The pair did meet in the sky on a Delta flight. They weren’t sat next to one another directly. They were an aisle away. And it wasn't until Tino, moving too fast and too inconsiderate, tried to get up while a flight attendant was making her way down the aisle with two full cups in her hand, that their paths crossed. 

Pants soiled, he had no choice but to accept Milagra’s offering of Essentials sweats from her carry on. They barely fit, for he was six foot flat and pushing two hundred and forty pounds. They rippled in a shared laugh at that alone for a good five minutes. They talked about why they were in Houston—her to see family that she always regretted moving away from when she visited, but the moment she landed back in the Magic City, the nostalgia wore off. He was sent there to do attend a research seminar by the hospital that recently promoted him. They compared careers, fitting like a puzzle at the way they chose to reconstruct things with sharp objects—him with a blade and her with a pencil. 

They pondered on where they’d want to fly next. Her most likely to Greece and him back to the motherland—the island of Samoa. And it was then, that Milagra really looked at him beyond the blur of a handsome stranger, that she had no intention on talking to after she debarked—and she traced the intentional inked armor going down his right arm. 

He told her how he grew up—in a family of giants—literally and figuratively. A football coach for a dad and a slew of cousins or uncles who wrestled professionally. 

One topic rolled into the next as they hungrily whispered to one another across the way—like young girls under a blanket at a sleepover—stopping every time a body walked by and cut through them. Before they knew it, it was five minutes until landing. 

Tino got all the way to his apartment in Downtown Miami before realizing he never even got her name, let alone her number—but he remembered where she said she worked. He found her on their LinkedIn and showed up one day. No flowers.  Barely a plan and the continuous headache that wouldn’t go away until he found her again. 

And the tickets to see New Edition were hers. She had planned to go with another man who caught a convenient case of the flu and canceled on her. Tin0 was his stand in. 

Milagra found herself with him every day after. She fell into his life the way a chef would add garnish to his meal. 

Their relationship coasted on steady waters for all of two years. Not bad, but nothing to flood the group chat about with think pieces. Until recently. 

They didn’t have sex—at least that’s what he told her. He did admit that the lines between coworker, friend, and lover had been stirred until it became a new substance that even he couldn’t name. Lines were crossed and he looked up one day and she was occupying a space Milagra was meant to fill. 

Milagra was grateful for even that confession, knowing most men wouldn’t even have offered her that.  She understood. He was a trauma surgeon, as she was. Together, their eyes had seen the worst of what the human body could go through. More hours spent at the hospital than in their homes. He was used to her. She was available. Milagra got it—she understood—and so her understanding morphed to bitter acceptance. 

But she wasn’t as green as she allowed him to believe. She knew she would only ever receive the watered down version from his mouth. The same way he pulled apart and molded the story of how they met, until it looked and sounded like something digestible. 

So, she took his confession, already knowing in order to get to the truth she’d have to multiply it by ten.

What else was she meant to do? She didn’t have any proof and she didn’t want it. That would mean she had to go—and she didn’t want that. It was strange though, because she didn’t necessarily want to stay either. 

She had just grown comfortable. Feeling like she belonged in a spot since she had been placed there for so long. Like unmoved furniture, worn out by years and familiarity. 

Where else would she go?

At the ripe age of thirty, where things were supposed to finally be falling into place or falling completely apart to come back together, the thought of being alone and having to get to know someone else—the way they liked their eggs, if they snored, or guessing about the secret family they had hidden—and those thoughts scared her more than the thought of staying with a man that cheated on her—maybe. 

Tino wasn’t a bad guy. He had his shit together. He went to church on Sundays, did things for Milagra before she had to ask, and maintained a body that beaches couldn’t wait to see. He was charming. He talked about starting a family like a man who actually wanted to be a father, instead of one who just liked the comfort of family. He could fuck. And he did the dishes after she cooked without complaining. 

He came with his own toolbox of bullshit—but what man didn’t? And still, he was the genius and prominent surgeon who saved lives, and she was his pretty girlfriend who couldn’t sink her claws into a stable career. Until about five months ago, when an unsought offer from a well known architectural company arrived to her email. She accepted of course, but wished she hadn’t when she discovered from a late night lurking session on her boss’s Facebook, that he and her boyfriend were old dorm mates in undergrad. 

A handout. Just another reason to be grateful and stay attached to his hip. 

Milagra made up for it. She earned her spot and put the work in. Went from new hire, to Senior, to Director. An ascent he couldn’t claim. No, that was all her. 

His warm hand cupped the nape of her neck. “Did you hear me, baby?”

“Yeah,” she answered looking up at him, now. The blinding light of her computer screen bouncing off her soft brown skin. “Just the day or?”

“I haven’t seen him in a while. And this’ll be your first time meeting. I think we should make it a weekend thing.”

His father, Roman, lived an hour up the map and, closer to the coast. Tino graduated high school and fled, thinking he could outrun the grief of losing his mother, or at the very least not be reminded of it every time he walked past the empty master bedroom—and past the guest room where his father chose to sleep instead. Her ghost haunted them both in different ways. 

“Are you sure? The hospital…”

“I’ll let them know tonight. They’ll probably just have me on call.”

“And when they call?” She asked, watching him grab the rest of his stuff to walk out the door for the night shift. He gave her a look. One that said everything but offered nothing. A pattern of his, she noticed. She just couldn’t expect too much out of him. He spread himself too thin.

Milagra always wondered if that was a trait he inherited from his mother or his father. A question she’d have to answer herself the following week. Tino rarely spoke of either. His mother was dead and had been for over a decade now. Car wreck. It was the single tragedy that forced him to double down on the trauma surgeon route. Fixing and patching people from freak accidents that he imagined was his mother. And every time he spoke of his father, it was cold and distant, like he too was already buried six feet under. 

“Good night, Tino.” She dismissed him, focusing back on the proposal from work he temporarily distracted her from. She already decoded what the silence meant. If they called, he’d go. 

She should’ve been weary, anticipating being left with a strange older man, regardless of his relation to her boyfriend—only, she wasn’t. A part of her hoped this week flew by.

Roman was an enigma. That shady yet integral character the series always mentions, but doesn’t show up until the last season.  

“I love you,” he told her as if love was their only issue. If that’s all it took, they’d be married with four kids.

Milagra waited until the last second before she knew he’d make something out of it before she sighed and said—

“Love you too,” stalely.  

She heard his heavy steps retreat to the front door before it shut, leaving her in a familiar space—alone. 

The first thing she did was minimize her work window to open a private one. 

He was the complete opposite of his son as far as aura was concerned.

Tino was like leather. Traditional and straight to the point with a hint of edge. 

Roman was alligator skin. 

The head football coach at Florida Atlantic University—and boy, he looked it. Built like a man that would put you straight on your ass if you tried him. Roman hardly ever smiled in the pictures she found. The most he offered the camera was the hike of his upper plump lip at the corner into a smirk, and a crinkle at the corner of his eyes. 

Always going above and beyond for his team. Taking the boys on trips, or surprise NFL games in the sky box—most likely a gift from his college buddies that made it big. 

Roman—as stoic as he appeared online—seemed like a beacon of light to anyone that crossed his path. A devoted helper. But he himself, was a loner. 

Milagra knew it. Fishing trips accompanied by no-one—most likely a plan Tino was supposed to be apart of and ended up flaking. New recipes or old ones he attempted in his kitchen. Catching the game every Sunday in his theater room. Gardening on his massive front lawn. Or even the random projects he assembled and carried out around his estate. The most recent one was the stone wall, sunken fire pit he added to his backyard.

These were all things she could pick up from Instagram alone. 

The internet was a scary place. 

Milagra leaned back in the kitchen table chair, gripping her other wrist above her head, chewing on her bottom lip. A picture of him, towering over two other women, who she assumed to be Tino’s aunts, staring back at her through her MacBook. 

She wondered if the shared holiday weekend was his or Tino’s idea. 

Either way, up until the actual day they left, it was all she could fucking think about. In the shower, before bed, at work. She was even dreaming about it. 

A parasite of some sort, infiltrating her mind with images and scenarios of how it would all happen.

What was her brain searching for among all the obscurity?

And now she sat in the passenger seat of Tino’s cocaine white, GMC Acadia, watching palm trees follow them up with narrow winding highway, having nothing but the opportunity to heighten her curiosity and imagine all the things she couldn’t see yet. 

The ride was an hour long constant of listening to the radio—eighties R&B because he knew it to be her favorite—and the occasional turn of the volume knob for him to say something she only acknowledged with a dragged hum or shortened laughed. Hoping he couldn’t sense something was off with her. 

They traveled up the length of the circular driveway laid with cobblestone. Tino gripping her hand tighter, watching her steps. The door was already unlocked when he opened it. He let her step in first, her heels echoing in the high-ceiling foyer that was lit up to the point where you could see every corner of the space. She couldn’t tell if her sudden warmth had to do with the actual temperature of the house, but it made her scratch the back of her neck before smoothing over the skin. 

She could hear music coming from somewhere deeper in the house. A house that breathed life for a family of at least five or more, but as far as she knew, it was just him. 

She wasn’t facing the throat of the house when he came walking down one of the spiral steps. Only heard Tino’s acknowledgement. 

“Dad, this is Milagra.” His hand urged her forward gently as she had to crane her neck up, trying to remember how to speak. “Milagra, baby, this is my old man.” She could hear him, but he might as well had been in another room. 

He was tall. Spreading wider as her eyes trailed up his stature, like the grandest tree sitting in the forrest. He was dressed like a man who was indeed in the comfort of his own home. Black t-shirt that conformed to the muscles in his arms, no shoes, and sweats that hung like they had been there all day. His skin had a glow to it. The sun-kissed tan giving every part of him even more definition. His hair was pulled back strictly—the most structured thing about him, other than his body. It carried the kind of shine one’s did after just wetting it. It was dark, like he had dyed it the richest jet black on the shelf—but Milagra found comfort in the grey hairs kissing the frame of his roots and even hiding in his beard. A tell sign that he had been here awhile. 

She appreciated it. The grey hairs and the way his clothes hung off him. It made him appear more human. More normal. Considering he looked like something manufactured in a lab solely for the female gaze. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Reigns.” Her hand came up and he looked at it with just his eyes as if he didn’t know what to do with it. 

“Roman,” he corrected her. “I’m not that old.” And like the sun’s head peaking over the darkness of the sea’s depths, he offered light, and smiled at her. Not a full one, but it cracked enough to make her feel safe, despite her heart fluttering against her ribcage. 

“You’re like fifty,” Tino teased. 

Ignoring his son’s jab, he kept his gaze on her face—heart-shaped with soft and languid features  like a timeless oil painting. Her skin had a natural bronze and richness to it, like the grand canyon almost. The black dress she wore, fell on her shoulders in a way that the deep lines of her collarbones were exposed. The skin carried a shine, letting Roman know that like him, she paid attention to the details, taking her time after showering to give the spots she knew would be seen extra love and attention. He had to tear his eyes away from the small beauty mark that sat intimately on the left slope. 

“And what’s with all this formal stuff?” The skin between his brows crinkled. “We’re family,” were the last two words she heard before the world blurred and faded away around her like a dream. 

Those arms she had to tear her eyes away from came around her, embracing her body like he had known it for years. 

Bitch, hug him back.

She had to coach herself. Everything about him was distracting. His cologne wasn’t harsh, in fact it was therapeutic. Something she could get used to. She slid her hands up to palm his back and could’ve melted into a puddle of nothing at his feet. 

She could remember that this is how it started. The moment the air stretched and gave out before it grew unbelievably thick between them. 

The hug lingered for a second longer than strangers were meant to be in each other’s arms, before they both pulled away. 

Whatever they just birthed, evident in the gaze they refused to let go, even after pulling apart. 

“You didn’t tell me she was a model, too.” He looked to his son whose smile matched his own and it was in that moment Milagra could see that the smile she thought he inherited from his mother, he had actually snatched right off of his father’s face. 

Milagra stood beside her man, feeling his hand snake around her waist in a way that it hadn’t in months as she tried to find her words. 

“Y’all can come on. I got dinner in here.” Roman’s sunk a hand into his sweats pocket, nodding his head in the direction he led them. 

“What’d you make?” Tino’s figure walked side by side with his dad’s slightly larger frame as they trailed off into their own conversation. 

Milagra however, fell three paces behind them, watching them interact and looking at the pictures that hung on the walls. 

“What is that?” Roman turned back to her with tight brows, as if the thought had bothered him—lingering in his head like the scent in his nose since he hugged her. “That scent?”

She stared at him for longer than she wanted to, his pace slowing like a car running out of gas, as he gave her an opportunity to catch up. 

“It’s uh—Mugler. Alien Goddess.”

“Mm.”

“You don’t like it?”

“No—I do. It’s strong, but feminine still. I think I’ve smelled it before.”

It was probably the first time in Milagra’s thirty years on this planet that someone—a man especially—paid her such an intentional compliment. It wasn't as simple as you’re pretty, you smell nice, or I like your bracelet. He somehow gave life and personality to a fragrance she wore nearly everyday. 

“Thank you,” she told him not even knowing if it was really a compliment. The half smile tugging at one side of his mouth as she passed him to get into the dining room, told her it had to be. 

He went all out. 

Turned a simple Thanksgiving dinner for three into a banquet of luxury. All the food, colorful and still steaming somehow, assorted on silver trays that lined the length of the table and shone under the low hanging crystal chandelier. Meats, side, and sauces. In the middle he arranged a line of those water-filled cylinders where the mini candles could float. Strategically, white lei flowers were sprinkled in between everything. And the cream cloth lying beneath it all, made everything look that more regal. 

“Hope y’all are hungry.”

Milagra starved all day for this.

She nodded, too occupied with appreciating not the just the spread, but the design of it all. He really had an eye for beauty. The kind that only someone who paid attention to everything could possess.

“Really outdid yourself this time, huh?” Tino smiled, peering over everything with the eyes of a man that hadn’t ate a home-cooked meal in years. 

“I don’t think I ever seen anybody make salmon or lamb for a Thanksgiving dinner,” Milagra looked to Roman.

“I haven’t done turkey in years.” He points to his son quickly. “He never liked it. His mom neither.”

Tino’s face fell flat and she could tell by the look in his eyes he wished his dad didn't just say that. Roman cleared his throat and the sound of his chair scraping the wood was unbelievably loud in the newfound tension. 

He sat at the head with his son and his girlfriend on either side of him—all in one corner despite the grandness of the table. 

