35. Lee
Lee
Six weeks was the magic number everybody threw around after you had a baby. Once you hit it, your doctor could clear you for sex. What nobody bothered mentioning was that being medically cleared and actually wanting somebody anywhere near your vagina were two completely different things.
At my six-week appointment, my doctor told me everything had healed like it was supposed to. I went home and continued not having sex.
Between breastfeeding, pumping, leaking, finally being done bleeding, being tired enough to fall asleep sitting straight up, and having a tiny human attached to me damn near twenty-four hours a day, sex wasn’t exactly at the top of my list.
Six weeks turned into two months, then two months turned into three. One night while I was lying in bed staring at the baby monitor, it hit me that me and Van hadn’t done anything sexual since Point Clear. Even then, we still hadn’t actually had sex.
I had refused to have intercourse while I was pregnant even though my doctor told me it was perfectly fine.
I just couldn’t get past having JB’s baby inside me while another man was inside me.
My brain said absolutely the fuck not, and Van never pushed the issue.
He took whatever I was comfortable giving him and left the rest alone.
Then Myles came, and somehow that man went from my boyfriend and my baby’s goddaddy to basically doing daddy duty without anybody sitting him down and asking him to.
Parenting was hard as hell. Anybody who said otherwise was either lying or had round-the-clock help. Myles was cute, but he was also demanding, loud, greedy, and apparently personally offended by sleep.
Van would work all day, come through the door tired, shower, then come find me and take the baby.
“Go do something.”
The first time he told me that, I looked at him like he was crazy. “Do what?”
“I don’t know. Take a shower, go to sleep, watch TV, stare at a wall. I don’t care. Just go.”
So I went, and when I came back an hour later, Myles had been changed, fed, burped, and was knocked out across Van’s chest while Snoop slept beside them.
The shit was almost disrespectful. I could spend forty-five minutes bouncing that baby around the house while he screamed directly into my ear, but Van picked him up and somehow Myles turned into a peaceful citizen.
Even his family had gone right back to believing Myles was secretly his. I had given up correcting them, especially after his mama cornered me in the kitchen one Sunday.
Denise waited until Van went outside with his daddy before she touched my arm.
“Can I tell you something?”
I was fixing myself a plate. “Sure.”
She lowered her voice. “I don’t judge you.”
I stopped reaching for macaroni. “Okay. I appreciate that.”
“I used to be promiscuous too.”
My hand froze over the serving spoon.
Excuse me?
Denise nodded like we were having some beautiful woman-to-woman moment. “I was young once. Made some mistakes. So I don’t judge you for not knowing exactly who Myles’s father was.”
I stared at her while she kept going.
“I just ask that you don’t break my son’s heart. Evander loves you and that baby.”
“Mmm.”
That was all I could get out.
“And pray against that sinful nature,” she added. “That’s what I had to do.”
I didn’t even know which part to address first: the promiscuity, her apparently believing I had been running around Mobile collecting possible baby daddies, or the fact that she thought prayer was the only thing standing between me and the next available penis. So I chose none of it.
“I’m gonna do that.”
Denise smiled and patted my arm. “Good.”
I took my plate and got the hell out of that kitchen, and when I told Van about it later, that nigga laughed so hard he had tears coming out his eyes.
“It is not funny.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Your mama thinks I’m a whore.”
“She doesn’t think you’re a whore.”
“She told me to pray against my sinful nature, Evander.”
That only made him laugh harder, and I should’ve left his ass right there. Instead, three months after having Myles, I was lying in bed beside Van when it hit me that this man had been my boyfriend for months and I still had never fucked him.
We had done plenty of other shit. He had eaten me out more times than I could count, and that weekend at the Grand, I’d finally returned the favor, but actual dick-in-pussy sex had never happened.
Now Myles was three months old, my body finally felt like mine again, and I was lying beside a man who had somehow been patient through all of it. Somewhere in the middle of thinking about that, I realized I wanted to fuck my boyfriend.
I couldn’t lie, part of it was gratitude.
Van had stepped into some shit he didn’t create and never once acted like Myles was baggage he had to tolerate because he wanted me, but that wasn’t all of it.
I missed touching him. I missed kissing him without stopping myself before things went too far.
After three months of living in nursing bras and oversized T-shirts, I wanted to feel like somebody’s girlfriend again instead of somebody’s mama for a few hours.
So the next morning, I called Anika.
She answered on FaceTime with a mouthful of cereal. “What?”
