by Daisy Allen
I grit my teeth and pull on her arm, calling her name. "Malynda, come on... it's not worth it. He's just a dickhead."
"I'd rather be a dickhead than a fucking peasant who has to live off the scraps his mom brings home from the diner. Come to think of it, maybe next time, I’ll leave her a little something extra." He barely has a chance to finish his crude gesture before my arm finishes its upper swing into his solar plexus.
"Xavier! No!" someone yells, as I barrel against him, this time digging my shoulder into his stomach. I feel rather than hear him heave before his arm comes to hook around my neck and he drags me to the ground. Somehow, I end up on top of our pile of swinging arms and kicking legs, straddling him. My fist bears down on his face as I punch him, over and over.
It's all just a blur, my arms swinging down connecting with his face before pulling back to gather momentum again. Die. I just want him to die.
I'm not sure how many times I hit him. The movement is a constant loop, even as I feel myself dragged to my feet and someone, or someones, are holding me back, locking my arms behind me. Someone pulls him up as well, his face torn and bloody, scarlet red dripping from his nose and bottom lip.
"You fuckhead," he hisses and spits, splattering the ground with bloody droplets.
"Don't you ever talk about my mom or Malynda again or I will fucking kill you," I yell back, trying to lunge forward.
"OY!" An older voice breaks in between us. It's Mr. Horsham, the owner. "Get out of here, you bloody kids! And don't come back again!"
My arms are suddenly free and my fists starting to feel the effects of the fight.
Mr. Horsham stands only up to their shoulders, but his gaze is fiery and it doesn't take them long to break formation and walk away. Jack gives me one last threatening glare before wiping his mouth on his sleeve and leaves.
"And you, that's it for you.” Mr. Horsham says, pointing his finger at me. “I can't have them coming back here and causing trouble. If you're here, they will. I'm sorry, boy."
I can't believe it. I need this job.
"Mr. Horsham!" I call after him. "Please, no. I need this job! I'll clean this all up right now!" I bend over, grabbing the cup from Mikey's sundae, trying to scoop up the spilled dessert back into it, desperate.
"I'm really sorry, kid. This is my business." He pulls his wallet out from his back pocket and peels off a thick stack of notes. "Here, this is what I owe you and, um, an extra week’s pay. You were a good worker. I'll give you a reference." He gives me a regretful smile and steps back inside.
"Shit!" I curse under my breath. What am I going to do now?
Mikey runs up to me, throwing his arms around my waist, his face wet as he sobs over his spilled sundae. My heart breaks for him, but I know I can’t afford to get him another ice cream, especially now.
"I'll clean this up. You get them home, they must be exhausted,” a soft voice says.
For a moment, I forgot that Malynda had witnessed the whole thing, but now that it's over, I replay it back in my head, seeing what she must have seen, hearing what she must've heard, and utter humiliation is spreading through my body.
"Er, no. It's okay, I can do it," I say, not meeting her eyes. I don't know if she hears me over Michaels wails.
She squats, gathering the scattered remnants of the ice cream into a pile.
"I want to go hooooome," Hamish whines, tugging on my arm.
"Go," she says, looking up at me and giving me a small smile. I see pity in her eyes. "It's okay, I've got it."
I open my mouth and no words come out.
So, I say nothing as she returns to her task.
I just walk away and wish her a goodbye, and a good life, in my head.
Seven
Him
Present Day
I turn the key in the door and push. It doesn't move.
I try again, this time with my whole hand, and it budges a little. I sigh, pulling off my suit jacket and take a breath before gathering my strength to lean against the rusted door with my whole body. It opens, reluctantly, each inch a fight. Like the door of a sinking car, the pressure outside bearing against the action.
My cough from the dust echoes around me as I take a step into the abandoned building and look around, flicking a switch that does nothing.
There are paper thin streams of sunlight filtering through the dirty windows, just enough to light the large space. It used to be a furniture display storefront, the main area vast and open, with four or five smaller offices in the back, along with a small kitchen and two bathrooms. Around the back is a warehouse, big enough for a gym or indoor basketball court.
I feel myself nod as I scan the room, as satisfied with this space as the first time I saw it months ago. It's going to make a great youth center up here in Harlem.
Kaine and I had picked out this spot especially due to the proximity to the high school just a block away and also just a few steps to the nearest subway and bus stations. The council approval was a little trickier; not everyone wants a spot where kids will be hanging around. But neither did they want to be seen as turning down the opportunity for an organization to come in and try to do some good.
I wasn't worried. Neither was Kaine when he put me in charge of this project or what he affectionately calls “letting his dog off his leash.” He knows I care about these youth centers as much as he does and will fight for it just as hard as he would.
How our own teenage years might've have been different if we'd had access to some of the services and facilities we're hoping to provide.
Not that we turned out too badly, I think, as I brush the dust from my Armani suit.
But not every poor child has the luck that we had. Kaine with his adopted father, and then me, in turn, with Kaine. I close my eyes and picture this place once it's finished. Computers, books, games. Counselors and tutors on hand. Then I imagine them all over the city, before I stop myself.
