Better as Friends

by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson

  I took away his wine glass and let him squeeze my hand instead.

  “Instead it proved I was an idiot. Who decides that love should make them miserable or justify being miserable? How low have you sunk that misery is what you look for and you’re willing to abandon joy? Miserable? No. Fuck that. I want to smile. Every day for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live in misery.” He looked down at my hand. And blinked. Looked around for his wine. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize for something I did.” I gave him his wine.

  “You two aren’t alike. I’m not walking around with the exact same kind of love for two identical women. The way I feel about you is yours. Just yours. No one’s had it before you. No one will get it if you decide to leave.”

  It wasn’t the wine that made my body warm and reality loose. “What’s the second part?”

  “There’s a part of me that loves Zion. All of me knows I can’t be with her. Every single fiber of my being knows what I’d be signing up for if I went back to her.” He shrugged. “So yeah. I love her. But that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t influence any of my decisions.”

  “What if-”

  “I hate this game.”

  When he rolled his eyes that time I knew he meant it. I wished I had something small to throw at him. “What if she fixed it all? What if she went to therapy and realized the error of her ways and got all of her shit together? What if it were obvious that she got it all together? Would you go back to her?”

  “I don’t live in the world of ‘what if’. Either it happened or it didn’t.”

  “Cahir.”

  “Cash.”

  “Don’t.”

  He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I don’t want to think about it. It’s a colossal waste of my time.”

  Maybe. Maybe it was.

  “Have I answered all of your questions? Addressed everything you’ve been thinking?” He drained his wine glass.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any other questions for me?” He took my glass and drank its contents in one long gulp that put my focus on his throat, his lips. The way he licked them.

  “No.”

  “Did my answers help or hurt?”

  “Help.” I didn’t have to think about that.

  He tugged my ankle until my back was flat on the couch. His fingers went to the button and zipper of my pants. “Can we do something else now?”

  “Please, God.”

  His laugh was dark. My sigh was soft when his mouth met mine.

  Cassidy

  “I was wondering when you would come down,” Gran said.

  She was right to wonder. The smell of melted beeswax called to me in my sleep and pulled me from my bed. It led me into my kitchen where I made two cups of tea and wrote a note for Cahir, still asleep in my bed. And didn’t that make me smile? To know that body with its corded muscles and desire to please laid where I left it. Laid where I drained it after a long night of reaching for him. Riding him. Accepting him. Pushing him. Touching him in places he hadn’t been touched before. Making him familiar with the dark. A lover of it.

  Gran was in the back of her shop behind the glass that gave everyone full view of her workshop. Sometimes shoppers would abandon their carts to see her pour candles or polish her own crystals. To see her bead jewelry or clothes in the way the Kenyan women taught her. Her hair was covered by a turban. Her face carried a light sheen of sweat. Her hands never wavered as they passed over each of her molds with hot, melted wax.

  I stood next to her at the old work table the man I called Uncle Ernest made for her. I ran my fingers over the heart I carved into it with our initials. My father told me Gran was going to kill me when she saw it. That I would be in so much trouble. But Gran ran her fingers over it and asked me for the knife. Then she carved our initials deeper into the wood.

  I took the wax from her and jerked my chin at the tea I brought down.

  “You remember how?”

  I rolled my eyes and bit back my yelp when she pinched my thigh. I accepted the burn for the first bit of focus that it was and fell into the pattern of breaths she taught me. That batch of candles was for tranquility. Calm. Serene. Worry free. That was what the dictionary said tranquility was. Gran taught me that it was a pleased acceptance. It was the pleasure of life as it existed and the lack of desire to concern yourself with what it would be.

  Tranquility wasn’t always easy for me to find, but I poured the candles, set the wicks, and felt my mind go quiet.

  We would wait for them to cool before we carved anything into them.

  “So.”

  I smiled at Gran. “What if I just wanted to see you?”

  “Then you would have seen me and gone back to the man in your bed.”

  “How much did you hear?”

  “You mean how much did I feel?”

  No. I said what I meant. Not that something like that would matter to Gran. She wanted the thing she valued most: the truth. It was the foundation for everything for her.

  “How much did you feel, Gran?”

  “How long have you loved him?”

  “I’m not ready to say that I do.”

  “How long has he loved you?”

  “I’m not ready to admit he does.”

  You gave Gran the truth because of the look in her eyes when she heard it. Because you could feel her pride in you emanate from her body like a wave that crashed over you and warmed you from the inside out.

  “What holds you back from something that should only make you better?”

  I looked at her. She was such a graceful woman. There was majesty in the wrinkles joy and time gave her, in the direct, doe eyes that were the exact match to mine.

  “There’s an insecurity in me.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  “I’ve never met the woman he loved before me. I’ve never seen her. I won’t even google her. I don’t want to know.”

  “Why?”

