Chapter 40: Dressed to Kill
The door clicked shut behind him, and the loft seemed to exhale, settling into a deeper quiet. Simone stood frozen in the middle of the room, Micah’s chubby hands patting her cheeks. The space where Eli had just been felt charged, like the air after a lightning strike.
She replayed the last sixty seconds.Him emerging from the bedroom. The dark jeans that sat low on his hips, the charcoal henley stretched across shoulders that seemed broader than she remembered. The leather jacket was old, but it looked new on him now, a second skin of worn-in cool.The glint of the gold watch. The chain.And the scent. That damn cologne, the one she’d always say got him into trouble, something spicy and clean with a hint of sandalwood. It used to be their secret language.Now it was a broadcast.
He’d moved with a new ease, a fluid confidence that had nothing to do with her. He kissed Micah, said “Love you, son,” with a casual tenderness that carved a hollow place inside her.Then his eyes had met hers. He’d seen her looking.He’d always been able to see her. He cleared his throat, offered his availability like a polite neighbor, and was gone.
“Mama?” Micah’s voice, a soft burble, broke the spell.She blinked, lowering him to the rug. “Yeah, baby. Mama’s here.”
The jealousy was a physical weight, a hot stone in her gut.It wasn’t just the outfit, or the cologne. It was the totality of it.The purposeful departure. The “just gonna be out.” He was going on a date.A real one. With someone who hadn’t seen him at his most sleep-deprived and stressed, who didn’t have yogurt stains on her sweatpants. Someone who would get that version of him: polished, charming, focused.
She busied herself with Micah’s bedtime routine—bath, pajamas, a story about a very lost dinosaur—but her mind was a runaway train.Was he with Aaliyah? Or was it someone else entirely? The rule he’d instituted—“unless it’s serious”—echoed mockingly.This felt serious.Not the relationship, but his intent. He was moving on, or at least moving forward, while she was stuck in this sunlit limbo of shared custody and unshared lives.
After Micah was finally asleep, his breaths deep and even, the silence of the loft became oppressive. She poured herself a glass of wine, something dry and bracing, and stepped out onto the small balcony. The campus quad below was mostly empty, just a few students hurrying under the orange glow of the antique lampposts. The faint, bluesy thump of bass from the jazz club below vibrated up through the iron railing.She pulled out her phone. Scrolled past messages from study group partners, her mom, Marcus.Her thumb hovered over Marcus’s name. He’d texted earlier: Hope the little man was good tonight.Thinking about you.
It was a nice text.Uncomplicated.Marcus was uncomplicated.Handsome, successful, clearly interested. He represented a clean break, a future that was purely hers, without the tangled history and constant, painful proximity.She typed a reply, her fingers stiff.He was an angel. Thanks for checking in.She sent it. It felt like a betrayal, but of who, she wasn’t sure.The breeze picked up, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant rain. She thought of Eli in that jacket, walking to his car, that cologne trailing behind him like a promise for someone else.The hot stone of jealousy cracked open, revealing something colder and sharper beneath: fear. Fear that the man who had just left—assured, desirable, independent—was the real Eli emerging, and the boy she’d fallen in love with, the one who needed her, was gone for good.She finished the wine in one long swallow. The bass line from downstairs changed, shifting into a melancholic, walking beat. She went inside, locked the balcony door, and began to tidy up.She washed Eli’s coffee cup from the morning, wiped down the counters until they shone. She was erasing the day’s evidence, trying to restore order to a space that felt fundamentally disordered.In her bedroom, she caught her reflection in the mirror. Her braids were practical, piled on top of her head.She wore an old band t-shirt and cotton shorts. She looked exactly like what she was: a tired pre-med student and a mom. She thought of Eli’s mystery date, whoever she was.She probably wore silk. She certainly didn’t have pureed sweet potato under her fingernails.A slow, simmering resolve began to replace the panic.Fine. If he was living his life, she would damn well live hers. Not as a reaction to him, but as a declaration for herself. She wouldn’t sit here in their shared museum of used-to-be, waiting for scraps of his time.
