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She sighs loud and heavy and I wish I could exhale like that. But I can’t. Not with everything that’s weighing on me now. The warmth of her hand closing over mine eases some of the ache. She presses her face against my chest and her other arm goes around my waist.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken you there.”
“You tried to tell me. I should have listened.” My voice is thick and talking is hard.
“It’s over. Let’s try to forget it. I’ll need a drink, though.” She laughs but it has no energy, no fire.
We go inside the apartment and she goes for the bar. I’m rooted just inside the door.
“Let’s have a drink and relax and maybe we can go out into the city or the bar a few blocks away.” She stops to look at me and her shoulders droop. “Come on, don’t let her ruin our night.”
She places everything on the kitchen counter and throws her arms around my neck. It’s easy to let her kiss me, to wrap my arms around her, to let her tongue slip in my mouth, to pull her to me and hike her up in my waist.
It’s easy to stroke her tongue back and slip my hand under her skirts to caress her thighs. It’s easy, way too easy, to lose myself in her and fall back into our bubble. The place where I’m always hard for her and she can wrap herself around me. It’s familiar, hot and perfect. But our world is not perfect, and it’s not a bubble, and she’ll come to realize that soon. And what happens then?
I walk us to the couch and sit. She pulls her mouth from mine as if she senses something’s changed. I look into the million questions floating in her eyes.
“Your mother was right.”
She pfffts. “Said no one ever.” But her face sobers up and she takes my face in her hands. “She’s wrong. All she cares is about is money, appearances, and what people say.”
“She’s not wrong about how little I make compared to you. I’ve always known you make more than me but I’ve never cared because—”
“It doesn’t fucking matter.” She climbs off my lap and sits a little bit down on the couch, facing me. “Who cares if I make more than you? You’ve never asked me for money and freak out if I try to pay for anything. I know you’re not after that.”
“But it matters, Saona. It matters that your family thinks I’m a moocher, that I’m biding my time before I ask you for money. It matters that I can’t take you to Paris and Italy to walk around like you dreamed of.”
Her face softens. “Someday we can, and it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, which for the record is only my mom. Sierra likes you and the rest of them are nothing to me.”
I’m a fool for doing this but I can’t let this be. “I don’t want to cause you problems with your mom and I don’t want to hold you back.”
Her hand tightens around mine. “You’re not. I love being with you. With you I’m alive and happy and I love—”
“Yeah, but that’s now. Don’t you see? How long until this all becomes tired? How long until you want traveling and adventure?”
The smile stays in place but it’s like she’s holding onto it hard. “If we want to travel, I’ll buy tickets and we’ll get away.”
“And that’s exactly their point.”
“Who is they?” Her face is scrunched up like I’m making no sense.
“Your mom, David, his mother, Edwin.”
“David? As in the man I just divorced?” She laughs. “He’s no one to me. As for the rest, I don’t care what they think.”
“But I do. I don’t want the world to see me as if I’m just waiting to drop the other shoe on you.”
She pushes off the couch and walks to the window. I want to go to her. I want to hug her and drag her to the bedroom and fuck her until we both forget this afternoon happened.
“Let me ask you something, Jax. If you made half a million and I was the one holding two jobs, renovating a house, and helping my mom out, would that make it acceptable to you? Would we be more compatible then?”
I don’t want to answer her, because yes. That would be acceptable. I would help her renovate her house and help her with her mom and take her on getaway weekends and buy her all the things she wants but can’t afford.
She turns from the window and gives me a cold and vacant smile, like the time she showed up in Baltimore without telling me. “I guess to be suitable for you is to quit my job and replace it with something minimum wage?”
Cold washes over me too because now she’s twisting everything. “Don’t you get it, Saona? You don’t have to change anything. You don’t have to be suitable for me. I’m not suitable for you. I’m the one that’s not at your level.”
And fuck. I shouldn’t have said that.