They ate, and she made sure to at least get a forkful of everything just to confirm that it pleased her tongue as much as her eye. Tino cleared his plate and was now on his second one. In the corner where they sat, Roman let them pick out an aged bottle of wine from the stone wall wine cellar, accentuated by LED backlighting. From Italy of course. 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. 

He popped it open for them. “I love that sound,” he smiled fully at her for the first time that night.

Like a newcomer, she let them do most of the talking. Tino caught him up on all the outrageous cases that came through. Someone with a shard of glass in their face from a bar fight. A girl whose hair clip was lodged into the back of her skull from a car crash. Another woman with something stuck up her ass. 

It wasn’t until they were nearing the end of their night, almost as if Roman was saving the best for last, did Milagra become the star of the show.

“Mila,” Roman’s voice interrupted the silence. She sat up even straighter in her chair and gave him her full attention, letting her fork rest on the plate. He made even the sound of her own nickname feel regal in her ears. Carrying the end of it like he was used to saying it. “Tin0 told me you went back to school recently?”

Swallowing what was left in her mouth, she eyed Tino, not sure what to make of them having conversations about her.  He always seemed too busy for even himself. Six feet between his own mind and everything else going on around him. So, to hear that he chooses, in the scarce five to ten minute conversations he carries with his dad, to talk about her, made her feel oddly closer to Tino in that moment. Maybe they weren’t as far apart as she thought. 

“Yeah, I decided to go back for my masters.”

“What are you studying?”

“Communications with an emphasis in applied linguistics.”

Roman’s brows rose slightly. “Say that shit five times in a row.” Milagra could see Tino shaking his head at the unsolicited dad joke. She on the other hand, found it cute.

“I know it’s a little different from what I’m doing now but…”

“Nothing wrong with that. Education is endless. Who says you have to stick to one lane?” Your son does, she thought but didn't dare say out-loud. In fact, she could tell by the tightness in Tino’s mouth that he was swallowing the urge to disagree. “What made you choose that route, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Well”—she shifted in her seat to match his stance. She tried being respectful, but Tino had barely gave any input. It might as well had been just her and Roman at the table. “I travel sometimes for work. A lot of International businesses consult my office for the architectural design of their construction projects—which means communicating with a lot of people whose first language isn’t always English.” She shrugged. “I thought it’d be helpful for the job, considering I’m the Director,” she lied. 

All those things were true. She traveled for work. Her office mostly did business with international companies. She was the Director of Interior Architecture, and a degree in language would help in her daily job responsibilities. But none of that was the real reason she grew a sudden interest in language. She read the novel Babel by R.F. Kuang in undergrad and wanted desperately to switch her major, but knew her parents would turn their noses up at the sound of anything other than the high paying field she was already knee deep in. Now, with a degree and established in her field, she utilized the extra time to go back and do what she couldn’t before. 

Adults didn't usually walk around proudly offering the fact that they were spending thousands of dollars to study a field they acquired from a fictional, fantasy novel. Milagra, almost always the only black woman in a room full of men, was always hyperaware of appearing more serious than she actually was. So, she kept the real reason she went back to school to herself. 

“And you already know three languages?” He wasn't even eating anymore. Only Tino’s silverware hit his plate and his father had angled himself in a way that suggested he and Milagra were the only ones at the table. She took note of all of this while simply nodding to his question. 

“I’m surprised you remember all this. I told you this—what—when we first moved in together?”

“It was just so impressive, I couldn’t forget it. What is it? English, Spanish, and…”

“French,” she added. “And I’m learning German right now as an elective.” His eyes urged her to keep talking, like he liked the sound of her voice as much as she got lost in his. “Tino tried to teach me Samoan. I think that’s one I really got sit and focus for. That’s definitely not a language you learn in passing.”

“Yeah. I grew up speaking it and I still struggle at times.”

“You’re half Italian, right?”

“That’s right.”

Tino’s brows scrunched, trying to remember when he told her that.

“Do you speak it at all?” 

Roman switched his gaze between both of her eyes. Under the light they were a solid amber. Something that caught his attention after hugging her in the foyer, but he didn’t get a chance to really revere them the way he wanted to. He had never seen the color on someone else up close. 

“I tuoi occhi sono—”

“—Baby, did you know the Cowboys were playing this weekend?” Tino interrupted with his phone in hand. 

Her pouty lips parted for a beat before she actually spoke. “Oh, damn. I forgot.” She waved a hand. “Dak is benched this game because of the injury. This is gonna be a hard watch. I don’t even know if I wanna see this.”

“Brains, beauty, and you know your way around a playbook. Where does it end?”

“Alright, old man.” Tino’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard at this point. “You’ve passed your compliment limit. One more, and I’m gonna think you’re trying to take my woman.”

His head went from side to side, and the line of his dimple deepened. “I don’t want no problems.”

No denial, just evasion. 

It was quiet for only a second before Tino’s phone vibrated in his hands and he wasted no time rising from his chair. 

“I gotta take this. It’s the hospital,” he said before leaving them alone. 

Milagra’s eyes traveled back to Roman, holding her breath when she found him already looking to her. She offered a tight lipped smile and he returned it. 

“The food was really good, Mr. Reigns—I mean Roman.”

“Thank you. I tried not to overcook, but I don’t know, I enjoy it. Enough for us to last the rest of the weekend.”

She nodded, looking at all there was left, before they fell into another silence. Not uncomfortable, but it felt forced. A layer of something resting just beneath it. Like they both had something to share, but chose silence instead. 

Milagra reached for her glass, with only a sip of the wine left in it, trying not to be overly aware of his eyes watching every step of the way. He waited until she accepted the last gulp of it before speaking again. 

“You ready to talk, now?”

With a pinched expression, she set the glass back down. “What do you wanna talk about?”

His stare hardened. She almost had him. Almost made himself a fool. Until he saw it. The twitch in her lips, the brew to a smirk. 

“He’s my son.”

“You think I knew that?” She whispered fiercely. “He barely even talks about you,” she scoffed. “I had to connect my own dots.”

“And you still came?” The hairs of his brows rose, causing wrinkles on his forehead. “What do you think will happen here?”

She frowned. “Whatever he wants. If he got down on one knee tonight, I’d say yes.”

“I would never let that happen.” He barely allowed the smoke from her heated statement rise.

He was hot as a furnace on the inside. It was one thing to imagine her with someone else all these years. Laughing at their jokes. Stroking the hairs of their beard like she used to do his. Mouth agape, rocking against them, moaning their name. 

But in front of him? A permanent reminder of his shortcomings? How he pushed away the one fracture of happiness he’d aligned himself with in the years following his wife’s death? 

That mystery someone being his own son, born from the fruit of his own body?

Hell no. 

With every burly pause in their conversation, the buzz of Tino’s voice echoed from the other room. 

“I love your son.”

“You’re so full of shit. Are you forgetting that I know you? I know you’re not happy. It’s all over your face and that fake ass smile.”

After all these years, he could still read her like the pages of his favorite book. She wondered if her armor was really that insubstantial, but no, that was just how it worked with them. He saw everything. Even the parts of her she didn’t want anyone to. 

“Well, it’s nice to see that you haven’t changed. That you’re still the same. Alive and well. I wouldn’t know.” She clenched her teeth, the muscles in her jaw dancing. “Seeing as I wasn't good enough for a fucking phone call at least.”

Her voice was coarse with the hairs of bitterness. And now he could see the real issue. 

“Mila—”

“Don’t.” She threw the napkin that rested in her lap onto the table, like a white flag. But it would never be that simple with them. “Okay? Don’t do that. I don’t need your pity—your excuses—a sob story—or whatever other bullshit you have to feed me, just to feel better about the way you left things.” She leaned forward. “This is happening. You’re not.”

He opened his mouth and shut it all in the same second, watching his son reenter. Both of their strained faces morphing into softer features as if Tino had a remote to control their dispositions.

“I got bad news.” Tino walked closer to the pair, tapping his phone against the opposite hand. Eyes burning holes into Milagra, who chose peace, not returning eye contact. 

Here we go, she said to herself.

“What’s going on?” Roman inquired.

“They need me.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s Thanksgiving.” Roman’s eyes flicked to Milagra, expecting her objection too. But he was trying his hand at a game she had never won before. She didn’t see the point. “HCA is like an hour away.”

“You know how it is—especially during holiday season. Folks get drunk—get reckless—bodies start piling up.” He looked to his girlfriend again, waiting until she lazily dragged her gaze to meet his. 

“I’ll be back as soon as I can be—I swear. You gonna be okay here?”

“I don’t know—”

“Of course she is,” Roman intercepted. Both of their eyes landed on him standing, grabbing another bottle from the cellar. “You said you’ll be back? She can help me put this up and I’ll give her the grand tour.”

Her eyes stayed pinned on Tino, hoping he came up with some reason to shut this down. She felt it. In the pit of her stomach she felt herself being sucked into a familiar wormhole if someone didn’t act now. 

Tino’s soft eyes shifted to hers and she tried to wash away the anxiety on her face.

“Just go. Go make somebody else’s Thanksgiving.”

ii. roman’s estate • put pressure on the wound.

It was the kind of night where sleep had wrapped a hand to cover her nose and mouth, but every time she slipped, it brought her back to life. 

Milagra was restless. The day exhausted her, but not enough to have a decent night’s sleep. The bed was too cold and unfamiliar. The crickets chirping were the most soothing thing about it all. That and the sound of the pool’s filter flipping the water in and out from the cracked sliding door. 

And the thing that kept her up the most was her mind remembering who slept on the other side of the house upstairs. 

She rose until her back hit the headboard, listening for a second, trying to search for any evidence of him being up too.

When she deemed it safe enough, she swung her legs over and into Tino’s slippers. She opened the sheer but thick white drape that covered the balcony door, enough so the pool lights from further out reflected onto her small face. She grabbed her latest read, Databases by R.F. Kuang. 

Once she made it into the vast hall, she realized just how eerie this situation was. She roamed through the house off sheer memory. Finding the hallway lined with pictures that weren’t there the last time she was. She stopped in front of it, finding Tino’s small face and a head full of thick curls, tucked between Roman and his mother. 

God damn she was beautiful. 

Full and voluminous, spiral curls cascaded along both shoulders. She wasn’t smiling, but her face illuminated the way only a woman that was at peace would. 

Women in Milagra’s age range always did that thing where they would see another woman and immediately pull out their ruler and scales. Measuring their own shortcomings and comparing the most minute details. And she was no different. It wasn't intentional or even malicious. It was just habit. 

From the first time she saw a picture of this woman, she barely found them. The differences. They had that same baked honey complexion, full lips, and long stemmed noses that flipped slightly at the tip. A jawline that was softer than angular, with chins that tapered at the ends rather than came to a sharp tip. 

Roman looked much younger. A connected mustache into a goatee vacant of any gray hairs, that emphasized his strong jawline. 

They looked happy. 

Not in a picturesque way. The portrait could’ve easily found its way into a sociology textbook, demonstrating the concept of family. But it was so much more than that. They looked like people that would do anything for one another. Like only fate brought Tino’s mom and Roman together. Pictures were worth a thousand words.  

Why did tragedy have to strike where it wasn't needed the most?

Every time she thought of it, she nearly shed another tear for them. 

Tip toeing the rest of the way down the hall, she rounded the corner and his broad figure stopped her dead in her tracks. 

He was on his laptop, the blue light reflecting in the glasses that sat low on the bridge of his nose, sharpening his already defined features. His bun worn out from the day. AirPods tucked in his ear, so she didn’t think he’d hear her if she snuck to get a cup of water and dipped out.

But he must’ve felt her instead. 

The minute she attempted at another step, his eyes ventured up. 

“Thirsty,” was all she said.

“Cups are above the refrigerator.”

“I remember.”

He watched her the whole time, in that way you do when you’re prepared to look away as soon as their eyes find yours. The minute she turned her body, he fixated on the screen in front of him, squinting as if he might actually be more interested in a paused video than her. 

He listened for her steps, light taps of her bare feet over the floor’s surface, until he heard the door slide open and then shut back. 

The curves of her figure wandering deeper into backyard. He pressed play, sighing. 

He knew they had to talk, eventually. Not like the one they had at the dining table. A more sensible one. He knew apologies were in order. Mostly from him. But there was so much more he wanted to say, in place of what he should. 

He tried to focus on the tape of his players’ at practice, but his eyes kept shifting to the sliding door. He felt that jolt. The rush of excitement one gets when they want to experience something with someone. Walk the line together. 

She circled around the sunken fire pit he added. It wasn't there the last time she was. She stopped for a while. Her face too far away for him to gauge whether it was in curiosity, admiration, or something else. 

He thought of her the entire time. Saw her eyes with every lay of the brown stone. Placed the steps where he thought he remembered her saying they should go. And now she was seeing the manifestation of her ideas, brought to life with his hands. 

As if he was late to something, he shut the laptop and stood from the couch. He made it all the way to the door, eyes like beams on the back of her head from where she sat. Muttering madness to himself—trying to build up the courage to just go. 

“Fuck,” he mumbled. Every step he took, felt lighter. His insides floating. She was curled up, cozy with her feet tucked under her, doing what she loved. This is exactly what he pictured. “Still reading?”

She looked up at him towering over her, almost forgetting the circumstances of her icy heart, and the words she held in her throat like bad food for years. 

“Why would I stop?” She rolled her eyes and returned them to the open book in her hands. “You think I’d just fall into a black hole after you?”

He planted himself on the cushions with her. Far enough that he didn't get the urge to touch her. 

Roman couldn’t do this. All the pretending. It was one thing to act as if he didn't know her—hadn’t felt her before—but, to act as if he hated her was taking it too far. 

He created the rift. Put enough space  and resentment between them for years. So he’d be the one to bridge the gap. 

“Look—I might’ve overreacted at the table.” The sound of the page turning gave him a moment to breathe. “I can tell that you love him and I know he loves you, too.” She listened to every word despite her eyes being pinned to the page of the book. “I was wrong—for everything. I’m sorry, Milagra.”

For years, those were the only two words that mattered to her. The only ones she wanted to hear from him, had she ever heard his voice again. 

The sound of the filter pulling the water suddenly felt like it was taunting her. The subtle layer of steam over it. The chill in the air. It all reminded her of that night where they stayed out here, fucking like starved teenagers, dipping in and out of the realm of water—such a pure element, washing away their indiscretions—until the sun came up. Three months spent with him felt like a lifetime. She had forgotten what the floor felt like with her feet flat and grounded. He had shown her heaven, as she fell through each cloud with gratitude. And then he snatched it away. She’d been walking on flat surfaces ever since. 

