Reaction at 2:16:00 AM

After I thanked him, Dorian sped off and I stood there by the curb until his car was only a figment of my memory.  The moon had decided to begin to roam around, illuminating everything that surrounded me, making my broken down world appear beautiful. A red Camry was hanging out of my driveway and instantly I prepared myself for questions. I planned on bypassing my roommate, Tracy and washing away the day’s hardness with the steam and rapid downpour of our walk in glass door shower. The door quietly clicked shut behind me. The sound was softer than the sound of my shoes. That’s why I, as quietly as I could, slipped each one off one at a time, gripping the doorknob for balance. 

My bedroom was on the first floor, to the left of the kitchen and to the right of the living area, which was code language for the room where Tracy liked to lick, suck, pull, twist, pinch, tease, kiss, nibble, caress, rub, stroke, and experiment when I was out. I generally stayed out of there, despite the flowery and tempting scents that always flowed from the candles she kept lit. Tracy was the kind of woman who lived for flowers and candles and quiet dinners with boisterous laughter. We rarely entertained groups of any kind in our home so we had the luxury of making it as beguiling and as nontraditional as we pleased. There were no parents in the picture to barge in and lecture either. 

I looked around, peeped in the living area and both the sofas were empty. There were four candles burning on the black side tables though. I speculated that maybe she could have just had them lit for reading purposes because Tracy was an avid reader, read two books a week sometimes, but the red Camry came back into mind. Looking straight ahead now, the kitchen lights were out, but the illumination from the moon would have been enough to sit in there and feed her guest(s) and sex her (them) on the table afterwards. Quickly, I ran a list of names through my head, names that have popped in here in the past few months to predict who was here. Red Camry. I knew it looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it with a face, body, or voice. Then I saw a red strapless bra adjacent to my bare feet. It was a very expensive bra, high quality, no doubt part of a designer set that cost half my share of the mortgage payment. Too frilly to be mine. Too posh to be Tracy’s.

I exhaled as I placed my hand on my room doorknob and twisted it as softly as I could. It made a small clicking sound, but it was barely audible if Tracy was upstairs in her own room.

“Denise.” Damn. A shiver rocked my body as I closed my eyes. The sweat and rain that tickled my skin earlier felt cold and dirty. “Is that you?”

I looked behind and around me. I didn’t see her, but I knew it was Tracy from her booming monotonous voice.

“Yeah.” I said, my voice meek and barely audible. 

I felt like I was confessing a deep, dark secret. I wasn’t quite sure where I was responding to until I heard her bare feet clomping down the hardwood floor. She was coming from the one place I hadn’t looked: the staircase. It was obvious now. There was a pair of perilous pointy black pumps thrown about, three stairs separating each one and the matching thong to go with the sleek red strapless bra was in the midst of it all. 

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Right On time at 12:35:00 AM

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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