Leave the Night On Pt. 01

I know what you're thinking: "Oh my God! She's posting a new story without having finished the last one!" I know, I know, I'm horrible. But here's the thing with that other story: I'm stuck. Big time.

Every time I write you guys something I need to get that feeling like things are flowing nicely, like "This is what I want these characters to make people feel". Unfortunately, with that other story, I'm not getting that. I'm sure you wouldn't want to read something written without any real feeling.

So I present to you something new I wrote while listening me to some K-Pop (TOTALLY NOT ASHAMED ABOUT IT). I had 35 pages of scattered ideas for this, so it REALLY needed to be written before I lost the vibe.

In my country, such a thing as "interracial dating" is not even an existing term and maybe that's why I feel a shortage of representation for some ethnicities out there. That's why I figured I'd make this hero a very hot non-white man.

I hope you like it because I get a feeling this one's going to be fun to write.

Enjoy it.

XOXO,

Nana.

P.S.: I will try my very best to finish that other story and to post the next chapter for this one as soon as I can. Graduating is my top priority, though (and I'm almost there!)

*****

1

SOME days I wake up and I'm just on.

I jolt out of bed at two in the morning, energy overflowing into my body, and I have to put my sneakers on to go out for a run if only to shake those ants in my pants. I don't stop until I'm coated in sweat, the muscles on my thighs burning, and I'm riddled of that electrifying impulse to move.

Other days I take up on cleaning the loft. I pour all of that stamina in scrubbing, polishing, dusting, and even bathing our cat, Mallory. My roommates love it. We probably have the cleanest kitchen -and cat- on our side of town.

When my brain is swarmed with a surge of chemicals that lit a fire inside me, I do whatever I can to extinguish it. My job, though, is probably the best therapy for my crazy outbursts. Being an elementary school teacher is what I was crafted for. I love my job. Children are natural powerhouses, like me. Not to mention they are siphons for grown-ups' energy.

When the weekend comes along, however, I get particularly frenzied. There's no escaping the heat, there's no work, no daily dose of energy sucking six-year-olds, and I don't have the legs to run all that energy out of my system. But on the plus side, I've no obligations but to throw on a flimsy dress, go out, and unleash myself upon a dancefloor.

Which is how, on my last Sunday of Summer break, I find myself being yanked out of sleep by that palpitating anxiety only to realize I'm not in my bed. The heat on my back is the kind only another body can produce.

Slowly, and already dreading what I'll find, I turn my head on the pillow and there it is; Last night's leftover. A heap of tanned skin and muscles lying next to me. With a quietness and agility gained by experience in sneaking out of unknown rooms, I find my clothes, and tiptoe out of his apartment at the break of dawn.

In my defense, I don't usually sneak out on guys. I only ever do it when they're not very skilled in making me come and then drop the line "Was it good for you too?" meaning they can't even tell I faked it. I'm not proud of myself for faking it either. I consider it polite to let a man know he needs to work harder, both for my sake and for the sake of the woman who comes -or doesn't- after me. Come to think of it, I sneak out a lot. More than I'd like.

Mr. Last Night was a disappointment. A big one. He fell asleep on me. Literally on me, when I could've gone another round or two. Nothing new, though. I've had more than one guy say Enough! on me. It wasn't the worst sex ever while it lasted. I've had worst experiences even if taking into consideration the fact he dry-humped me for longer than it would've been considered acceptable.

After walking twenty blocks back to the loft, only to trade my party dress for my workout clothes, I run until I make myself wetter than Mr. Last Night had. My feet return me home when the sun is already up and shining.

Home is almost like a real life sitcom. I share a loft with three other girls and a cat. According to Cami, the place oldest inhabitant, we'd be a sitcom around the lines of The Golden Girls, but suggestively called Four girls and a cat instead.

Limbs exhausted, I climb the stairs to our floor and I'm suddenly assaulted by the scent of freshly brewed coffee. That's a smell that tells me Lil is already up. She's the only one, out of the four of us girls, who knows how to make decently good coffee.

Liliane, Lil, is my favorite person ever. My closest friend and a hopeless romantic. She's a botanist, the reason why our loft looks like a mini indoor jungle. I met her four years ago, the day we both showed up at the loft's front door to see about the vacant rooms Cami was renting. We were both newly graduated young women searching for work and a room in the city. We bonded over Mallory and moved into the loft that same day. We have been friends ever since. Lil is like my soul mate. She's the complete opposite of me, calm and level-headed, and yet she just gets me. Even when I fuck up royally she doesn't judge me; she listens and helps me put my shit together.

