Finally, he seemed to remember, and turned left. Zora followed silently, her hand still engulfed in his larger, callused one.
“What’s all that mean? That he needs to talk to you about the clip?” He didn’t slow his pace as he spoke.
“I don’t know. I guess he found it … revelatory or whatever. I still want to choke the hell out of Asif for not telling me that he was …”
“Dude is Muslim, right?”
Zora pursed her lips for a moment, feeling in her gut and hearing in Deuce’s voice that this conversation was at risk of going left any minute now.
“Yeah,” she said, quietly, hoping that keeping things brief where Nicolas was concerned would short-circuit the conflict that now felt unstoppable.
“And he’s like, friends with your family.”
“Old friends with Seef from back in Detroit. Yes.”
“So, what went wrong? Why’d you two stop hanging out … or whatever?”
He was practically pulling her along now, because his strides were so much longer, and he was walking faster.
“Because.”
“What does that mean … ‘because’?”
“Deuce …”
“What? Tell me. I mean, at least on paper he looks like he would be your family’s dream for you.”
“You’re right,” she said. “He would.”
He stopped walking, and dropped her hand, abruptly. Zora felt the blood rush back to her fingers.
Turning to look at her, eyes narrowed to slits, he leaned in a little. “So you think …”
“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think. Maybe my father would think that, but I don’t. I would think that would be obvious by now.”
Exhaling, Deuce looked up at the sky, interlacing his fingers atop his head.
“What’re we doin’ here, Zee? I mean … what’re we doin’?”
There was still traffic, lots of it around them. Both foot-traffic and the din of cars and vans, taxis and slow-moving suburbanites in SUVs, gingerly making their way through the perilous big city streets. The evening was warm and muggy, the air uncomfortable and laden with the dense odors from a dozen restaurants, nightclubs and corner-stores.
In her sleeveless cotton shift-dress, Zora felt the beginnings of moisture on her back, and pinpricks of perspiration under her arms. She didn’t want to have this long-overdue conversation while sweating it out on a New York City sidewalk.
“What do you want us to do?” she asked, exasperated.
“I want us to get married.”
He said it without hesitation. Like it had been on his mind all evening or maybe even longer than that, and he had only just gotten an opening to say it aloud.
Zora almost would have been less surprised had he turned and shoved her into oncoming traffic. She took a step back, making a noise like a sharp intake of breath, followed by a squeak.
“What?”
Deuce looked at her evenly. “I want you,” he said more slowly, more deliberately, “to marry me.”
“But we …”
“I know not now,” he said. “Not right away. I know that … I know the time’s not right. I know we’re … young, or whatever. But I want to make it clear to you what I want. What I want to us to work toward. To plan for.”
“But we’re not … We just got back together. We don’t even know if we are back together, and …”
“What do you mean we don’t even know if we’re back together?” Taking a step closer, he held her arm, then her waist, and pulled her against him.
“I just meant we hadn’t talked about it.” She looked up at him, but found it difficult to meet the vulnerability in his eyes with her own uncertain gaze.
“Do we need to talk about it?”
“Deuce, everything with you is so … black or white. And sometimes there’s shades of grey that …”
“No. No fucking shades of grey. Not with us,” he said, his face bunched up in anger. “Not with this. I need to know that you’re with me, and you’re not going any-fucking-where.”
“This is like, the worst marriage proposal in the history of marriage. Or of proposals,” Zora said shaking her head, and almost speaking to herself.
She looked up at Deuce and to her surprise, the anger seemed to have disappeared and now he was stifling a grin.
“No, seriously,” she said, trying to repress a smile of her own. “It was awful. You really need to work on your delivery.”
He kissed her, shutting her up, and pulling her even closer. It was a kiss like only he gave; the kind that made her forget modesty or reason. Vaguely, Zora heard a catcall and whistle of appreciation from nearby, but still it was Deuce who broke the kiss.
“Will you?” he asked, in an almost-whisper when their lips parted. “Will you marry me?”
Zora felt her throat tighten and she clutched the back of his shirt in her tightened fist, realizing how much of an effort it was to not immediately say ‘yes.’
The idea of it, of pledging her life to him caused her no fear at all, only eager anticipation. But to say ‘yes’ right now would be a pledge. A sacred promise. And one she was not yet sure she was in a position to make.
Deuce sighed. “Is it that stuff … That stuff you talked about with your dad, and …”
Zora chewed the corner of her lower lip and nodded. “I know it seems … stupid and old-fashioned, but yeah … I … I’m not sure I could … He might see it as me turning my back on everything that he’s about. Everything that he raised me to be about.” She pursed her lips.
“Okay.” Deuce’s chest heaved once again. “Just tell me one thing: are you saying ‘no’, or …?”
Zora shook her head. “I’m not saying ‘no’.”
He nodded. “Okay,” he said, his brow furrowed. He looked down at the pavement beneath his feet. “Okay. That’s … that’s good.”
But he looked depleted. Defeated.
Zora reached for and tugged on the front of his shirt.
“You had a crappy day today, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t look at her but gave a wry laugh. “And it just got a whole lot worse.”
