A Familiar Ring

CHAPTER 5: Handle the Truth with Care

It has been said that when love calls, you answer. What they don't tell you is that love always calls collect; it's a call you'll have to pay for one way or another. Four years had passed and Prosper was still on the line, waiting, on hold. He thought he had hung up long ago. He took another look at his phone pondering on the conversation that had just transpired but that didn't help him much. His heart had decided that he'd go to Macon as soon as he heard Cadence's voice. Or to California, or Zimbabwe. He'd have gone wherever she desired, really. Why? Prosper found it hard to answer that question as he couldn't think much about what he was doing, he just did it.

Though it had been four years since Prosper and Cadence had broken up, he still felt like he was obligated to rush to her side. She probably only wanted to consume him; salt him with her tears then swallow him whole, regurgitate him. Only this time, she'd probably be spewing him from her mouth and her heart. Or she probably just wanted to fuck or make love depending on what her emotional state was by the time he arrived. Prosper didn't know what the fuck he was doing. He battled with his feelings the entire car ride over to his loft and never once thought about what he would say to Nola when he got there. Now as he stood at his door fumbling his keys, he felt something he had never felt before: nervous.

He unlocked the door and walked in placing his keys on the table that lay in the entryway.

"Nola? It's me," Prosper called out.

"Up here," Nola replied while peering down from upstairs, smiling at him. She was wearing one of his button up shirts.

"You just waking up?" Prosper asked as he walked up the stairs. It was the middle of the day and she worked late nights after all.

"Nah, just up here painting," Nola said.

Nola was Prosper's partner for the last two years. Partner is the term she preferred to use, Prosper would've just referred to her as his shawty—which really meant she was the main woman he was having sex with but not the only woman. Their relationship was unconventional by design and very open. They had both come into each other's lives when they were desperately seeking freedom so they explored the limits of their relationship's openness by pursuing other sexual partners, sometimes sharing partners. For Nola, this relationship allowed her to be comfortably queer. For Prosper, this relationship was merely convenient but it's not something he'd ever admit to Nola as he struggled to even admit that to himself.

Given the nature of their arrangement, Prosper shouldn't have been nervous about the conversation they would soon be having at all. He stood in the doorway of what used to be his blueprint room but was now Nola's studio and just took a few moments to marvel at her. She was a stunning, yellowbone beauty with fiery auburn hair, hazel-green eyes, and daddy issues. Her name, Magnolia, came from her father's favorite flower but that name was all that she had ever gotten from him. For years Nola had desperately craved the attention from men in all ways possible. Every man she had come across left her empty, just like her father. All of her cravings became satisfied when she met Prosper.

"What brand of lotion did you use when you were a boy? To jack off?" Nola asked seductively as she stepped back from her piece seeking imperfections.

"Girl, you know--"

"Girl?!"

"My bad, my bad. Woman, you know I never needed to do that," Prosper answered as he walked over to her, hugging her from behind.

"Oh so all the fast ass girls were rushing to fulfill your adolescent wet dreams, huh?," she turned to look at him, giving him a seductive stare.

"Well, I wouldn't say that exactly but, something like that. Yeah."

They both burst out into laughter as Nola fell into Prosper's arms before kissing him deeply. She pressed her breasts into him and poked her ass out a bit—inviting him to palm it, and he did so aggressively.