#weak spot

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 be 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 blue 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 so she could get to the good part and finally meet him. 

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—or at least that’s how he presented himself. 

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 could tell. 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. Nice to the eyes, but Milagra would’ve modeled it just a little different based on the aesthetic of the rest of the house from the pictures she saw. 

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 she was just guessing at. 

What was her brain searching for among all the obscurity?

It was banal to imagine things you hadn’t yet encountered—but for her mind to keep going back to him, like the most catchy part of a song—it was tortuous. 

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—eighty’s R&B because he knew it to 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 and 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. 

No amount of pictures, from Tino’s home office or the internet, could’ve prepared her for him. He was so big. Taller than she imagined, 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 the new 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, admiring the handiwork of whomever designed this place, as she ventured further inside.

“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.”

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. 

“I didn't know what your diet was like,” he explained from behind her. “And this one here is not good with details. So I just made a whole bunch of stuff. Do you eat meat?”

She was grateful she did, otherwise she would’ve just had to imagine what the glazed salmon tasted like on her tongue—or how tender the lamb was. 

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. Milagra 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.”

“Do you speak it at all?” 

He switched his gaze between both of her eyes. Under the light they were a solid amber. Something he noticed 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 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.”

“Wait a minute—you watch football?” Roman’s brows nearly connected in the center. 

“I grew up in a football family. My father played, and both of my brothers did. Didn't really have a choice but to learn the game.”

“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. 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. 

“Everything okay with you two?”

His tone held no infliction, but it didn’t need it. The question itself is what threw her off balance. 

“Why would everything not be okay?” She pressed. Pushing a smile through to make sure her face didn't match the tension in her tone. “Has he said something?”

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.”

She finished the rest of her water off, grateful she hadn’t taken her eyes off of his, otherwise she would've missed the lick of his lip after he made a trail of her neck as she swallowed. 

“Everything is all good from this side.” The glass clinked on the table between them. “Unless, you know something I don’t.”

Folding his lips in, his chest rose and fell with a barely audible deep breath. She had never wanted to get inside someone’s head more than she did in this moment, at his table, under the heat of all the candles lined over the cloth of it. 

His eyes said a lot, but she didn't receive any of it. It was like listening in on a conversation of a dead language she never bothered to learn. Pointless. She could hear the foreign words—see the truth dancing behind his eyes—but she didn't know what any of it meant, because she didn't know him. 

“Let me refill that for you,” he offered, rising up and taking her empty glass to retrieve another bottle from behind her. Leaving her, her confusion, and all that he chose not to say at the table. 

“I got bad news.” Tino appeared, 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 in the middle of unscrewing the cork. 

“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 in the ER.” 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?”

Did she have a choice?

“Of course she is,” Roman answered for her. “We’re just gonna finish this off and watch old videos of you getting potty trained.”

All three of them wore smiles, two of theirs only half genuine. She wouldn’t pick a fight in front of his father. There was no fight left in her. It was what it was. 

“I’m okay,” she assured him. “Go make somebody else’s Thanksgiving.”

ii.    roman’s estate • i forgot what color yearning was. 

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. Once she made it into the vast hall, she realized just how eerie this situation was. She tried to take in account the tour he gave her before they split ways, before ending up in two different rooms she hadn’t seen prior. She recognized the family portrait in the hall that led to the kitchen. 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. 

But every time she saw a picture of this woman—and it wasn't often—she found less and less 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 Tino. 

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 took another step his eyes ventured up and a light-hearted smile tugged at his lips. She returned it, stepping forward, and messing with the end of Tino’s shirt she wore over the same sweatpants she gave him on the plane ride.  

“Down here to keep me company?” 

“I was um” —she twisted her body slightly back to the kitchen—“I couldn’t sleep. And I got thirsty.”

“There’s cups in the cabinet over the stove,” he directed. “Here, let me get it.” 

His slippers scraped across the floor as he made his way into the kitchen, grabbing a mug for her without even so much as stretching his arm fully. 

She looked around the aggressively Tuscan style kitchen, looking  straight out of a reality TV show of some rich family in New Jersey who probably owned a chain of pizza stores up the coast. The shiny surfaces of marble counter tops and dark wood furniture with low hanging chandelier lights. 

“Thanks.” She accepted it, after watching him fill it with the water from the fridge. 

“You good?” She nodded in the middle of sipping. Knowing she should hurry up and go back to bed, but she wanted to stay. 

“Can’t sleep?” She asked with her own eyes burning from the failure of rest. 

The muscles in his long arms flexed when he placed flat palms on the island. “Something you said earlier—when you were talking about Dak—it made me think about how good he is with his mid-range accuracy. I just been up looking at some of his highlights from last game to show my quarterback. I’ve been trying to get him to limit his risky throws.”

“Oh, he’s one of those quarterbacks.” Milagra laughed at his eyes rolling up. 

“The quarterback is one of the most important players, but he’s going through this stage where he thinks he’s the most important player. Smelling himself and making careless mistakes.” She nodded. “That’s one position I do not envy. I’d rather help the guy than be the guy.”

“Defensive tackle, right?” She recalled his position from college.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

She spoke without thinking. “You still have your highlights up on Instagram—”

Fuck, she screamed internally. 

He squinted playfully. “Were you cyberstalking me?”

“It was for research purposes,” she bit into her bottom lip. 

At least it started off that way. One too many pictures of him with his shirt off and she was storing each one in her mind to pull out later, for the nights Tino wasn’t home, and she needed some extra imagination. 

“Oh, okay. I see,” he laughed. 

Her mouth stretched in a yawn that taunted her, knowing if she tried she would fail at sleeping. 

He pulled at a drawer and pulled out something that shone briefly under the little light near the sink, before he handed it her way. 

It was a Twix bar. 

But only someone that knew her would know that she liked them, and specifically always indulged this late at night when she shouldn’t. 

“Hey.” Her lightbulb went off, eyes burning, as she fought to keep them open, if only just to stare at him. “You were cyberstalking me, too.”

“Research purposes,” he explained with that smile again. He looked so much better with it. She wished he did it all the time. “I had to know who my son was dating. He talked so much about you, but it was like pulling teeth to get him to bring you here. He slipped up one day over the phone and said your whole name. Milagra instead of Mila.” 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 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. “Your Facebook was outdated.” He waved. “Your Instagram, though? Told me everything I needed to know.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s everything?” She pressed tearing the gold rapper. 

“You just turned thirty last month. Born in Connecticut, but you moved to Houston for high school. FAMU for undergrad. Gym rat. You can play the piano. You really, really like Turks and Caicos—eighty’s R&B—and your guilty pleasure is warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream. No one makes it like your grandma—so you say. And your favorite late night snack—a Twix bar.” 