That was the scariest thing about finding something useful in another person. He who has the power to give, has the power to take, too.

“Was any of it real?” 

She hated the rush of desperateness that folded itself over her words, but she was just that—desperate. For answers. Blaming herself for years, finding reasons to shift the blame from him to her. But the problem was rooted in something much deeper than just blame.

Milagra thought she wasn’t enough. Much younger and not nearly as successful as she is now—she figured he finally realized that. 

He wished he could pin point that as the reason. He’d tell her straight up—I just wasn't feeling it. But it’d be a lie. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he told her dryly. Hurting even himself with the avoidant reply. 

Of course it mattered. It always mattered.  

“We have someone in common now,” he continued. “If you love my son like you say you do—then you’d forget about what happened before.”

The birth of something didn’t erase the existence of what remained. It would have to be bigger, stronger, more potent. 

“I can’t believe I didn't realize it sooner.” He studied the side of her face. The line of her jaw that he used to press his lips into while the thick hairs of his beard scratched the skin lazily, back and forth, until he found a place he liked the most. It was usually the spot near her ear. She had another beauty mark there. Faint, but it was there. That was her favorite place for him to land, too. 

“He kept saying his dad was a football couch. Never said what school. He’s half Samoan. From Florida.” She recited all the clues, missed. 

“How did you figure it out?”

“He has a bunch of boxes in the basement. Tapes, old trophies”—she stopped to look at him—“and pictures. Not a lot, but enough. The first one I saw was of your wife. I could never forget her face,” she admitted. Roman’s chest went hollow. “I knew I had seen her before—I just couldn’t put my finger on how. So I kept looking. Until you showed up.” Tapping her fingers on the hardness of the book cover, she almost got lost. Remembering how she cried all night, in the shower, while Tino laid sound asleep in their bed, oblivious. 

She didn't know then why she was even crying. She deemed it as resentment from him being closer than she could’ve ever imagined. She thought she was getting somewhere. Closing the gap between what could’ve been and what actually was. She found something stable. But as soon as she turned in his foyer, watching him clear the last two steps, it couldn’t have been more clear. She was relapsing on a drug you couldn’t even see most days. Her body shriveling and getting sick off of it. He hadn’t even opened his mouth yet, and all those feelings came crashing, like water from a broken levee, into the houses she built from her pain. 

She used to think of the past as something shrinking. Memories drifting further away and getting smaller as the days between the current and past stretch. Before they become a task to remember. But it wasn’t until he ended their summer fling, that she learned that memories—the ones that leave actual stains—we hold onto. They become the dreams that are hard to forget instead of being hard to remember. Not just clusters of scenes fading, but clear dialogues—words he always repeated to her or the sound of his heavy breathing while her head was pressed to his chest—and drawn out scenes—bold lines as if they were from a movie she had watched just minutes before. The past where he appeared was far from shrinking. It expanded and swelled just a little more everyday, as did the ache to just be in his presence one last time did. And it grew so large, it took up too much space in her mind. Like a tumor. 

And it didn’t help that the man she used to move on from such tragedy—in a sick poetic way—just so happened to be his son. All the mannerisms, the subtle behaviors that made her glitch, feeling as if it were years before with Roman—it was all because Tino learned it from him. 

Milagra made a grave mistake all those years ago. That same one that most women in their mid twenties do. Meeting a man that presented himself as all the things she dreamed about as a little girl. An extension of her father. A protector, a provider, a lover, and someone to help her sort out all the thoughts that got lost in her head. Projecting the rest of her life with him in every frame. Memorizing every wall in his house, and resting in his bed until her scent soaked in the fabric of the sheets. 

She hadn’t even meant for it to go as far as it did—as deep as it was in such a short time. Neither did he. But that was the issue. Love without intention is like taking a dagger and shoving it right into your own heart. 

Roman reached deep into the pocket of his sweats, revealing what he grabbed on his way out. She stared at it and then him blankly. 

“It’s a peace offering.” It was a Twix bar. 

“I don’t eat those anymore.”

“You’re still bad at that,” he told her. “Lying. You just posted it a few weeks ago.”

He tore the gold rapper open, taking one of the four chocolate cylinders for himself before holding the rest out.

“You were cyberstalking me,” she realized before snatching it from his hands knowing it’d disappear in his mouth if she didn't. 

“I only just started,” he lied. “I knew you were coming.”

“I knew it.” She had to laugh. “I fucking knew it. You didn't even flinch when I turned around. In the foyer.”

He bit into his bottom lip, but it didn't do much to hide the smile forming on his lips. “He kept telling me about this girl he met. On a plane. I don’t know how I didn't connect the dots. He said you were from Connecticut. You worked in architecture and design. Went to school in Houston. He talked about you all the damn time. You started to feel familiar. Like I already knew you.” She swallowed the knot in her throat. “It was like pulling teeth to get him to just bring you here. He slipped up one day over the phone and said your name. Milagra.” His lips—she couldn’t stop tracing them. She had just learned about pronunciation and how it varies from person to person based on factors like jaw structure, the atmosphere and region they learned to speak in. She always liked the way he carried the A’s in her name and the way his lips opened up to put it in the air with a slight southern drawl. She watched the whole time as he recounted the story like it was a fond memory he thought of often. His eyes bounced over the ground when a smile rounded softly, as if his worst nightmare hadn’t some to fruition. 

Only it had. It was a blessing wrapped in a nightmare. All those nights, wishing and hoping for a cracked door—any chance or lingering sign that he could or even should try again. It came. But at what cost?

“Why didn't you say anything?” 

He breathed deep. He couldn’t tell her the truth. He just wanted to see her face again. Hear her voice. Smell that perfume. Strong, but feminine. 

“I don’t know,” he lied again. He had been doing that since he met her. Telling half truths, lying to himself even, hoping it was enough for the time being. All those lies, like a bridge built with compromised materials. It’ll never hold up. Severing their connection. 

“You could’ve stopped this.”

“So could you have,” he argued. “But you didn’t. You still came. Why?”

He hung onto every movement of her face. Her eyes dancing between his. The tightening of her lips. The arch in her brow. 

All she ever had to do was just say it. Save him from his own misery. 

“I don’t know I guess…I just wanted to tell you to your face what a piece of shit you are.” He breathed again, not even realizing he was holding himself from the act. Her chuckle faded out. “I don’t even feel any better. I thought I would.” 

That cinching of your insides, organs fluttering, your gut reacting, when you’re about to make a decision that’s not quite right—it was happening. 

“I’m willing to forget if you can.” Every word that tumbled from his lying mouth made his heart cramp in his chest. “For Tino.” He convinced the both of them. 

She was slow to accept, but eventually she nodded. “For Tino,” she agreed. 

The water lapped and the pool’s shimmering light bounced off their faces as they chewed on his peace offering. 

“Everything okay between you two?”

His tone held no infliction, but it didn’t need it. The question itself is what threw her off balance. She looked to him as if she might’ve forgotten he was there. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

He shook his head. A lie. She could tell from the same pout he wore that his son adopted every time he was withholding something. “I’m just curious, is all. Just asking in general.”

“You’re bad at that too.” He squinted. “Lying,” she clarified. “Especially now that I know your tells. You can thank your son for that.”

“Your page—there’s no pictures of you and him.”

She rubbed her moisturized lips against one another, thinking of a way to climb out of this one. 

“Your generation likes to advertise things they cherish. Mine not so much. Monitoring spirits online and whatnot.”

“Sure,” his curved lips said, but his eyes captured doubt. 

Milagra was impressed at how easily he could read her. He could do a lot that his son couldn’t. 

The difference was like night and day. 

The difference in being looked at and being seen. Only downside was that in being seen, that means he saw everything. 

His silence grabbed at her guilty conscience.

“I love your son.”

“That’s your second time telling me that without me having to ask.” It always felt like he had more to say. A pregnant silence at the end of every sentence. His eyes still pointed intentionally as if his mouth were still moving. 

“Maybe, that’s because your lips are saying one thing, but your eyes are saying another. Just say it.”

“He might’ve mentioned something about you two going through a rough patch. A coworker?”

Milagra shifted in the seat. Of course he knew. She couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore, so she redirected her attention to the fireplace. The dark, smooth surface surrounding the untouched rocks, as if it had never even been lit before. 

“Every couple goes through things. I’m not saying it’s okay, but…” She shook her head. Every time she thought about it she thought less of herself. 

Still, she knew no greater wrench to love than one person giving up and sinking to the bottom, while the other kept swimming. “Leaving is always the easy option.” His chest shrank in size. “I leave and I’ll just have to deal with problems from the next one. Probably worse. At least he tries.”

“You two seem to fit pretty well.”

“We have our moments. Days. Things we just can’t seem to agree on. Like the whole going back to school thing.” 

Roman’s brows dented in the middle. “He didn't want you to?”

“He did—he just thought the whole masters in communications thing didn't make sense. Said it was chaotic. Unstable.” She smiled softly as if the words didn't hurt when she had first heard them. “I can’t please everybody. I fuck up trying to please myself some days.”

“I hear that,” he agreed. “I love my son, but he’s one of those people that lives life in a straight line—or tries to anyway. I thought it would wear off after his mom died. Once he realized how short life is.” He poked his bottom lip out. “All it did was grow. Nothing wrong with it, I guess. I just wish he didn’t try so hard to put everybody else on such a narrow path.”

“Yeah,” she chuckled to herself. “I appreciate him though. Structure is good, sometimes.”

Too much structure—perfection—it could get so boring. 

Their relationship wasn’t extravagant, but it wasn’t below the bar either. It just was. Mediocracy was sometimes the biggest let down in life. The idea of just existing when there was a clock counting down that none of us could see. 

If Milagra thought about it too hard—all the time wasted just being—it got hard to breathe. 

“Too much of anything isn’t good for you.” 

This was dangerous. She liked to believe the conversation was lighthearted and innocent in nature, but there was nothing passive about the way he stared into her soul. Him listening, was the most intimate thing that had happened to her in months. The past and the present were starting to blur into one, making her feel like time hadn’t moved at all. 

“Did this all by yourself,” she spoke again after a bout of silence. Eyes still trained on the fireplace built in her name. The seats they sat in. The stone laid on the ground. The plants. It was all for her. 

He stopped for a moment, a lightbulb going off. “You cyberstalking me, too?” The corners of his lips lifted.

“I only just started,” she mocked him, before smiling back. The fire of a memory burned through her mind, but as quick as it came, she put it out. She cleared her throat, shut the book, and planted her feet back on solid ground to stand up. 

“I got that.” He held his hand out watching her grab the mug. “Go ‘head. Go to bed.”

She turned, going back to the house, one step at a time, trying to forget the way his fingers stayed on hers for longer than necessary. 

“Roman.” She called his name softer than she meant to, halfway to the house. He turned his head from where he still sat. “So, we’re just supposed to just act like we don’t know each other all weekend?” She laughed it off. The tender spot in her chest that started as a small dot and then grew with every memory, every night, every kiss, she was meant to bury inside for the next two days. 

Roman thought about it. And he thought hard, not returning her smile. He should’ve said something right then and there. Took a shortcut. Told the truth and kept swimming. But he retreated back to his coward practices. 

“I won’t say anything if you don’t.”

In the cool air of the night, the pair tried to overturn their heat for one another just as cold. Throwing ice chips in a burning building. Taking the pen off the book’s pages in the middle of a sentence, for the second time. 

For years, they wondered about each other. 

Roman wasn't the type to believe in second chances, and even if he had, he convinced himself he didn't deserve one. Especially, not now. 

She didn’t come here for him. She came to close the book, not finish it. To show him his handiwork. The remains of a woman he didn't handle with enough care, that she had to put back together on her own. 

He fucked up and he had to accept that. It was for the best.

But there were instances—small moments turning to bigger ones. Every day that went by, it was becoming harder and harder to differentiate what was and what had become. He didn't know much about coincidences. He figured things just happened as they were supposed to. 

And they were.

Following their conversation from the night before, there was a silent understanding that they should keep a safe distance. The universe heard this and laughed. 

They ran into one another the very next morning. Milagra was in the middle of zipping up her hoodie, when the door to the gym came creaking open, and out he walked. Shirtless. Every seam that made up his body pulled tight from the exhaustion of his workout. 

“I was—um.” She had to clear her throat of that thick and heavy feeling of lust before she continued. Lines drew themselves on her forehead like she was trying to remember her lines. “I was just gonna go for a walk,” she explained.

He nodded wiping the streaks of sweat still running down his body like he was fresh out of a shower. Every deep breath he pulled in, the muscles of his core flexed and then settled, and flexed again. God, please don’t do that, she begged to herself. 

The door creaked when he opened it back up for her without turning. “Equipment is still downstairs. I think it’s supposed to rain in a bit.”

The sweat—it kept dripping. Through every line and every crease. She could imagine him panting—grunting as he handled the metal weights like toys. 

“I thinks it’s better for me to get some fresh air right now,” she admitted. Roman’s sweats hung looser, one side dipping more than the other, exposing a defined v-line. Something thick and obviously needing attention, pressing firm against the material, creating extra lines. Leaving nothing to the imagination. 

“Right.” She couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose. The jump of his peck and his lips folding in said otherwise. Bastard. 

Shaking her head she made a move to walk past him. 

“Have you talked to Tino? I tried to call him a little while ago.”

“He texted around five. I guess I missed his call. He said he was still tied up and he’s trying his best to get back before noon.”

Her stride quickened after getting a whiff of him, but his voice got closer with every step. 

“Something I meant to ask you last night.” She stopped at the door and turned. “Is he always this caught up with work? I know he’s in trauma and all, but to have to leave so quick at night like that?”

“That’s just how it is.” She stared blankly. “They call and he has to go.”

He couldn’t miss the distance in her eyes. If it weren’t his son they were talking about, he’d easily tell her she deserved better. That a woman like her required more than a man who would only get to her when he could. 

But he’d be a hypocrite. 

Just when she sensed him wanting to say more, she put her hand to the door. “I’ll be back. Should I leave this open?”

“Yeah.”

She couldn’t have gotten out of there fast enough. He was too much. The whole thing was too much. She didn't know how she’d survive until it was time for them to leave. 

