“Now, you have all the time with him in the world. Be careful what you wish for,” Zora teased.
“Oh, god no,” Asha said. “This is exactly what I … I just love it, y’know? Coming back to him at the end of the day. Cooking our meals, keeping our little apartment looking like a home … I love it. I have a life that makes sense to me.”
~~~
She was exhausted when she got home. Pleasantly so. She and Asha shopped all afternoon. Not for anything major, since neither of them had plenty of money to spend. It was more about spending time together since early the next morning, Deuce was driving her and Kal to the airport for their flight back to Oakland.
By six that evening, it seemed they had to have walked the entire length of the island of Manhattan. They parted at the subway at 34th Street, with hugs and kisses and a little teary-eyed.
When Zora asked, only half-jokingly whether they would consider moving to New York, Asha shook her head right away.
And Zora remembered her words in the diner: I have a life that makes sense to me.
If only she could say the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Everything seemed to have been untouched and unchanged in the apartment since she left to meet Asha. Asif had been gone for more than twenty-four hours and as far as Zora could tell, hadn’t been home even to change.
She took a shower, ordered a jerk chicken dinner from the Jamaican place a few blocks over, and ate alone with the television volume on low, a dull ache in her chest like apprehension. Finally, around ten, she texted her cousin asking where he was.
Cutting room, he replied almost immediately. You good?
Yes. Fine, she responded. Just checking on you.
He didn’t answer that one, and Zora knew it was probably because he was engrossed in his work. The screening lit a fire under him and now he was feeling the pressure to deliver on the enthusiasm of the first significant audience to see his work since film school. She hadn’t asked how much money had been pledged, but she guessed it was the kind of number that would keep him up at night, or at least, working almost twenty-four hours without a break.
On the drive back from Jersey after the party he kept shaking his head, like he couldn’t believe it all had happened. And intermittently, Zora heard him mutter under his breath, thinking aloud, making lists of things he had to do.
She felt like calling him now, just to hear his voice but didn’t want to admit that she was lonely in the apartment, and for a change would have appreciated even his incessant teasing and intrusive questions about where she was going and with whom. Then she thought of calling her brother Ousmane and ribbing him a little about the redhead in the pictures her mother had shown her. But it was after two in the morning in Paris and if she called, she might wake him; or worse yet, wake him and the redhead.
Finally, Zora called no one. She sat up for a long while, thinking about Asha and Kal, and the no doubt beautiful children they would have. And she thought about how often Asha blushed when she spoke of Kal and their life together.
Zora went to bed after midnight but slept only in spurts, part of her listening for the slightest sound that might mean Asif was home. He finally came in around three-thirtyish and only then did she fall fully asleep.
She woke again a little after seven when her phone rang. She had forgotten to put it on silent and the ringtone jarred her awake, so that her heart was pounding when she reached over to answer it.
“Did I wake you?”
Zora shoved herself up a little, so she was leaning back against her pillows and the headboard, partly propped up.
“No,” she said, her mouth cottony. “I mean, not really.”
“Sounds like I did,” Deuce said. “Sorry. I just wanted to … Just got back from taking Kal and Asha to the airport. Wondered if you might want to go get some breakfast or something.”
Zora tried to get some moisture on her lips. Her tongue felt papery.
She thought of Regan in her pink, floaty dress, and knew she should refuse.
“Sure.”
“How much time do you need? I can come get you.”
“An hour?”
“Okay. Cool. See you then.”
When he hung up, Zora sat still for almost twenty minutes before getting up to shower again—even though it had only been a few hours since the last one—and get dressed.
~~~
“I like this place,” Zora said once they were ushered to and seated at their table on the patio.
The restaurant was New American rustic, with butcher-block tables, shaded by green awnings and flanked by unvarnished wooden folding chairs. Though unpretentious, it was clearly an upmarket eatery because Zora spotted two television personalities, and a famous Broadway actor inside through the plate glass windows.
“I heard about it from …” Deuce hesitated. “Someone told me about it a while ago.”
“Oh.” Zora reached for her menu.
Regan, she wanted to say. You can say her name.
“I’m going to miss Asha and Kal,” she said instead. “It was cool having them here.”
“Maybe next time we can go out to Oakland.”
She ignored the ‘we’.
“Yeah. Would be cool to visit when the baby comes.”
“When’s that?” Deuce asked.
“Her due date’s around Thanksgiving.”
Zora didn’t look up as she spoke.
It was hard enough looking at him in that white shirt, contrasting with his warm umber complexion, his jaw rough with a couple days’ growth. The last thing she needed was to make it worse by considering him in light of the specter of some future unborn child, and what he or she might look like.
“What’re you thinkin’ about?”
“Hmm?” Zora’s head snapped upward. “Ahm, nothing. I was just …”
Deuce was pointing down at the menu. “To eat,” he clarified. “What looks good?”
“Oven-baked eggs, I guess? With the side of potato hash. And maybe a couple of the buttermilk biscuits.”
