Better as Friends

by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson

  I was light again.

  I missed drowning.

  When it was time to leave, she pulled out a wad of cash and handed it to the curator, pointed.

  “Wow, cash money.” I rolled the words around in my mouth while she laughed. “Cash. Cash?”

  She nodded. “I like it.”

  “Me too. Come on, Cash. Let’s go.”

  “I’m driving.”

  Idiot that I was, I gave her the keys. She pushed my Range Rover through the streets like it was a Lamborghini.

  “That was fun.” She gave the keys and a smile to valet.

  “Was it?” My ankle buzzed when I put my weight on it. My whole body buzzed.

  “Come on. You’ll feel human when I put some alcohol in you.”

  “Maybe.”

  She laughed.

  We walked two flights of stairs to get to the bar that despised children and families but stocked all the board games from my youth on the community tables. As if anyone could see the Monopoly board in the dark.

  There was always a fire in one of the two fireplaces. A small, dancing fire from the gas fireplace on one side of the bar in the summer. A roaring wood fire on the other side in the winter.

  We sat at another of those tables too small for strangers and too big for us. Gin for me. Vodka for her. A basket of fries and a small plate of meatballs between us that she cut into an even number of pieces.

  “You don’t want to argue with me, Cahir,” she said in the middle of her task.

  And then I did, just a little bit, to see what it would be like to be struck by her brand of lightening and eaten by her fire.

  “What kind of name is Cahir anyways?” She licked ketchup off her finger.

  The fries did look good. “Irish. My dad’s Irish.”

  “Is he?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “He and my mom.”

  “I’m not going to drag it out of you.”

  “Good. I like this suit.”

  “You’d better.”

  We laughed.

  “I’m adopted,” I said.

  “How does that feel?”

  “It’s-” I put my elbows on the table and shook my head. “Fuck me. No one’s ever asked me that. It doesn’t feel like anything most days. Some days it’s odd. If I’m in a room with other Chinese people. They’ll speak to me, and I won’t be able to answer. They shake their heads, and Cash, it feels like I’ve betrayed parents I’ve never had and a culture I’ve never known.”

  “Do you want it?”

  “The parents or the culture?”

  “You have parents.”

  “Yeah.” I laughed. “Shit, Cash. Okay. I can do this. Okay.”

  “Wanna stretch or something?”

  “I don’t miss the culture. I was never interested in how to be the right kind of Chinese. It was never a thing. I spent my life surrounded by white people unless I sought out something else. Culture didn’t matter. Money did.”

  “Mmm.”

  I didn’t know if it was my words that made her hum or the food in her mouth. “Everyone that looked at me already assumed I was smarter, better, richer, more educated, more cultured, just because of what I looked like. Why put more work into it?”

  “Huh.”

  “Could you live without yours?”

  “My culture? God, no. If I lost being a Black woman, the community that comes with it, I would cut off my arms. It would mean the same thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So many things I don’t have to say and so many ways I’m understood. Just because I walked in the room. I see Black women and I see family. I’m family as soon as they see me. And we speak the same language. Whether we grew up in the whitest neighborhood or the blackest. A few sentences and then it clicks and we’re all speaking the same language and moving our bodies the same way.”

  “Just Black women? Not men?”

  She shook her head, and I knew I was an outsider. I knew to back away.

  We ate fries. I ordered us more. Another round of drinks. The silence was full. It didn’t need my help. It didn’t need my contributions. I let it rest until the words had to spill out of me.

  “Can I tell you about Zion?”

  Five

  Cahir

  She looked up from her drink. The little candle on our table made all of the red on her face and the brown of her eyes…I wished I had the words. I cursed myself for lacking the words.

  “I wish someone would,” she said.

  I laughed. And I told her. About the bookstore where we had our first date and the cookbooks and the abortion that she had without me, that made her leave me. About the split and the reconciliation that wasn’t a reconciliation to Zion because there was no baby and then how we split again. I told her about graceful hands and a soft voice and eyes darker than midnight and as bottomless as hell. I told her what it was like to lay next to Zion at night and what it was like to lay alone. I told her about the secret place that I thought I wouldn’t tell anyone else about.

  “My therapist says it wasn’t rape. Technically. Legally. It was sexual assault.” It was easier to watch the flame of the candle flicker and twist than to watch Cash’s eyes. “I say I showered fifteen times in three days and didn’t know what I was trying to wash off.”

  “Cahir.” Her voice was warm and soft.

  I didn’t know how to tell her that was worse. Compassion and understanding were worse.

  “I have a lot of good friends. I collect them in my business. Mainly by accident. And when I told them why Zion was gone. The men-” I shook my head. “They jumped back like I had a contagious disease. Every single one of them was horrified. Every single woman told me to get over it, to forgive her. Maybe go to counseling with her. It was just holes in a condom. I could get over it. Zion was amazing, and we were in love.”

  “Hmm.”

  I looked up because I had to know. Her lips were pursed and her eyes were slits.

