In His Arms

by Yasmin Sullivan

  “So you’re working your way through school and raising a son. That’s a lot.”

  “I have good support. My cousin Nigel lives here, and his wife is a godsend.”

  “Where are you all from originally?”

  “Charleston, South Carolina.”

  “Aha. I thought I caught a slight Southern drawl here and there.”

  Michelle swatted at Rashad playfully, but he caught her hand before it hit and held it for a moment—a long moment.

  When he released her hand, Michelle had to shake her head to clear the questions in her mind and release the flutter from her stomach.

  “We Charlestonians are proud of our Southern heritage. I do still have the accent, but I can turn it on and off now that I’ve been in D.C. for so long. You should hear me when I go home.” Michelle then checked her watch. “Actually, we need to finish our drinks. They’ll be closing soon.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” Rashad said, glancing around. “I think they’ve closed the doors already. They’re just waiting for us stragglers. Hey, if you can stay a little late next week, we should walk along King Street. They stay open later, and they have bunches of shops and galleries—art, jewelry—”

  “I know. My cousin’s wife—her name is Regina—she co-owns a mosaic and beadwork studio and gallery not far up King Street.” Michelle stood as Rashad paid their tab. “That’s how I first found out about the Torpedo Factory. What about you? Are you from D.C. originally?”

  “No, but my family is from Baltimore, and we’d come down every so often.” Rashad also rose, and they headed back to the promenade. “Then I came to D.C. to go to Howard, and then I stayed here to work. I’ve been here awhile. I don’t know where everything is, but I know most stuff.”

  “Between work and home, I don’t get out a lot.”

  “Now I know why you haven’t seen much of the D.C. area. I’d like to show some of it to you if you’ll let me.” His tone was soft, but then he straightened, and in a matter-of-fact voice, he added, “If that’s all right.”

  “Maybe after the semester is over. I can do more over the winter break and over the summer.”

  They were retracing their steps along the waterfront, taking their time back to their cars.

  “Tell me about being a graphic designer. What attracted you to that?”

  “I love art, and I love working on the computer.”

  “Ugh. That’s where we differ. I like paper and pencil or paint. I don’t know what I’ll do when we can’t read books, actual books, anymore.”

  “I like that, too, but I like the computer, as well. And mind you, the day is not far off when everything you read will be on a computer tablet of some kind.”

  “No, no. I don’t want to hear it.” Michelle covered her ears with her hands. “La, la, la—” She interrupted herself laughing, and Rashad started laughing, as well.

  “Okay. I’m past my rage against the future. You may go on.”

  “I’m not sure I should. I work for a web design firm, so everything we do is for the computer. But there are graphic designers in a variety of fields. I took to web design because I had to learn how to do one for a project, and I got hooked. It’s great bringing an organization to life on the screen. I guess I like what I do.”

  “You’re very lucky.”

  “And you?” Rashad asked. “Why advertising?”

  “I love the artistic side of it,” Michelle said. “I don’t know much about the business side of it as yet. I don’t like the idea of fooling people or luring people with false promises. I want to produce art, and advertising is what I want to do because it’s art that everybody sees. It’s art without the hundred-dollar ticket price for the orchestra seat.”

  “So you’re a Marxist revolutionary about art—art for the masses!”

  “In a way. And don’t knock Marxism. From what I’ve read, Marx was quite brilliant. That’s my way of saying he’s dense as hell.”

  Both laughed.

  “He was damn near incomprehensible sometimes,” Rashad agreed. “I’ve dabbled, as well.”

  “Kudos to us for trying,” Michelle said. “High five.”

  Michelle raised her hand, and Rashad met it.

  “Are you sure you’re not a sports fan?”

  “Absolutely sure.”

  They were at Michelle’s car now and had paused. Rashad seemed as reluctant as she was about the end of the evening. It had felt like being on vacation to Michelle. Adult conversation with a handsome man, an hour in which she didn’t have to be anywhere, talking with someone who seemed to be genuinely interested in what she was saying, what she was thinking. It was like paradise.

  Michelle unlocked her door, and Rashad leaned toward her and reached around her to open the door. But they still stood there.

  Rashad leaned toward her in the dim light of the garage, and, for a moment, Michelle thought that he was going to kiss her. She held her breath and felt her heart begin to pound in her chest.

  But just as quickly as it happened, the moment was over. Rashad straightened, and Michelle wondered if she had misread his body movements. She felt her face flush with embarrassment, wondering if he could tell that she’d thought he was about to—

  “Follow behind me. I won’t run any yellow lights or anything like that. But honk if you start to fall behind.”

  Rashad had turned and had taken several steps toward his car, but he turned back.

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Married?”

  “Your husband is a lucky man. And you were married right out of high school, so that’s about...six years?”

  “I’m not married anymore.”

  “Huh? I thought...”

  Michelle saw the confusion in Rashad’s crinkled brow.

  “I was divorced a little while before I moved to D.C. That was one of the reasons I moved—to leave that past behind, so to speak.”

