by Kennedy Ryan
“Yeah. I mean, I think so.” His heavy sigh raises my level of concern. “I don’t know. She’s in Philly, I’m here. My ex was in a hurry and didn’t give a lot of details. She would have told me if it was life-threatening but . . . I just feel like I should be there.”
“Of course. How can I help?”
“Debate Clem Ford.”
What you talking ’bout, Willis?
“You want me to debate Clem Ford?” I glance up at Bristol, who now stands right beside me, her brows knit into a frown. “I’m not . . . you. I’m not qualified for that.”
“The hell you’re not.” He sounds a helluva lot more confident than I feel. “You got this, Grip.”
His urgency and my doubt wrestle in the silence between us.
“Please,” he says, and with his pride, I know what that costs him.
I run a weary hand over my face.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever you need, of course. Is there anything I should know?”
For the next few minutes I jot down contacts and details the organizers sent him. By the time I hang up and let him go to his daughter, the initial panic has passed. I’m feeling slightly better.
“It’s on you?” Amir asks, the game abandoned on the couch beside him.
“Looks like.” I glance at my watch, a quick smile quirking my lips that the piece of shit is still telling time after all these years. “It’s not far, but let’s take a car. We need to roll soon.”
I stand, bringing my body just inches from Bristol’s.
“You look beautiful.” I forego her lips, careful not to smear the vivid line of her lipstick, and opting to kiss Neruda’s scripted words running along her shoulder instead. I lift the gold bar necklace hanging between her breasts bearing the same inscription.
“Is Dr. Hammond’s daughter okay?” Worry pinches her expression.
“I think so.” I caution myself to keep it casual. Any talk of danger to a kid hits too close to home, brings up too many things we’re trying to get past. “He didn’t have all the information and was on his way to Philly.”
The longer we stand here together, the less I think about anything but us. I hope Iz’s daughter is okay, and I’m nervous about debating Ford, but Bristol’s scent, her proximity make everything else fade. We haven’t even talked about what the doctor said at her six-week. It was such a whirlwind getting out of LA and arriving here, and now we’ve both been pulled into commitments. At this rate, it’ll be tomorrow before my sore wrist goes into retirement. I rest my hands at her hips, rubbing my palms along the silkiness of her dress, imagining her skin, even silkier beneath. I turn a pointed glare on Amir, not so subtly signaling him to get ghost and give me a few minutes with my girl before we have to go our separate ways for the night.
“Uh, I’ll meet you downstairs in . . .” His expression inquires as he heads for the door.
“Twenty minutes. I need to get there a lot earlier now.”
“K. I’ll call for the car.”
“Bye Amir,” Bristol says. “We’ll see you in a little bit.”
“We?” I eat up the inches separating us, leaning down to run my nose along the satiny curve of her neck. “Damn, you smell good, Bris.”
“Thanks.” She pulls back and grabs her phone from the couch. “If you think for one second I’m leaving you in the same room with Clem Ford without me, you have another thing coming.”
As much as I want her with me, I don’t want her babysitting or feeling like I can’t handle my shit with this idiot.
Okay . . . I did lose my shit a little that last time, but that’s beside the point.
“That’s not necessary,” I tell her.
“Okay, it’s not necessary.” She doesn’t look up while her fingers fly over the keys of her phone. “But I’m still coming.”
“Speaking of coming . . .” I pluck the phone from her fingers and hide it behind my back. “We didn’t get to talk about what the doctor said yesterday.”
I can’t read her face, but she stops reaching for the phone.
“Oh, she said I’m fine.” She licks her lips, her brows jerking together and her eyes shifting away. “I mean, we can . . . ya know.”
My arm drops to my side and I hand her the phone without a word.
We can ya know wasn’t exactly the response I was hoping for. I mean, it’s great that we can . . . ya know . . . but she doesn’t sound too enthusiastic about it, certainly not desperate for it like I am. I swallow my disappointment and smooth over another layer of patience.
