Queen Move (All the King's Men, #3)

by Kennedy Ryan

Humanity blurs my vision, wet and hot and stinging my eyes.

The Atlanta Child Murders case, two years of more than twenty unsolved murders and disappearances, transfixed the whole country. My mother mentioned it as soon as she heard we were moving here. “Yeah.” Janetta sighs. “All little black boys and girls. I had to know where my kids were every second of every day. We even started sleeping in their rooms after one child was taken from their bed. Joseph in Keith’s room and me in Kayla’s. Well, that’s behind us now, thank you, Jesus.”

“You do know y’all have been the talk of the neighborhood, right?” Her frankness draws a startled laugh from me. “Can’t say I’m surprised.” I flick water into Ezra’s eyes and he giggles, his face lighting up. “I take it there aren’t many mixed marriages around here just yet, but it is the eighties.” Janetta shrugs, leaning a hip against the bathroom counter. “Loving was what? Just fifteen years ago? We’re not that far removed from your marriage being considered criminal, and in the South, ignorance about race likes to linger as long as it possibly can.”

“Me act funny?” I chuckle and frown. “Every time I leave my house people stare at me like I have two heads. At least once a week I’m asked if my son belongs to me. My husband is never home, and it feels like I’m in this whole state by myself. Of all things, I miss my mother, who rejected me for marrying a man who is not only not Jewish, but black. At this point, I’d kiss strangers to make friends.”

I blink at tears that snuck up on my eyes and press a hand to my chest where the loneliness collects.

“Whatever you would do if I wasn’t standing right here, do that because I’m too tired to referee for the two of you.”

I think every morning when Ezra wakes up, God gives him a tiny jar of words. He only gets so many, maybe a quarter of what the rest of us do. And he’s so scared he’ll run out, he uses as few of them as possible. Half his sentences are one word or a grunt. Weekends, he talks so little, I bet at the end of the day, he has leftovers.

“You know what my daddy calls it when one person has a head start that the other person doesn’t even know about?” “What?” “America.”

Neither of my parents really know what it’s like to live here as me. To look around and see no one who looks like you. To live with the stares and questions about “what I am.” To feel like a puzzle, pieces hidden and scattered, and always trying to find and fit all my parts together. To see myself not as half this or bi-that, but whole.

“Hazak, Hazak, Venithazek.” It sounds like Hebrew, but I have no idea what it means. “What’d you say?” “Be strong, very strong.” His fingers tighten on mine and he doesn’t drop his gaze or slide a hand in his pocket, or any of the other Ezra things he does when he’s unsure. “And we will strengthen each other.”

“He’s black when it’s convenient for other people, and white when it’s not,” I say. “If Hannah can’t introduce Ezra to her parents, then she doesn’t deserve him.”

Ezra and me in his backyard when we were six years old. He’d been to a wedding the week before and decided we should get married. Being Ezra, he had memorized all aspects of a Jewish wedding, and we reenacted them under his elm tree. When we got to the part where the groom could kiss the bride, he pecked me on the lips and we both giggled. My heart aches a little for that day. We’re only thirteen and I know there is a lot more innocence to lose, but somehow, I, too, thought we’d save all our firsts for each other.

With my free hand, I reach up and swipe my thumb across her bottom lip, smearing her red lip gloss. “What are you doing?” she asks, her mouth moving under my finger. “Taking off this lipstick stuff.” “Why?” She’s turned the volume of her voice down to secret. “Because I like your lips the way they always are.” Her smile dwindles into a straight line, and the laughter drains from her eyes. I trace her top lip with my index finger, swiping until the red tint of gloss is mostly gone. Even after there’s barely color left, I touch her mouth unnecessarily, so soft and pillowy. I should feel self-conscious or nervous or weird. It’s my first kiss, after all, but I don’t. It feels, instead, like I’m walking up to a moment that’s been waiting on me all my life. Since we were both born on the same day in different cities. Since Mrs. Allen plopped Kimba into the tub with me before we could even talk.

“Kayla said we’re supposed to use our tongues.” I press my mouth to hers and slide my tongue across her bottom lip. Her eyes pop open. “Did I do it wrong?” I ask quickly. “I don’t know, but I liked it.” She liked it.

