by Tope Folarin
“Finally!” she exclaims.
He is momentarily confused. Then he realizes that she’s on the phone.
“Finally?”
“Yeah, I called every room on the top floor of Rand. I remember you said you lived on the top floor, but I couldn’t remember what number you said. You might have a few angry neighbors tomorrow morning.”
He laughs, and then he hears his roommate moaning in his sleep, so he pulls the phone cord outside and closes the door. He sits on the floor.
“You called every room?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I just wanted to check up on you, that’s all.”
“But I just saw you a few minutes ago.”
“Well, I miss you.”
And he feels something happening inside him.
“I missed you too.”
There’s a pause. She coughs.
“Well, I also wanted to know what you thought about all that stuff I said before.”
“At the restaurant?”
“No. In Jamar’s room.”
“About your ex?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t care.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
And he doesn’t.
But he does. He likes her, and when she mentions her secret, now no longer a secret—a secret that, when he thinks about it, isn’t really a secret at all, just a story that no one in the room had heard before—that day almost two years ago when she and her boyfriend had sex in the back of a truck at a drive-in theater, other kids looking on and cheering, the few parents there honking their horns and shaking their fists, he feels instantly jealous. He knows this feeling is entirely irrational, and he tries to convince himself that her prior life means nothing to him. But this lie will not stick.
And what about her other secrets? Something tells him that she is transparent, that she embraces life fully. That she is not a guarded person like him, that she will tell him anything he wants to know.
And he wants to know everything. At the same time he does not want to know.
And what about his secrets? If they continue to speak, if she feels even a hint of what he is beginning to feel for her, will she expect him to whisper his insecurities into her ears? The fact that he hates so much about himself, that he wants a smaller nose, skin that’s a few shades lighter, that he hates his toes, that he studies so hard because he suspects that the only thing people value about him is his ability to memorize facts and perform well on tests?
That he has never been with a girl.
But she is talking and talking, and he can’t help himself, he is talking back. It’s the kind of conversation that recognizes itself after a few moments and takes control. They talk and talk for hours, and who knows what they discuss? It’s the kind of talking that feels good because your words seem to intertwine with the words of the person you’re speaking with. They talk until he notices a few of his dormmates are already up and walking toward the showers. They say good-bye and he hangs up the phone. He lies on his bed for a moment. He smiles to himself. Then he rises to brush his teeth and get dressed.
He goes out to find her.
I love thinking about her. Whenever I’m in class, or walking around the quad, or studying in my room, she’s on my mind.
She’s everything I ever hoped for.
She’s absolutely perfect.
I can’t stop thinking that there’s no way someone like her could actually be real.
I need her. I don’t care about anything else. All I know is that I need to be with her.
She wants to hold my hand in public even though I’d rather not, even though I don’t really like doing it, even though there are so many other ways we can show each other love.
I like to show her how much I care about her by messing with her. Hiding her soap. Tapping her nose when she’s trying to concentrate. Tickling her when she’s trying to fall asleep. That sort of thing.
She’s learned my language and so now she plays tricks on me as well. She hides my stuff, teases me as I stomp around my room trying to find my keys, my backpack, my books, her laughter welling up inside me until it comes spilling out of my own mouth. That sort of thing. Why isn’t this enough? These private expressions of affection. Why must everyone know what’s happening between us? Why must we constantly advertise how we feel about each other? Our love is green and young, its first tendrils tentatively poking up into the air. Maybe too much sun isn’t such a good thing now.
She wants to hold my hand in public even though we constantly hold hands when we’re in her room, or mine. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone else’s hand so well. Each groove, each nook of it could as well be my own. Our hands fit so perfectly together, like she’s a puzzle and I’m the missing piece.
She wants to hold my hand in public even though everyone reacts the same way when they see us. They look at our hands and then they look at us, they peer at us, almost like they’re trying to imagine if we’ll be holding hands this time next week or next year. “Will they last,” their eyes say. Also “Do they fit?” Also: “How did he manage to snag her?” When we’re outside holding hands I can feel all those eyes boring into me, questioning me, undermining me, and she just walks along like everything is beautiful in the world, and this makes me so angry that sometimes it’s hard for me to breathe.
She wants to hold my hand in public even though we’ve only been dating for like, what, two months? Shouldn’t we at least hit the six-month mark before all the gratuitous PDA? Aren’t we jinxing ourselves? What’s wrong with walking close to each another, maybe even her slipping her arm around mine every now and then? Why the permanence—the inescapability—of handholding?
She wants to hold my hand in public even though there are all these other fine women out here. I see them all the time when we’re out, and it seems like more of them appear when we’re holding hands. It’s like the moment we start holding hands some alarm somewhere goes off, and all the finest women at this college—in this city, in this state—come out to watch us. They tease me with their eyes, they smile flirtatious, untouchable smiles. They wear tight, transparent clothes, they wink at me and show me what I could have if I would just let go of her.
She wants to hold my hand in public even though she could be holding anyone else’s hand. Really, she could. She’s so beautiful and so confident, everyone knows her, everyone thinks better of me because I’m with her. So why does she want to hold my hand? All these other men who eye her so aggressively—does she not see them? Or is she pretending that she doesn’t see them? Maybe she does see them, maybe she holds their hands when I’m not around. Maybe all of this is some kind of ruse, maybe there’s a camera trailing me, maybe one day I’ll turn on the TV and see the last two months of my life—the happiest moments I’ve ever had on this green earth—were just a big-ass prank. Once I see it I’ll laugh along with it, I’ll have to, because why did I ever believe that any of this was real?
