Yes, like a psycho who thinks he owns me because of something that happened fifteen years ago. I swallowed down the lump of bitterness that welled in my throat. What I had with Victor could be called a lot of things. But love wasn’t one of them.
It was mom’s idea to make Victor the hot pot. But I’d been surprised by how Victor had responded to it. He slurped down what had to be at least five bowls of the DIYish stew. And that super nice compliment he gave us afterward about it being one of the best things he’d ever tasted…
I had forgotten that about him. How sincere he could be about the little things in life. He’d ordered around his security guards, Han, and Phantom like he was entitled to their service. But both times I’d given him a drawing, he had acted like it was the most precious thing he’d ever received.
I hated the conflicted feelings inside of me as I watched him eat. Hated that I loved seeing him enjoy a meal my mom and I had made, especially with him in mind. Hated that it still felt like he was hanging on my every word as I made small talk with my mom.
Not true, not true, not true. Dawn, girl, it is not true. We weren’t who we were in high school anymore. We weren’t even a real husband and wife.
And now, we’d be sleeping in the same bedroom, even though it wasn’t an anniversary night.
I stalled as long as I could after mom left, watching “the YouTube,” as my mom called it while Victor continued to type nonstop on his phone. But eventually, he put the phone away in his suit pocket.
“Come, we should go to bed.”
Not wanting my mom to overhear us, I switched to sign language. “Okay, but you know we’re not going to have sex, right? It’s not our anniversary, and this isn’t a hate fuck kind of situation.”
His eyes, which had been so unusually relaxed all evening, suddenly went hard as stone.
There he was.
The husband who hated me. The one who would try to punish me for daring to command him.
But then he raised one hand to sign a simple “O” and “K.”
Whoa…
Cue the awkward situation music. He followed me into the guest bedroom, and I wondered when was the last time he’d slept in a room this small. Had he ever?
“I’ll use the bathroom first,” I told him. “And then you, OK?”
I grabbed my toiletries bag out of my backpack before he could answer and escaped to the bathroom.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and changed into an oversized nightshirt. Then it was time for an Issa Rae-style pep talk in front of the mirror. You got this, Dawn! I assured my reflection.
My reflection did not look like she believed me. And eventually, a soft knock sounded on the bathroom door.
I found Victor on the other side, looking irritated about having to wait so long.
I carefully slipped past him, then rushed as fast as I could into the empty room. I was under the covers with the quilt pulled up to my neck by the time he returned.
He walked in wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, which was bad. Terrible, in fact. He was still built like a tattooed god. I noticed that he’d added more and more of them over the years. But we hadn’t had the kind of relationship that had allowed me to get a good look at him in the clear light. So I took all the tattoos in, noting the ocean waves that now covered his abs underneath his chest dragon.
However, my gaze stopped scrolling down before I reached the new tattoos covering his legs. There was something underneath his black briefs, standing at attention and raring to go.
“What happened to no sex?” I signed to Victor.
His gaze followed mine down to the very obvious tent in his boxer briefs.
“I can’t control that part of my body,” he answered with an amused shrug.
Then he switched off the light next to the door, turning the room to black. It should’ve been a reprieve. It meant I didn’t have to see him get into bed. Or look at the other monster between his legs.
But you didn’t have to see something to know it was there.
Like the moon hiding out in the daytime, I could sense his erection. It pulsed the same as the secret he had once given me inside a ninja star. And made waves crash inside of me.
No sex was supposed to ensure that I got a good night’s sleep instead of a sex hangover the following day when I needed to be at my best. But I ended up tossing and turning because my body felt so weird. My core was swollen, warm, and clenching at air just like it did on our anniversaries.
