Page 4 of Divine Sense
“Magnolia, I demand you to stop laughing this instant!” Daniel shouted at me, pounding a fist into the mattress. I stood up again, set my shoulders back, and took a few steps closer to the bed and watched as he swallowed hard.
I leaned over the bed and looked at him with a stoned expression before speaking. “You are a very sad man, Daniel. I hope you know just how much you’re losing when you watch me walk out that door and never come back. Stay well, and don’t worry, that embarrassing little story of when you got your dick stuck in your penis pump is safe with me. It would beawfullyindecent if anyone found out about how you needed to latheryour limp dick in butter to get it out when the motor died and you were held captive by the balls.Literally.”
I stood up again, leaving Daniel with his mouth hanging open and walked towards the door again.
“He’s all yours sweetie, but honestly, you might wanna choose wisely. I don’t know if he’s shown you his stash of little blue pills that he hides in his bedside drawer, but they’re there. He tries to keep it a secret but he sometimes has a hard time, well, getting hard. I think you deserve better than that.” I pulled my lips back and made a face at her before dropping my head behind me, laughing again. I walked out of his apartment and let the door slam behind me on the way out because he had lectured me about not doing so a hundred times in the past.
As I stepped outside the old historic building, I felt a lightness in my chest I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
3
MAGNOLIA
“You saidwhat?” My friend, Margaret, gaped at me as we sat on our mats Saturday morning before our barre class started. We went to the same class every week to catch up and have a scheduled time to see one another. It’d been a few days since I talked to her so I was filling her in on everything that went down with Daniel.
I leaned in closer and whispered, “I told him that I thought it would be indecent if people found out about the time he had to lather his penis in butter because it got stuck in his penis pump.” I had to cover my mouth to dampen the sound of my howl, the ridiculousness of it all too much. Margaret fell over on her mat laughing, causing a few of the older women in the room to stare.
“Oh my god, Mags, that’s hilarious. I can’t believe you said that to him!”
“I can’t believe he was hooking up with some college chick in between her classes. I mean really, how cliché can you be?” I rolled my eyes just thinking about it.
“What did Susan say when you told her?” Hearing my mother’s name made my stomach sink. Losing Daniel had beeneasy. Shit, it felt like cutting off a parasitic limb that had been slowly killing me the last few years. But the idea of having to tell my mother that I had failed her in the one mission she had ever given me nearly brought me to tears. I knew I didn’t want to marry him but I also knew I didn’t want to disappoint my parents either. They gave me everything I had and I wanted nothing more than for them to be proud of me.
“I haven’t told her yet,” I responded, nervously spinning the ring on my index finger. She reached over and held my hand to stop me.
“Do you want me to come with you when you do?” Margaret had been my best friend since we met in second grade. She and I bonded over the fact that we thought the uniforms we had to wear at school were ugly and how we couldn’t wait to be able to wear whatever we wanted every day of the week. She understood my relationship with my mother was strained at best after years of witnessing me do everything but break my own back to make her and my father happy, just for it to never be enough.
“No, that’s okay. I appreciate it, but I think I need to handle Susan alone.” I groaned just thinking about having to tell her that her dream wedding wasn’t going to happen. At least, not with me in it.
The instructor stepped up to the front of the room to start class and for sixty uninterrupted minutes, I was able to be alone with my thoughts. Some would think that finding my boyfriend sleeping with another girl would hurt, and they would be right. But the thing that hurt me more was what he’d said about our sex life. How he made it seem like our issues were my fault, like I wasn’t good or interesting enough. There had been plenty of times in our relationship when Daniel had made comments or insinuated that something I was doing was wrong. That in his eyes, I wasn’t good enough for him. He stood firmly in the camp that my mother did: a good Southern woman should submit tothe man she was with and obey him without question. But that wasn’t me and that was never going to be me. If he couldn’t support a woman who was strong-willed and independent, then he couldn’t have me.
But as much as I wanted to walk away unscathed from this entire thing, it still stung deep in my core knowing I wasn’t enough to keep him faithful.
Once class was over, I waved goodbye to Margaret and rolled up my mat before snagging my shoes from the cubby by the door. I pulled on the white, long-sleeved T-shirt I brought with me to keep warm in the late November breeze and pushed open the studio door to walk towards my car. With my eyes casted down towards my phone and my mind drifting back to everything that had happened with Daniel a few days ago, I wasn’t paying much attention before stepping out into the street.
“Hey, watch out!” I heard a deep voice shout and the sound of wheels scratching against the pavement. My head jerked towards the sound but it was too late. Before I could step out of the way, a six-foot-something, deep brown skinned figure was swerving toward me on a skateboard as I stepped into the crosswalk. We both fell to the ground, him falling away from me in an attempt to avoid taking me out entirely and me jumping back and landing with my ass on the edge of the curb. I heard the skateboard go screeching across the street and smack into the curb on the other side.
“Oh shoot, my bad. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” he called out to me after jumping up from the pavement and grabbing his skateboard from across the street. He jogged over to where I was trying to catch my bearings from the curb. Suddenly, his hand was in my face, offering to pull me to my feet.
“Yeah, I think so. You should watch where you’re going on that thing, you could really hurt someone,” I snapped before pushing myself up from the curb. I ignored the hand he hadoffered me and took a step away from him once I was standing again. A shooting pain shot up my back from my tailbone and I winced before bringing my hand to where it hurt.Of fucking course. I would fall and hurt myself the same week I found my boyfriend sleeping with someone else.After checking to make sure I had everything, my eyes finally landed on the guy who almost ran me over.
He was wearing tattered jeans and an oversized T-shirt that had some kind of spray-painted design on it. He looked strong under the baggy clothes and his hair was short and cut close to his head. As my eyes made their way to his face, the first thing I noticed about him was his smile. It was big and wide but had a sense of wariness to it, almost like he was nervous. His deep brown eyes were round and set into his face and his jawline was sharp. When I shifted my weight to my other leg, I winced again from the pain coming from my tailbone and he reached his arm towards me.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You fell kinda hard there.” He brought his hand to my elbow to help steady me on the sidewalk. His low voice sounded genuinely concerned and the way he looked at me was almost hypnotizing.
“I said, I’m fine,” I snarled at him, pulling my arm away from him again.Why are you acting like such a bitch? You stepped in front of him.
“This is the worst fucking week,” I mumbled under my breath, looking up and down the street. It was still quiet for a Saturday as many of the tourists were gone by this time of year. The sidewalks were empty, leaving just me and skater boy standing alone on the corner of the street. If it weren’t for him, I’d be completely alone.Just like you are now that you lost Daniel,a voice in my head snipped.Unexpected tears sprang to my eyes and I quickly wiped them away, not wanting to cry infront of the stranger. I dropped my eyes to the sidewalk to avoid his gaze.
“I’m sorry for getting in the way,” I mumbled before taking a few steps away from him to start towards my car. He grabbed my elbow again, causing me to turn towards him, and dropped his head to one side when he saw that I was crying.
“Are yousureyou’re okay? Please let me take you somewhere if you’re hurt, on me.”
“Yeah, right. I don’t need someone likeyoupretending like they can help someone likeme,” I scoffed, looking at him up and down again. He looked like I had just slapped him across the face. I pulled my arm from his again and finally hurried away towards my car. When I reached the corner, I turned around to find him standing where we had almost collided, watching me as I went.
And unlike the last man who watched me walk away without any remorse for hurting me, this one looked at me as if he was sorry he’d caused me any pain at all.
4