Her lips turned down as she nodded, impressed. “All that from a damn Instagram page. I gotta work on my mystique.” She snapped one piece, holding it out and he took it. 

“The internet is a scary place.” He stared at her for a minute and she stared back. She could tell he had more to say. “You know what I didn’t see much of?”

“What?”

“My son.”

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. It seems 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.”

“Never said you didn’t. Pictures on social media aren’t the currency of love.”

She didn’t want to talk too much. Relationships were supposed to be sacred. All that keeping certain stuff between you and your partner stuff. But it was obvious that Roman knew things. His cards weren’t even close to his chest, he was hiding them at this point. 

“Why did you ask me that earlier—if he and I were okay?” He did that thing with his lips again. The same one Tino did when he was about to lie. “Please don’t lie.”

He laughed. It should’ve angered her, but it sent a chill down her spine instead. The low rumble of it.

“He told me you two were supposed to come by a couple months back—for his birthday—and then he canceled last minute. Might’ve mentioned something about you two going through a rough patch.”

She couldn’t tell if he was being vague because he lacked all the specifics, or if he didn’t want her to feel embarrassed at the fact that another woman had inserted herself into a dynamic meant for two. 

Either way, that was not a conversation you had with your somewhat father-in-law.

“We have our differences,” she confessed. “Every couple does. Some days we’re bread and butter. Others we’re oil and water. I appreciate that we don’t always see eye to eye. It keeps things interesting. Like the whole going back to school thing and getting my masters in communications.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” His tone suggested that he might’ve already heard Tino’s side of things. 

“Tino thinks it's…chaotic. Unstable.” She lifted one side of her mouth to soften the blow. “Can’t please everybody. I have trouble pleasing 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. 

She covered her mouth, yawning again. Hopping down on tired legs she walked toward the sink to wash the mug out, but he grabbed it. Their fingers touching for just a second, but it burned with something. 

“I got that. Go ‘head. Go to bed.”

She turned the same way she came from, trying not to still feel his fingers on hers. “Roman,” she called back. He raised his eyebrows looking back at her. “Thank you.” Knowing exactly what she meant, he just offered a soft smile that revealed the lines on the rim of his cheeks with a slight nod. 

“We should do this again some time.”

In that kitchen, the previously uncharted pair had tended to whatever they gave birth to from the hug in the foyer. Their own little thing, outside of Tino. 

It’s what was expected of her or any other daughter-in-law to be, right? Isn’t that the whole reason Tino finally brought her all the way here? To bond?

These were all the ice packs she used to soothe the heat bubbling within her core. 

Milgara didn’t believe in coincidences—things happening just to happen. So far, every instance, every interaction, every decision in her life had meant something. Small strokes of a higher being’s paint brush, that made a bigger picture. Even had she not took on those beliefs, the things that transpired between herself and her boyfriend’s dad that weekend, were too potent, too in her face, to just be meaningless. 

And the more she found herself rejecting it—the bigger it swelled. Until she had no choice but to look. 

Them running into each other the next morning… 

She was in the middle of zipping up her hoodie, when the door to a room she remembered him saying led 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. 

“I would join you, but I just got my cardio in,” he smiled wryly. Milagra swallowed nothing and everything at the same time, thinking of all the ways she could’ve helped him achieve his goal. He didn’t make a move, yet. Almost like he was waiting for an invitation, anyway. “You can use the treadmill down there if you want. I think we’re supposed to get some rain soon.”

“No—it’s fine. I thinks it’s better for me to get some fresh air right now,” she admitted. Roman’s sweats hung looser now, 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. 

Milagra didn’t even think he was doing it on purpose. Any of it. That’s what made it all the more enticing. The innocent nature of it all. Him not knowing that her wet hole was clenching on nothing, while imagining sliding down and filling herself with the natural bulge in his sweats. 

“Right,” he agreed as if he could read the filthy thoughts invading her mind. 

How the hell could a man his age still manage to upkeep his body like that? She fished through all the words of the three different languages she knew, and still couldn’t find any. So she turned on her heels, until his deep and exasperated voice pulled her back like a puppet on a string. 

“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.”

Milagra found herself at the silver refrigerator, refilling a bottle that was already full, as to not have to look at him. His peck had flexed and so did her clit at the sight, so she fled for safety, deeper into the kitchen, behind the island, just a few steps away.

But safety was a dying concept now. This was his yard, and she was losing reasons to defend herself. It wasn’t long before his heavy steps were coming in behind her. 

“Something I meant to ask you last night—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?” He leaned on the counter, folding his arms across his chest.

She shrugged. “Pretty much. If that’s who even really called—” She snapped her own mouth shut, eyes tight, once she realized what she had done. Turning in place she finished screwing the top back on her bottle while shaking her head. “I didn’t mean that.” 

“Yeah, you did.” His mouth tilted in a smirk that was less mischievous and more comforting. “You just didn't mean for me to hear it.”

Milagra had said too much and her stomach jumped with embarrassment.

“I’ll be back. Should I leave the door unlocked?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

She couldn’t have gotten out of there fast enough. 

What the fuck was she thinking?

She 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. 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, until she remembered which way the kitchen was. She found it and him, 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. 

A few things laid out on the counter being him. A carton of eggs, challah bread, heavy cream, coffee creamer, thick-cut bacon, and seasoning, amongst other things. She wasn’t in the kitchen enough to make sense of all he was making. And before she could do a one-eighty, his eyes found hers. 

He turned the volume down before rising to full height. 

“You cook?”

“Barely. Just the basic stuff. We’re pretty boring at home. Tino likes it simple. Eggs, avocado toast and sausage works for him.”

“Come.”

So, then came Milagra’s personal favorite—the cooking lesson…

Everything he had assembled turned out to be the ingredients for French toast, beef bacon, and something she never had—quiche. 

Elbows on the counter she observed more than the food. Stealing glances at his full biceps as he added all the makings for the French toast first. He made the same expressions his son did when he was focused on a task. Top plump lip slightly curved. 

“Coffee creamer?” She asked.

He talked and poured at the same time. “The vanilla—it’s what gives it that sweet flavor,” he explained. 

She shut her mouth. He was the expert. 

“Gotta hurry up before Mr. No Sugar For Breakfast gets back.”

She chucked softly watching him dip the thick cuts of bread into the liquid mixture and into the pan, while simultaneously tending to the bacon in a separate one. The strong aroma of the brown sugar he added to it, making her realize just how hungry she was. 

Milagra hopped in his place, watching over and switching out the bacon and French toast while he prepared the quiche.

There was something oddly intimate about cooking with someone. Preparing things with care and precision to feed someone. 