“Great.” I clear my throat and glance down at my dark jeans, button-up, and Jordans. “I look okay? I wasn’t planning to be onstage but I—”
“Grip, I’m sorry,” she interrupts. “You’ve been really patient, and I know it’s been hard.”
It’s hard right now with the double addiction of her scent and her nearness seeping into my veins and smoldering in my blood and headed for my cock like a cum-seeking missile, but I play it off.
“Babe, it’s okay.” I cradle her face between my hands and caress her cheeks. “However long you need. I’m not some horny beast.”
She gives me a look that says, I know you.
“Okay, I’m a horny beast.” I laugh to keep from crying because I’m as hard as Skid Row right about now. “But we have the rest of our lives.”
If I say it enough, maybe this hard-on will believe me.
“Tonight, when I get home . . .” she starts.
“Tonight? Yeah, we can do tonight.” Eager bastard. “Or tomorrow. Tonight works if you want.”
“I was going to say it’ll be late when I get home tonight.” Bristol’s smile loosens because she’s not so secretly laughing at me. “I have to meet Jimmi when I leave the debate, and there’s no telling what time I’ll get home.”
I’ve fucked on less than two minutes of sleep before, but I don’t point that out. If there’s a curfew on our new sex life, we can ease into this.
“I’m . . . I don’t know . . .” She shrugs. “Nervous? I know that sounds crazy. Are you nervous?”
“About sex?” I cannot wrap my mind around this concept. “Uh, no. Not even a little bit.”
“Grip, oh my God.” She laughs, and it does sound nervous, unsure, which she’s never been. What we’ve been through changed me, and it changed her, maybe in ways I wasn’t prepared for, but our vows didn’t come with conditions, and neither does my love.
Ask me when your belly is full like the moon,
and our love has stretched your body with my child,
Leaving your skin, once flawless,
now silvered, traced, scarred,
I will worship you.
My eyes will never stray.
My heart will never wander,
gladly leashed to you all my days.
I am fixed on you.
It’s all still true and always will be. I couldn’t have known to write about losing that child, about losing bits and pieces of ourselves. You don’t see things like that coming, and you have no idea how it will affect you. You can only choose the right person, the person you want to go through shit with. Bristol is that person for me. I’ve always known she could endure anything life threw at her, that she would fight right alongside me. There’s always been a strength in her, but now it’s titanium core.
“I’m not nervous because nothing has changed,” I tell her, bending to align our eyes, our lips, our hearts.
“Things have changed.” She lowers her lashes, trying to hide from me. “My body and—”
“I love your body because it has you in it.” I drag my lips over the curve of her jaw, groaning at the taste of her along the way. “Sweet Jesus, Bristol. How could you think anything has changed for me?”
“Not just physically.” She glances up at me. “I don’t feel the same.”
At those words, my heart stumbles in my chest. A tundra inches over my whole body.
“About . . . me?” I can’t regulate my breathing. “You don’t feel the same about
me?”
“Oh, God, no. Not that, Grip.” She reaches up to touch the side of my face, her eyes earnest. “I feel the same about you. You know I’m . . . it’s just . . . I’m all over the place. I’ve always been uninhibited with you, and now I feel caged, like I’ve had to keep my emotions on such a short leash lately, and there’s something in me that’s not free.”
She spreads her hands and shakes her head, helplessness in the look she aims up at me.
“I’m not doing a good job of articulating this, but I’m—”
My phone cuts her off, and I want to hurl it and Amir across the room.
“Dude, what the hell do you want?” I snap.
“Put your dick up and get down here,” Amir replies calmly, used to me. “Unless you want to be late and leave Iz hanging.”
Shit. Have I mentioned that I hate Amir?
“Oh, and I got you a brace,” he says.
“A brace? For what?”
“That carpal tunnel.” His deep chuckle taunts me and my stiff dick and my sore wrist.
“Fuck you.” I hang up and turn to Bristol. “Car’s ready. You sure you want to go?”
“There’s no way you’re going—”
“A simple yes would suffice.” I grab her hand, pausing to let her scoop up her clutch from the side table.
