by Eden Butler
For a second I only watched her, pushing back that huge need that rose up in my chest, the same one that wanted me to touch her, to bring her close enough to taste. But that wouldn’t help me keep her out of my way. It wouldn’t do anything but give her another reason to keep knocking on my door. So I went with being an asshole.
“First time for everything, sweetness.”
Willow dropped her arms and her face went all red and blotchy. “Why are you such a jerk?” Those eyes though, they were cold, steely and it hit me square in the chest when I realized I’d pissed her off. Kinda liked how it looked on her.
Still, I didn’t appreciate that know-it-all shake of her head or how her anger seemed to make her think she was right about me. “Look, you don’t know…”
“I know you’re avoiding me. I know that anytime I see you on the sidewalk or in the lobby, you head in the other direction.”
Willow stood right in front of me. There was an eyelash on her left cheek and I fought to keep my hands in my pocket so I wouldn’t brush it away. Even in boring beige, she was beautiful, something I tried like hell to deny over and over in my head. Something, it seemed, was impossible to do.
“There is something happening here and you’re running from it.”
That had me laughing, a quick, cruel sound that tightened her mouth until there were small lines around her lips. “It ain’t like that.”
“Something happened to you.” Just as she said that a quick breeze floated around us, pushing her bangs into her eyes. She reached up to brush them back. “Something happened to me, too. I don’t know what it is, Nash, but there is something between us.”
“That isn’t what’s happening here.”
“If there was nothing happening, you wouldn’t be avoiding me.” She stepped closer and I refused to back up, to show weakness in retreating, but I couldn’t hide how shallow my breath had become. She spotted it. “If there was nothing, you wouldn’t be so nervous when I get close to you.”
I did step back then, I had to, and I thought she might follow. Willow was a pushy sort of female, the kind that didn’t back away just because you wanted them to. She got inside your head, claws sharp and deep and wouldn’t let you go without a fight. Part of me liked that about her. The other part of me, the one that reminded me I didn’t need a damn thing but my brain and ambition to get what I wanted, that voice was loud and obnoxious.
But you don’t get rid of a claws-deep woman just by pushing them away. You strike, you hurt and just then, I wanted to hurt Willow so deep that she'd have no choice but to drop me like a toxic bomb. “I’m nervous because you’re insane. Certifiable. I’m not into you.” I put a little gravel in my voice just then, ignoring how wide Willow’s eyes had gone at my insult, how she let her mouth drop open like a guppy out of its tank. “There is nothing happening here.”
“I am not crazy.”
Just then, she didn’t look convincing and I understood why. This was the woman who believed in auras. She was the same female who pulled me into her boho madhouse because one glance at me told her there was something wrong with me. I wouldn’t admit to her she’d been right about that, but who she was, how she was, I understood why she was so insulted. I was willing to bet it wasn’t the first time someone had called her crazy. It sure as hell pissed her off.
It hurt just a little to see that frown, but my plan had been to keep her away. My plan had been to remember the work I’d spent years doing, to keep focused because I was nearly there, had nearly made it. My plans didn’t include some white-assed hippie chick who promised things with a look, who expected the same from me.
I needed her angry. I needed Willow to hate me. “Whatever you say, nutjob.”
I expected her to rage, to fight back. To come at me swinging. Instead, she didn’t flinch, or even frown at my insult. It was almost as if she had expected me to be an asshole. And hell, I wasn’t ready for how cool, how cruel, how correct she could be. It only took a small brush of her hand under her chin and that sad, disgusted frown to show that she could see through me.
“You’re such a coward.”
It was a gut punch I hated feeling, one I tried hard not let show on my face. “What did you say to me?”
“You heard me and you know it’s true.” She was in my face with three small steps, taunting me, accusing me. “You’re running. You felt something between us. That night in my apartment, then in yours. There is something happening, I have no idea what it is, but you feel it too.”