“No one can ever say you lack confidence, Kimba.” “I’m a woman, a black woman at that, working in a male world. If I waited on other people to believe in me, I wouldn’t get very far, and neither would my clients. And I take my clients far, Congressman.” I let that sink in because we both know I just took one to Pennsylvania Avenue. “Get in touch when you’re ready to talk.”

“I kinda miss normal life.” “Fuck normal. We are not normal chicks.” I relax into the corner of the sofa and cross my legs. “We are in the League of Extraordinary Bitches.

When I was six years old, I got married on a spring day in my backyard. The bride wore a Paula Abdul T-shirt that declared Straight Up on the front. There was a tiny hole in the toe of her Keds, and her pink sock poked through it. Her hair was artfully arranged into two afro puffs. The groom wore a Superman cape and swimming trunks. Who knows why six-year-old Ezra was obsessed with swimming trunks, but there you have it. Mama had taken me to Aunt Rose’s wedding in New York, and I knew as soon as I got back to Atlanta, my best friend and I should get married. For once, Kimba let me have my way. The low-hanging branches of the elm tree out back formed our chuppah. I couldn’t remember any of the Sheva Brachot, so I made up my own seven blessings. I’m pretty sure they were things like all-you-can-eat pizza and Super Mario Brothers high scores. I grabbed two tabs from cans of Coke in the refrigerator for our rings. I can still feel the cold metal encircling my finger. I couldn’t remember why they broke the glass at Aunt Rose’s wedding, but we dropped one of Mama’s mason jars on a rock, jumping back and laughing when it shattered everywhere. And that was it. We were married. Kimba said we shouldn’t tell the grown-ups because they wouldn’t understand, and we should wait ’til we were older. She always seemed to know best, so I agreed.

“If a woman is in perimenopause and wants to have kids naturally,” Dr. Granden says, her voice softening into compassion, “she better move fast.

Why do you want to run for office? You’re making plenty of money practicing law.” “It’s not about the money,” he says, his tone stiffening like one of his heavily starched shirt collars. “What is it about then? Tell me.” “It’s about…the people.” “What about them?” “I…well, I want to help them, of course.” “Help them how? Tell me their issues. Tell me their problems. What’s the average income for people in that district? How are the working poor faring? Graduation rate? Voter suppression is rampant. What do you plan to do about it?” “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are you attacking me?” “Attacking you?” I suck my teeth. “Boy, please, you ain’t ready. If you think this is an attack, try being in a debate, a hostile interview. I’m giving you the chance to show me you care about the people you would be representing. That you care enough to know how you can help them, not how this opportunity could help you.” “You put every client though this wringer before you take them on?” Oh, he has no idea. “You still stepping out on Delaney?” I ask, going for that weak spot he thinks I don’t know about. The silence between us is sticky and pulls like syrup. “What?” he finally asks. “I don’t know—” “I said are you still cheating on your wife?” I hear him swallow, but no answer. “Get your house in order,” I tell him, “before you think about running for mine.” “Your house?” “Oh, yes, sir. I grew up in that district, Stoke, and I may not live there now, but I’ll be damned if I’ll send an ill-prepared,...

“They’re not married,” Noah interjects. “Mommy says marriage is a social construct like gender and race.”

I could have done it a hundred other ways, but when I worked on my first campaign, politics chose me.” “It’s a tough game.” “I’m a tough girl.” She drains her glass of water. “Ask all the people who call me a bitch. They’ll tell you.”

I cannot breathe. Sweat sprouts at my hairline and on my top lip. I fan hot air into my face, pressing my lips tight against a scream scraping the inside of my throat. The sun is too bright and the sky isn’t wide enough, the clouds seeming to drop and loom over me. I need to run, but I can’t escape my own body. I’m tethered to this flesh and bone, and these ticking-time-bomb ovaries.

Our friendship always went deeper than connections I’ve had with other people. Aside from how I felt with Lennix and Vivienne, no one else came close. All my life I kept waiting to feel that kind of knowing with someone else. I mean, we were thirteen. But I never have. I thought, maybe hoped, we had outgrown that visceral bond, but it’s still there. At least, I felt it immediately. It’s the fiber of our friendship. You don’t blame magnets for being drawn to each other. But if they’re far enough apart, they can’t stick. For the last two decades, Ezra and I were far enough apart not to stick, but now… This is a bad idea.

