Better Than Your Ex

by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson

  “How?”

  “The scars Zion left will never go away. The memory of her will never go away. You’ll walk in a room, and he’ll be there, and you’ll just know she’s on his mind. Not like he’s pining for her. It’s just a road he has to walk sometimes. Let him walk it.” He braced his elbows on his knees. “And set up some boundaries for yourself. Figure out how much is okay for you. How much you can let slide and how much is too much before you have to get away and take care of you. Don’t ever stop taking care of you.”

  “I-I can do that?”

  “Without boundaries how do you stop yourself from becoming the next victim?”

  “Wow. That was way more profound than I expected it to be.”

  He laughed and shrugged. “You can do this thing however you want. I lucked out. I got to make sure Domingo never walks again. You’ll find something that works for you.”

  “I think I already have,” I said.

  He nodded and let me wander off. I eventually found my way to my car and thought it was time to go see Cahir.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cahir

  I used to call myself patient, willing to lie in wait for what I wanted until it was there, right there and so easy to come by it wouldn’t make sense not to go for it. I used to say I had tenacity.

  I spent a week feeling like a fucking coward. Again. I could see it. It was all over Cash. She had something to say. Something that would change things. Something that would twist and turn us into something new all over again. I knew and didn’t say a word. Let her sit on it. Simmer with it. Prayed against all hope that she would say something when she was ready and I wouldn’t have to drag it out of her.

  We watched a movie, a scary one for her. In the middle of the day for me. She laughed and I jumped which made her laugh harder and made things seem more right between us. Comfortable. I missed that when she was gone. It wasn’t until I had her that I realized I’d never been really comfortable with anyone in my life.

  “Can we talk about something?”

  I took a deep breath and grinned like I wasn’t strung tighter than a racist at a Black Lives Matter rally. “Whatever you want.”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about what your future is going to look like. When the baby comes. And where I want to be in it.” She turned on the sofa until she faced me. A tangle of limbs and a crown of curls.

  “Okay.”

  “And what I’m about to propose is kind of terrifying. Why are you smiling?”

  I shook my head. “Say it.”

  “I know you. At least I think I do.”

  “You know me.”

  “Okay.” She laughed a little. “You say that Zion isn’t going to raise your kid. She isn’t going to be your kid’s mother. But you’ve never said that your kid won’t have a mother.”

  So she had been paying attention.

  “I knew what you meant. The first time you said it, I knew what you meant. I knew what you wanted. And I thought you’d lost your fucking mind.”

  I nodded. If I were her, I would have thought the same thing.

  “You-The elevator broke something in me. Or it broke something about who I thought we were to each other. Who I thought we were together.” She tilted her head. “I’ve forgiven you for it. Because I know you understand. But that doesn’t mean I’m better. Not all the way.”

  When I reached out, she put her hand in mine. It didn’t fix everything, it didn’t fix anything, but it soothed me and that was enough in the moment.

  “I just-” She shook her head and laughed. “I’m going to love you for the rest of my life. I can see that. You’re going to be more than a friend to me. You’re going to be family. So, it terrifies the shit out of me, but I want to do this with you. I want to raise that baby with you.”

  Maybe I moved too fast when I snatched her from her spot on the sofa and into my lap. My hands might have pulled too hard on her hair. I might have bit instead of kissed. But she was there, and she was going to be the mother of my baby. She was going to help me build a family. Something I could be proud of.

  “Cahir.” She turned her face. That was fine. There was her ear. Her neck. “Stop.”

  I went still. When she pushed against my arms, I let them fall. She stood.

  “I want the baby. I want to raise the baby with you. But relationship…I’m not ready to be the nuclear family and be a married couple or even be back in a relationship with you. I’m not. The broken parts aren’t fixed yet.”

  I stared at her.

  “Cahir, did you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You’re not ready to be in a relationship with me again.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  She just stood there. Wrung her hands and bit the corner of her lip. She was adorable.

  “Why are you still wearing clothes?”

  She burst into laughter and pulled her shirt over her head.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cassidy

  Not a relationship. But there was love between us, and I didn’t know why I denied myself. He kissed me before the laughter died on my lips. Swallowed it and the sigh that followed and then my feet weren’t on the ground. It did something to me every time he picked me up and moved with me as if I weighed nothing.

  Mouth on mine. His mouth never left mine. Even when he whispered that he loved me. That I’d made him so happy. That he was going to fuck me in ways that embarrassed me in the morning.

  God, yes.

  His hands dove deep down the back of my pants to grip my ass. To squeeze and scratch lines that would leave heat and red marks behind. I welcomed it. Threw my head back and closed my eyes to embrace it. He bit my neck. My shoulders. He set me on my feet.

  My clothes were gone. So were his. Middle of the day and I couldn’t see where my clothes had gone. I couldn’t see at all. I could only hear. And feel.

  “Can I tell you the truth?” He didn’t wait for my response. He was smart enough to know I couldn’t find my words. “The happier you make me the more I want to hurt you.”

  I felt wetness slide and dance an uneven path down my thigh.

