Blood & Milk by N.R. Walker Page B

before Damu. His arm was still wrapped tight around my waist, his soft breaths at the nape of my neck, and his red shuka draped over us like a blanket. I could also feel his cock pressed against the crack of my arse.
    It felt so good. Hot and hard and right there. It was something I hadn’t felt in over a year, physical intimacy, sexual attraction.
    Not since Jarrod. Not since that awful day… we’d woken up, like any other normal day. Sex before work wasn’t that unusual. It was usually just a quick fuck or mutual blowjobs or handjobs in the shower. We saved our lengthy lovemaking sessions for night time when we could, and quite often did, spend hours in bed.
    He’d woken me that day by pressing his lubed up fingers inside me, nipping teeth at my shoulder, pleading with me to “wake up, baby” before he slipped his cock into me. Afterwards, he made me coffee and toast, told me he loved me, stole a bite of my peanut butter, kissed me, and went to work. Just like any normal day. Work was normal, and we went to the pub for dinner after work, just like normal.
    Everything was normal.
    Until it wasn’t.
    Nothing was normal again after that day. Not one thing. Not me, not my life, not the stars or the moon. Not the air I breathed, not how people looked at me.
    Nothing.
    And when the memories brought with them their leaden weight of loss and grief, they brought with it something new.
    Guilt.
    Guilt for breathing, for surviving. Guilt for living when he does not. Guilt for lying in the arms of another man.
    I didn’t dare move.
    I wanted to grind back harder. I wanted to grip his hips behind me and pull him closer still. I wanted to feel him slide between my arsecheeks. I wanted him inside me.
    I wanted to feel… something.
    Anything
    Alive, mostly. I wanted to feel alive.
    But I didn’t move. Well, not the way I wanted to. I peeled Damu’s arm off me and crawled out of the hut. The sun was rising, shedding strands of brilliant golds over the horizon. The air was crisp, the birds were singing their praises, and the kraal was waking.
    It wasn’t long until Damu stood beside me and stretched the kinks out of his back. “Excited for this day?” he asked.
    “What?”
    He eyed me cautiously. “Start school for you.”
    “Oh,” I said. There was no point in pretending I hadn’t forgotten. “I had other things on my mind.”
    Damu nodded slowly. “He speak to you,” he said, looking over the kraal. “In your dreams. The one you left behind.”
    I swallowed down my heart and breathed hard against the cage that squeezed my lungs. "He doesn’t speak. In my dreams, he doesn’t speak. I would kill to hear his voice. Just one more time. I would give anything―” my voice cracked “―I would give anything , just to hear his voice, but he never speaks. And I didn’t leave him behind. He left me.”
    I was on the verge of tears and tried blinking them back but had to scrub them away with my hands. Damu put his hand on my shoulder. “We get water.”
    I nodded, and ducked back into the hut to grab the bucket, and it was then I noticed Kijani had come out of his home. Damu was clearly making sure Kijani didn’t see me upset. I doubted the brave warrior would take my tears as anything short of weakness.
    Not that I cared what Kijani thought of me. I cared about what Damu thought of me. “Sorry about this morning,” I said to him as we walked to the river.
    He shrugged it off. His ever-silent way of saying ‘no problem.’ He held up the empty bucket. “Need more water to make school.”
    My gaze shot to his. “We’re making a school?”
    Damu laughed. He put his hand up, flat, then upright. “Roof. Side. Block sun and wind.”
    I put my hand on his shoulder and bounced with excitement. “We’re making a school!”
    Damu laughed, and it turned out to be the best thing ever. Distraction, purpose, and a real sense of belonging.
    For the next week, myself and Damu, along with the women of the manyatta and even the