36
After dinner, I feel thankful to Aaliyah’s mom. As we walk outside the front door, Aaliyah walks alongside me.
“You want to take a walk?” Sister Aaliyah asks.
“Yeah sure,” I reply. Turning to her, I smile. “The dinner was awesome.”
“My mom loves you,” Sister Aaliyah says with a smile.
I feel pleased that Sister Aaliyah called me for help. There was a time I would have been over the moon about this, but now I feel like I’m invading.
As we slowly reach around the next block and Aaliyah tells some silly stories about her mother, I say, “Your mom seems like a genuinely nice person.”
“She is. She sacrifices so much. I have to remind her to be happy for herself, you know?”
We are about to walk over the corner and take a left at the intersection when my heart starts beating faster.
I see a woman coming from around the corner with red braids in her hair.
I almost freeze and forget how to walk, just staring at this woman.
It’s dark, but her face stands out to me.
When my brain catches up, I see that it’s a woman who isn’t Erica but looks almost exactly like her.
Then the closer she comes, the more I realize no, it’s not Erica at all.
Geez.
Now I’m seeing her face in everything?
Even at the dinner table I was thinking about her, about Christmas, about the kiss under the mistletoe… about her mouth on me…
~“Do you think about me?”
“All the time,” she had said. ~
All the time…
All the time?
“So you’re done the Youth Camp?” Sister Aaliyah’s voice breaks me out of my stupor.
“Uh y-yeah.”
“Happy to have you back.”
“Thanks,” I say, giving her a smile.
“Just out of curiosity, why did you stay?” she questions.
I don’t want to tell Sister Aaliyah everything .
“The church needs me more here than they need me at the Youth Camp Outreach,” I reply. “And they have a lot of hands there. It’s like they were trying to find things for me to do.”
“So it has nothing to do with Erica staying here and getting fired?” Sister Aaliyah throws that question my direction.
Instantly my pulse rattles around in my system, causing me to laugh nervously against my will.
“Well… a little bit. She doesn’t know anyone in the church. I also feel responsible for her,” I answer truthfully.
As we walk a little farther, Sister Aaliyah and I find a small park I didn’t even know was here. There’s a swing set near the edge of the grass. We sit down on the swings.
“Can you push me?” Sister Aaliyah asks.
“Yeah,” I reply.
She is so light and so beautiful.
This would have been a dream come true, or at least a very nice fantasy, being here with her.
But I don’t know why I’m feeling so antsy.
After I finish pushing her on the swing, she offers to push me, but I decline.
Instead, she goes down the slide. This park is mostly for kids, but she’s enjoying herself and doesn’t care one bit. She laughs going down the slide.
When she laughs, she’s quiet. When she talks, she’s reserved and very shy. I think about Erica when she’s laughing. Erica laughs with her whole body, throwing her head back and laughing loud like a firework compared to a spark. Her eyes are intense and light a fire in me.
But Sister Aaliyah’s eyes, even though they’re very beautiful… when I look in them… I can’t see anything in them.
Aaliyah is like cool quiet rain on a Sunday evening, but Erica… she’s the sun shooting its rays through every cloud and every tree top in a large forest, waking up all the animals and making everything loud and alive.
Her lips are like fine wine and strong caffeine at the same time.
The way she touched me made my knees weak with something dangerously close to worship.
This is not good.
“Come on, Brother King. How many times you get to go down a slide?” Sister Aaliyah says again.
“No,” I shake my head, trying to maintain a good attitude.
“Please, Brother King. It’s really fun. Just once ,” she urges playfully, laughing a little bit.
Wanting to please her and knowing she’s not going to give up that easily, I oblige.
Walking up the tiny ladder to the slide, I place my feet out in front of me and push myself down.
My legs get caught, probably the underside of my boot catching the plastic of the slide, making a squeaking noise and causing me to crumple on the slide.
Rolling forward, I stumble into the mulch off the slide in a very clumsy way I did not intend.
Sister Aaliyah is laughing up a storm, a quiet melody of her loudest laughter, which isn’t very loud at all. It sounds more like silent little gasps as her eyes crinkle shut. Unable to help myself and to shake off the embarrassment, I laugh too.
“Let me help you,” she says through her chuckles as she gets to her knees and tries to help me up, but I’m too heavy.
She’s laughing so hard that tears fall down her face.
“Glad you find it so funny,” I tell her.
“You’re very funny. You were laughing too,” she grins at me, barely able to hold in her joy.
“You know what? I’m going to just lie down here,” I tell her in playful defiance.
“No, don’t do that,” she stutters out in an impish, jovial tone.
Still on my back, I prop myself up on my elbows and look at her, rolling my eyes with a small smirk.
“Then I’m going to stay here too,” she says, kneeling down beside me. She catches me completely off guard when her lips find mine.
My eyes open wide for a second, unable to believe what’s happening, before they flutter closed. Her mouth opens to close over mine again, and mine do the same, accepting the invitation. Only the tip of her tongue finds my lips as we kiss, never going deep, and I never push myself into her.
Sister Aaliyah… is actually making out with me. This is actually happening. We’re kissing right here on the ground in the dark, alone…
And I feel nothing.
This is the woman I had fantasized about when I slipped into that temptation in my mind, the one I admired for so long. Now she’s kissing me, and she shouldn’t be. But I let Erica kiss me. I can’t keep sinning against God. Pulling back, I say, “I’m sorry.”
My head turns away from her as I sit up a little straighter, looking at the ground in front of me with my legs folded.
“I… I apologize. I’m so sorry. God forgive me,” she says quickly, as if trying to do damage control and feeling embarrassed herself.
Looking over to the left of her, I give her a soft smile. “That was nice but… we can’t,” I tell her apologetically.
She only looks at me for a minute before her face seems to fall in sadness, and she nods in understanding.
“Let me take you home,” I tell her as I stand up and pull her to her feet.
???