"Lil, light of my life! I love you so much," I say, as I enter our home, removing my earphones and sweatband. She is perched on the kitchen counter, sipping coffee from her favorite blue mug that reads I'm a bad bitch in bold white letters.

I make for her, spreading my arms, threatening her with a sweaty, smelly hug. "Don't you dare touch me. You're disgusting," she says, scrunching up her freckled nose.

"Don't disdain the love, Liliane." I pour more coffee than I should drink on my own mug. I can feel Lil's disapproval weighing on me.

"Don't you think you should ease up on the caffeine?"

I roll my eyes at her. Caffeine isn't something I'm ready to abnegate. "Where's the rest of the herd?" I ask, ignoring her mother hen instincts.

Lil traps a tendril of fiery red hair behind her ear. She's beautiful in an ethereal, unearthly way. Lithe and graceful, like a nymph. "Mel went out to get some eggs. Cami is in the shower," she answers, informing me of the whereabouts of our roommates.

I inspect myself, whiffing. I am disgusting. "Speaking of shower, I think need one."

"You most certainly do." She drags her cunning green eyes over me, her knowing expression having nothing to do with my state.

"What?"

"You didn't sleep at home." Lil is as smart as a cat. The day I manage to fool her the skies will part in half.

"I need to pee," I mumble in a very bad attempt to evade her.

I hear her tut-tutting as I rush to the bathroom. "Was he untalented?" She shouts after me.

"Oh girl, you've no idea." I open the bathroom's door and a billow of steam engulfs me. "Jesus fucking Christ, Camille, open a window."

"Pearl! Is it you?" Cami pokes her sudsy blond head out the shower curtain. She flashes me her all shining smile. "Good morning, my goddess!"

"Morning, honey." I smile back at her, peeling down my running leggings. Camille is the kind of girl who twists necks on the street. She's half French, has that kind of billowing golden hair you only see in shampoo advertisements. Her beauty is only second to her intelligence, though she tends to be overly honest. She's getting her Ph.D. in Philosophy and likes to use our lives' dramas as her experimental projects. I love her like a sister. I honestly can't count how many nights we spent discussing the meaningfulness of life and the uselessness of useless men over bottles of wine.

"He didn't give you a UTI did he?" Lil's leaning on the bathroom door, casting her worried eyes over me. "You're wincing. Your cooch burning?"

I smile at her composure while she watches me peeing. One of the greatest advantages about living in an all women environment is never having to worry about locking the bathroom door.

"Don't call her cooch," I object, though my coochie is burning a little. "And no, I don't think he gave me an UTI, he just dry humped me like a dog. I'm sore."

Cami snorts out a laugh. "At least you got rid of the cobwebs, Pearly Girl."

"Wasn't worth it," I state, flushing the toilet. I open the window before leaving so Cami doesn't mold the whole place.

I stride back to living room, coffee back in hand. I spare our old purple couch from my disgusting sweaty self and sit on the floor instead. Mallory materializes out of that mythical place where cats inhabit, jumps onto my lap, already purring and offering his little neck to be petted. I bury my red nails in his grey, fluffy fur. Lil lands her skinny ass on the couch with a muffled thud. Her big eyes are like magnets attracted to my face. I swear I can catch her thoughts coming like electromagnetic waves from her brain like I'm her personal antenna.

"Woke up in the middle of the night again?" she asks.

"Yep." The girls are all too familiar with my habit of sleeping too little and moving too much.

"Who did you spend the night with?"

"Just a guy I met at the club," I say. I feel terrible about it, but I don't remember his name. I don't even remember him telling me his name. There's a chance he didn't say it. Or that he did say it and I didn't register it.

"I heard you coming home. It was pretty late. Or pretty early. I'm not sure which." Lil sips her coffee playing at disinterest. I pretend not to know what she's trying to get at. "I woke up and didn't find you. I thought maybe you'd found someone you liked and decided to stay over for breakfast." She nudges me with her toe, her beautiful face expectant. She never gives up hoping I'll find my knight in shining armor. She thinks we all have our designated perfect partners and I just happen to be unlucky enough to have not found mine.

"Not this time. Maybe my next try," I tease her. Mallory looks up at me, yellow eyes unconvinced.

