Chapter Thirty-Five
“Your girl really planned you a party at a strip club. Shit, I underestimated Overalls.”
I was buzzed, not drunk, which meant I only had so much patience for Jay right now.
“Yo, she doesn’t like that nickname.” Jay had taken to calling Lauren Overalls since day one. When he’d met her for the first time she was dressed comfortably, and he seemed unwilling to let her forget it. “Cut that shit out.”
Marlon cut some of the tension, leaning forward against the bar counter and observed, “Why’d you let her throw you a party when you know you didn’t want one?”
“It was a reason for her to spend some time with my sister.”
You could say that it was important to me that at least one of my sisters was on my side about this. Sanaa had planned this party with Lauren for a month straight, obsessing over little things like color schemes, becoming her friend in the process. They’d bonded.
If not for the fact that Lauren’s best friend was in attendance, I was sure that she would’ve been off somewhere with Sanaa, who was probably walking around somewhere with a clipboard, treating this party as if it for one of her clients.
Marlon was saying something I couldn’t hear, so rather than ask him to repeat it, I only shrugged, saying nothing and glancing Lauren’s way for what was definitely the hundredth time that night. She was still chatting it up with her friend. Evidently Lauren and Lux had a lot of catching up to do.
It was a little after one in the morning, and the party did seem like it was beginning to lose some of its steam. After Vance had called it a night, I’d spent the better part of the evening with my friends, as none of us were really impressed by pole acrobatics anymore.
Like I said, clubs like this lose all of their enchanting flair after some time. And after a lifetime of being at the head of an empire that focused on erecting clubs like this, places like The Diamond Palace went from enchanting to strictly business.
Also—and I was sure that Sanaa just didn’t know when she chose it—The Diamond Palace was one of Lyle’s spots back when he was alive. Being here made me feel like his ghost was creeping somewhere, hovering above my neck.
“Amir would have been all the way turnt at this one.” Jay meant no harm, but I didn’t appreciate the reminder.
And it wasn’t the first time he’d brought him up this evening.
I understood that some people worked through their grief by constantly talking about the person who died, constantly reminiscing.
That wasn’t me.
When I found my eyes wandering back to Lauren and her friend yet again, it would’ve been an understatement to say that I was pleased to see Lux hugging her as if to say goodbye. Over her friend’s shoulder, Lauren’s eyes found mine, a knowing smile bringing out her dimples.
“Yeahhhhh,” the word was long and drawn out once I turned my attention back to Marlon and Jay. “I’mma catch you guys later.”
***
“You never came back to join us.” Lauren patted at my shoulder the minute it was within reach.
“Trust me,” I expressed, placing a hand at her hip to pull her in closer. “She didn’t want me to.”
“Right.” Lauren frowned. “About that…”
“You can’t win over everybody.”
“She’s not usually that rude.”
I cracked a smile. “That… kinda makes it worse. Do you wanna get out of here?”
Lauren eyed me, her eyelids drooping ever so slightly as she narrowed her vision.
“You’re not having fun,” she finally concluded, as if the answers were in my eyes.
“You’re the one who diagnosed me with depression,” I reminded, as if to say, ‘Are you really all that surprised?’
“Before we go back to your sister’s, can we stay a little longer?” she asked.
I looked around the club, knowing full well I didn’t want to stay a little longer. Technically, it wasn’t even my birthday anymore.
“Not here,” Lauren added, grabbing my hand and nodding for me to follow her. It was a trek across the club before she finally came to a stop and nodded toward a threshold behind her. “In here.”
Behind Lauren was an opening into a private room, closed off from the rest of the club by a thick velvet curtain. During regular business hours, I knew this closed off space was one of the club’s Champagne Rooms, where high paying customers could pay dancers for extra special attention.
Lauren lead the way through the empty and dimly lit space.
Under the pink fluorescent lights, Lauren’s white dress could almost pass off as rosy, the usual brown of her skin shining red under the colored bulbs.
She turned to face me, stopping at a long red chaise, nodding for me to take a seat on it while she stood.
“I saw you watching me from across the room all night.”
I took a seat, deciding to play along with whatever she was trying to start. “I wasn’t tryna to hide it.”
