Egbá: A Gentle Femdom Novella

ELEVEN

The roses in Marcos' hands are wilted. It was stupid of him to buy this specie, but it was the most expensive on the list, and he thought they would like expensive. Now, he just feels like an idiot, sitting down here for hours on end with dead flowers. He'd laugh at the irony of the death around him extending even to previously fresh flowers, but he's not in the mood.

MR AKINOLA AND MRS GBOLAHAN AJEBAMIDELE.
JANUARY 25, 1970 —  SEPTEMBER 27, 2015.
OCTOBER 1, 1977 — SEPTEMBER 27, 2015.
LOVING CHILDREN AND PARENTS
REST IN PEACE.

Egbá finds him in this position, like he knew she would. Somehow, after numerous Twitter stalking sessions, he found out that she comes to this cemetery on a certain Tuesday.

He wasn't sure of which Tuesday of the month it was, but he traced down the date on one of her posts. Second Tuesday. And here he is, waiting for her with a handful of wilted flowers.

She doesn't look surprised to see him. She drops her own flowers on the headstone, taking a hand to her lips. She mutters some words he's too far away to make out, and places the hand from her lips on the headstone.

Then she comes to sit beside him. She stays like that for a while, as if considering possibilities of a hundreds of things, then turns slightly to him. "Hey."

Hey.

He has never realized the amazingly stoic tone of that word. Or the dismissive nature, even. Hey, like there's nothing going on between them, and hey, like the past two months of calls and millions of texts and ache are nothing.

"Hey," he calls in return, because they are nothing.

Not now that she's right here again, and hope is rushing through his blood because she took a seat beside him instead of losing her shit like before.

She's sitting beside him, and she looks willing to talk. She looks willing to listen to him. That has to be enough somehow.

"I'm leaving for Paris next week to model fall collection," she says finally, roaming her eyes around his face, voice at a whisper. "I'll miss you."

"You won't," he replies moments after he finds his voice. "Because I'll follow you there."

She exhales shakily. "Marcos. Don't do this to yourself."

He clears his throat, like it'll return some sense of normalcy into this conversation. If there was even a sense of normalcy to begin with. "What if they make you take nudes? Who's going to whisk you out of there?"

"I am going to model some nudes," she replies, less than contrite. "And I won't need anyone to whisk me out of there.
He leans back properly against the bench, even though it's too low for a man his size, and takes in the entire scenery again. It's a public cemetery, so graves stretch out far and wide across from them. It's a fitting setting, seeing as he's about to get his heart officially broken.

"There's something about graveyards that just makes one begin to face mortality," he says softly, knowing she's hearing him. "Facing the fact that no matter how much we try, we're going under anyway."

Egbá shifts, like the dark turn of the conversation is making her uncomfortable. He notices then how small this bench is, and how she's bending into herself to keep their bodies from touching. He almost laughs. Almost.

"I want to be cremated," she finally mutters, twiddling her hands. "I don't like the thought of being forced into a casket in there. I want to burn, and be spread out in the wind. In a grassland."

"Not in a river somewhere?"

She shoots him a quick look. "I'm aquaphobic."

He snorts, because it's the natural thing to do when on the precipice of banter. "You have the largest pool I've ever seen."