Seventeen year old Safaya Bennett must navigate young adulthood under the stresses of her sins, her crumbling relationship with her twin sister, Rue, and a crippling mental disorder that makes her very dependent on her relationship with Nate Jacobs...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
————————
There was something eerie in the air the night that my sister walked out.
I was laying in bed, it was late, and I tried everything to make myself go to sleep. I even contemplated punching the shit out of myself in effort to knock myself out, but even then I knew it wouldn't work. Plus, it was probably physically impossible, so there's that. I knew something was wrong. I could feel it but I just didn't know what it was. It could have been guilt or just a gut feeling that Safaya was in danger and I was to blame.
Across town she was laying in bed. Wrapped in the arms of a woman beater as the soft glow of Nate's bathroom light shined on them. After their shared shower, and two more rounds of passion, the pair laid in bed and listened to the other breathe. Faint music was playing but neither one of them were fully paying attention. They didn't want to go to sleep, or really do anything but be with each other after all this time.
Nate turned his body to face Safaya, laying on his side and adjusting himself in his Tommy Hilfiger boxers. He didn't say anything, just grabbed my sister's hand and held it in his while he played with her fingers. Plenty of times he would lay in bed with Maddy and feel nothing. When they first began dating, she made him feel like the big man on campus. She boosted his ego but months of fighting and fucking and he was tired of the cycle. Safaya was something new. He had never explored her body before and regretted waiting so long. Something about my sister's pussy just sent him in hyperdrive and he felt like he had snorted three fucking lines of coke. I don't know what was wrong with him, but he was high off of sex.
"You look like a little kid right now." Safaya said, a soft laugh escaping her plump lips.
Nate brought her hand to his face and rested it there, closing his eyes as he settled into the touch. "What was your first impression of me, Saf?" Nate asked, his gaze glued to his sheets.
"Um," My sister began. She hadn't expected such a loaded question in the middle of the night, but she knew Nate was in his head a lot, and figured she would entertain this. "I didn't really know what to think. I was scared, you know, I looked at you and thought you were going to be another kid that would make fun of me." She ran her hand through his short hair, stopping at the back of his neck and rubbing circles into his scalp. "But then you talked to me. Told me that you liked my hair and asked me why my leg was shaking so much."
Nate nodded, finally looking into her eyes. "I thought you really had to fuckin' pee." He chuckled to himself.
"You're so stupid." Saf smiled, rolling her eyes at him. "What made you think about that day? It was so long ago." She inquired. She could tell there was more to what was going on, he just needed to let her in his head for once.
*play Love Drought by Beyoncé *
Nate shook his head, looking back down at his hands. "Do you still think of me that way? Someone who would make fun of you?"
My sister squinted at the question. Saf sat up in his bed, pulling Nate's tee shirt closer to her body. She pushed him to lay on his back, throwing her legs on either side of his hips, and straddling him. "Of course not. You protect me from assholes like that." Saf let her hands rest on his torso. "What's going on in that big head of yours, huh?" She inquired. He deflected her original question so she figured rephrasing it might get her some answers.
"It's nothing. It's just all this shit with the investigation." Nate's hand crept around to Safaya's back, trailing down her spine before they rested on her ass. "There's a lot of talk around town about me, awful lies, and if no one else was on my team ... I just wanted to make sure you were still here."
Safaya nodded. She figured whatever was bothering him had to do with Maddy, since she was the one who created this big fallout. "I love you too much to just leave. It's okay to be scared, Nate--"
"I'm not scared." He quickly corrected her. His body tensing underneath hers. "I'm not the person they're painting me out to be, Saf. But it's only a matter of time before everyone knows the truth."
My sister leaned forward, balancing her weight with her outstretched arms. She gave Nate a kiss, tugging on his bottom lip gently with her teeth. "And I'll be there by your side the entire time."
The room was silent, only thing around the couple was the sound of music. "What is this song?" Nate crinkled his brows. He pulled Safaya closer into his body and she laid on his naked chest, curly hair tickling him but he didn't mind it. She smelled like Coconut and Aloe, really clean, and he loved playing in her hair. The little coils wrapping so easily around his finger, quite frankly, I found it fucking ironic.
"It's Love Drought. Beyoncé." She answered without missing a beat.
"It's fucking depressing." He hummed against her. "Come on, let's go to bed." Nate grabbed her phone from the nightstand, clicking the music off, and something caught his attention.
Saf closed her eyes, head in the opposite direction as she drifted off into sleep quickly. Nate scrolled through her notifications, eyes landing on Instagram highlighted numerous times. TJ liked a couple photos that were on Saf's profile. One being from the night of McCay's party, she and Nate were sitting at the pool during pregaming. Feet dipped in the water as he wrapped his arm around my sister, the two of them full of smiles. The other photo was a throwback picture that Safaya loved. It was from when we were like five and our dad held her high up in the air on a sunny day. The light was shining in their faces and you could see in her chubby cheeks and his crinkled eyes, that they were both laughing.
If it was anybody else, Nate probably wouldn't have cared, but in all honesty he saw Thomas Jagger as a threat to him and Safaya. There was nothing he could do at the moment about the likes, or the fact that TJ was looking at my sisters page at almost one in the morning, but he knew he was fine for the time being. He had just fucked my sister and now she was laying on his chest, in his bed. While these little moments meant everything to my sister, Nate didn't give a fuck. He saw Safaya as a trophy, a conquest, and in the unspoken battle between him and TJ, he knew he was winning.