  “But before I asked how long you guys had been here.”

  “I thought you meant me and my son. We’ve been here two years. I didn’t know that you thought—”

  “Wow. I guess I just assumed that you were married—still married.”

  “I guess I wasn’t clear.”

  There was a pause in which each seemed to be recalculating—tracing their conversations to detect the flaw that had led to the misunderstanding and reassessing what had just happened in light of the clarification.

  Still, Michelle wasn’t sure what to think, and it was she who broke the silence.

  “I had better get going. I have to get my son from the sitter.”

  Her words seemed to awaken Rashad from a reverie, and he refocused his eyes on her. He stared at her a moment before he spoke. “Okay. Yes. Just follow behind me.”

  He took a couple of steps toward his car and then turned back again.

  “Next Wednesday let’s have dinner in Old Town Alexandria after class and window-shop along King Street—if you can get home late again.”

  “Okay,” Michelle answered. “I’ll check and email you if the sitter doesn’t mind.”

  “Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  Michelle followed Rashad as far as Beltway Plaza on Greenbelt Road, wondering all the while what had just happened.

  When he turned off Beltway Road to the street leading to her apartment complex, Rashad stopped and waved her past him.

  There was no traffic, so she pulled up alongside him.

  “Can you get home from here?” he teased.

  “Don’t you play with me when I can’t reach you to strangle you. The real question,” she said, “is whether or not I can find my way from class again.”

  “Can you?”

  “No.”

  They cracked u
p.

  Michelle waved, passed him and continued on as he made a U-turn and headed back to Beltway Road.

  She picked up a sleeping little Andre from two doors down and carried him home to put him in his own bed. Once that was done, she started to change. She had to get to bed right away because she had to be at the coffeehouse early the next morning. She would get Andre ready and drop him off with Mrs. Miller, who would walk him to school.

  She cherished Mrs. Miller. It mattered more than anything having people around whom she could trust, especially with her child. She paid Mrs. Miller, of course, but what Mrs. Miller did for her couldn’t be counted in money. She took Mrs. Miller grocery shopping and had her over for Sunday supper sometimes and did whatever else she could, but it didn’t seem like enough. Mrs. Miller and her cousin Nigel and his wife, Regina, and her boss at the coffeehouse allowed her to do the things she hoped would get her life back on track after that fiasco of a marriage.

  She had even spent a night out after her art class with almost no notice. And that was what was really on Michelle’s mind, keeping her awake.

  She kept replaying the moment when it had seemed that Rashad wanted to kiss her, and she kept wondering about his reaction when she’d told him that she wasn’t married. It was clearly news to him, but he hadn’t come back to kiss her. Perhaps he didn’t want her if she was actually within reach. Or maybe he hadn’t been about to kiss her and was just being polite to let her get over her embarrassment. But then he had asked her out the next week, or was that only to continue their friendship from class?

  Deep down, she wanted him to be interested, and that’s what scared her.

  It was funny to think that after being divorced for two and a half years, the prospect of a date would perplex her, but it did. Was next week a date?

  Michelle fell asleep wondering what the following Wednesday would bring but determined to let it be whatever it turned out to be. In her mind, life was looking up. She could at least imagine having a date, and she was finally getting her life in order after the merry-go-round marriage she’d had.

  Don’t forget to check with Mrs. Miller and email Rashad. That was her last coherent thought before she nodded off, and her dreams were tinged with possibility.

  Chapter 4

  Rashad sank into the leather sectional that lined the back of his brother Marcus’s law office. Rashad was the youngest of four brothers, and all were now gathered in Marcus’s office because they had planned—before Rashad knew about his class dates—to go to a Washington Redskins game. He had called to bow out, but he came to see his brothers off. Now all of the brothers—Derrick, Marcus, Keith, and Rashad himself—had arrived.

  “I’m just explaining,” Rashad said. “Why I can’t go tonight. I have a class, and I’m having dinner with a classmate afterwards.”

  “Is this dinner with a man or a woman?” Derrick, the oldest brother, asked.

  Rashad rolled his eyes.

  “It’s a woman,” Keith said. He was sitting next to Rashad and nudged Rashad’s shoulder.

  “What does that prove—whether it’s a man or woman?” Marcus said.

  “Just because you’re gay doesn’t make the rest of us gay,” Keith said. “We love you, bro. But this is a different story.”

  “If it was just dinner,” Rashad explained, “I would reschedule, but I can’t change the date and time of my class.”

  “Forget the class,” Keith said. “We want to know about the date.”

  “Are you still playing,” Derrick asked, “or are you getting serious?”

  Rashad was the only one of his brothers not married, including Marcus, the gay one, and it was never long before they started their ribbing and tried to get him to find the right one and “settle down.” Rashad let his head fall back and then shook it, looking at the ceiling. It was starting.

  “Rashad hasn’t been serious about anyone his whole life,” Derrick said.

  “Hey, I’ve always been up front about not wanting to get serious.”

  “That’s to your credit,” Marcus said. “But what about getting serious for a change?”

