That night, Chevelle ate the way she used to eat when she was a child. Licking the bones of the meat dry...crushing them like little shells...sucking on the marrow... It was a spiritual experience. Good food always had a way of doing that to Chevelle—of speaking to the living thing inside her. Reminding her what it meant to be real and embodied.

Chevelle had already washed her plate clean and wiped the grease stain from around her mouth when the crash came from Abel's room.

His door was slightly ajar, but from where Chevelle stood, all she could see was Abel's shadow twisting on the back wall.

"What was that, Abel? Are you okay?"

"Uh...yeah, I think so."

Chevelle didn't like how unconvincing his voice had sounded, and so she pressed him. "Are you sure?" she asked.

As she waited for Abel's response, a thick silence fell over the house, and it quickly became scarier than the crash itself had been. Just as Chevelle accepted that she would have to enter Abel's room to face a gruesome sight, he groaned loudly.

"Fuck!" he hissed.

"Oh no."

Chevelle ran to Abel's room, and on the way, she reminded God that although she had run out on Mass, she had also refrained from punching her boss' neighbor who, last month, threatened to tell Chevelle's boss that she had gone for a dip in the pool while he was out at work. This was the same neighbor who had kept one of her security cameras religiously pointed into Chevelle's boss' backyard from the day Chevelle was hired. She was a widow with nothing better to do than to terrorize Chevelle, and that day, she had made Chevelle clean out her rain gutters to buy her silence. For that, surely Chevelle deserved at least one uneventful, peaceful night.

As Chevelle reached for Abel's door, it swung open and she came face-to-chest with his very shirtless body. He was still wet from his shower and Chevelle could see the droplets glistening on his skin. His hair was slicked back and so she took the opportunity to fully appreciate the purple flush the hot water had left on his cheeks, and it wasn't long before her eyes sauntered downwards, following the trail of little rivers down his face...along his jaw...over his chest...past his navel...until they disappeared beneath the band of his grey sweatpants that left too little to the imagination.

Chevelle's breath got caught in her throat and she forced herself to gulp it down.

She tore her eyes away from those dangerous sweatpants before her nipples tore holes through her shirt. She tried to focus on the reason Abel's shirt wasn't on in the first place: the not-so-large, but very bloody gash that stretched its way across his left pec.

Chevelle instinctively reached for him, but she stopped herself before she could touch him. "What happened to you?" she asked instead.

Abel looked down at his chest and groaned. "It's nothing, the door of my closet just cut me. I've been meaning to varnish that wood for a while, but I keep on forgetting."

"I heard a crash."

He laughed dryly. "Oh, that was the lamp. I tripped over the cord. Into the closet."

Chevelle winced. "Shit, that looks painful."

"It's fine," Abel said. "I just need to stop the bleeding. Where are my Band-Aids?" he muttered, moving past Chevelle.

She reached out again, and this time, she actually grabbed onto Abel. She held his arm and gave him a pointed look. "Don't be stupid," she said. "That looks really deep. It could get infected, Abel." She paused, and then said, "Let me clean it for you."

Abel eyed Chevelle doubtfully, and of course, Chevelle noticed. She assumed it was because he didn't believe she knew what she was doing, but really, Abel was just worried that with Chevelle's hands all over him, they would soon have an even bigger problem on their hands.

"Trust me, I used to clean my little sister's wounds all the time," Chevelle assured him. "Do you have any rubbing alcohol?"

Abel winced at the thought of having rubbing alcohol in his wound, but he nodded anyway. "Yeah," he said. "I have a first aid kit, actually."

"In the kitchen?" Chevelle asked, not wanting to admit that she'd already seen it earlier. In fact, she'd located and kept one eye on it since the moment she heard the crash from Abel's room. It was next to the toaster, under the box of Special K Red Berries.

God, Chevelle was really praying that he couldn't tell just how eager she was for a chance to get her hands on his body. It hadn't been that long, but it had been too long still.

"Yeah, I can grab it," Abel said, heading to the kitchen, and Chevelle followed quietly behind him, drooling over the taut muscles of his back the entire way there.

Fuck, she really shouldn't have skipped that Mass.