One kid. Let's just help one kid, we tell ourselves when the dreams get too big.
One kid can make the difference.
Never underestimate the effect of a single act of kindness.
In my musings, I almost miss the sound of high heels clicking on the floor. It takes the sound of her clearing her throat before I turn around, her silhouette against the door, tall, shapely. Her name isn't the only thing that changed, I can't help but think. I don't remember her having those hips. Hips that have my fingers itching at my side.
"Oh, um, hi. I was supposed to meet someone from the ASH Foundation here,” Malynda says. Is it just me or does she sound a little nervous?
"Well, that would be me," I tell her, wondering if I sound as nervous as she does.
"You? You work for them?"
"I work for ASH Industries and well, yes, the foundation as well." I say each word slowly. Maybe I'm stalling, already not wanting this encounter with her to end. Taking in every detail, things that are different about her, things that are so the same. It feels like we're eighteen again.
She comes up level to me, and I can't take my eyes off her.
Everything about her commands my attention: her body, the way she moves, her eyes, open and earnest looking back at me.
I've missed her so much.
So much; and now she's here, after all these years.
It makes me mad to think about all the wasted time.
"Malynda."
She sucks in her breath. "It's Isabella. Please."
I shake my head. "Don't do that, it's just us here. Don't make me call you... that fake name." I won’t bring myself to say it, give life to it. She’s Malynda. She’s always been Malynda.
"It's who I am now, Xavier.” Her voice saying my name strips the years away, and with it, any hope that I’m going to let her have her way.
"No, you're Malynda," I respond forcefully, grabbing her by the wrist. "You're MY Malynda.”
She doesn't shake me off, just looks into my eyes. They're closed off now. Cold. Flat.
"’Malynda’ do
esn't exist. So, whatever you think happened between you and her, never ever existed. I'm not her. And I'm not yours." The cold in her voice stings and I struggle not to let go of her wrist, enduring the frostbite.
"What the hell happened to you? Tell me. You owe me at least that."
"I don't owe you anything." This time she does shake me off, ripping her arm away from me.
I catch her face in my hands instead.
"I know you're in there. Malynda, I know you're in there!" Before I can stop myself, I bury my face in her hair. She still smells the same. Vanilla. Sweet, heady, musky. Driving me insane.
"Stop it, Xavier!" she shouts, and I step away out of shock at how she can be so cold. "I don't know you. And you certainly don't know me."
"You want proof? Is that what you want? You need me to remind you? You want me to remind you of the first time we met? You want me to remind you about my black eye and split lip? The hours we spent at the basketball court? The hours we spent at the lake?" There's a knot in my throat that forces me to stop talking. I take a deep breath and pull something out of my pocket. "Or this – maybe this will prove it to you that I do know you." I take her hand and shove the wrinkled unopened envelope into it.
She looks down, her mouth falling open before she looks up at me again. There's a flash of something nostalgic, vulnerable in her eyes.
"Is this? Is this what I think it is, the letter I wrote you that day? You still have this? How? Why?"
"I found it at the lake after you were there the first time. You must've dropped it. "
"You never told me you saved this."
"No. I thought... I thought it might come in handy one day. Not like this though. I never thought we’d be here like this. Me trying to remind you who we are, what we were to each other.” The frustration burns in my chest. This is not how I’d imagined our reunion to be.
She sighs. "Xavier."
"Look, I don't know what happened to you, what happened to us. But if you're so intent on not acknowledging what existed between us in here," I tap myself on the chest, "then that is something that you can hold. Can touch. To help you remember."
She looks down at the envelope again, her fingers running along the crumpled surface of the paper, along the torn edges. I know she's going back to that day, like I have, the thousands of times over the years when missing her.
I watch her eyes soften, the slight part of her lips.
"You remember now, don't you?" I lean in, so close my words move her hair. "Close your eyes," I whisper, like just like I did all those years ago. And for just a moment, like all those years ago, she obeys. "Remember us. How we laughed, how we talked, how we touched each other."
There's a fluttering of her eyelash against her face, then they snap open.
"No,” she says. But it's not to me. She shakes her head and says it again, "No." She's talking to herself.
I slide my arm around her waist, pulling her into me before she retreats back into herself.
"Stay with me, Malynda." I tilt her face up to look at me, and tears spring to her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Xavier, I can't. I can’t do this." The utter sadness in her voice pierces my skin and I let her go.
I don't know what happened to her. But I will find out and I know I need to give her the space she needs to open up.
"Fine." I say, more brusquely than I mean to and even through the tears, I can see the confusion in her eyes at my change. "Let's get to work."
"Work?" her voice trembles.
"Well, you came here to help ASH Industries with the design of our youth center, right?"
She nods, slowly, unsure.
"Then let's get down to work."
"Xavier, I don't think I can. I can't work with you on the youth center, it's too much."
I nod, hands sliding into my pockets to hide their shaking as I fight to maintain my composure. "That's fine, too. I can get Jade to take point if you want."
