Better as Friends
Cassidy and Cahir 1
Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson
Copyright © 2019 by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
I’m going to be bold-
This book is for me. For surviving.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Also by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson
One
Cahir
She called to me like a siren. No. That’s not right. Zion wasn’t just a siren. She was their queen. And she didn’t call to me. She sang. Her songs matched the blood rushing through my veins and the pace of my lungs as they accepted and rejected air. Her songs sounded like the flow of my thoughts. Not the individual thoughts themselves, just the way my mind moved from one concept to the next.
Of course it was natural to fall in love with her. I felt understood in a way that was unfamiliar to me, in a way that made me crave her. It was why I chased her through restaurants and hotel lobbies after she left me. It was what pushed my feet to her house even though her song was gone and she had no words for me. It was why I raised her body high before bringing her to crash down around me.
Then she told me.
Abortion. An abortion. That was why she’d run? The tempo of her song changed just a bit, and I was out of step. For the first time there was the sense of effort between us. She once felt like air and food and water and rest. Shouldn’t she have known me better? Shouldn’t she have known that my life was about the deal, about rising high only to see the weakness in others and sell them solutions? What would I do with a child? I didn’t know what to do with all of the things I felt for her. I was supposed to add more? Welcome another? No, the abortion was the right choice. The best choice. The only choice.
I used my softest words, roughest tough. I made love, and I fucked. I gathered her close and slapped her face the way she liked. I stretched myself from one end of the earth to the other to show her that I was still hers. I was still a supplicant at her altar. Bones chilled, knees ached, mind freed. I was still hers. She was still mine. We didn’t need a baby to complete us.
It became a mantra. Perhaps I could say the words so often I would no longer be able to see. The altar was broken. My queen was weak. Oh, she still stood tall but there were moments. I would speak and where there should have been her soft voice with its careful syllables and galaxies of meaning there was only silence.
I knew better than to turn to her. I knew better than to show her that I saw. I watched from the corners of my eyes as her body waved in a wind only she could feel.
I still went to her. The melody of the song changed, but it was still my song. Still my siren. And wasn’t I careful? Didn’t I change everything to make sure she wouldn’t leave me again? Condoms hidden all over her apartment. Desire between us was sudden and insistent. I wanted to be ready. I wanted to be safe. I wanted an eternity with her.
When I was inside her, it felt like an eternity. Or maybe it was an absence. Of time. Of thought. Of awareness. There was nothing in the world but her. Even I went away. Then I heard the sounds of her pleasure. The sounds of release and time would rush towards me. I would drop like lead back into my own body and hold still, hold onto her, for just a moment. Just a moment to find my legs again, to let her tether me back to her.
I remember I smiled that particular time. Because that time felt like what we had before the pregnancy changed us. And I knew it. I knew it! I knew if she just gave us a chance we could be what we were again. I knew that she was wrong. We didn’t need a baby to complete us. We were complete. We were more than enough on our own.
She saw. She knew. She smiled the smile I remembered and it felt like my song was what it used to be. It felt like she trusted me to lead, to guide, to be her man.
I smiled when I pulled the condom off. I knotted it tight. I pulled the knot. I was a man but once I was a boy who liked things that oozed or moved in odd ways in confined spaces.
My smile fell. There was real ooze. Real-What was in my hand? I didn’t understand. Why was there a mess in my hand?
I smelled it. And where there should have been the scent of Zion and latex there was the smell of us together.
No.
I remember that was the only word I could find. No. She wouldn’t do that to me. She wouldn’t manipulate me. She wouldn’t go behind my back. She wouldn’t force me into a situation I didn’t want. She would take the magic that was our sex and manipulate it, make it ugly. Make it rape.
I curled back from that word. Not me. Not me. Men didn’t have that happen to them. When women forced sex, forced a change in sex, it was a compliment. It was only ugly when men did it to them. That was it.
That was all.
And I was wrong. There was nothing wrong with the condom. I just wasn’t careful when I took it off. I’d always been careful before. Careful meant I went back to Zion sooner. But I couldn’t be careful every time. Eventually there was bound to be a mess. I would prove it.
I held the condom under the sink faucet and waited for it to fill with water like the water balloons I used to throw in the summer. I smiled while I waited. Sure that I would be proven wrong. Sure that I would stumble, laughing, from the bathroom to tell Zion about my silliness.
But the condom didn’t swell. Not really. The six holes in it made it easier for water to flow out of it. I stuck my hand under that water. I turned off the sink. Put my hand under the condom again. Maybe if I held my hand there long enough the water would become something else. Or I would wake up. I was willing to give up everything I had if it could all just be a bad dream, if it could be me instead of Zion that woke up screaming.