“You created a monster in your image,” I say, the laugh I force coming out breathier than it should. “I like to think so. I taught him the most important thing to remember in chess.” “And what’s that?” He glances up from the board, his eyes tracing my face in that deliberate way of his. “The queen is the most powerful piece.”

“Remember when I explained that a black queen starting on a black square is called a queen getting her color?” he asks, grinning. “I went around for days telling everyone I was getting my color.”

Is he judging me? I shouldn’t feel self-conscious about what I said. It’s the truth. I do prefer just fucking. I don’t like strings, to be tied to someone emotionally or socially simply because we had sex. By and large, sex has been physical with very few side effects on my heart. I’m fine with that, and Ezra doesn’t get to judge me for it.

“He always had those orange Push-Ups you liked so much. Those were your favorites.” She tilts her head, smiling as she considers me. “How do you even remember that?” “I remember everything, Tru.”

Isn’t there someone you’ve been attracted to? When Aiko asked me that question a few weeks ago, I didn’t see a path to do anything about my response to Kimba, but now she’s here. I should have tried harder to keep her in my life before. I was a boy then, but now I’m a man. And there’s a napkin in my head with Kimba’s name scribbled all over it.

Use the napkin in my edit

I’m infamous for the no-strings, hot-and-dirty package. Last but not least, why not? I’m here a few weeks and some companionship wouldn’t be awful. He does have that really lean biker body that I’m afraid if I straddle, I might break, but he’s attractive in a very kale greens kind of way. He’s smart and funny. Seems kind. Focusing on a date with an available man makes more sense than fixating on someone who is taken and has a family. It doesn’t matter that I felt more alive, more seen talking with Ezra than I have in years. I can’t let it matter. I need to do the right thing, and avoiding time alone with Ezra is the right thing.

He isn’t gone for two seconds before Mona takes his place by my side, grinning hard. “Did I see you and Barry with phones out?” “You’re worse than Facebook. I just clicked on him, and you’re already flooding my timeline with ads for wedding dresses.”

“Spoiled? Me? Keith is the one you both spoiled, allowing him privileges neither Kayla or I ever had simply because he was a boy. Letting him run wild so now he’s an entitled, underachieving, underperforming brat who assumes he can ride my father’s name and legacy into office. Well, not on my watch and not until I’m satisfied he will serve the people of this district well.” Mama sighs with a despairing shake of her head. “You’re just like your father.” “Thank you.” Mama whips a glance at me, rolls her eyes and relinquishes a tiny smile. Against my will and better judgment, my lips quirk, too. Our clashes of will usually end in mutual respect.

“Don’t do that, Tru,” Mama says, eyes narrowed, voice dropped. “They diminish us enough without you making yourself small. You descend from queens. And I’m not talking about going all the way back to Africa. I’m talking about your grandmother who put her life on the line as a freedom rider. Your aunt who was a pastor when they said women couldn’t be and led one of the largest congregations in the South. Your great-great grandmother, who, with a sixth-grade education, opened her own restaurant and became one of the wealthiest women in this city.” “I know, Mama.” I chuckle at her shaking the branches of the family tree to make her point. “You’ve told us a million times.” “Well don’t you forget it. Congressman Ruiz would be lucky to have you manage his campaign, and better hope you’re still available and interested by the time he realizes it.”

“I can’t just reproduce on demand. If and when I can get my period on track, I need someone to reproduce with, and I have no prospects. And I’m not sure I want to drop everything to have kids right now. If this window closes and I want kids later, lots of babies are up for adoption and need homes. I don’t need a sperm donor for that.” “I know you’ve never felt pressure to have kids,” Mama says. “Or to get married, for that matter, but I think you’d make a wonderful mother, if it means anything to you.” “That does mean something, and thank you, Mama.” “You keep doing what the doctor says and we’ll get through this.” The weight that’s been heavy on my shoulders since Dr. Granden first uttered the word “perimenopause” feels that much lighter with every person I share it with. First Kayla. Then Mona. Now Mama.

