Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Twenty-Nine

An hour after her sister Naomi went to bed, there was a jangle of keys at the door as someone sought entry. Dropping her book and running to the entryway, Rhonda was just in time to see her man walk in.

They silently embraced.

"Naomi and the kids are sleeping," she said quietly. Naomi was the first member of Rhonda's tightknit Bed-Stuy family to welcome Tommy. The idea of the widowed eldest daughter shacking up with a teenage gringo had been far too much for Rhonda's parents and brothers to handle at the time. They'd seen it as a certain sign that Rhonda finally had gone mad from grief.

Six years later, her family embraced him fully, but not without the occasional ripple. The fact the two were living together in sin was still a significant sore spot for Rhonda's conservative parents. Also, Naomi's daughters, Lisbeth and Toni, adored Tommy, but from time-to-time would slip during a visit and refer to him as Uncle White Meat. The two were just of an age, seven and five, to realize saying such a thing was a no-no and would cover their mouths with both hands and flee the room when realizing their mistake. For his part, Tommy reciprocated. He saw the girls as a joy, but never once had he pondered where they may have learned such language.

After holding her boy for a while, Rhonda gave him a push away.

"Go take a shower."

Tommy skipped off silently to comply. He'd missed her but was aware the night would be chaste, no matter how much Rhonda shared his longing. She refused even the thought of having sex while her nieces were under the same roof.

There was an enormous couch in the sunroom on which they stretched after Tommy freshened up. It was the middle day of Rhonda's three-day weekend, but she was as wakeful as he was. They lay on the couch for hours as he updated her on the events of the last four days. They'd kept in contact during that time, as they always did, by short text messages several times per day, but those didn't do credit to what he'd seen and done.

She hadn't seen him fly. Once before, during their recent two-week huddle, he briefly had lifted himself into the air to demonstrate to her that he was not merely shining her on with talk of his Gifts. The event had so frightened her that she'd retreated to the bedroom, from which she'd refused to emerge until he promised never to do it in front of her again. Now, hearing him talk about his flight, she wasn't certain she might not one day like to see him do it. But she knew that day would not be soon.

After he filled her in on the events that had transpired, they lay there for several hours, as they sometimes did, merely enjoying the delight of being entwined with one another's flesh. She drifted off not long after sunrise.

At some point in the morning, two more tiny bodies joined them on the couch, and at a little before 8:00, Naomi emerged from Rhonda and Tommy's room to find them all piled in one great snoring and drooling mass. The adults got up, but the girls didn't emerge from their comas until Uncle White Meat finished making breakfast for them 20 minutes later.

The racket that followed was short-lived. Today was the one Sunday per month that the family joined Rhonda's parents at church. It was the one family ritual in which Rhonda did not participate, a source of much pain for her parents. Rhonda refused to speak of it, even to Tommy.

At a little before 9:00, kisses and hugs were issued all around, and Naomi trundled the kids off to Brooklyn.