Page 13 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

Instead, a small, stunned smile takes over—crooked and late, taking the long way up to his mouth.

He moves closer, my nipples grazing his chest, and he smooths my wet hair back and away from my face. “You gonna let me wash your hair?”

He’s looking down at me as if I didn’t just puke up the night.

“You’re not gonna ask me what that was?”

He spins us so I’m out of the spray, his cock brushing soft against my ass, and he lathers his cheap-ass three-in-one boy shit in my hair. “Wasn’t gonna. Unless you wanna talk about it,” he says, massaging my scalp. “But if it’s ‘cause’a my cooking, we might be doomed...”

“Baby…”

Brandon’s voice snags.

“What the hell you doin’ here?”

He rubs a hand over his face,

half-asleep.

In a black hoodie and sweatpants, he stands with his feet apart and one arm across his chest, his hand held beneath his bicep. He’s staring at me, stunned and wrecked and scared. As if I punched a hole through time and stepped out of the past to fuck him up again.

My gaze floats around the apartment, stalling. It’s late—bone-tired late.

His window’s cracked open. The cold’s bleeding in and piercing heat.

The apartment smells like him: dryer sheets, his cologne, a hint of weed always soaked into his clothes.

A big leather couch is backed against the wall facing an even bigger TV.

A Knicks jersey’s framed on the wall.

Coffee table’s a graveyard⁠—

burnt roaches, empty water bottles,

ashtray gasping for a breath.

“Baby,” he says. My eyes cut back to him, and he lifts a pierced brow. “You really here right now?”

His letter’s in my head.

His voice too, reading it and meaning every goddamn word, I fucking love you, Allison. And now I’m standing in front of him, and he’s looking at me—green eyes glassy and teetering on the edge of hope—like there’s still a chance, and he still loves me.

And I’m fucking up his head more by being here. “I shouldn’t have come,” I rush out. “I shouldn’t be here.”

His eyes widen as I turn for the door.

He jumps to my side. “You think I care why you came? I don’t. I don’t give a fuck. You’re here now, so don’t drive all the way out here, then walk out on me, Baby. Not tonight.” Our eyes lock, and his are full, raw, and openly begging. “Whatever it is?” He flattens his hand against the door. “You came to me. You show up like this, so stay. Please, it’s late. It’s past one.”

It’s past one when Little Death crawls into Andrew’s bed, sliding in between me and him—soft-footed and silent in the middle of the night.

It doesn’t care if I’m buried in his skin, wrapped up inside his arms. It slides down like clockwork, wanting to make sure I’m still loving it,

wanting my hand,

a hush,

a lullaby.