“Babe. Don’t. And I meant … I mean at work. Did something happen that at work …? All evening, you’ve felt a little … I don’t know. Off, or something.”
At that, Deuce looked down at her once again, his expression thoughtful. He seemed to be considering his words.
“It wasn’t a crappy day,” he said finally. “Not really. It was … I had a conversation with my father, a real conversation like we haven’t had in a long time. Or maybe ever. And he made me see that I need to think about playing my long game y’know? And think about what that game looks like. What I want it to look like.”
Zora nodded, though she wasn’t sure she followed.
“And then all that stuff with Kal and Asha and them having a baby. I mean they’re moving at warp-speed, just doin’ it. They ain’ even consider their game, they just did it, y’know?”
Zora nodded again.
“So, I thought about that, and what my father said, and … when I did that? Thought about what my long game might be? I realized that I … I can’t even begin to imagine what it would look like if you weren’t part of it.”
Zora tugged harder on his shirt until he took two steps forward and she was able to wrap her arms around him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
He was up near four-thirty and couldn’t get back to sleep. So, Deuce studied the ceiling of Zora’s bedroom, staring at the pockmarks that looked like someone had once hung mobiles from it. He counted them and tried to fall back asleep for the almost hour-and-a-half he still had before he would have to get up and out, downtown to his apartment and ready for work.
But he couldn’t drift off again so instead he turned and looked at Zee through the almost impenetrable dark. She lay on her side, one arm extended, head resting on it. The studious attentiveness around her brows relaxed, and her full lips were softer, and slightly parted
. All the concentrated intelligence and seriousness of expression when awake disappeared in sleep, to make way for pure vulnerability.
The round of her exposed shoulder was smooth and shone in the gray early morning light. There was the hint of a dark-chocolate nipple peeking from beneath the covers. Leaning in, Deuce kissed the shoulder, and Zora shifted, with a soft moan. He kissed a little lower, along her arm, then gently moved her onto her back. She sighed, and even in her sleep, relented.
Positioning himself atop her, he balanced his weight on his forearms and parted her thighs with a knee, kissing her clavicle. Zora’s chest heaved and released. Goosebumps dotted her skin as he moved to her breasts, taking a nipple in his mouth, then pulling back and toying with it with the tip of his tongue.
Deuce didn’t know if she was still asleep even now, but Zora gasped and her back arched, as she thrust her chest toward him. With that, he moved to the other breast, treating it much as he had the first, propping himself on one elbow. He stroked and teased the nipple that wasn’t on his tongue, and it pebbled between his fingers. Zora was breathing audibly now, and swallowing large gulps of air.
Deuce kissed her along her center, pausing at her hips, running the tips of his fingers over her skin, and pulling back just to watch her lift her core toward him. He stroked her inner thighs, just up to the line demarcating them from her mons. He smelled, and then immediately, wanted to taste her. His erection strained against the boxer-briefs he hadn’t removed the night before.
Using his thumbs to part her, Deuce captured her clitoris between his lips and held it there, tongue against its sensitive tip, hearing Zora’s sharp gasp and letting her buck and thrust against him. He did nothing more than that until he felt what he was waiting for—her hands on his head, pressing it against her—and only then did he go at her in earnest. He tasted, sucked and drank her in, impaling her on his tongue when she thrust upward, licking her when she pulled back.
The pace of her breaths increased in speed and became shallower until finally, she held him hard against her and cried out, her back bowing off the bed.
Without waiting, Deuce moved upward, peeling his boxers off as he did, and shoved inside her. Zora groaned and grabbed him closer, her arms binding him to her as close as their bodies allowed. Turning to look at her, Deuce saw that her eyes were open now, though still only at half-mast and unfocused with pleasure.
Seeking out her mouth, he grunted and grabbed the back of her head to hold her still when she seemed to want to evade it. He kissed her hard, and deep until she was kissing him back just as hard, powerless to do anything but submit. He sucked in her tongue, then tugged and nipped at her lower lip, pulling it between his while their hips moved in humankind’s most primitive dance.
“Don’t pull away from me,” he breathed against her neck.
“I wasn’t … I won’t …” Her eyes opened fully now.
He kissed her again to punctuate his demand and she followed the kiss, giving in completely.
Hooking an arm down and beneath her, Deuce moved and held one leg higher to give himself more range of motion. He sank deeper and felt her body’s compliance, just as he had with their kiss.
Pressing his lips against her ear, he asked the question he had been wondering ever since she showed up at the lounge that night in that revealing outfit; since he found out she had been ‘seeing’ Nicolas; and since last evening when he saw the bitter resentment in dude’s eyes at happening across them together.
“Did you and Nicolas …?”
Zora’s head whipped around, her chin almost crashing against his.
“No,” she gasped, as if the idea of it was unthinkable.
But it wasn’t. Because he had been with other women when they broke up. Three, apart from Regan. All of them casual and forgettable. The first, a girl who worked at Lounge Two-Twelve, he fucked in her small dank apartment, where he had taken her after her shift. He was still half-drunk and filled with self-disgust the next morning, feeling like he had cheated on his woman, which at the time—at least in his heart—he had.
