Things Hoped For

by Chencia C. Higgins

  A small smile on her face, Xeno shook her head. "It's all good. She obviously wants the same thing that I want, but I don't want to put any pressure on you. If you're not feeling it, I'm not tripping."

  "No!" I damn near yelled in the quiet hallway. "I mean, I don't feel pressured at all and I'm definitely feeling it. I'm free Thursday night. Does that work for you?"

  Her full smile returned and she nodded. "Yeah, that's perfect. Thursday it is. Can I call you tomorrow with more details?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's what's up."

  Another blanket of silence fell over us as we stood there smiling at each other until Jade cleared her throat.

  "Oh, yeah," I murmured. "Let me walk you out."

  I led her through the maze of hallways and back into the lobby that was dim due to the heavily tinted windows. We said our goodbyes and through the floor-to-ceiling windows I watched her walk out of the building, bottom lip securely tucked between my teeth. She pulled her keys from her pocket and pulled open the door of a big-body SUV, glancing back at the spa storefront one last time before climbing inside. When her vehicle had disappeared out of sight, I turned to Jade with a frown on my face.

  "Damn, could you have made me sound anymore desperate?"

  Sucking her teeth, Jade waved me off. "Girl I couldn't even give you an opportunity to say no. It's your duty to go out with that woman. You gotta fuck her for the culture."

  Wait, what?! I burst out laughing. "So you just renting out my pussy all willy nilly?"

  "Girl, stop! Don't try and play like y'all weren't eye-fucking each other in the hallway not even five minutes ago. I just helped usher in the inevitable."

  I pursed my lips. "Maybe I didn't need your help."

  Her head cocked to the side and she quirked one dark brow in the air. "If it wasn't for my help you wouldn't be standing here with hearts in your eyes right now. Lie and say it's not true."

  I rolled my eyes but kept my mouth shut because not one lie had been uttered. Spinning on my heel, I headed back to the room to start cleaning, slipping into autopilot as my mind was occupied with a certain rapper with soft skin and piercing brown eyes.

  ♥♥♥♥

  When I Said What I Said

  She called me just after four the following afternoon, and even though I knew in my mind that she was going to call me—because she'd told me she would—it still caught me off guard when I heard her voice on the other end. I didn't recognize the number when my phone rang but my intuition told me it was her.

  Still, I couldn't keep the hesitant stuttering out of my voice when I answered with, "He—hello?"

  "Trisha? Hey. This is Xeno."

  Just the sound of her voice brought a smile to my face and I clutched the phone tighter and sighed out, "Hey."

  "Hey," she repeated. "Are we still on for tomorrow?"

  So it hadn't been a dream? She had actually asked me on a damn date?

  "Yep. Just let me know the time and the place and I'll be there."

  "Is 6:30 good with you?"

  "Yep. It's perfect." Anytime that she suggested would have been perfect. She could mean 6:30 in the morning and I'd be fresh-faced and ready for whatever.

  "Cool. Instead of meeting me there, I want to pick you up. Save my number and text me your address."

  A silly grin covered the bottom half of my face. "Aww, that's sweet, but you don't have to do that."

  "I know I don't have to; I want to. I need to. I gotta go all out for our first date so years down the line when you're telling people how we got together, you're not embarrassed to tell the whole story."

  Uh...wait a minute.

  "Years down the line?"

  "Yeah. This is our origin story. You're about to be my girl."

  That made me giddy as hell, but it was also presumptuous as fuck.

  "Who said I wanted to be yours?" The idea had merit, but still.

  "You don't?" Disbelief colored her tone and I couldn't keep the amusement out of my voice when I replied.

  "I don't know you well enough to know if that's even a good thing or not."

  "That's okay." She quipped; her tone full of arrogant confidence that didn't annoy me like it should have. "I can show you better than I can tell you."

  Why the hell did that turn me on?

  "Oh? Well, okay then; show me something."

  "You ain't said nothing but a word. Text me your address."

