Page 34 of Love Letters from a Libra
Still, this connection with Jules felt different. I closed my eyes and replayed our night together in vivid detail, his hands mapping my body with the same focus he brought to everything. I remembered the weight of him above me in the bed when we’d gone in for round two. He asked if I was okay, even when we were both breathing hard with wanting.
I also remembered how we had tea in the morning, like we were creating our own private language.
And now, silence. Or close enough to it that it felt like silence.
Perhaps he was just busy. People often got busy with work, or life happened. I told myself that. Still, the excuse rang hollow in my ears.
I’d dated enough to recognize the phase when it started. I just didn’t expect it from him, not after the intensity of our connection, not after he finally allowed me to see behind those carefully constructed walls.
I wrote about cosmic timing and patience. I literally made a living telling people to trust the process. When anxiety crept in, I closed my eyes and blew out air, as I had instructed my blog readers to do.
“Fine, I’ll wait. I’ll give him space. I’ll trust that whatever is happening has a purpose that I can’t see yet,” I whispered to myself.
I hated how my emotions went wild, swinging from one extreme to another. All I wanted was harmony and everything neatly aligned, but sometimes the universe had other plans, and all we could do was sit with the discomfort. I turned my phone on silent and placed it in a drawer out of sight, not entirely out of mind.
A knock at the door jolted me out of my spiral of overthinking. I glanced at the time, 9:38 p.m., too late for package delivery and too early for the upstairs neighbor’s drunk singing to drive me to complaining. I debated ignoring it, but a familiar voice called through the door.
“I know you’re in there, Zanaa. I can literally see your shadow under the door.” It was Rell’s lying ass because he knew good and well he couldn’t see under my door.
I dragged myself to the door, running a quick hand through my curls before opening it to find him standing with an arm full of jalapeño popcorn and a box of wine tucked under the other. He was wearing an oversized hoodie that read, “Don’t text your EX, breathe instead,” in bold white letters.
“Your Facepage story was giving emotional crisis, so I bought reinforcements. And before you ask, yes, I got the extra spicy kind because I know you think regular jalapeño tastes like air,” Rell announced, pushing past me into my apartment without waiting for an invitation.
I closed the door behind him, something loosening in my chest at the familiar way he moved through my space, droppingthe popcorn on the coffee table and setting the wine box on my kitchen counter. We’d been friends since college, when we were the only two black kids in advanced poetry who rolled our eyes at the same pretentious classmates.
“I didn’t post any story,” I protested, following him into the kitchen where he was already opening my cabinet for wineglasses.
Rell’s eyebrows raised in perfect skepticism. “Really? When Mercury and Mars square off, communication goes sideways. Check your assumptions, lovelies. The stars are testing your perception, not your worth. With that moody filter in your journal in the corner? That is astrologer for some man is fucking with my head.” He handed me a wineglass.
I blew out air and leaned against the counter. “It was a regular post, not a story.”
“Not the point, Zanaa. Who is he, and what did he do?”
The wine box made a sad squeaking sound when he squeezed it to fill his glass. I took a long sip, the warmth spreading through me, before following him back to the living room. He settled onto the couch, immediately grabbing the popcorn and tearing it open.
“It’s not a crisis. It’s just a situation, and you know who he is.” I tucked my legs under me as I sat beside him.
“Mm-hmm. A situation with the hot meditation guy with the locs?” Rell’s voice was muffled by popcorn.
I took another sip of wine instead of answering, which was enough for Rell to nod, while reaching for more popcorn. “What happened? Last I heard, you two were all aligned with the heart chakras or whatever.”
“That is not what I said, and nothing happened exactly. That’s the problem.” I couldn’t help smiling, despite myself.
“Define nothing.”
I blew out air, the wine already loosening my grip on my composure. “We slept together.”
Rell’s eyes widened. “That’s definitely not nothing.”
“And it was good, really good. Not just physically though . . . That was . . . yeah, but the connection felt real. We talked for hours, but he keeps doing this vanishing thing.”
Rell stood up, grabbed the wine box from the kitchen counter, and topped off our glasses. “Define vanishing.”
“I don’t know. He seems attentive at times, and other times, very vague, no calls, no plans to meet up again, just distance.”
“And you haven’t texted him because . . .?”
I shot him a look. “I’m not chasing a man who doesn’t wanna be caught. I do have some dignity.”