With the second chick, he convinced himself that out there somewhere Zora might be doing the same thing. That thought made him a selfish, almost callous lover. He wasn’t even sure the girl reached her climax, and he didn’t care.
By the third chick, he managed to get out of his head, and enjoy it. He made himself not think, and dissolve into the feeling of soft, pliant flesh, surrounding his flesh, and the sweet, flowery scent of the girl whose name he now didn’t recall. And then there had been Regan, who had been good in bed to begin with, and only got better when she learned all the things he liked and made sure she did them often.
But there had never been—could never be—anyone like Zora. She was the only woman he had ever made love to where there was actual ‘love’ as part of the equation. She was more than mouth pressed to mouth, sex-on-sex, and entangled, frantic limbs. She was everything, and everywhere—taste, touch, scent, secret sounds that, if it was up to him, only he would ever hear her make. And there was the incomparable sight of her face when he made her come apart. She was on his mind, in his heart, and now part of his soul. Physical pleasure was almost the least consequential part making love to her.
Almost, but not quite.
She seemed on the verge now, and gripped his triceps, her fingernails almost breaking skin, her head thrown back and jaw clenched. Deuce slowed, waiting through this, her second, quieter climax, feeling his eyes roll back as the most intimate part of her body clung to his.
Lowering his head, he kissed her neck, and it was that which pushed her and shortly afterward, him into oblivion.
~~~
“You have to get up,” Zora said.
Her head was on his chest though, and she showed no inclination to move.
“I know.”
Outside, the sky was much lighter, and elsewhere in the apartment, the sound reached them, of a shower being turned on.
Asif was home.
Deuce only briefly wondered and didn’t much care whether Zora’s cousin heard them earlier. He would have to get used to the idea, sooner or later, that Deuce was going nowhere. He was going to be spending a lot of time here.
And Zora would come to his place as well. That Band-Aid would have to be ripped off, thoroughly and cleanly.
And soon.
“Come to my place tonight,” he said.
She tensed.
“Bring a bag,” he continued. “Spend the night.”
“Sick of slumming it uptown?”
She was trying to make a joke of it, lighten what he knew was heavy stuff for her. His apartment carried lots of Regan-sized baggage.
“You can come with me now if you want to.” He ignored her attempt at levity. “Bring all your books. Study there while I’m at work.”
“And make sure I have a hot meal waiting on the table for you when you get home?”
“Zee.” He sat up, so she had no choice but to do the same. “You want me to move? To buy a new bed? What? Tell me and I’ll do it.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said shaking her head, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “And anyway, you’ll be moving soon enough. Up to Bedford.”
“Temporarily. But my place will still be my place. And yours, too.”
At that, she looked at him.
“Yours, too,” he said again, nodding.
Zora exhaled and looked down, chewing on the corner of her lower lip.
He grabbed his phone from her nightstand and glanced at the time. “Anyway, I gotta go … I don’t know what time I’ll be home tonight, so I’ll leave you a fob at the front desk, so you can go whenever you’re ready. Okay?”
Zora still said nothing, even as he lowered his feet to the ground and started dressing.
“Zee,” he said. “I’ll make sure you can get in. Okay?”
She nodded noncommittally.
“Look. I really have to …”
“Go. Yes,” she said. “I know.”
&n
bsp; He dressed quickly, mindful of the time, then kissed her briefly before slipping out of the room, and the apartment.
~~~
Zora didn’t text him all morning. And it took a lot of willpower not to reach out to her. But Deuce knew her. She was thinking. Mulling everything over, from his unexpected proposal to the idea that she should go over to his apartment, pick up a key and begin spending nights there. She would be thinking and ruminating; and thinking and overthinking. And eventually, she would make her decision.
He should be freaked out that he had actually proposed marriage last night. Marriage. Most right-minded people would say that a twenty-three and twenty-two-year old were nowhere near ready for that. But he didn’t feel freaked out at all. When he proposed to her—clumsily, he could now admit—it felt like the telling of a long-held secret, that he had been dying to share with his best friend.
~~~
“I thought I already rejected these,” Jamal said, sliding the sheet of paper back across the table, as he took a seat opposite Deuce.
They were meeting in his office, in the sitting area where Jamal had ripped into him for skipping out on work on a Monday right after Regan’s incident at work. Deuce had gotten half an hour on Jamal’s calendar by bribing his assistant with courtside Knicks tickets. But it was clear from the moment he sat down that finding even that short block of time was a strain on Jamal’s schedule.
He had the same expression that Deuce sometimes saw on his father’s face when he was working; of someone who was only half-present, and whose mind was already skipping ahead to the next thing, and the thing after that one. His brow was furrowed, and he was managing his impatience, waiting to hear something, anything that would make this meeting a worthwhile use of his time.
“You did reject ‘em,” Deuce said. “But I think you’re wrong. Any one of these would make a good symbol for the label. Lemme explain to you …”
“I don’t need you to explain. I need you to go back to the drawing board, and …”
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