He grinned at her and shook his head. “Your appetite, man.”
“Why? What’re you planning to have? The kale and goat-cheese salad?”
“The grass-fed burger. And before you ask, no you can’t have a bite when it comes.”
Zora smiled back at him, feeling some of the strange tension between them melt away. “Fine. I won’t ask.”
When they placed their orders, she leaned back and looked out at the street. Chelsea on the weekend was a cool place to hang out. She had missed New York and New Jersey when she was in California, missed the brash directness of the East Coasters, and was often befuddled by the breezy, laid-back attitude of the West. Just the lack of urgency in the way people walked was enough to sometimes drive her insane.
And most of all, she missed Deuce.
“By the way, Asif is on a cloud right now,” she said, looking at him. “Thank you again for …”
“It’s fine. All I did was call a few people I know and invite them over to …”
“It was a big deal.” Zora spoke over him. “Because the people you know are not people the rest of the world has access to. So, just let me thank you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Leaning back in his seat, he stared off into the distance, at an area somewhere in the horizon and just above her head. Seemed as though they were both doing that, finding ways to avoid looking directly at each other.
“He’s on a cloud … but it’s inflated with stress. Brought on by the need to deliver on high expectations,” Zora added.
Deuce laughed. “Well, the expectations are pretty damn high. Even my pops was impressed.”
“Was he?” Zora sat up straighter. “With Seef’s work?”
“Yeah. Said it was smart of me to get in on the ground floor with him. And then when I went over to my Moms’ house, we talked about it some more, and …”
“Wait. Your father was at your mother’s house?”
A
t that, Deuce nodded slowly. “Yeah. If you can believe that.”
“Is it because of …?”
“Her being sick? Yeah. I mean, I guess that’s the reason for the ceasefire. It’s weird seeing them together. Not battlin’ for a change, but just … talking. They even smile at each other and shit.”
Zora nodded, not smiling herself, but just resting her elbow on the table, chin on her fist.
“I mean, now that they’re not yelling and screaming, I can almost see it, y’know? What made them attracted to each other back in the day. There’s a little … vibe, of two people who understand each other.”
Still, she didn’t speak, wanting to leave room for him to say more.
“You know I love her, but my Moms is … a little, you know, rough around the edges sometimes. And my father, he came up hard, too. So in some things, they speak the same language.
“But he had drive, and ambition, and talent; and she was just driven, and ambitious, but without the talent. He came up off his talent and hard work, and she … I guess she came up off of being with him. And having his kid.”
Zora could tell from the way he furrowed his brows as he spoke that it was hard for him to say that. Looking critically at one’s own parents, assessing them dispassionately was not an easy thing to do.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t really know her though. And now I …” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I wonder if I’ll get that chance.”
Without thinking, Zora reached for his hand. He let her take it, then turned it over, putting his atop hers instead, his coarse fingertips stroking the soft skin on the inside of her wrist.
Goosebumps rose on her arm and Deuce looked up, his eyes meeting hers with a look of mild surprise.
Zora blushed, wondering why he would be surprised that he affected her the way he did. A lot may have changed between them, but that one thing never had.
“Why wouldn’t you get the chance to know her?” Her voice faltered. “You … you said you were thinking about moving back home, right?”
Deuce nodded. “Yeah. Now all I gotta do is break it to her.”
“Break it to her? You say it like it’ll be bad news. She’ll probably be secretly excited.”
Deuce shrugged. “Maybe.”
“So, do it. Move back. Get to know her like you want to.”
“If I move will you help me?”
“Like carry boxes and stuff?” She pretended to be mulling it over.
His fingers were caressing her knuckles now, and she tried to ignore that, and the way it made her heartbeat speed up.
“Yeah.” He bit into his lower lip. “I’ve got plenty of boxes.”
“Uh, no,” Zora said. “What you have is plenty of money. To hire movers. And not to mention …”
A girlfriend whose job description should include helping with moves.
“Okay, so I’ll hire movers. But maybe you can ride with me the day of. Get me settled in, help me make my bed … Help me unmake my bed …”
Zora dragged her hand from beneath his, the smile falling from her face.
They might play and joke around a little, but he had to know that it wasn’t easy to be reminded that she had forfeited these rites of passage with him and that there was someone else who had the right to them.
Just as she was about to say exactly that, a server returned with their espressos, briskly informing them that their food would be out in a moment.
“What just happened?” Deuce leaned in a little, lowering his voice. “Just now, you … shut down on me.”
“If you need someone to ride with you on the day you move, and to unmake your bed,” Zora said ripping open a packet of brown sugar, and avoiding his gaze, “it probably shouldn’t be me.”
“Why not?” Deuce picked up his own packet, shaking it to get the sugar all to one end.
“Deuce, don’t be … You have a girlf…”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No girlfriend.” He shrugged.
