On the ride home, she reclined her seat, pulled her dress up around her waist, and let him finger her to two orgasms while he drove. They offered him solace in the form of Erin, but her absence was more pronounced in the wake of those recollections. It was a Friday night, and he could still recall the way she had looked at him before a date, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she glanced up from beneath lowered lashes. Now and then, a slant of sunlight caught her bare skin, accentuating the curves and hollows of her body with a glow. Latishia bends to examine a sewing machine, her body stretching in such a way that highlights every contour. Cheyenne entered the master bedroom, her shadow stretching across the threshold like an intrepid explorer taking her first steps into a long-forgotten temple. With the photos in place, Cheyenne looks around at the room that now breathed with a sense of renewal and hope. Grime clung to his skin as if it had become part of him, a second skin he couldn’t shed no matter how hard he scrubbed, not that, that was a priority for Larry. Then, with each swipe of a rag and window cleaner, more and more of the grime that had accumulated over the year since Erin’s death
