Page 15 of Meet Me at the Altar

Kalliope

He called me later that night, but I didn’t take his call. He called again and texted several times the next day. It took six days before I finally accepted his call, because my entire world was shaken with his reappearance. The text that moved me read:

MY LOVE: I won’t let up. I’m ’bout to apply that pressure, because I won’t lose you again.

ME: You didn’t lose me. You gave me up.

MY LOVE: That’s my girl.

I genuinely had givenup hope on him returning, but he kept his word and returned ten years later to the day. It didn’t make things better, and I was still hurt that he hadn’t kept in touch. He acted as if I was just supposed to be excited that he returned and fuck the ten years he was absent.

Fortunately for him, I had so many questions, and I had missed him desperately. All I wanted was to be in his presence and up under him like old times. Not a night had gone by since his reappearance that I hadn’t dreamed about him, and not an hour of my day that I hadn’t thought of him.

When I finally returned his call, he invited me to have dinner at his hotel room. He was staying at Ridgeland, an upscale, swanky, five-star hotel, that had me wondering what he did for a living. I worked as a personal shopper for some executives who paid me very well, but I could scarcely afford to stay one night at the Ridgeland, let alone an extended stay like him. I couldn’t have afforded to spend one night in this place before my layoff at NI Briggs.

“Glad you decided to come,” he greeted when he opened his hotel door. He peered at me with a knowing smirk from those hooded, russet-brown eyes and lifted one thick, arched eyebrow. They were so thick and long, he almost had a unibrow, something he hated as a kid, but had grown to ignore in high school.

I stepped inside and couldn’t help but check out his body. A loose pair of basketball shorts hung low on his waist, and a fitted navy-blue T-shirt with the words Gen U emblazoned across his chest that matched his basketball shorts with the same words and logo on the side, clung to muscles that had only grown more defined over the years. He wore a pair of Gen U slides on his feet, but no socks.

At six-two, he towered over me by nine inches. His beautiful bronze-brown skin had taken on more of a golden tone in that California sun, and his sun-kissed skin highlighted the golden hairs on his arms.

“Look at you. The hardest street dude I ever knew with pretty feet. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear that you get pedicures,” I teased. Truthfully, I was trying to ease my nervesand find that flow that we had all those years ago. I felt like I was going on a blind date, but this wasn’t that.

“Get in here and give me a hug, li’l bit,” he remarked, pulling his fingers through the soft hairs of his beard with one hand and wiggling his fingers at me with the other hand. I noticed that his beard, mustache, and goatee were nicely lined up and had grown in somewhat thicker through the years.

When I stood still, he grabbed me and pulled me close. Andrès wrapped me in his arms and squeezed me to him. It took a moment before I hugged him back, and it felt wonderful. He smelled so damn good, and all I could think about was the last time I saw him before he relocated. The memory of the kiss we had shared seared my mind, and I felt my belly clenching and my thighs squeezing together. I wanted that kiss again, despite my nonchalant attitude toward him.

Andrès released me, and the way that he stared into my eyes and then at my lips, I knew he had to be thinking the same thing. He slowly pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, and his gaze grew heavy and dark. There was too much we needed to wade through before we jumped into kissing each other again.

Reluctantly, I pulled back from his embrace, and to break the sexual tension between us, I laughed and asked, “Where is the food? I don’t smell anything. Did you forget that I was coming?”

“I asked the kitchen to hold our food a little longer. I wanted to make sure that it was hot when you arrived. You didn’t used to be a fan of having to microwave your food.”

I smiled. “You remembered.”

“Everything about you,” he remarked as he led me into the suite and pointed at the couch. “Have a seat. I’m about to call them now.”

I sat down as he called down to the hotel restaurant.

“You want anything to drink?” he asked when he ended the call.

“Just juice.”

He removed a bottle of juice from the refrigerator and handed it to me as he sat beside me on the couch. My stomach clenched at his nearness, and I secretly inhaled the scent of his freshly showered fragrance.

I couldn’t help but giggle when I recalled how I used to love sitting next to him and inhaling him after he showered.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking about when I used to sniff you after you got out of the shower.”

“Yeah, like a little puppy dog or something. Man, that used to drive me crazy,” he remarked, tugging at one of the silver hoops in his ears.

“And the more it did, the more I did it.”

“Until I started sniffing your hair and armpits.”

“That was so embarrassing, because you would wait until we were around other people to do that mess.”