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Zoe did not smile at my words, not even a little. And she was all about sexual expression, had been supportive of me doing this in the beginning.
“What?” I asked her, turning and abandoning my search for the perfect candle.
“Nothing,” Zoe mumbled.
I frowned. Zoe was not a woman who didn’t say what was on her mind. With Zoe, there were no lies, half-truths or talking behind anyone’s back. None of the cornerstones of toxic female friendships. We both worked in industries where a large majority of women still gave in to the dominant narrative that we should all be in competition with each other, working to subtly undermine our fellow sisters whenever the opportunity arose in order to bring themselves up in some kind of way. I was lucky to be in a group of women who lifted each other up and told it how it was, even if the truth was ugly.
“I never thought I’d have to speak these words to you, Zoe,” I said. “But tell me how you really feel. I can handle it.”
Zoe regarded me, as if she were figuring out whether I actually could handle it. “I love that you’re in this new relationship that’s giving you a sexual awakening, confidence and getting us the VIP booth at Klutch, but you I don’t want you to bend too much for this man. I see you’re falling for him, but his love isn’t the light ...” she reached out to squeeze my hand. “You’re the light, baby girl. I don’t want him and his rules, his darkness, taking that away from you.” She let go of my hand. “With or without him, you still shine, you always have. And I don’t want you thinking you have to stop shining in order to be with him. Midnight and sunrise exist within the same world, they are different sides of the same sun. So just promise me that you won’t let him steal that from you. Won’t let him stop you from rising.”
Unexpectedly, a lump formed in my throat, and tears prickled the backs of my eyes. There was only one problem with girlfriends who loved you, cared about you enough to tell you the truth: they didn’t to let you hide from yourself.
“I don’t think he’s stealing anything from me,” I argued, clearing my throat. “I think he’s showing me something that’s always been there. He’s showing me the midnight that I’ve always been afraid to acknowledge. The darkness in myself.” I took a deep breath. “There’s always been a voice inside of me telling me I was going to go there, to the dark side. Like Darth Vader type shit. I’d was petrified to lose myself. Lose everything good in me to an illness that took away my mother’s life. If anything, he’s making more comfortable in the dark. He’s making me fear it less.”
There it was, the truth.
“It’s not going to take you,” Zoe proclaimed with certainty. “You are not your mother, Stella.”
“I know,” I replied.
Not yet, at least.
It was three in the morning.
The witching hour.
I’d woken from a nightmare.
Jay was there. I’d barely shaken it off when he was on me. Inside me. He chased away all of the horrors with his touch. His lips. His presence. I’d given myself to him fully and completely, thankful that I had my very own demon to guide me through the darkest point of night.
My breath was heavy when we finished.
Or when I thought we were finished. Jay had other ideas, leaning over to turn on the light.
“What do you fear?” he murmured, lips ghosting over the inside of my thighs.
My chest was rising and falling rapidly, trying to weather the orgasm that had ripped through me, my brain scrambling from the pleasure, from the pain of the rope biting into my wrists.
“The dark,” I breathed.
Jay’s eyes were intent on me, urging me on, coaxing out more, readying to draw everything out of me until I was empty inside, like he did when he was fucking me.
“I hate the dark,” I continued. “That’s the real reason I was at Klutch that night. Because I didn’t have a party to go to. All of my friends had plans, and there were no men I wanted to bother with, but I couldn’t stand to be alone in the dark.”
Jay watched me. Lips no longer on my thighs. He’d gotten what he’d wanted. What he’d craved. The last part of me I’d been saving for someone else. But there was no one else. There never would be.
“That’s why I went,” I whispered. “To escape the dark. Because that’s where they live. The sounds of someone creeping into my apartment. The creaks of time passing by, of monsters unknown breathing on me. Shadows lurking. That’s where it is. That illness I’m so afraid of, the one I can chase away in the light, it lives in the dark. That’s what I’m most afraid of.” I sucked in an unsteady breath. “Until I met you. Because you are the dark. The pitch-black night in the body of a man. And I’m not scared of it anymore.”