Lil squints. "Don't tell me you're starting to believe in such things as love."

"I believe in spreading love."

"Spreading love or your legs?" A comment pinched with acid comes from the direction of the door.

Mel.

Melanie. My third roommate. She and I don't get along very well. I don't really know what I did to her, she seems to loathe me. She never misses a chance to push my buttons and narrow her eyes at every damn thing I do. Most specially, she likes to remark on how many men I sleep with -or rather how many men she seems to think I sleep with. Basically, to her, I'm a huge slut. I have tried to get along with her for the longest time until I realized my efforts were once-sided. Luckily for both of us, she's rarely home. She spends most of her time with her asshole of a fiancé, Mark, who's constantly checking my ass anytime he comes over.

She just came in and I'm already half hoping she trips over her wicked tongue. Mine's already itching to give her a reply. I know I should be the bigger person here and keep my mouth shut. Fortunately, I am not. "Perhaps if you minded your own sex life instead of mine you wouldn't be so bitter, my darling."

"We don't all need to be so promiscuous," she spits just when I notice she's not alone. Her shithead of a fiancé is right behind her, holding her bag of groceries.

I sigh for this little ruining of my good mood. "Hey, you brought Mark with you without even giving us a heads up. How nice!" I clap my hands together, loudly. That seems to catch his attention. I always make a point of letting him know how unwelcome he is.

She throws her dark hair over her shoulder in a mean girl kind of way. "I pay the rent too, Pearl."

"Yeah, you also live with other people. There are civility rules to respect," I tell her, for the thousandth time. One of us could be naked inside or something. Although honestly, if Mark weren't such a dick I wouldn't mind her bringing him over anytime she wanted. It just so happens that he is the biggest dick there ever was.

"Rough night, Pearl?" He focuses his attention on me. He usually does. Specially on my most voluptuous parts.

I give him a disdainful look, ignoring his presence completely. I hate the way he looks at me. Lasciviously. Without any respect at all. I wonder, if he's that creepy around Mel's friends, how does he treat other women? How does he treat her when we're not around?

Seeing that I don't respond to Mark's provocation, Mel feels the need to meddle. "She probably just came straight home from someone's bed."

"Oh, Melanie," I almost shout her name, my patience at its lowest levels. "Could you lay down your usual persecution of my sexual conduct for today?" Lords knows if I had half as much sex as she seems to think I do, I wouldn't even be able to walk straight.

Mel just hisses at me, retrieving to her room and leaving stupid Mark to store her groceries.

She and I are as different oil and water. She would never understand me. I spent most of my life, all my teenage years, being told I wasn't allowed the same liberties as men, especially when it came to sex. It took me years to understand my own body and my own desires. To her, I'm a slut because I'm not afraid to enjoy sex with whomever I please, even if sometimes my choices prove to be of poor character.

A man is just being a man. Having his fun. Exerting his male right. But a woman? A woman is a whore. A bitch. Easy. Disposable. Meant to be fucked and judged for it. Men slept around all the time. Why couldn't a woman do the same and be left in peace? Why couldn't she leave me be?

I finish my coffee praying for Jesus to give me patience. Lil squeezes my hand, a silent plea to disregard Melanie's petty insults. Just then, I hear Cami come out of the bathroom and decide a shower is all I need to save myself from a cortisol rush. "I'm going to take a shower."

I rise from the floor to deposit my mug on the kitchen sink. Mark, who is taking his sweet time putting away Mel's groceries, positions himself strategically so that I have to brush past him on my way to the bathroom. As I pass by him, he takes the chance to whisper, "Let me know if you need help soaping your back."

I can see, from my peripheral vision, Lil tense up on the couch. Anger dominates me so suddenly, I start seeing red. "Oh, yeah?" My smile is seductive. I take in a breath, close my hands around my mug and refill it with hot coffee.

"If you want." The cocky curve of his mouth insinuates he actually believes I would accept his offer.

"Here's what want, Marky." I lean in, put my lips near his ear and say, "I want you to go fuck yourself, you jerk!" And I spill hot coffee all over the front of his expensive khaki pants.

"Fuck!" He pushes past me in a blur, rushing to the sink where he splashes cold water on his groin while calling me every sexist name under the sky. "You fucking bitch!"

