Melted & Shattered (15 page)

Donte was moving way slower than necessary to get the plate, but it wasn’t lost on me that he was offering me a look at the flat stomach that
was showing under his hiked up shirt. I looked. Fuck yeah, I looked. He was hot! My eyes crawled up his arms to his solid shoulders. He placed the plate on the counter and I emptied the bag’s contents onto it.

“You play ball, Donte?”

“Basketball.”

“Thought so,” I said, looking at him over the top of my glasses.

“Why’s that?”

A took a moment before answering, breaking up all the weed before I turned and squeezed his shoulders. “Your shoulders. Had to be either basketball or baseball. With your height, I was leaning toward basketball, but it’s never good to assume, you know.”

He grinned back at me. “No. Assumptions can be dangerous.”

“Indeed,” I replied with a wicked glint in my eye.

“Here you go.” Dylan passed me the cigar he had cut open and emptied out. I filled it with the nuggs I’d broken up, and made it a point to look Donte in the eye as I ran my tongue over the edges, wetting it so I could roll it and make it stick together.

Desire burned in his eyes. “See, I assumed you were a good girl when I met you. Those glasses are deceiving.”

I looked around as if seeing who else he might be referring to, feigning innocence. “Me? I am a good girl.”

“Sure ya are.” Donte’s smile filled up his face, and lit
up his eyes. They sparkled with dirty promises. Or maybe they just sparkled, and I was the one thinking of dirty things we could be doing.

“Chris, you wanna fire this up, girl?” Her and Dylan had been talking quietly and laughing together while I was seducing my Shemar Moore
look-alike.

Chris nodded and I passed her the blunt to light.

“You ladies want a beer?” Dylan asked.

Donte smacked Dylan. “Damn, way to be a good host. We’ve been here an hour and you’re just now offering these lovely ladies a drink.”

“Fuck you, bro. For that, you’re going into the basement to get them. And check your watch while you’re at it.”

Donte left Chris, Dylan, and I to go get beer. I was already interested to see what he’d bring back.

“So how do you guys know each other?” I asked Dylan, planting my hip against the counter.

“We go to school together.”

“State college?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“Elle goes there too,” Chris decided to chime in.

“Oh yeah, what for?”

“An education.”

Dylan laughed at me and turned to Chris. “Yep, just like you said.” The two laughed at some private joke I seemed to be the butt of. I did my best to give Chris dagger eyes like she used on me and the rest of the world so efficiently.

“Evasive,” was all she said to me. I couldn’t deny it. Clubbin’ Elle was evasive as hell.

Donte came up the stairs carrying two six packs of Coors Light. I
kept my disgust to myself. Donte passed Dylan and me a beer. Chris passed, pulling a half pint of Hennesey out of her purse.

“What the fuck? For real, Mary fucking Poppins. I swear that wasn’t in there when I looked for the weed.” Donte and Dylan looked at me like I was crazy. Oh no, I wasn’t the crazy one. “Chris has a Mary Poppins carpet purse. You never know what’s in there.” Chris just winked. She was so fucking coy.

We sipped. We smoked. We laughed. We played a few rounds of Dominoes at a beat up kitchen table in the dining room. We had fun. I felt more like my old self than I had in weeks. J was far from my mind, and Donte just kept getting hotter the more I drank and smoked.

We were all laughing at Dylan telling stories about some crazy chick that was stalking one of his absent roommates. I was holding my stomach from laughing so hard. “Shit, I think I might piss my pants. Where’s the restroom?” I said, wiping a tear from my eye that had escaped during the part about the chick breaking into their house and sitting on the couch waiting for the roommate to get home. Dylan found her, and ended up consoling her for an hour until the roommate finally c
ame back from the bar. I’d never be one of those crazy bitches.

“Here, I’ll show you.” Donte got up and lead me upstairs. “Dylan and I actually clean ou
r bathroom. The one on the main floor is questionable.”

“Questionable?”

Donte laughed when he said, “The last girl my roommate brought home used the word ‘unsanitary’ to describe it.”

“Oh shit!” I roared. “That is so fucking bad. She could have said dirty, nasty, gross, but unsanitary. That’s harsh, man.”

