Page 20 of Free to Fall

A playful smile tugged at her lips. “I know. I make everything look good.”

“But you look even better without any on.”

Before she could react, I was outta my stool, moving fast. I gripped her waist and yanked her forward, lifting her onto the cool countertop until her thighs opened for me like muscle memory. She gasped, hands flying to my shoulders for balance.

“Nasseem, what are you?—?”

“I’m still hungry,” I said, already hitching the shirt up her waist, my palms dragging slow over warm skin.

Her breath caught as my face went between her thighs and my tongue extended swiping gently between her folds.

7

EGYPT

Iwasn’t used to this kind of easy. The kind where I could laugh ‘til my stomach hurt, laid out on somebody’s couch in an oversized t-shirt, feet propped on their thighs like it was second nature. But here I was—belly full from breakfast, hair piled in a lazy bun, controller in hand, yelling at a TV screen while Nasseem laughed his ass off next to me smoking a blunt.

“Babe, what are you doin’?! That’s a grenade—don’t run towards it!”

“I panicked!” I shrieked, throwing the controller down in my lap. “Why would they make the damn button to run look like the button to blow shit up?!”

“That’s literally not how that works.” His voice was calm, but his chest was shaking’ from laughing. “You gotta stop pressing every button like you playin’ Mortal Kombat.”

I squinted at him accepting the blunt he handed me, taking a few pulls, “Okay, but why my character movin’ all slow like he tired? You said this game was high action.”

“That’s cause you sprinted across the whole map with no strategy. Now you’re outta breath and about to get sniped.”

“You know what?” I reached over and lightly slapped his arm before I handed the blunt back to him. “I didn’t come over here to get judged.”

“You came over here to get schooled and look at you—gettin’ bodied by a 13-year-old named 'LilPissy' on the mic.” I couldn’t help it. I laughed hard, falling into his side. He caught me with ease, one arm slinging over my shoulders, controller in the other hand like it was just another day. Only it wasn’t. This felt like something else. Something I didn’t have a name for yet.

After a few more rounds—and a lot more shit talking—we finally tossed the controllers aside and crashed on the couch. He flipped through Netflix while I rested my head against his chest, his fingers absentmindedly playing in my hair.

We ended up watching two movies back to back--Friday and Love Jones both black culture classics with a different vibe. Friday was his pick; Love Jones was mine. The entire time, we were half-watching, half-whispering dumb commentary between kisses, fingers tracing each other like we couldn’t help it.

“I like you like this,” he murmured somewhere between the end of the second movie and the start of the third, Boomerang.

“Like what?”

“Relaxed, laughin’, being real.”

I looked up at him, his brown eyes soft and gentle. “You make it easy.”

His gaze dropped to my lips, then slowly back to my eyes. “Nah. You make it beautiful.”

He kissed me then—slow, warm, intentional. The kind of kiss that says stay. It deepened and before I even realized, I was straddling him. His hands were firm on my thighs as my body settled against his. Everything between us melted into fire—gentle at first, then needy, then something else altogether.

We made love that night, real and slow. It was not rushed nor was it primal. It was, just us—bare, honest, connected. Like every touch was saying something we were still too scared to say out loud. I kept my eyes on him the whole time, and he kept his on me, like we were silently daring each other to blink first, to break the spell. But neither of us did. Because in that moment, there was nowhere else I’d rather be and there was no one else I’d rather give myself to.

And when it was over—when our bodies were tangled in warmth and sweat and the kind of breathless silence that came from pure satisfaction—I didn’t try to run. I didn’t try to explain it away or pretend it didn’t mean something. I just laid there, head on his chest, fingers laced with his and let myself be. And when sleep pulled me under later that night, it was with a kind of peace I didn’t know I’d been missing.

Wakingup in Nasseem’s bed was starting to feel a little too natural. The sunlight snuck in between the blackout curtains, hitting my face just enough to warm my cheek but not enough to pull me all the way outta sleep. What did it, was the sound of him breathing steady behind me, arms heavy around my waist, legs tangled up with mine like he couldn’t let me go even in his sleep. I didn’t wanna move. I didn’t even wanna blink. I just laid there a little longer in the stillness.

We stayed like that ‘til his hand slid up my stomach, over the curve of my waist, fingertips dragging slow and lazy across my skin. He pressed his face into the back of my neck, his lips warm against my shoulder.

“You up?” he asked, voice thick with sleep.

“Barely,” I mumbled.

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