“Do you wanna play a game with me?”
“Depends. What’re the rules?”
Lauren pulled up a chair opting to sit across from me. “I’m gonna call it strip therapy.”
I chuckled, suddenly becoming all too aware that the red chaise I was on looked like something straight out of a therapist’s office. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” she asserted. “Lay down, and I’ll tell you the rules.”
“Lauren.”
“Kain,” she mocked my tone, encouraging, “Lay down.”
Lying down, I asked, “What’re the rules?”
“We are going to have a therapy session. For every question of mine that you answer honestly, I will take something off. For every question that you avoid, you will take something off. Easy enough?”
“Yup,” I nodded, chuckling to myself before I added, “Now take something off.”
“Wait—that question didn’t count.”
“These are your rules, Lauren. That was a question; I answered.”
Rolling her eyes, she leaned backward in her seat, reaching for the back of her white heels.
“Shoes count?”
“I’m wearing a dress. You’re wearing a shirt and pants. Let’s keep it fair and say I can do one shoe at a time.” She waited to see if I would disagree. When I didn’t, she reminded, “Also you asked me a question.”
“Remember, you didn’t say I had to take something off for askin’ questions, only avoiding them. These are your rules, Lauren.” She crossed her arms, visibly annoyed that I was right. “Petty looks cute on you.”
“Let’s get started then,” she urged, thinking for a while before asking her first question. I could tell from the amount of time she took that it was going to be an intrusive one. “What happened that night when you got to Poseidon?”
Sitting up from my laid position, I reached down to unlace both of my shoes, removing both and leaving the socks. “Pass.”
“What happened after Poseidon?”
Images of me in Memphis, raising a gun between my aunt Rochelle’s eyes, flashed in my memory. Without a word, I removed the socks, too. “Pass.”
“If I never showed up at your doorstep with those two men, would you have ever sought me out?”
“Yeah, I just needed some time.”
“For?”
“To heal.”
“You still haven’t healed, though,” she observed, and I confirmed this. “You would’ve shut me out for more than a month.”
“It’s possible.”
“Why?”
“After Amir died, I sort of got it in my head that it only hit me so hard because I’d given him too much of a presence in my day to day life.
I thought if I’d kept him at an arm’s length, I wouldn’t have suffered as much.
Distance—I decided—is protective. The further you keep someone away from you, the less affected you will be when they’re gone. ”
“And so you wanted to push me away in case I die or something.”
I shook my head at this assumption. “Death isn’t the only thing that separates two people.
Lauren, I just thought it was best if I didn’t need you.
And when all that shit went down… there was no one else in the world that I needed more.
That scared the fuck out of me. Because then I got the strongest sense that everything I was feeling could happen to me all over again, but worse, because next time it would be you. ”
“What would you do if you lost me?”
I cringed. “I… I don’t know, Lauren.”
“Are you avoiding the question?”
“No, I really don’t know,” I stressed, reminding her, “You’ve asked a lot of questions.”
“Do you know how many exactly?”
I cracked a smile, knowing it was more than enough for her to be naked right now. “Let’s just say it was two.”
Nodding, Lauren removed her other shoe and reached for the hem of her dress. With her sitting there in nothing but a sheer black bra and panty combo, I got a feeling that these questions were about to get a lot harder.
“It sounds to me like you fear getting hurt,” she figured.
“Doesn’t everybody?
“Not this way.”
“Explain.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever been properly taught how to cope with trauma.
You suppress. The things you can’t suppress, you avoid.
And the things you can’t avoid, they eat at you until you deteriorate.
And because you know this, you try to protect yourself by keeping your distance.
By never allowing yourself to want things, to hope for things, to love anything.
Because you wouldn’t know what to do if you lost them. You would break.”
All I could do was think about her words for a moment, leaning forward in my seat, my elbows resting not far off from my knees.
Lauren wasn’t completely wrong.
“That sounds almost spot on. So what do you recommend, Dr. Caplan?”
“Well,” Lauren said the word slowly, rising from where she sat and taking a seat beside me. “I recommend you see a real doctor. And get real therapy.”
“I’ll consider it.” I reached in, running my thumb along her cheek.
Under the rosy light of the private room, everything about her appeared to come in various shades of pink and red.