Milagra started at a decent pace, finding her way down to the main road they came in on, palm trees covering one side, and on the other the water sparkled from the sun’s early rays. She ran and ran, until the feeling of her lungs burning overrode the feeling of guilt and embarrassment. It worked, but there was a third feeling that superseded all of them. One she couldn’t place. And it lingered and stayed stuck in her chest like heartburn. 

Sure enough, the rain started. It was one of those light showers that almost felt sticky because of the humidity. Her sneakers hit the wet asphalt relentlessly as she tried to outrun the flashes of memories plaguing her mind from seeing him like that. His bare chest. Out of breath. The eye contact. 

She shouldn’t feel these things anymore. 

Her hands settled on top of her knees when she came to a sudden stop. Chest in knots. Letting the rain wash away her sinful thoughts. 

Every time it rained, she thought of her grandmother. A small and everything but fragile black woman from the Dominican Republic that refused to speak English, regardless of her knowing it. 

La lluvia significa nuevas bendiciones, cariño—she would tell her. 

New blessings. That’s what rain was supposed to represent. 

It hadn’t rained on Milagra in a while. 

She tried to be grateful for the things she already had—for some don’t get the blessing of stability. The comfort of knowing things would be a certain way when they made it home. 

But sometimes it felt like a prison for her. 

When she arrived back, skin slick with sweat and rain, she uncovered her head from the hood, walking deeper into the house, past the two spiral staircases, and into the kitchen. She found him again, dressed as comfortable as he had the night before at dinner. His hair in a looser bun as he leaned over on the island, iPad in hand, the sensual voice of Anita Baker serenading the entire open area in a love spell. Sweet Love. Timeless classic. 

It was becoming clear that everything Milagra came to love about Tino, he had adapted from his father. 

How could she have not seen it before? 

He was like a watered down carbon copy of the man she spent an entire summer with. A summer that haunted her every summer after, making her resent the ancient cycle of seasons changing in the first place. 

The sight before her folded at the edges and turned to something else. Blurred into the mornings she’d come down, still in one of his shirts, following the smell of breakfast and the sound of the music. Rounding the corner and honing in on his focused features. Lips in a tight line. Brows dented in the center. The muscles in his arms moving with him. The natural light of morning spilling in over the accents of brown within the kitchen. Coating the glossed counters. 

She’d just watch. 

And she found herself doing the same thing. Just watching him. Falling into the same forbidden patterns until his brown orbs found hers as he rose to full height, adjusting the volume before clearing his throat. 

“You hungry?”

“I guess I could eat.” 

“Come. Sit.”

Like a puppet on his string she sat across on the stool. Watching him move in a relaxed and almost rehearsed fashion, trying to figure out if she should say something. 

Nothing about him had changed. A few more lines of silver at the root of his hair and along his beard—leaner—tanner—but other than those small details and signs of aging, he was the exact same. Milagra didn't know whether to be appreciative or resentful. Women were good at filling in that grey area men left unattended. In the days following his unexplained silence, she did just that. 

Maybe he fell ill, or went on vacation and lost service. 

Then days turned to months. She was forced to color in the void with more aggression now. Delusion even. Imagining that he had went through some life altering phenomena. Group therapy. Rehabilitation, or something mimicking it for those addicted to grief—the kind where they made you throw away your cell and take mandatory hikes to appreciate nature and life. 

Then after a year had passed and she built a wall high enough to not look over it—or at least stay off his social media that he barely posted on—she convinced herself he wasn't real. That she had imagined it. Dreamt it. 

It felt like one anyway. 

But he was real. And he had always been right here, where she left him with intentions to come back. But her pride wouldn’t allow her to return to a place where she was not wanted. 

Somehow she still ended up right back here. 

“You gonna just stare or you gonna help?” He muttered without looking up. His hands went to work, chopping up vegetables she assumed would fill an omelette. 

“I think you got it. Looks like you got it.”

His upper lip hiked up in a smirk. “You know the rules in my kitchen. If you’re in it, you help.” Eyes rolling up in her head briefly, she slid off the stool and washed her hands. “You remember how to make my French toast?”

“Eggs, heavy cream, vanilla coffee creamer, salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, maple and vanilla extract.” She listed off the items without pause, clumping them together on the counter near her so they were accessible.

“Good girl,” he praised, mindlessly. A force of habit. No extra filling in it. But it made her heart skip a beat. He hadn’t realized what he’d done until seconds after the two words left his mouth, going back and forth with the idea of apologizing. Peering back at her, watching as she moved without hesitation, so he just let it be.

When he figured enough time had passed and enough of the song playing went on, he spoke again. “Gotta hurry up before Mr. No Sugar For Breakfast gets back.” He listened to her chuckle softly, pleased that he hadn’t fucked up the mood too much. 

“Have you ever tried a different flavor coffee creamer?” She asked through the sound of clinking, working a fork through the eggs to beat them.

“No,” he answered. “No, I never thought to.”

“It’s good with Chobani’s Cookie Butter creamer.”

His hand movements slowed, as the thought of her taking a piece of him registered. 

She had always been good at that. Taking what he gave her and maximizing on it. Making it better before giving it back. 

“I’m gonna have to try that,” he finally replied. “You ever make it for Tino?”

“Yeah right,” she replied pulling a laugh from him. Too many studies on what sugar does to the body had Tino allergic to the idea of sugar. A practice she fell into, only when his eyes were on her. 

Daylight spilled into the kitchen, each song easing into the next, smoke rising from the pans that occupied the five burner stovetop. They managed to collaborate on the rest of breakfast with no hiccups. Just more laughs—some from the gut that lingered—eye contact that neither let marinate too long, and the stench of the past. 

Eating what they produced together, however, was the complete opposite. An intimacy that couldn’t hide in the mirage they had been keeping up. Not sat across one another. Not in the silence that forced the projection of their thoughts. 

“We did alright,” he forced himself to say, wishing now that he’d kept the music playing. She nodded without looking up from her plate. “You were always a good sous chef. One of my best,” he joked. It sounded harmless in his head at first. Then, the twitch of her eyebrows pinching for a second, made him more aware of his words. 

Fuck, he cursed himself. 

“I’m sure you’ve had better,” she told him tightly.

Their chewing and the beating of silverware against plates took precedence until he found the nerve to speak again. 

“You know I didn't mean it like that, Mila.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Milagra repeated his words from just the night before. She forced a smile before taking a sip of the grape juice he poured her. “None of my business.” In place of the orthodox orange juice, he remembered the grape always being her favorite. He himself had never been a fan of it, but somehow at every store run, he found himself grabbing for it. In his fridge, it would live. Untouched. Like the sunken fire pit, the grey cotton robe that still smelled like her perfume, or her hardcopy of Tia William’s, Seven Days In June.

Her fork hit the plate and the wood of the stool shrieked across the floor. “I’m gonna go shower. Starting to smell myself.”

All these years, making excuses for him and elaborate scenarios, and the most realistic one never occurred to her. Of course there were other women, she crucified herself. And now everything started to come into focus like a camera lens. 

Tino ended up coming back around eleven. Apologetic and willing to compromise by participating in an activity he hated when he was younger, that his dad loved for some reason—fishing. 

She sat in the backseat of his truck, listening to the mindless chatter of men and trying not to get lost in the butterflies hijacking her stomach whenever their eyes snagged in the rearview mirror. 

Milagra tried not to let his comment from breakfast consume her, but it stuck. It stuck like a piece of gum under your shoe. The whole ride there, she kept going back to it. 

But she just couldn’t rest with the idea. Him and other women. Besides the fact that it made her feel physically ill, she just couldn’t see him opening up that way with another. It was a struggle enough with her, but once the hatch broke everything fell into place as natural as the sun rising in the east. 

There was a calm lake just a few miles out from his estate that he bought. She waited, off to the side, enjoying the scenery of nature and the muscles in his back when he untied his flybridge catamaran from the dock. Tino moved everything they brought with them onto it. She pulled her Chanel shades atop of her head to keep the hairs blowing from sticking to her lip gloss. 

Every glimpse of the boat, she had to fight the memories. Walking onto it was hell. Obscene images of her and him on a day just like this one. The sun intolerant, with teeth, sinking into their skin. Her bare ass sliding off the leather seat. Him sweating above her—mouth latched onto the center of her tanned breast he freed from her bikini.

Roman passed her and offered a cautious “sorry,” when his leg brushed against her stretched out one. He left her to the inside of the cabin, joining his son in the flybridge before they took off. Those same filthy memories snagging on him too.

They got settled after Roman drove them further out. She stayed under the shade inside, one with her hardcover of R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis, while they hung off the wooden back piece with their hooks. Stealing glimpses of their nearly identical profiles whenever she could without consequence. His tongue darting out to lick his full bottom lip. A silent game of her eyes darting onto the lines of the page whenever one of them looked her way. The veins in his hands when he adjusted the rod, doubled in size. Another memory, glitching. In a tight grip, his hand, ran with veins of adrenaline, held the space just below her calf, before pressing his lips to it. His thrust losing momentum. 

She blinked long and hard. Mouth going dry. Insides fuzzy. 

In an act of terrorism, she’s sure, he peeled the black shirt from his body, exposing the ripples in his stomach and his defined chest, before stuffing it between his legs. 

Milagra’s lips puckered when she exhaled harshly. “Fuck me,” she mumbled under her breath. 

“Isn’t that right, baby?” Tino’s voice rose, peering back at her. His hand a visor. 

“What?”

“I was telling him how you and your brothers taught me how to tell where the fish really were. The negative space.”

Roman didn't even bother looking back after that. He had taught her that. She must’ve passed it on. Another piece of him she kept. 

She couldn’t help it. The pieces of him shattered and then scattered about the moment she realized she’d never see him again. The sharp pieces caught onto the parts of her that it could and sank deep. 

It was serene. The boat rocking lazily. Seagulls screaming overhead every so often. A fleeting painting of their shadow on the white drape overtop her head. A familiar picture. A familiar scene. Only in the first one, her world had just shattered and came back together. Coming down from the high of an orgasm that left her limbs lifeless. 

Her teeth sank into the flesh of her bottom lip, not even noticing the shadow of Tino’s large figure growing closer with every step. 

“Baby, can you go keep him company. I gotta take this.” He held his buzzing phone up. 

She had to take a deep breath. Placing the bookmark inside, she sat it down and padded barefoot out to him, using the metal bar for leverage, before plopping down. 

They sat like that for a while. The tension spreading out and over. Her thumb rubbed over the skin on her inner wrist, catching his attention. 

It was small. Something she could hide in the corporate world with long sleeves. A semi-drunk night with her college roommate and line sister that she thought she’d regret, but had only grown more attached to as the years went on, and the ink lost its initial intrusion and innocence. 

Two snakeheads facing the opposite of one another, open-mouthed, and made to look like the outline of a butterfly. 

His lips had spread over the ink many times before. Even his teeth sunk into the flesh, before he slid his slender fingers through hers, holding tight as they both fought to stay grounded. 

Something like electricity forged a line through them when she caught him staring at it. He wasn't quick enough when he looked out into the water, clearing his throat. 

He could see the thoughts, heavy and murky, as they lingered over her. Her light dimming for just a moment. 

“I meant what I said this morning. The sous chef thing—I didn't mean it like that. I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t realize how fucked up it sounded.” He bit his own tongue, a different confession almost slipping. 

He couldn’t have possibly meant it like that. No other woman besides Tino’s mother or a blood relative, had ever even stepped foot in that kitchen. His son’s mother’s hands repelled against food and the mixology of cooking. It was a talent that should come naturally, but she naturally always failed at it. 

It was a language only Milagra understood. 

“I know you didn’t,” she replied. Chuckling so softly he had to look at her to make sure he wasn't hearing stuff. “You’re a loner. You like being alone. You like your space.” Milagra’s head shot up and back, seeing Tino distracted with his hands going as he talked to whoever else was on the other side. “We barely left the house that summer,” she continued, looking in his eyes. They lightened like honey in the sun. His lips melted into a smirk remembering. “I doubt you had anyone else in your space like that. I barely made it there. We met on accident.”

Such a fool, he thought to himself. Accidents were things you bounced back from. They were thoughtless and without gravity. There was nothing accidental about the way his heart overcompensated for its normal job when he looked at her. 

“Am I really that predictable?”

One shoulder shrugged. “You just like your routine. I see where he gets it from, now.”

Roman shut one eye, a feeble attempt to fight the sun, while looking back at Tino quickly. He shook his head. “Swagger jacker.”

Milagra laughed from her gut and it was like hearing the opening chords to his favorite song. He hadn’t seen her do that in years. Laugh so deeply, that she didn't care how it sounded coming out of her. 

“Ugh.” She winced. “You can’t say things like swagger jacker.”

“Why not?”

“Because nobody says stuff like that anymore.”

“Okay, so what are the kids saying now?”

“He’s biting off of you or eating off you.”

He waved a hand. “I don’t even like the way that sounds.” He had earned himself another hearty laugh. Her stomach aching. 

“Okay—what about he’s reheating your nachos?” She raised her brows. 

He hesitated before relaxing into the idea. “Alright, I guess. It’s better than that other shit.”

Tino rambled about, phone pressed to his ear, linen button up open and flapping from the wind dragging over the lake—completely unaware and uncaring of the duo sitting on the edge. They sat close enough for their shoulders to touch and it looked as if nothing was between them, but there was. 

If you looked closer, you could see an entire world of yearning wedged comfortably down the center. A sore and bleeding cut of what if. 

They had dinner together again that night. Not like the night before. This one was less formal. Instead of the dining room, they made camp in the living room, eating leftovers from the prior night. On the longer couch Milagra sat, plate in her hands, careful to not spill anything on the cream material, with Tino between her legs on the floor. 

Milagra’s foot rested on Tino’s muscular thigh. He ran a hand over the smooth skin of it subconsciously as Roman’s eyes kept snagging on where their skin met. Almost losing his train of thought in the conversation they managed to carry, over the background noise of some old holiday movie. 

“The hospital is in a pretty hot area,” Roman pointed out. “No celebrities ever come through there? I know y’all got laws and stuff to follow so, no names.” He held two hands up. 

“I remember this lady brought her granddaughter in. The kid had swallowed one of those flat batteries. Her mom was some rapper.”

The two men’s voices came and went in Milagra’s consciousness. She had heard all of these trauma nightmares too many times. It rubbed her the wrong way now. Like an old itchy sweater. Anything to do with that damn hospital. All she could think about was him and his coworker, sneaking off to grope each other or something. 

