Michaela
Mo slept on his stomach, arms stuffed under his pillow. The sun shone through a wide crack in the hotel curtains, a beam of light spilling across his torso. Even though I was freaking out on the inside, I took my time leaving, because separating myself from this man felt a little like leaving a piece of myself behind.
Which was crazy. We hadonenight together. I shouldn’t feel this way.
But our one night was everything.
I’d never felt so connected to another person outside of my family.
And it scared the ever-loving shit out of me.
Mo groaned, and his left arm slid from beneath his pillow. The gold band around his fourth finger glinted in the sun. I held my hand up, checking if my matching band did the same.
I’d like to say I’d been wasted out of my mind when we chose to get dressed and find a chapel to get married in last night, but that would have been a lie. The details were fuzzy, and I couldn’t quite remember how we made the decision to become husband and wife, but I remembered little snapshots, like Mo slipping a gold band on my finger. And I’d never forget the depth of sincerity in Mo’s eyes when he promised to take care of me forever, right before he kissed me in front of God, Elvis, and the sweetest chapel owners in Las Vegas.
I snapped a picture of him sleeping. It was easier to look at him through the buffer of my phone screen. Without it, he was too real. A solid, living man…who was myhusband. That was a crazy, terrifying, ridiculous concept.
Leaving while he slept was good. Cowardly, but good. If he cracked open his eyes and they were suffused with regret...well, I didn’t know how I’d deal with it. I didn’t much want him to see how unsure I was about this whole thing either.
I’d leave him a note. Something pithy but sweet. He could focus on my pithiness or my sweetness, whichever he wanted.
On the hotel stationary, I scrawled:
Dear Moses,
You looked too comfy to wake up. Thank you for last night and being my burrow. I won’t forget it. Well, some of it I’ve already forgotten, which I blame on you and your heavy champagne pouring hand.
I have your number in my phone. I’ll be in touch as soon as I get a chance.
Yours,
Michaela
Leaving the note on the bedside table, I couldn’t stop from reaching out and pushing the fallen wave of brown hair away from Mo’s forehead. He had Superman hair, and it made my stomach fold in half, then in half again, like origami.
Before I turned away, I pressed a kiss to his bare shoulder and inhaled his scent like a dirty little addict getting one last fix before checking myself into rehab. He smelled like me, and sweat, and hotel soap, but underneath it all was Mo—spicy, like a gingersnap.
Enough, you loon.
The entire ride on the elevator was spent clinging to the railing, stopping myself from making a wild leap through the sliding doors and dashing back upstairs to tuck in beside Mo’s long body. I’d never been sillier over a man I’d only just gotten to know. The band around my finger was evidence of that.
There was no time for silliness or whimsy. I needed to get back to my hotel room, grab all my stuff, and hotfoot it to the waiting tour buses. But first, I stopped at a drugstore and made two very important purchases.
Emergency contraceptive pills. Because in the cold light of day, I could acknowledge how foolish and reckless we’d both been. Maybe this marriage could be real, but I wasn’t whimsical enough to truly believe that.
My second purchase was a package of gingersnap cookies, because Iwaswhimsical enough to want something that would remind me of the husband I’d reluctantly left behind.
Touring was a hectic, chaotic, exhilarating ride. I became a different person at work. Hard, unsmiling, and unflinching. Each city we stopped in, I met new men who didn’t know how to take orders from a small, young-looking black woman. It just did not compute in their brains that I could possibly be their boss’s boss.
I had literally found workers napping behind speakers, and when caught, they’d smile at me like I wasn’t about to throw their asses out of the venue. They quickly learned their mistake.
“Holy shit, I’m turned on.”
My head whipped around, but I was already smiling. Gabriel Sotero’s wife, Jenna, stood behind me, her mouth agape. I’d just gotten done addressing my crew with my expectations of the day, and although these were the guys who traveled with us from city to city, I didn’t lighten up on them. I couldn’t. One slip-up and the years I’d spent gaining a reputation in this business would be wiped away.
“Too bad I left my whip at home,” I quipped.
She fanned her face. “Don’t say things like that to me. I can’t handle it.”