She walked to her closet, pushed past the comfortable sweaters and sensible jeans. In the back, wrapped in plastic, was a dress she’d bought on a whim months ago and never worn. It was bronze, cut from a fluid material that whispered as she pulled it out.It was not a dress for studying. It was not a dress for playgrounds.She laid it on the bed.Then she opened her laptop. She found the website for the gallery opening Marcus had mentioned—a showcase for a local Black artist, the kind of thing she used to love before MCAT prep and pediatrician visits consumed her calendar.It was tomorrow night.
She clicked “RSVP.”
The action felt decisive, like turning a key.She would go. She would wear the dress.She would drink something that wasn’t coffee or cheap wine. She would laugh at Marcus’s jokes and let him introduce her to people who knew her as Simone Davis, pre-med student, not as Eli Johnson’s ex-girlfriend or Micah’s mom.
She closed the laptop.The loft was quiet, but the silence felt different now. It was no longer an absence waiting to be filled by Eli’s return. It was her space, full of her own potential. She could hear the faint, complex melody from the club below, a saxophone weaving through the rhythm, telling its own story, separate and complete.
She looked at the dress on the bed, a splash of jewel tone in the lamplight. Then she looked at the door, the one Eli had walked out of. A clean, sharp line divided the before and the after in her mind.She was on one side of it now. She finally knew which side she wanted to be on.
She finally knew which side she wanted to be on. The decision felt like a key turning in a long-stuck lock, releasing a tension she’d been carrying in her shoulders for months. She would go to the gallery opening. She would wear the bronze dress.
Across town, Eli parallel parked his car with a smooth confidence, the tires kissing the curb. The building was a sprawling warehouse of brick and neon, pulsating with the synthetic chirps and explosive sound effects of a hundred games. "An adult arcade," Kimora said, unbuckling her seatbelt. Her eyes reflected the swirling colors. "Interesting choice."
"I had a feeling you had a competitive side," Eli said, killing the engine. He turned to her, that easy smile playing on his lips. "Under all that professional elegance."
She laughed, a rich, full sound. "You don't know what you just signed up for, Eli. I was the Skee-Ball queen of my youth group." They stepped into the sensory overload. The air was cool and smelled vaguely of ozone, fried food, and synthetic carpet. Lights flashed in every direction. He bought a huge cup of tokens, the metal clinking heavily as he handed her half.
They started easy, with a racing game, their shoulders bumping as they swerved virtual cars around impossible tracks. She beat him by a millisecond. "Beginner's luck!" he shouted over the din. "That was a warm-up." They moved to a classic shooting gallery, then a dance machine where Kimora’s rhythm was effortlessly precise, while Eli’s enthusiasm made up for his lack of coordination. They were both laughing, breathless, the earlier weight of his life at the loft completely forgotten in the carnival chaos.
After an hour, they retreated to the bar nestled in the center of the madness, ordering loaded fries and cold local beers. The noise became a comfortable blanket around them. "So, political science," Kimora said, leaning on the polished counter. "You want to change the world or just critique it?"
"Both, hopefully," he said, and found himself talking about his senior thesis idea, about community organizing, things he hadn’t articulated to anyone in a long time. She listened, really listened, asking sharp questions that made him think. She told him about the frustrations and joys of freelance design, about her big, loud family in Atlanta. The conversation flowed without potholes, without history. It was just now.
Replenished, they attacked the games with renewed focus. Eli zeroed in on a basketball free-throw game, the one he knew he could dominate. He sank shot after shot, the machine racking up a staggering ticket count. The paper streamer poured out like a golden waterfall. "For you, my queen," he said, bowing as he handed the massive pile to the prize counter attendant. Kimora chose a ridiculous, fluffy pink octopus with googly eyes.
Then he saw it, hanging from the highest rack: a massive, green T-Rex plushie. Micah’s disappointed little face from the zoo flashed in his mind. "I need that one," he told the tired-looking teen, pointing. It cost nearly all his remaining tickets. He hauled it out, the dinosaur almost as big as he was, its silly felt arms dangling.
Kimora shook her head, grinning. "A man who wins prizes for his kid on a first date. That's a new one." She dragged him by the hand toward a vintage photo booth in a corner. "Proof of the carnage," she insisted.
