Grey

by Aundrea Ascencio

Chantel couldn't help but notice how his eyes light up with memories of home. His voice even appeared to change. He was a lot more relaxed, and now and then his words slipped on a vowel or two, pronouncing them in a more German-like manner than an English one. It had never occurred to her that English wasn't his first language, and the slight off-ness about his words was actually quite adorable to her.

  "She did hit me once," he recalled. "I was in high school. Young and angsty. I deserved it."

  "What happened?"

  "I got in trouble at school for tagging and I felt like I didn't have to answer for it. She tried to ground me and I told her where to go. She locked my car keys in the safe so I couldn't leave. Said I'd lost my privileges. I was pissed off. I won't repeat what I said to her before she punched me, but after I said it, she almost knocked me through the wall."

  "What did you say?" Chantel asked, her eyes glinting with interest.

  "I'm not going to say it," he said, shaking his head. "That would defeat the purpose of the lesson. I shouldn't have said it at all. It was dumb and disrespectful, especially to her. I regretted it later."

  "That must have been awkward later."

  "No. We don't hold grudges. That's unhealthy. We just duke it out and move on," he said. "After she hit me, she made me dinner. Usually, she speaks to me in German, especially when my dad's around. She said to me 'You know why I hit you, right?' And I nodded, 'Ya, mutti', with this huge ice pack against my head. And that was the end of it. We moved on. I swear she's descended from Hitler. She hates it when I tell her that."

  Chantel giggled, forgetting her head was about to burst. "Don't make me laugh. It still hurts."

  "Sorry. I forgot."

  "Your mom's not like you then?' she asked. "Like, you know, she doesn't hold the same views as you do?"

  "No," he said quietly. "She views everyone the same way. She thinks the best of people from the beginning, and it's easy for her to care about someone and show kindness to a complete stranger. She's always trying to help people who have it worse than her. I admire that about her."

  "So how does that work?" Chantel asked, confused. "How did you end up the way you are when you weren't raised like that?"

  "It's complicated. A story for a different day," he said quietly. "Enough about me. Let's talk about you. What about your parents? What are their names?"

  "Wesley and Olivia," Chantel answered.

  "And neither of them are black?"

  "No. My dad's Italian and Irish American, and my mom's Italian, Irish, a little Welsh, and some German."

  "Goddamn, why don't you just say she's white?" Eric remarked.

  "Because nature doesn't define itself by black and white," Chantel replied. "We're all mutts."

  "Ya, but I'm sure people look at them, and then look at you and go what the hell happened? How does that work?" Eric asked.

  "Adoption," Chantel admitted. "I was adopted on my 4th birthday."

  "What, the orphanage ran out of white kids?" Eric joked, but remembering himself, he changed his tone. "I didn't mean it that way. I just think it's interesting. I mean, when people adopt, they usually prefer a kid who will blend into a family portrait. You know what I mean? Unless of course, your mom's name is Angelina Jole and she makes a hobby out of collecting exotics."

  "No, actually her name is Olivia, like I told you before, and it doesn't matter that our family portrait isn't mainstream White America. They picked me because we connected, because I do blend into the family pretty well. On all accounts, dark skinned or not, I'm a Pari, first and foremost."

  "And how do your biological folks feel about that? You've never had any struggles with identity? Never once felt out of place?" Eric asked. "I'm not asking it to be an ass. I bring it up with the utmost respect. This kind of thing is just really different to me, so I'm interested in knowing what it was like."

  "I don't know. Maybe, at times I felt out of place, but very rarely," Chantel answered quietly. "My parents were always good about sheltering me from those kinds of conflicts, if there were any."

  "So no connection at all with your real parents?"

  "It's a closed adoption. I don't know my real parents. Just that my biological mom was black, and young, and not ready for a baby. She gave me up when I was two."

  "Have you ever tried contacting her?"

  "No," Chantel answered. "I don't need to find her. She gave me up for a reason. I'm lucky to have my adopted parents. They're enough."