Her gift is one of Noah’s favorites, and one of mine, too. “Ezra’s Big Shabbat Question.” Noah reads the title of the book once he’s torn off the wrapping paper. The book isn’t that large, but my name leaps out at me immediately, of course. There’s a brown boy on the cover wearing a yarmulke. I go completely still and don’t think I’m even breathing. What a book like this would have meant to me thirty years ago when no one at my synagogue resembled me. A book like this would have reflected me when the only place I saw myself was in a mirror. That she found this book and shared it with my son? It means everything. “Wow.” Noah’s small face sobers. “This is…it’s great, Kimba. Thank you so much.” I think he knows this book really means something. For him, maybe for me. His blackness hides deeper in his pores than mine, diluted even further by Aiko’s Asian heritage, but I make sure he knows my history, my father’s history, and his father before him. I make sure he knows about all the influences, cultures and ethnicities that came together to make him who he is. It’s a rich, varied heritage, and I wouldn’t shortchange any part of it. “I’m glad you like it.” Kimba shrugs, smiles. “I saw it in the bookstore and just thought…” “It’s perfect,” I say.

I fall back through the split in the net enclosure, flopping onto the trampoline. The surface answers with a little bounce. That tiny hiccup of buoyancy lifts the heaviness, the doubt inside of me. With no audience but an empty backyard, I kick off my flats, stand on the trampoline and attempt one tentative hop. And then another. A bigger one that propels me higher and higher still. So high my arms fly over my head. My feet and legs absorb the shock, the energy of each bounce, and I’m soaring and landing and springing and laughing. For just a few moments, I don’t want to think about my ovaries betraying me, or that I’m never done proving myself, no matter how much I succeed. Someone still needs to see more from me before they give me a chance. I want to forget that the boy who used to feel like mine is now a man I can’t have. I leave all my problems on the ground and just jump.

And then we’re bouncing, facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes as the trampoline tosses us into the air. It hits him first, the laughter. A smothered chuckle when he releases my hand to bounce on his butt, then to his feet, and then springing higher into the air. And then I’m in its clutches, the mirth, the giggle spilling out of me like an overturned bin of pixie dust. It suffuses the air around us, the joy. We’re kids again, without cares or responsibilities. There are no ceilings on our dreams or walls on what could be. We could jump all night and laugh until dawn. Except after a few minutes, we stop bouncing to land on our butts and lie on our backs and look up. There’s a silver scythe moon slicing through the black velvet sky.

Who moves first, I’m not sure. Later my pride will say he did, but that could be a lie to exonerate myself. Regardless, his hand is cupping my face and my fingers burrow into the shorn curls at his neck. His thumb brushes my mouth, an echo of our first innocent kiss, but this kiss isn’t tentative or shy. He tugs my chin until my mouth opens and he licks into me, hungry and reckless. I lick back, I suck back, I groan back. This kiss flies into the sun, melting my iron will and burning my reservations to ashes. I fight my way through the lust fog and search for reason, a mirage in the distance, something flickering in and out of sight between hot fantasy and cold, hard reality.

“I overheard you tell Mona you like to fuck,” he says, trapping the fullness of his bottom lip between his teeth. “So do I. If you’re in the market for someone, I’d like it to be me.”

Rarely have any of my sexual relationships been complicated. It was a release, a transaction of pleasure between two consenting adults who were free to transact with whomever they pleased. I already know Ezra would be a different story. “Ez—” “I don’t want to see you with him.” “I know you’ve been off the market,” I say dryly. “But that’s not exactly how a man talks when all he wants to do is to fuck.” “What do you want me to say? That I don’t feel anything for you? You know that’s a lie. Whatever was between us when we were young never got the chance to become…more. But it’s still there, and it could never be nothing.”

I stride from the bathroom and come face-to-face with Anthony Rodderick, my sometime-nemesis. Yale educated. His family are Augusta National board members who yield power across the entire state. He holds a guaranteed spot on Sunday morning’s political news circuit that I usually eschew. He’s your typical entitled male, but a liberal, so in some ways he’s even blinder to his own privilege because wanting to save the world assuages his guilt for getting all he wants from it.