They crammed inside, the curtain closing them in intimate, red-lit darkness. The first flash caught them laughing, the octopus on her head. The second was a mock-serious pose. On the countdown for the third, the playful energy shifted, condensed. The machine beeped. In the sudden white flash, her lips were on his. It wasn't like the frantic kiss against the tree with Aaliyah. This was soft, exploratory, a deliberate punctuation to a perfect night. The fourth flash captured the slow, smiling aftermath.
Later, cones of mint chip ice cream in hand, they walked a quiet downtown block. The sugar was cold and sweet. "I haven't done something like that in years," Kimora said, licking a stray drip. "Just pure, dumb fun."
"Me either," Eli admitted, and it was the truth. He drove her back to her Airbnb, the dinosaur propped in the backseat like a silent, approving chaperone. At her door, under a soft porch light, she turned. "Thank you for an amazing night, Eli. Seriously."
"Thank you for not suing me over the dress," he said. She laughed, and then they were kissing again, deeper this time, her hands sliding up the leather of his jacket. It was intimate, warm, a full stop on the evening's sentence. He watched her go inside, a faint smile lingering on his own lips.
The loft was dark when he returned, save for the soft glow over the kitchen sink. He crept in, the giant dinosaur tucked under his arm. Simone was on the couch, a textbook open but unread in her lap. She watched him pad silently down the hall to Micah’s room. He emerged a minute later, the plushie delivered.
"Have fun?" she asked. Her voice was neutral, carefully sanded of any edge.
"Yeah," he said, leaning against the hallway wall. "I did." The scent of the arcade, of fried food and Kimora's perfume, still clung to him. He saw Simone’s nostrils flare almost imperceptibly as she caught it.
They stared at each other across the shadowed room. The silence was a live wire, humming with everything they had done and hadn't said that day. The gallery RSVP in her laptop, the taste of mint chip on his tongue, the memory of Marcus’s lips on her hand. It all hung in the space between them, charged and invisible.
He pushed off the wall and walked over to her, stopping so close he could feel the heat from her body. A breath apart. "You okay?" he asked, his voice low.
She looked up, and in the dim light, her eyes held a raw longing she would never, ever voice. It was there and then gone, shuttered behind a familiar wall. "Yes," she said, the word barely a whisper.
He reached out, his fingers gently brushing the single braid that had fallen over her shoulder. He tucked it behind her ear, his knuckles grazing her cheek. He leaned in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead. Her eyes fluttered closed. "Okay," he murmured against her skin.
Then he stepped back, turned, and walked to his bedroom, closing the door softly behind him. Simone sat perfectly still on the couch, the ghost of his kiss burning on her skin, the scent of another woman’s perfume a faint, cruel taunt in the air. She looked toward Micah’s room, where the giant dinosaur now stood guard, a trophy from a world where she no longer belonged.
She looked toward Micah’s room, where the giant dinosaur now stood guard, a trophy from a world where she no longer belonged. The silence after his door clicked shut was absolute, a vacuum that sucked the air from her lungs. She sat in the dark until the streetlights outside cast long, skeletal shadows across the floor, each one feeling like a judgment.
The bronze dress on her bed was a taunt, a symbol of a future that felt cold and performative. She walked to her room, the weight of the evening pressing down on her shoulders. She changed into a soft sleep shirt, the cotton familiar and grounding, and slid between the cool sheets. Sleep was a distant country. Her mind replayed the night on a frantic loop: the scent of his cologne clinging to the leather jacket, the effortless way he’d moved, the casual ‘love you, son’ that had felt like both a gift and a goodbye. The forehead kiss. That was the cruelest part. It was a ghost of their old language, a habit of tenderness that no longer had a home.
She punched her pillow, turning onto her stomach, then her back. The ceiling offered no answers. Every nerve felt scraped raw, hyper-aware of him moving in his room down the hall. Was he asleep? Was he texting her? The phantom smell of mint chip and foreign perfume haunted her. With a frustrated groan, she threw the covers back and stood up. The polished hardwood was cool beneath her feet as she began to pace, a slow, soundless circuit from the window to the door and back.