“No doubt.” We reached the top of the stair and Donte showed me into the bathroom that was in between his and Dylan’s bedrooms.

“I’ll be right down,” I told him.

I shut the door and stumbled a bit to the toilet. You know that feeling when you start to pee and it’s like the heavens open up and sing? That’s about how I felt. I might have even done an “ahhhhh.” I got myself together in the mirror. Washed my hands, and tried to get the stupid grin off my face before exiting the restroom. Eh, hair was holding up OK, makeup too. I squared my shoulders and reached for the door handle. I opened it to find Donte leaning up against the wall, hands behind his back, one ankle crossed over the other.

“I assumed you’d be downstairs,” I told him, moving slowly towards his sexy physique.

“I thought we already established how problematic assumptions can be.”

I started at his feet, and worked my eyes up his toned stomach, strong forearms, broad shoulders, and finally up to his chocolate eyes. They were lusty, dripping with desire. I took one more step forward until I was within reach of him. Like
lightning, he grabbed my arm and twirled me around. Now I was the one leaning against the wall, as he leaned in to whisper in my ear, “I assumed you wanted me to wait for you.”

Unlike the trembling pants J elicited from me, I was cool as a cucumber Elle with Donte. The old Elle. The pre-J, head a mess Elle. In a smooth voice I told him, “Maybe assumptions aren’t all bad.”

That was all it took for Donte’s hands to be in my hair, his lips on my neck, my ear, my chin, and finally my mouth. I didn’t hesitate to wrap my leg around him and pull him closer to me. My side twinged a bit at the movement, but I pushed the pain aside and grabbed the front of Donte’s shirt, pulling him aggressively towards me, shoving my mouth against his. He caught on quick and walked me backwards into his bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him.

It was like we were in a race to get each others’ clothes off. Hands were all over, shirts and pants thrown across the floor. The o
nly sound was our jagged breaths and zippers—boot zippers, pant zippers, hoodie zippers. Everything was off and we were naked in record time. My head was cloudy with lust as I shoved him down onto the bed. I grabbed his hands, lacing my fingers in his along either side of his head, and ground myself into him.

“Condom?” I breathed, ready for him to be inside me in that instant.

He flipped me over so I was on my back, and reached into his nightstand. I barely registered the sound of the package being torn open, let alone him wrapping himself up. He took fistfulls of my wild hair into both his hands and drove himself into me. Once fully impaled, he paused. Just the slightest pause. Maybe he was savoring it, enjoying the moment with a long exhaled sigh before he began to move. I don’t know how long he paused. I suddenly didn’t know anything—what I was doing, who the hell was on top of me, why I felt an emptiness inside me, deep inside me? And in that empty space, somewhere between my head and my heart, in that miniscule pause, a war broke out.

Battles were waged inside me as Donte began p
umping in and out. I groaned, or moaned, however you wanted to interpret it. He could think it was a moan of pleasure. He could imagine the noises coming from me were those of extreme, erotic, desire. He had no idea they were the sounds of a woman breaking, shattering inside, of swords colliding with one another. One sword held by my mind—telling me I was a fool, a stupid bitch to be thinking of J. The other sword gripped by my heart—a pile of shattered hopes for a man to love me, hold me, protect me. Hopes that I’d share adventures in life with a 6’5” Giant Hottie. Hopes that I’d found my
one
, the person who would be my forever. All of those hopes lay shattered in the recesses of my soul, while the man on top of me ejaculated, and I ooooh-ed and aaaaaah-ed at the appropriate times.

He rolled off, muttered something, to which I mumbled something back. He took the condom off, tied it up, and tossed into what I hoped was a trash can on the other side of his bed. I lay on my back as he threw his leg over me, and curled his body around mine. Staring at the ceiling, I asked myself
how in the hell did I get here?
In that moment, everything came back. Every moment J and I shared. Every tender word he whispered in my ear as I drifted off to sleep. Every sated smile he created on my face. Every fucking time he promised his love and devotion.

