by Kennedy Ryan
“And was Roberta’s not the best pizza you’ve ever had?” she asks.
“It was aight.” I shrug and understate about the best pizza I’ve ever had.
“You lying . . .” She slits her already-tilted eyes and twists her full, pouty, lipstick-long-gone lips. “It was bomb, and you know it. And what can we say about this ice cream?”
She licks the vanilla dome. “Hmmmm. You probably can’t remember the last time you had something this sweet.”
Her tongue circuits the ice cream, and my mouth waters remembering that tongue in my mouth, licking inside, sparring with mine, both of us gasping for air.
“Nope,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t sound too hoarse. “It’s been a while since I had something that sweet. You’re right about that.”
Her licks slow to occasional swipes while we stand on the sidewalk eye-fucking each other, which we’ve been doing intermittently all day. To my great frustration and delight.
Frustration because I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want Lotus. Her breasts in that strapless shirt and smooth, lean legs in those miniature shorts? I’d trade one of my championship rings to have her. I mean, I got two rings. There’s only one Lotus, as far as I can tell.
And delight because it is so obvious she wants me, too. I’m not a conceited guy. I’ve been a baller half my life—high school, college, pro. I could never be sure if women wanted me for my prospects and earning potential, or for me.
Lotus wants me for me. There’s no artifice to her—no tricks. No game she’s running. No agenda. When she looks at me and her eyes burn hot and her breath comes short, it’s for me. The pure way she wants me back and the hard time she has fighting it may be one of the most alluring things about her.
“Well, we’re almost done,” she finally says, and starts walking again. “You survived.”
I match my stride to her shorter one, and for a few minutes we’re quiet while she finishes her ice cream.
“I feel like today I’ve used all my words for the next month,” I tell her with a chuckle.
She turns her face slightly up toward me. Her profile scallops delicate curves into the shadows falling with the approaching sunset.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I just . . . don’t talk much usually.”
“I think we can safely say that has not been the case today,” she says, her laugh low and sarcastic. “I couldn’t get in a word edgewise.”
“Okay, now you’re exaggerating.”
“Well at least I found a nickname for you.”
“What is it? I’m not gonna like this.”
“Big mouth.”
“Not creative or accurate.” I tug on one of her braids that has fallen down to her shoulder. “Back to the drawing board.”
“You keep telling me you’re an introvert, but I don’t see it.”
I slow my steps a little as we approach the long stretch of the Brooklyn Promenade’s railing. I weigh the words, wondering if I should say them. They’re true, but they may tell her too much too soon.
“I’m not this way with anyone else,” I say softly. “I know it sounds crazy since we don’t know each other that well, and haven’t known each other long, but I’m only this way with you.”
17
Lotus
I bite my lip, not sure how to respond to Kenan’s words.
I talk to everyone all the time, and I’m hyper-social, but I know what he means. I think the point isn’t that he actually talks to me when he doesn’t talk to other people much. I think the point is that he wants to talk to me, and that I get because even though I talk to everyone, there’s something unique about my time with him. Something I wish I could replicate with other people, but at the same time love that I’ve only experienced it with him. I haven’t even shared my deepest, darkest secrets yet—the things that chase me into my dreams and arrest me in the middle of the night.
But I think I will.
Soon I will share those things with him, and he’s right. It makes no sense. But I, unlike Kenan, am used to things that don’t add up. I’m accustomed to things that defy explanation. I was raised on hope and weaned on miracles so the exceptional feels familiar to me.
Even so, this is different.
I stand on the base of the rail, placing my feet between the rungs, and face the New York skyline and the water lapping at the city’s edge.
“Nothing to say to that?” Kenan asks softly.
“Oh, I have a lot to say to that, but right now I just want to watch the sunset,” I whisper, not because there are other people around who might hear—tourists and natives alike lining the rail to catch the last of the day like us. I whisper because there’s something sacred in the sky. Every time the sky speaks to me, I’m reverent, whether it heralds good news or bad.
“Cotton candy clouds,” I say, turning to smile at Kenan.
“What?” He blinks in that way he does when someone says something unexpected. He blinked like that when Chase said he had great forearms. I chuckle, recalling how Kenan looked at him at the Christmas party. Like Chase was gum he’d stepped in.
“What’s so funny?” Kenan asks.
“Nothing.” I shake my head because saying Chase’s name, saying any name that isn’t Kenan’s or mine right now, feels wrong.
He leans his elbows on the rail, so close the heat from his body reaches out to stroke my skin. I feel his eyes on my profile as tactile as a caress. Like his touch over the verse on my collarbone, soft and curious and savoring. He looks away from my face to the horizon. The Statue of Liberty. The Brooklyn Bridge. Bulky buildings hugging the river’s edge. And the pointy tip of one skyscraper that seems to pierce right through a pink cloud.
“I was saying the clouds are pink,” I go on with a smile. “Pink clouds mean happy days.”
“Huh?” he asks.
I climb down, turn my back to the view, and climb back up, propping my elbows on the rail. I’m facing him now and can see his response as he watches the sunset.
“I looked it up once,” I say. “I used to love watching the sunset from a tree in MiMi’s backyard.”
