Exposed (Free Falling)

by Raven St. Pierre

I stood there staring at him, feeling torn. His green eyes flickered between having hope that I’d agree and fearing that I’d turn him down again. “Please, baby.”

  I folded my arms over my chest and let out a breath. “I’ll let you know,” was all I said in response. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”

  Jason continued to stand there for a moment, like he wanted to plead his case longer, but the unwavering expression on my face warned him not to even bother. Defeated, he stepped aside and let me pass. I pressed the button for the elevator to come and was glad that he knew to wait for the next. The two of us in an enclosed space like that wouldn’t have been ideal. I glared at him through the sliver of space between the closing doors, still not believing how he played me.

  I detoxed my mood while I shopped for the ingredients for dinner, not wanting AJ to know anything was amiss. Thus far, I managed to avoid telling him that Jason and I were on the outs. It seemed messy to share the nitty-gritty details of my relationship with him, which was why I gave such a general response when he inquired about Jason the night before. It seemed like AJ had the same idea, keeping his relationship with Kira out of our conversation aside from when I asked about her for the sake of being polite.

  Combing the aisles, thinking about the conversation AJ and I had the night before, I tried to decide what to cook. Whatever I was going to make would have to be quick because I didn’t have much time. He was due at my apartment by 7:30, which only left me two hours to get home, cook, shower again, and straighten up a little. Deciding to make baked chicken, asparagus, and au gratin potatoes, I headed for the register after adding a pack of dinner rolls too.

  I paid, sat impatiently through the ten minute cab ride, and then rushed up to my apartment to get started. Rushing around like a mad woman, I managed to get the chicken in the oven and the sides prepped before hitting the shower. When I was finished, I put on something more casual since we’d be staying in. I grabbed a pair of stretch pants from my pajama drawer and a black tank top to go under a pink cotton shirt that hung way off the shoulder and stopped at the top of my thighs. I stuck my feet inside my fuzzy, black slippers and went to check the chicken. I’d just managed to get the sides going when I heard a knock at the door at exactly 7:30 on the dot. A smile crossed my face, knowing who would be on the other side of the threshold when I answered.

  AJ greeted me with a warm smile and I couldn’t help but to give him a onceover before stepping aside to let him in.

  “Wow, something smells good,” were the first words he spoke.

  “Hello to you too!” I laughed - yeah, he missed eating real food. “It shouldn’t be too much longer; half hour max.”

  He handed over a bottle of wine that I couldn’t even pronounce the name of. “Thank you.”

  While I disappeared in the kitchen to set the bottle down, I heard AJ take a seat on the couch. When I returned, I explained why my place was so empty.

  “Ok, so, it usually doesn’t look like this in here, I promise. I just have to replace a few things since Angel left.”

  He laughed and leaned back, getting more comfortable. “I’m in no position to judge. I spend my nights on an air mattress, so…”

  I cringed. “You win. That has to be murder on your back after a while, doesn’t it?” I took a seat on the other end of the sofa and propped my feet up on the ottoman.

  “It could stand to be more comfortable,” he said with a smile.

  I realized I was staring again and looked away quickly. “How was work?” I asked.

  He shrugged and sighed at the same time. “Eh…fine I guess. I’m just looking forward to the day that things run more smoothly. I have to stay late tomorrow, so that should be fun.”

  “I hate days like that. My boss dropped a project in my lap last Thursday that needed to be finished by Monday. I had to stay until almost midnight to get it together so it wouldn’t throw me off schedule with everything else I had on my plate.”

  “Have you ever thought about branching off on your own?” He asked.

  I smiled. “I have, but I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. Maybe in a few years. Stepping out right now would be career suicide.”

  He nodded in agreement. “That sounds like the exact same thing I told my father.”

  I checked the time to see how much longer the chicken had, and then asked, “You didn’t want the promotion?”