“No. I don’t!” Willow stepped back when I yelled, but she didn’t cower. . I desperately held on to my lie, despite feeling like I was being outmaneuvered. “Sorry to bust your bubble, nut job, but no. The only thing happening is I have a crazy ass neighbor who keeps leaving cupcakes at my door. The same crazy neighbor who pulled me into her apartment the first night we met because she swore she could see my aura.” I made sure to accent that word as sarcastically as possible. “So yeah…like I said…crazy.”
Willow stood her ground, that same impassive frown pinching her features, her eyes hard and sparking. She didn’t buy my excuses and that look of hers was nailing me to the wall despite my noise and the shit I was trying to spill. Willow might be a little weird, she might be a lot in her own world, but she wasn’t afraid of a damn thing—not me, not my loud yelling voice or the thing that pulsed between us, the very same thing I refused to admit was there.
“You’ll figure it out. Eventually,” she said, stepping back. “One day you’ll get over your issues and admit that I’m right.”
“I damn well won’t.”
“And when you do,” she interrupted, cocked up an eyebrow, curious, a little worried before her expression changed and her lips twitched. “Maybe then, Nash, you’ll stop running from whatever it is that’s got you spooked.”
It was another gut punch moment. I’d only ever heard that expression once in my life and it had never come out of Willow’s mouth.
“I just hope I’m still around when you’re ready to admit it.”
She left the roof then, reaching for her braid. It was loose and her hair hanging in a huge mass down her back by the time she made it to the stairs. I could only watch her, heart pounding like a drum inside my head. The only other time I’d heard about being spooked was some girl named Sookie in my dream and there was no way Willow could know about that.
Was there?
Willow
Effie Thomas was a librarian who liked to tell patrons to “shut the fuck up” anytime they got a little too loud in her library. She’d been admonished at least a half dozen times when she first landed the gig, but she was damned good at her job, and by the time she’d made head librarian, no one had the nerve to tell her to stop yelling at noisy patrons.
We were dorm mates for two semesters at NYU, sneaking booze we weren’t old enough to buy and kissing boys we had no business knowing. I loved Effie like a sister. Or, at least, like I supposed you should love a sister, if you had one. Effie was also somewhat of a dabbler in transcendental meditation. “Hogwash,” my mom would call it, but Effie, despite the filthy insults she flung at loud mouths in the Reference Department like a monkey with shit at a zoo, Effie happened to be one of the calmest, most well-adjusted people I knew.
But I was a little desperate, a lot annoyed and figured that my mother’s standard “walk around in nature” remedy for de-stressing wasn’t going to cut it this time around. I’d let Effie direct me if it meant I could find my center again.
“Breathe in, Will. Through your nose, releasing through your teeth.” Effie sat up straight, her knees facing mine as we rested cross-legged on the plush rugs draped around my living room. She had her hair elegantly wrapped in an up do with jewel toned scarves twisted around her braids. It was an elaborate, complicated arrangement that Effie had never shared with me, likely with anyone. Her tank top was a little threadbare but so soft, and she wore red yoga pants that clung to her lush thighs like paint. She was beautiful, with wide set eyes
and skin the color of wet sand, lips that puckered naturally. Effie was by default quiet, but could shatter the windows of any room with a cool, mean glare or that filthy mouth of hers when riled.
“You paying attention?” she asked, poking me with one long finger, the nail long and painted something she liked to call Bitch Red. “In and out. Easy breaths and when you are relaxed,” she exhaled, and I smelled the hint of clove on her breath, “then and only then do you start your mantra.”
Ah. That was a problem, or it might be.
“You have it, don’t you? A mantra?” I opened my eyes, pushing a sweet smile on my face to lessen the blow that might come when Effie discovered I hadn’t quite chosen my mantra. Not like I hadn’t been thinking of and discarding idea after idea... I shrugged and the tall woman lowered her shoulders, tapping three of those nails on the hardwood floor at her side. “You serious?”