Abel got the first aid kit from under the cereal box and brought it to the counter where they both sat, and Chevelle began to clean his wound. She dipped the corner of a hand towel into the alcohol and dabbed lightly at the cut, trying her best to be gentle with the raw flesh, but after a few minutes, the both of them had to give up. It was clearly causing Abel too much pain (even though he tried expertly to hide it), and Chevelle cared much more about stopping his pain than she did about having an excuse to touch his body.

Just as they were about to surrender Abel's wound to infection, he remembered his aloe vera plant that sat out by the doors to the back porch. And so, they made their way to the back of Abel's house, passing through a doorway with nothing but a wall of foliage that rained down from the top.

They entered the back room and Chevelle stared in awe at the little wonderland Abel had made for himself, hidden away from the rest of the world. The sliding glass doors that were meant to separate inside from outside really did more melding than they did separating. The green of the plants inside somehow fit perfectly with the white snow beyond the doors, marrying them into one beautiful landscape. Chevelle could only imagine how beautiful of a view this must have been in the spring. And the sliding doors were cracked slightly open, allowing a chill breeze to brush past them. The space felt very loved and lived in, and Chevelle knew it was something Abel must have created for himself a long time ago.

"Want to sit?" Abel asked, motioning to the sea of blankets and pillows that were set up inside this indoor forest, placed perfectly for one to gaze at the world outside.

Chevelle nodded, smiling at him as she slipped off her shoes and lowered herself down onto the softness below. "This is really beautiful," she said, still looking around, trying to capture every detail. "I think I'm in shock."

Twisting her head to look back outside from this new angle, Chevelle gasped as she caught sight of the moon shining vigilantly in the dark sky. For some reason, it had never looked as beautiful as it did to Chevelle in that exact moment. Framed by the careful and intentional selection of plants that surrounded her, the moon looked like the star of its own movie—which, in a sense, it was. And the white snow reflecting back on it made the moon's white even more blindingly beautiful.

Chevelle was so entranced that she didn't notice Abel sit down beside her with a piece of aloe vera in his hand until he cleared his throat and spoke.

"I'm glad you think so," he said, with a small smile that brought all of Chevelle's attention to his lips. "This is kind of my favorite place—well, aside from home."

"Home?" Chevelle asked, taking the aloe vera from Abel. She placed her free hand on his smooth chest, touching him hesitantly at first, and then allowing her palm to flatten against his warm skin.

Abel watched Chevelle as she looked at his body, and in that moment, he didn't need for her to say what was on her mind. He could see it all in the furrow of her brow, the parting of her lips. In the way her hand moved across his chest, glued to every bump and every curve.

"Ethiopia," he said. "Bahir Dar. It's like the Addis of—agh." Abel took in a sharp breath, wincing as the aloe vera came in contact with his cut. And although it still hurt like a bitch, compared to the rubbing alcohol, it was like a dream. "The Addis of the north," he finished, his voice strained.

Chevelle winced as well, not liking that Abel was in pain even though she knew this had to be done. "You grew up there?" she asked him, both very interested in his life story, and also eager to get him talking about something so that he wouldn't be thinking about how much pain he was in.

With a shake of his head, Abel answered, "No, but my parents did, and so my brothers and I grew up going back and forth quite often. My dad is always reminding us that that's our home, never America."

Chevelle smiled, and Abel watched it with intrigue. "Hm. I like that."

"Yeah, me too," he said.

"So when last were you back?"

"May, actually."

"Okay then, Mr. International," Chevelle teased, both happy for and jealous of Abel at the same time.

She hadn't been back to Haiti in over five years, and she missed it more with each passing day. Even though Abel didn't grow up in Ethiopia, a part of his heart was clearly there. He was lucky he got to go back so often. Chevelle didn't know the next time she'd be able to set foot in Haiti again, and thinking about it always amplified that feeling of hopelessness. It was like her very own sunken place. Chevelle was down there in the nothingness she had become, and up by the light, she could see the palm trees, her smiling aunties, the view from her old backyard...she could hear the sound of oil popping, smell the fresh fruit, hear the laughter of her friends, but no matter how loud she screamed, they couldn't hear her. No matter how much she ran, she couldn't reach them. All that was left for her was this place. America. Where she had to spend Christmases hiding from her own home because her ex-boyfriend was there, fucking her little sister every night.

God, it was so messed up.

"Ow, shit!" Abel flinched, recoiling from Chevelle's touch. Thinking about Haiti had gotten her so emotional that all the gentleness had flown from her touch.