Her craving was a physical ache, a deep, throbbing need that had nothing to do with logic or their carefully constructed rules. It was memory fused with want—the specific heat of his skin, the way his hands knew every curve of her body without hesitation, the sound of her name in his mouth when he was buried inside her. The rule about ‘extra noise’ was bullshit. This was a deafening silence. Before her courage could evaporate, she was in the hall, staring at the grain of his door.
Her hand lifted, knuckles poised an inch from the wood. She held her breath. This was crossing a line, breaking the treaty they’d just established. What if he sent her away? The humiliation would be a fresh wound. Just as her fingers trembled, deciding to fall, the door opened inward.
Eli stood there, shirtless, in a pair of low-slung sweatpants. He’d clearly been pacing too. His eyes, wide and dark in the low light, met hers. No words passed between them. The air crackled, charged with everything unsaid from the zoo, from the porch, from the arcade. He simply reached out, his fingers brushing hers before closing gently around her wrist. His touch was electric. He pulled her inside, the door clicking shut behind them, sealing them in a new, private darkness.
Then his mouth was on hers, a collision of pent-up need and searing familiarity. It wasn't gentle. It was a claiming, a furious conversation their bodies understood perfectly. Her hands flew to his face, his shoulders, feeling the solid muscle she’d only seen from a distance. His tongue swept into her mouth, tasting of toothpaste and him, just him. They fumbled with clothes, a desperate scramble of pulling and tearing. Her sleep shirt went over her head. He shoved his sweatpants down, his cock already thick and hard against her stomach. The feel of him, skin to skin after so long, punched a ragged moan from her throat.
He walked her backward until her knees hit the edge of his mattress. They tumbled onto the sheets, a tangle of limbs and hungry mouths. He broke the kiss, his lips blazing a trail down her throat, over her collarbone, taking a nipple deep into the heat of his mouth. She arched, crying out, her fingers tangling in his afro. He moved lower, his hands spreading her thighs with a firm, possessive urgency. His breath was hot against her inner thigh, then her core. He didn’t tease. He dove in, his tongue finding her clit with unerring accuracy, licking and sucking with a focused intensity that shattered her instantly.
“Eli… fuck,” she gasped, her hips bucking off the bed. The climax ripped through her, sharp and shocking, her back bowing as she chanted his name into the dark room. He didn’t let up, drinking from her until she was trembling and oversensitive, pushing weakly at his head. He moved up her body, his weight a delicious anchor. She kissed him, tasting herself on his lips, a deeply intimate filth that made her whimper.
He positioned himself between her legs, the broad head of his cock pressing against her slick entrance. He looked down at her, his expression fierce, stripped bare of all pretense. “Look at me,” he growled, and she did, her eyes locking with his as he pushed inside. She gasped at the exquisite stretch, the perfect, forgotten fullness. He groaned, a deep, ragged sound from his chest, and buried himself to the hilt.
“God, Simone,” he breathed, staying there for a moment, buried deep, letting her adjust. Then he began to move. It wasn't frantic. It was a deep, rolling rhythm, each slow, deliberate thrust hitting a place that made her see stars. His eyes never left hers. This was making love, a raw and painful and beautiful communion. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, meeting every stroke. The friction built, a sweet, coiling heat in her belly. She could feel his control fraying, his thrusts becoming less measured, more desperate.
“I’m gonna come,” she whispered, the sensation cresting, overwhelming.
“Come with me,” he begged, his voice broken. And she did. Her orgasm exploded, a wave of pure sensation that tore a scream from her throat. As she clenched around him, she felt a gush of warm release soak the sheets beneath them. Her climax triggered his; with a final, brutal thrust, he shouted her name, his body shuddering as he spilled himself deep inside her.
He collapsed, rolling to the side but pulling her with him, keeping her close. Their hearts hammered a frantic, synced rhythm against each other’s skin. He nuzzled into the crook of her neck, his breathing gradually slowing. She traced the lines of his back, sticky with sweat, the reality of what they’d done settling over them like a heavy blanket. No words were needed, or possible. In the quiet dark, tangled in his sheets and the scent of their sex, they fell into a deep, exhausted sleep, holding onto each other as if the world outside the door had ceased to exist.