Page 53 of Raising Love
I lifted my eyes to him.
“Why were you sitting in the dark?”
“Because I’m tired.” I nodded my head, still looking at him. “I’ve been up for the past 24 hours. How about you?”
He blinked in response.
“You look well-rested.” I pressed my lips together. “Jubilant.”
He was also different. Leo looked different to me since the hookup in his room. He looked at me differently as well since then.
Unable to maintain eye contact with me for more than a few seconds. Always needing to focus on a distraction to have a reason not to look my way.
I shook my head, moving my attention to the baby monitor he picked up from the city weeks ago. He got it the day after I had to leave Baby Love with him to take a much-needed shower. For a few days after that day, Leo was a present guardian to the baby. Showing up and helping to care for Baby Love. But lately, specifically after our hookup days ago, he’d been distant.
And I couldn’t bring myself to ask why. Because I didn’t want to hear the truth. Because what happened that night was still something I was processing. Alone.
Leo cleared his throat, gesturing toward the door. “I’m about to head out.”
“I heard,” I said, snapping my neck in his direction. “Must be nice...”
Leo kissed his teeth.
“… to be able to decide on a whim to drive close to an hour to the city to go eat, drink, and be merry.”
“Ivy, don’t give me that shit.”
I jerked my head back.
“I got games every other day,” he started. “Flying out and making sure to fly back the same damn day so you won’t be here alone with Baby Love the whole time?—”
“And somehow I still feel alone with him, hmph.” I feigned shock. “Funny how that is.”
He pressed his hand to his chest. “I’m here during the day. I help out.”
“For an hour or two,” I said. “After that, you’re back in your room, sleeping off the drinking and partying from the night prior before you’re up again taking your ass back out for another night of drinking and partying.” I shook my head. “You’re using the city and Vanessa,” I gritted out, “as an escape from your responsibilities here.”
“When did you start having a problem with how I spend my time, Ivy?”
Since he made me feel heaven on earth while still alive. Very alive.
There hasn’t been a minute in any day that I hadn’t thought about that night he and I had. It was the most random thing I’d ever done, but the most soul-stirring too. I don’t hook up. It has never been my thing. Kendra used to say I was too in my head to do it right, and she wasn’t lying.
The one time I tried hooking up with a guy I wasn’t dating, before the guy and I could get back to my place and actually do it, I had to change my mind because I kept wondering what would happen after. What we would say to each other? How would I send him home? All the questions living in the moment has no answers for, so I’ve just understood hooking up as being for everybody else and not me.
But the night Leo and I had sex unexpectedly, everything just flowed. Everything just felt so right, including the act itself. I didn’t need to get in the headspace to focus or concentrate. Didn’t need to overthink, wondering if he was okay and if I was making him feel as good as he was making me feel. I was just feeling and reacting from that feeling, and it was the most amazing thing.
But he’s been a jerk ever since.
“If I were you,” Leo said, pulling me back into the kitchen with him. “I would take more advantage of the Simmons’ and their offer to watch Baby Love.”
I kissed my teeth. “I would never do that. I would never ask them to watch the baby so I could go out and drink and fuck in the city.”
He scoffed a laugh. “Who said anything about fucking?”
I squeezed my eyes closed, pissed at myself for saying the one thing that was really bugging me. Because I knew that’s what he had to be doing with Vanessa. That’s all they ever did. He’s joked about them barely having conversations because they spent most of their time on beds always having sex. So I knew that’s what they had to be doing with his frequent visits to the city.
Leo held two hands up in front of himself.