"Fuck, I'm so sorry," Chevelle apologized, reaching forward to touch him, but then hesitating, unsure if that was the best course of action considering she'd just hurt him a second ago.

Abel shook his head. "Don't worry about it," he said, leaning in a little closer and frowning when he saw Chevelle's trembling hand. "Are you okay, though?" he asked. "What's going on?"

"Nothing, it's...it's nothing," she said, lowering her head and forcing out a laugh so that she wouldn't cry. "I just miss home."

"Where's home for you?" he asked.

"Haiti. We moved here a few years ago, and I haven't been back since. I just miss it a lot, and hearing you talk about Ethiopia made me miss it even more."

Abel nodded, understanding exactly what Chevelle meant. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know it's hard—having to be somewhere your heart doesn't want to be."

"Yeah. It is." Chevelle chuckled cynically, wondering why life always insisted on dragging people away from their happy places. What was the point of life if she couldn't be happy? If she couldn't even fathom a near future where she'd be happy?

Chevelle didn't like to dwell on those kinds of thoughts for too long because she wasn't a stranger to the lows that getting lost in that type of despair could bring. She wasn't sure she could handle experiencing another one just yet.

"Gauze?" she asked, holding a hand out to Abel.

He gave Chevelle the packet he'd taken from the first aid kit, and she opened it up, placing it carefully on the cut before smiling at her work. It was good to see his wound taken care of, but now that it was, Chevelle wondered what came next. They had a whole night ahead of them and no real structure to guide them through it. She became painfully aware of how close they were sitting.

"You spent more than a few minutes in that shower, you know."

"Yeah, I know. Sorry about that," Abel murmured. "My mind was all over the place. That's probably why I tripped to begin with."

Chevelle laughed. "And I doubt you've had a chance to clear your mind since then with all the pain I've been putting you through."

"No, this has actually been pretty relaxing," Abel said, taking a deep breath. "You have a very calming touch, Chevelle."

She smiled, thanking him for the compliment and taking a moment to appreciate the way the moon picked up the red undertones in his skin, illuminating it from the inside out. The way it cast dancing shadows on his body. And as Abel reached up to tie his hair in a bun, Chevelle caught sight of the black ink marking the inner surface of his arm. It was clearly some form of writing, but it was far from English. The letters curved and bent like little bodies as they snaked down his arm.

Abel saw where Chevelle was looking and he held his arm out so that she could see it better. "It's Amharic," he said.

"What does it mean?" Chevelle asked.

"It's an old proverb that roughly translates to 'a snake at my feet becomes a stick at my hand.' You've heard the story of how Moses turned a snake into a staff before the Pharoah, right?" Chevelle nodded and Abel smiled. It was kind of funny to him how they both had such Christian upbringings and yet they'd met at a bar and bonded for the first time over a blunt. God really did work in mysterious ways.

"I guess this tattoo was my way of claiming that any pain I face will transform and blossom into exactly what I need it to be," he continued. "That anything I put my hands on will...come to fruition."

Chevelle's eyes flickered upwards to meet Abel's gaze, and the look in his eyes knocked the breath right out of her chest. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to understand the kind of magic that this man held in his hands.

"Do you have any tattoos?" Abel asked.

Chevelle shook her head. "No. I'm too indecisive." She laughed. "Even if I wanted to get one, once I'm actually in the seat, I'd never go through with it."

Abel chuckled. "That's understandable," he said, thinking back to the day he had gotten his tattoo, not too long ago. After his breakup with his (now-married) ex, he had needed to take control of his life again. The heartbreak had been all-consuming, and Abel had let it eat away at him until he found himself backed into a corner. He needed to find a way to control all of that emotion and channel it into something other than his own destruction, so he had decided to mark himself. To him, this tattoo was a prophecy of sorts, and as soon as he'd gotten it, he had known that it was just the first of many. The pain had been addictive—pleasurable even.

"I almost didn't go through with mine," he said. "But at a certain point, I was like, I've been through worse pain, you know? So fuck it."

I enjoyed writing this chapter even though not much happened. My relationship with writing has changed so much over the past few years, and being able to just focus on conversation--on characters getting to know each other--was really nice.

Thank you for being here if you're here. Chapter 5 coming to wattpad next weekend. Chapter 22 coming to radish on Sunday.

<3

-nabi

**the next chapter is hella NSFW so I'd suggest getting nice and cozy before you read it