Cynda and the City Doctor: 50 Loving States, Missouri

My nails seem to do something to him.

“Christ, Cynda,” he bit out right before his body tightened, and he released into the condom.

He collapsed on top of me. And we stayed there like that for a while. Breathing air in and each other.

I weirdly wanted to stay there forever. Which is a new feeling for me.

Usually after sex, I was done. Thank you, sir. Turn the light off and go to sleep. Even more often, I left. And I had a perfect excuse since Rhys had a shift later that afternoon—hence the morning date.

But in this case….

My stomach hollowed when he finally pulled out. And a new feeling popped off in my chest when he disposed of the condom then came right back to pull me into his arms. Suddenly, I understood all the hype over this spooning business as we fell asleep.

Together.

However, it wasn’t just the two of us when I woke up.

I blinked, then rubbed my eyes when I saw Rhys dressed and talking to someone just inside the door…in what sounded like German.

A woman. He was talking to a woman.

I guess you could call her beautiful, but that felt like an understatement. I’m pretty in a girl next door way—like most Beauty Queen of America state princesses. But this woman looks like a real damn princess.

She was tall and willowy with perfect breasts. Her skin looked pretty much poreless, no makeup required. And her eyes sparkled clear, blue and bright, like they’ve never even considered having anything less than 20/20 vision. And as for her hair, it fell in cascades of blonde waves over her shoulders.

So girl next door? Only if you live next to a castle.

“Ingrid, what are you doing here?” Rhys’s voice, usually so droll and charming, had turned into cold stone.

“I came to visit you, of course. I became worried when you didn’t answer any of my texts. Also, I’ve never been to St. Louis. I wanted to see what drew you here.” She had an accent I couldn’t place. Not English like Rhys’s but just as pronounced.

My guess that she wasn’t from around here was confirmed when Rhys answered, “So you got on a plane all the way from Europe to come check on me?”

I sat up in bed, so confused. “Rhys? What’s going on?”

They both turned toward me, like I’d interrupted them in the middle of an important conversation.

“Cynda, I’m sorry for waking you,” Rhys said.

At the same time, the blonde princess smirked. “I see you really did decide to experiment with something new. How…interesting.”

I was pretty sure she was talking to Rhys, but her eyes were slitted on me.

“Ingrid…” Rhys said with a warning tone.

“Don’t be upset, darling. It was simply a joke,” she chided. “Perhaps your friend could show me around today since you have to go to work.”

As much as I loved being talked about like I wasn’t sitting right there, naked underneath Rhys’s covers, I had to ask her, “Okay, who are you again?”

“Oh, how rude of me. I’m sorry it took me so long to introduce myself,” she answered.

Then she held up a hand with an enormous engagement ring on her finger. “I’m Ingrid, Rhys’s fiancée.”

Chapter Six

Three years after meeting Rhys’s fiancée, I agree to let him rent out the back house my father built for his mother-in-law. On the very same day he fires me.

And later that night I find myself in bed, hunched over my laptop, researching one Reina Smith.

I think Mabel senses that I need some company. Instead of hanging out with E in her room, she meows into mine and hops on to the bed.

If petting me will help, go right on ahead, she seems to be saying as she settles against my thigh.

“Good idea, Mabe,” I say out loud.

Scratching her behind the ears, I watch the last video in some superfan’s Best of Enjenue Video collection. Despite her ubiquitous last name, Reina Smith had actually been really easy to find on the internet.

My earlier suspicion was right, she’d been a real beauty. She’d been born before it became common for Black girls to compete in the official Princess Missouri pageant. But I’m surprised grandma, who’d sewn my early gowns by hand, hadn’t put her up for Miss Black Missouri or something like that. She was the kind of girl-next-door stunner that beauty pageants love. And she was talented too.

I discovered that she used to be in a 90s girl group. The kind of act that never made it all the way to BET’s 106 and Park but opened before the opener for the acts that did.

The earliest performance clip I found of them after a few deep YouTube searches had been grainy as a big dog. But it had a camcorder date stamp that was just a few months after my birth. Which explained a few things.