  "Good," Eric said, nodding. "It seems like you have a better relationship with them then most people have with their blood relatives."

  "She did try to contact me once, my mom. I was nine, but at that point in my life, my parents felt like it would just confuse me. They didn't think it was the best idea, when I was already so adjusted to my new life. So I never heard from her again."

  "So what happened to her?"

  "I don't know. It wasn't until a few years ago that they finally told me she had been a call-girl. She got addicted to heroin and she couldn't break the habit. She didn't want me taking the same path, so she let me go."

  "I'm sorry," Eric said. "We can stick to your adoptive parents, if you want. What do they do?"

  "My dad's a web developer and computer programmer. My mom teaches art at a high school in San Francisco."

  "Well, you're better off then," Eric said, grabbing an extra pillow and plopping it onto the floor. "I don't know about you but I'm beat."

  "I'm right there with ya, brother," she said. "I should really sleep. I have to get up early and turn in the final draft tomorrow for this month's issue."

  "After how many shots you took?"

  "I have to. It's important."

  "Well good luck. Don't expect me to be up early."

  "Where are you going to sleep?" Chantel asked.

  "Right here on the floor."

  "It's cold down there."

  "I'm from Colorado, remember? This is beach weather compared to where I lived."

  "You don't have to, you know. You can sleep on the end of the bed."

  "Like a dog?"

  Chantel scooted over and patted the space next to her. "Fine. You can be a pillow then. Don't be shy."

  "Are you sure?" he asked uncertainly.

  "It's your bed and I feel bad. I can deal with it for one night," she said. "I really don't mind."

  "Fine. Scoot over."

  Chantel moved over as he lifted the blankets and got in next to her. She tried snuggling up against him, but frowned in discontent. "You're not very pillow-like," she complained. "Loosen up."

  "Sorry," he said, shifting his body to make her more comfortable. She flipped and flopped onto her side, then onto her back, wiggling her hips and shoulders to find the right spot, but it was still too rigid. "No," she sighed. "Still not right."

  "Here, why don't I just..." Eric trailed off when she turned to face him and snuggled against his chest. To top it all off, she swung his arm around her waist and rested her forehead against his. "There," she said. "Better? And no talking. Pillows don't talk."

  "Ok."

  "Shh!"

  Was this really happening? Eric forgot to breathe, worrying that even that might disturb her. It didn't work out too well for him, and eventually Chantel's eyes rose to meet his.

  "What now?" he asked. "Am I still doing it wrong?"

  "I'm sorry. You're just not a very good pillow," she said. "Your heart's beating too loud."

  "Sorry," he apologized. "Should I move?"

  Chantel readjusted herself until her nose was level with his. "I'll be ok here," she said. For moments, she laid still like that studying the green in his eyes.

  "Everybody was right," she whispered finally.

  "Sorry?"

  "You do have really nice eyes."

  "Thanks," Eric whispered back. "But you're drunk and you're not going to remember any of this in the morning."

  Chantel laughed. "Well I guess since I'm drunk I can do things like this."

  And then she kis
sed him.

  Abruptly? Firmly? Avidly? He didn't know what to call it. A kiss or clumsiness? He couldn't tell. Whatever it was, he could do nothing but kiss her back. It lasted five long seconds and then she passed out for good.

  To call it romantic would be an overstatement. To call it complicated would be closer to the truth. The moment defined and defied everything simultaneously. None of it was supposed to happen. Chantel was not the girl he was meant to open up to. What kind of man was he for it? Had he betrayed everything he stood for because he protected her? Was he flirting with social decay because he felt something for her? Could he wake up beside her every morning like that and still fight for the preservation of his own race?

  To him, everything about it was backwards, sideways, and upside down. His priority wasn't specifically to hate anyone, but to uphold justice for the White race, a great heritage trampled on by reverse discrimination. It was organizations and ideas he hated. Things like the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, affirmative action, and minority designated clubs on campus. It was the hypocritical concepts of equality held by the non-white classes that made him see things the way he did. In order for equality to work, it had to be open both ways, and until that happened, he had no problem supporting white supremacy.