  “Can I hurt you a little? Surprise you?”

  My head was on his shoulder. I nodded.

  “I need to hear you say yes, Cash.” His tongue traced the shell of my ear. “I’m going to need to hear it a lot.”

  “Yes.” I didn’t recognize my own voice.

  I didn’t recognize his bed though I’d spent so many nights in it. That was a gift of his. He could twist my desire and his voice to make the world a brand new place that I didn’t want to explore because I was so wrapped up in him.

  He spread me wide, wider than I thought my legs would go, then put my hands on my knees. “Hold them.”

  I heard the nightstand drawers open and smiled. I bought some things. Threw them in beside the condoms.

  “I like that you bought these.” Buzzing noises filled my ears. He dragged a vibrator down my chest and let it rest on my stomach. “I don’t know how much you will.”

  He slid a finger inside me and then in my mouth. Moaned when I cleaned every trace of myself from his finger and said, “More, please.”

  He always gave me what I wanted.

  The vibrator slid inside me. Thought that would be it. It was enough. A fat, curved thing that pressed and nudged into my G-spot with an insistence that surprised me. I thought I would get comfortable with it. Then his hand came down on my clit.

  My body jumped like it’d been electrocuted. Twisted and arched and my legs tried to close because his mouth was where his hands had been. His mouth wasn’t what I knew it to be- insistent but always gentle. In the past it brought only pleasure. Always.

  That was beyond too much. It was uncomfortable. Where there should have been only pleasure he introduced pain. He made me twist, and push, and reach, and the moment the pain felt like it could morph into something close to a friend there was his hand.
And when I eased into the electricity that came with his hand when it connected to my clit over and over again, he used his fingers.

  Deaf, blind, almost mute. There was only his name to say. Growl. Pant. Moan. I pleaded and promised with it. I tried to barter and found he’d already taken everything I would have offered.

  Cool air clung to the sweat on my body, to the tears that pooled in and around my ears. It did nothing to quench the dryness in my throat. His sheets stuck to my back, rose and fell when I did as if convinced their new purpose was to be my second skin. And it was the middle of the day. I knew it was the middle of the day. And I knew everything around me was dark.

  I thought he would stop. I thought he would have to. Eventually I would drown him. Instead he added his teeth to the torture and I gave up screaming. I howled.

  “There it is.” His mouth was gone. The vibrator.

  I throbbed. Pussy, clit, legs, hands. The muscles in my back and thighs. God. God. Then he pinched my clit one more time and I rose off that bed. Proved that soreness and sweat and burned vocal chords and parched, dry mouths didn’t matter as much as doing what Cahir said.

  He was inside me. It wasn’t slow like it normally was. He always gave me time. To adjust. To savor. Then he surprised me. He always held a little of himself back to surprise me with. Sometimes I thought he did it to humble me. The thought always curled my toes and made me wetter for him.

  That time, there was no time, no surprise. He gave me all of him at once and made sure I knew. His hand behind my neck pulled me forward, curled me in on myself so I could see the way my body took him, could see his hips grind into me.

  He kept that hand on my neck until I propped myself up on my elbows. Every time I tried to look at him, to feel like I was still with him despite how new it all was, he pushed my head back down.

  “Pay attention,” he said.

  So I did. To the way my body moved closer to his to accept his punishing pace. To how I sounded, how he sounded, how we sounded together. To the way my hands held my knees back, and his fingers squeezed into my thighs.

  He trailed a finger over my clit. I hissed.

  He smiled. “Does it hurt?”

  I nodded.

  “Say it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hurt it some more.”

  “Cahir-”

  “Good. You know my name, and you heard what I said. Do it. Before I do.”

  My lightest touch hurt. And it left me wishing for more. I rubbed circles, figure 8’s, traced stars. And I cried. Because it all felt so good. I sobbed with it. And he leaned close to me:

  “You’re so beautiful like this.”

  “Pretty girl. Pretty Cash.”

  “Your tears taste almost as good as your pussy.”

  That was when I exploded. When I lost it. My God. Fucking God.

  Cassidy

  He held me until my tears subsided. He gave me water and wiped my body with a warm cloth. And when I enjoyed that too much he put me in his shower, on the bench, and turned on the steam settings. My body melted.

  He washed me. My hair. Conditioned and detangled it. I taught him how. I didn’t teach him how to be soft with me. Gentle. I had to hold back tears for a different reason.

  He wrapped me in towels and then his shirt and that was better. I collected those shirts and wore them. Believed they were never-ending hugs from him. He knew. He had to. He saw everything else I did. He understood it before I did.

  We laid in his bed and just breathed together. We twined hand and legs and feet around each other and smiled. He brought us food when my stomach growled. I turned on music when I knew it wouldn’t offend the silence or break the moment. We used the shadows to track the hours that slipped away from us. It was perfect.

  Then he started talking.