They collaborated on the rest of breakfast with ease. While waiting for the quiche to bake, he had her helping with lunch. An old dish, crab rangoon, he hadn’t made in while, but he figured it was safe enough for her to grasp the concept of. 

The filling he did on his own, talking her through his regimen and letting her taste after.

“You wanna try?” He offered, after folding the first couple of wontons himself. 

She hesitated, but eventually slid in the spot in front of him as he kept a safe distance behind her.

“You only need a tiny bit, maybe half a spoon at the center,” he instructed watching her scoop some out of the bowl to place in the center of the wrapper. “Then you wanna wet get it wet—the edges.” She pressed her lips together not wanting to laugh at his choice of words. He had angled his head down to get a look in her face, worried when she wasn't talking. “Oh, stop it.” He waved her goofiness off. 

“So many other ways you could’ve said that.”

He shook his head and she listened nonetheless, wetting the corners. 

“Bring the corners together to meet at the top.” He leaned further, making sure she was doing it right. “Now pinch the edges, so nothing leaks out when it fries.” His long arms came around her body. “Like this.” He did it himself as she watched. His stoic and focused face, dangerously close to the side of hers. She could see every grey hair. Even the ones poking form where his hair faded on the side of his temple. 

He caught her staring, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away or pretend she hadn’t been looking at all. His eyes softened at the corners. 

But that’s when she felt it. Something pressing against her lower back. The moment she felt the urge to back up more, to feel it more, she snatched away completely. 

“I think I should go shower. I’m starting to smell myself,” she lied. 

“You sure it’s not the crab?”

“I’m sure,” she lied.

He didn’t push further. He just nodded in a way that she couldn’t tell if he knew she was full of shit or not. But she didn’t even let the awkwardness of the situation settle into their skin before she turned and made her way to Tino’s bedroom. 

The shower she made cold on purpose. 

Then, of course there was the fishing incident….

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 back seat of his truck, listening to the mindless chatter of men and trying not to get butterflies whenever their eyes snagged in the rearview mirror. 

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, while Tino moved everything they brought with them on it. She pulled her Chanel shades atop of her head to keep the hairs blowing from sticking to her lip gloss. 

Roman rose and their gazes found one another again. He offered that wry smirk, tilting one side of his mouth and she returned a tightlipped smile, pretending none of it meant anything. 

There was this glitchy silence between them now, as if saying anything, even conventional, around Tino was wrong. 

They got settled after Roman drove further out. She stayed under the shade while they hung off the back piece with their hooks. From where she sat with her hardcover of R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis wedged in her hands, she could see the sides and backs of them. She could stare without consequence. His tongue darting out to lick his full bottom lip. The excitement of watching but not seeing his eyes behind the dark shades he wore, not knowing if every time he turned his head slightly to the right, if he too was catching glimpses of her. The veins in his hands when adjusting the rod. And then in an act of terrorism, she’s sure, he relieved one arm from the confines of his black tee and let it rest on his shoulder, exposing the ripples in his stomach and his defined chest. 

She had to take a deep breath. Rereading the same page she had been on for the duration of the ride.

“Mila,” Roman called out sternly. “Why don’t you come give this a try.”

It’s like he couldn’t stand the thought of her being left out. 

Placing the bookmark inside, she sat it down and padded barefoot out to them, using the metal bar to not slip and fall. 

“Here.” He handed the long rod to her and took ahold of it like a baby discovering a new toy. He adjusted her hands and got behind her. Not again, she thought. But nothing could happen this time with Tino sitting just a few feet away—right?

This might’ve been worse. His voice directly on her ear, his big hands wrapped around hers firmly to wind the hook up, and his chest flexing with every move on her back. 

He let go, allowing her to do it on her own, but his hand rested on her bare thigh and she stopped breathing completely, not wanting to react and alarm Tino. It wasn’t even scandalous in nature. A thoughtless kind of intimacy reserved for people you considered enough. Like handing off the hand sanitizer at the table of a restaurant. So, she settled into, hoping he never took it off. 

And then the tattoo…

She couldn’t even remember who brought it up. It was probably Tino. He had been talking about getting something added to his sleeve back home, so she’s sure that’s what jumpstarted the whole ordeal surrounding tattoos. 

Then Roman chimed in. Telling them he was done with the ink, that he’s had enough. And just as Milagra went back in time to just a couple hours before when she watched the patterns on his chest jump, he looked to her, asking if she had any. 

She suddenly felt naked when his eyes traveled the length of her arms looking for clues, until they settled on her inner right wrist. 

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. 

It happened so fast—too fast in Milagra’s mind because she was too consumed with trying to register the feeling of his skin on hers again. His fingers—warm and dominating—took ahold of her wrist. He bent down to a point where she was face to face with the thick hairs sprouting from his scalp, inhaling the strong scent of conditioner he put in it. 

Her mouth went dry preventing her from speaking. Even as he smirked to himself and said, “strong, but feminine”—again, with that intentional compliment. 

And then he did the most dangerous thing ever. His large thumb swiped over the skin, soft, with care. 

For the rest of the fishing trip, she found herself rubbing the same spot, trying to remember exactly how his fingers felt. 

They had dinner together again that night. Not like the night before. This was 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 she sat, plate in her hands, careful to not spill anything on the cream material, with Tino between her legs on the floor. 

“I can’t believe this is the new age dating,” Tino said. “There’s no way in hell I’ma go as far as to tell someone I love them without even seeing their face.”

Love Is Blind played in front of them on the set of four plasmas Roman had hanging, arranged to look like one continuous screen. 

Milagra shook her head laughing softly. “Yeah, unfortunately looks do matter,” she added. “I don’t know though. I feel like for women this is the safer route. Making a man get to know you—love you before he’s even touched you.” She couldn’t see, but he made a face at his dad causing Roman to laugh. “What?” She chuckled, lowering her head to see him better. 

“If you say so.”

“Dating is hard for women,” she argued. “Y’all rarely ever have the right intentions.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” He stopped her. “You could’ve gotten that off maybe five years ago. It’s hard for everybody now. Social media fried everybody’s brain. Too much expectation. Too much comparison. Dating always seemed like work. Like I was the hiring manager at HR or some shit. Not with this one, though.” He looked up at her, head rested on the inside of her thigh. “Nah, you were the one doing the interviewing.”

She dug two fingers into his clavicle making him squirm. 

“What about you, Dad?” The word tasted kind of bitter on her tongue. “You’re not dating?” Milagra feigned a smile, in case she was poking a sore spot. It had been over a decade since Tino’s mother passed. Grief had no expiration date, but Milagra just hoped, he had gotten past it far enough to know there was something else out there for him. That love didn't die with her. 

His mouth turned upside down but his eyes smiled when he shook his head. 

