He walked in forty minutes later.
Simple black mask. The masquerade kind, held by a thin elastic, covering just enough.
He had took the hoodie off at the gas station — just the grey sweatpants now and a white tee that he removed somewhere between the front door and the living room because the candles Celestine had burning made the space genuinely warm.
The three women did not pause their conversation.
Loretta was mid-sentence about something involving a former situationship and a hotel in Shreveport.
Elizabeth, who had driven two hours from Birmingham and intended to get her full money’s worth out of this evening.
She was on her third glass of something pink that Celestine had mixed from a recipe she’d saved on Pinterest in February.
Then Celestine herself had sat a the corner of the sectional.
Isaiah saw the lazy-boy recliner was open and, sat down, stretched his legs out.
Nobody introduced him.
Nobody asked.
He picked up the decorative pillow from beside him and set it on the arm of the chair.
Then got comfortable like a man who knew how to exist in a room without being noticed.
The women kept talking.
“I’m just saying,” Loretta said, holding up her glass to the ceiling.
Who goes where and in what order and somebody always ends up with a feeling about it afterward and then you got to manage that—”
“The feelings,” Elizabeth agreed. “That’s where it goes wrong every time.”
“Every time,” Loretta confirmed.
Celestine nodded into her cup. “I’m not built for the emotional overhead.”
“None of us are.” Loretta gestured. “Now being tied up — that’s different. That’s contained. That’s one person’s problem.”
Elizabeth sat up a little.
“See, now that—”
“That is a different conversation entirely,” Loretta said.
“Is it though?” Elizabeth turned toward Celestine. “Cele you ever—”
“This is not a confession circle, Elizabeth.”
“I’m just asking.”
A beat.
“The idea,” Celestine said carefully, “is not unappealing.”
Loretta pointed at her. “See.”
“I said the idea.”
“The idea is where everything starts, baby.”
Isaiah said nothing. Adjusted slightly in the armchair. His head would fall backwards and he jumped up slightly then looked toward the window like he was watching something outside, though the blinds were down.
He was listening to every word.
The music shifted into something with more bass and less singing.
Elizabeth, who had apparently been waiting for exactly this type of music, stood up from the sectional and started moving in one place.
Not dancing.
Just moving from side to side — the way women move when they are comfortable, buzzing and past the point of caring about anything that doesn’t feel good.
Loretta joined her without discussion.
Celestine watched them from the couch for approximately thirty seconds before the music made her get up and start grinding slowly and dipping low, in the space between the coffee table and the bookshelf.
Three women.
Candlelight.
A playlist that set the mood.
Isaiah watched from the armchair.
Then somewhere between one song ending and the next beginning still in silence — his eyes closed.
Head tipped back slightly against the cushion.
Like a typical man who was comfortable and well-fed.
The tent was up.
The black sweatpants doing absolutely nothing to hide Isaiah’s other friend.
Apparently one part of him was paying closer attention to what’s going on than the rest of him.
Celestine saw it first.
She stopped moving.
Loretta followed her eyes.
Then Elizabeth followed Loretta eyes.
Three women standing in candlelit silence looking at a man that had dozed off and
had no idea that he had become the subject of a group study.
Loretta mouthed something without making sound.
Celestine shook her head slowly.
Elizabeth pressed her lips together very hard.
They moved back toward the sectional in a looser way, like they had not just collectively witnessed something that rearranged their individual thought patterns.
The conversation that followed was preceptively about one thing.
But Loretta’s eyes drifted over. Then back.
Elizabeth smoothed her shirt down and then — in a move that had nothing to do with temperature — pulled it off over her head and set it on the cushion beside her.
Loretta considered this for a moment.
Set her wine glass down.
Reached for her own.
Celestine looked at her two best friends, then across the room at Isaiah breathing slow and unbothered in the armchair, the candles throwing everything in warm romantic mood, the music still doing what the music was doing.
She reached up.
Freed the first button of her silk top.
Then the second.
Let it fall open at the front.
Somewhere in the armchair, Isaiah’s breathing stayed steady.
But his eyes — slow, almost slightly— opened just enough.
To be continued…