Ruquayyah ♡𝜗ৎ

Vaughn Levitt, 38

The walls around are all indented. They are closing in quietly because they’re the same color. The monsters are the spotty serif print. Vaughn Levitt. They began distorting like a flickering projection. They are outmatched by the precinct logo in the corner chomping at the empty lines before the big feast.

By the powers that be, my thin sharpie-pointed blade slices away with slicked wet black cuts. Then I crumble this plane like Lut’s city. Crushed. Then the paper ball ricochets off the musty unbagged bin and lands near my foot.

I was only an hour into the forest of paperwork and already I just wanted something bitter on my tongue. As the thought wafted over, so did the fishy smell of burnt espresso and vanilla, which meant—

“Hey, oof. You’re looking rougher than Monday past Thursday.”

My sudden awareness of the feeling in my stomach tells me it isn’t from the bottle.

Laela Mindy had appeared carrying coffees in a tray and an oily paper bag and all that was herself.

My stomach practically squeaked as she set the greasy gift on the sectional end of my desk. She’d carved at it over months for what I now learn is this specific routine.

I ask her, “Rough like me, or just the me attached to this desk?”

She gropes fingers over my face. “Just kinda like an overall thing.”

I’m groaning and picking at my dry hair. “You can insult my barber directly to his face. I have his number. We chat. His name’s Javen.”

“Stop. You can’t look this bad on the hook. People start flapping their lips.” She swatted my hands away and made her own attempt at it.

The tits had to be close enough for a porous examination for me to notice. Not that I didn’t notice Laela. Laela’s fitted business skirts. Laela’s cuff earrings that always tangled in her hair. 

“They had toasted vanilla this time. That one’s yours in case plain old vanilla got boring. Not a fan.” She says it as I register it as the curious smell on her breath.

I do feel fixed. I ask her how her handiwork is and she thinks up something about having left Einstein territory. We laugh like normal and sip our lattes like normal.

When we sober, she asks, “Did you feel up to Stefan’s thing last night?”

“No, I passed on that.” Starting honest was key. “I’ve been smelling more skunk in Vee’s shit.”

I made a habit of avoiding the topic of my kid with Laela. I noticed whenever I did, she’d be effused with some new energy. 

All I’ll say about that is if Laela had been the one to drop 4 pounds of Vee that June night, Vee likely would not have landed on her head in a painted concrete porch.

Wired, and obviously, Laela takes another big sip. “Have you thought about what you’re gonna say yet?”

There’s more than one Kessie-related file among my reports and cases. Laela skims the mess with a cute unresisted squint.

She gets to helping, she gets to asking. She gets to asking, she gets to knowing. And she gets to knowing and I get to not knowing her ever again, or being fucked, or however that was going to go.

“Well, she’s cut off. Obviously.” I say flatly.

Felt like opening my front door at the knock with a no-solicitors sign stabbed into my lawn.

“Vaughn. Bless your heart. You’re a great father. We’re always saying how happy she looks whenever she’s around you. Even if she doesn’t say it, you know?”

She rests her hands on my shoulders, and my view is her chest again. Either the office audience was getting to her or, based on the way her thumb is stroking my shoulder stitch circularly, she’s just on fire.

“Well, just tell me what you’d say, I guess,” I drop it with the drop of my head.

None right-minded would flinch from Laela, but I only fuck her to get her off my tail.

Hey, maybe I’ll be less confused if I just got to see much less of her.

I blasted off into planet Laela, where her lips and hips were the comforts I sought and what a time. She murmured all of her moans and whispered the way up and the way down. Her hair gleamed like tinsel strands. She was curiously tan in the cracked weather, and orangey, with her pale-pink bloody cheeks and mouth.

I was thinking that my apartment was remarkably and conveniently neat for my mental state as we laid on the dark grey sheets. 

The moment I came or after, Kessie had flashed in my mind. That was when I fully accepted that Laela would find out, whether I started flapping my lips or not. 

“Vaughn…this is fun.”

I felt less strong about dangling animal as I had in the past, say, with Adriann. “Isn’t it?”

“Would you believe, Stefan actually asked if he should stop hitting on me?” she smirks with a grumble. “That guy.”

It’s harder to pretend I don’t hear her with my guy Stefan’s face — and the promise of one more pitcher at that mid-landslide bar Dent — in the mix.

All I knew was I wanted to be honest with her. Then I laughed at the want, and then some more at the thought of the want, because that would somehow mathematically cut out the can’t? I definitely say nothing.