“Oh, please,” Tino spoke through a grin. “Don’t get all shy now. There was women calling this house nonstop the last time I came up.”

Milagra swallowed the taste of something bitter like jealousy, not liking how hard it was to push down.

His broad shoulder went up for a second. “They call. That doesn’t mean I answer. Mostly the players’ moms or older sisters, but I don’t mix business with pleasure,” he explained. 

“I keep telling him he needs to get back out there. Can’t spend every holiday and birthday with me, man. I think it’s time you get back in the field.” 

Roman’s eyes—they were like vortexes. They sucked Milagra in and she got lost for every single time, forgetting about the world that actually existed in front of her. Every time he looked at her she felt that spotlight. Being seen—she wasn't used to it. 

Before she knew it his mouth moved again. “Only for the right one.”

With the look in his eyes, it always looked like he was trying to tell her something else, other than what his mouth was conveying. An inside notion only they understood. 

Or maybe she just wished that they had that piece of something meant only for them. Was she making it all up? Did she long for connection that much that she was imagining every crumb as a grand gesture?

“Gotta let the light back in before it gets too dark,” she added. 

He bit into the pink flesh of his bottom lip, letting her words and the meaning behind them run its course, before telling her, “I like that.”

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 base. 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, and she contemplated pretending to be sleep. She 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. 

And he did—he went straight to sleep. Hefty breathes from his nose hitting the top of her head. 

She couldn’t sleep. Even with the comfort of him actually being in bed that night. Carefully, she lifted his heavy arm from around her, grateful that he was such a deep sleeper. 

She hadn't even thought deeply about why she had gotten up or what she’d do once she made it out of the room, but her subconscious did—brought her feet through the same route they had traveled just the night before. Once she reached the portrait in the hall, she saw that reflective, blue shadowy light that only a TV in the dark could cast. The closer her steps got she heard the voices to match. 

He was there again. This time his back was to her and she didn’t know what made him turn around, but he did. 

“Can’t sleep again?”

She shook her head. “I’m starting to think you’ve got insomnia, too.”

His eyes lingered over her for a few seconds more with a look she couldn’t read. It made her self-conscience of what she was wearing and wished she stopped to put on her robe. She had on Tino’s t-shirt again, but it pirated the shorts she had on, making it look as if she had nothing on underneath. The sensitive skin of her nipples brushed against the fabric of the tee and she was too scared to look down and see if they were visible. 

“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. 

Milagra made her way over, using his oblivion as an opportunity to smooth over her nipples, hoping they would go down, before peering over him at a safe distance behind the couch. “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.”

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 wore—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.

“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. He 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. He was just a stranger a little over twenty-four hours ago, and now she felt like she had the golden ticket to his most vulnerable self. 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. Or a a cousin you only see during holidays, but it feels like you might’ve grown up in the same house together every time you get in each other’s orbit. “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 as second, wondering what she’d think of her. She glanced over at the TVs, noticing he was watching a home movie. Tino in a yard she didn’t recognize, kicking a soccer ball around. He waited until her eyes peered back up to his to say the next part. “Strong, but feminine.”

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. “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—bur 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, she noticed. 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. 

“Are you happy?” He finally asked the question he had been meaning to since their first conversation. 

Her face dropped—grew even flatter with every thought. 

Was she?

For the past year, it felt like all the things around her were stuck in place. Nothing unordinary. Nothing to double back at.

And then Tino went and did whatever he did with his coworker and she regretted all the times she longed for excitement—for something—anything—to just happen. 

You have to be careful what you wish for. 

She couldn’t bear the uncertainty that would attach itself to a simple yes if she spoke aloud, so she just nodded instead. He looked her face over, waiting for her to explain, as if it was impossible for her to just be that—happy. 

“Happiness and familiarity are twins. Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart.”

His words weren’t hard to understand, but her heart beat aggressively against her ribcage trying to decode why he would tell her such a thing. Did he not want her with his son? Did he not want them to be happy? Or at least appear that way?

A part of her fell wroth at how clearly he could understand their situation. She thought she was doing a good job—hiding. Pretending.

“I think we should just finish looking at the pictures,” she told him and they both knew it was a lie. Neither had the heart in that moment to recognize it as such. 

That thing from the foyer, the kitchen—she was trying to suffocate it, but it had grown rapid like unkempt weeds. 

Milagra eventually dosed off. The heaviness of her head gradually falling until it landed on the oddly comfortable muscle of his shoulder. Roman sighed of relief the moment her head finally molded into him. He didn’t move her. He didn’t mind the extra weight. The warmth of another person—her. It felt good to be needed for something—for someone to lean on him. Serving a purpose—even if it was as small as a pillow. 

For so long, he had just been existing, alone. He forgot what this felt like. 

The intimacy of someone feeling safe enough—calm enough in his presence to sleep.  

Shadows from the Peace Lily pots on the veranda danced along the drapes when Miagra opened her eyes the next morning. She ended up in Tino’s old bedroom, not remembering how she got there. The water from the shower was hitting the floor with vigor and that’s when she lifted, spotting his shoes by the ottoman. 

Tino. 

She stilled for a moment, last night a dreamy haze, as if she had been drinking or if she imagined it. 

With a heavy heart and pulsing mind, she forced herself out of bed. Brushed her teeth while his tall, shadowy figure moving behind the glass. She studied herself finding it hard not to compare, yet again, to the woman in the home videos with her current boyfriend and his father. 

She wondered if that’s what they both saw. The same elongated nose and soft features. Clinging onto any part of her, so much that that they forget she wasn't her. 

Hearing the water stop, she made her way back into the room to make the bed. The pungent aroma of that brown sugar bacon had crept its way through the cracks of the door. 

“Let’s just stay an extra day.” Milagra’s heartbeat stalled. She was grateful he was still in the conjoined bathroom, otherwise he would’ve seen the exact moment she stopped making the bed, freezing in place,  and made something out of something. “Make up for all these fucking calls I keep getting.” His voice grew closer. A towel wrapped loosely around his waist like it begged to be set free. He had a decent build—one you would expect from a six foot surgeon who strained his muscles in the gym at least three times a week. The thick curls he inherited from his mother were tapered down the sides and weighed down by the water he just left. Only his right arm and right calf covered in the intricate patterns of his culture. “Feels like I’ve been there, more than here.”

“Isn’t that how it always is?” Milagra muttered, but he heard her clear as day. 

As she rounded the end of the bed to get his side, he stopped her with a hand wrapped around her bicep. “Mila.” He used those eyes. The same ones that always made it seem like he needed her or his entire world would fall apart. Now, she regretted letting her smart remark slip through. She kept doing that. Saying things meant to live and then die in her mind. This wasn't like her. 