  He struggled with the ideas all night and searched for a new way to define his principles. He could not abandon them. His past experiences with certain people would never allow him to see them differently. Blacks would always be the problem, in his eyes, and he could feel no amount of empathy for them.

  Still, he couldn't bring himself to hate Chantel. He no longer had a legitimate reason to. She was different. She was the exception to his unbroken rules about interracial mingling. In fact, if there were more out there like her, he probably wouldn’t have minded black people so much. Chantel Pari was a lucky find, and there could be no one else. There could be no other person like her on Earth, white or black, who made him feel the way he did.

  The Morning After…

  Somehow, despite his conflicted thoughts, he must have fallen asleep, because he woke again to the sound of his phone buzzing on the desk. He winced as the sunlight from the window above blinded his eyes. Chantel squirmed and turned away from him, groaning at the loud vibrations coming from the desk. Eric cursed and sleepily reached for the phone to silence it. He turned over and closed his eyes, falling back asleep.

  Minutes later, the phone rang again.

  Chantel threw the blankets over her head. "Turn it off!" she ordered.

  Eric blinked upon hearing her voice. He stared at her curiously, trying to remember how she ended up in his dorm in the first place, let alone, in his bed.

  Slowly, he sat up and silenced the phone again. He stretched and yawned, looking back down at Chantel, and decided it was time to take his bed back. "Chantel," he said. "Hey." He tapped her shoulder.

  "Leave me alone," she groaned.

  "Chantel, you got to get to class. It's almost twelve."

  Her eyes shot open and darted around to take in her surroundings.

  "You awake yet?" he asked.

  She turned to the voice who had asked her that question, and when she saw whose face it was, she jumped out of the blankets. "Oh my god!" she cried. "Eric! What are you doing here?"

  "This is my dorm. You just passed out in here."

  "Not in your dorm!" she cried frantically.

  "You don't remember? You were drunk. You couldn't take care of yourself," he said. "What was I supposed to do? Leave you outside?"

  She punched him in the shoulder. It actually hurt. She punched him again, over and over, until he fell onto the floor trying to escape, blankets still wrapped around his ankle. "What's wrong with you?" he demanded.

  "What did you do to me?" she shrieked. "Did you drug me?"

  "I didn't do anything!"

  "Oh God, please tell me we didn't-"

  "No, we didn't."

  "Oh my god, you're lying!"

  "Why would I lie about that? Why would I...I didn't do anything to you!"

  "But we slept in the same bed?" she demanded.

  "You wanted me to sleep here instead of on the floor."

  "Why would I ever ask for that?" she cried. "That's disgusting!"

  "Whatever. Give me back my pillow. You can go now."

  "Right, now that you've got what you wanted, you can just throw me away, you sick animal!" she roared, chucking the pillow at his head.

  "I didn't touch you!"

  "I was passed out in your bed, completely incoherent, completely oblivious, and you didn't do anything?"

  "Sorry to break your heart, but that would be correct. I didn't do anything, and there were a shit load of other guys who wanted to. I had to drag your ass all the way back to campus just so you wouldn't wake up in an alley somewhere. That's the last good deed I ever do for you."

  He shoved his closet door open and searched for a clean shirt.

  "Why would you do that?" she asked, more quietly and confused.

  He stopped and studied her, trying to figure out if she was seriously puzzled or just playing with him. "You know, to be as smart as you are, you're really stupid sometimes," he said finally, and slammed the closet door shut again after finding a gray T-shirt. "Forget it ever happened. It's done. We're done. Just like you said. We both disappear. No communication. No favors. No bullshit."

  "How am I going to walk out of here now without people calling me a whore?" she asked.

  "Well that's easy because I didn't fuck you."

  "It doesn't matter if we did or not. Everyone's going to assume we did."

  "Tough shit. It's not my problem," he shrugged. "There's consequences in life and you got to deal with them. You should have thought about that before you got shit-faced."