Lil guffaws. Mallory even meows. Victorious, I laugh my ass off. "Oh, Mark. I'm so sorry!" Asshole. He had it coming. "How clumsy of me. I hope I haven't burned your weenie penis."

He turns to me, face so red he resembles a tomato. "Your frigid little cunt." He spits, coming at me. I don't even flinch.

"Mark?" Mel calls from her room. He freezes, but his eyes on me are homicidal.

I lift a brow, daring him to touch me. "Your fiancée is calling."

He points a finger at me. It's an effort not to bite it off. "You're going to get it one day, Pearl," he threatens.

I take a step closer until his finger hits my sternum. "I can hardly wait, Marky."

Lil appears by side, steading hands on my shoulders. With a last glare at me, Mark backs away and leaves the kitchen, still cursing. Even when he's gone I don't relax. "Pearl, you have to be careful," Lil warns me, worried.

If I have to be careful, what about Mel? She might not be the nicest girl I know, but not even she deserves that pitiful excuse for a man. "I can handle idiots like him. I grew up around them," I tell Lil, not daring to admit I'm actually afraid, deep down.

***

I STACK the colorful crayon masterpieces my new pupils hanged on my classroom walls in Meet the Teacher Day into a neat pile on my desk. I've got a collection of ordinary pieces of white paper transformed into amazing works of art by that wonderful imagination only children have.

Kids are my spiritual animals. They come in all shapes and sizes, boisterous and brutally honest. Most days at work I have so much fun I go home with a bellyache from laughing so hard.

I'm distracted, counting the drawings, when two knocks on the door announce principal Isherwood's arrival. She's a stern old English woman whose gaunt face displays her perpetual unhappiness with life. Most of the time, she scares the kids. In their little colorful heads, she's a wicked witch. I secretly think she likes me -a little bit.

"Miss Jones," she says in greeting. I jump to my feet. Her voice throws me years back in time, to that little girl who used to get in trouble in school. Principal Isherwood's shrewd eyes inspect me from head to toes. I'm wearing my Special Meet the Teacher Day Outfit; a red polka dot dress, shiny oxford shoes and hair arranged in two puffy Mickey buns. I study her countenance, searching for any signs of disapproval. She hardly shows any emotions by way of facial expressions though. "We have a parent who couldn't be here earlier," she says in her flat tone. "Is it a problem for you to talk to him now?"

There's a retarder every year. That kind of parent who periodically drops their kid off fifteen minutes past the time. The principal rarely forgives their tardiness, which is why I think it strange this particular one should be getting special treatment. "It's no problem, principal Isherwood. Send him in, please."

She's gone for two seconds before she brings the tardy parent in. As he walks into my classroom it takes less than a minute for my brain to process the information that I know him.

I've seen those enviable high-angled cheekbones, that square jaw and those deep set dark eyes before. My brain does me the favor of reminding me that the last time I saw that perfect combination of facial features I was being fucked to within an inch of my life up against a nightclub's bathroom wall under morally dubious red lights. Now he's here. In my classroom. A goddamnparent.

My jaw drops. I blink in slow motion and have the sense to shut my mouth before I start drooling. "Julian?!"

He looks right at me, at my core, where my heart beats to pump blood through my body. That is all it takes for my brain to release a storm of adrenaline that has my cognitive functions going into disarray. At first, his face is blank, then recognition hits him. I don't know how I expect him to react, but I don't anticipate such of large display of teeth as his mouth curves up. His eyes are reduced to two half-moon chinks, the telltale wrinkles of a genuine smile like starburst radiating from their corners. I'm almost fooled into thinking he seems happy to see me. Almost. If only the humiliation he put me through weren't still as fresh as a daisy.

"Pearl?" It's his husky voice. It's him. He sounds surprised to see me. Happy surprised. He's got be kidding me with this shit...

"Oh! Miss Jones, you know Mr. Song?" Principal Isherwood is still there by the door. I'd momentarily forgotten about her.

"Mr. Song?" I turn my face her direction, but I can't tear my eyes away from Julian's. "Yes," I manage to mumble, dumbfounded.

"What a coincidence," my boss says, fishing for an explanation. I'm suddenly aware of how much trouble I could be in if my history with Julian ever becomes public knowledge.

Julian is staring at me, a stupid grin plastered to his mouth, one inconspicuous straight brow up in challenge, daring me to come up with an excuse for our acquaintance. I can see it in his face like a movie projection; he's thinking of those things we did and said to each other, too.