“You busy tonight?”
She chewed. “Why?”
“Can you keep Myles?”
Her eyes lit up immediately. “Yes.”
Damn. I hadn’t even finished asking.
“You ain’t got nothing planned?”
“Nope.”
“What about Trevon?”
“He live here.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Anika rolled her eyes. “Yes, Lee. Bring my nephew.”
Ever since she found out she was pregnant, she had been trying to use my child as a practice baby. I personally thought she had picked the wrong one. Myles was not beginner level.
“You know he been fighting sleep lately.”
“Good. I need practice.”
“That’s what you keep saying until he screaming at two in the morning.”
“I got it.”
“Mhm.”
She scooped up another spoonful of cereal. “What you doing anyway?”
“Nothing.”
Anika stopped with the spoon halfway to her mouth and narrowed her eyes at me. I knew that look.
“Why you need me to keep him if you ain’t doing nothing?”
“Because I want a break.” I looked away from the screen, already knowing she wasn’t about to leave it there.
“Van there?”
“He lives here, Anika.”
Her whole face changed, and she slowly put the spoon back in the bowl. “Oh.”
“Don’t.”
“OH.”
I reached for the button to end the call.
“Go get your back blown-”
I hung up before she could finish. That was why I didn’t tell her shit.
Once Myles was safely at Anika’s house that evening, I came back home and started getting myself together.
I considered cooking, then thought about standing over a stove, cleaning the kitchen afterward, and still having enough energy left for what I actually had planned.
I decided absolutely not and let LongHorn handle the cooking.
I ordered enough for both of us, picked it up, brought it home, and put everything in the oven on low so it would stay warm. Then I showered, shaved, moisturized, and did all that extra shit I hadn’t bothered doing since before Myles was born.
I dug through the back of my drawer until I found a black lace set I hadn’t worn in forever.
It was a little sheer in places it probably didn’t need to be, and for a second I just stood there looking at it like I had forgotten women still wore shit like this.
The bra pushed my boobs up enough that I stood in front of the mirror admiring them until I remembered those same boobs could start leaking milk with absolutely no warning.
I put a thin black robe over everything and checked myself again. My stomach wasn’t anywhere close to flat, I still had stretch marks, my hips looked wider, and my boobs were bigger. There were parts of me that hadn’t gone back to what they were before pregnancy and maybe never would.
For a second, I almost changed clothes, but then I looked at myself again. Fuck it. I looked good. Different, but good.
A little after six, I heard the front door open.
“Snoop, move,” Van said from the front of the house.
The dog’s nails clicked across the floor before Van’s voice carried through the house.
“Lee?”
“In here.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, then immediately stood back up. Sitting there waiting looked too planned, even though this was extremely planned.
I walked into the bathroom, stood there for two seconds, then walked right back out. What the hell was I doing?
“Lee?”
“Bedroom!”
Heavy footsteps came down the hallway before Van appeared in the doorway still wearing his work clothes, keys in one hand. The first thing he did was look toward the empty bassinet.
“Where Myles?”
I was standing there in a robe at six o’clock with food in the oven, and the first thing out this man’s mouth was asking where the baby was.
“With Anika.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Why?”
“Because she wanted him.”
“You voluntarily let your sister take that baby overnight?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why you saying it like it’s a bad idea?”
Van just looked at me.
Okay. Fair.
“He coming back tomorrow.”
“Mhm.”
Then he sniffed the air. “You cooked?”
“LongHorn did.”
That made him smile. “What’s going on?”
“Why something gotta be going on?”
“Baby gone. Food here. You standing around in a robe looking suspicious.”
“I always look like this.”
“No, you don’t.”
I folded my arms, and this time when his eyes moved over me, they didn’t come right back to my face. They lingered long enough for me to know he was finally catching on.
“Go shower,” I told him.
Van didn’t move. “Why?”
“Because you been at work all day.”
“I shower every day after work.”
“Then today shouldn’t be different.”
He looked me over again. “Lee.”
“Van.”
“What you got under that robe?”
“Go wash your ass and find out.”
Van stared at me for another second before reaching for his watch.
“That’s what I thought.”
He shook his head as he took it off. “Keep talking.”
“I will.”
He headed toward the bathroom but stopped beside me long enough to kiss my forehead.
I frowned. “What was that?”
“A kiss.”
“On my forehead?”
“You told me go shower.”
“Yes, but damn.”
He laughed and disappeared into the bathroom.