“Oh—and last month, one of those guys from Love Island came in. Drunk driving.” Tino shook his head at the sore subject. 

“Love Island—what’s that? One of those game shows?”

“Yeah. A bunch of strangers fake falling in love over the summer to win money and clout.”

“Hey!” He flinched when Milagra snatched her small foot from his hold. 

“You weren’t supposed to be listening.” He chuckled. “I’m telling you that show is bullshit.”

“Why is it bullshit? Cause there’s money involved?” Milagra probed. 

“That—and the fact that they’re only on the show for maybe two months max. If that. Some of them come in mid season.” Roman’s chest jolted with the pressure of a laugh, watching them go back and forth. “Dad, some of these motherfuckers even go as far as exchanging I love you’s. Never even left the villa before. They don’t meet the parents until the end. Guys on there asking girls to be their girlfriend. It’s crazy. That summer love bullshit.” 

Milagra’s body ran cold at the same time that Roman’s prickled with heat. 

It seemed the living area had frozen in time or maybe just they did. Tino was fine as he scraped the remnants of rice and sauce from his plate. 

“I don’t know,” Roman started. He shouldn’t do this. It was bold, but that’s exactly why he was doing it. In the past he hadn’t been so bold and he had been paying for it ever since. “Summer love can sometimes be the most potent. You only get but so much time. Less room for faking it or holding back. You know?”She shouldn’t look. She couldn’t look. “I’d take that over a slow burn any day,” he finished. 

Milagra looked anyway. Right into his brown planets of lure. The weight of his words settling over them like a blanket. A warmth she hadn’t felt in years. 

Even deeper into the night, Milagra laid in the sad grey sheets of the king-sized bed, alone, as she was used to. It was much more humid than the night before, so the air thrusted through the vents harsher. She hated artificial air. It was too demanding. Goosebumps rose on her soft skin against her will. She ended up leaving the door that led to the veranda open, just watching the sheer curtain dance every time the wind pushed them. 

 She didn't even know why she was waiting up for him. It’s not like they’d have sex. They barely indulged in the late night debrief that most couples do. He’d stay on his side. She’d stay on hers. A book in her hand, while he read one from his phone—disconnected from the pages of whatever he was reading, how he was with almost everything else in his life. No more than five words between the two of them, unless something big happened that day, before either flicked the switch. Then they’d lay, backs usually turnt to one another, overly aware of the other’s presence in the bed. At some point in the night, because they still longed for one another, or at least the tightly threaded connection they once shared—they ended up tangled in each other’s web. His leg over hers. Her arm draped across his abdomen. 

It was pathetic. The way she still somehow longed for it. 

Milagra dosed off after a while. Thinking she was dreaming when she heard voices, she stirred to get more comfortable. Those voices—she recognized. One was Tino’s—rushed and avoidant. The other held bass. Powerful but comforting. It was Roman’s.

They weren’t yelling, but they weren’t whispering either. 

They grew quiet and she didn’t hear anything at all, until the she recognized the timing of Tino’s heavy footsteps. She contemplated pretending to be sleep, but gave up the act once she heard him mumble something under his breath. 

“What’s wrong?” She turned in the duvet. 

“Nothing, baby. Go back to bed.” Not listening, she just stared until he climbed in and did the thing that confirmed her suspicions of something being off. He got in close and draped an arm around her midsection. Not in a mindless way. It couldn’t have been, because that would suggest it was habit. His arm didn’t just rest, but he curled it over until his warm hand met the other side of her waist, and he held her there as if he couldn’t sleep unless it was like this. 

She settled into the sound of his breathing and made peace with the crickets singing, so clear, as if they were in the room with them. That familiar buzz of the night opening herself up.

“It’s so quiet here,” she ripped through the silence, feeling as if she should. “Peaceful.”

He drew a breath and somehow his grip became tighter. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Nothing like the holidays at your people’s place.” She laughed with him. 

“All those damn kids. It’s like my brothers are trying to start rival football teams.” 

He laughed harder. “I don’t know. I kind of like it. The sound of kids being kids. A full house.”

Her brows dipped before she turned in his hold until she was facing him. She could feel the shift. Something in him changing.

“For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always preached that one and done thing.”

“I know. It’s just I don’t want this to be my reality.” His eyes illuminated by the moon roamed around the space. “My parents only had one. I left and now this is how my dad spends his days. Alone. Nothing but the walls and that loud ass pool.” He smiled and she returned it. 

“I’m not raising all those kids by myself, Tino.”

He sighed. “I know.” Something like dread laid between them now. The apprehension and anxiety of having to make the unattractive decisions. “Tomorrow’s problem,” he finally spoke again. “I wouldn’t do anything without putting a ring on your finger, anyway. It’s what we always agreed on.” 

Milagra’s heart picked up speed and she wondered if he could feel it this close. 

The promise of forever—security—it should’ve soothed her. Instead it triggered her fight or flight. The walls closing in. 

She had always pictured things happening so differently for her. 

And just five years ago, one fleeting summer—sweet and savory—a glow around its edges, even now when she thinks about it—spent with an older, mysterious man who reeked of loneliness and the appetite of new desire—she could taste that different version of forever.  

But the summer was ending. She prepared to go home, back to reality. Downtown Miami where men like him just didn't exist. 

“You know where to find me,” he told her. A strong hand pressed to her car door as if he didn't want to shut it with her on the other side. 

Sincerity always reflected in his eyes, and that time was no different. “Yeah,” she nodded. 

She was going back. 

He watched the entire time. From the moment he shut the heavy car door. When she reversed and her tires dragged over the stone of his driveway. Until she made it onto the street. Giving him one last look that would last for years as he stood tall in her side mirror—the heat of a summer’s love still heavy on her tongue like alcohol the morning of a hangover. 

The last of her car reduced to a dot down the long road disappeared, and his phone—a device he forget he even had the past three months—buzzed in the deep pocket of his sweats. 

“Son,” he answered. In a daze. The sickness already settling into his bones from Milagra’s absence. He felt it as soon as he stepped foot back into his own home. 

“I was calling to tell you that I was running late. It’s already ten and I haven’t heard from you all morning. I was getting worried.”

It took Roman a minute. To arrange the words he was hearing in order and give meaning to them. And once he did, the sickness of something else consumed him. One with claws that sunk into your skin and held you down. 

Grief. 

It was his wife’s birthday. September twentieth. The close of the summer. When she was here, she was the pretty bow wrapped around a season full of life. Every year after her death, the two men she left behind, paid her homage, dedicating a weekend to the beach house on Fisher Island Roman and his late wife owned. It was their first big purchase after they moved to Boca. Tearing up the foundation, redoing the roof, and rebuilding it until it felt like theirs. 

It became her spot. 

In her death, it’s where they felt her the most. Her smell still lingering on the couch cushions. Sundresses, bright and flowing, still hanging in the master bedroom’s closet.

But that year, Tino and Roman’s normal routine went askew. Tino would usually drive up to Boca, they’d rent a boat and take the hour and a half ride, or ferry, to the island. Spend the weekend doing all the things they would if she were there, until it hurt too much. 

“I-I…” Roman swallowed something solid and burned the entire way down. 

It was his wife’s birthday and he had spent the entire morning of it with another woman. 

The reality of it all—what he had done that whole summer—that morning—hit him like a brick wall and smacked him back into his depressing reality. 

“I got caught up with something.” The robe Milagra left behind, a breadcrumb, he fingered it from where it draped over the back of his couch. “I’m about to shower now. The door is open when you get here.”

Milagra texted him the moment she made it home. She hadn’t even stepped foot out of her car, the ignition still humming. 

The text lived in their thread for two days. Untouched. 

So she sent another. The bubbles emerging and then disappearing and her heart bounced frantically, but it felt like there was no blood coming from it. 

I don’t think this is going to work. 

I’m sorry Milagra. 

She wasn’t going back. 

Months went by and she had called twice by then. Betraying herself with every stretch of wanting something that didn't want her. Missing someone who knew exactly how to get to her. Holding the gun firm to her own heart. 

No answers. 

All the texts and calls—they all ended up in the same void. Until one random day, the way they say it usually happens, she killed it. Whatever they had or didn't. She buried it and moved on. 

iii. roman’s estate • if it’s meant to be.

“You using something different in your hair?” Milagra asked her boyfriend before fingering through the thick curls. 

“Why?” He place his phone on the other lounge chair so he wasn't tempted to check it again. 

Things looked different to her than they had the days before. The grass was a deeper green. The pool sparkled better under the sun. She breathed easier. Felt lighter. The weight of the past not pressing down so hard. 

“It doesn’t lay the same. It’s in your face more.”

“Don’t tell me—my hair looks sexy pushed back?” Tino recited a line from one of her favorite movies—Mean Girls—drawing a hearty laugh from her. “You should do that more.” He smiled. Amazed that he could even still do that—make her laugh. 

“Do what?”

“Laugh. I feel like you don’t do that enough lately,” he explained. 

He remembered just as she did, how they used to be. Sewn like siblings who were forced to do everything together. He had been trying to get back to that. It’s all he wanted. And she was starting to realize that wanting that too, was her best bet at a normal life. One that didn’t force her to keep looking into the cemetery of old flings. 

“Noted.” Her fingers pressed deep into the lounge chair’s cushion as she leaned in to kiss him. A single touch of their lips, tender, and straddling the fence for more. 

Roman slammed the backdoor to the house louder than he intended, breaking their trance. They watched as he approached with a pitcher of liquid—something thick and saffron—and a couple water bottles tucked under his arm. 

“I ran out of grenadine,” he muttered, setting it down on the side table. “You want a glass?” 

“No, thank you.” She slid her shades over her eyes. Hiding the amusement that twinkled in them, before rising and removing the old t-shirt she turned into a cover up. Both men stared, getting lost in the curves of her body as she revealed the blue Pucci bikini, tied snug to her tanned skin. 

“You alright?” Tino asked him.

“Yeah—yeah.” His voice didn't sound like his own. Looking up for the weakest second, he caught her, rubbing the sunscreen into her hands before smearing it over her cheeks. The white liquid sitting on her plump ass, an image he was all too accustomed to. He shook his head, adjusting himself in his red trunks as discreet as possible. 

“Did you bring the face sunscreen out here, baby?”

“Yeah, it’s right here,” Tino answered, holding it out to his dad. “Can you hand this to her please.”

Roman let out a rough breath. “I thought we agreed, no phone today.”

“Two seconds. I’m just checking my email.”

On weak legs, Roman made his way toward the pool where Milagra stood. Skin glistening, hair blowing, and thick in all the right places. A scene that mimicked the introduction of the main female character of a rom com classic. 

“Here.” He held the tube out at a safe distance. 

“Thanks.” 

He didn't want to torture himself a second longer. The minute it left his hands he turned on his heels, but her voice stopped him in his tracks. 

“What’s wrong big fella?”

“Why would something be wrong?”

She poked her lips out before responding. “You just seem tense, is all.”

He laughed breathily. Her words a grater to his resolve. “Tense?”

“Yeah. Maybe you should get another sous chef. Relieve some of that tension.” Milagra smiled as fake as her acrylic nails. 

“Shut up,” he warned. 

“Awe. Look at you two.” Tino yelled from behind them. “Future in-law bonding. Love to see it.” 

The standing pair wore obnoxious grins before turning back to each other, a brief fit of laughter between them. 

“That is so fucked up.” She shook her head.

“You really should tell him.”

The secret could hold up for now, but he feared that the fall from higher up—after marriage and possible kids—would be way more catastrophic. 

Her head snapped in his direction. “What happened to, I won’t tell if you don’t? Leave him be,” she defied. “He’s happy in his delusions. Aren’t you?”

“Be careful,” he warned. “The ledge—one of those rocks are coming off. I meant to fix it.” 

She walked along the shaven rocks that made up the pool’s decking. One foot in front of the other, balancing herself as if she was on a tightrope. They sloped up slightly to a mountain in the corner for someone to sit or stand on before jumping in. 

“If I fall in, are you gonna jump in or wait for him to get up?” She joked. “Oh—” She almost lost her balance, bending forward a bit to catch herself. He jolted forward, ready, in her peripheral.

“Milagra—I’m serious.”

She chuckled to herself. “I’m just trying to get to the top and tan. Relax.”

Everything happened so fast. Too fast. He didn't have enough time and too much space was between them. Her foot found the faulty unlaid rock. A scream, short but powerful, escaped her before she went splashing in.

“Babe—what the fuck?” Tino’s back detached from the lounge chair, and she emerged from the water. “Are you okay?”

Roman took one look at the scowl on her wet face and all his worry fled the scene. “I tried to tell you.” He pushed out between a laugh. 

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” Her skin was on fire despite the cold shock and his laugh only grew in size. 

“Alright—alright.” He held his large hand out. A peace offering. He looked to his son still laughing. “She’s alright—oh shit!”

So occupied with relishing in her fall, she stole an opportunity to grab his hand, tugging as hard as she could. It didn't happen quite as fast as hers, but it happened, and that was enough to satisfy her hunger for revenge. Roman’s enormous stature disappeared into the water with the sound of a hard smack and splash. Tiny droplets reaching even Tino. 

He rose, like some type of Demigod. Fully dressed, shaking the water from his long dark waves that escaped his bun.

“What happened? You were supposed to be helping me?” Her act cracked as soon as he turned her way, upper lip curled in a snarl. 

“I see some things never change,” he muttered. Milagra’s laugh went full blown. Old habits die hard. It was the same tactic she always used to get him back in the pool when he was ready to call it a night, but her body just wasn't ready to rest. She assumed the damsel in distress. A cramp, or just needing help out of the water. Her brave knight—he always fell for it. 

The hoarseness of her laugh got to him. The smile stole his irritation, before he drew in closer, lifting her in a bear hug before dunking her back in. Splashing each other. They were like kids at a cookout. Unruly. Wet. Uncaring. 

Tino observed, pleased. A twinge of confusion with how well they meshed so quick. 

And then something shifted. Milagra ended up in his hold, prepared to be dunked again. They felt it at the same time. It creeped up on them. 

The guilt. The residuals of passion and how they were before. The line was starting to blur. 

Her smile faded and it was if his sun had set. Before he could even speak, she removed herself. Up and out of the pool in a flash. Leaving a trail of water in her wake the entire way into the house. 

Roman didn’t go after her right away. He didn’t even know if he should, but he knew what his body was naturally meant to do. He put up a good fight but he was done not listening to it. 

