In Too Deep

EPISODE 5

CHAPTER 8

Jayla

Two months after we met, Tiana moved in.

Officially.

Unofficially, she had been living in my bed for weeks already — her perfumes on my dresser, her accessories scattered all over my dresser, her skincare in my bathroom and her shoes stacked next to mine by the door.

It should’ve felt too fast.

It was too fast.

But when it came to her, my rules about love didn’t seem to matter.

She slipped into my life the way smoke slips into a room: slow at first, then suddenly everywhere, filling every breath, every corner.

At first, it was beautiful.

We fell into domesticity like it was second nature — lazy Sundays making pancakes, late nights lying on the kitchen floor talking about nothing and everything, silent evenings where her leg brushed mine while we scrolled on our phones.

We had s*x constantly.

Everywhere.

The bed, the shower, the kitchen counter at two in the morning while a pot of forgotten pasta boiled dry.

It was messy, chaotic, and perfect.

For a little while.

Tiana

Living with Jayla felt like playing house — the kind of house you dream about when you’re little.

The kind where you can stay in bed all morning, kissing sleepy smiles on each other's skin, not worrying about anything outside the walls you built together.

But being loved that hard...

Being seen that deeply...

It terrified me sometimes.

She wanted all of me.

Every inch.

Every ugly corner.

And some days, I didn’t know how to give it.

Didn’t know if I could.

I told myself I was doing my best.

And most days, I believed it.

But cracks were already deepening under the surface and neither of us wanted to look too closely.

Jayla

There were nights she stayed out late.

She said it was modeling gigs, or hanging with friends — and I wanted to believe her.

I really did.

But she had told me once, early on, that most of her friends were people she'd hooked up with before.

And no matter how much I loved her, that knowledge gnawed at me.

Rottened the trust from the inside out.

I'd sit up waiting for her, scrolling through i********:, wondering who she was with, if they were laughing at jokes I didn't know, if they touched her in ways I'd never get to.

Jealousy made me ugly.

It made me say things I didn’t mean.

"Have fun f*****g your friends," I snapped once when she stumbled home at three in the morning.

Her face crumpled like I had slapped her.

And maybe, in a way, I had.

We didn't sleep in the same bed that night.

CHAPTER 9

Tiana

We tried to fix it.

We sat on the couch, knee to knee, having awkward, halting conversations about boundaries and trust and past mistakes.

We said the right words and tried to take the right steps

"I love you."

"I want this to work."

"I’m sorry I made you feel that way."

But words are easy.

Understanding is harder.

I could feel her still watching me when I left the house.

Could feel the weight of her fear like a second skin I couldn’t scrub off.

It made me close up tighter.

When I decided to share, we always ended up fighting because she realized it's something that had already happened days or weeks before I told her and it made me want to stop sharing even the small things.

And when you stop sharing the small things, then the big things become impossible to say.

Jayla

I noticed it first in bed.

The way her kisses turned mechanical.

The way her body stopped reaching for mine the way it used to.

At first, I thought it was stress.

Work, exhaustion, life.

But then she dropped the bomb, casual as hell:

"I think we should take a break from s*x for a while," she said, folding laundry like it was just another Tuesday.

I blinked at her.

"What?"

"I just... need to focus on other things," she said, not meeting my eyes.

It was like a slap in the face.

Like she had taken one of the last things still connecting us and sliced it clean in half without even asking if I agreed.

I wanted to scream, I wanted to beg. I was confused.

I asked her " Don't I satisfy you". She said no, that wasn't it. She said she had made a spiritual commitment to herself right before she met me.

"What does that mean?" She said she was trying to work on the fact that s*x has alot of control over her and maybe if we didn't have s*x, and she was celibate, I would want to suspect her everytime she was out.

It made no sense to me. I wanted to talk about it, to ask her how she couldn't involve me in a decision that affected our relationship.

Instead, I nodded like it didn’t matter.

Because deep down, I knew:

If I made her choose

She wouldn’t choose me.

Tiana

I wasn’t trying to punish her.

I wasn’t even trying to push her away, not really.

I just... needed space.

Sex was still amazing, but it was affecting my judgement, and becoming a crutch.

How could I explain to her that I wanted to see how much I loved her if s*x wasn't involved? How could i tell her that i was s*x was my d**g that I needed and that I couldn't control myself when it came to s*x without reinforcing the fact that she couldn't trust me around my friends.

How could i tell her that i was trying to protect her from my toxic habit?

But I didn’t explain any of that.

I didn’t sit her down and say, "This isn’t about you."

I let her feel unwanted.

I let her think she had done something wrong.

Because it was easier than admitting:

I was starting to slide.

Starting to drown in something I had said yes to but didn’t know how to stay afloat in.

And instead of asking for help —

I built walls she couldn’t climb