Page 32 of Chemistry: The Chemist

I watched from afar as she grabbed the bottled water beside the bed and finished it off. When she climbed under the covers without wiping my remnants from her skin or draining my semen from her soil, I was enamored.

Staggering… in every sense of the word.

I followed her inside with her dried fluids still coating my dick. I covered it with a pair of shorts from the third drawer of my dresser. A smile traced her lips.

Tittering, I communicated my thoughts without having to say a thing. She understood me. I understood her. Twin flames of sorts. Fire danced between us. We were inevitably drawn to one another.

I found myself still staring seconds later. I hadn’t made as much progress as I’d believed.

“You’re intolerable.”

“Yet, here I am.”

And here you’ll be.

“Come back to bed.”

“Soon enough. Get some rest.”

With a sigh, she closed those pretty eyes of hers and left me alone to decompress. Back out on the balcony, I unlocked my cellular device and glared at the red letters on the screen.

The rate of my heartbeat changed. The air around me stilled. The weight of my body grew heavier.

4:07 a.m.

I tapped the screen, initiating the call. The hour of the day meant nothing. Four o’clock in the evening or four o’clock in the morning would render the same results without fail. A baritone etched in my brain struck the line.

“Malachi.”

“I’m happy it wasn’t an emergency. I called you five hours ago.”

“Brother, had it been an emergency, I wouldn’t be on your line. I’d be in your face. You find humor in insulting me, huh?”

“You should know me by now.”

“And you should know there is very little I don’t know about you and them other knuckleheads.”

Losing a parent was never easy, but losing a mother took pieces of you you simply couldn’t replace. The void my mother’s death scarred me with made its presence known each time I saw or heard from one of the men I shared her with at one point in time.

To make matters worse, the day I lost her was the day I lost so much of them. Our distance nibbled on my sanity for years. Nothing prepared me for the despair their combined absences filled me with.

I was grieving her casualty and our closeness at once. Til this day, neither had run their course. I struggled, in every way imaginable, with the consequences of my mother’s decision on a daily basis. Nothing in my world had been resolved surrounding the circumstances of her and Maurice’s deaths. Everything just lingered. Hurt a little less, but hurt, nonetheless.

I loved my sisters to my core, but those boys had my heart first. They always would. Their ages, occupations, and relationship statuses never mattered and would never make me love them any less.

“You crossed my mind.”

“I’m flattered,” I exaggerated.

“Fuck you.”

“Hey!” his wife protested in the background.

“Listen to your wife.”

“I meant that.” Malachi chuckled. “What’s on your mind?”

“Same shit, Malachi. Same shit.”

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