“You act like that’s such a shock. I said this would happen back home. They call and you go. It’s always been like this.” His brows wrinkled at the fierceness in her voice. Hand slipping down to her waist.

“Baby, it’s not like I’m leaving to go sit around, twiddling my thumbs.”

She softened her voice. “That doesn’t make it any better—that doesn’t make it feel any better. You barely see your dad as is. It’s that time of year where family means more than anything else and you’re like a ghost. Here one minute and gone the next.” She could see him retreating. His grip on her slipping and his eyes going distant. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. It’s just something to think about.”

They were in a stance, where their bodies were just an inch apart, as she talked directly under his gaze. 

“You’re right,” he yielded. “I’m sorry.”

She pressed her lips together. She didn’t need him to be sorry. Just better. More aware. 

Realizing he was still stuck on her, she felt his stare heat up, morphing into something harder and desperate. He leaned in, his soft lips, and the hairs above them, fell on hers, and he released a breath like he had been waiting to do that for months. 

When he repeated his actions, she found herself as desperate as him. Easing her tongue into his mouth, tangling in a heated battle. Her grip on his forearm tightened and he used his other hand to hold the back of her neck before sucking the skin right under her jaw. 

The hardest part of his desire now pressing into the fabric of the weak towel and into her stomach. She breathed from her parted mouth, eyes fluttering once he found that spot that sent a direct signal to her core. 

His palms crept under the band of her shorts, squeezing and kneading the flesh of her ass. Struggling to open her eyes again, she fled from the prison of pleasure for just a second, turning her mind back on. 

She missed him and she craved sex. He hadn’t touched her since the news of his betrayal and he was in desperate need of the opportunity to extend his apology, all the while seeking comfort and the security that she wouldn’t slip from his grasp despite everything. And with all the tension from deprivation of him, and the storm brewing between herself and his father—she was more than ready to give him that opportunity. 

But she just had to know one thing first. 

“Were you really getting called into the hospital?” And just like that she threw a blanket over their fire and put it out. 

He stopped mid suck of her neck, plump lips dragging off her skin now, pulling back until he could see her face again. 

“What?”

She didn’t repeat herself.  

Face contorted in confusion or pain now, he bent his knees to plop down on the edge of the bed. She stood in front of him, unwavering, and trying to ignore the slip of his hard dick through the towel. 

“I can’t believe you would even ask me some shit like that. You said you trusted me.”

“I trust that you would tell the truth, not that you wouldn’t do it again.”

He scoffed. “What the fuck is that even supposed to mean? I told you everything because I knew it was a mistake. Meaning I wouldn’t do the shit again.” His voice was solid now. 

“I didn’t know you had it in you the first time, but you expect me to not be on edge, after the fact?” Her brows rose. 

Back snd forth, they sparred, voices matching the last notch of the other, until they forgot where they were. 

“You don’t trust me,” he said, as if he was realizing it in that moment for the first time. “The fuck are we even doing, then?” Not having the answer, she just shook her head. “If I wanted to be over there, that’s where I’d be. I’m busting my ass—running back and forth on the highway—just to make it back to you.” He stretched back, grabbing his phone from its place near the pillows. “You wanna check my phone now? Is that going to make you feel better?” He held it out and she backed away. “No—here.” He shoved it further her way. “That’s what you on, now? Go ‘head take it.”

“Tino, stop! You’re not the victim.”

“Well, then tell me who is! How do you stay with someone you don’t trust?”

Three solid knocks on the door cut between their heat as they stared one another down with pinched expressions. 

“Yeah?” Tino answered with all of his frustration. 

The door creaked and Roman appeared. 

“Breakfast is ready.”

Neither responded. Not with words anyway. Tino rose from his spot on the bed after tossing his phone down, rushing past her and him to retreat back into the bathroom. 

Milagra stood there, not moving, as if he was still there on the edge of the bed—lost. She didn’t mean for any of that to happen, but in the deepest part of her she felt relief. The calming and satisfaction of knowing he cared somehow. It was twisted and it barely made sense to her. 

Her head snapped to the door where Roman had half of his body inside, boring a hole into her face. Waiting for something. Saying everything and nothing at the same time. 

Their hourglass was running its last bit of sand. 

Every exchange she had with him it was like coming to an orgasm, waiting for the big drop, for it to be snatched away. Closer they got to the edge, every time. Stopping because they both knew it. 

That line was too dangerous to cross. There was no going back. 

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 this weekend proved right, he could feel her, too. 

Tino had left a couple hours prior. An emergency surgery for one of the patients he worked on Thursday night whose body wasn't taking to the medication. 

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. Free-falling into the inevitable. She knew from that moment in the foyer. 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, every flick of his gaze her way when Tino had to go. 

It all made its way down on her sight like rain on a windshield until she couldn’t see clearly anymore. 

He muted the TV after catching her figure in his peripheral. Some tape from a practice before his players went on break. It distracted him from the storm brewing under his very roof that he was getting sucked into. 

She sunk into the couch next to him, eyes fluttering. 

A tenseness in his expression, almost as if he didn’t want to talk about anything, if not what he overheard. 

“I’m pretty sure you heard—earlier,” she whispered as if Tino was still there. 

He shifted on the soft couch, interlocking his long fingers.

“I wish I didn’t interrupt. I wanted to hear your answer.”

“My answer?”

“To his question,” he revealed. “Why do you stay with someone you don’t trust,” he repeated his son’s words softly as not to offend her. “I think I know why. And that’s why I stopped it. I don’t think he can handle the answer.”

It was like he found the one loose string to their relationship, and he pulled and pulled until the whole structure unraveled.

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. 

He didn’t lean in too. Barely moved a muscle. Instead, his head shifted to the right, so subtly, she would’ve missed it if she wasn’t already inching toward him. A gesture that told her everything she had been guessing at all weekend. 

He felt it too. 

The last stretch of space and she almost didn’t do it. But her eyes shifted down, catching a glimpse of his parted pink lips in the dark. Waiting for her. Open arms. And she fell into it. 

Softy as first. Simple. Just one peck that lingered until she found the strength to pull away. 

Stiffly, he eyed her. He wanted her to come to him. He had to make sure she needed it before he made his move. So, she leaned in again. Lips pressing into his. The hairs living overtop his lip pricking her a bit. Again and again she did it. Until his hand curved into the space of her upper neck, long fingers tangling into her scalp, pressing her against him. 

He entered her mouth tongue first. Full throttle now. He was ashamed to have imagined this very scenario. 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, falling deeper into the kiss. Her hands. He hadn’t felt a woman’s touch in some time. Not one like this. He slow cooked this one on his own. Tender. 

