Malik and Jade

Chapter 33 (Jade): A Friend

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA 

Hayete. My life.

Malik had just called me his life.

Scrambling to sit up on my knees in bed, I wasn't sure what to do, what to say, where to go. It had shaken me that much. Malik sat up, too, his eyes concerned and had it been any man other than Malik, I would have said his eyes were wild. His hands reached for me, as if to steady me. Or maybe to keep me from running away. 

Never had he called me that, and now that he had, now that he had, I wasn't sure what to do with it. Why he had called me that? Where had it come from? It wasn't sweetheart or honey -- this was  an endearment with serious undertones.

"Jade," he said softly. "It's OK."

Cognizant of Nour asleep only feet away, I answered him just as softly. "No, it's not OK. It's not, Malik and you know it. Was it something that slipped out from habit?"

"I've never called you that before." He was confused, so I realized I needed to spell it out for him.

"Not me." My implication was clear. Brooklyn.

It was his turn to physically recoil. "Never. I never thought that about her much less ever used the term with her."

"She was good enough to hold in your heart and love."

"At one time I thought she was, yes. But no longer, Jade."

Looking away, I didn't even know what to say to that other than liar, liar. My disbelief must have shown on my face, even in the dim light.

His hand reached out and cupped my cheek again. Hayete. Would I always associate him touching my cheek with that endearment?

"Jade, do you still feel the same way about me that you did when we were first married?"

"No." My answer, though quiet, was cold and abrupt, and Malik winced slightly at the finality in my tone.

"So, if your feelings for me can change, why can't mine for Brooklyn change? Why, after seeing what she was really like and after hearing about the nasty things she did to you, can't my feelings for her have completely changed? Why are you so certain that you know better than I do how I feel about her now?"

"Because you loved her for so long. Because you never loved me!" And you never told me otherwise. 

"Jade, Brooklyn was the first woman I dated, and it took years for me to want to date her, years for me to ask her out. I'm not someone who's ruled by emotions and I don't rush things. I'm deliberate and intentional, and I think things to death before I act. She and I were friends for years before it became anything more. But it didn't take me long at all to feel like I'd been taken in by a snake when I saw and heard about the way she was behaving. So you can choose to believe it or not, but I have no feelings for her unless you count contempt and even that isn't worth my time. It's more indifference." 

There was a lot that was interesting in what he said, but of course I latched on to the one fact I didn't know before.

"Why didn't you date before her?" 

Malik laughed low. "I was about three years younger than my classmates so I wasn't exactly in high demand. It doesn't seem like a lot now, but in high school and college, it was a lot and girls didn't want to go out with me, date someone so young. And then I was busy trying to get the best grades, get into medical school, and I was competing with the best of the best so I had to work harder than ever. It took almost all of my focus and every spare moment I had to be top of my class."