  “She broke him and he still speaks kindly of her. She hurt him and he won’t place any more blame or anger on her than she deserves. She betrayed him. Twice. And he can look me in the eye and tell me that he can’t be with her but he still loves her.”

  “Show me the rest.”

  Yes. She would know that there was more. “How can I compete with a woman that can do that? How can what he feels for me measure up to that? How can I build something new with him if there’s that?”

  “The ghost of a woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there more?”

  No. That was the big secret. The one that pressed on my chest in the mornings before he reached for me and followed me through Beyond. Screamed at me from behind the glass of her office.

  “Well, my love. You seem to not want to see things for what they are.”

  “Gran-”

  She held up her hand. “Love is not a confusing thing. It is a big one. So big that it sometimes pushes things like our common sense out of the way.”

  I laughed.

  “You say he doesn’t speak ill of those he invited into his life, into his heart. He doesn’t give more blame than what’s owed and deserved. I say that doesn’t say anything about her. That says something about him, about the kind of man he is, about the kind of man that he will be for you. You see?”

  Yes, I did.

  “Just because he is good doesn’t mean that you have to make yourself small or say that you don’t measure up. You have a good man. Mind your business and be a good woman.”

  I laughed again. “Gran!”

  “That’s all there is. Thinking that you have to be jealous and insecure not because he’s disrespecting you, lying to you, stringing you and another woman along but because he’s just good and decent is silly, girl. Stop that.”

  “And do what?”

  She got off the bench and went to the candles. “Enjoy yourself.”

  Eighteen

  Cahir

  I thought I f
ucked it up that night on my couch. I thought maybe I said the thing I wouldn’t be able to come back from. The thing that took the patience out of her eyes and the openness from her face. The thing that made her reach for me even when she didn’t need my help.

  But she was there. Still there. Not the same though. She came back to her bed late one morning smelling like wax and flowers and made me see colors I didn’t know existed. She laughed. She talked. She did all the things she did before. And was somehow still different. Still better. While still being Cash.

  It made me push. Try harder. Do more. Look for the places she hadn’t claimed yet and show them to her, offer them to her, see if she’d want to move in there too. She did. Even when I didn’t expect her to.

  But what was a stylist supposed to do with more clothes? What was the daughter of real estate moguls supposed to do with buckets of flowers and succulents from the farmer’s market? What was the granddaughter of a seasoned entrepreneur supposed to do with dinner dates?

  What did I have to give her that she didn’t already have?

  Racked my brain and came up empty. It was…odd. That had never happened to me with a woman before. Even with Zion, I knew she had more than she needed but would always welcome more. Things. Give her things.

  And I didn’t delude myself into thinking that if I had nothing Cash would want me. I knew that she didn’t find poverty and struggle attractive. Why would she? Why would anyone? But money wasn’t enough. Too common. It had to be more. Different.

  And then I had my answer.

  We had drinks with Junie. I laughed until I cried like I always did when Junie was around. She swung technicolor braids over her shoulders, popped her gum, and told you things about the world you already knew but hadn’t considered in quite the same way she did.

  And then I took Cash home.

  She moved through my apartment with the familiarity only comfort and time could give. Her purse had a place. Her shoes. The clothes she wore that day and the ones she would wear that night until I took them off of her slowly. As a reminder that I didn’t want anything separating her skin from mine. Things were better when my skin was on hers.

  We made dinner. No music, no talking. That was good too. Better. Silence used to be heavy, threatening. I used to wonder what secrets it held. What thoughts it concealed. With Cash it felt like-Like when my mom did the laundry when I was a kid and I used to bury myself under those warm soft clothes. Comfort. Security. Rightness.

  Dinner was quiet. The long looks between us said enough. The looks changed when I laid the rose quartz keychain with its single key and fob on the table.

  “What is that?”

  “Rose quartz.” I ran a finger over the raw stone. “I soaked it in salt water and charged it like you taught me. In the window during a full moon.”

  And, shit, I liked the way her body angled towards mine.

  “What’s on it?”

  “What you need to get into the building.”

  “Why?” Her voice was soft. Timid. Her eyes wide.

  “I-” I cleared my throat. “Because I wanted to give you a gift. Something you didn’t have. Something that would matter to the both of us.”

  “So you’re giving me your home?”

  I looked around the apartment. “I mean, I’m renting it. I don’t think it’s mine to give.”

  She laughed the way I hoped she would.

  “Access, Cash. To me. Whenever you want. I’m giving you a permanently open door.”

  “Did you give Z-”

  “We don’t have to do that you know.” The chair pressed hard into my back.

  “What?”

  “Every time I do something for you, we don’t have to take a moment to compare it to what I did for Zion. This is for you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She was graceful when she stood. When she walked across my apartment and put on her shoes, grabbed her purse and car keys, and left.

  I sat at my dining room table like a jackass. For twenty minutes. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong. I couldn’t make myself call her and find out. I didn’t want to know. If I didn’t know there was a chance she would just come back.