I swiped at the tears silently streaming out the corners of my eyes and down around my ears. Fuck. I waited a moment for Donte’s breathing to even out,
while taking deep breaths of my own, attempting to not freak out. Luckily, he passed out within moments of attaching himself to me. I slid my legs out from under him first. Gently, so gently, I eased my torso across the edge of the bed until I was sitting on the floor. I gathered my clothes from said floor and crept into the bathroom.

Looking in the mirror, I saw a woman I didn’t recognize. She wasn’t calm, cool, and collected. She wasn’t witty or coy. She wasn’t passionate, full of fire just beneath the surface of ice. No, she wasn’t anything like that. She wasn’t anyone I recognized. She was broken. I was broken. That mother fucker broke me.
No, no. I was a grown ass woman, and I allowed myself to break. I was responsible for my actions. I did this. I fucked up and let my heart be melted then shattered.

That thought was the last thread. I slid down the wall and let the tears
fall freely. I was broken and alone. Damnit, I wanted to scream, but couldn’t seem to catch my breath quick enough. The war inside me was taking the air I sucked into my mouth and reallocating it to some place other than my lungs. I felt suffocated. Shit, I was losing it and I didn’t know how to make it stop.

With my knees against my chest and my head between them, in only my jeans and bra, I gave up.
I clutched my shirt and sobbed, I had no more fight left. Any strength I thought I built up since I’d seen J was gone, was lost in the war waging inside me.

“Elle?” I blinked a few times
at the sound of my name. “Girl, are you in there?”

I heaved a breath, trying to get enough air to respond
, but came up empty. The door creaked open, and I saw Chris peek around it.

“Oh
God.” Chris came to me, locking the door behind her. “Baby girl, I got ya. It’s gonna be OK.”

She wrapped her arms around me. I couldn’t move other th
an to lay my head on her arm and soak her shirt in tears. I don’t know how long we stayed like this, crying, rocking, shaking. Eventually, my lungs filled with air, and I realized I was half naked on the bathroom floor of some dude’s house.

“Fuck. What have I done?” I looked to Chris
for some magical response that would provide some sense to this whole situation. I should’ve known better.

“Besides get snot on my favorite shirt, I think you just had a panic attack.”

I gave a half-hearted laugh. “Thanks. I’ll get you a new shirt.”

“Fuck the shirt, Elle. Get me my girl back.”

With despondent eyes I told her honestly, “I don’t think I can. She’s gone. All you’ve got is broken me.”

“Oh, you’re not broken,
just a little dented. Come on, let’s get you dressed and dip outta here.” She dug through some drawers in the bathroom to find a washcloth. Holding it up, she asked, “Risk it?” I nodded. Chris wet the questionable wash cloth and handed it to me. “Get dressed and meet me in the truck.” She passed me the keys from her Mary Poppins purse, and left me to get myself together.

After I’d pulled it together as best I could, I gingerly pried the bathroom door open, hoping Donte was still passed out
, and that I could avoid his roommate. I heard Chris across the hall, behind the door I assumed was Dylan’s room. God, I hoped she wasn’t telling him what had happened. Fuck, I hoped Donte didn’t know what happened. Before I launched into another meltdown, I hauled ass downstairs. As soon as I got outside, I lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Fuck. This was a nightmare. How did the night go downhill so quick? Like a strike of lightning, how did one pause throw me into a tailspin?

I looked up at the stars. “I thought you were gonna line up for me.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. “Bitches,” I mumbled at the stars.
They must've been a jumbled mess up there, anything but lined up based on what had just gone down.

I was putting my cigarette out when Chris exited the house of sex and panic attacks. She drove me to my house in silence. I could’ve said something, thanked her, but nothing really mattered to me in that moment. I wasn’t packing light anymore. In fact, I think I exceeded Delta’s weight regulations by a thousand pounds. I was dragging a full set of luggage, with a carry-on and backpack inside me. I just wanted to get home, get in the shower, sink to the floor, and cry. Cry for it all—J, my love for him, him asking me to wait, whatever dangerous plan that could take his life, Genesis, her love for Fernie, those fucking letters, Fernie being deported and separated from his parents. I wanted to huddle in my shower and cry for it all.