The town hall is being held at that same bookstore, and it’s being televised again. The magnitude of this hits me as I’m riding in the back of the SUV, cramming like this is some quiz.
“I’m not Iz,” I mumble, caressing Bristol’s hand absently while Googling stats on my phone. “Ford’s gonna eat me alive.”
“Ford will wish he was facing Iz tonight instead of you.” Bristol stretches her eyes at the skeptical look I offer in response to that bit of ridiculousness. “I’m serious. Iz may have the degree and the books and the credibility and the—”
“Let me know when you get to the reassuring part, babe.”
“And all those things.” She pauses, leaning her head onto my shoulder. “But you have passion. You’re brilliant. You know these issues. You’ve lived these issues. Just tell them what you know, what you’ve experienced.”
Her confidence soothes my tattered nerves, and her reassurances give me peace in a way no one else can. She’s always done that. Her eyes glow with pride and love and confidence in me. This feels like us. It’s been months since we felt like us, since there’s been any ease around us, between us. Maybe it’s being in a different city. Maybe it’s knowing we’re rounding a bend with Dr. Wagner loosening the chastity belt. Whatever it is, it feels good. For the first time since Zoe died, it feels right.
Even before we lost Zoe, the shadow of loss hung over us for months. I know we’ll never be the same. We’ll bear the scars of the ordeal we’ve suffered, but we’ll still be us. It’s not about what we endure, but that we endure, the fact that I ain’t going nowhere, and neither is she, no matter what’s tossed our way.
“We’re here,” she says, studying the line of people crowding the sidewalk. “You ready?”
“Hell no.” I bring her knuckles to my lips. “But are you with me?”
“Hell yeah,” she whispers, dotting kisses along my chin.
“Then I’m good.”
I capture her lips, wanting just a taste to hold me over, but dammit she’s so sweet and I can’t stop. Hunger breaks the surface of my control and makes me sloppy. Deep licks, sharp bites. I’m sucking her chin, nuzzling her neck. Without my permission, my hand wanders to cup her breast, to pinch her nipple, her sharply drawn breath making me even harder. I need it in my mouth. I’m sliding to my knees in front of her when everything crashes and burns.
“Ahem.” Amir, not looking even a little shamefaced, grabs our attention. “Like your mama always says, if you didn’t bring enough for everybody, put it away.”
“You vibe-killing, cock-blocking motherfucker,” I say as good-naturedly as can be expected with a saber poking through my jeans. Bristol’s throaty, unabashed chuckle doesn’t help matters. Inhibited, my ass. I don’t care what time she gets home, I’ll be up and ready to show her how uninhibited she still is.
“Let’s go kick some racist ass,” I say, struggling to refocus.
“Kicking racist ass” may be overstating my performance, but I hold my own against Clem Ford. I’m not Iz. I don’t have the epidemiological substantiation for my responses. I know fewer statistics than Iz does, and God knows I’m not as polished, but every bullshit reason Ford trots out for his corrupt system and avaricious worldview, I have an answer for.
“Are you saying crime shouldn’t be punished?” Ford asks after we’ve been at it for an hour. “That black men deserve special treatment?”
“Special treat . . .” Disbelief traps the words in my mouth. “You think we get special treatment?”
“It sounds to me like that’s what you’re asking for, that crime be overlooked.”
“No, I’m asking that justice be blind and that punishment fits the crime the same for everyone,” I say, outrage stiffening my voice. “That a black man with a busted tail light not spend weeks in jail because he doesn’t have bail money when someone snorting coke is given a slap on the wrist and set free. Prosecute a man for being guilty, not for being black, brown or poor.”
“Oh, not this argument again.” He rolls his eyes.
“Which argument are you anticipating exactly?” I demand, heat licking up my neck in the face of his derision. “The systematic criminalization of black and brown men in America? Or maybe you think I’ll point out that when crack ravaged communities of color in the nineties it was a crime, but now when we have widespread opioid abuse in suburbs and rural areas it’s a health crisis? I’m not saying it’s not a health crisis, but where was that perspective, that compassion when drugs eviscerated a generation of black people and their communities?”