  "Are you seriously going to change in front of me?" she cried, shielding her eyes with the pillow.

  He shrugged again. "I'm sure I got nothing you haven't seen before. If you don't like it, then don't look. I'm not going to act like Jesus in my own room." He grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled it over his head. Chantel peeked over the pillow again, tracing the brawny tone of his upper body, and zeroed in on a small black symbol tattooed on his left shoulder. She made out a circle and a lightning bolt with strands branching out from the center of the circle to the edges. He slipped on his shirt before she could really get a better look.

  "What's that?" she asked.

  "What?"

  "Your tattoo."

  "What about it?""

  "So you do worship the devil?" she asked.

  "I don't believe in God or the devil," he answered.

  "Then why do you have that tattoo?"

  "It's not Satanic and I got it because it looked cool," he replied. "Is that ok with you, Madam President, or am I not allowed to have such things?"

  She shook her head. "I wish you would stop calling me that."

  He leaned against his closet with a sigh, and the two of them froze in their own private thoughts, letting the silence take hostage of the room.

  Finally, he asked, "What are you going to do? You can't stay in my dorm forever. You got to face the world eventually."

  "I don't know," she said. "I mean, nothing happened, right?"

  "You seriously don't remember anything about last night?" he asked. "Nothing at all?"

  "A little," she said. "I remember going to a party."

  And the kiss? Of course she didn't remember the kiss.

  "Well," he said carefully, taking much consideration into how he phrased it. "You could always just avoid these so-called rumors and go out with me."

  "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

  "You could go out with me."

  Chantel chuckled. "Ya, I thought that's what you said. No, seriously, Eric-"

  "I am being serious," he replied. "Go out with me."

  Chantel laughed. "To be as smart as you are, you come up with some really stupid ideas."

  "Actually it's a very smart idea."

  "How?
" Chantel cried. "How could any good come out of that? Even if you did stick it out for me last night, nothing's changed between us."

  "You have the right to feel that way," he said. "You can say whatever you want about me, but at the end of the day, you want me with you. That's why you kissed me."

  "What are you talking about? I didn't kiss you!"

  "If only it were that easy, huh?"

  "I was drunk!" she declared. "I wasn't thinking straight."

  "I still have the same eye color when you're drunk and when you're sober," he pointed out. "Are you saying that was drunk talk too?"

  "Yes it was," she said certainly.

  "Bullshit. You've wanted me since the day I walked into that Physics class. You know you were checking me out behind your little compact mirror."

  "Don't flatter yourself, Eric. You have no ass to check out," she said.

  "Well, you still kissed me," he said. "You can't erase it, and I won't let you take it back. You'll have to own up to it eventually."

  "I did not kiss you!"

  "Whatever. Either way, no one's going to believe you didn't have sex with me, so there goes your overrated perfect little reputation. It's up to you as to how you want the rumors to go. Would you rather have been a slut who gave it up to a complete stranger at a party, or would you rather be a girl in a committed relationship who had sex with her boyfriend after a party?"

  "I'm not going out with you. You're going to tell them the truth," she ordered.

  "I slept with Chantel Pari."

  "No! That's not what happened and you know it."

  "But that's the truth."

  "But you can't say it like that. We slept in the same bed, but we did not sleep together. There's a difference."

  "Sounds all the same to me," he said.

  “You wouldn’t dare spread that rumor.”

  "It's not like I'm asking you to marry me," he said. "When graduation comes along, I'll be on my way back to Colorado. No strings attached. It doesn't have to even be a month. We'll break it off after a couple of weeks, until the heat's off your back, then we go on with our lives. I'm just trying to help you out. I feel partly responsible for getting you into this, but I have a solution, and it doesn't have to be all bad."

  "I feel partly responsible for getting you into this. How many times are you going to tell me that before this is over?" Chantel demanded, glaring at him, but she did think it over for a moment. "Say for instance I did agree to your evil plot, and I'm not saying I am, this is strictly hypothetical, but say I was to go out with you. Then what?"