“This tree is magic, child. When you’re feeling blue, climb this tree.”
I swallow emotion. Still, after two years, it hurts that I can’t ask her advice. Can’t hop on a plane and see her when I want.
“What’d you find out about pink clouds?” he asks, tracing the shell of my ear, running a finger over the studs, leaving a trail of shivers in his wake.
“Well, they say—”
“’They’ being?”
“Scientists, I guess.” I laugh and shrug. “Whoever they are, they say when the sun sits low, sunlight passes through more air than during the day when it’s higher. More air means more molecules to make the violet and blue in the sky seem more distant. It literally chases the blues away.”
I catch his eyes when he turns from contemplating the pink clouds and contemplates me.
“So happy clouds because no more blues.” I smile, and I wonder if he can tell it’s ironically tinged with sadness. I long for that tree. Even on days when the sky tells me through pink clouds to be happy, it doesn’t feel the same as it did from my perch in MiMi’s backyard.
“Cotton candy clouds?” he asks, watching me closely.
“Yeah, they’re like cotton candy. I had to design a dress for my final project at FIT. It was cotton candy pink and absolutely perfect.”
“Did you make it for a model-sized person or a you-sized person?” he asks, chuckling low and deep.
“Oh, I made it for me. Exactly to my measurements.”
“I’d love to see it on you.”
“I’ve never worn it.”
“What are you saving it for? Why not wear it?”
“I’ll know when. It’ll be a special occasion,” I tell him, fake-defensive. “Get outta my closet.”
We laugh just as his phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and scowls at the screen, but answers. “Hey, Bri
dge. What’s up?”
His scowl deepens. If Bridget could see his face right now, she’d hang up. He looks pissed. Beyond pissed. Disgusted. I’d shudder if he ever looked at me that way, and she has no idea. Or maybe she’s gotten used to it.
“If you’re lying, Bridget—”
I hear her whining voice cutting into his comment. He squeezes the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. “Tell her to be ready in an hour, and I’ll come get her.”
My heart sinks. Our day is almost done, but I was hoping we could ride home together on the train and then he could take his Uber . . . excuse me, Uber Black . . . back to the Upper West Side.
“I’m sorry, Lotus,” he breathes out frustration. “I was supposed to have Simone tomorrow, but Bridget says she has some commitment and needs me to get her tonight instead. I know Bridget’s probably playing games and manipulating, but I don’t ever want Simone to feel like I choose not to have her with me. You know? I’m already playing catch-up with her.”
My heart contracts. He has no idea how much I know. I know how it feels for your mother to choose a lover over you. How it feels for her to choose not to have you with her. Not just for a night, but for years. To forfeit an entire childhood for an unworthy man.
“I get it,” I say simply, inadequately conveying my understanding. “Simone should be first. I’ll never begrudge you that.”
His eyes, usually so guarded, aren’t that way now with me. His face is as intimidating as the rest of him. Handsome, but comprised of sharp lines and blunt bones—austere. But when he looks at me, the hard lines soften and it’s like watching rock melt. I’m the sun.
I feel that power for a moment—the power to make someone as hard as Kenan look tender. That power surges, and then it converts into responsibility.
Gentleness is power under control.
And I feel the urge, despite him being so much bigger, a hundred and fifty pounds heavier, and ten times stronger—to be gentle with Kenan. To be careful with the power he vests in me every time he shows me more, tells me more.
I feel a sense of responsibility that a man like him, who has been betrayed by someone who should have been faithful, might just choose to trust again. To risk trusting with me again. We’re not so different, he and I. I was betrayed by the one who should have protected me, too. Not a wife, but a mother—by a family’s complicit silence. We’re not so different, and maybe that’s what my cotton candy clouds are trying to tell me. It’s a good day. A good day to trust again.
Standing on the rail makes me tall enough to reach him. I touch his face, caress the strong rise of bone beneath the mahogany skin, and turn him toward me until our lips brush together. He pulls back the slightest bit with a stare that doesn’t waver.
“Remember what I said.” His voice is husky and heavy, maybe with the weight of this no-turning-back moment. “When we kiss again, you have to make it happen, and it means you want to be more than friends.”
I close the space he inserted between our lips, and lick into the seam. He gasps, and his eyes close immediately.
“I want to be more than friends,” I whisper over his lips. “Open your eyes and don’t look away.”
When he opens his eyes, they lock with mine, and I suck his lower lip and lick into the corners. He angles his head to capture my top lip between his, never dropping his glance. His hand, huge and encompassing, curves at the back of my head, his fingers curling at my nape. He deepens the kiss, tasting me with surging, hungry licks that make me whimper and moan. Now it’s my turn to gasp and close my eyes because the contact is so charged it sends a current down my spine and through my toes.
“Don’t look away,” he echoes back to me.
We set a frantic rhythm of bobbing heads as the kiss grows more urgent. I’m turning my head and he’s angling his, both trying to delve deeper without breaking the electric thread of our gaze. While our tongues mate and our lips beg and our bodies strain to learn the shape of each other, we never look away. And it’s more intense than fucking.