  “I found the words eventually to explain to them that it felt like my body didn’t belong to me. She made me feel like my body was just there to…do what she wanted. I didn’t get to say yes or no. I didn’t get a say in my own life or what I did. I didn’t matter enough to get a say. She would do what she wanted, and I would fall in line.” I rolled a cold French fry between my fingers. “I got the words to tell them how it felt to love someone and know that no matter what they said or the pain they were going through, they didn’t give a shit about you. If they did, they wouldn’t have betrayed you in the first place.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I put the fry down. Wiped my hands. “I am too.”

  Cahir

  Cash never gave me her cell phone number. Maybe it was because I didn’t ask. But I didn’t want to. Every time I spent more than five minutes with her, there was magic. Perfection. The comfortable kind I could sit in for a while. For a while, I wasn’t drowning. I missed drowning, missed being in the ocean, fighting, arms and legs heavy, to get closer to the siren that sang for me.

  My assistant got Cash’s number for me. I held the piece of paper she wrote it on in my hands and felt the sweat break out under my arms. I laughed at myself. It was just Cash. It was just a phone call.

  The phone barely rang.

  “It’s not that weird that you found my number.”

  I leaned back in my chair, smile already too wide on my face. But I couldn’t help it or stop it. I could hear her smile. “Oh, yeah?”

  “You do all that weird tech stuff. Your office is probably full of weird gadgets and stuff. Like in cartoons.”

  I laughed and looked around at my office. Minimal like everything else in my life. I hated clutter. I hated other people’s ideas pressing in on me.

  “Shit.” She sighed. “I hate being wrong.”

  I laughed again. “Be my friend.”

  “I already am. Your best one.”

  The smile was going to break my face. “Prove it. Have lunch with me.”

  I didn’t have to see
her to know she rolled her eyes, to know the smile was still there. “Send me an address.”

  So I did. I went to the food hall when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to eat but knew I wanted sunshine, old school rap, hipster kids, and business people that wanted beers while they had their meetings. And I thought Cash would like it.

  She was covered in flowers. They were on her dress. On her rings and her earrings. There was one braided in her hair. Combat boots on her feet. I shook my head.

  “Yes,” she said. “I do look wonderful. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” I hugged her and realized. She never smelled the same. It was like her scent changed to match her outfits. She smelled like honey suckle and lilies that day.

  We got food. Found a booth to squeeze into. She raised an eyebrow. I rolled my eyes and got us drinks.

  “I talked to my mom today,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. She’s-” Cash shrugged. “I’m a disappointment to her.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” I didn’t mean for my mouth to hang open. No one wanted to see a half chewed piece of salmon. But I couldn’t help it.

  And I guess it helped. She laughed.

  “My grandmother has always owned her own business, made her own money. My parents did the same. Real estate development in Baltimore. They like that I do something ‘artsy and free’. They don’t get why I’ve got to work for someone else.”

  “Ah. The shitty thing about entrepreneurs.”

  “Yeah.” She tilted her head.

  “Okay.” My chopsticks picked through my poke bowl until I found a scallop. “Entrepreneurship is weird. Everyone thinks it’s owning your own business, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve always disagreed with that. Owning a business isn’t enough. Entrepreneurship it’s-it’s a spirit, right? It’s this desire to take ownership of a thing and make it grow.” I found another scallop and put it on her plate. “I can’t run companies with people that want to be cogs in a machine or just want to clock in and clock out, collect a paycheck. They have to be people that look at my companies and see them as their own, they have to buy into them as if they’ve got everything on the line too. They do have everything on the line. They’ve staked their reputation and skills on the fact that they can make this work. Cause if it doesn’t work, they’re screwed. I can find someone else to give me money. Shit, I’ve made enough. I can fund my own ventures. They’ll have to throw their resumé with all their failed projects around and hope that someone takes mercy on them.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Look at your resumé. You worked for the Agency from the first day they opened their doors. You left when you saw they were stagnating and decided to work for an ex-escort in a building owned by a former sugar baby. You decided to gamble. Maybe you don’t want to own a business. But you sure like building them.”

  I bent my head over my food. I loved seaweed. I was ashamed of that as a kid: how much I liked Asian food even though I didn’t give a shit about being Asian. It was a friend that told me to get my head out of my ass. Good food was good food.

  “Oh my God.”

  Cash hadn’t touched her food. Thai. I liked Thai.

  “I have to call my mom.” She ran out of the food hall.

  Her lunch was delicious. The joy on her face, the kind that only shows up when you’re understood, was even better.

  Cassidy

  It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny. I threw my head back and laughed like a hyena anyways. I knew horror movies weren’t supposed to be funny. Slasher films weren’t supposed to be funny. There was music and lighting and back story set up to surprise and shock and stun viewers into silence. But so much of it was wrong. They didn’t research the spirits or the magic they used. Millions of dollars to spend and they couldn’t hire someone to teach them about the other worlds. They just made things up.

  And how many deaths could be avoided if there was just a little common sense? How many of those films weren’t even about a real plot? How many of them just wanted to see how many gruesome ways there were to die in ninety four minutes?