All her blood seemed to rush to her head and Zora’s eyes suddenly grew hot. She blinked, feeling them fill. Her throat felt clogged, and the crushing weight that had been on her on her chest, like an anvil, was lifted. Only its sudden absence alerted her to the fact that it had been there in the first place.
“What?”
“I tried,” Deuce began, his eyes narrowed. He spoke slowly. “To do the right thing, the honorable thing with her. After what she’d been through. Even though I knew … I mean, the minute I saw you at that bar … Hell, I knew even before I saw you. And then after that night at your apartment? Even after all that time we were apart, I still … I just knew …”
His words were clumsy, and hard to follow. But she knew what he meant.
“You knew what?”
“That … me, being with someone else? You with someone else? That wasn’t never gon’ work, Zee.” He shook his head slowly, his eyes gripping and holding hers. “It just wasn’t.”
She swallowed hard. “So, you and Regan …”
“That’s done. And I’m … I’m sorry it took so long. Because I know that hurt you. I know it made you doubt me. But it’s always been you. It could never be anyone but you.”
~~~
They walked after they ate. Aimlessly at first and then eventually down W. 20th and across the West Side Highway to Chelsea Piers.
They had eaten their entire meal without broaching the subject of Regan again. Instead they talked about Asif’s documentary, about her having only one more month before law school classes started, and about him moving to Bedford. They avoided the Big Questions still hanging between them, maybe because they both wanted, at least for now, just to settle into the realization of this chance to start again.
When they got to the Piers, someone was having a celebration in Sunset Terrace. One of the entrances had been left unmanned, so Deuce took Zora’s hand, leading her through the crowd, walking as purposefully as though they belonged there. They stopped only when they were standing on the deck, overlooking the Hudson.
It wasn’t sunset, or even close to that time but it was still a beautiful view. From where they stood, the water was a silvery, metallic blue and looking directly at it made them squint. So, they didn’t look at it, but instead after a few moments turned to each other.
They stared for so long that finally, Deuce’s eyes crinkled at the corners and he broke out into a grin. Zora couldn’t help it, she smiled, too.
This was how it used to be—how it still was—with them sometimes. There were moments when their giddiness at just … having each other made them grin like idiots.
“Say it,” Deuce told her, sounding resigned. “You know you want to.”
“What is it you think I want to say?” she teased.
He twisted his lips to one side, eyes narrowing. “You know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.”
Taking two steps closer, and then a third, Zora got on her toes. She pressed her lips against his ear and felt him shiver a little.
“Is it magic?” she whispered.
But Deuce didn’t laugh.
And when he brushed his forefinger at her chin, so she would face him, he wasn’t even smiling. His expression was so intense, so serious that it made Zora consider that maybe even she hadn’t been joking after all.
He moved closer and pressed his lips to hers.
“Yeah,” he said, speaking against them. “It is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Shit!”
Deuce sat bolt upright when he realized the sun was bright and high in the sky.
“Fuck! Shit!” He cast the sheets aside and stumbled out of bed, tripping on his own shoes, and falling against the dresser.
“What?” Zora moaned from somewhere behind him. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Monday!”
“So?”
“I have work, Zee! It’s almost nine. I told you how Jamal … shit!”
He tossed a pile of clothes aside,
searching for his jeans. There might be no time to go back home first, so he would wear his jeans, and pick up a shirt somewhere on the way.
Zora emitted a loud yawn and he turned just in time to see her tugging the sheets up to cover her bare breasts, dark nipples disappearing under white cotton. Just the sight of her made him pause to appreciate what had happened over the last day.
“What?” she asked, self-consciously putting a hand up to her hair, messy and flat on one side.
“Nothin’,” he said. He moved toward the bed again and leaned in to kiss her, anticipating her move to avoid him planting it on her lips.
She submitted but puckered up as a subterfuge to spare him her morning breath.
“I gotta run,” he said, jumping into his jeans without wasting time searching for his boxers. “But how ‘bout dinner tonight? You free?”
Zora was clutching the covers to her chest now, but one long, bare brown leg was extended, and the sheet concealed mostly her abdomen, leaving a thigh, hip and one round butt-cheek fully in view. If he stayed even one minute longer, or thought about last night, he would be saying, ‘the hell with Jamal Turner’ and crawling back in bed.
She nodded and gave him the kind of shy smile that almost made him doubt she was the same woman who just hours ago had laid some moves on him that felt so good his eyes rolled back into his head.
“Yeah, I’m free.”
“Okay. I’ll call you. I’ll … I gotta go.” He shrugged his crumpled shirt over his head while stepping into his shoes.
She nodded again, watching him with a bemused half-smile, as he yanked open her bedroom door, looking right and left like a fugitive. Asif was nowhere in sight, and Deuce was grateful because he didn’t have time right now to explain to her cousin that this was no booty call, and that he was back for good.
Stepping out into the hallway, he stuck his head back in one last time, just as Zora slid down under the covers and hugged the pillow, emitting a low moan.
Damn he wished he could stay.
Rhyme & Reason Page 24