  Seven

  Xeno

  When You Know, You Know

  I knocked on her door at six-thirty on the dot, and before the speedy second hand could make a full rotation, she stood before me, looking sexy as hell with a grin on her face.

  "Right on time. I'm ready, so we can go."

  I took a step back, giving her room to cross the threshold and join me on her porch. While her back was to me, I took a moment to take in her outfit. She wore high-waisted, neon-green biker shorts, a black, long-sleeved, cropped henley, and Jordan 11s that matched her ensemble. When she turned to face me, her glossed lips caught my attention and I smiled, offering her my hand.

  "Let's go."

  Without hesitation, she linked our fingers and allowed me to lead her to my truck. As I climbed behind the wheel, I acknowledged the sense of rightness I felt with her sitting beside me. It was almost like déjà vu. We'd been here before, she and I, riding in my truck, on our way to spend time together—to have some fun—just the two of us. It would have sounded insane if I'd said that out loud to her, but that little flash of a vision made me stare at her in silence for a moment after I started the engine.

  When she noticed me staring at her, her lips quirked at the corners. "What is it?"

  "I don't know, man. You might think I'm strange if I tell you."

  Shaking her head, she giggled. "I highly doubt it. Just tell me."

  Backing out of the parking space and navigating out of her apartment complex, I weighed the pros and cons of telling her, before deciding to bite the bullet. If she felt some type of way about it then I could always turn around and take her back home, even if that was the last thing I wanted to do.

  "I just had déjà vu."

  While mostly keeping my eyes on the road, I glanced her way every so often as I recounted the seconds-long vision I'd had of us. It might have seemed innocuous; but shit like that wasn't coincidental to me. In fact, I didn't much believe in coincidences of any kind. Things didn't just happen, every instance in life had a purpose, and I believed that déjà vu was a vision meant to calm me down. After laying eyes on Trisha that first night, it had been hard to concentrate on anything without her cropping up in the back of my mind, distracting me with her alluring presence.

  I'd felt a pull toward her that I couldn't explain, a pull that my brother had picked up on and aptly dubbed a "love connection", despite the fact that he was tryna clown me. It had caught me off guard and I spent the next week allowing every and anything steal my focus instead of reaching out to her like I wanted. When two back-to-back dreams of her woke me up in the middle of the night, I stopped pussyfooting around long enough to book an appointment for a massage; but did so by calling the spa directly instead of dialing the number her friend had scrawled on the back of the card.

  Before she'd even laid hands on me, before we'd left the waiting area, I'd knew. The aching melancholy I'd felt—the bone-crushing loneliness—was gone. My soul had named and claimed her as mine. And that scared the shit out of me, because what if she was that person—the one—and she didn't want to be? I'd been raised to go after what I wanted, it was why I'd found the success I had in the rap game, but what if she wasn't ready and I ended up pushing her away by doing too much? Would I still end up alone? What then?

  The fear-fueled questions plagued me, but I still pushed through them to ask her out. That was why the snippet of a future—or past—us was so revelatory; it meant that everything for us would work itself out. We had been here before and we made it through. So, I could calm the fuck down and just enjoy the
ride this time around.

  Pulling up to a red light, I swiveled my neck to see how Trisha was reacting to my vision. To my surprise, instead of gaping at me like I was foaming at the mouth or committable, she was staring out the windshield with a faraway look in her eyes. Concerned, I reached across the center console and gently brushed my fingers down her arm.

  "Hey," I called, waiting until she looked my way to ask, "Did I freak you out with that?"

  Immediately, she shook her head and grabbed the tips of my fingers with her own. "Not at all. It just reminded me of something, is all. It wasn't strange at all." She offered me a flirtatious grin and I licked my lips before glancing at the light just as it turned green.

  "What did it remind you of?"

  "A couple years ago I came down here on a girls trip with my friends and we had our palms read. What you just said made me think of what the woman told me that night."

