Page 86 of Love Me

Monique

As we enter Diego’s place, my feelings from earlier continue to weigh on me. I was able to make it through dinner with smiles that I didn’t feel but I know Diego noticed.

He has a way of noticing everything about me.

“Come here,” he says as soon as the door closes behind him. He doesn’t give me time to completely enter his five thousand square feet luxury condo before he pulls me into his arms. I’ve been to his place plenty of times, but I always love viewing the pieces of art on his walls.

There’s something so comforting about being in his home. Everywhere reminds me of him.

Diego traces my jawline with his finger. My body’s response is instant. At this point, it doesn’t surprise me how I react even to his simple touches.

“You were quiet during dinner. Are you feeling okay?” He scans my face with worried eyes.

I attempt to hide my true feelings with a nod. “Hey, there’s an art fair next weekend in Blairwood. An artist I’ve been trying to track down for some time might be there. Are you up for coming with me?”

He looks over my face before agreeing. “You don’t even have to ask. You know that.”

I do know that. A sigh slips from my lips as the picture in the photo album of me in the hospital comes back to my mind.

“Being with someone with a long-term chronic illness isn’t easy.”

A wrinkle appears in his forehead as he pulls back, looking down at me in confusion. “Are you talking about your diabetes?”

I pull out of his embrace and move to the far end of his expansive living room. I bypass the low sitting leather couch and chairs to stand in front of the painting of smoke emitting from a volcanic landscape. The piece beautifully highlights the fuchsia colors of the volcanic mountainside against the gray smoke in the background.

Diego and I were together when he purchased it at an Art Basel show in Miami five years ago. However, at this moment, I can’t help but to recognize how deeply I relate to the image.

My life feels like a mix of the beautiful fuchsia—a wonderful family, finally getting my gallery off of the ground, a man who would move mountains for me. Yet, the billowing overhang of the dark smoke in the background—the way my life began that I can’t talk about with the one person I want to talk to about it with, my disastrous past that almost resulted in my best friend in jail, and my illness.

Diego takes me by the waist from behind. My back presses against his strong chest.

“Do you remember when I gave Johnathan Baker a bloody nose for teasing you about wearing a glucose monitor?” he asks.

I turn to face him because that was the last thing I expected him to say.

“We were in fourth grade.”

He nods. “You had come to Excelor Academy a few months earlier,” he says of the exclusive private school I started going to when my mom married my dad.

Johnathan, from what I remember, was a loud mouth boy who liked teasing girls he thought were an easy target. The day he first saw the glucose monitor attached to my arm I became one of his victims.

When he started teasing me, I didn’t say anything because I was frightened that he would recruit other kids to join him. That was my experience at my previous school. It got so bad that one day I decided to leave my extra insulin at home. I ended up in the emergency department and scared the hell out of my mother. Soon after, I got the continuous monitor.

“I hated bullies and I couldn’t stand that little prick,” Diego declares while tucking a few strands of my loose curls behind my ear.

I smirk.

“But what really pissed me off was the look on your face when I overheard him talking shit to you. I saw red.” He lifts and lowers one shoulder. “The two-week punishment I received from my parents was worth it. Because no one else dared to say anything about your diabetes after that.”

“You shouldn’t have gotten in trouble for me,” I mumble. I hate being reminded of the times he’s put himself on the line for me.

“I was pissed that anyone would dare to make fun of something so serious.” He takes my hand and leads me to the couch. After sitting, he pulls me to his lap.

My hands immediately go to his hair.

“What I never told you was that the week before that I overheard my dad telling my mom about the scene of a car accident he and his team worked. They had to pull the driver and her two-year-old daughter out of the car.”

I pull back and look down at him. Diego’s father is a firefighter. Back then, he was still working at Rescue Four, one of the most elite stations in the city. Today, his father is a deputy chief in the emergency operations sector of the department.

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