Mr. Mysterious In Black (19 page)

“There now. All done,” I said, when I’d finished the last cornrow. My fingers were numb.

“Good,” Nelly sighed. He twisted and pulled me down to the blanket with him. “Because my hands have been itching to touch you. My lips have been quivering to kiss you. And my eyes were almost twisting in my head from having to not look at you for the last forty-five minutes.”

An impassioned kiss he engaged us in.

My Nelly. The only lips I knew. The only touch I knew.

“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date’,” he quoted Shakespeare whisperingly against my lips. Literature had been favored by me since I’d met him, only because of
his
love for poetry. “But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st’.” He pulled away and stared at me. “I love you, beautiful cognac-eyed girl.”

My mind sidetracked, I replied with a small smile.

“What’s wrong?” His face crinkled with concern.

“Nothing.”

“Sadie, we’ve been dating for seven months. I know when something’s bothering you. Tell me,” he pressed.

I broke his gaze. “It’s nothing, Nelly.”

“Baby, tell me.”

My eyes focused on his chest and I picked at invisible lint on his T-shirt. “If you love me so much, then why are you so withholding?”

As if not sure what to say, he just gazed at me. Opened his mouth, and then closed it.

“I mean, I know you personally. What you like, dislike. What makes you smile and all that,” I continued. “But I don’t really know much
about
you. Where you’re from. Your true name. About your family. You know everything about me. And it’s not the same with me.”

Nelly closed his eyes and slid down my body so that his head rested on my stomach, he held me tight. “I will tell you. You will know. I belong to you, Sadie. And you to me. But I can’t now,” he said solemnly. “I’m waiting for your eighteenth birthday to arrive so I can whisk you away from here and marry you.”

Marry me?

“So you don’t trust me enough to tell me about yourself?” My voice was lower than a whisper. Because I was suffering profound hurt.

He gripped me tighter. “Of course I trust you. Sadie, don’t think this is about you. It’s not, okay? It’s the consequences I’ll face if people know who I am. My father…” he trailed off, then hugged me tighter. “I may never be able to see you again. And I couldn’t bear that, it would kill me.”

I nodded, not that he noticed, for his eyes were screwed shut as he clung to me like a life-saver.

“You have to believe that I love you.
Always
,” he breathed.

“I believe you,” I assured him.

“Then why haven’t you told me you love me? Do you not feel the same?” He lifted his head and rested his chin on my navel. His yearning blue eyes stared hopefully at me, while I fiddled with the ends of his braids.

I averted my gaze to a far distance where a young boy played ‘go fetch’ with his shaggy brown dog. Behind them were two baby girls wallowing about in a sandbox.”Your true name, at least? I don’t deserve to know even that?” I asked, evading his question.

Forlorn, he whispered, “What can I do to make you love me?”

“Tell me your name.”

He sighed heavily and laid his head down again, cheek to stomach. “My name’s Na—”

A basketball bounced on Nelly’s back, cutting him off. I jerked my head up to see a few of the Nine Life Clique members grinning down at us.

“We’re gonna play ball, Nelly. C’mon,” said Darren, a tall, tattooed honk with thick auburn hair.

Nelly gave them a perfunctory shake of his head.”Nah, guys, I’m chilling with my girl.”

The guys started laughing. Then Travis, a stocky, brown-haired, scrunched face guy, whose eyebrows were inherently set in a V, causing him to look as frightening as a demon—even when he was smiling, said, “Dude, you’ve been courting her for almost a year. That’s some ol’ school shit. Everyone knows Sadie’s not givin’ it up.”

“Shut the hell up, Trav,” Nelly warned as he eyed me, gauging my reaction to his boys who were explicitly antagonistic towards me. Always.

Travis fixed his obsidian dark eyes on me. “Isn’t it true, Sadie? You’re not gonna give it up, are you? We know you don’t love him. He’s just your pastime on weekends or when your daddy kicks you out the house so he can juice your mommy like a lemon.”

Rolling onto my side, I turned my back to them. Batting down my emergent tears.

No, it’s wasn’t true. I love Nelly. Of course I love him.

Nelly rose up on his knees. “Trav, chill the hell out. You’re upsetting her.”

Darren butted in. “Come on, Nelly. It’s true. You’re…
you
. You can get
any
girl you want. Is Sadie worth the wait?”