“Milagra!” His voice rumbled like thunder throughout the vast halls of his downstairs. The sun giving the house life from the arched windows. “Milagra—”

The sight of her, red eyed, rushing to clear her face, silenced him. Weakened the strong legs he stood on. Almost brought him to his knees.

“I’m okay—I swear.” She turned from him, shooting up from the bed. 

He shook his head, holding the towel to his waist tight with even tighter lips. He wished he could stop it. Her pain. He didn't even know where to start. His feet carried him further into Tino’s room. 

“Milagra I—” He grew frustrated. With himself. With her. With Tino. Everything. 

He felt it too. Nostalgia was a curse. It felt like he was swimming against the tide. This shit was hard.  Seeing her and then pretending to be blind. The extra effort to go around himself and what he felt naturally. All to do more hurting than helping. 

“Why do you do that?” She asked in one rushed breath. 

She was disgusted with him, but herself more. Allowing that flimsy childlike faith that things could rest between them infiltrate her better judgment. Trying to make amends with a man who fed her dreams that she had gotten full on. Surviving off of them like an animal in the winter, until she needed more. And by then, he was long gone. 

Unanswered calls, piling up on her phone. Blue bubbles in their thread consistent on his, as fear had him by the throat. Paralyzing him to the point where he couldn’t even end it properly.

Foolish of him to think that by not properly closing the door, and leaving it cracked, meant she’d never try to shut it herself. 

I’ll come back when I’m ready, he’d tell himself night after night. I’ll find her again when I’m better. 

“You have to know that this is as uncomfortable for me, as it is for you,” he said in a whisper, as if he didn't want anyone, not even himself to hear it. 

“Uncomfortable,” she repeated between a married laugh and scoff. Uncomfortable was her bun being a tad too tight, and the scrunchie pulling on the small fragile hairs that rested on the nape of her neck. The cup of her Louboutin causing too much friction with the skin on the back of her ankle. 

This feeling wasn’t as easy to cure. And as long as he stood tall—a constant nagging of a bruising memory—a reminder of the night she laid awake beside him, thanking God for sending him—the feeling would only expand. 

“I’m gonna make it easier for the both of us. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll make some shit up. Some work thing—I don’t know.”

He clutched the towel tighter. A puddle forming now where he stood just staring at her. She was in pain. He had caused enough of it trying to hold onto something. So, he let go. 

“Okay.” He nodded. “Okay,” he repeated. The decision not settling any better in his body, no matter how many times he’d say it. It would never be okay.  

They avoided each other the rest of the day. An invisible pull they ignored for everyone’s sake. Milagra faked a sudden illness. Lying in Tino’s old room. Blank TV screen and a phone barely touched. Just thinking. 

She could hear them—laughing. The distant hum of chatter. The echo of the TV. She fell asleep to it. 

Lips. Somebody’s lips—familiar and soft—she felt them. The hairs of their mustache dragging and scratching her skin with every kiss. Her waist first, her breast, shoulders, and then her neck. A moan slipped and she smelled him. He moved quick. Tugging on her panties in the dark and she lifted helping. His mouth latched onto her again. Her back arched and rose off the plush mattress.

“Mm,” she moaned out. “Fuck.” He sucked all the heat right from her. Hungry. Starved. 

Her hand came down, tangling in the tresses—long thick tresses—of hair on his head. That’s when it hit her. And at the same moment, he kissed his way up until they were face to face. She knew those eyes anywhere. Recognized them in her sleep. 

He was thick against her thigh. Without thinking twice she reached between and connected them. A rush of heated pain as he stretched her. 

“Always so tight,” he mumbled against the skin of her cheek. Pace quickening. He couldn’t suppress his appetite any longer. Their skin slapped together in collision. A fierce and demanding kind of sound. His groans carried, carelessly, biting into the flesh of her neck, grinding deep. Milagra’s breath hitched with every thrust. Eyes suddenly catching the dark shadowy figure in the doorway.

Tino.

Her heart almost combusted as she struggled to stop him. 

Tino was just watching. Still as a statue. His mouth finally parted and his voice reached her as she jolted up from the bed.

“—Baby—it’s just me.” Her chest heaved. Struggling to come back to center, she held onto his arm for stability. “You were sleeping, relax.”

She huffed. 

It was just a dream. 

“You feel better?”

“No, not really. If it’s not better by the morning, I’m just gonna go back home.”

“You sure?” His brows turned down. 

She nodded. “Yeah. I don’t wanna get anyone sick,” she lied. The only sickness she held was in her heart. “Besides, you and your dad deserve the alone time. You barely see each other. He needs you right now. It’s that time of the year where family means the most.” He looked off. Mouth twisting. “What?” She asked. 

“Hospital called. That’s why I came in here.” She sighed. “My patient that I worked on—his body isn’t taking to the medicine. He had a seizure a couple minutes ago. I’d take you with me, but I don’t want you waiting at the hospital before I get a chance to take you home.”

“It’s fine. Go ahead.”

“If you need anything—he’ll get it.”

No he can’t, she thought. She nodded anyway. Watching his back as he left. 

Just one more night. That’s all she had to do, was get through the night. 

Before she even bent the corner, she already knew he’d be there. Waiting for her. She could feel him. And if anything she learned about him that summer proved right, he could feel her, too. 

Milagra tried hard. She really did. 

She could feel the doom of something and it kept her tossing and turning in the sheets of the vast bed, until she finally gave in. Every little instance, every snagging of their eyes, the hiking of his top lip into a slight smile of admiration or amusement, every pry into their relationship—it all made its way down on her sight, like rain on a windshield until she couldn’t see clearly anymore. She should’ve known it would end this way. 

A bystander, she watched the side of his hard face. Admiration and longing filling his eyes. The TVs—they projected a glow over the space. Making everything majestic and mysterious. Soft. 

The chubby face of the boy on the screens, she recognized. Tino in a yard, kicking a soccer ball around. It was Roman’s voice, deep with a southern drawl, behind the camera, egging his movements on. 

He muted the TV after catching her figure out the side of his eye. Then they veered down to the duffel bag by her feet. 

Roman chose to ignore it, knowing he wasn't letting her walk out that door a second time without making this right—without setting things straight. 

“Just looking at old pictures.” He held up the stack he was currently going through. Once buried in the closet, with the rest of the memorabilia that had his late wife’s scent on it. Tonight, he decided to pull it out. Too often, he found himself trying hard to remember the feelings he had only ever felt when she was still here. It wasn't that hard to conjure, anymore. Some of them were sneaking up on him and coming back in increments. 

She looked down the hall that led to the foyer one last time. It’s right there, she told herself. Just grab the bag and go. Milagra’s feet carried her in the opposite direction of the door. He never even turned back around. He knew she’d come. 

“You know, this time fifteen years ago, we had just moved into this house?”

“I didn’t know that. I thought y’all always lived here. In Boca.” They never talked much about his life before her. That summer wasn't the time for that. He told her all of two stories about his wife and son. Never showing any pictures. The ones lining the halls weren’t there before. He didn't have the heart to put them back up until recently. He had the stripped the place of any trace of her in the years following her death. 

He shook his head. “Before this, we lived in a small beach town. Pensacola. All the way on the other side. It’s like a nine hour drive. We didn’t get here until I got injured—Jaguars released me—and then one of my college teammates offered me a job as a head coach up here at FAU.”

In the picture he held, he and a teenage Tino were standing in the circular driveway outside. Roman had a firm hand on his shoulder as they both wore that lopsided smirk that wasn't mature enough to be a smile. She laughed inside at Tino’s full afro of curls and how big he was even back then.

Roman slid the picture to the back to reveal the next one. Tino in a cap and gown, holding a mock diploma in hand. The proud colors of his school she recognized from the same shirt she always stole of his—orange and blue for the University of Florida. Cords and sashes draped around him colorfully as he sat in the dirt next to a tall obelisk headstone. A picture Milagra had seen before, from the stash he buried in their basement. 

“Man, I wish she could’ve saw this,” he said more to himself. “She wouldn’t believe the things he’s doing now. Saving lives.” 

She crept around to sit next to him and get a better look. Not bothering to leave any space. It was pointless. Nothing else could transpire. She had already made up her mind. Had all day to think about it. She would never step foot back in this house after today.

Tino was barely even doing the smirk thing. His eyes were puffy and red from having to get himself together before taking the picture. 

She couldn’t imagine. He was only sixteen when it happened. They hadn't even been in this house a full year before he and his father had to rifle these unfamiliar streets, looking for any sign of her, desperate, when she hadn't come home from a store run. Just for them to circle back home, those flashing blue and red lights greeting them. Two officers, ashamed to tell the two men, who had already felt it before he even said it—that their everything was gone. 

“Must’ve been really hard to raise Tino on his own.”

He blew out a big rush of air from his mouth, reminiscing. “For a long time, it was like he refused to acknowledge that she was gone. I didn't wanna force him to grieve. Everybody does it at their own pace.” His eyes lowered gradually to the picture again, and she could see all the memories swarming his mind. Some good. Some bad. All necessary. 

“What was she like?” The words flew out of her mouth before she could catch them. She easily lost control around this man. It was no different than before. They were fools to believe it would be. He extended a familiar warmth, the same one you’d get from that girl at the summer camp that you easily vibed with and would never forget, even though you’d probably never be as close to again. “He never talks about her.”

He hesitated at first. A blank stare across his stiff features and she almost regretted asking the question—regretted even getting out of bed before he turned his head to her and his face softened. 

“She always had her hand in everything. She wanted to be everything,” he smiled lazily. “I think that’s what I admired about her the most. She never limited herself to one thing, you know?” Milagra’s eyes trailed off for a second, wondering what she’d think of her. “She was a lot like you.” Her breathing stalled. “I see why he chose you.” 

She didn’t know what to make of his words. He handed her something she didn’t even think she had the capacity to carry.

“It’s cruel,” she whispered in pain almost. “What happened to y’all.”

“Damn, right it is.”

“I try not to question God—but sometimes it’s hard not to when things like that happen.”

“I took a long break from Him after that. I stopped going to church. Didn’t even think to touch a Bible. It just didn’t make sense. None of it. Why did I get left with this hand and all the sinners get to live out their fantasies—happy?” She could listen to him talk all day. His voice was calm, passionate, and careful, like he had rehearsed these very lines to recite for her. 

And he had. 

“Then, I really had to think about it. I can’t see everything—all the variables involved. He can. I only see from my small, selfish lens. I don’t know why that had to happen, but it did. He doesn’t make mistakes. Now Tino’s a surgeon, of all things. My wife’s one life for all the hundreds he’s saved. I think I can live with that.” He used a hand to smooth down the hairs of his thick beard. “It took me a long time to get to this point—but I’m at a place where I’m at peace and I’m happy.” He nodded approvingly at himself before looking to her.

He had those kind of eyes that made you self conscious in silence, wondering what he could be figuring out. She could tell he listened to the gaps as much as when she filled them. 

Milagra kept it all together on the outside. Her hair—if not in its naturally curly state, slicked back in a single tight braid at the nape of her neck—was usually straightened with her ends clipped bluntly with not a flyaway in sight. Clothes always ironed, even her socks at times—she never left the house without earrings. And in the bag that matched her outfit of the day, she made sure floss, hand lotion, and those mini stain removers were packed. 

But on the inside she was a jumbled mess. She lost her train of thought from the slightest interruptions. Milagra could barely make a sound decision without changing her mind at least five times before. And she found herself dotting over the answers she gave people in her head forever, before even saying them aloud—to the point where there was almost always a three to five second window of silence between the question someone asked and her answer. 

That was one of the first things she noticed about Roman. Their conversations dragged—not just because he always managed to pull more out of her, not wanting her voice to go silent—but also because he too, took that bout of silence before responding. Most men were blunt in a detrimental fashion that made Milagra’s stomach fold over itself. She worked with them—arrogant pricks they were—and even grew up in a house with three men who never failed to “tell her like it is.” Roman stood apart from all of them. He gave thought to his words. Filtered over them before their delivery and she appreciated that. 

Even the way he was able to take those jumbled thoughts she sometimes let slip through the cracks and help her give order to them. Setting things straight and affirming them. 

“That summer we met…I was a mess. Even after. It was so much worse. I wasn't over her.” He laughed at the ridiculous notion. “I wasn’t over any of it. I was in the thick of grief. And Tino was nowhere to be found. In medical school. It was like everybody was moving on, but me. Everything just moving. Life passing me by. I wasted so much time in these walls—doing nothing but sulking.”

He thought—how could I ever go on? He hadn’t planned on doing life without her. He barely wanted to do it alone, but he had a son to think about. A piece of her. 

He didn't want to do it with anyone else. 

And then Milagra appeared—and for the first time since his wife’s untimely death, he thought to himself—I think I can do this. 

It rattled him. Knocked his entire world off its axis. She came out of nowhere, with the unspoken promise to make love a possibility again. Granted him permission to enjoy it. To be grateful for the sun shining on his pores, even though his wife couldn’t feel that anymore. Gave him something to look forward to. He had a reason to get up everyday, that wasn't his son. He couldn’t handle it.

Opening one door meant closing another. He clung to his grief as long as he had, because the pain kept his memories of her alive. Yearning to feel her hands on his was only possible if he missed her egregiously. If he let go—if he decided to move on and be happy—how would he keep the memory of her alive? How could he remember the way she said his name? Could he still taste her lips on his? Would he be able to still smell the natural scent of her? Or would he forget all these things? Move all the cluttered memories of her out of his mind to make room for Milagra?

He couldn’t do it. It felt too much like betrayal. Cheating almost. 

But damn if Milagra wasn't the spitting image of her. Not just in looks, but her spirit. Her energy. It was as if, in her last act of love, his wife sent Milagra as a consolation prize for her own death. The cushion to soften the blow of her absence. Someone to take care of him and his son. 

The whole thing kept him up most nights. He’d lay in bed, trapped in memories. Memories of his wife. Memories of when his son could stand to be around him. Memories of Milarga. 

It was never going to work back then. If he was the same man from years ago, even if Tino wasn't in his way—he wouldn’t have been able to get past himself. 

But Roman was different now. And he had to let her know that.

“I’m different now.” He locked in on her gaze. Something grabbing them both on a hook and refusing to let go. “I’m not mentally locked up anymore. I’m happy. I’m free.”

Milagra felt the hot tear roll heavy to her chin. Frozen, she couldn’t even wipe it. 