  He smiled at me and tangled his fingers in my curls as he talked about the house we would buy. Or a condo even. That would be okay as long as there was some green space. The car I would need. He wanted to buy me a new car anyways, and what did I think of Range Rovers? Would I prefer a driver? And the trust fund. The baby would need a trust fund. A college fund. His parents wanted to handle the college fund but he didn’t know how I felt about it. How did I feel about it?

  I didn’t have to open my mouth to answer. He asked about baby proofing and what I thought my grandmother would say. Shit. Gran. My parents.

  Private or public schools? Home school? A nanny? What other languages should the baby learn? What books should we read to it? What were his favorite books as a baby? He’d have to call his mother.

  I laid there with him as night deepened around us and wondered if Cahir were just deaf or if he was dumb too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cassidy

  Gran was surrounded by flowers when I walked into the back room of her store. “I wondered when you would get here.”

  “When I was needed,” I said and stepped around buckets and pails to get to her and lay a kiss on her cheek.

  She snorted. “Sometimes you open your mouth and my words come out.”

  “You said it was how I would know I was a grown woman.”

  “Imagine my horror when I opened my mouth and my mother’s opinion came flying out.”

  We both laughed.

  “We’re drying these,” she said.

  I sat with her on her work bench and helped her gather handfuls of lavender, then marigold, then echinacea, yarrow, and cornflower together and wrap them with twine. They would hang from the ceiling of the shop until they were dry and find their way into lotions, oils, teas, little bags to slide under a pillow or wear beneath a shirt.

  She hummed as we worked. Songs that must have had lyrics but that I never heard. When humming wasn’t enough she opened her mouth to let the sound come through and that was better. That was home in a deep down way that no other place or moment had been until Cahir came.

  “I’m going to be a mother,” I said.

  “You’re not pregnant.”

  “No.” I laughed.

  “And so?”

  I told her the story. From beginning to end. And I never worried if it would be okay or if she would judge me because she never once stopped her humming.

  “And so?”

  I laughed again. Everything had to have a point with Gran. “And so I’m crazy, right? I’m agreeing to have a child with a man I’m not sure I can be in a relationship with.”

  “What is a family?”

  “Huh?”

  “What is a family?”

  “People that-” I stopped. I wanted to say people that were related to each other. But I was adopting. Blood wasn’t going to link me to my child. It didn’t have to. “People that…”

  “I think that life has been about the choices. When your grandfather passed on, Sylvia and Annette made the decision to move in close to me. They became as much mother to your father and uncles as I was.” She waited for me to acknowledge the women I called and believed were my aunties, pillars of my family. “Your grandfather’s brothers and sisters and cousins came in close to me.”

  I nodded. My and Gran’s house were always full. I was dizzy with it sometimes. And I learned not to ask who was my “real” relative, how we were related. “Family is family, ain’t it?” Dozens of cousins without knowing if they really were. I only knew I was expected to fight if they did. To defend them until I fell.

  “Those women you work with. They call themselves sisters and have only known each other as adults. But are they wrong?”

  I didn’t bother to answer something so obvious.

  “I think you have to think too about what it means to be a mother. To be a good mother. Is that about the romantic relationship you have with the father? Do you have to be romantically tied to the father? Or respect him? Agree with him to love your child?”

  She left me with the questions and hummed for us. We gathered so many flowers around and between us that I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t see the door or the floor.

 
She stood when we were finished and raised her arms high above her head. “Thank you, baby. Maybe next time you come we’ll talk about what’s really bothering you.”

  I was supposed to laugh. I couldn’t. I went to my apartment, laid across my bed, and knew sleep wasn’t coming.

  Cahir

  I wanted every minute of every day to involve her and knew it was crazy. Crazy to want it and crazier to fight it. She let me come close. She let me talk, dream. Sometimes she smiled. Others she laughed. When I dreamed, it was rare that she talked.

  She talked about the elevator. Cross-legged on my couch she talked about how she lost her friend a split second before she lost her lover and how new that was for her. She talked about how pride was what gave her the strength to walk and talk and hear. Pride and a little ego maybe.

  “I remember I thought ‘Of course. Of course she’s pregnant. They can’t have a love story that ends. She can’t just let him be mine.”

  She gave a little laugh. When she talked about the elevator, when her eyes slipped from mine to stare a memory down, I never smiled. I never laughed. I listened.

  I never apologized. Not after the first time. She knew. She knew every other thought I had. She didn’t need to know that my grief and regret for hurting her traveled with me everywhere. Tucked in my wallet. Nestled among my keys. Shuffled in with work papers and proposals.

  I listened. When she was quiet, I was. When she waited, I spoke.

  I gave her an apology. To give her another would be condescending. Would be empty. What would she do with words she already had? How would they heal the wounds she tore open for me to examine the truth of?

  I talked about Zion. The reality of her and me and our relationship and why it was over. Why I couldn’t go back. Why it wasn’t really a love story.

  “Love doesn’t drown you. Love doesn’t leave you wondering where in the fuck all the air is and when you’re gonna get back to it. Love isn’t hiding or deciding not to talk or that you’re just going to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.” I took a deep breath. “Love isn’t what happened in that elevator.”