Page 124 of Call Me Mrs. Taylor

For a second, I just lay there listening to the slow rhythm of her breathing, watching the early morning light shine through the blinds. But with the light comes reality. A cold, hard dose of it.

Raya isn’t my girlfriend anymore.

Whatever this is, it can’t last.

I rub her back to bring her out of her sleep. She stirs, shifting against me, her fingers gripping me tighter before she fully wakes up, blinking up at me with a sleepy, innocent look that makes my chest hurt.

“Morning,” I say, my voice rough with sleep.

She smiles, then clears her throat. “Hey.”

Neither of us moves.

But somebody has to think straight, and move accordingly.

“Go on and get cleaned up in the guest bathroom,” I say. “I’ll make us something to eat.”

She hesitates, her eyes searching my face, looking for something. Then, she gets up and disappears down the hallway.

After my morning routine, I keep myself busy in the kitchen scrambling eggs, frying bacon, making coffee. Familiar things that keep my hands moving and my mind occupied. Anything to block out what happened last night.

The things she told me. Shit I’m still trying to process.

She joins me just as I’m plating the food. She smells like my soap. She’s wearing one of my t-shirts, with a pair of my boxers on underneath. The sight does something to me, but I push that down.

She sits at the counter, pulling her legs up onto the stool and wrapping her arms around them just like she did last night at the bridge. She looks smaller, somehow. I think that’s what she wants, to take up as little space as possible. To look as vulnerable as possible so I’ll forget all the shit I’ve seen her do.

I slide a plate in front of her.

She looks at it, then up at me. “Thank you.”

I nod, sliding in next to her. We eat in silence for a while, then she exhales, setting her fork down.

“I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” I ask around a mouth full of bacon.

She gestures vaguely. “Last night. Last month. Everything. All of it.”

I set my fork down, watching her carefully. “How much of last night can I actually believe?”

She flinches, but she doesn’t look away. “You don’t have a reason to believe any of it, I guess. And that’s on me.”

I nod, my eyes narrowing as I study her face, trying to find a tell, trying to get past the hold she has on me to see the truth.

“The stuff about your pops,” I say slowly. “Is that true?”

She presses her lips together and nods. I take in the way her brows knit together, and the desperate way she’s fighting to keep from crumbling, and something inside me knows it’s true.

And that makes it worse.

I turn on my stool to face her directly, swallowing the anger that’s rising in my throat like bile. “How the fuck do you live in that house with him every day?”

She looks down at her plate. “I can’t say.”

“Try me.” I tap her thigh to get her full attention. “Honestly, at this point, it couldn’t hurt.”

She huffs out a rueful chuckle. “Facts.”

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