Page 113 of Omar

"Can't even remember." He almost smiled. "Shanay been on my case about it. Says I need to chill."

"She ain't wrong."

"She never is." He picked up his mug and took it to the sink. "Get outta here. I'll hit you up if something comes up."

I drove to the apartment. Asha was there. Nene had gone to stay with her cousin in Flatbush to give us space, which was Nene's way of saying she approved without having to say it out loud.

Asha was sitting on the couch reading something on her phone when I came through the door. She looked up, put the phone down, and smiled.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"How's Kadeem?"

"Good. Handling business."

"And you?"

I sat down next to her. "I'm here."

She leaned into me, her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her. We sat there for a while with the apartment quiet around us and the street noise coming through the window and nowhere to be for the rest of the day.

"This is weird," she said after a while.

"What is?"

"Just... sitting here. No timer running, no Cee outside, no Supreme coming home. Just sitting."

"You gonna be okay with that?"

"Give me a minute to figure it out." She tilted her head to look at me. "Ask me again tomorrow."

"I'll ask you every day if I have to."

"You won't have to." She kissed my shoulder through my shirt. "But you can if you want."

I turned toward her and kissed her properly. Her hand came up to my face, her thumb against my cheekbone, the same gesture she'd made the first time we'd been in this apartment together. But everything about it was different now. There was no clock. No Cee. No cage to go back to.

"Take me to bed," she whispered against my mouth.

I stood up, took her hand, and walked her to the bedroom. The late afternoon light was coming through the blinds, casting warm stripes across the bed. She stood at the foot of it and pulled her shirt over her head. I did the same.

We undressed each other standing up, facing each other. Her hands on my belt, my hands on her waist. She unhooked her bra and let it fall. I pushed her jeans down her hips. She stepped out of them, then pulled my jeans down, her mouth kissing my stomach as she went.

She stood back up and her fingers found the bruise on my cheekbone. She touched it gently, her thumb tracing the swollen edge where Supreme's fist had connected. Then her hand moved down to my forearm, where his nails had torn four lines through the skin. She held my arm between both hands and looked at the scratches without speaking.

"It looks worse than it is," I said.

She didn't answer. She just lifted my forearm to her mouth and pressed her lips against the skin beside the scratches. Then she let go.

We were both naked and standing in the afternoon light and I looked at her. Her body, her face, the expression in her eyes that was different from every other time we'd done this. There was no desperation. No urgency. No fear underneath the wanting.

She was just here. With me. Because she chose to be.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"I'm thinking about when we were sixteen. About the life we planned."