  Well that had definitely piqued my curiosity. "My déjà vu reminded you of a palm reading you received a few years ago? What did she tell you?"

  A bevy of emotions played across her face before she said, "I—I don't—I'd rather not say."

  Damn. Now I was even more curious, but I respected her right to privacy so I nodded and let it go. Our destination wasn't far from Trisha's apartment, and soon I was parking in the gravel lot of the only place I visited several times a month, outside of the studio. The nose of my truck was facing the street and Trisha twisted in her seat to see the building behind us.

  "Skate Central," she murmured in a low voice, reading the lit marquee that was perched on top of the nondescript brown, brick building. Her lips stretched into a wide smile, making my heart beat twice as fast. "We're going skating?"

  The excitement in her voice brought me joy, and I nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Come on, let's head inside." Cutting the engine, I hopped out of the truck and walked around to the back, where I lifted the tailgate and removed a large, drawstring bag.

  With the doors locked, I pocketed my keys and reached for Trisha's hand. The way she placed her warm palm in mine as if it was a natural thing that didn't require a second thought warmed me from the inside out. I hadn't told her where we were going and seeing the way her eyes lit up as she took in the interior of the building after I paid our entrance fee was worth the worry of whether or not it was the right move.

  Skate Central had been a mainstay of my childhood and, except for a few modern updates, it still looked the exact same. The arcade and prize counter was to the left as soon as you came in the entrance. To the right was the rental counter and a wall of lockers. Across the room and dead center of the back wall was the snack bar. To the right of that were the bathrooms, and to the left in the corner of the building was a small kiddie rink. Neon lights flashed and various black lights lit up the darkened room, the only fluorescent light in the large room came from the snack bar and the rental and prize counters.

  We headed to the rental counter to get her a pair of roller skates, before settling onto one of the many cushioned benches around the large room. I pulled my custom, red in-line skates out of the bag and Trisha's eyes ballooned.

  "Oh, you be skating skating! I've never seen somebody in real life with their own skates before."

  Grinning, I nodded. "Hell yeah, girl. I love to skate. Me and my brother damn near grew up in this here rink. My parents met here when they were teenagers and brought us almost every weekend."

  "Holy shit, that is so sweet!"

  Laughing, I stood and helped her up, then led her to the lockers where we stored our shoes before slowly rolling along the low-pile carpet until our wheels met the smooth, waxed flooring of the rink. The feeling that rushed through me as soon as I began to roll was similar to the feeling I felt when I rhymed or performed. My eyes fluttered closed and I simply floated for a moment, letting the momentum from jetting out onto the rink continue to carry me forward. There was a sense of weightlessness—like being carefree because I was at home and could just relax—that calmed the hell out of me. Since things on the music front were quickly exploding in the wake of Plus's cosign, I'd been in the studio nonstop, trying to put together an LP to capitalize on this newfound popularity and hadn't been skating in almost a month. It felt great to be on eight wheels again.

  Turning to my right, I prepared to help keep Trisha upright, or skate at a slower pace so that she wouldn't feel left behind, but once again, she surprised me—this time by not being beside me. Craning my neck, I looked around the rink, trying to spot her in the dark amongst all of the people present, and found her coming up behind me, apparently completing a lap while I had been grounding myself. At my awestruck look, she giggled and blew right past me.

  "That's what you get for assuming I couldn't skate!" She called out to me.

  Pushing off, I caught up with her quickly and poked her side, laughing loudly when she shrieked and took off. That made me chase after her, and we spent the next twenty minutes and six songs weaving in and out of people, playing around like teenagers. It was the most fun I'd had in a long time.

  When the DJ slowed the music down and called for a couples skate, Trisha came up behind me, wrapping me in a hug from behind and resting her cheek on my back as we skated in tandem.

  "Thank you for bringing me here. I'm having a great time."

  Sliding my hands over hers and linking our fingers over my abdomen, I smiled to myself. "Thanks for just going with the flow and trusting me."