“I couldn’t decide…”
“It’s vital, Willow. Damn, girl, how many times I say that to you? Vital.”
“I know…I’m sorry.” Effie laughed at me when I dropped my face in my hands, rubbing my temples. “Nash has got me so…”
“Sprung?”
I jerked my head up, staring at Effie, mouth open a little. “That’s probably the perfect word for it. Ugh.” When I fell back, laying against the sofa pillows I’d tossed around my floor Effie came to my side, elbow to elbow with me as I watched the ceiling, not seeing the small cracks in the plaster or the dust bunnies collected in the old chandelier. “I never get stupid over men. Not ever.”
Her laugh was warm, and as we lay there, side by side, I was reminded of late nights in our cold dorm when we’d huddle close together because the furnace never worked right. Effie sounded sweet, a little too amused which told me plainly I was about to be teased. “Well,” she started, pushing me over so she could rest her head on the same pillow as me, “there was Micah Wiley sophomore year.”
“Not fair, you went stupid over him too. Every girl with a pulse went stupid over Micah.”
Effie snorted, waving those nails at me as though my accusation had zero merit. “Please. What would I want with some football player? He had nothing between his ears.”
I moved my head slowly, eyes squinted as I watched my friend. “Who the hell cared?” She laughed again, shrugging away her denial. “No one cared if he could quote sonnets. It was that body…”
“True enough.”
A flash of memory circled in my head and it brought me out of the moment. Eyes tight, I tried to block out the voices, the deep, rich sound that I knew I’d never heard but that sounded so familiar. Something I heard only in my dreams. And that face—warm, dark amber eyes with flecks of gold, bright and kind. A mouth that I…that someone I didn’t know…so wanted, dreamed of. My thoughts were complicated with guilt, something I didn’t make a bit of sense. There was no one for me to be unfaithful to and even if there were, the man in my dreams wasn’t real. If he had been once, he would be old by now, older than my parents, because that was the world he lived in. Not mine.
“You need a mantra,” Effie said, lifting up on one elbow to look down at me. “It focuses your thoughts. It’s the center that you concentrate on while your mind bends to the will of the universe. The mantra is key, Will. I’ve only ever…” she paused just then and the silence brought my gaze to her face and the hard set of her mouth as she frowned. “What the hell has you looking all dreamy-eyed and simple?”
“Nothing…it’s…” It was everything—the dream and the emotions that Isaac stirred in me but it was the memory of a man I’d never known. It was Nash, too, and the stupid way he ran—from me, from life, from everything he saw as a complication. “I can’t stop thinking about him, Effie and it’s pissing me off.”
“Girl, please. He’s just a man.”
I blinked at her, unable to make her see reason with that stupid gobsmacked expression I no doubt had plastered on my face. “Honey, he’s not just a man. He’s…Nash is…God is he just…”
“Unavailable?”
“What? No! I’d never move in on someone else's guy.”
“I dunno, Will, sure seems to me like you’re chasing after something you can’t get. You sure that’s not it? That you only want him because he’s one of the few things that has been out of your reach and that scratch you can’t itch is what’s driving you crazy.”
I gave her the skank eye. “Are you crazy? Damn, Effie, you know me better than that.”
“So what, then? He’s hot? How hot can he be, really?” When I cocked an eyebrow my friend’s doubtful frown loosened into a grin. “What? Like Jesse Williams fine?”
“Better.”
“Shemar?”
“Better.”
She held up a hand. “No damn way.”
“It’s not just those eyes or that smile…”
“Liar.” She ducked when I tossed a pillow at her head, laughing at me and the stupid blush I knew she could make out on my cheeks. “So you’re into him? I get that. Bout damn time.”
“I’ve been trying to start a business, you know.”
Effie tilted her head, waving me off like I was a little pathetic. “Yes, tell me how hard that is, Ms. Moneybags.”