I pull back to brush my thumb across the vibrant coat of lipstick, smearing it. Her lips are soft as petals under my finger. I do it again and again until nothing but the natural pinkish-brown of her mouth remains. Her breaths come harder every time I touch her lips, and she’s panting, her eyes never leaving my face. I cup the back of her head and bend, giving her one last moment to think better of it—to pull away. But instead she leans in, meeting me halfway, her mouth open and her sweet tongue seeking mine.

And we kiss like there’s no tomorrow because there have already been too many yesterdays, too many years we were apart. Centuries separated us, but now here we are and here’s our chance. It’s not ideal and it has its complications, but it’s ours. And we’re taking it.

“My shoes.” I stop and bend to take them off, but he dips under my midsection and hoists me over his shoulder. “Ezra Stern!” I squeal, bouncing against his back, the rows of vegetables a blur as he dashes through mud and squash and tomatoes. “If you drop me…”

“What’d he do?” Because I can already tell he did something I’ll hate him even more for. “He told me if I didn’t let him fuck me again and suck his dick this time, he’d post pictures of me in the cafeteria. Pictures he took while I was asleep. He even threatened to send them to my father.” “Motherfucker. What’d you do?” “What I always did with my problems.” She smiles sadly. “Went to my father.” “You told him—” “I told him everything. I always could.” Her naked shoulders gleam in the moonlight when she shrugs. “He told me not to worry. Said he would take care of it, and he did. I don’t know exactly how, but there were no photos and Terrell couldn’t even look me in the eye to the day he graduated.” “I hope your dad did something incredibly painful that ruined his future.” Kimba slants an amused glance to me. “He might have. Daddy did have his ruthless streak.” I shake her playfully under the covers. “That’s where you get yours from.” “Damn right.”

“A lot?” I ask teasingly. “Have there been a lot?” He pauses mid-toast-flip and slants me a glance. “Are you asking how many people I’ve had sex with?” “I mean, it’s none of my business. If you don’t want to—” “Eight.” Eight? Lord above, only eight?! “Oh.” I straighten and rest my hip against the counter. “What a, um, single-digit number that is.” “Well, I’ve been with one person for ten years so…what about you?” What about me? I’m tabulating years of hook-ups, one-night stands, fuck bois and carrying the one. “If you don’t want to,” he says, cracking an egg into a bowl, “it’s fine. I don’t care how many people—” “I don’t know.” He glances up from whisking eggs, a small frown puckering his dark brows. “You don’t know what?” “My number. I don’t know how many people I’ve been with.” He resumes whisking, his frown clearing. “Oh.”

“Tru.” He stops whisking and gives me the full impact of his undivided attention. His eyes are placid blue. No shadows or undercurrents. “I don’t care.” Ezra pushes the bowl aside and faces me. “But there is something I feel like we should be clear on regarding how you’ve handled sex in the past.” Here we go. “You’ve never wanted to commit before,” he says. “Right. I’ve never wanted any strings attached.” “I know I said we could be just sex, no emotional attachments.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “But I feel like I have to be honest with you. Having you back in my life has been…it’s been exactly what I need, and what I felt last night… I’ve never felt that way before.” I’m not even sure my heart is beating, but it also feels like there’s a tumult in my chest. “What are you saying, Ez?” His mouth flattens into a hard line and his jaw hardens to stone. “I want strings.” “Y-you do?” “I want strings.” He links our fingers, strokes his thumb across my palm. “Ropes, if necessary. I want anything that keeps you with me and me with you and tells everyone else don’t even think about it.”

“Look. We’re already redefining the relationship,” he says. “Strings attached?” “I can’t believe I’m saying this.” I step closer, tipping up on my toes to kiss him. “But yes, I want all the strings.”

“He loves to travel.” Ezra walks up beside me, studying the photos. “Next year, he wants to go to Israel. Shocking.” “I love how interested he is in his Jewish heritage.” Ezra breathes out a laugh and shakes his head. “A lot more interested than I am. He asked me if I’ll start taking him to synagogue. I am not that Jew. I was a lot more involved when I was younger, but mostly because of my mom and Bubbe. As I got older, there were some things I wanted to keep, and some that just didn’t matter as much to me.”

Your zip code shouldn’t determine the quality of your education.”

For so long he wasn’t in my life, and suddenly he is. And beneath the layers of pleasure and delight, there is a sick feeling that just as suddenly as I found him, I’ll lose him again.