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 every part. Memorizing her. 

It jumped under her palm, as he imagined what her warm mouth would feel like stretched over him. 

That one act, made time real again for her. She snatched away, standing like the couch had caught fire. 

She stared into the gloss of need over his eyes. 

And before he could open his mouth to say something, she walked away briskly. The last thing she needed was to hear his voice. That would’ve made what just happened too real. The acknowledgment of it. 

Milagra tossed and turned. In heat. Flashes of the scene unfolding in her mind. From her point of view. What it looked like from someone else’s viewpoint. His. All of it. 

Her body was burning up from the inside out. 

It was so big. 

She licked her lips with closed eyes. The pain of yearning for something forbidden, unbearable. 

She couldn’t take it anymore. She had twisted and turned every which way, but nothing could release this feeling coiling like the tightest spring inside of her. 

Flipping the cover open, she stepped out, bare feet hitting the carpet, as she didn’t even bother to tighten her grey cotton robe. 

Her body was unreliable as is, and they still carried her to the other side of the house and up the last side of the spiral steps. A territory she hadn’t ventured before. She held onto everything on her way. The bannister, the walls—purposely not looking at the pictures lining them. 

At the very end, two wall sconces, dimly lit, as if he left it on for her to find her way. The door was cracked open already and she pushed it the rest of the way. 

It was as grand and alluring as him. A dungeon of sorts. Dark wood pillars on the four corners of the canopy bed, vacant of any drapes. A fur throw, overtop the thick duvet. Every surface shined, no evidence of prints or dust. She was floored at how well he kept this place up with no hands to help. Small ceiling lights dimmed, but she could see everything. To her left she found the dresser, the same cherry dark wood finish as the bedpost, with carvings on the edges. 

There were no pictures in here, despite them being showcased all around the rest of the house. The watch he had on when they were downstairs was laid on it. She fingered the gold antique figurine of a butterfly before picking it up, feeling the weight of it. 

They must’ve meant something to him—butterflies. The way he ran his thumb over her wrist. 

There was so much you could tell about a person from their room—the sacred walls, witnesses to their most raw selves and intimate acts. Masturbation. Crying. Talking to themselves. Laughing at a memory that no one else could see. Sleeping. Or getting dressed from the shower. 

That’s when she heard it—the shower. 

Setting the butterfly figurine back down she nearly floated to the sound. Like she was an assassin in  a fantasy novel suddenly remembering her target. She came in here for something. 

This whole trip, she realized, she had been looking for something—someone. 

There was an extra wall that blocked the conjoined bathroom’s entrance from the rest of the room. With every step, she breathed in more steam. He had been in there for a while. 

She touched the walls as she went, like a toddler, trying to familiarize herself with new things. She made it past the threshold, his stretched figure looming behind the frosted glass. She could make out his tanned skin and the dark hairs resting on his shoulders. 

Without even thinking, and before she could change her own mind, she slid the glass door open with a light creak. 

He didn’t flinch, almost as if he expected her. Her heartbeat accelerated at the side of his bare back, the deep line in the center leading to his ass. 

He turned just his upper body, face wet from where he had it placed directly under the waterfall head. When his eyes landed on hers it was like electricity. Then they ventured further down where he noticed her robe was basically undone. The space between her breast, the hills of them and the hard peaks under the cotton fabric made harder at the sight of him. Her bare stomach and the tiny stud that sparkled above her belly button—even the tiny space of hair above her mound—it all had him sucking in air from his nostrils. He was hanging on by a thread.

He made eye contact again and she refused to breathe until he spoke. “Go back to his room.”

Stone cold and sure like he was ordering a child to tie their shoe before they fell. 

“No.”

She surprised herself even, with the rebellion in her voice. It was too late to turn back now. 

The kiss, they could maybe push further out, until years passed and they only saw one another three times a year—maybe—and it became so distant, they convinced themselves they imagined it. But this—her showing up in his room, the tie to her robe loose, as she feigned for him to turn around so she could see everything—there was no mistaking or forgetting this. The whole thing was a declaration. The only thing that could’ve made her intentions more clear, was the act itself. 

In one swift move he had yanked her inside and under the water with him. Her back flexed and she stifled a wince when he corned her into the hard and wet, polished limestone walls. Her breathes coming out in tasked shakes and she was sure he could hear. Thriving off of it when he released his own huffs of primal air. 

He steadied himself, two big hands on either side of her head. 

He really had never seen eyes like hers before. Crusted with gold in between the solid brown. The prettiest two planets he had ever seen. 

Newly transformed curls spiraled, sticking to her face. Neck craned up, she wanted so badly to see what he saw. To notice about herself the things he did. 

In her peripheral it jumped. Eyes darting down at the monster between them, she sighed a breath of relief. Rubbing her thighs together. It was huge. Thick and long, sprouting from the dark hairs. Tan as he was, curving to the muscles of his left thigh. 

His tongue rested in the corner of his mouth, tracing the slope of her breast that had been exposed now from the rush of getting dragged in. He was hungry for the contrast of the dark nipple in comparison to her caramel skin. 

She watched his tongue and his lips part ways, like he was rehearsing and going over in his mind first what he would do to her. Like he had to get this right or there’d be no other chances. 

“You are fucking perfect,” he told her. 

She wanted to kiss him so bad it almost hurt. And when he leaned in closer making a line for her lips, a soft whimper escaped her, before he switched his course and nudged her head to the side with his, landing the kiss on her neck instead. 

Mouth parted, he is all she could feel. 

With his lips on her skin, she’d be a fool to stop this. She simply just didn't have that much strength left in her. He had found her weak spot—literally and figuratively.

“—Dad!” Tino’s baritone voice barreled through, decimating the cloud of  smoke around them. 

Roman’s jaw locked in place. Milagra’s breath picking up as her whole body tensed. 

“Yeah,” he answered with a steady tone. 

“You seen Mila? She’s not in my room.”

Her eyes projected onto him before they shifted to the door she couldn’t see, past the frosted glass. 

He let Tino’s question linger before he spoke again. 

“Check the pool, son. I don’t know. I’ve been in here.”

Tino’s silence dragged as if he wanted to say something else. The suspense had them both frozen in place, barely breathing. 

“Alright.” 

They waited a solid five seconds. She pushed off the shower wall, under his arm, sliding the door open, blinking rapidly as if her reality was distorted. 

“Take a shirt and sweats. The gym,” was all he said. 

She followed directions, quietly without a word. Everything around her seeming distant and cold, now. His shirt covered most of her and she opted for shorts instead, that could’ve been mistaken for Tino’s. Her bare feet softly hitting the steps, listening out for any sign of Tino, before she brushed past the right spiral staircase, to the hall, hand on the handle, right before she heard him. 