The same relief you feel after being casted into deep waters and finally coming up for air—that’s the feeling that coursed through his veins. He had never spoken those words aloud. He felt free like he said. Heard the chains cracking. 

“Are you happy?” Her face contorted in pain, already shaking her head. “Just answer the question.”

“It's not a simple question. I don’t have a simple answer.”

“Sure it is,” he urged. He was throwing her a line, praying she took it. Offering her a way out and they’d figure out the specifics later. 

“Why do you even care? As long as your son is happy, that’s all that should matter to you.”

“Why do I care?” He almost laughed at her ignorance. “I’ve always cared.” A line formed in the middle of her brows. “I’ve made a few mistakes—yes, I know. But you are not one of them.” Her heart gained momentum with every other word and she wondered if any of this was even real. She had imagined it—dreamt of it before, but nothing could compare to the real thing. 

She jumped when his warm hand grabbed hers, placing it on his hard chest. “You never really left.  Five years and I still feel you. You’ve been living right here the whole time.” His heartbeat. It matched hers. 

She didn't lean in too. Like a fish on a hook, she was still hung on his confession. And by the time she realized what was happening, he was already halfway to her. 

For so long, he had just been existing, alone. He forgot what this felt like. Yearning. The twisted need clawing at his neck of losing control around someone. 

This wasn't supposed to happen this way. She had planned to ride it out. Starting over was a task and she already had a home. Empty and lonely as it was. All she wanted was to be seen—tended to. And in three days this man had done all of that which his son couldn’t in almost three years. 

And for that reason alone, his last stretch of space, she closed it. 

It was soft at first. Simple. Just one peck that lingered until one of them found the strength to pull away. The first buds of a flower. They eyed one another. Orbs bouncing around each other’s faces—sinking into their places. It was always going to happen this way. 

He leaned in again. Lips pressing into hers urgently now. The hairs living overtop his lip pricking her a bit. Again and again he did it. A hand curved into the space of her upper neck, long fingers tangling into her scalp, pressing her against him.

Roman entered her mouth tongue first and she leaned her head to the side, deepening the kiss. Fully bloomed now. Their flesh smacked together loudly in the silence. She could hardly breathe, chest tight, but she didn’t care as long he didn’t stop. 

She pressed her fingers up the fabric of his cotton shirt, feeling the rippling muscles over his tight skin. Traveling the length down, past the waistband of his sweats and the strings, sliding over the hard and thick muscle. Roman’s breath picked up against her mouth. Her hands. He hadn’t felt a woman’s touch in so long. So, he slowed his pace, and took his time, making her settle—surrender. Gliding his tongue over every inch of her mouth, wanting to feel all the parts he missed out on all these years. Learn every inch over. 

He pulled until she landed in his lap. The air thickening. Their breaths quick. Hands everywhere—desolate. He needed her like a fish needed water. 

Two big hands wrapped around and swallowed her face. He couldn’t believe it was real—that it was finally happening. 

“You are fucking perfect.”

He pressed the skin of their foreheads together before they kissed again. Like animals, feeding off one another. He slid her sweats down, palming her ass, before reaching a hand further. Rubbing her through the fabric of her panties, the wetness soiling it. 

“Take this off,” he directed. She pulled the zipper of her hood down, revealing her breasts and guiding one to his face for him to catch. 

Licking around the rim, flicking and biting, he gave equal love to the other one. Her head hung back, suspending in pleasure. A strong hand yanked her panties to the side, rubbing the slippery flesh directly. 

“Oh,” she moaned, moving against his hand.

“I know you missed me.” He kissed the skin stretched over her throat. “You touch yourself thinking about me, still.” He was an arrogant lover and he earned the right. No one even came close. “I think about you all the time.” She struggled to keep her eyes open. Stomach tightening. She wouldn’t last much longer. That’s just how good he was. He knew every spot. He couldn’t forget. “Listen to her, baby.” 

The squelching wet sounds filled her ears. 

“This is wrong.” His face fell into the side of hers before licking it. On the screen, Tino stared back. “This is wrong,” she repeated, breathless. 

“So, stop me,” he whispered. 

With the strength of a woman scorned, she uttered the words. Weakly. “S-stop.” 

His hand didn't move anymore. Easing off her and holding them up. She rose, planting one foot back to the floor. Looking around as if she had awoken from a dream. 

She stared into the gloss of need over his eyes. All the hurt and pain of his absence falling like accumulations of snow. And now it was everywhere. 

All he had to do was communicate. Tell the truth.

She would’ve understood. Might have even waited for him. 

And by the time it all registered, her acrimony was already boiling over. 

She struck him. His face snapping to the left, eyes shut tight. Jaw working. 

Before he could open his mouth to say something, she grabbed her hoodie, holding it tight to her chest, and walked away briskly. The last thing she needed was to hear his voice. That would’ve made what just happened too real.

Roman didn't move from the couch. Not even after he heard his front door slam. 

She had shown him something he thought would be missing forever. A piece of himself he buried with his wife. And a young and off limits Milagra dug it up just to kill it again.

iv. home • doing it wrong.

A week had passed since they left his father’s estate. 

Her and Tino were as okay as they had always been. A pimple patch over the obvious red blotches of things wrong with them, but they loved each other enough to see it through.

She went through all the stages of grief—again. Trying to erase his father’s existence. An eraser to permanent marker.

Roman was wrong to reopen a wound she was already putting pressure on. Forcing it to heal itself. 

He did that. Cut her open and left her to bleed out. Just when she thought the wound was closing up, he did it again. 

She could still feel the weight of the smack. She felt bad. 

She had never even done that before—put her hands on a man. None of them drew up emotions strong enough for her to feel that urge. 

Every time the phone rang and she hard Tino say, what’s up dad, her heart stuttered in her chest. Every new post he made on social media, she was just waiting for him to hint at fucking his son’s daughter. 

She was losing her mind in the calmest way possible. 

Already thinking of excuses to never go back. 

She just wanted a clean slate. Her and Tino deserved that much. 

It was a Friday night. She had nothing to do. No work and she had been released on winter break from school after acing every final, despite her clogged mind. 

Tino’s figure appeared in the doorway. She expected him to go for the walk-in to get ready to go, but he was dressed comfortably in sweats with his bare chest on display.

“Hospital just called,” he announced settling until he was comfortable enough to lay still. “Said they don’t need me anymore.”

Milaga turned to look at him, the book in her hand folding in on itself with her thumb as a temporary bookmark. She waited, sensing he had more to say.”I was thinking, maybe, Patrick and I can have some fun. I know he’s been missing me. We don’t talk as much.”

A wrinkle formed in her brow line as she chuckled softly. “Boy—what?” 

Tino didn’t have any friends or coworkers named Patrick—and he sure as hell didn’t volunteer to spend time with any of his family outside of his father. 

Patrick wasn’t a person. Patrick was what a young Milagra named the birthmark erotically placed on her pelvis, that just so happened to be shaped in a deformed star. Thus, came the name Patrick Star. 

Tino grinned lazily. “You heard me.”

Before she could respond his large body was already on the move. 

She erupted in light giggles, like a schoolgirl who had never been touched before. 

His mouth was relentless. On her chest, her lips, her neck, and back to her lips again. A small whimper fled her throat, feeling him through his sweats. 

She watched him leave open-mouthed kisses onto every inch of her waist. Fingers sliding into the elastic of her shorts.

“You are fucking perfect,” he whispered. 

Lying stiff as a piece of wood now, she warped back to the week before, when he uttered the same sentiment. 

She could hardly feel his lips on her inner thighs, sucking and biting. Staring up at the ceiling she remembered everything clearer than when it happened. That same pit of yearning, deepening. He managed to pull the shorts down, exposing her wet center, but her hands came over his. 

“What’s wrong, baby?” He peaked up at her. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t—I’m sorry.” 

His hand came down next to her head on the pillow as his face twitched in confusion. His mouth opened and closed in the same second before he sighed. She saw the exact moment where he chose to give up, all his fight eating itself. 

Biting into his bottom lip until the skin turned yellow, he slid off her. The tears already welding up in her eyes watching his back until he disappeared somewhere else in the house. 

He never came back. She waited for him, in the same position he left her, and closed her eyes in the darkness, after realizing he wouldn’t. He always had a heavy walk, and she could hear him moving about in the house. 

She was punishing him still for the same crime she had committed—sure that hers was much worse. But nothing felt right with him anymore. The little light to their flame was already dying out before, and Roman’s resurrection from the dead blew it out completely.

The tears stained her pillow. She didn’t know where to go from here. 

The night and the next day flew by. For once, he was home, but he spent his time alone, in his office. She’d linger in the kitchen across the way, running through lines she could say. Watching him through the glass panels of the door, his glasses rested just above the tip of his nose, brows scrunched—like his father. All her words dried before she could build the courage to say something. 

At night she just laid in bed. Back flat on the comforter, legs crossed at the ankles.

She didn’t know how to fix this without knocking everything down first.

She heard the bedroom door creak, but she didn’t have the strength to look up. He made his presence known anyway. Sliding next to her, matching her position with a flat back to the bed. 

Milagra couldn’t stand the silence. It wasn't something she wanted to sit in when so much weighed over them. 

“Do you wanna talk about last night?” She asked. Peering over at him, when he shook his head. 

“No, we don’t have to. I do wanna talk about something else, though.”

“What?” Her heart doubled in size, pumping more blood than ever before. Every second he didn’t open his mouth, time stretched. She was already drawing up the lines to explain herself. Come clean. 

“When I told you about me and Madeline”—Milagra cringed inside at her name. Jaw clenching. 

She was more than a fuck up. Madeline pumped life into the problem they had been pretending was dead. “You didn’t react,” he finished. His voice didn’t harbor anger. She found no sadness in it either. It was the same as them. Just there. “You didn’t yell. You didn’t even cry. Not that I wanted any of those things from you. But you didn’t give me anything. I just wanted something. Something to let me know you were in this—that you cared. And, I’m not saying that’s why I did it. It had nothing to do with you. I had a moment of weakness. That shit came and went.”

She felt him move. It appeared in front of her seconds later. A small blue velvet box. Her hand shook when she took ahold of it. Holding her breath the entire way until she popped it open. 

“I’ve had it for a couple months now. Way before the Madeline bullshit.” It was beautiful. He did listen when it counted. 

She remembered their first anniversary, drawing her dream ring on a napkin at the resort’s beachfront restaurant. It was simple. A studded gold band with the center cut just enough for the diamond marquise ring to slide the through the space atop of it. 

“Last step, was for you to meet my Pops. I couldn’t do it without his approval. He said you passed with flying colors. That you reminded him of my mom,” he added. And that’s when she heard it. The crack in his voice. It forced the heavy tear to finally roll down the side of her smooth face. “I know you don’t think I pay attention—everybody thinks so—even dad. But I don’t have to have my eyes on you all the time to know that you’re unhappy.” She sniffed. Fighting to keep her composure before the cry became ugly as the truth. 

He did it this way because he already knew. If he had it his way, he would’ve bought out some rooftop. Flew her family out, so they could witness their love in real time. But he knew they were at the end of their road. This was it for them. Last night confirmed it. This house was no longer a home. It was just familiar. There was barely any love left. 

The box snapped when it shut before she handed it back to him. The last bit of hope he had withered away. She was sobbing silently now. 

It was over. 

She felt the pain and the relief of release at the same time. Like being released from prison with nothing. Not a damn thing to your name. Nothing to fight for. But at least you’re free. 

They both knew it was wrong, to turn over and hold each other as close as they did, clinging. Her fingers gripping the cotton of his shirt, tears spreading on the material. All he did was pull her in tighter. 

They slept just like that. Cradled and molded into one another. Their last night together and they spent it holding onto the last bit of love they had for one another. 

She wanted a clean slate and they composed just that—a clean break. Seamless. A war with no casualties. 

He offered for her to stay as long as she needed, but her bags were already packed and she was out the door with them by noon the next day. He wasn't even there to see her off. A sign that she was going the right way. This needed to happen. It was long overdue. 

Her new home was a hotel downtown that was convenient and close to work. Half her days were spent working, dotting over illustrations and recalculating measurements three times over—and the other half of her days she spent on Zillow looking for something that felt homely enough. And she wondered if that would ever happen. If she would ever feel that safety and comfort of home again. The chip of paint behind the headboard from it knocking against the wall too much. The faint brown spot on the living room carpet where he made her spill her coffee, demonstrating a punch from the fight that aired the night before. The smell of his Men’s Dove body wash all over the bathroom. 

She settled into a condo not too far from the hotel a month after the breakup. It wasn't quite the homely feel she had already missed, but every day that she used her key to open the door, and every small pot bought or piece of furniture she moved—it started to feel familiar. And that was the best she could hope for. 

Two months had coasted by in Milagra's new place, living her new single life, and she was starting to get comfortable in it all. Her classes were back in full swing after the winter break and she buried herself in distractions as to not have to look up and face the changes in her world. 

It was a Tuesday morning and she chose to work from home. Fresh out of a meeting she went downstairs, looking for the new edition to her collection of classic literature novels. But she found something else in the black boxed locker. 

It was another book. Or at least that’s what it felt like through the plastic carrier bag. Her name printed on the label. 

She rushed back upstairs, kicking the door closed, before tearing it open. The wrapping fell revealing her copy of Seven Days In June. She could tell by the color of the tabs. She thought of the last time she had seen this version. Her first one purchased—she never thought she’d have to live it.

Her brows pinched, opening it from the back and flipping until she landed on the title page. A languid cursive she’d recognize anywhere. 

Page 240.

It was all he wrote. 

The smallest push of wind landed on her face as she flipped the pages to get there, almost missing it completely. A single line of dialogue underlined. She never wrote in her books. She didn’t believe in it. It had to have been him. 

“I love you,” said Shane. “Dramatically, violently, and forever.”

Her eyes hadn’t even finished sifting over the text before the teardrop landed on the page. 

She could run all she wanted, but when things were meant for you, they never left you—and if they did, they came back. The thickness skin cradling around a wound once open, growing back twice as hard. 

Love. 

He loved her. 

It was happening again. The past and present blurring.

She was just like him. Holding onto her pain, because it kept them and all they had alive. 

It was time to let go. 

In her mind, she hated him. 

But the body—the body always remembers. The body will always do what’s right to heal itself. Always. 

v. roman’s estate • i took the long way.

“I’m sure he told you what happened, by now. That’s how you found my address.”

It took Milagra all day to figure out that she was going back.

