Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
People talk about the stages of grief, but there is a stage of depression—at least for me—where you go from feeling pain so acutely you can’t bear it, to feeling nothing at all. A blessed numbness after debilitating sadness. It’s like laying a thin film of steel over your emotions. So thin it’s diaphanous. You can see everything through it, but nothing actually touches you. I couldn’t feel a thing, but I embraced it because at least I wasn’t feeling pain. At that time, joy didn’t stand a chance, but tonight I feel everything. And it is finally good.
Even after the song ends and Tony! Toni! Toné! has done it again, the laughter doesn’t leave us. It bubbles up in me as surely as the water gurgles in the fountain. I glance over to the DJ, planning to give him a thumbs-up, and am surprised to see Josiah standing beside him, arms folded, a slight smile on his face when his eyes meet mine.
He was standing there when Hendrix said how much she loved this song. Did he…
I do the sign for “Thank you,” touching my chin and dropping my hand. When the kids were young, before they could talk, we taught them a few basic signs. It’s been years since I used it, but it was our shorthand in meetings, across crowded rooms. Josiah’s smile glitches just the tiniest bit. No one would notice, but I do because even though we aren’t married anymore, I’ve had years to learn the physiognomy of this man’s features. After a pause so slight it’s almost undetectable, he signs “You’re welcome.”
I’m still smiling when Vashti walks up beside him, tugging his sleeve. For just a second, he doesn’t look away. My smile starts to fade, and Kassim tugs on my sleeve, reminding me about Madden and Jamal. Deja’s back on her phone, her bottom lip slightly poked out. It was nice while it lasted, and even though the song has ended and the droplets are already drying on my skin, I hold that moment of joy close. When I look back to the DJ booth, prepared to sign to Josiah that we’re leaving, the spot where he and Vashti stood is empty.
He’s already gone.
Chapter Four
Josiah
I’m awakened by a warm tongue stroking across my skin like velvet.
I pry one eye open, dragging myself up from the pillows and thread count that dreams are made of to glare at the edge of the bed. Otis, of course, has pulled back the sheet with his teeth and is licking my foot like he does every morning.
“Dude, seriously?” I glance out the window, where the sky is still lavender tinged with pink, barely kissing dawn. “Can’t we sleep in a few more minutes?”
The pitiful whimper at the foot of the bed becomes a whine. I know this drill. If that bladder gets any fuller, he will escalate to a full-on howl.
“Shit.” I sit up, slide my feet into the leather slippers Deja and Kassim gave me last year for Christmas. I know Yasmen probably chose them because they bear the mark of the practical luxury she’s good for, but they’re still from my kids.
“Replacing the ones you mangled,” I remind Otis, who doesn’t look repentant in the least. I tap his head on my way out of the bedroom, and he follows me down the stairs and out the front door. Any hope I had of ever shaking this dog died long ago. He demonstrated his tenacity the first night I slept in this house.
The divorce wasn’t quite final, but I needed a place to live. Instead of finding another tenant for Aunt Byrd’s house, I moved in here. Of course, we all assumed Otis would stay with the kids. They walked him, fed him, played with him. I provided a roof over his head and the occasional acknowledgment of his existence.
I was considering the huge TV mounted on one of four blank walls, not even bothering to turn it on because who cares about Netflix when your life has been incinerated and everyone you love lives two streets over now…when my phone rang. It was jarring in that new all by myself quiet I hadn’t experienced since before I married.
Yasmen’s name and face flashed up on my screen. And for one wild moment, my heart banged in my chest. Had she changed her mind? Realized our divorce was a horrible mistake? As irrational as I knew that line of thinking was, I answered the phone with a pulse that refused to stop leaping.
“Yas, hey. Everything okay?”
You need me? You want me? Should I come home?
“I think Otis wants you.”
It was the most disorienting thing she could have said to me at two o’clock in the morning.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry. What?”
“O-tis.” Yasmen broke it down into small bites I could digest. “He won’t stop howling. He’s standing at your side of the bed resting his head on your actual pillow.”