  “You didn’t lock the door behind me,” Cash said.

  She stood in the doorway, an oversized box in her arms.

  “Why don’t you ever lock your door?”

  I laughed, kissed her, sighed in relief, and looked down into the box.

  “They’re for you,” she said.

  I carried the box to the counter. She pulled the plants out and distributed them around the apartment. I remembered them. She would take clippings from herbs, plants, flowers from the farmer’s market and put them in little clear glass vases with long necks.

  They’d grown. Leaves and buds and fragrance filled my space.

  “You can see the water,” she said. “So you won’t have to wonder if they need any.”

  I nodded.

  “I wanted to give you a gift too.” She touched my face.

  I took off her clothes.

  Cahir

  A new pattern. A new twist. She didn’t give me a key, but I didn’t really want one. It was enough that she would be there when I got home from work. It was enough that she smiled. That she was closer still and her laughter was a bit brighter. It was enough that when she reached for my hand I knew she reached for someone that was more than her friend.

  We went to dinner. Sushi. She complained that there was no good sushi in the City, so I rented a limo for the hour long drive to the highest rated sushi restaurant I could find. And I smiled over our sashimi when I remembered all of the things that we did to each other in that hour.

  The restaurant was small. Hidden away in a subway station, of all places. The men that worked there were serious. The lighting was high, for their benefit. There was no thought to setting an atmosphere for us. The music was traditional, light, haunting. And our seats were high so we could peer behind the glass that separated us from the chefs and let us watch them craft masterpieces for us, one simple piece at a time.

  Cash held my hand when she wasn’t eating. She watched those men stretch salmon and tuna and God knew what else over rice and brush it with something that made everything taste more alive and squeezed my hand as if it were some high drama. She smiled at them and accepted every plate as if it were, of course, the best thing that ever happened to her.

  The joy on her face…I forgot to eat until she nudged me and whispered that I was being rude.

  I held her hand when we left the restaurant and walked through the subway station. She stopped to listen to a woman with an acoustic guitar scat and dug my wallet out of my pocket to give the woman money. I laughed. And I had to tell her.

  “I think I would stay with you.”

  She turned to face me after we stepped onto the escalator. “What?”

  “If Zion fixed everything, if she came back to me with not a single issue, I think I would stay with you.”

  “That’s good but,” she touched my face, “thinking isn’t as good as knowing, Cahir.”

  Cahir

  I took her to Miami for selfish reasons. I was a man that wanted to see his girlfriend in less. I wanted to see her skin bronze in the sun. I wanted to see her hair curl tighter because of salt water. I wanted to lay beside her in the sand and whisper all the things I wanted to do to her until she dragged me to a cabana we didn’t pay for or back to the hotel.

  I wanted to take salsa lessons with her and eat Cuban food. I wanted to drink tequila and watch other men fall under the spell her beauty cast. I wanted to know what color the sunset would make her eyes.

  Girlfriend.

  That’s what I said she was when I went to the front desk and asked them to send breakfast up to her while I was at the gym. When I called the florist and asked them to have flowers delivered to her at Beyond when we got back from our trip. It was what I said in my head every time I looked at her and it made me smile. I didn’t stop smiling. I wanted to know
if she would smile too.

  “I’ve been calling you my girlfriend in my head for about a week now,” I said when we were settled on the private jet I chartered to take us home.

  “Have you?”

  I pulled her onto my lap. “I don’t know what that face means. I think this is the first time-”

  “-I’ve made an undecipherable face?”

  I tickled her ribs. Her laugh was like…

  “I’ve been calling you my girlfriend in my head. With strangers.”

  The silence that fell over us-even that silence was comfortable. I traced circles over her back. Her arms looped around my neck.

  “Call me your girlfriend out loud,” she said when we were at cruising altitude, surrounded by blue sky and clouds. “Say it to me. Make it real.”

  Her lips were soft when she kissed me. They always were. And yet it always felt new.

  “You’re my girlfriend.”

  Nineteen

  Cahir

  I took her to her apartment because she asked. Because it made sense. I couldn’t have her every second of every day. Because our love was different. I was different. I didn’t need to be stifled. I didn’t need to drown. I kissed her. I carried her luggage to her apartment. I carried the shopping bags that filled my trunk and filled me with pride. My wealth had a purpose beyond myself. I kissed her again. I laid her across her bed and spread her open. Wide open. Legs. Mouth. Arms. Spirit. Mind. And I gorged so I would have a taste of her when I went home.

  Home.

  I didn’t know where home was. I knew what my address was. But when I went there without Cash it didn’t feel the same. Sometimes I touched her plants-my plants-and thought of her. Sometimes I looked through the refrigerator full of the foods we purchased and at the recipes suspended by magnets on the door. I opened her wines and had only a glass. Then I remembered what I wanted most was her. The taste of her. Laughter and teasing and serious and playful and sometimes quiet or bored. I wanted those tastes to fill my mouth.