A Harlem Metanoia Story ©

AHMS| HE WANTED

read with white background

So, what had a girl both bewildered and conflicted found herself doing once presented with the taunting offer of a king?

She obliged.

Though; the night hadn't ended in article by article; clothes disappearing from the pair's entangled bodies. Jacobi hadn't leaned in and whispered the salacious things he had wished so desperately to do to the girl.

Instead; for the beginning of the night they had kept a significant distance from each other, eyes only locking when the start of his story announced itself. Jacobi; in that moment, to a woman he had barely known; came undone of the truth behind the man, that was himself.

He had explained, how his mother never loved him, his father never knew him, and that the only man that once cared for him; was selfishly taken away by the cruelty of Spanish Harlem. His words; that had seemed to have already croaked with each syllable; became stuck when he spoke to Jaiyaah's listening ears of the man that had destroyed his life. In the same apartment they sat in, on the same stained carpeted floor that had been sitting and molding for years after he had left it at the tender age of 15.

Their eyes had only met when the end of his story declared itself, and Jacobi's body drew towards Jaiyaah's like the desperate magnet he was. Then, with a twinkle of fear behind her specs; Jaiyaah sucked in a breath of anticipation. She couldn't understand why a man who had done something so repulsive to her could sit before her, and she could bask in merely the sight of his presence.

"I didn't do what I did to you because I needed a quick fuck." His words were sharpened to a point, and when he spoke them Jaiyaah's head drew back, watching the man before her.

"I did it to feel the power I lost a long fucking time ago when the man my mother trusted, violated me and she laid in bed pretending to be sound asleep."

Jaiyaah observed the man before her carefully, not exactly sure at all what to say. The pair's eyes locked for a moment; scanning each other's appearance with nothing but interest flickering between their eyes. For the entirety of the two hours they'd spent in one another's presence, Jaiyaah remained silent, and that moment had been no different from the other 120 minutes that had passed the two by.

The moment a lonely tear escaped the girl's eye, Jacobi remembered the tears he had shed the night of his reckoning, his screams, and the verbatim screams she'd cried the night he raped her. It made him think of the gloomy day he lost his father, and the feeling the girl before him must have felt the day she lost her dignity to a man she hadn't even known.

Once the single tear had fallen onto the carpeted floor the pair sat on, plural copies followed, each streaking the face that Jacobi's eyes hadn't left for the entirety of the night. He wanted desperately to outstretch a hand and wipe the tears that he had been the immediate cause of. He wanted to hold her each and every night, and be the only shoulder she could cry on, listen to her fears, breathing and heartbeats each day, and be the only cause of her pulse rising and heart thumping.

He wanted it all, but Jacobi also knew; it would never happen. In that moment, he wished he could turn back the hand of time, and never do to her, what he had done.

Jaiyaah's swollen eyes focused on the wall in front of her, observing its plainness. For some reason she couldn't muster the required amount of strength to meet Jacobi's eyes once more. For some reason, behind his orbs; lied a certain emotion that without knowing; seemed to have easily brought Jaiyaah to her weakest point. She wondered if it had been hatred or a conflicting case of love that she had been feeling towards him; from the day she had came out of her hiding. She had questions burning a hole in her conscience that she wouldn't allow herself to ask; though she desperately wanted the answers.