Better as Friends

by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson

  Everyone tiptoed around Zion’s office, looked at it without seeing it. Her name was said in whispers. It wasn’t said around O’Shea at all. She was a wound that festered and oozed on what would have otherwise been a pristine place.

  “She never had the time for me. Couldn’t say hi when she walked in the door. Looked at me the way some black girls look at each other. You know what I mean. Looked at me like I should leave that ‘hood’ shit outside and speak ‘proper’ English. Like my kind of black wasn’t the kind she could be around.”

  “Really?”

  “But it don’t matter how I felt about her. That was their sister. And they go to the wall, shit, through the wall for each other. Leave that man alone.”

  “Whatever.”

  Not like I wanted him anyways.

  Cassidy

  I only attended the event because I had a dress for it. A dress that hung in my closet and called to me, called for me, begged to be worn, to be seen. I obeyed the call and was glad I did. It clung to my body the way rain clung to roofs and asphalt. I was brighter in it. New in it. More because of it. I tamed my curls just a bit. I twisted them the way my grandmother used to before she let me go play in the thunderstorms. And then I took those twists out and loved that my hair looked like a cloud. I liked feeling close to heaven. Like I was my own kind of heaven.

  My heels were high, but I liked towering over people, over men. I liked the way they had to crane their heads back to see me. I liked looking down on them and seeing all the ways I could dress them better. I liked that they believed me, and soon I didn’t have a business card on me. God, it felt good to be good.

  I drank champagne and danced with some of the girls I styled. The ones that danced in my office and let me photograph them. The ones that knew it was me that got them the husbands, the jobs, the spread in the style or lifestyle sections of the paper or their favorite magazines. They kept me close during that party. Too close. Their sweat, as they moved wild and fast on the dance floor, streaked on my arms, and I had to go. Did they wash? Any part of their body? Could I trust them or did I just like the clothes they wore?

  I burst off the dance floor and into a dark hallway. Thank God for the cool that lived in dark hallways. I snagged another glass of champagne from a waiter that walked past and felt the soft touch of relief.

  “You’re always so beautiful.”

  “Yes. I am.” I didn’t turn to the deep baritone that drifted down the hall to me. I didn’t have to. I knew it the way I knew myself. I heard it when it wasn’t near. I always heard him. I felt him.

  “I miss you.”

  “And your wife misses you, Kevin.” I was proud that there was no bitterness. Proud that my rituals for release, for tranquility and acceptance, worked. I had never done them without my grandmother before.

  “Don’t bring her into this, C. She’s not a part of this. She’s never been a part of who we are. What we’ve done.”

  What we’d done. Oh. The things we’d done. The places we did it. I could smell him when I knew he wasn’t around. It always knocked me on my ass and made me want to open my mouth and beg him for more even though I knew he wouldn’t hear.

  But she was there. Always there. The stain on the sheets that I couldn’t see. The film on my skin when it wasn’t touching his. The moan that sounded like I’d wrenched it from his body instead of welcoming it gently. The moment when he looked away and I didn’t know where he’d gone and instinctually knew not to probe.

  “Go back to the party, Kevin. Go back to your wife. Tonight, before you go to bed, kiss your children.” And, oh, that hurt. He never told me there were children. I saw them. In my dreams, I saw them. Beautiful babies with his kinky hair and dimpled smile. The boy would be tall like him. The girl was already as stubborn.

  I turned to him and saw him stagger back. I was ashamed for a second. I went against what my grandmother taught me: I enjoyed another’s pain. I fed on his shock and was full like a glutton with room for a bit more. I took a step.

  “Go home and read the things your wife left for you on her desk.” I visited his wife’s dreams once. And I was sad for her, for how much she yearned for him and was afraid for him, for his business. “You have time to stop it.”

  His fear and surprise tasted better than his dick ever had. “Cass-”

  I smiled. I had time to eat him before I went back to the party. It wouldn’t make the hurt any less but, Jesus, it would be fun.

  “Cassidy.”

  Again the part of me that used to reach out like a greedy child for Kevin went warm. “Cahir.”

  Tom Ford was perfection on him. “There you are. I saw you leave the dance floor but Angelo had something to tell me. He said it was important, but you know how asinine he is.”

  Cahir’s arm snaked around me. Loose, but familiar. Sure, but questioning. He was the only man besides Kevin I couldn’t look down on that night.

  I laughed. I didn’t know who Angelo was. I didn’t have to. I loved games. “I don’t know if he’d be okay with you calling him that.”

  “Truth is the truth.” Cahir shrugged. “You done with this?”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t do anything that would top the look Cahir’s presence put on Kevin’s face.

  “Good.” His arm was gone, and then he was. Just a few steps down the hall. He stopped. Turned to me. Held out his hand. “You coming?”

  “Yes.”

  Three

  Cassidy

  He could dance. I didn’t expect that and felt a little shame. I fought so hard against the stereotypes placed on Black women and put one right on that Asian man.

  Shit.