  I watched “scary” movies when my brain needed a break, when I’d watched the same fashion show for the fifteenth time, when I’d called the same designer for the twentieth time, when a shipment was delayed. Again. They reminded me that the world was ridiculous, that I was ridiculous, and I could laugh loud if I wanted to.

  I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday evening. Company would have been nice. Not that my plants didn’t count as company. They were some of the best friends I had. But they couldn’t laugh with me.

  I turned my phone over in my hands and crossed my legs on my couch. Junie wouldn’t come. She said scary movies were actually scary and there was something wrong with me that medication wouldn’t fix. My grandmother was busy. She was always busy. It didn’t seem fair to call her away from her store and all the prep work she had. I should have gone to help her.

  There was Cahir. I knew if I called he would answer. I knew if I asked he would come. Our days fell into a pattern. We had lunch together three or four times a week. Once or twice a week he would have drinks with Junie and I. We went to all of the interesting events together. I even dragged him to New York Fashion Week with me. Delia went to all of the higher end designer’s shows. I trawled for the lesser knowns. The ones with talent and no budget. He took me to tech conferences and told me when it was okay to lean my head on his shoulder and fall asleep. I told myself it was best to not enjoy how he looked onstage in the clothes I picked for him too much.

  We were friends.

  We were friends! I rolled my eyes at myself, at the way I overthought the simplest of things and called him.

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said. “Pick something good. I want to see a lot of people die.”

  I laughed. And changed into something a bit more appropriate.

  Six

  Cassidy

  “Wow.” His eyes were slow. Slow and heavy as they dragged over my baggy sweats and faded, shapeless t-shirt, my bonnet. “You really just wanted to watch a movie.”

  “Did you wear sweatpants to my house, you whore?”

  He held up a plastic bag. “There’s jeans and popcorn in here.”

  I laughed and let him in.

  “Holy shit.” He froze a few feet from the door.

  I forgot, I always forgot, what my apartment looked like to newcomers. I forgot how the fiddle leaf fig and the cactus, a few feet away from touching the nine foot ceilings, the jade plant, the bamboo between the windows, the two lemon trees that flanked the television, the young oak tree in its large glass pot full of water, the succulents on the coffee table, the rosemary, mint, basil, and lavender that crowded the windowsill all caught people by surprise. But wasn’t it natural to want to be natural? To have only a few pieces of furniture in pale colors or just white, to bring in natural woods, and thick rugs so that the plants could shine?

  “This makes perfect sense.” He tossed a smile over his shoulder at me.

  Where his smiles were usually light, that one fell heavy and made something inside me thud just once.

  “I’m going to change.” He tossed a box of popcorn and a large bag of peanut M&M’s at me. “Get the provisions ready.”

  I laughed.

  That laughter died when he sprawled on the couch beside me and dumped the peanut M&M’s into the popcorn.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “Sweet, salty, and savory all at once.” He shoved a handful into his mouth and smiled. Chocolate stained his teeth.

  I rolled my eyes and started the movie. He jumped while I laughed. He closed his eyes while I scoffed at the absurdity. He screamed once and didn’t look offended when I laughed so hard I cried.

  Shadows fell long across the floor until only the television provided light and washed the color from his face.

  “Thanks for coming over.” Every moment
we spent together felt like another perfect moment, like something snatched out of a movie. There was no reason for me to feel awkward. “I used to do this with Kevin a lot.”

  He handed me the bowl of popcorn and chocolate. I took a handful. I didn’t know how to tell him it was a good idea, a good movie snack.

  “You never talk about him.”

  I crossed my legs and pushed my hair back. “I met Kevin on a Thursday. Thursdays were our days. Always. We always did something together. We always ended up in bed. Or doing the things adults do in bed.”

  I liked the way Cahir grinned. Like he got it because he’d done it. “Where’d you meet?”

  “He owns nightclubs. I went to one. No. I snuck into one. They were already at capacity, but I knew I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to dance there that night. I decided the best place for me to go after I made it into the club was the DJ booth.”

  Cahir laughed.

  “He was there. He saw me dancing. He said that was what made him stop. Not that I was beautiful. The way I danced.”

  “Yeah. I get that.”

  “He stood to the side of the booth and just watched me dance. Then I went to him. And from then on it felt like I never left him.” I shrugged. “It was one of those-Like a hurricane. There would be a little calm and then we would go out and rage. Wreak destruction on whatever we could find. We wanted the whole world. To see it all. Mark it all. Do something vulgar to it.”

  “Sounds exhausting.”

  I tilted my head. “Yeah. It was. In a way. But he made tired feel good, natural. I didn’t need to keep my eyes open when I wasn’t with him anyways.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit,” I said.”

  “So how’d you find out?”

  “It was a Thursday.” I laughed at the irony of it. “He came to me and when he put his arms around me there was something else there. I sniffed and sniffed and sniffed, and the more I did the more the dread grew in my chest. A knot of it. It didn’t matter what incense or herbs I lit. It didn’t matter how much I danced or fucked. It was there. Right there.”