During yet another very dry and bleak holiday season, Simone Evans, a high school English teacher, finds herself in the most unlikely friendship with Jordan Jackson- an ex con.
**Mature Content**
More mature chapters will be marked with a (⚠︎︎) bef...
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Simone woke up early the next morning, but she didn't get out of bed though. She just watched Jordan sleep. She watched the slight rising and falling of his chest as he breathed. She laid there right next to him, gently running her finger along the few tattoos on his arms and chest.
But kept going back to one in particular— 'Bianca' tattooed on his right chest. She knows that's his mother's name, but that's all she knows about the woman. He doesn't talk about her much more than that, and it's because he can't. He can't talk about a woman who he barely knows himself.
Simone asked him about her once, and he told her that he tried finding his mother in the years after he was done with high school, but without much luck. He just said that wherever she is, he hopes to God that she's doing okay— that she's doing better than when he was taken from her.
"What the fuck is this?" Simone whispered, more to herself thananything else. "What are we doing here...?"
Because she really didn't know. She's known this man for a handful of days, and already she's letting him into her life in a way she's never done with anyone before— not even when she first met her husband, Malcolm.
Being this close to someone this fast scares Simone in a way. Because to her, people aren't meant to fall this fast. There's steps you're supposed to take first, steps that they've skipped completely. It's been one week since Simone and Jordan first went out to that tree lighting— one week since they first officially got together. One week, and they were laid up next to each other, stark naked in her bed like it's been one year.
After a while of just laying there, just watching Jordan sleep, Simone finally got up and went to the bathroom to get herself at least a little bit ready for the day.
"Good morning," she didn't even turn around when she heard him walk into the kitchen a while later. She was standing at the stove, rolling dough between the palms of her hands before flattening it out to drop into the pan of vegetable oil.
"Mornin," he wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned over, placing the softest kiss on her cheek. "What are you making?"
"Fried dumpling with salt fish and cabbage."
"Is that another Jamaican thing?" He asked, now just standing against the counter as he watched her.
"Yes," she let out a little laugh because the way he said it was funny to her.
"You need help with anything?"
"Not really," she shook her head because she was almost done anyway. There really wasn't anything he could help her with.
"Where'd you learn how to cook?" He asked her instead.
"My mom," a small smile crept across her face, remembering all the times she'd help her mom out in the kitchen when she was a little girl. "Almost everything I know is from her. She was— she was great. She was the best."