  He moved like the shadows thrown by the moon. Something a little seductive and dangerous in the way he didn’t forget he had hips and a loose waist when he slid through space with me. And he smiled. Bright smile through it all. Danced and danced and danced with me. He laughed at me when I fanned my face, panted, and tried to get off that floor. Grabbed my hand and held onto it. Held onto me. And wasn’t that a different kind of comfortable and cozy? I laughed and thought it sounded new. I liked that.

  I liked what my night became. I liked how much my feet hurt and pulsed against the sides of my shoes. I liked the feel of a few curls plastered to the back of my neck. I liked the beads of sweat that grew in the land between my edges and my forehead. I liked the burn of my thighs. The soreness in my ass from bouncing just a bit too hard.

  I stayed on the dance floor with him.

  Cassidy

  Did he know what we were laughing about? We ran together out of that charity event, my hand held firmly in his, into brisk night air that moved with sharp purpose over our skin. That air raised goosebumps and the awareness that what we had was one of those perfect nights. One of those magic nights that could turn the mundane into miracles.

  Ah.

  Down the steps. I expected to lose a shoe. Only one. It was the kind of thing that happened on nights like those. But I didn’t lose my shoe. I thought I lost my mind. I got into his car. A strange man’s car. I let him drive, and I laughed when I looked at him the way he laughed when he looked at me. I looked out the window at the moon. It wasn’t full. I had no one but myself to blame my behavior on.

  He took us to the obnoxious Italian restaurant. The one that played Rat Pack songs loud from hidden speakers and had lights strung across trees that had carried enough burden in their lives and deserved to be free.

  I almost stopped laughing.

  But he tugged me past that place and towards the unmarked door a little further back. Back in the shadows, the dark, the corner. Oh. How good and right. I laughed into the dark he pulled me into. Laughed into velvet curtains and thick, thick hardwood floors. Past the hostess who dropped the tired from her face and smiled at us, waved at us.

  There was jazz in the bar. Real jazz. The unplanned kind that came from the soul and swept out the darkest corners of the mind of the person that invited it in. The kind of jazz that showed you your mess and made
you like it just a bit. Made you find the beauty and the blessing in it.

  We sat at a high top. The table just big enough to hold two glasses and force our elbows to bump and dance and meet again and again, introductions be damned.

  We talked. I couldn’t tell you what we talked about. The strange life of Robert Johnson and what we would do if we met the devil at a crossroads. We talked about how no one believed in time travel even though they’d seen other worlds and met a galaxies worth of people thanks to simple little books.

  We talked until the bartender said it was done, and then we talked an hour more because she became interested in our conversation despite herself and took us to the bar so she could listen, and laugh, and talk herself as she cleaned.

  He mopped. He took the mop from the bartender’s hands and mopped her floor. He took off my shoes when the floor was dry and dared me to run across it so he would know it was really clean. I did. He said I was all arms and legs. He said he should have known I would be fast. Then he took his own shoes off and we raced: me, him, the bartender. From the door of the bar to the street. To see if we could.

  We laughed when we cleaned the dirt from our feet.

  I looked at him and got thankful for the night. Thankful for the moment. He felt like my best friend, and it all felt like a gift I would never be grateful enough for.

  I carried that night with me every second of every day for a week. A full week. And then I saw him again. In Zegna.

  Four

  Cassidy

  Oh, I liked a man in custom Italian. It was always a touch more decadent than the situation called for. And Cahir was tailored within an inch of his life.

  He unbuttoned his jacket and then his arms were around me, lifted me. I was so high in the air that things smelled different. I squealed like a child with a present and was glad Delia was at lunch with Colton. Glad that Nadia and O’Shea loved minding their own business more than anything in the world.

  “Hello.” He smiled.

  I knew that smile. I knew it like he knew mine. And since our smiles were friends I gave him mine and let them meet again. “Hello.”

  “You got things for me?” His hands were on my shoulders. Heavy. That was good. Reassuring.

  “Yep.” I broke away from him, but felt him follow, steps in sync with mine, to the rack I filled for him.

  “This.” We said it together. We pointed at the same suit. Oh, I liked him. I liked him very much.

  “You’ll make everyone look so-”

  “Everyone but you,” he said. “You’re always color.”

  Someone else would have corrected him, would have told him he forgot a word or three. But I heard him. Agreed. And wished he would shut up.

  “Come with me.” He stepped closer. “Come with me, Cassidy. I need a date. I want you to be-I want to take you on a date.”

  I might have said yes. I might have held onto the smile that was his smile’s friend if I hadn’t heard his footsteps shuffle and falter when he came into the office. Because he was looking at the space that used to be Zion’s. And he didn’t sigh, but I saw it build in his chest. I saw him pull it apart.

  “No.” I gave him the suit. “Have fun though. You’ll have fun.”

  Cahir

  The first time I saw Zion it was like lightning struck my body.

  I read my mother’s romance novels when I was younger. I thought they would tell me all the things I didn’t understand about girls. And I remember I read something like that in one of her books. It stuck with me when everything else about those books faded away. I thought it sounded unpleasant. Who wanted to be struck by lightening? I prayed it never happened to me.