“Mila?”

“Yeah?” She jumped watching him bend the corner, still dressed in dark blue scrubs. 

“What’s going on?”

“I was…” She looked into the dark leading down to the steps, a hand pressed to the door still. “I was working out. I couldn’t sleep.” She cleared her throat, but it was still thick as if it was anticipating bile.

All of her angst cleared away when his upper lip tugged in a smirk and he stepped in closer to her. “A hard one, huh?” He fingered her newly formed curls, not used to her wearing it natural enough. 

“Yeah.” She forced a small laugh, before her knees gave out and she lowered onto the top step. 

“Are you okay, baby?” He lowered onto the floor with her. 

Of course she wasn’t. She couldn’t hold one single thought long enough. She was everywhere. All over the place.

Staring into his eyes, the sincerity in them, it made her stomach fold with guilt. In a feeble attempt to justify all that happened, she opened her mouth to ask a deadly question. One, she promised herself she wouldn’t. 

“Did you sleep with Madeline?”

Her voice was timid. Almost as weak as she felt on the inside. Rims of her eyes already conjuring tears. 

His jaw tightened and his eyebrows curved with sympathy. “Why do you ask me questions you don’t really want the answer to?” His eyes blotched with sadness before he blurted the answer in a rush. “No. No, I didn’t.” 

Her heart stopped. 

Relief and guilt fighting to the death inside of her.

“I couldn’t,” he said. “All I could think about was you.” Guilt had won—took the knockout and stood fiercely. 

Not once, had she thought of him in that shower, until she heard his voice. 

“How I wished it was you instead of her—kissing me—showing me attention,” he continued. “That was selfish of me. Knowing I’m not even home enough to get all those things.”

They fell heavy down her face. 

God, what had she done?

She bit into her nail so hard, she heard the sharp crack of the acrylic. 

“I’ll say it a million more times if you need me to. I fucked up. I’m sorry, Milagra. I just want to start over. Okay? Can we? Can we just start over and forget about all the bullshit?” He whispered. Face contorted in pain, watching hers spill from her eyes. 

She sat nearly trembling as he waited for her answer. She could’ve ended it right then and there. Told the truth and wiped the slate clean. Start over, as he said. But her treachery wasn't as simple as his. 

He wished Madeline had been her, but when she closed her eyes, it was Roman’s face she saw. It was his voice she’d hear in her dreams. 

She nodded vehemently. She leaned into him and they hugged for the first time in months. Squeezing, he inhaled the scent of her, swallowing hard when he thought he smelled his father for a second. 

Tino got called into the hospital again. They were eating breakfast when it happened. The TV not too far in the living room held the low hum of some sports show. Stephen A’s boisterous persona echoing and reaching them in the next room. The aggressive clink of everyone’s fork to the plate replacing the conversation nobody could bear to have or hear. 

So much had happened in the past three days and it had drained all three of them. 

His phone vibrated against the table and they all felt it. She already knew what it was even before he sighed and put his fork down. 

“I think I should just leave with you.”

He turned his head to her. “Yeah. Okay.”

She got up before him. Roman’s eyes hot on her tail. She cleared what was left of her plate into the trash and dropped everything in the sink, not having the patience to wash anything. 

She managed to pack her bag and his while they lingered in the kitchen, saying their last remarks. 

“We’re all packed,” she announced. Swiping her hands down the material of her tights. 

Him and his dad slapped hands before pulling one another into a hug. Roman went for her bag, but she was faster. Gripping the handle to hand it off to Tino. 

The easiest way for her to navigate these last seconds without imploding, was to erase his existence altogether. So, she did just that. Never looking his way but feeling those heavy eyes on her every move. Waving small, and muttering a goodbye before slipping into the truck. 

It made her sick to her stomach. All that led up to them, the things they gave life to, for it to end like this. Crash and burn. Stuck between whether leaving it as is was wrong or right. 

The last of him, she saw through the side mirror, standing in his all black ensemble, a hardened look. 

And it couldn’t have been more obvious that he was looking for her. Looking for something. A small inkling, a wave, any gesture to let him know it wasn’t all for nothing. 

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.

iii.    home • doing it wrong. 

Milagra thought the endless loop of imagination her brain inherited before meeting this man was tortuous. In that case, whatever it was now doing, after not just meeting him, but smelling him, letting his voice and breath travel up the spot behind her ear, and feel the teasing of his skin—this was closer to death. 

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. After their conversation on the steps that night, vowing to start over, she felt a new sense of closeness to him. The same kind you’d feel after going through something traumatic with a friend. Like helping them survive the loss of a parent.

And she really wanted to take this clean slate thing serious, but the slate had dirt on it that only she could see. A whole pile covering her undeniable attraction to the man he called dad. And it wasn't just physical. God, how she wished it was just a physical thing. Fantasies of fucking him didn’t satiate her hunger. It was more than that now. Days of him listening to her, and her listening back—him seeing her and her seeing him. She had to catch herself sometimes. Blanked out, staring into space, thinking about the things you only consider when you actually consider someone. If he ate at all. If the silence of that haunted house made him uncomfortable. If something happened to him, who would he even call that could get there fast enough?

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 almost sleeping with his son’s daughter. 

She was losing her mind in the calmest way possible. 

Already think of excuses to never go back. 

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 school girl 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 before. 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 intrusion 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. 

“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. Strong but feminine. 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 lat bit of love they had for one another. 

They 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. 

Tino had texted the week she moved in, asking if she had found something. Said, if she needed help moving in, he was there. She knew he was just being his normal generous self. Extending the hand he didn’t have. He wasn't there and that was the issue. But she thanked him anyway and did the hospitable thing which was lying and telling him she’d call if she needed him, knowing she would rather call her brothers or father who lived hours away. 

Out of the blue, in the wee hours of the night, she got a call from a random Florida number, while curled up in her new bed. She watched it ring, not recognizing it. Only seconds after it stopped, her heart pummeled over itself at the text on the banner. 

It’s Roman. 

She clicked it immediately. The bubbles popping up in the thread as she anticipated his next words. They disappeared, and then reappeared. She could hear her own breathing, shallow, as he held the phone tight in the dark. 

I just want to know you’re okay. I just talked to Tino.

Her thumbs danced over the keyboard. She didn’t know what was safe to say. 

You have no family this way. It’s not safe. I think at least one of us should have your address. Extra layer of protection. 

She stared at the words for nearly five minutes. Rereading them to make sure she wasn’t reading too fast and misinterpreting it. Eventually, she texted her address back, thinking maybe he’d come. 

He never did. It was delivered and read. 

Milagra found herself the following days, just waiting—for a text—a call—a knock on her door. Anything. 