She wants to hold my hand in public even though I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve the way I feel right now. I don’t deserve this joy, this peace, this sense that we are the product of some long equation that has been winding itself through the years, that we, us, are a destination. That we have arrived where we were meant to be, and other things will find us too. Success. Children. Hope.
She wants to hold my hand in public even though I am ugly. I am unsightly, tarnished. My face is a sad collection of odds and ends that were rejected from the faces that were fashioned before mine. There is nothing pleasing in my appearance, and not much pleasing about me, so why does she insist on grasping my hand so tightly?
She wants to hold my hand in public even though the very act of holding hands is an affirmation of our mutual belief in the impossible. Can we afford to believe so dangerously and so wildly in an uncharted future? Both of us come from poverty. Both of us barely made it here. These dreams that nestle in the space between our hands—can we afford t
o keep them there? Will they survive? Shouldn’t we just cast them away—and each other—before we’re damaged by the inevitable calamities that feature so largely in our lives?
She wants to hold my hands in public even though I think I love her. Everything I’ve loved in my life has been destroyed, has destroyed itself. I think I love her but I don’t think we’ll survive as a couple—I don’t think she’ll survive—if we continue to hold hands, because handholding must be some kind of signal to the universe that we are falling for each other, and if the universe receives that signal I’m afraid we’ll be destroyed sometime soon. We have to keep our love at a level that is just beneath love, whatever that is. That’s the only way we’ll survive this.
She wants to hold my hand in public even though she’s held many hands before mine. She told me she’s been dating dudes since she was in middle school. How many hands is that? How did they feel?
Do my hands make her feel safe? And if they don’t, what am I supposed to do?
She wants to hold my hand in public even though I’ve told her so many of my fears, and some of the mistakes I’ve made. She often holds my hand when we’re talking, as if her holding will ease more information out of me, and as I’m talking I’ll look down at our entwined hands and wonder if she actually has any clue what she’s getting herself into. If she cares.
She wanted to hold my hand in public until I told her a few days ago that I didn’t want to hold hands anymore. She looked at me with fear and defiance in her eyes. “Why?” I told her that I didn’t feel comfortable doing it all the time. “Why?” I muttered something about my culture, my parents’ culture, but she knew that I wasn’t telling the entire truth. “Why?” So I told her. “I just want to be sure,” I said. I wasn’t being clear, but she seemed to understand. She nodded and dropped my hands and left my room.
We did not speak for one, two, three, four days. And then she called and asked what I was doing. I’d never been so relieved. I rushed over and gave her a hug and told her I was ready to hold her hand as long as she wants, wherever she wants. She barely managed a smile. And that’s how it’s been for the past few days, us walking and talking all over campus, us not holding hands.
My eyes are filled with words.
My tears are waterlogged
Apologies. Please
Forgive me.
One night I wake up and she’s there, breathing slowly next to me.
I reach over, slip my hand under hers. One by one her fingers curl over mine.
Her face.
Her face is just as I imagined it.
Especially her lips.
Sensuous. Shapely. Full.
“Tell me a joke.”
“I don’t really have any jokes.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m not a jokester.”
“OK, but you must have one in your back pocket or something.”
“Nope. My back pocket is empty.”
“OK, that was a joke, I guess. But corny.”
“A joke is a joke.”
“Come on . . . give it a try.”
“Why are we doing this in the dark?”
“So you won’t have any inhibitions.”
“I’m not afraid to tell jokes.”
“But maybe you are.”
“Not really.”
“OK, then, give it a shot.”
“Um. OK. What do you get when you cross a turtle and a porcupine?”
“What?”
“A slowpoke.”
“Soooooo bad.”
“But you laughed.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“What would you do if someone gave you a million dollars right now?”
“Like just randomly?”
“Yeah.”
“Like if someone just came up to me and handed me a check?”
“If you require that level of specificity, then yes.”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never really thought about that before.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“That’s pretty weird.”
“OK, then, tell me what you’d do.”
“I thought you’d never ask. First, I’d give half of it away immediately.”
“I see you’re trying to show me up.”
“And then I’d take the other half and just fly away with you somewhere. Anywhere, really. It wouldn’t have to be a beach or anything like that. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just escape everything and just be together and not have to worry about money or anything like that? Like wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just start our own thing somewhere? I’d give just about anything for that.”
She said she loves me
She said it twice
I love you, she said
I want you to know that I love you
Her love is everything I have been waiting for
She loves me
She said it twice
Now the joy of my world is in
Noelle
Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle. Noelle.
I love writing her name.
I write it everywhere.
Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde. Noelle+Tunde.
/>
Our names belong together.
We belong together.
Her love makes everything real.
These days and weeks and months
I never spent much time thinking about where time goes. How it passes.
But I can feel it now.
Every second ticking in me when we’re together.
Each empty and meaningless moment when we’re apart.
“I just want you to know that I’ve never been happier in my life. Never.”
“I feel the same.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The exact same.”
It’s true, I’ve never been happier in my life
but what happens next?
Where do we go? What do we do? What’s the next step? The next chapter?
What happens after happiness?
I know what happens. We fight. We fail. She cheats or I cheat. She falls out of love with me or I fall out of love with her. That’s how these things always go.
I can’t just let this happen to me.
To us.
I have to be in control.
It will hurt less if I make the first move.
“Do you have to go back?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Well, I started at Morehouse. I want to graduate from Morehouse.”