Love How I Love You | WMBM | BXB BL

1 | The broken version of me

JASON 

With each morning I spent next to him, I grew sicker. Percy kissed my body until sunrise. His words are a soft blow against my sweaty skin.

The July sun peeked through the white paper-thin curtains. When he kissed me above my navel. I ran a hand through his wavey, disheveled blond hair. His lazy Sunday morning smile made me sink further into his king-size bed. From my navel, he kissed up my stomach, to my chest, to my lips. We share a tangled mess of words through a clumsy kiss. 

Percey does what he does after sex. Lighting a cigarette and letting it burn in the ashtray on his nightstand beside his bed. I liked the nicotine smell and the menthol aftertaste when we kissed. He always apologizes for his awful smoking addiction saying it was because he was French that he smoked a lot.

I sit up on my elbow. Staring at his face. His head rests on the headboard of his bed. Percy's chest rises and falls slowly.

"You should go," he said. Always I should go. I could never stay long in the warmth of his bed. I wanted to pout, I wanted to complain that I was his lover and I could stay as long as I like.

But he didn't want his neighbor to see some black boy leaving his house in a mess of makeup sex and hasty I love you's. 

"You'll call right?" of course he would. I just like hearing that he would. The corners of his mouth turned upward into a smile.

"Don't I always?"

"You do."

I felt like a bed warmer whenever he needed me. It didn't matter though because when he told me to come over. I'm in a rush of shoving my feet into my shoes, pulling my shirt over my head, stumbling out my front door with my mama yelling, "Where are the hell you going, boy?"

Percy opens his eyes to look at me for a second with a million things dusting his baby blue eyes. I move to him, straddling his naked lap. There was a part of me that wanted to be closer to Percy, to know his mother's favorite song and father's favorite sports team. That was on a deeper level of intimacy that wasn't sexual. Then there was a part of him that wanted to pull away from me before things got too deep so deep that he'd know I cried to the song: Be My Mistake by 1975.

I brushed his bangs off his face. "I love you."

"Love?" He laughed lightly, and there it was, that tiny crack in my heart growing bigger.

"I know you'll never say it back."

"I will."

"When?"

"Someday." He kissed my nose. Someday was two hundred miles away. And I'm foolish waiting for him to say it back.

Boys like Percy didn't commit to love with boys like me. I should behave, know my place, and gobble up the little attention he feeds me from the palm of his hands.

His phone dings. And I glance over at his nightstand to catch a glimpse of the notification Abigail: heading over.

As Percy's hands run up and down my sides, my gaze returns to him.

"I thought you said you weren't talking to Abigail anymore?" My fingers tapped against his chest.

"We made up."

"When?"

"Does it matter?" he asked. "You should leave. It would be awkward if she got here, and you were still here."

When I didn't fit into Percy's life, Abigail did. She's everything you'd expect from a white all-American girl wearing Hollister Co. 

I'm just someone he kept around when he wanted another type of fun. When the white girls grew boring for him because all they talked about were their fake tans and their next Starbucks order.

I'm dressed. Shoes on. He walked me to the front door. Casual. He's being casual about things like he always was. A soft kiss to lips and check. His fingers tangled with mine for a few seconds. When he's ready for me to go, he isn't all that ready yet. He says one thing and means the other. I basked in his warmth. Letting myself be lost in him.

"You'll be good?" Percy asked as he leaned his shoulder against the opened front door.

You'll be good was code for I shouldn't do anything in my free time that would piss him off. Like talking to other guys or girls whether it be romantically or flirtatiously.

He gives me another kiss this time along my jawline. There was always this pull that tugged me even deeper into Percy. When he confides in me, I let him because he needs it. The longer I stayed with him the more I wanted to be back naked in his cream-colored sheets. 

"I'm always good." And that's what I hated about myself being always good for this white boy when he wasn't always good to me. I give and he takes without giving anything in return most of the time yet I didn't care.

"That's my boy." He smiles against my jawline. Pulling his head away.

He's soft, everything a black boy like me couldn't be. When I'm with Percy I'm as soft as I can because he allows me that space to do it.

Soft black boys meant you were weak. I needed to be strong for an emotionally dependent mother and a father who chooses his fist over words.

I hate myself. And I wished that Percy could love the broken version of me.

Author's note

I think I like this first chapter better. What do you all think?

Thanks for reading!