“Not fair.” I moved my braid around my shoulder, twisting the ends between my fingers as habit. “Besides, I’m not using my parents’ money. I got a loan.”
“Will…”
Effie’s gaze shot to me, followed me around the apartment when I slipped into the small kitchen to fill the kettle for tea. “Do me a favor and don’t start in with the ‘you’re being stubborn’ lecture, okay?”
“But you are.”
“Not the point.” I dug the tea tin from the cabinet, ignoring Effie when she stretched, mumbling something under her breath that sounded a lot like judgment. “You and my dad, the pair of you think I should just take advantage of that money, but the business wouldn’t be mine if I did. This way, it is mine. Completely, utterly mine. Plus, this way I know what every small business person feels like when they have to come up with a business plan and try to land capital. Pride and experience. It’s essential, Eff.”
She sat on the sofa, crossing her legs under herself as she watched me. “I wasn’t going to lecture you…except about not finding your mantra.”
The kettle sounded and I dropped two tea bags in each of our mugs, bringing Effie’s hers as she fiddled with the trim along the arm of the sofa, those red nails pushing against the purple fabric.
“Well,” I started, sitting across from her in the plush chair my mom had handed down to me. It was a chevron pattern she’d gotten bored of last summer and the gray color corresponded nicely with the purple and white of the lap blanket I’d draped across its back. “There was one thing that kept cropping up in my head. I think it was something I’d dreamed of and can’t forget, even though I also can't quite remember exactly where it came from.”
“The same dreams you were telling me about? With the redhead and the janitor?”
“No. It’s different, somewhere older, something I can’t remember nearly as well…”
“The dream doesn’t matter, sugar. Just the mantra. What is it?”
When I tried to recall the dream, the details got fuzzy. There were only minute flashes of memory that seemed clear—there’d been a night wind and a purple sky. There’d been a boy, the one whose eyes I was seeing through, and a girl I—he—loved, more than anything, and there had been a promise that stuck, something around which their world—and mine, by extension— pivoted. Over and over, it had planted itself inside my heart.
“With everything I am.” I said that over the rim of my mug. The warmth from the hot liquid heated my skin as Effie looked back at me, waiting for an explanation I wasn’t sure I could give her. “I don’t know what it means.” I took a sip, watched her do the same. “Will it work?”
Effie polished off her tea and smiled, motioning back toward the floor and the assortment of rugs and blankets and throw pillows a
ssembled that made for a comfortable place to focus and meditate. “It’s a start at least.”
We settled back down on the floor facing each other and at Effie’s urging I let the words collect in my mind, pushing them past my lips soft but focused.
“With everything I am,” I said under my breath, like a whisper meant only for my ears. Maybe it was remembered hope. Maybe it was a promise made decades before that meant something then. Whatever it was, I took it for my own, not really sure who it should be meant for—the man in my dreams or the man who liked to pretend I didn’t matter at all.
“With everything I am,” I thought, letting the silence move around me, letting my breath and energy and the collection of thoughts and moments lull me into another time, another space. I’d found my center and it brought me to the past.
Washington D.C.
Isaac’s face took my attention for most of the weekend. It was a sad state, really and one that hadn’t gone unnoticed.
I shifted my skirt, laying my forehead on my arm as I hid among the stacks, wondering how I could have been such an idiot to let it go so far. I was here only because the library felt safe to me. There was a warmth to this place that had nothing to do with the stacked stone fireplaces in the four sitting areas or the ceilings that pitched high, fifty feet or more, and several stories that seemed to stretch out into the clouds visible through the glass at the top of the ceiling. The place was old, nearly as old as the Lincoln University itself. And books? Thousands upon thousands that took up ten floors, every shelf stacked with hundreds of books, some right of the presses, some older than my folks.
It felt like a castle and me, tiny speck of a girl that I was, I felt safe here, away from the raised eyebrows of the city where women still weren’t so commonplace around our university or any others housed in D.C. Here where it didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, black or white, male or female.