Maybe it was just as simple as he said. An extra layer of protection if she needed it. 

Two months had coasted by in her 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 a cookbook. The Classic Italian Cookbook by Julia Della Croce. Her brows pinched, opening it from the back and flipping until she landed on the title page.

His name is languid in cursive. Under it a small note. 

Na e toe aumaia le malamalama i totonu.

She sped-walked to her laptop. Glancing back and forth between his writing and the keyboard to type it into google. The translation that came up, had her plopping down onto the bed. All of a sudden it was months before, and she was suffocated with that feeling she couldn’t escape. 

You brought the light back inside.

He had opened a door she thought was locked, and she wasn't looking to shut it this time. Not without her on the other side of it. 

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

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

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

She stepped out of her truck, sneakers hitting the cobblestone. 

She switched her outfit at least four different times back in her condo. From something too sexy, to something too homely, and another that was too formal—until she settled on dad jeans and a tank top. 

There was the smallest twinge inside of her that told her this could go completely wrong. A disaster. Rejection was a silent killer. And she didn’t know what she’d do if this was for nothing. 

She didn’t even get the chance to knock before the door swung open. 

They stared, no words between them, just yet. Observing each other. Looking for changes. 

He always looked so comfortable. Like something she could wrap her arms around and get lost in. 

“You drove all the way down here?” He looked out to where her truck was parked. “By yourself. It’s late.”

“I needed the drive. To clear my head,” she lied. Her head was just as jumbled, if not more, than when she left Miami. 

Neither of them moved or spoke for what seemed like forever. Roman thought long and hard about what it meant—letting her past this threshold. He had always been a man of constraint and discipline. His body showed so. His bank account. The strength of his faith. His sex life and relationships with women or lack thereof. 

Milagra had managed to penetrate every solid temple in just three days. She worried now, how desperate this was. The context going clearer to her. She wondered if he could smell it on her. The sheer vulnerability and thirst for someone to just look at her and save her from her own self-inflicted misery. It seemed like the perfect idea when she was on her way. The grand gesture of a knight drawing his sword for the princess. Now, she just saw it as weak and pathetic.

She took a step back. 

“Come on,” he said. The door opening wider. 

“I don’t know if I need to to grow up—if I’m still looking at love through the lens of a little girl—but there was never that spark—that moment where I said to myself—yeah, this is where I’m supposed to be. I don’t feel that. The spark,” she finished. Chest expanding and minimizing from the shortness of breath from her ramble. From her anxiety. From the exhaustion of love’s side effects. All of it. 

He was unusually quiet. Sitting stiffly on the other side of the island. She feared that she had messed it all up. 

Had he come to his senses and realized how fucked up it all was? How impossible it could be?

“You asked me before, if I was happy,” she continued. “And that familiarity and happiness were twins. Easy to confuse.” He nodded. “I couldn’t tell them apart before. I can now.”

Nothing. He offered nothing. Just shifty eyes and the roll of his broad shoulders. 

“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.”

Again, with that look. The one that implied he had a secret message hidden for her in his speech.

She shook her head. She couldn’t do this. Sit here and pretend. 

“Roman—” 

She stopped herself when he rose from the stool. 

In suspense, she couldn’t keep her eyes off of him. He paced the length of the island, stopping the end closer to her. A large hand covered his own mouth, smoothing the hairs around it down, before resting his palms on the smooth surface. 

“He’s my son,” he reminded her and a part of himself. 

“I know,” she said firmly. “I know,” she repeated in a rushed whisper. 

“I love him. I’m supposed to protect him. I’m all he has left.”

“I know,” she said, exhausted. 

He let the air around them go cold for a minute, head swarming with the loneliness he’s worn over the years and gotten comfortable in, clinging to it like a second skin. 

And then she came. Out of nowhere. And they say that’s how it usually happens. 

He peered up at her, lifting and rounding the corner to stand in front of her. The ball was in his court now. The cookbook was just the worm on the hook. He couldn’t let her go on, thinking it meant nothing. That she meant nothing. She caught it and now she was here. 

Everything happened in reverse from the first time. It was now Milagra who sat stiff, as he leaned in. She licked her lips and that was the only invitation he needed before pressing his into hers, setting her on fire. 

He did it again. Added three more down the length of her jawline. 

“I feel it.” Another one, caught on the skin right below her ear. “Damn right I feel it.”

Her breath left her in shakes. Nothing but adrenaline and need coursing through her veins. Fueling her. 

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. 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 really happening. 

She planted two hands over the hair of his beard, bringing him down to her, tasting him again. Getting used to him. Familiar with his taste. 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. 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 new addiction. 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, not used to the sensation. 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. Teased each other to the point of 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 dreamed about it. Some so real he woke up missing her wrapped around him—a feeling imagined. 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. 

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.” 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. 

The whole experience was new for Milagra. She had sex before, but not like this. Not 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, he sucked on that spot without even being coached. 

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. It was like he had done this before. Like someone had already shown him the map to her treasure, and he studied hard before his voyage. 

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. 

She just hated that it had to happen at the expense of someone else she loved. She suddenly felt the scales of her own skin. 

The muscles in her face fell. Subtle, but when someone saw you, they could see every shift. He bit into his bottom lip, already knowing where it hurt. Settling until he found a comfortable position over her, the muscles of his arms trapping her on either side, yet again. His brown eyes bounced around on her face, reading every thought. 

“Everything can be fixed,” was all he said. She nodded. Listening. Understanding. They’d figure it out. 

He didn’t know how his son would react. It was too far out for him to grasp. He had no plans on loving this woman in the dark. That wasn't his style anyhow. He was too grown for games. He knew he waited too long for this. He tried to stifle his wants with something else and it didn’t work. 

He tried. He tried for Tino. He tried for her. He tried for himself. He tried to bury this feeling within his chest, and all it did was sprout from the ground, blossoming. They had given too much life to it in just the three days spent together. 

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. That, he did know. So that’s what he chose to focus on. Not the unknown. 

His lips folded in for a second, contemplating his next words. “I looked everywhere for you,” he confessed. Those words drew everything in her together, sewing her insides tight. 

She could see all of it. Their entire existence as far as they could go. Something she just couldn’t do with his son. 

Cooking lessons at the wee hours of the morning. Some eighties band who’s one album charted for weeks playing from his iPad. Massaging him after a workout. Him popping up on her at work to bring his latest tried recipe. On the side of his team’s game, cheering them on and taking notes of the things he couldn’t see. 

This was the spark she had been waiting on for so long, that she didn’t even think existed anymore.

Just when she thought she’d give up the search, at the end of her road, ready to turn back—here he was. The whole time. Closer than she could’ve ever imagined. 

“I took the long way.”