Page 86 of Lily In The Valley
Tasha was next to me, curled up on her side, arm stretched over where I had just been. She looked peaceful. Skin glowing in the hush of daylight, mouth slightly open, braids falling over her cheek like a curtain.
She looked like love.
But I felt like a stranger in the frame.
My bare feet touched the cold floor. That grounding kind of cold. The kind of cold that made you hyper aware of your body, of the way your chest rose too fast, like breath was trying to outrun whatever lived in your ribs.
I grabbed my pair of sweats from the chair, pulled them on quietly, and padded down the hallway into the kitchen. Thehouse was too quiet. Not eerie, just blank. Tasha didn’t believe in order. Not physically. Not emotionally. She said everything should find its own resting place.
The walls were off-white, the cabinets stark brown. There was a live-edge dining table in the corner with four matching chairs. A few scratches and rings from heavy use.
The coffee maker was already going, the scent rich and warm, rising like steam off old regrets. She must’ve set the timer last night. She always did. To her, mornings shouldn’t require extra decisions. Waking up was hard enough. The machine beeped. I poured coffee into the mug with her initials on it, then poured some into mine. Black. No cream. No sugar. It tasted like something burnt at the bottom of a memory. I leaned against the marble counter and stared out the window.
Houston in the early morning was still soft. The skyline in the distance peeked through a congested haze and humidity. Streetlights flickered out one by one, giving up the fight. A man walked his dog with a paper bag in hand, and a jogger bounced by, earbuds in, rhythm locked. And still, my mind went back to her.
Kelly.
Her face registered in my mind before I could prevent it. The way she looked that night at the taco bar, the soft, warm lights licking the curves of her cheekbones, her voice quieter than I remembered, like grief had lowered her volume. She hadn’t smiled at first. She just looked at me like I was a bruise she forgot she had.
And I felt it again. That ache. That inconvenient, relentless ache.
She had no right to still live in my chest. But there she was, unpacked and unmoving. Even after all the silences. Even after the hurt. Even after I fooled myself into thinking I could move forward with Tasha.
Tasha padded in twenty minutes later, still wrapped in sleep. She wore one of my hoodies, the sleeves too long, the hem barely covering the curve of her thighs. She smelled like honey and sleep. Her skin was warm where she leaned in to kiss my shoulder, her lips lingering just a second too long.
“You okay?” she asked, her voice still scratchy from sleep.
“Yeah,” I said, sipping my coffee.
She didn’t move right away. Just stood there beside me, one hip leaned against the counter, while her eyes studied my profile. She moved around me like we belonged here, together. She pulled the whole milk from the fridge, stirred it into her cup, and added two spoonfuls of sugar, clinked her spoon against the ceramic as she stirred. She liked it sweet, even when she was salty.
“You been up long?” she asked again.
“Just thinking.”
She didn’t push. She never did.
“About work?” she asked.
I didn’t answer fast enough.
She smiled a tight curve that didn’t reach her eyes. “You called her name in your sleep last night.” That stopped me. She took a sip, then shrugged like she hadn’t said it. “I’m not in my feelings, if that’s what you’re thinking. Y’all were close. You’re allowed to still feel stuff. It’s cool.” She said it like she meant it, but the way she strangled her mug said otherwise. She was doing it again. Testing the waters, then skipping away when she saw how deep they ran.
“We said we weren’t doing that. The mind games and shit.”
She laughed, light and airy. I didn’t laugh with her. She rolled her eyes and lifted her mug again. “The only one who should be worried about people playing mind games is me.” Her jaw tightened as she turned away, like she hadn’t cracked the surface just a little. At her dining table, she sat across from me, her legsfolded beneath her, sipping her coffee like it held more answers than questions.
“You gonna tell me what you’re thinking about?” she asked.
“Nothing important.”
She didn’t buy it, but she let it go. Sat there tight lipped as we finished our coffee. That was the thing with Tasha. She’d press close enough to make me wonder if we were getting too deep, then pull back like it didn’t mean anything. And me? I let her play it that way. Because it kept me from having to answer the one question I didn’t want to face.
What did it mean to miss someone who wasn’t there while waking up next to someone who was?
We satin a sun-drenched patio in midtown surrounded by her coupled up friends who laughed too loud and clinked mimosas like they were in a sitcom. Tasha talked animatedly with her girls about work, about her sister’s engagement, about some trip to Tulum they were planning. I nodded at the right times. Smiled when I was supposed to. Kissed her temple when she made a joke that landed.
“So this is the mysterious Khalil?” one of them asked, raising an arched brow.
