said it. Wanted to hold it in my chest and make sure it was real.
My sister’s murder was solved. Her killer was paying for it.
The charges against me were dropped. My babies were healthy.
Yusef was back in school, a much better private school, and killing it.
My business was thriving. My other sister was finding her power.
And the man lying next to me on this floor loved me in a way I didn’t think was possible.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m happy.”
He leaned down and kissed my forehead. Soft. Like I was something precious.
“Good. Now go do your Essence interview. And tell them your man said you’re the baddest woman in America.”
“I’m not telling them that.”
“I’ll call them myself.”
“You absolutely will not.”
“Watch me.”
I shoved him and got up, grabbing the dress off the floor and heading to the bathroom to fix the damage he’d done. In the mirror, my hair was wrecked, my lipstick was smeared across my chin, and I had a fresh hickey blooming on my collarbone that no amount of concealer was going to cover.
I looked like a mess.
I looked like a woman who was loved.
Same thing.