Marshall's P.O.V.
I walk out of Melody's mother's house and pull my hood low over my head to conceal my face.
It's not a very busy neighborhood, but it's still pretty early on in the day, and I don't want anybody recognizing me and for me to get mobbed, before I even get a chance to get inside the car that's waiting for me on the sidewalk.
"Marshall!" Melody calls out to me from behind me, and I turn around.
She looks sheepishly back as she closes the door behind her, and quickly makes her way off the porch.
She smiles, kind of shyly and hands me back the note I gave her.
And I swear to fuck, I am way too fucking old to feel as nervous as I do now when I unfold it.
Then my heart kind of drops in uncertainty and my brows unconsciously furrow as I look back at her.
"For real, Mel? 'Maybe'?"
"Well, I mean, you did put it on there as an option," she grins, and I ain't sure if she's just fucking with me right now, or what does she mean by that.
I start to open my mouth to speak, but before I really get the chance to, she suddenly wraps her arms around my neck and pull me to her. She stands in her toes, at the same time pulling my head down and she smashes her lips to mine, and that's all she really gotta say.
It takes me like a second to get over the initial shock and then I kiss her back, and I wrap my arms around her, bringing her closer.
It's a very good possibility that somebody might see us right now and take a picture or something, and then it's gonna end up everywhere, but ya know what, I don't give a fuck.
"So, is it really a yes then?" I ask as I smirk as Mel eventually pulls away from me.
"Shut up, boy," she shoves me playfully in my chest, but I just pull her right back to me.
"Is it a yes, baby? Cause I need to know."
"It's a fucking yes, Marshall, damn!!" She exclaims and buries her face in my chest briefly. Then she looks up at me again. "But," she says firmly, and I groan.
"Oh, shit, here we go," I sigh, and she rolls her eyes at me.
"Shut up, Marshall! It's a yes, but we gotta take it slow this time. We can't just... jump into it like we've always done in the past! I'm not gonna drop everything here and just go and move in with you again."
"Babe, I wasn't expecting you to..."
"Shut up, boy, I'm still talking!" Melody gives me that look, that I ain't even gonna lie, kind of scares me, cause for a second there, she looks just like her momma when she kept discretly aiming those damn knitting needles at me whenever Mel wasn't looking. So I close my mouth up right quick. "What I mean is, we really need to take it like one step at the time, Marshall," she then says. "Every other time we've tried before, we've always rushed into it, we acted like we were a married couple or something, playing house as soon as we've met. We can't do that again, cause it led us nowhere. We need to date first this time."
"Date?" I ask like it's a foreign word to me.
"Yes, baby boy, date. Do you even realize that we've never done that before?"
"I guess you are right," I conceed. "So you know what, you want me to date you? Imma date you. It's whatever you want, Mel, honestly. You set the fucking pace, baby," I say, and I mean it. Honestly, I would take pretty much anything she throws at me at this moment.
"Well good," Mel frowns, looking like she wasn't really expecting me to agree so easily to her little demand, but it's honestly such a small thing for me. "So then..." she thinks about it for a moment as she unconsciously plays with her hair. "Then I would expect you to come pick me up right here, next time you are in New York. Cause I damn sure am not moving back to Detroit yet, don't even think that I would."
"Mel, I get it," I chuckle. "And I actually am gonna be here in New York for the next few days, so I could come pick you up tomorrow. And we could do something."
"Okay," she smiles, and looks up at me.
We stare at each other for a few seconds, unsure of what to do next.
"Yo, imma be honest with you," I say awkwardly. "I ain't sure at all how to do this whole slow thing with you. So I don't know what's okay or not, so you need to fucking tell me."
She seems to think about that for a moment.
"Well, this is okay," she finally says, then kisses me again. It's a short kiss, but it feels nice. "Just this..." she continues in between kisses. "For now... that's all you get. And that's okay, isn't it?"
"Yeah, Mel. It fucking works for me, girl."
Just as I go to kiss her again, the door to the house suddenly opens, and Melody's mother steps out.
"Melody Hardwick!" She says in this no-nonsense tone. "You better get back in this house. Right now!!"
I swear to fucking God, man!! I groan internally to myself, just as Melody frowns. This woman is something else entirely! But she does do something that nobody else on this whole green Earth has ever done before. She puts the fear of God into me.
"I'll be right there, momma, damn!!" Mel exclaims, and her mother just rolls her eyes (now I see where her daughter got it from!) and then disappears back inside the house, thankfully giving us another small moment of privacy. "I'm sorry, Marshall. I'm about to go in there and have a serious talk with her about this," Melody how whispers to me, and I take a deep breath.
"Baby, she's just concerned for you," I force myself to say, cause it's the honest fucking truth. "She knows what I've put you through before, so we can't really blame her for not trusting me." Even though she still freaks the living lights out of me!!
"I know that, Marshall!" Melody exclaims. "But you are not that person anymore, so she honestly needs to let it go! It's between me and you after all anyway. She can't just keep intervening like this!"
"Mel, honestly, if it was Hailie, or Lyric, or any other one of my daughters, I would've acted the same way. Hell, I would be worse. I would've been stomped the motherfucker," I smirk, and she just shakes her head. "So be easy on your momma, aight?"
"I will try," she grumbles, and I just chuckle and kiss the side of her face.
"I ever tell you how cute you look when you are angry like this?"
"Shut up, Marshall! Anyway, you need to be going now, and I still need to have that talk with my mother."
"You want me to go with you, yo?"
"No, Marshall. That's something I need to do on my own. I get why she's concerned for me, I really do, but she really needs to let it go and let the both of us breathe."
"Okay, baby. So I'll see you tomorrow then?"
"I'll see you tomorrow," she smiles.
I think about pulling her in for another kiss, but I just know her momma is watching us through the crack of that damn door, so I get back in my car instead and allow my driver to take me away and take me to the radiostation where I'm supposed to be talking about my new upcoming album.
But not before I watch Mel run up those porch steps and get back in her house safely.
Serious question for you guys: I hope that I'm not making Marshall a little too soft lately? 😅 I mean, I like him like this, but it's maybe too much of a change from his previous character? I don't want him to bore you guys to death now that he's more of a nice guy lol