“I’m only saying—”
“Oh, no,” I cut in over him. “You probably thought I’d regurgitate facts about men of color serving three, four times the sentences for possession of marijuana as other groups for possession of cocaine and heroin. Are those the arguments you were expecting?”
For a silent second, hatred rears from behind the polite mask covering Ford’s face. His fury is fire, but my composure isn’t even signed. And before he can hide it, I see that my even keel only makes him angrier.
“The courts determine the appropriate punishment for the crime, Mr. James,” he finally replies, his voice smooth and restrained.
“And when there is no crime, Mr. Ford?” I ask, not waiting for his response. “When black men, Hispanic men are pulled over and arrested for bullshit reasons and then languish in the system for months because they don’t have money for bail for their non-crime? What’s their crime? Their skin color? Their poverty?”
“I don’t think—”
“No, you don’t have to think about it, do you?” I punch the words for emphasis. “When corporations like yours set lock-up quotas, demanding ninety percent prison occupancy rates, securing cheap labor for your businesses, to do your work, you don’t think about the charges the system has to trump up to meet those quotas, do you?”
“We don’t—”
“What if people in certain states start paying attention to the fine print of their tax bills? How outraged will they be when they realize they are penalized for fewer prisoners? That they pay for empty beds? It’s outrageous.”
“What you call outrageous, we call capitalism,” he says, looking into the audience for understanding, because the word “capitalism” always works.
“I’m a capitalist,” I interject before he can garner much support. “Ask me how much money I made on my last tour.”
I look out at the audience, playing into the curiosity on their faces.
“I have no idea.” I shrug. “Too much for me to keep up with.”
A smattering of laughter emboldens me to finish my point.
“I bleed green like the next American.” I look
out to the audience instead of at Ford. “But I won’t stand by counting my money while innocent men sit in jail for months, years because they don’t have the resources to prove their innocence. Men like Khalief Browder. At sixteen years old, he was wrongfully accused and imprisoned for stealing a backpack. This innocent young man rotted in jail in Rikers Island for three years without a conviction—without a trial. Two of those years he spent in solitary confinement. He was little more than a child himself.”
I choke back anger and frustration at the miscarriage of justice. I can still see him in my mind, his young face and bright, intelligent eyes.
“He was never the same,” I continue quietly. “And when he was finally released—after three years, no trial, and no conviction—he later took his own life.”
Quiet descends over the crowded shop.
“I’m not asking for special treatment,” I say, looking back to Ford. “I’m begging for reform, working toward it, so our justice system won’t have the blood of boys like Khalief on its hands.”
The applause, loud and spontaneous, startles us both. We’ve debated for well over an hour in relative quiet because the moderators requested the audience hold their response. Red crawls up Ford’s neck and jagged displeasure seeps into his face. I look out, searching for Bristol in the crowd. She’s on her feet, applauding with a smile wider and brighter than I’ve seen in months. It was worth it. Sitting in this hot seat, unprepared and scared pissless that I’d let Iz down—it was all worth it to see that smile on her face.
“You were amazing,” she whispers when I come off the small stage.
“Thank you.” I kiss the corner of her mouth, wishing all these eyes weren’t trained on us. “You ’bout to bounce? To meet Jimmi?”
“Nope.” She shakes her head, eyes locked with mine. “I asked her for a rain check. I wanted to spend time with my husband.”
I really hope “spend time” is a euphemism for “screw my husband till we pass out from exhaustion,” but I’ll get clarity later. I just nod and keep her close to me as I sign autographs and take selfies and whatever else fans and people from the audience come up with for me to do. I twist our fingers together and pull Bristol into my side. She tends to wander off for this part, gets impatient and fidgety and wonders how I put up with this long line of people. I’m a patient man. Waiting on her taught me to be patient. All those years when I wasn’t sure we would have this life together, that taught me patience.