  He shrugged again. “Wanting it and being ready for it are two totally different things. I would’ve seen myself in my current position a decade from now, not at twenty-four with two years of experience under my belt. I mean, thank God I haven’t screwed anything up yet, but it’s still too early to tell,” he chuckled.

  I waved him off. “You’ll be fine. If your dad didn’t think you could handle it, he wouldn’t have sent you here.” When I looked at AJ again, he was already watching me. I felt my face heat up and a nervous smile broke free. I had to look away to control it.

  “You know what? I think I’ll have a glass of wine now,” I announced as I stood to my feet. I looked back over my shoulder to ask AJ if he’d like one as well, but paused when I caught him staring at my behind while he thought I wasn’t looking. I blushed even harder and cleared my throat. “Umm…would you like me to bring you a glass too?”

  He looked up into my eyes and realized he’d been caught. The corner of his mouth hitched up into a slick smile and he nodded. “Yes…please.”

  I smiled back and went to the kitchen. When I got there, I braced myself against the counter for a few seconds while my stomach fluttered. The tension between us was unreal. Be it sexual or otherwise, I couldn’t tell, but it was heavy and I needed a break. Once the feeling dwindled a little, I returned with two filled glasses in my hands and the bottle tucked underneath my arm.

  “The whole bottle, huh? You tryna get me drunk?” he joked.

  Another smile broke free. “Actually, I just know I’m gonna want more than one glass.”

  Because you have my nerves going haywire just by sitting next to you.

  He accepted his glass and took a sip while I reclaimed my seat beside him. I put my feet back on the ottoman and was getting ready to drink when AJ’s phone sounded off. My eyes shifted to him and then back down to my glass.

  He stared at the screen and deliberated about whether or not to answer for so long that I knew who it was without even having to ask – Kira. I was just getting ready to tell him that he could take the call in my bedroom if he needed privacy, but he answered too quickly for me to get the words out.

  “Hey,” he said, sounding far calmer than I would have in his situation. I mean, granted, we weren’t doing anything wrong, but still; I was pretty sure Kira wouldn’t approve of us hanging out.

  With the volume on AJ’s phone relatively high, I heard Kira’s response to AJ’s greeting without having to strain. “Hey! Still at work?” She asked.

  “Yeah….I’ll probably be stuck here for another couple hours,” he lied. I couldn’t help but to turn and stare at him full-on now. When our eyes locked for a brief moment, he quickly dropped his gaze to the floor.

  Trying my best to give him some privacy, I turned away and sipped more of my wine. He and Kira exchanged a few more words before she let him go and then the two of us were plunged into silence. I didn’t even look over in his direction.

  “Sorry about that,” he said with a sigh, leaning forward to place his phone on the coffee table.

  “No big deal,” I answered, waving him off casually.

  But it kind of was…

  My eyes were fixed intently on him, thinking about the way he just had to lie to even do something as innocent as sit on my couch and have a conversation. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I mean, yeah, it seemed like the stars had aligned to get us to this point, but thinking about it left me feeling somewhat torn. I was pretty sure that, like me, AJ had no intention for anything physical going down between us; however, Kira would never believe that and I didn’t want AJ to ruin his
relationship because of me. After the things I’d done in the past, the way I broke his heart, I didn’t have a right to interfere with his shot at happiness.

  When I set my glass down, I had AJ’s full attention – maybe the look on my face alerted him that something was wrong. I started my sentence a couple times and had to stop. I absolutely did not want him to leave…but it wasn’t about me.

  I cleared my throat one final time and just blurted it out. “Are you sure it’s okay that you’re here with me?” I paused while he shot me a bewildered look. “You’re risking a lot, and I’m not sure if kicking it with me over expensive wine and store-bought dinner rolls is worth it,” I added with a nervous laugh.

  The silence that followed my statement was deafening. AJ stared for a few seconds and took a deep breath when he looked down at the floor.

  “To be completely honest, I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing here tonight, or why I came to see you yesterday, or why I even asked you to call,” he admitted.

  I held my breath while he organized his thoughts.

