Blood On Her Hands

Chapter 41

It was a Wednesday afternoon when I stood outside Kimberly’s shower with a towel wrapped around myself. The heating in her apartment was spotty. Some days it was turned up to the point that we were sweating in November and some days we were left shivering as it snowed outside. I knew that to escape the frigid chill that sent goosebumps through the length of my body, I needed to get dressed in record time. I should have been jumping into my pants and hastily drying my hair that curved into loose, inky tendrils. Instead, I found myself under the spell of my shower thoughts. I was too enraptured in them to be concerned about how the temperature made me shiver. I sat on the edge of the toilet seat as drops of water from my hair dripped down my shoulders and remembered what Adonis and Nancy were like.

It had perplexed me to hear that Nancy thought Adonis wasn’t satisfied with her. Even apart from her suspicions about my relationship to Adonis, she said she felt as though she wasn’t enough for him. Even if he hadn’t loved Nancy as much as he should have, it wouldn’t have warranted her cheating. I had developed a morbid curiosity about the perils of their relationship as of recently. Had there been signs that they weren’t truly happy? That even without rumors of an affair floating in their heads, they weren’t right for each other?

The picture that had been turned over on my family mantle the last time I was home had made a lasting impression on me. It was my family and Adonis in front of the lake we visited early that summer. All of our smiles were big, all except for Adonis's. I searched deep inside my memories of that day, taking hold of every fragment that remained and tearing it open to dissect the miniscule pieces. Inside one of those flecks of the past was a scene I had almost forgotten. If it wasn’t for the picture frame, I would have probably never recalled it.

My back was to the lake as I hiked up the grass. Water rolled down my legs and dripped off my hair. My bathing suit felt heavy on my body from being soaked and the weightless feeling of floating in the water had left me. The sun was beaming down from its spot directly over my head and I found myself hurrying towards the shade where all of our stuff was sitting. As I grabbed my towel from Darren and I’s bag, he called out to me from the water where he had just been engrossed in a swimming race with Julio.

“The bathrooms are all the way down the hill!” he said, feeling comfortable enough to yell since all the other visiting families were on the other side of the lake. I was thankful that it wasn’t crowded when he continued. “You’re going to have to find a tree and pop a squat. You’ll be fine, just don’t wipe with poison ivy!”

I rolled my eyes as I stepped into my red striped flip flops. “How are you so sure I didn’t relieve myself while I was swimming with you?”

Darren’s eyebrows shot up the way they did whenever I surprised him by competing with his playful teasing. He recovered quickly, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “Is that why this spot's so warm?”

I used the towel as a shield to the sun as I walked into the woods that surrounded the lake. The sound of Nancy talking with Tìa about the kinds of foods she wanted to serve at her wedding faded as I got deeper into the dense set of greenery. The leaves began to act as a canopy and the shade revealed that the sunscreen I had smothered on earlier had not done a good job of preventing the sunburn forming on my shoulders.

It was not until I heard the sound of shuffling and saw dirt being kicked into the air that I remembered Adonis had ventured into the forest to use the bathroom just a few minutes ahead of me. Immediately, I thought about turning back and waiting until I saw him come out of the woods to be safe but then it was too late. I spotted his mop of long hair and dark skin, his outline delicate and soft. He was sitting with his back against a tree trunk, his shirt and trunks still clutching his skin from being submerged in the lake.