The water stopped. I filled the condom again. Watched it empty again. Fill. Empty. Fill. Empty. I thought I was empty too. Then I thought about what my life would be like with a baby and a woman that was happy to manipulate me, discard my feelings, alter the course of my life whether I wanted her to or not and claim it was in the name of love. Whether I agreed or not.
Didn’t the loss of consent make it rape?
I punched the mirror with my right fist then my left. Blood, semen, and water mixed and coagulated over my hands.
There was Zion in the doorway, mouth open and ready to admit, without sorrow, shame, or subterfuge, what she’d done.
That was always when I woke up. And like I did every time the dream woke me, I ran my hand over the scars left by the damage I’d done and the stitches Fine gave me. He was the only one that tried to put me back together. I reached across the empty space that should have held her body and realized that it was a nightmare. It was just a nightmare.
One that happened to me in reality and chased me into my sleep.
Cassidy
They weren’t just clothes. They were my chance to peek into your soul and see what you hid there, what you valued. To find the parts of your body that you hated. To find out when you had
the best and worst times of your life and if you healed from them. Did you love yourself? Did you hate the world? Were you insecure? Which way did you lean politically? Were you rich? Were you poor? Could you live within your means? Were you a good liar?
It took just a glance to know if you were a follower, a leader, or trying to shrink into the background. In a matter of seconds, I knew more about you than you would willingly admit to yourself.
I wouldn’t let anyone say it’s just clothes.
I wouldn’t let anyone say my job as a personal stylist was easy. The majority of you hated your bodies. You paid me to do more than dress you. You paid me to make you fall in love with yourself. You paid me to make you believe that your dreams could come true. Wasn’t that what you thought when you slipped on the outfit that made you feel like you could handle your day and it’s challenges, that you could get that certain someone’s attention, that you could hang with the cool kids?
Did you think it was easy to find the lovable parts of you before you did?
Exhausting. All exhausting. It was what waited at the core of the exhaustion that brought me back to the job over and over again. At the core was exhilaration. I never failed. I struck rock and flint and saw a spark come into your eyes that I knew would become a blaze. I knew I had you. You were my addict.
I was tired when Cahir came into Beyond to be styled. I knew who he was. I heard snatches of whispers about him and Zion. Never the whole story. I just knew Zion was gone. It would have been nice to get a happy person for once. To be able to step over the broken birds and get someone whole.
I couldn’t say no to Delia though. Not when she gave me everything I ever wanted in a job. Not when she respected me and my ideas.
I sighed and pulled out an empty rack. Tom Ford. Versace. Zegna. Gucci. Calvin Klein. A few bespoke Seville pieces. Not that the options mattered. He would wear what I gave him.
“Excuse me? I’m here to see Delia?”
Something in me jumped. That part of me that could get hot, soft, liquid. The part of me that moaned and panted and begged and screamed and scratched and clawed. I missed that part of me. She hid from me after Kevin. I didn’t try to draw her out or coax her back into her place. I thought she deserved that, deserved the break.
I stepped from behind the rack and blinked. I called myself a liar. I said I knew Cahir. I was so wrong. I knew of him. I knew his name and his reputation for building tech companies whose sole purpose was to be sold for billions to specific and exacting buyers. I knew his net worth.
I didn’t know he was over six feet and all shoulders and broad arms. I didn’t know his skin was a perfect meeting of untreated maple and delicate spring roses. I didn’t know his lips were full and looked as ready to laugh as they were to sin. I didn’t know his eyes were the color of the earth I turned over in the summer with my grandmother and filled with seeds. And his hands…
The earth wasn’t the only thing that could be filled with seed and-
I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter at myself. Bless his heart, he only slid his hands into the pockets of his pants. He only showed me he had the thighs to match the arms and a crisp white shirt to pull tight over a chest I could bite.
“Delia?”
“Sorry.” I snorted. “I’m not. The thing that just ran through my head was ridiculous.”
He grinned. No, it was a ghost of a grin that made me want to see the real thing. “What was it?”
“I can’t tell you. It was about you, and it was wildly inappropriate.” I went to him, hand outstretched. “I’m Cassidy. You’re seeing me. Not Delia.”
“Oh.” The grin fell from his face and made my joy feel inappropriate.
There was no fun anymore. It was a shame to lose it. When I looked at him and saw what I saw there was something else. I saw a man that was attracted to the woman in front of him. And I was pleased. Not because a man’s attention and attraction were rare. I was five ten with a willowy body that made people think I was a model not a stylist. I wore my red-brown curls in an Afro so big and wild it felt like my own personal halo. No. It wasn’t seeing his attraction. It was seeing my own. The spark. It was knowing that I was ready to have fun in spite of myself. In spite of what Kevin did to me.
