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"What happened to your face? I've been wondering since you adjusted our dinner plans." Bakari asked as soon as I stepped into his house, groceries in hand.
We were supposed to go out for dinner, but the bandage covering my stitches from the fall I'd taken that morning made me change my mind very quickly. The spectacle above my eyebrow had already subjected me to some staring and I wasn't in the mood for more.
"Do you really want to know?" I asked, my eyes landing on the tall, bald man walking to me.
Bakari was handsome and well-built, his toned body right in the middle between skinny and buff. If anyone asked me to describe him, I'd say he was a younger version of Morris Chestnut.
With 'not shorter than me' being my only preference in men, I didn't really have a type, but I knew that to other women, Bakari was probably a tall glass of yes, please. What really drew me to him was who he was, not so much how he looked. He was a man who genuinely liked and respected me, so different from what I'd witnessed growing up in Inde, where men treated women with the same level of respect people typically reserved for a clump of used up toilet paper.
When we first started dating, I thought it would be a disaster. It was my second attempt at being in a serious relationship and I had low expectations, but Bakari surprised me with how serious he was about us.
He valued my presence in his life and was always sure to let me know that. He'd never once raised his voice in an argument, never thrown any insults my way, never treated me like I was disposable. We'd been together for three years and were still going strong.
When he got to the kitchen, where I was standing, Bakari took the groceries from me and abandoned them on the counter. He came over to give me a hug and a kiss on top of my head. "Come on, just tell me, baby."
"It's embarrassing," I admitted. "I fell at the pharmacy. There was a caution sign because the floor had just been mopped, and I missed it completely."
I told him the rest of the story as I unpacked the things I'd bought for us to cook together, his expression sobering as I spoke.
"Thank goodness for that doctor." Bakari mumbled as he held my hips and gently kissed the bandage above my eye. "I'm glad you're okay."
I took a deep breath and released it, my hands sliding up behind his head as he leaned in for a kiss that never came.
"Are you okay?" Bakari asked instead of kissing me, the question reminding me of the previous night, how I'd woken up panicked from a nightmare detailing things from my childhood that I'd rather forget.
"I am." I said, pecking him on the lips.
"Are we going to talk about last night?"
And there was the dreaded question I'd been avoiding all day. As great as Bakari was to me, there were parts of my life I didn't want to let him in on. I couldn't tell him how real the horrible dream had been. I couldn't talk about the terrible memories that had left me screaming into the dark room at unholy hours.