Lauren and the color red was always such a breathtaking combination.
Just before I leaned in to kiss her, she stopped me.
“We’re still playing,” she informed.
“Ask your two questions then,” I whispered, having every intention of answering them in exchange for the last two items she had on.
“This is one question… Why did you say I was almost spot on? What did I get wrong?”
Thumb still caressing her cheek, I replied, “You said I wouldn’t allow myself to want things, to hope for things, to love something. That’s not all the way true. I’ve allowed myself to do all of those things.”
The vulnerable place it put me in was more stressful than Lauren could ever understand, but I allowed it anyway.
I didn’t sleep at all the night I realized I loved her.
That was the night she was brought to Silas’ house by the two men I killed, the same night I’d watched her sleep peacefully in my arms. I knew then, and accepting it was terrifying.
Holding my eyes to hers, Lauren removed her bra.
“Ask your last question.”
Rather than speak, Lauren crossed over me, seating herself on my lap, one knee on either side my legs.
My hands found their way to her waist, as they always did whenever she straddled me, and she took my face into her hands.
Her voice wasn’t as confident as before when she whispered her final question.
“Do you love me?”
Against her lips, I quietly confessed, “I do.”
If ever there was a way for time to both speed up and slow down within the same period, it happened in that moment.
At the exact second that our lips touched, her hands traveled down each and every button of my shirt with an almost lightning fast quickness.
Her lips against mine were slow, however, her tongue tasting like Sprite of all things.
At this, I smiled into the kiss. Leave it to Lauren to drink Sprite at a party in a strip club.
She wasted no time helping me get just as naked as she already was, wasted no time taking hold of my erection in her palm, and seemed to go too fast to realize we didn’t have protection. My hands gripped her waist, holding her still until she raised a look my way.
“Baby, I’m not wearing a—”
“I know,” she interrupted with a whisper, her front teeth sinking into the skin of her lower lip nervously before bluntly expressing, “It doesn’t matter.”
Again, her lips were on mine again, disarming me into loosening my grip at her waist. In a way that was both slow and fast, without hesitation, Lauren lowered herself back onto my lap, taking every inch of me into the tight warmth of her body.
When her mouth pushed back, breaking the kiss prematurely, her forehead was still on mine, and she softly said the words, “I love you, too.”
***
The club was long empty by the time Lauren and I had finally found our way out of the champagne room.
She walked barefooted, slightly in front of me, her white heels in one hand and small purse in the other.
It was a little after four o’clock in the morning, but Lauren’s languid steps were not out of sleepiness at all.
“You need me to carry you?” I offered, a vague sense of accomplishment in my question.
She met my smile with an over exaggerated roll of her eyes. “You’re feeling yourself.”
“I’m just tryna help,” I chuckled, tugging at one of her stray curls teasingly. “But I won’t mind watchin’ you wobble your way to the car at all.”
A half step ahead, she turned to face me, stopping at the club’s exit. My eyes rose to find her eyebrows coming together with skepticism.
“Oh, please. I’m not wobbly. We both know you’re back there staring at my ass.”
“That, too,” I agreed, pulling back the door and waiting for her to walk outside. “You wanna get to bed, or are you up for one more stop?”
“A stop where?”
“All I did last night was drink,” I explained, coming up behind her as she took steps that definitely were wobbly to the car. “I’m starving.”
Lauren turned to respond, catching my smirk behind her at the sight of her less than stable steps. “Okay, that’s it. Yes, I might be having a little trouble finding my balance. I can’t have you standing behind me, stroking your ego over the fact.”
“A little trouble finding your balance,” I repeated with a chuckle, only laughing harder when she scurried up behind me, no longer wanting me to have the backend view. I turned to look at her, amusement in my voice when I stressed, “Lauren, quit playing games, I need you where I can see you.”
I stepped out of the way, nodding for her to walk ahead.
At the exact moment I stepped out from in front of her, a sound like thunder ripped through the early morning silence. Instinctively, my heart fell. Perhaps if I had come from a more run-of-the-mill background, I might’ve been able to trick myself into believing the sound was thunder at first.
But naturally, unlike thunder, I already knew that close range gunshots would always make my ears ring.