  She poked me in the stomach. "Is that what I was doing? Trusting you?"

  I shrugged. "It seemed like it. You didn't once ask me where we were going, only what to wear."

  "I could just be that chill of a person."

  Pulling out of her embrace, I spun to face her, keeping her hands in mine and my pace in time with hers, going back on my right when she went forward with her left and vice versa. It was dance I'd seen my parents do a million times growing up and had always wanted to recreate myself. Now felt like the right time and the way Trisha just went with it confirmed that feeling for me.

  "Are you that chill of a person usually?"

  Her eyes met mine and they seemed to glint under the black lights above us, giving her an almost ethereal look.

  "I could be," she said simply.

  But it didn't feel simple. It felt coded, as if she was once again trying to tell me something without saying the words, and I was reminded of the night we'd met when I'd had that same feeling. I wasn't for guessing this time around.

  "What are you saying?"

  She stared at me for a while, not saying a word, until we'd made another lap around the rink. Then she blinked, nibbled the corner of her bottom lip and said, "Is it weird that watching you skate backwards is turning me on?"

  My brows shot up. It was a none-too-subtle change of subject, but instead of pushing for an answer to my question, I took the bait hook, line, and sinker. "Weird? Hell naw! Matter of fact…" Dropping her hands, I pushed away from her and spun in a circle before doing a few lunges á la Shad Moss in Roll Bounce. Trisha threw her head back and howled with laughter as I glided back to her.

  "How you feel now?" I asked, waggling my brows suggestively.

  "I feel like you're a damn fool for hitting the choreo that Bow Wow couldn't stick."

  Just as I tossed my arm over her shoulder, the DJ called for an all skate and a faster song came on. The floor flooded with people and we picked up our pace.

  "That's okay. The fact that you even got the reference is enough for me."

  We skated through a few more songs before I asked Trisha if she was ready to go.

  "I don't know about you, but I worked up an appetite. I was thinking we could grab something to eat."

  "That sounds good to me," she agreed and we exited the rink.

  As soon as we stepped onto the carpet, a group of little kids came barreling toward us. We squeezed along the wall to allow them to pass.

  "'Scuse us!" A few of them chirped as they zoomed past to enter the rink at high speeds. />
  I glanced down at Trisha to see her watching them with a soft smile on her face. When she noticed me watching her, she met my gaze, her expression unchanging. Staring up at me like she was, looking beautiful and happy and like everything, I had a strong urge to kiss her, and I was nothing if not a woman who followed my intuition.

  Bending my neck, I brought my lips to hers, pleased when she placed a hand at my waist and kissed me back. It was soft, sweet, brief and I pulled back before it could get too deep, since we were in the middle of the walkway.

  "Let's get out of here."

  ♥♥♥♥

  When You Really, Really Know

  "What is this place?" Trisha asked, as soon as I pulled up to the tiny, red shack just off the highway, about twenty minutes west of the skating rink.

  Putting the car in park, I smirked. "I thought you were a go with the flow type of person. What happened to that? Huh?"

  She rolled her eyes but amusement curved her lips into a smile. "First of all, I never said that. I said I was chill. Those are not the same."

  I tapped my chin like I was thinking it over. "Nah, you definitely said you were a go with the flow and down for whatever type of chick. A fuck on the first date type of chick."

  Her mouth dropped open and she stared at me for a full minute before she shrieked with laughter. The sound pulled me out of character and I joined in, laughing so hard my ribs hurt.

  "I think I changed my mind from earlier," she said suddenly, wiping a few tears from her eyes. "You are definitely strange."

  Jumping out of the truck, I locked the doors and pulled her toward me, pressing my chest against her back and wrapping my arms around her similar to how she'd done me at Skate Central. "So, are you saying you're not a fuck on the first date type of chick?"

  Curving her neck to the side, she glanced at me, a smirk firmly planted on her once-again glossy lips. "I could be."