"WHAT-THE-FUCK?!" Jaquan snatched the skirt off his face.
He blinked profusely, finding that he was staring up at the cabin ceiling. Jaquan raised his hand to find a sheet instead of Daisy Mae's skirt. It was broad daylight early morning, signaled by a rooster's call somewhere outside.
"Oh, you're awake now, huh?" His eyes went wide as his head slowly turned to his left side.
Renee was lying on her side under the sheets of their bed facing away from him towards the bedroom window. Her hair was down cascading over her shoulders as he took in the decadent curve of her motherly hips.
"Uhm, yeah." Jaquan's brow furrowed as he stared to his immediate right, finding the cracked open door of their bedroom, giving him a peek outside into the rest of the cabin. There was some faint snoring emanating from the loveseat in the main part of the cabin facing the fireplace.
"Hey?"
"Yeah bae?" Jaquan's body still felt weighted down, almost magnetized to the mattress exhausted.
"We good?" Renee asked barely above a whisper making him panic inside.
He didn't know how to answer with visions and mind movies of his wooded tryst with Daisy Mae. His throat was dry as he tried to figure out how to answer his woman who was supernaturally proficient at detecting falsehoods and lies.
"Yeah." He answered sullenly not knowing what else to say.
"So uhm, I'm sorry about leaving you here alone yesterday; I don't know what got into me, but I just needed some distance."
"It's okay." Jaquan facepalmed hiding his shocked face.
"No, it's not." Renee's head turned, giving him a glimpse of her profile.
"Bae, I'm good okay; you should spend time with your family; it's just that uh, you never talk about them or your parents."
"Ain't I enough?"
"You're everything." He spoke without thinking from the heart, conflicted as to how he got home in the inky darkness of an unfamiliar wood.
"Then why won't you touch me?" Renee replied meekly.
"Well, you were so mad when we talked after you left; I guess I needed to give you space."
"We never talked after I left with Daisy Mae and Honey."
"Yes we did, I called and uhm, you were still mad." Jaquan accounted lying on his back staring up at the cabin ceiling. He heard some movement looking over as Renee sat up on the edge of the bed facing the window.
"No, we did not; I came back here yesterday and found you passed out in the bed, snoring loudly in that way I hate. It was so bad, I put that sheet over your face because I couldn't get any sleep."
He facepalmed again as she recounted a night, he was sure didn't happen.
"Jaquan?"
"Uhm, I guess you're right." He admitted averting his eyes to the cracked door of the cabin bedroom.
"Of course, I'm right; there ain't no calls on your phone."
"HUH?" Jaquan glanced over, finding his phone in Renee's hand. She was perusing it after having sussed out the password a day prior. He tried to quickly sit up but felt it everywhere in his bones as his mind did flipflops about the last few apparently unaccounted for minutes in his life.
"There's nothing here, to me or anyone else." It was a lazy dig at his fidelity.
"It was a dream." It was a Freudian slip of the tongue that got her attention further.
"What was a dream?"
"Nothing."
"What was just a dream?" There was a hint of strife in her voice that put him on edge as she shifted on the edge of the mattress folding a leg on the bed. Renee was wearing a long sheer nightgown and nothing else underneath. She hated pregnancy clothing, using some vintage styles which led to her penchant for old school babydoll sleeping wear. Jaquan could see the rising intensity on her pale face.
"You ever had one of those dreams that seemed like it was real?" He decided to answer a question with a question.
"What seemed real?" Renee kept at it, frustrating him.
"Uhm, I dreamed that I went across the ditch on that road outside and into the woods to get a signal on my phone. You picked up and gave me the business." Jaquan told a version of the truth from his perspective.
"That's it?!"
"Yeah... and I saw a doe back off in there at this creek." He added leaving out that it was a masked woman. Renee didn't look convinced in the least, suddenly glaring at him.
"Are you sure about that, Jaquan?"
"Yeah."
Things seemed to go static in the moment, still as if time had ebbed to a halt.
"Be careful out there Jaquan; they say if you go in there and see a doe, she'll follow you and take your soul if you don't satisfy her." His brow furrowed, heart skipping a beat as Renee mentioned in part what he'd experienced.
"WHAT?!!" Renee snickered, covering her mouth with her hand as he sat upright finding that he was clothed under the sheets.
"Aw, it's just some dumbass legend they used to tell us when we were kids to keep us from getting lost in the woods." Renee admitted.
"That's crazy." Jaquan scratched his temple telling himself that it was all a dream.
"Tell me about it; back in the day a lot of hicks were going out there looking for that shit. Supposedly, if you saw her as a woman, you had to please her. Fucking hillbilly bullshit, right?"