Nelly jumped to his feet, furious, his hands curled into steady fists. “One more word out of any of you, and I swear I’ll—”

“Okay. Okay,” Travis tried to placate. “No need to get violent. Apologies, Nel.”

The boys knew better than to piss Nelly off. An angry Nelly meant bloody noses, no more spoils, or ostracism.

“Come play ball with us,” Darren said.

“Not now,” an assuaged Nelly said as he sunk back to his knees. “I have to work at mending what you assholes just messed up.”

The clique muttered more apologies and wandered away.

Nelly touched my shoulder and I shrugged him off. “Don’t be mad at me, Sadie. You know they’re jerks. Why do you always let what they say affect you?”

Silence…

“Sadie, please.”

Continued silence…

“Want me to sing a verse of a Pink song? Choose anyone and I’ll sing it. You know I know all her songs—not like I had a choice, anyway.”

My face was turned away from him, and I was glad for that, because he couldn’t see my small smile. Singing—or rather
crowing
—a Pink song was his way of cheering me up. Because I loved her music so much, I could never resist joining in when did. Sighing, I turned and curled in his arms. He inhaled sharply when he saw that my face was wet with tears.

“Don’t cry, Sadie. You’re stronger than that,” he whispered, raking his fingers through my hair.

“I’m ready,” I choked out.

Nelly stilled. “No, you’re not,” he said firmly. “Stop letting those boys get to you. They’re just trying to scare you off because one or the other wants me to date a cousin or sister of theirs.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that I’m ready for the last two months, Nelly. And you keep saying I’m not.”

He thumbed my tears away. “That’s because you aren’t.”

It always irks me the way he treats me like a naïve child. “Yes I am!” I half-shouted. “Stop babying me.”

Nelly closed his eyes and sighed as he opened them. “I want this moment for you to be special, Sadie. You deserve the best of everything. I want us to be married and on our honeymoon on an exotic island when I take your maidenhead. That’s what I envisage. Call me old school, but that’s what I want to give you…a fairy tale.”

I snorted. “When will that be? When I’m thirty?”

“No. The minute you turn eighteen.”

“I don’t want to wait,” I whined. “I want you, I want you, I want you. No waiting. Please, Nelly.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Nelly sat up straight and pulled up his feet casually. “Come, sit here.” He pointed between his thighs. “And wrap your legs around me.”

I did as I was told and he wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me hard, like he always does. The atmosphere became cooler as a result of the sun’s dimming. The leaves of the oak tree whispered placidly above us. And the distant noises of bouncing balls, barking dogs and playful children grew silent to our ears as we embraced each other.

“You always tell me that I hug you too hard,” Nelly began. “That’s because, no matter how close I hug you, it’s like I’m just not getting all of you. I have this feeling of wanting you so much as to make our bodies one. Make my soul kiss yours.” His voice dripped warmth, ardor, and unconditional love as he spoke. “I love you so much it scares the living shit outta me. No one should ever need another human being this much. I told my mother about you, and she said it’s hazardous to love anyone this much. She scolded me: ‘If one should love another more than they love God, then he’ll take that person away. Everyone and everything else should be secondary to him.’ And I don’t want to lose you. I try and I try not to love you this much. But I think I’m obsessed. Possessed. Hopeless. I can’t help it. I need you to smile. I need you to breathe.”

My god…

It’s unbelievable that he loves me
this
much. Why? What have I ever done for him? To him? I’m just a normal girl from a dysfunctional home.

Jesus, Nelly, I love you, too.

“Nelly, I-I-,” I stuttered. “You’ve left me nothing to say.”

“Say you love me, too, dammit,” he snapped.

No. I’m afraid.

I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him senseless, trying to express my love for him in my fervid kiss instead of saying the actual words. He needed to hear it, I know. But I couldn’t say it.

We parted, gasping for air, eyes locked, panting mismatched.

Nelly reached for his messenger bag from the blanket and ruffled inside to withdraw a black velvet case. He opened the case and in it sat two identical silver bands with a line of gold around the middle. “These are promise rings,” he began. “We’ll both have one. It’s a promise that I will marry you one day. That you’ll be the mother of my children, the love of my life. The one who’ll bring me eternal happiness, as I’ll do you. That we’ll lay next to each other in the grave…”

He removed one of the rings and showed me the engravings, ‘
Nelly, My Beloved’,
on the inside, then slid it on my index finger.