This kiss wipes away every man who came before him in a baptism of greedy lips and searching tongues, dipping me, dousing me, saving me.
Changing me.
I’m new. Different.
Even when it ends, our lips still cling, loathe to let go of this revival that purifies even the air we breathe. And here, trapped between our lips, each breath is holy. Here between our chests, our hearts bang like ancient drums. Here between our eyes, his and mine, a searing glance sees everything.
It’s the best kiss of my life. It’s my first glimpse of real intimacy.
And it’s almost more than I can bear.
18
Kenan
I had Simone all day yesterday, and she spent the night. Now it’s Monday, and I haven’t been able to see Lotus again. I want to badly after our “not date.” It may not have been a date, but it was definitely a kiss. I want a repeat as soon as possible. I’m getting off the elevator to Dr. Packer’s office when my phone flashes with an incoming notification from a local florist.
Your package has been delivered.
That August is good for something. My San Diego Waves teammate, married to Lotus’s cousin Iris, has been bugging me ever since I asked for Lotus’s number.
“So how’d the date go?” he’d called to ask yesterday.
“What date?” I’d asked, deliberately obtuse.
“Brooklyn.” There’d been barely checked eagerness and frustration in his voice. “If you play this right, we could practically be brothers.”
“As appealing as permanently chaining myself to a wet-behind-the-ears rookie is,” I had said, letting the barb I always use with him sink in, “I think I’ll handle this myself.”
“You don’t think Lotus told Iris every detail?”
That had given me pause.
“She did?” I’d kept my voice neutral. They’re close. It wouldn’t have been unheard of. It’s just so new, and I haven’t told anyone yet.
“No,” August had grudgingly admitted. “Iris couldn’t get anything out of her. We’re both on pins and needles here.”
“Why don’t you and your little wife worry more about having that baby and less about what grown folks are doing here in New York.”
“You’re grown, but Lotus isn’t,” he’d laughed. “Good ol’ Glad. Robbing the cradle.”
If we’d been together, I would have body slammed him. Or at least given him a good headlock.
“Even though you aren’t sharing shit with me,” he’d said, “I'mma give you some free advice. Something I did for Iris, and you see where it got me.”
“Like I need your advice,” I’d scoffed.
The phone went silent for a few dead-air seconds, and I’d huffed an exasperated sigh. “I mean, you may as well tell me now.”
He’d taunted me with his laughter before sharing his advice. She better like the flowers I sent.
“If you steered me wrong,” I mutter under my breath as I cross the lobby, “I’m shaving all those damn curls off next time you fall asleep on the plane.”
Simone and Bridget are already seated in the waiting area. I know I’m not late. I usually beat them here.
“Hey, Moni.” I swipe my hand over her face to greet her, and reach up to tug her ponytail.
“No, Daddy,” she says, blocking my touch with both hands. “Don’t touch it. I need it neat for the recital tomorrow.”
“There’s a recital tomorrow?” I frown, glancing between them. “It’s not on my calendar.”
“Well, guess Davis made a mistake,” Bridget says waspishly.
My assistant, Davis, back in San Diego, doesn’t make mistakes with my schedule or any aspect of my life. I’d be lost without him.
The door opens and Dr. Packer walks out with a warm smile for all three of us.
“Good to see you,” she says, gesturing for us to precede her into the office.
“Wait out here for a few minutes, Simone,” Bridget says, cutting her eyes at
me. “We need a few minutes alone with Dr. Packer first.”
“We do?” I ask, frowning. First I heard of it.
“We do,” she confirms, sailing past me and into the office.
What now?
“Is there a problem, Bridget?” Dr. Packer asks from behind her desk. “I know we chatted a few weeks ago without Simone, but I like to limit impromptu meetings like this and schedule our time without her. Seeing this could make her feel like we’re talking about her.”
“Well, we kind of are,” Bridget says, “thanks to Kenan’s reckless behavior.”
“Me?” I point a thumb at my chest. “Reckless? How so?”
“This is how so.” She pulls her phone out and shoves it at me.
When I see the photo on Instagram, I want to roar at Bridget for being in my business. At the same time, I want to kick myself for not being more careful. The server at Sally Roots posted the selfie with me. Just beyond the shot, almost like a photo bomb, Lotus is looking at her phone. Her head is down, but those platinum-colored braids are distinct. Bridget saw them that night at the restaurant. I asked the server not to tag me, and he didn’t, but he used #KenanRoss.
“You object to me taking a photo with a fan?” She’s going to have to say it—be petty enough to make a big deal out of something that isn’t.
“What I object to,” Bridget spits out, “is this woman you’re running all over New York with.”
“Running all over New York? Hardly.”
“What do you call this then?” She shoves her phone at me again.
This photo shows Lotus and me on Jane’s Carousel. We’re laughing in the shot, and I almost smile again at me looking so big and ridiculous on that carousel despite the awkward situation I’m in now. The poster’s caption: “Don’t see this every day.” #KenanRoss
Bridget must have been trolling me and searching by that hashtag on Instagram. I want to hurl her phone into the nearest wall.
“May I see?” Dr. Packer asks and accepts Bridget’s phone. “What’s the problem?”