But there was his sorrow. And more. There was something else that filled the space between us that had nothing to do with Delia and everything to do with the woman who used to occupy the office next to her: Zion.
Broken birds.
And wasn’t I broken myself after Kevin?
I did what my grandmother taught me. I let all the emotions mix with my breath. The disappointment, the attraction, the lust, the hope that I was ready to move forward and found…something. I let it all mix together, and then I opened my mouth and released it.
A second to close my eyes and thank each of the emotions for choosing me, for reminding me of the weight and beauty of being human. I thanked the universe for giving me something nice to look at and dress. The clothes would hang well on him. They would be worn by him. So often, despite everything I did, it was the other way around. Gratitude. It swelled in my belly and made me feel warm.
“Let’s get started,” I said. “Tell me what you want to feel like after you get dressed.”
Two
Cassidy
I met Junie the day after I started at Beyond. She strode into Delia’s loft office and sat down on the couch next to me. Her braids were highlighter yellow, and the gum she popped and blew into large bubbles smelled like watermelon.
“I’m Junie. I was going to get into your business yesterday, but O’Shea wouldn’t let me. Something about pretending to be civilized until your employment paperwork was filed.”
I laughed. Looked her over. Pretty. Long features that would have been horsey on anyone else but were elegant and strong on her. Chiseled. Dark skin. Bamboo hoop earrings. “What you have is a gift.”
“Which one are you talking about? My ability to spot a trash nigga or fight?”
I laughed again. Really laughed. No one made me really laugh but my grandmother. “Urban. Not everyone can make urban look so classy.”
“Class is a myth. Looking classy isn’t a skill.” She waved a hand and popped her gum. Twice. “Any woman that knows she’s fine and walks with a purpose can make a tattered bathrobe look like magic. Now. Tell me all your business.”
I did. I told her everything. More than I’d ever told a person about myself so fast. But there was something about Junie that reminded me of the hottest summer days I could remember. The way I tried to hold the heat close to me, to spend every second in it that I could. Junie, like a summer day, felt like she had the power to make me forget the worst of it, to forget winter was coming.
I brought her coffee in the morning, and she brought me the paper, she made sense of the financial section and told me where to invest. I gave her clothes and accessories and helped her dye the hair she braided into her own. And every day after work, every day, we went out for drinks.
Junie left work when she felt like it. “Nadia tells me what to do. But she sure as shit ain’t ever going to tell me what to do. Tuh.” She would text me an address, and I met her there. We had two drinks. Only two. Junie said she always forgot who she was when she was drunk, and that wasn’t safe for anyone. And alcohol made me bloated for days. I couldn’t afford that. My clothes were specifically tailored to fit me at a specific size.
I met her at a place we went to before. One of those places with black penny tiles on the floor and gold sconces on the wall. Marble bar and a man with delicious muscles shucking oysters behind a high glass wall. Booths too large for anything less than eight people held two people who probably did things to each other under the table no one wanted to know about.
We both admitted the drinks weren’t great but the people watching was phenomenal. I always picked up a few clients when we visited. Junie picked up rich men that always looked like they couldn’t quite believe she deigned to speak to them. I once watched a
man rub his hands with glee after she dismissed him.
“You didn’t tell me Cahir was fine.” My purse was heavy when it hit the solid marble of the bar.
“He was fucking a New Money Girl. What the fuck else was he going to be?” Junie took a sip of her drink and flipped teal braids over her shoulder.
“Is Guy fine?” I settled into my barstool and smiled at the bartender.
“When he looks at O’Shea,” Junie said.
“Yeah.” I nodded my head. “That’s true. Oh, thank you.”
I took a sip of the ice cold Cosmo and sighed.
“That bad?” Junie popped her gum.
“How do you chew gum and drink things? My gum always gets hard.”
“Strong jaw.” Junie’s grin was sly.
My laughter boomed. “Bitch.”
“So Cahir, huh?”
“That’s a good looking man.”
“Better looking than Kevin?”
I smirked.
“You aint never met a more off-limits man in your life.”
“What? Why?”
“Zion’s ex? Come on, Cass. I don’t have to explain this to you.”
“Ex. That’s the word I want us to focus on.” I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t understand the words that came out of my own mouth. I didn’t want Cahir. I just liked looking at him.
“That one didn’t end pretty. Everyone’s still got scars from that one. Including me. And I didn’t like the bitch.”
“What?” I set my drink down on the bar.
Better as Friends Page 1