Chapter 9 Guess Who
GUESS WHO
I was walking home, mind somewhere else entirely, when I glanced through the window of a restaurant on Rhode Island Avenue. And there she was.
Mehar. Sitting in a booth near the back, next to a man. Not across from him. Next to him. Same side, close enough that their arms could brush if either of them shifted an inch. She was eating, and something about the way she was sitting made me stop on the sidewalk, like my feet had decided for me.
Her shoulders were down. I’d never seen that before.
Every other time I’d seen this woman, she carried herself like she was bracing for something.
Her jaw was usually tight, her posture rigid.
It was so constant that I’d started to think that was just who she was.
That the tension was permanent and welded into her bones.
For all of her dominatrix shenanigans, the bitch needed one good fuck.
But here she was with her shoulders dropped and her face doing something I couldn’t quite name. Soft wasn’t the right word because the bitch was never soft. But the sharp edges had blurred. Maybe it was him or the food, but it had reached something in her that I didn’t know was reachable.
I should have kept walking, but I moved closer to the window instead, staying to the side where the streetlight wouldn’t catch me. And I watched. I told myself I was just curious. That this was nothing. That people see people they know in public all the time, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.
But my feet wouldn’t move and my chest was doing something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Something hot and tight that spread from my sternum to my throat and tasted like metal. Jealousy and rage welled within me. She had something of mine.
I rushed to the other side of the street out of view when I saw him pay the check. She came out first. Walked to her car without looking back at him. She got in, sat there for a moment, then pulled away heading east.
I watched her taillights disappear and stood there longer than made sense for someone who was just curious.
I walked home and got into bed and closed my eyes and saw her face through that window. I replayed it over and over, adjusting the angle each time, trying to see more than the glass had given me.
I told myself it was nothing. I told myself I’d forget about it by morning.
But when my alarm went off the next day, the first thing I did was think about her. And the second thing I did was start figuring out how to make sure I never had to wonder where she was again.