“Now put mine on and promise me,” he whispered, watching anxiously for my reaction.

He didn’t know that I loved him beyond sanity. That he
was
my beloved. So to alleviate his anxiety, I removed the other ring from the box, which had the engravings ‘
Sadie
,
My Beloved’.
“I promise.” And I slid the ring unto his finger.

He grinned and clamped his mouth on mine and we kissed greedily and feverishly, his hands in my hair, my hands moving restlessly beneath his shirt. Nelly fell on his back, taking me with him as we both laughed in mirth.

“I love you, Sadie. More than life. More than myself. More than you know. I love you.”

I was rocked awake by gentle hands. My eyes opened to the sight of Natalio gazing down at me, lying on his side, propped up on one elbow. I darted my eyes around the room before settling back on him, and I felt then that my face was wet with tears.

“I’m sorry to wake you, but I couldn’t stand the tears that kept leaking from your eyes. It’s not to my belief that you were having a nightmare, because you weren’t screaming or tossing, just quietly crying.” Natalio tried at smiling but a torn expression marred his features.

“It’s okay. Thanks for waking me,” I whispered.

“Was it a bad dream?”

Closing my eyes, I tried to remember what my dream was about. There were flashes of the neighborhood I grew up in, the large oak tree I used to sketch under, kids laughing and playing. And there was this figure, seeming like a young man, but his face was obscured as he clung to me. The snaps were quick, I had them, and then they were gone. Zilch. “No.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“I-I can’t remember any of it, Natalio.”

Natalio sighed and fell onto his back, his gaze fixed on the plain white ceiling above. “It was about Nelly again,” he stated. “You were whispering his name over and over. Declaring your love for him.” He looked pained as though whatever I’d been saying in my sleep was too cumbersome for him to bear. “Nelly’s the one who hurt you. The one who made you cry. The one who made you a cynic of love and making love.
I know
. But there’s just one thing I can’t wrap my head around,” he sighed noisily, and it resembled a bewail. “How is it that you see this person each time you close your eyes, yet when you open them, you don’t? How can you dream the memories, but when you’re awake they’re unreachable?”

“Memories? You think my dreams are memories?”

He gave me a chary side eye glance as he unwittingly pulled on the strings of his sweatpants. “Maybe…”

The answers to his questions were unbeknownst to me. For I knew not how. And, if they
were
my memories—which I have a strong belief they are, due to the fact that my childhood neighborhood is always in my flashes—then they’ve only started presenting themselves in my dreams since I met him, kissed him, made love to him. Maybe this Nelly person was someone from my past who got lost in the damaged memories. No, it wasn’t anything I could explain. But Natalio was perceptive and there was no point in trying to falsify his perceptions. I liked him, a lot, and wouldn’t want for him to leave me. But I could see the pain that I was causing him already, for I slept next to him but dreamt of someone else.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I really don’t know how.”

Turning back on his side, he redirected his gaze to me, but said nothing. Natalio’s eyes were rarely readable, but now—maybe by his deliberate doing—I could read all that was in his eyes: his distrust, his poignancy, his disbelief, and, the most illuminated, his hope.

“Hug me back to sleep,” I begged him.

On a sigh, he opened his arms and I crawled into them and snuggled up to his chest. Being in his arms felt so right. There was an unexplainable peace in my heart when I was with Natalio, and I wanted very much to focus on what I had with him. Channel all my attention to him. Find some sort of happiness again.

Listened I did, as Natalio’s heartbeat slowed and his breathing evened out. Knowing he’d fallen asleep, I tilted my head for the pleasure of admiring his handsome face. I tentatively stroked my finger across his brows. He didn’t stir. Then gently down his face. He didn’t stir. It was the first time that I’d ever really looked at him like this. Normally, I’d be lusting all of him at once. He sighed in his sleep and his face fell in an instantaneous repose. He looked young, peaceful and vulnerable. Carefree, even. Nothing like the hostility-ridden, intrepid, Mysterious Man in Black. His lips parted as he seemed to have fallen into a deeper level of sleep.