The Art of Scandal

by Regina Black

She shouldn’t have let Faith talk her into such a big phone. Rachel had trusted her twenty-one-year-old daughter’s claim that it was great for watching movies, but it also made the penis inescapable.

Her husband’s rant about Virginia’s failed universal pre-K bill had gone viral. Nathan couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a white man in a thousand-dollar suit shout the word “fuck” that many times into a microphone. The guy was genuinely pissed off, even though the Abbotts could have opened their own chain of day cares with a fraction of that British slave trade money they pretended came from “working in textiles.”

What would it feel like to be held by someone like that? Someone big enough to block out the sun.

She was quiet long enough to give him palpitations. “I actually hate texting,” she admitted. “I’m too slow.” “That’s because you care about punctuation.” “Commas increase readability, and I will die on that hill.”

“Stay.” Alesha grabbed her arm. Rachel tried to pull away, but her aunt’s grip was fueled by intergenerational spite.

“She didn’t recognize me. She looked right at me and saw the First Lady of Oasis Springs and not Rachel Thomas, because I buried her. I gave her up and I grieved for her because it was the right thing to do. I became a wife. And a mother. And that should be enough.” She met his eyes, desperately searching. “Why isn’t that enough?”

He knew what it was like to walk into a room of white faces wearing dark skin made of stone so no one could hurt you.

“We don’t get joy.” He gestured toward the new realism exhibit they’d just left. “They get to deconstruct things and slap colors on a canvas because they like the way it looks. But we get what?” He gestured to the photos. “The special collection for heritage month? Places like this only care about our oppression and suffering.” Rachel took a step back. He was right, but she couldn’t help but feel defensive. “I get your point, but that erases the effort of people working to change that. I used to be one of them and my work was never about suffering.”

“You can’t walk like this,” he said. His face tightened, like he was readying for a fight. “I’m going to carry you. Please don’t argue.”

At first, she held her body stiff and upright as if she could make herself lighter. But then he squeezed her ankle, said, “Relax,” and like some magic spell, it made her sink into his warmth.

“I’m not your friend,” he said gently, with the exhaustion of someone tired of explaining the obvious. Her eyes filled. This was it. This was how she lost him. “Nathan, please don’t—” He stepped back. “I can’t do this. I can’t be around you and not…” He looked at her, finally, and took a deep, ragged breath. “I love you. I’m so in love with you, but I don’t know how to be in love with you.” There was no joy in his confession, only anguish. Like it was a sickness without a cure.

“Like what?” Rachel could feel herself changing, shedding an old skin that couldn’t contain her. She moved closer until the sliver of space between them was as charged as the thunder rumbling outside. “Tell me how I look at you.”

She grabbed his shirt with both hands. “I want you, Nathan. Please.” It pierced him like a bullet. That word. Her mouth, swollen from his kisses and begging for more. Begging for him. This was what it felt like: to be wanted, and to be enough. “Are you mine?” He kissed her again, claimed her with his tongue. “Because I’m yours.”

People who love you think they want to know everything about you. Like the unseen parts are wrapped gifts they’re eager to open. But Rachel knew it was more like reading someone’s diary or going through their internet search history. Once you know, you can’t unknow.

Mistakes aren’t debts we owe to other people. They’re just part of living.”

Hating someone you love only makes you smaller. Those feelings take up so much room.”