  He shook his head and his expression became hard to read. “I know what’s at stake, Sam, but I’m here anyway,” he stated clearly. “And I think that says it all.”

  It absolutely did.

  He took a while to speak again and I got lost in my thoughts while I waited. “I’ve never forgotten what it was like – being with you, spending time with you…..loving you.” He paused again and stared at the floor when he continued. “Call me crazy, but I miss it all. For some reason, no matter how hard I’ve tried, no matter how wrong I know it is, or what I know I’m in danger of losing…I can’t seem to make myself stop wanting to be around you.”

  My limbs went numb and if I’d still been holding my glass of wine, I would’ve certainly dropped it after hearing that. “Wow,” I said under my breath. That was the only word I could think to say.

  “Am I making you uncomfortable?” He asked.

  He was, but not in a bad way. A cool sheen of sweat broke out on my face and I had to cross my legs tight to quench the tingly sensation that AJ’s words had induced. “No, I’m not uncomfortable, just surprised.”

  “Surprised?”

  I shrugged. “I suppose I just wasn’t expecting you to say all that.”

  I met AJ’s gaze, immediately regretting making eye contact with him at all when I got trapped in his stare and that devilishly sexy smile of his.

  “You don’t feel it, too?” He asked.

  He already knew the answer to that, but wanted me to own it. I smiled back and shook my head at him, being both coy and cautious when I asked, “Feel what?”

  The smile on his lips turned into a sultry laugh that intensified the surge of heat between my legs. He had no intention of answering as he looked me over from head to toe, not bothering to hide it this time. The stove timer went off and I snapped out of his trance.

  “I should get that,” I said, rushing off to the kitchen, clumsily – bumped my knee on the coffee table and everything. When I was alone, I paced a small section of floor that was out of AJ’s line of sight from the living room. Fanning myself, I tried to keep my head clear. It wasn’t like we were about to pursue these feelings, but by acknowledging that they existed, AJ opened a can of worms that was notoriously hard for the two of us to close. The sound of his footsteps at the entrance of the kitchen made me look up. It was too late to pretend like I wasn’t in there trying to recover from the things he’d said; I was practically wringing my hands together while I wore a path in the floor.

  AJ leaned against the archway and stared. “Listen, if I said something wrong, I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward around me. I’m not looking for anything to come out of us spending time together. I just meant to say that I enjoy it – having you around again.”

  That actually was not all he said, but clearly he was trying to backtrack his statement, dial it down a notch because he thought he’d scared me off. In fact, his admission had the exact opposite effect. He hadn’t scared me off; if anything, I now felt the pull toward him intensify tenfold.

  “You didn’t say anything wrong. I’m just…thinking,” was all I offered up in response. I forced my feet to stop moving and turned to open the oven, trying to calm my nerves a bit. I grabbed the mitt and started setting the food out on the counter.

  My head was all over the place, making it hard to focus on what I was doing. When I grabbed the pan of chicken clumsily, it almost slipped right out of my shaky grasp. AJ moved in closer just as I set it on the stovetop, thinking I’d need his help. I turned in his direction to say that I was fine, but when I did, we were standing face to face, with only an inch or two between us. A breath hitched in my throat. He froze too, staring down from the nine inches of height that he had over me.

  “I-I think I have it,” I managed to breathe, praying that he’d back up. When he didn’t, my brain tried to instruct my feet to step away, but they weren’t cooperating either. We were close. Too close. AJ made this realization certain when his eyes drifted down to my lips, causing mine to literally throb with anticipation of what it would feel like to kiss him after all this time. The sound of his phone ringing on the coffee table where he’d left it snatched me back to reality and I was finally able to take that step away from him.

  “You should probably get that,” I said in a low voice.

  AJ stared down on me for a few seconds, as if he’d ignore the call altogether. I watched, panting as he finally left me to go answer. While I caught my breath, I finished removing the rest of the food from the oven and tried to force my heart into submission.