There's a look of relief on her face, one that stings almost more than anything else that's happened since she came back into my life.
"Thank you, Xavier."
"No problem. Anything for the youth center."
Her front teeth sink in her bottom lip and she nods. "Okay, then, I guess I'll make an appointment with Jade."
I take a step towards the door, controlling my breath. Thinking of how to deliver the next line. "But, while you're here, I guess we can talk about the other project."
"The other project?”
"Yes, my apartment. I paid to have you help me with the interior design of my apartment, remember?"
She sucks in her breath, before exhaling hard. "I can't do that either, Xavier."
I shrug and force my gaze out one of the dirt stained windows. "Well, okay, no problem. I'll just get Jade to return my check to me. The donation, that I made to Ash Foundation. For your services."
"You're going... to take the money back?"
"Well, of course. You don't expect me to pay all that money for a service I'm not going to receive, do you? It's too bad, though. That's what pushed us to our fundraising goal. Without it..." I make a show of turning around slowly, looking at the space around us and shrugging.
I watch her swallow hard, her fingers wringing each other before she forces herself to speak. "What do you want, Xavier?"
I drag my eyes back to her face, locking my pupils with hers.
"Just what I paid for." I shrug. "You."
Eight
Her
Present Day
I was eight years old the first time I realized I loved color. I loved the way the world was essentially just blocks and lines and dots and endless permutations of different colors. Colors shaped our feelings, our behavior, the way we tasted food, the way we heard music.
My mother once served me a slice of ham and pineapple pizza and I refused to eat it because it lacked the speck of black that olives made when scattered over a slice of supreme. Even before I took a bite, I knew it would not have that flavor, what the black represented. That's when I knew my relationship with color was more than just through sight.
Unfortunately, it was also around the time that I realized I could not draw. While even the most simplistic drawings of my classmates would be obvious representations of houses and gardens and their pets, I couldn't put pencil to paper to draw what I saw in my head.
So I gave up the dream of being an artist, and doggedly pursued my love of dance instead.
But I never, ever, not for a second, gave up my love affair with color, or the joy that the perfect shade of yellow on spring’s first daffodils could bring me, or the way the rain would intermittently wash out the world and coated it in shades of grey and sadness.
But it wasn't until that day, that day standing in front of the paint swatch wall at Home Depot with Xavier, did I ever think that I could make something with my obsession. I had never thought that there was any room for me in the world as an artist, but that day he awakened something within me.
I pull the crumpled envelope out of my pocket, remembering the first time he returned it to me, pushing it into my hand almost twelve years ago.
How we've changed since then.
He looks almost nothing like the thin, lanky, shy but intense boy from back then; his too long bangs hanging way below his forehead, trying to stay hidden from the world.
But his eyes.
Nothing has changed there.
They're still the same deep, dark green that draws the truth out of me with just a glance.
I wonder what I look like to him. Am I what he thought I'd look like at this age? Is he disappointed with how my body has changed?
And would I react the same way, if he touched me like he did back then?
I push the breath from my lungs, and with it, the thoughts of our past. Whatever he was back then, he's different now.
Hard. Both in body and mind.
"I paid for you, you're mine," I can hear him say from our meeting earlier today, confident, in charge. 18-y
ear-old Xavier would never have said such a thing. I guess I’m not the only one who has left that person behind.
“Hey, Isa, I didn’t expect you back so soon,” Cameron says as he walks past my open office door.
I tuck the envelope into my top drawer and wave to my business partner.
“Yeah, the, er, the meeting was quick.” I say, pushing the actual details of the meeting away.
“I brought you lunch from Donnini’s. I thought you might not have had time to eat.” He lays the small container on my desk.
I thank him for his thoughtful gesture with a smile. Not for the first time, I wonder where I’d be if not for Cam. Not here, that’s for sure. But just how much worse off, I don’t even want to wonder. His natural business acumen melds perfectly with my desire to just stick to the creative side and work with our customers. Sometimes, I wonder if he’s ever considered us in a romantic sense, or if he just knows that I never have and never will think of him in that way. The revolving door of women in and out of his office at all times of the day certainly doesn’t scream ‘pining for me,’ that’s for sure.
"How did your meeting go with Ash?" he asks through a mouthful of salad while sinking into the sofa opposite my desk.
"It was fine. Early days there, they still have a bunch of construction to do before it's anywhere near time for us to come in. But I wanted to go in and get a feel for it."
Cameron nods and takes a drink from his water tumbler. "Who did you meet with? Jade? Or the charity director?"
I take a breath, trying to keep my voice light. "Er, no. Not today. I met with their lawyer." I stop short of saying his name.
"Oh, the guy who bid on you on the auction? What's his name again?"
Shit.
"Um, Xavier, I think."
"You 'think'? Didn't you meet with him today?"
"Er, yeah, sorry. I've just got a lot of other stuff on my mind. Yeah, his name is Xavier."
I can feel Cameron watching me, so I busy myself with my lunch, sorting through the salad with my fork before taking a bite.