Page 28 of After Him, There Was You
Chapter 14: Made to Love - Eva
Several Days Later
“What do you need from me?” I inquired, running my hand down his arm. The heartache I knew he had to be experiencing from the draining events of the day, had me wishing I could take the pain away.
I knew as a woman I could be a lot to handle, but for those who were close enough to me to have earned a space in my heart, I immediately had an overwhelming source of empathy and desire to make them feel better. With Zeke, I wanted to ease his grief and subdue every ounce of agony.
“Honestly, I just need you to be here,” he confessed. “I’m not trying to be by myself right now.”
From the time I arrived at the church to attend the funeral, I’d witnessed him have a handful of breakdowns, and it took everything in me not to run to the front of the sanctuary when he dropped to his knees as they opened her casket to say a final goodbye.
My heart broke for him every time I looked in his direction.
He had buried his mother only hours earlier, and it would have been foolish for me to expect him to be okay under the circumstances.
“Okay,” I noted, processing his words and interpreting their meaning. I heard him say he wanted me to be there, but I knewtherecould hold a different meaning for him than it did for another person.
“Are you hungry? I can cook something for you while you take a shower,” I offered, trying to gauge his definition ofthere.
“I’m not hungry. I really want to shower and get in the bed,” he confessed, leaning in my direction, resting his head in my lap.
He could say he wasn’t hungry, but I’d been with him majority of the day, and I hadn’t seen him consume anything. Even after the funeral and the graveside, when we went to the repass service, he declined everything aside from water.
With his head in my lap, my hands naturally gravitated to his well-kept dreadlocks, and I innately began to massage his scalp, allowing him to be completely still and silent. I knew people had been pulling on him all day, and at the end of something as traumatic as losing a parent, silence could be worth more than any gesture.
Somehow, I had managed to massage his scalp until the both of us drifted off to sleep, and when I opened my eyes, my head was hung over the back of his couch.
Raising my head, I opened and closed my eyes to adjust to my surroundings before lowering my head back down in the direction of my lap where Zeke’s head was resting.
Instead of being asleep like I expected for him to be, his eyes were opened, and he was staring at me.
“Please, don’t tell me you are a creep,” I stated, making him smile. His nonverbal response gave me the impression there was some truth in my statement, and I couldn’t help but to shake my head.
“No, I’m not. Besides, why would I need to be a creep when you’re in my house?”
“What does me being in your house have to do with anything?” I questioned with my face twisted up. “You know what? Never mind. Please don’t feel the need to answer that question.”
“If you want an answer, I can give you an answer,” he coaxed looking up at me with too many emotions to name in his eyes.
Before I could respond to his shenanigans, his doorbell rang out.
“Are you expecting company or something?”
“Zeke, why would I be expecting company at your house?”
“I don’t know, but I’m damn sure not expecting anybody. Do you know what time it is?” Zeke rhetorically questioned, showing me the time on his phone just as his alarm sounded.
Whoever it was granting themselves entrance into his house was either bold or familiar. They could have been a combination of boldly familiar.
From the click-clacking of heels against his tiled floor, I knew it was more than likely a woman or a sharp dressed man. The prior had me looking at him in disbelief as he pulled himself from my lap.
“Chante, what the hell are you doing here? Is everything okay? Where are the girls? Is something wrong with them?” Zeke asked, sliding his feet in the loafers positioned in front of the couch, simultaneously walking in the direction of where his keys lay.
My heart silently went out to him because it was as if his mind went to the worst-case scenario like he was in preparation mode for the next most unpleasant thing to happen.
He was so mentally distraught he was missing the obvious.
Her little visit didn’t have anything to do with their kids. Sis was at his house on a social call, and I knew it from her attire.