  You can’t have him Sam. You can’t have him…

  I listened to AJ on the phone in the other room while reciting these words in my head on a loop.

  “Hello?” he answered. “A little. Why what’s up?” There was a pause and then he laughed. “You’re relentless, you know that?”

  It didn’t sound like he was talking to Kira this time, but I tried to force myself not to care if it was her or not. Didn’t work.

  The sound of AJ’s footsteps returning to the kitchen made me tense, but I tried to play it off. I was painfully aware of his stare when he leaned against the side of the archway again, finishing his conversation while he watched me get plates down from the cabinet. After grabbing silverware for the both of us, I flashed him a tight smile as I passed by on my way out to the dining room table. He said a few last words to the caller and then hung up before abandoning his post to retrieve our glasses and the bottle of wine from the living room. Setting them down on the table, his eyes were locked on mine as he took the seat across from me.

  “That was Terrell,” he explained. “He’s been hell-bent on getting the two of us talking since before I even moved here. But something tells me you probably get the same nagging phone calls that I get.”

  I smiled and cut my chicken into bite-size pieces. “Almost daily.”

  AJ chuckled and refilled both of our glasses.

  “Are you gonna tell him that we’re, you know…hanging out?” I asked, curious as to just how big a secret this was supposed to be.

  Hanging out? Was that even the right phrase? Were we homies now?

  AJ shrugged. “I started to say something just now actually, but I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about him knowing.”

  As far as I was concerned, we had nothing to hide. Well, I didn’t anyway….but I wasn’t the one with a fiancé. “It’s cool with me,” I shrugged. “As hard as he’s been trying to ‘fix’ us, it almost seems cruel to keep him in the dark.” Imagining how genuinely excited Terrell would be that AJ and I reconnected brought a smile to my face. He’d been pulling for us this whole time, not letting the fact that five years passed diminish the hope he had that AJ and I could at least be friends again one day.

  I took a bite and then realized that AJ was staring at me. Before it became a ‘thing’ I tore my eyes away and continued to eat.

  “Next time we talk, I’ll tell him,”
he said casually before tasting his food.

  I nodded and then forced myself to look back down at my plate. In fact, that’s pretty much how the rest of the meal went. Aside from a few casual words being exchanged, we ate in silence. When we finished, AJ insisted on helping with the dishes just like he had every time I could recall him eating dinner at my parent’s home in Virginia. It brought back so many memories as I stood there beside him at the kitchen sink.

  He passed me the soap-coated pan I’d baked the chicken in and my fingers slipped over his when I took it to rinse. Feeling his persistent stare, I glanced up to find his eyes locked on his initials on my wrist.

  “Does he ever give you a hard time about that?” AJ asked, referring to Jason.

  I sprayed the pan and shrugged my shoulders. He’s brought it up once or twice, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue.” I looked up at the dark letters on AJ’s neck and imagined that his tattoo was probably a bit harder to ignore than mine. “What about Kira? Does she ever bring it up?”

  AJ laughed and nodded right away. “More lately, but it’s always been an issue.”

  “Of course it is!” I couldn’t help but to laugh. “I’m surprised she hasn’t made you cover it by now. How long have you two been together?”

  “Three years.”

  I thought about his previous statement. “Wait…more now? Since the wedding, you mean?”

  He nodded, still smiling a little. “Yeah. I think seeing you may have made her a little more vigilant about getting me to remove it.”

  I fell silent, trying to imagine how she must feel when she sees another woman’s name on her fiancé’s neck.

  “It didn’t matter a whole lot while she and I were still in the ‘friends’ phase and prior to the engagement she suggested that I remove it on occasion. But now?” he added with a weak smile. “She’s mentioned making the appointment herself.”

  The only sound in the room was that of the water sloshing around in the sink while AJ dug for the last remaining silverware. I found myself curious as to how much he’d actually told Kira about our past. Jason knew it all, but I wasn’t sure if AJ had taken the same ‘full disclosure’ approach that I had.