  Then I saw Zion, and it did happen to me. I found that it was right. It was unpleasant to be singed from the tallest hair on my head to the tips of my feet. Ha. Unpleasant. It hurt like a bitch. But she’d already captured me, compelled me. I went to the source of the pain and like a mother with a newborn baby forgot that I was hurt in the first place.

  Cassidy wasn’t like that. The sight of her didn’t hit me like lightening, but I saw her, in one glance, and knew that she contained lightening and fire. The kind that we harnessed for electricity and used to warm us on cold nights. The good things.

  That night at the charity party, I saw the way her lightening could hurt. I saw the man that she pushed away without raising her arms, and I liked it. I thought about standing there, just out of sight, body leaned against the wall. I could have watched the show all night. But the man didn’t look like he deserved lightening and fire. Or maybe I was greedy and famished to feel those things again. So I got her.

  Her hand in mine felt like finding some place new.

  I never danced with Zion. She shook her head every time music came on. She tucked her chin and smiled. Except for the one time she took me home. She danced with her mother and her aunts. Even then she was contained.

  Cassidy was the wind. I saw the evidence of her and felt her and didn’t know what she would do next and knew better than to try and contain her.

  I didn’t remember or recognize my laughter when it burst out of me. But I knew hers. By the end of that night, I knew her. I felt like I knew her better than anyone, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know what to do with a perfect night. I didn’t know what to do with myself besides wish for another one of them.

  I didn’t know my voice when it came from my body and went to her ears. Didn’t know what possessed me to ask her on a date. Then I found the yearning to connect with her again. To feel that kind of magic again. She had magic. Maybe a witch was safer than a siren.

  She said no.

  No.

  When was the last time a woman said no to me?

  Was what Zion did its own kind of no?

  No usually made me mad. But Cassidy’s no made me heavy. Made my face a different kind of sad. Lugubrious, even. Because I felt the sad on her. I almost saw it drape over her shoulders.

  Of course. She would feel the absence inside me. She would do the right thing.

  I left with a garment bag draped over my arm. I gave Junie the smile and wink I always had for her.

  “She’s off at four,” Junie said. “Come back and get it right.”

  I didn’t bother to ask how Junie heard. I didn’t know how any of the women in that building did the things they did. I just respected their gifts.

  I took Junie’s words and held them close. I turned them over and over in my head until I found the place they were supposed to fit.

  Okay, I said. I grabbed my car keys.

  Cassidy had the last of her things stacked together. The music was quieter, different. The corner where she did her photography was clean of footprints and empty wine glasses.

  “Hello,” she said. She didn’t turn around.

  “Hello.” I smiled. “I’m going to ask again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the question has changed a bit.”

  “Then you aren’t really asking again, are you?” She faced me.

  I sent a smile to meet hers because it was what I wanted most. “Will you come out with me? To the event? I could use a friend and another perfect night.”

  “A friend?”

  “Yeah. Sorry I put the other stuff on you. It was-”

  “I didn’t ask for an apology. I don’t think you should have given it. At least the other stuff wasn’t sloppy or heavy.”

  I laughed. “Okay.” I laughed again. “So. Will you?”

  “As friends?”

  “Or strangers if it makes you more comfortable.”

  She laughed. “Are we friends, Cahir?”

  “There were a few times that night that I thought we were best friends.”

  “Yes.” She nodded and all that hair bounced. “I thought so too.”

  I wanted to press another “So?” I wanted to push more insistence her way. But I knew it wouldn’t do me any good, and I didn’t know how I knew what I knew. I put my hands in my pockets. And waited. />
  “Okay. I have a dress. I’ll go.”

  “Thanks, friend.”

  We laughed together.

  She hefted a heavy bag onto her shoulder. “Come have a drink with Junie and I.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to-”

  “You might as well. Since you’re letting her send you back here to pressure me.”

  If I were sorry, I wouldn’t have grinned. “Okay.”

  Cahir

  It was the opening of an art exhibition. I didn’t care much about it. Didn’t care much about art at all. Not that I could tell Zion that. She would have dragged me all over O’Shea’s gallery space. I would have enjoyed it. I found myself wandering it sometimes. I even bought one of her pieces. A small thing, just a hand. Zion didn’t have to tell me the hand was hers. No one did. I would always recognize her, see her.

  I didn’t know where I put the painting after-After. But it was gone. And I was at the opening with Cassidy. She wore black and slashed with red. Slashed it across her eyes, cheeks, and lips. Slid it onto her feet and the soles of her shoes. She should have looked like a bruise, a pimple that wanted to be popped, a clown. Instead she looked like a volcano when the first of the lava reached for the sky. She looked like forest fires. She looked like suffocation.

  It caught me. For a few milliseconds, it froze me. Then she smiled. We looked at the art. She whispered her thoughts. Some nice. Some naughty. Some made me bend at the waist and laugh so hard I thought after the ground, the floor, swallowed it that it would vibrate and send the energy back to me.

  Irreverent. I didn’t know how she could take herself so seriously and not at all. I wished she would teach me.

  She knew everyone I knew. And when she told them that we were friends, not “just friends,” but friends, they all accepted it. We drank cheap red wine and competed to see who could make the most ridiculous face. We ate hors d’oeuvres and then gave up and hoarded a tray between us.