  “I’ll know when it’s time to get serious,” Rashad answered. “I’ll know when I find the right one.”

  “I don’t know,” Keith said, already trying to control his laughter. “I’ve seen you out with a couple of, how shall I say, not-so-comely women.”

  This exaggeration was designed to get Rashad’s gall up. They all knew that he dated lookers.

  “Okay. Let me alone.” He panned his index fingers, pointing at all his brothers. “I can whip all of your behinds individually. Remember that.”

  Rashad was the youngest but also by far the tallest of the four at six feet and two inches. And his brothers’ ribbing did get his gall up. He had dated only casually partly because he had in mind a model prototype of the woman he would marry, and he had not met her yet, so he had never really been serious. Actually, he resented the pressure his brothers put on him to conform, but he found that it subsided more quickly if he ignored them and didn’t let on that they were getting on his last nerve.

  “It’s not that it isn’t fun to play,” Derrick said. “But there comes a time to settle down.”

  Those were the words he hated. Rashad raised his palms in desperation, then let them slam down on his thighs.

  “Here we go again.”

  “Just trying to school you the right way, baby brother,” Marcus said, backing up Derrick.

  “What we mean—”

  Rashad cut off Keith. He was the last one married and the least serious of the bunch about everything except his marriage.

  “No, we’re not going there today. And you, brother of mine, are the last one who should be talking about being serious.”

  His other brothers cracked up, which was not quite what Rashad had intended.

  “We’re not on me today,” Keith said, almost pouting. He added, “Thank heavens.”

  Rashad stood as Trevor, Marcus’s partner, opened the door and came inside.

  “I have to get on it,” Rashad said. “I have to make it to Old Town Alexandria from here in rush hour traffic. Hey, Trevor.” He greeted the other man with a brief hug. “You taking my place tonight?”

  “Apparently so.”

  Marcus got up from behind his desk and came over to them, first hugging his partner hello then clapping Rashad on the back and pulling him in for a similar hug goodbye. Derrick got up from his chair and Keith from the sectional, and both also came over to hug Rashad.

  “I’m sorry I can’t make it tonight, you guys. We don’t get together enough.”

  “Hey,” Derrick said, “Thanksgiving is next month, and I think the next game is before that.”

  Rashad and Keith did their thing, a brief hug and then a smacking of closed fists.

  “I’ll see you all then,” Rashad said. “If not before.”

  He left his brother’s firm and made it to his meter before it expired.

  His brothers had riled him, but they also had him thinking. Tonight was actually something of a date (though he would never say that to his brothers), and he didn’t know if he needed to say something to Michelle about not getting too serious. It was generally the first thing out of his mouth—just so they couldn’t point fingers later—but it hadn’t even occurred to him to say anything to Michelle. But then he’d thought she was married. Now that he knew she wasn’t, he still didn’t want to say anything. He didn’t want to chance chasing her away.

  Something about her just set him at ease with himself. Yet she wasn’t what he thought his ideal would be. He imagined a sleek, sexy, manicured professional type—a corporate lawyer in a tight-fitting skirt done up to the nines, assertive and in control but his (and only his) playmate. He’d had that fantasy since he was a teenager, hence the model t
ypes that he’d dated. But none of them had shared his interests or even his thoughts.

  Michelle, on the other hand, sparked something inside him. He thought about her, waited for her email saying that she could stay late after class—which had finally come two days ago. It was the way her energy filled his car on the ride home, or the way he fantasized about her curves. She was beautiful, but not in a sleek, manufactured way. There was some fire to her, but there was also a sweetness about her, an unassuming quality.

  He reached the Torpedo Factory Art Center without coming to any resolution and smiled when he saw her beat-up Ford Fiesta in the lot as he pulled in. Yes, there was something about this woman.

  He didn’t know quite what it was or what to do about it, and he didn’t have time to figure it out right then, so he would let come what might.

  He found her already there when he entered the classroom, and took his usual seat next to her.

  “Did you still need a map to get here?”

  “Don’t start with me,” she said, but then she chuckled and nodded her head. “Did you finish your homework?”

  “Of course. And here I am with it, even though I’m missing a Redskins game with my brothers.”

  “Redskins?”

  Rashad couldn’t suppress his laughter, and other students in the class turned to look. He wanted to let them in on it, but he couldn’t stop the laughter, so he just waved them away. When he could catch his breath, he turned back to Michelle.

  “You don’t know who the Redskins are?”

  “I told you I don’t follow sports. But has anybody thought about this name?”

  Rashad chuckled more, but he could control the volume this time.

  “I’m glad I amuse you,” Michelle said. Then she put her hand on her hip and moved her head back and forth, getting real. “But this laughter at my expense has got to end.”

  “I’m sorry. I am. And, yes, I’m sure that the name has been a subject of debate.”

  Rashad was laughing again before he finished. After a firm look in his direction, Michelle joined in.

  “Are we still on for tonight, or do you need to leave early to catch what you can of the game on television or something?”