Beautiful and talented painter, Selma Halpern + charismatic architect husband, Jamal Halpern + bubbly baby boy, Rae Halpern. The stars had finally aligned in Selma's favor.
But by the strike of midnight on a fateful day in April, it seemed like the...
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15.
#2
What I love about you, Selma Janette Halpern is your patience. It's all because of your loving heart, how motherhood has shaped you into the best of women. You're gold itself but you don't deserve to suffer in silence. Your skin shouldn't bear the slightest of discomfort and your heart should have no cracks.
Because only you, Selma, can make the wrongs in my life right again.
- Jamal.
This note, she had found tucked in the belt of her outfit. Jamal must have slipped it in when Selma had posed with her backside pressed to his front and the cameraman had yelled "perfect, Selma." After their little clash, they had pretended everything was normal even though the shift in their moods was obvious enough for everyone — by which she means Lyn — to simply assume it was sexual tension.
Which was definitely still there.
It was a tough feat, for both of them, she would admit. At a point, her mind had flashed back to when she had pulled down Jamal's pants, and a deep burning filled her core. It felt like her heart had situated itself in her lower belly and her eyes clouded a bit. This was only apparent to Jamal who had responded by whispering, "I'm sorry."
For what exactly, she wished to ask. For kissing her or being the cause of the anger that made them stop? For not finishing what they started? Or for even starting it in the first place? Damn right, that was the one. He couldn't even stay in the same dressing room as her, waiting outside to give her "space".
The slightest feeling of pettiness crawled into her heart, as she remembered the day she found a rumpled note on their bathroom floor, only to discover it was hers. She closed her hand around the what I love about you note and made a perfect ball out of it before dropping it exactly where she knew Jamal would see it.
When she stepped out of the dressing room, he was sitting on a low pavement and jumped to his feet immediately he saw her. "Selma —"
"Mhmm?"
His mouth opened and closed without a sound escaping it. He must have thought better about not looking stupid in front of her because he closed his eyes for a second as if to get himself together.
"Selma, I was thinking about what you said and um, I know you aren't wrong in any manner so I just decided to show you this." He pulled his phone out and handed it to her.
"Put in your password?"
She couldn't have imagined how his face fell and how quickly he swallowed before saying, "your fingerprint. You registered it when I first got the phone."
