"Why are you still with him?"
"I don't know... there's just something that keeps drawing me back to him."
•••
Tamara thinks she married her best friend. She thinks she found the one.
What she doesn't know might end up killing her.
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It's almost 8 p.m. when Tamara returns home, oblivious to a figure sitting on the sofa in their well-decorated living room while she slips her heels off to the shoe rack.
As she takes a step up the small staircase that separates the front door from the living room, Tamara squeals when she sees the figure move in the moonlight, dropping her purse and phone.
She relaxes when she is able to make out her husband's nude torso shining as the moon reflects onto him.
"Oh Tion, you scared me to bits. I didn't know you were still awake."
"We always pray together before bed." Tion calmy responds as he stands up and walks up to her in casual strides.
Her phone and purse remain on the floor by her feet. She wants to pick them up yet she lets up.
Tamara doesn't know why but his quietude shakes her skin in a way making the hairs decorating her body gnaw underneath her blazer. Regardless, she forces a smile, awaiting his next move.
"I'm so sorry, I thought you'd be asleep by the time I returned."
She eyes him with an unmoving smile as he reaches her level, his arms automatically going to her lower back before rising to her nape. The touch brings the usual butterfly eruption she gets anytime he touches her or smiles at her.
She is so immersed in his soft touch that she doesn't feel the way his grip hardens against her copper skin at first. Tamara whimpers at the sudden grasp.
Her eyes widen and she stares right into her husband's light brown ones, gaining a smirk from him in return. His pink cloud-like lips ghost over her parted ones like he is going to kiss her but he doesn't.
"This is the last time you miss prayer, understood?"
With that said, Tion's fingers are unburied from her neck and find themselves on her cheek where strings of wetness appear. He swipes them away, holding onto her jaw and finally kisses her.
It's a quick but deep kiss, which she tries her best to respond to afraid she'll rouse his anger any further.
When he pulls away, Tamara has to resist the urge to wipe the particles of his lips on hers. She is far too lost to anticipate his next moves, not expecting any more surprises from him. Before she can register what's happening, his forehead is resting against hers, and with parting lips, he begins to recite a prayer.
"Dear God..."
The young woman doesn't get to stare at this version of the man she married when she sees his eyes wide open, unblinking while he prays. Her heart that had been racing the moment she walked through the doors, now hammered inside her while she stood helplessly letting him have his way with her.
"Amen." Is all she hears marking the end of his orison, and her body nearly drops when he lets go.
"I'm going to bed. I have a ton of meetings tomorrow." Tion kisses her forehead and begins to walk away.
The itchiness that scurried through her body while he held onto her leaves her scratching her arm, neck and face. Finally she wipes her lips, her gloss smearing the back of her hand and the corner of her mouth. Her brain is frozen as she was in his grip, unable to comprehend what was happening and who this stranger was.
Surely this wasn't her husband?
Tamara couldn't believe this was the same man she had married, the same man who had nervously scratched his neck the night he proposed to her. The same man who has looked at her with such loving eyes before screaming with joy, "I do" in front of the pastor, their friends and the rest of the congregation.
She lets herself fall to the floor, not bothering to pick up her previously fallen items and finally lets her tears fall freely, each carrying a weight she couldn't quite figure out yet.
Silently, her mind convinces her this is nothing, simply frustration at not being able to pray with her like they usually do. Her mind encourages her to believe this is a 'slip up', an it-only-happens-once event and it will surely not happen again. However, when she finds herself submerged with this funny feeling, her limbs unable to move as her mind did previously, she remaines on the floor.
Their shared bedroom chastises her into staying put on the cold tiled floor surrounded by her belongings in the living room.
That night, she finds no rest or peace but the words, "I'm sorry mom" can be heard by the hardened confinements around her, sobs swallowing her pleas.