Truth be told, the minute she saw his handwriting etched neatly in cursive inside that book, she felt the distance between herself and him shortening, as the hours counted themselves down. 

It was always going to happen this way. 

He nodded. 

“You asked me before, if I was happy,” she continued. “I wasn’t. And you knew that—you could see it. I thought I was doing a good job. Pretending. Coasting.” He knew the lyrics to this song all too well. He had lived them. “But that’s no way to live.”

He didn't respond. He left the floor open for her to open up and feel safe. 

“What did he say?”

“That he was lost,” he answered. “And I told him that sometimes lost is the best thing to be. Now you can go anywhere. Start over.”

“When I make big decisions like that—life changing ones—I can’t help but always wonder if I made the right decision.” She always knew in the back of her mind that she’d never get full off of him—Tino. He was just the safest option. And after falling from grace, that’s all she wanted when she found him. Safety. “How did you know—that Tino’s mother was the one?”

“When you know—you just know.” He stared. 

“Do you know…now?”

He nodded, taking in every line of her. Her skin and the glow to it. The sleekness of her hair and the way it fell over her shoulders. The depth of her cupid’s bow. Those eyes. 

“I’ve always known.”

“He’s your son,” she reminded him. The same way he had done on Thanksgiving.

“I know.” He bit down hard. “But that’s on me. If I was better—if I was honest—you two would’ve never even crossed paths.” He ran his fingers over the hair surrounding his mouth. “I never really believed in second chances. Not until I needed one.”

“Needed?”

“Like a plant needs sunlight.” He shook his head. “This is the only thing that makes sense for me. You.”

“Why couldn’t you just say all of this? That first night. Out back?” She just couldn’t wrap her mind around the deception. Him allowing her to think that none of it meant anything. That it had been so insignificant to him, it disappeared into thin air. “You acted like me being back here was the worst thing ever.”

“At the time it was,” he stressed. “That meant hurting my son. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“So, now what?” She snapped. 

“I can’t promise that things will be perfect. It’s gonna be hard—I mean really fucking hard.” 

Milagra shook her head. It was already hard. Why couldn’t things just naturally fall into place for her?

“But it won’t be like before. That, I can promise.” He took gradual steps, proceeding with caution, until he towered over where she sat on the other side of the island. This time he wouldn’t sink to the bottom. He swam to her. Bending until he was just inches from her mouth. Her eyes jumped from his mouth to his eyes. She was showered in fear. 

But it was time to let go. 

So her eyes closed and she waited until she tasted him—warm and parlous—the complete opposite of what her life had adapted without him. 

He did it again. Added three more down the side of her neck. 

He exhaled from his nose, before catching her jaw in his hand, forcing her to look at him. 

“Always knew,” he reminded her, before planting another kiss on her forehead. 

He lifted her up, wrapping her legs around his waist, all the while exiling his son from his conscience. He could have this. He deserved this. He deserved her. Fasted for over a decade for someone like her. 

Roman carried her up the length of the staircase the same way he carried her months before—like she and all that she came with didn’t weigh a thing. Eating off one another, desperate to finish what they started five years ago. The hunger and passion just as potent as before. Pungent like food that had been sitting out just waiting. 

He released her, and she fell gently on the bed. Her dyed black strands surrounding her, draping over the fur throw. She watched the entire time, as he reached behind to slide the black shirt up and off. Grabbing the hem of her tank, he cracked a smile at her before lifting it over her head. Her D cups spilling out, hitting the cool air as she giggled. 

He came back up. Fists digging into the bed on either side of her head, muscles flexed. 

This was finally happening. 

She planted two hands over the hair of his beard, bringing him down to her, tasting him again. Getting used to him again. The girth of his tongue and the rhythm of his passion. 

His hands went for the button of her jeans next. Kissing the skin above, running chills everywhere his lips brushed. He caught a glimpse of the almost star shape on her pelvis, smiling to himself before kissing it in ritual. They were barely off when he hooked his hands to the back of her knees, pressing until he could see all of her, glistened under the dim lights. One last look and one last chance to stop him, and she didn’t. So, he dove in, face first. Licking and sucking in a French kiss as if it were the lips on her face. The back of her head dug into the mattress. Writhing and moving against his mouth. Getting away was useless. His grip was too strong. It always had been. 

His hand came down somewhere between her hip and ass, eyes shut, licking around the most sensitive area. Moaning to himself, feeding his addictions. Venturing down, he kept the pressure of his thumb on her clit, but couldn’t resist burying his face deeper. She giggled, pushing at his strong shoulders. Wickedly, he smiled before rising, turning her on her stomach and pushing his sweats down and off. 

She gasped. The hardness of his tip rubbed up and down her slit, almost entering. Pushing back, she couldn’t take it. They had played enough games. Wasted enough time. Drove each other into madness. 

“Roman—please.”

So, he pushed. They were both starved. Pushed past the mental block of betrayal and her walls all at once. Entering and covering himself in a form of ecstasy he hadn’t danced with in years. 

He was in control at the start. Moving at a safe pace, making her feel every vein, every piece of skin she was missing. In and out, a hand locked on the small of her defined back, right above the meaty flesh of her ass. It was a sight to see. Stretching her out. The white cream gathered at the base. Her breath hitched and he struggled to keep himself in check. He dreamt about it. Some so real he woke up missing her wrapped around him. His hand not even cutting it close. 

She was everything he ever wanted. Starving for knowledge. Passionate. Ambitious. Leaning into her feelings. Strong. A woman. 

A woman that made him lose control. 

His demeanor shifted. Something teetering the line of anger or frustration, guiding the motions of his hips. Driving into her. Deeper. Faster. Rougher. Her breaths turned to whimpers. Whimpers turned to moans. Moans transformed into screams. She couldn’t recognize her own voice. 

His strokes accelerated. From precise to choppy and needy. He couldn’t focus on anything else. 

Milagra clawed at the covers, taking it. She would take anything from him. This older man held the key to all of her locked doors. 

His hand slithered between her and the bed to find her clit. Rubbing tight circles over the slippery flesh. His strong leg, knee pushing hers up, as he laid all of his weight on hers. He pushed and pushed. The muscles of his ass flexing every time he drove in deeper. Their skin slick. Mingling together in a groove—grinding as one. Their labored breaths filled the room. She pushed back when he did, ensuring they were never apart. 

“I want all of it.” He pushed further and further until there was nowhere left to go. “I want all of you,” his gravelly voice whispered on the side of her face. “Forever.”

She gasped, when she felt it kick inside her. The first spurts of his release didn’t make it to where he intended, before he pulled out and left the rest of it on her ass. 

Two sets of knuckles pressed deep into the mattress as he hovered overtop her still, catching his breath, coming back to reality. 

Gripping the bone of her hips he pushed her over to the other side. Clearing her face of all her hair before licking into her mouth with a new sense of yearning. 

He reared back on his knees and she rose to hers. He was hard as a rock still. Heavy with a string of clear liquid still leaking from him. 

She never wanted to taste something so bad in her life. 

“You don’t have to do that,” he told her in the midst of getting pushed on his back.

“I want to,” she said. Eyes smoldering. She would’ve done anything in that moment. 

She took ahold of him in her hands that seemed to shrink in size compared to him. Moving the skin along she licked her lips, admiring at first. Kissing the tip like a gift she had been dying to unwrap, before taking it all the way down, gagging herself on purpose. The strings of spit following her release of it, evidence to her purposeful suffering. 

His stomach hallowed. This wasn’t his usual thing. They all struggled too much or their desire to look pretty while doing so always ruined it. But she always looked pretty to him. 

“Such a pretty girl.” He couldn’t help but tell her so. Sliding his hand down the hill of her arch before stroking her hair. “So fucking pretty for me.”

He gripped the base, sliding the swollen tip back and forth over her dripping tongue. 

“Suck it.” He guided it inside as she closed in on him. Cheeks hallowing in. “Fuck. God, I missed that mouth.” She released it with a slight pop before spitting on it. Taking the tip back in and repeating her actions two more times before he lost control. Gripping a handful of hair, his hips pushed off the bed, hitting dead center in the back of her throat. She struggled to breathe, mouth full, running her nails over the skin of his chest where his peck flexed under the ink of his tattoo. He slowed down. Wanting to feel everything. The warmth of her mouth, every piece of wet flesh. His dick hardened to a painful degree, begging to release again. “Come on.” 

She climbed overtop of him and he immediately strived for connection again. Holding it for her to ease down on. She moved against his hard body, not wasting a second to show her appreciation. Grinding back and forth with a hand to his knee, her swelling clit kissing the hairs on his pelvis. Clinging onto her hips, he watched, mesmerized. Infatuated. 

The swinging of her breast. The muscles in her core. The small whimpers breaking from her swollen lips. Thick hair falling over her face. The skin of her neck, shining with sweat every time she dropped her head back. The tan lines decorating her. 

He gripped her breasts in his hands, sliding his fingers over the hard tips of her nipples. 

“So fucking sexy.” His thoughts came to life. He loved everything about her. “Give it to me. Urghnn,” he growled at the tightening of her pussy around him. 

To gain some control he dug the heels of his feet into bed, huge thighs striking up into her. 

“Oh my—f-fu-f-fuck! Roman,” she cried. Clawing at the meat of his muscles. 

“I know, baby. I know.”

His lips snarled over his teeth at the sight of her breast bouncing. Hands struggling to hold onto him.

Their eyes found each other. The heat in his chest spread, smoldering to a new fuel. A need for closeness. He rose up, pressing his chest to hers. 

“Wrapped around me so tight,” he sighed of relief. “Almost like you need me.” 

Burying his face into the flesh of her chest, he inhaled. Strong but feminine. The compliments replayed in her mind. His tongue snaked out to lick the top of where her chest rounded. He always paid attention to the parts that everyone else ignored. 

His hands were greedy. Gripping and feeling every inch of her skin, traveling the map of her body with no destination, until he settled on wrapping his strong arms around her waist. Holding her, letting her their bodies mold and stick to one another. 

God, she missed this. She had sex before, but with him, it was always different. Different in a way that she ached for connection and wanting to come out of her own body. It was usually just about pleasure. Feeling good and hitting the goal post. This was different. She just wanted to be as close as close could be. She wanted him to feel what he’d done to her inside. When words weren’t enough, this is what it should be like. This is what the creator intended. The thing that separates us from animals. 

She rocked with him, never wanting it to end. She could do this very thing forever. Melting into his strong hold. His arms a barricade. She had never felt so safe. 

Somewhere in the euphoria they had stopped moving completely. Her fingers tangled in his beard and hair. Noses gliding alongside each other as they chased the high of kissing. Something so simple. A lost art, they perfected. Leaning into each other’s movements. Making up for where the other lacked. 

His tongue flexed in a way that reminded her of how he ate at her just minutes before. Moving to her neck, pushed her head over, he found that spot where the beauty mark lived. 

They just fit. 

She started moving again. Riding with her clit brushing against him. 

“You feel so fucking good to me,” he declared into the skin stretched across her throat. More fuel. She sped up. He switched his position, feeling her squeeze the life out of him. She was close. That fast. That’s how it happens when a different organ—the heart is leading. 

Up on his knees, he held her in place. Balls slapping against her ass with every thrust. He already knew the map of her body. No one, not even she, had to coach him. 

Up and down he moved her. It crept up on her like a snake slithering over a rock. Unexpected regardless of her search for it. Just like him. It started at the center where they met and exploded through every part of her like a cancer. Weakened her and gave her the strength of a hundred men. She fell back from his hold, until her head hit the comforter. Still, with a grip on her hips, he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. He’d give whatever she needed, make the ride smooth as he could. 

She rode out the waves of pleasure, body twitching, until she couldn’t feel anything else. He forced himself to retreat again, within seconds. Exploding on the softness of her tummy. 

It was over. They made it to the other side. 

“Holy shit.” He huffed. Finally resting. It was like coming down from a high. 

She covered her face to hide the stretch of her smile. He invoked a girl-like giddiness in her. 

She was okay. For the first time in a long time—she was okay. Not just there. She had ascended. 

The war was over. 

"I love you too," she finally confessed.

Milagra’s eyes fluttered open. Focusing in the dark, before landing on his face.

It was for real. She hadn’t dreamt it. 

Minutes passed as they laid there, staring, marinating in the inevitable. His hand cruised up the muscle of her back. Kneading and massaging. 

“I missed you so much—I don’t think I know how to put it in words,” said Milagra. 

“You don’t have to…I can feel it. I felt it in the foyer on Thanksgiving. Every day after,” he revealed. “Sometimes words don’t mean as much as we think. They fall short.”

“Dramatically, huh?” Milagra questioned. 

He pushed out a laugh. “Violently too, apparently. That was a hard ass slap, woman.”

As their laugh fizzled out, something else blew in. Something more serious. Reality. The burden of remembering. He could see it all in her face. 

“I know you don’t trust me. Not with that.” His finger landed on the space to the left of her sternum. The space occupied with bone that protected her heart. An extra layer of hurt over it that he was the composer of. “I don’t blame you. I know what I’ve done. I had five years to think about it—all the ways to make up for it. I was lost, Mila. Hurt was where I was most comfortable. I know you know that feeling.” Her eyes fell heavy with tears at the rims. “I had to do the work. I had to heal. Forgive myself. I fought—I pushed through and now I’m here.”

She infiltrated his mind and got stuck there. Her ghost walked around this house like his deceased wife’s did. He was tired of living with them. The ghosts.

“What the fuck took you so long?”

She could see the road again. Their entire existence as far as they could go. Something she just couldn’t do with his son. It was dangerous. Hard, as he said. Pothole and reroutes—but the path was there nonetheless. 

This was the feeling she killed before. Ready to lay the headstone of their short-lived affair, at the end of her road, ready to turn back—here he was. The whole time. Closer than she could’ve ever imagined. Making plans to forge his way back to her. Asking God to send him signs so he didn't get it wrong this time. 

Five years ago he could’ve kept it going. Ignored that cloudiness in his chest every time he woke up and couldn’t decide if it was Milagra’s or his late wife’s face he dreamed of. He could’ve answered her text and made plans to see her again. They could’ve fell into something. Roman would’ve told himself the lie that he was over his wife—over how abruptly she was snatched from him. A bed time story giving him just enough courage to fight off the monsters for one more night. 

It would’ve been faster. Easier. 

But that would’ve only lasted so long. He had to make a decision. 

Grief is selfish. Paired with trauma, she’s envious. She would’ve tore right through them. 

“I took the long way.”