Page 46 of Omar

I was still standing by the door. She was six feet away from me across the apartment and the fourteen years between that distance were louder than anything either of us had said in the car.

"You live here?" she asked.

"Sometimes. It's more of a..."

"A work thing."

"Yeah."

She nodded. Her eyes moved over the room one more time, then came back to me. "It's clean."

"I'm a clean person."

"You always were." She smiled, and it was the smile from when we were sixteen, the one that used to make me forget whatever I was supposed to be doing. "You used to make your bed before school. What sixteen-year-old boy makes his bed?"

"One whose mama would slap him if he didn't."

She laughed. The sound filled up the apartment and something in my chest unlocked.

"Come here," I said.

She crossed the room and I met her halfway. My hands went to her waist and hers came up to my chest, fingers pressing into the fabric of my shirt. We stood there for a second, close enough that the warmth coming off her body hit my skin, her breath against my neck.

"We doing this?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah. We're doing this."

"Okay." She looked up at me. Her eyes were steady. "Then do it."

I kissed her. Not like the park, not like the coffee shop. This was the one I'd been holding for fourteen years. My hand went to the back of her neck and I pulled her into me and her mouth opened under mine and the sound she made went straight through me. Her hands grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled and I walked her backward until her back hit the wall beside the kitchen.

I pressed into her and her leg came up around my hip and I caught it, held it there, my hand gripping her thigh through the denim. She was pulling at my shirt, trying to get it over my head without breaking the kiss, and I helped her, one hand leaving her thigh long enough to drag it off and drop it on the floor.

Her hands went to my chest, my shoulders, my arms. She was touching me like she was trying to memorize the shape of me, like if she didn't touch every part of me right now she'd forget what I was made of. I kissed her neck and she tilted her head back against the wall and said "Oh shit" in a voice that didn't sound like anything she'd ever say in front of anyone else.

"Fourteen years," I said against her skin.

"Don't." She pulled my face back up to hers. "Don't count. Just be here."

I was here. Every part of me was here.

I pulled her sweater over her head. She wore a plain black bra underneath and her skin was smooth and warm and I put my mouth on her collarbone and kissed down to the edge of the fabric. She unhooked it herself, reached behind and undid it and let it fall, and I looked at her for a second before I put my hands on her because I needed to see her properly. All of her.

"Stop staring," she whispered.

"Nah." I shook my head. "I ain't never stopping."

She grabbed the back of my neck and kissed me hard and I picked her up off the wall, her legs wrapping around my waist, and carried her to the bedroom. I set her down on the bed and she pulled me down on top of her and we were all hands and mouths and breathing, her fingers at my belt, mine at the button of her jeans, both of us rushing because we'd waited long enough.

I got her jeans off and she kicked them to the floor. She pulled at my belt and I helped her, shoving everything down and off until there was nothing between us.

"Omar," she said, and the way she said my name made something crack open inside me that I'd been keeping sealed since I was sixteen years old.

"Yeah?"

"I need you. Right now. Please."

I slid into her and she gasped and her nails dug into my shoulders and I held still for a second because the feeling of being inside her was so overwhelming that if I moved too fast I'd nut right there. She was warm and tight and her body fit against mine like we'd been built for this, like fourteen years apart hadn't changed the way we locked together.