The air conditioning was on full blast. My body shuddered violently as droplets of rain dripped from my collarbone length black hair that I had taken out of the ponytail it had been in for most of the evening. The water was cold. My sopping cotton shirt clung to my skin that was filled with chill bumps and felt cool and pasty and had started itching. My head was ablaze and pounding at my temples, the fire burning through my smoldering eyes. Images of missing that train, running up and down those stairs, pushing those people out my way, waiting under the rain for almost an hour for a bus, cursing people out when I caught the wrong one, walking almost two miles to get back to the city, gutting out over two hundred dollars to a cabbie to get me to this club as fast as he could beckoned me. Now he was telling me that it was over. Everything was over. two years was over. I swallowed hard and exhaled loudly through my clenched teeth. My eyes tightened and squinted together. My voice clapped through the air like thunder.“You didn’t know what I went through to get here tonight.” I growled with my chin tilted down towards the ground as he turned his back to leave me.“You know what, Denise, it doesn’t matter what you went through to get here. The only thing that matters now is that you broke your promise. And you know what, that was the last one you’re going to break. Denise, I’m done. This is done. We are no more. I can’t keep doing this. You put everything in your life before me. I can’t. I-I...”I put my hand out in front of me. He stopped rambling. I could barely breathe. I had never been more humiliated in my life. All I could think of was that I had brought this upon myself. This is what I got.
“Stop.”
Every voice and every sound disappeared. Every feature on everyone’s faces had become so opaque that they looked like unfinished portraits. My heart was shattered and I hadn’t seen where all the pieces had gone. Yet, I had heard enough. I wasn’t going to fight him anymore. We’d been there too many times before for me to be naive enough to believe that this time he didn’t mean it. I trotted out of that VIP lounge through the weight of the stares, pushed through the heavy curtains, rushed down the stairs, passed the bouncers, got out the door, and didn’t breath until I leaned my back flat against the brick wall. I began panting in short puffs under the now soft rain.
His voice made every sense come alive inside of me. It was incredibly deep and baritone, rich with bass and tremor.
“You're still here.” I was quiet and didn’t move a muscle. I was at the thin point between growing angry and pushing past it and it felt like mush. “I thought you would have been long gone by now.” My curiosity go the best of me.
I twisted my neck to the sound of his words. He was coming out of the club. First, my eyes landed somewhere between his pelvis and neck, an empty spot on his chest. He was very tall, appearing almost seven feet. Then, I slowly raised then to meet his eyes. My eyes fluttered down once I noticed his eyes staring directly into my face. I recognized him. Just before I walked into the club to meet Maurice, I had stopped at the corner store across the street to get a bottle of water to down my aspirins with and he was standing outside the door talking on the phone. He seemed to forget who he was talking to when he watched the muscles in my mouth, chin, and neck move as I practically gulped down the entire bottle of water in one swig. He hadn’t said anything to me, but I heard him talking into his phone.
“Hmm, yeah.” I replied softly. I didn’t have much of a voice at that point. Part of me hoped he would take my nonchalant response as a clue to just keep walking by.
“I hope you're not waiting for him to come out here.”
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