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“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.”
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 nod. “I was just thinking about them, what they’re doing on a Friday night. It’s the Sabbath.”
“No.” I smile. “You can’t even turn on the lights or cook or do much of anything on the Sabbath.
“At first, yes. My mother actually started calling after Ezra was born.”
Daddy used to say don’t talk about it. Be about it. The fastest way to shut up someone who thinks you can’t do something is to do something.
Kayla is such a mother. I mean, the woman does have five children, the last one still in diapers.
No one person has had that many kids in our family since like… Reconstruction. But along comes Kayla, bringing fruitful and multiply back.
I can’t make the moment as light as it should be. Seeing her only twice in more than twenty years feels wrong. It’s never felt right to be apart from the person who once knew me better than anyone else—who
He’s looking at me like I’m the sunrise and he’s grateful for a brand new day.
That's exactly how a man is supposed to cherish his woman!
“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.”
“I don’t just want you when you’re strong. I want you when you’re vulnerable, when you’re lost, when you’re not sure. I see the armor you have to put on to make it in your world. I just want you to know here, with me, you can take the armor off.”
You put in that work if you want the rewards. And I’ve accepted that I have to work harder than everyone else sometimes just to get the same results. That’s the reality girls like me learn to live with. We use it to make us stronger. I kick those doors down, whether it’s in work boots or Jimmy Choos. Looking
It feels so good to let someone love me, to let him cherish me, to share my burdens with his strong shoulders.
“No. It was just Ruth and me.” Defiance and dread vie in Mama’s eyes. “The reason I was so sure Joseph never had an affair with Ruth is because I did.”
“Your father was busy, working, gone all the time. So was Al. It’s no excuse. Ruth and I just…we were there for each other. I never would have thought…”
“It happened. I let it happen. The day Joe died was the hardest of my life. The day he found out about me and Ruth was the second.”
“We didn’t plan it,” Mama says. “But she was miserable here and missing her family. I was resentful, felt like I was carrying all the load with your father gone so much, and I missed him. Missed being…touched, seen.” Mama huffs a short breath.
“Love is not a tidy thing, Kimba. It can’t ever be perfect because none of us are. Someone at some point will make a mess. The test of that love is how you clean it up. Your father stayed and we cleaned it up together.”
“After all these years we finally found our way back to each other at just the right time when he’s free, but his ex is now pregnant and I’m in perimenopause.”
Seven weeks. Two days. The baby’s mine. Any life that is just beginning deserves some celebration, but today, right now, it feels like my life is over. At least my life with Kimba. “I need to go out.” I stand to leave.
“Seven weeks along.” I see the devastation in her eyes before she can mask it, a flash quickly snuffed. “Okay. Thank you for letting me know.”
“I can’t, Ezra,” she says on a harsh breath. “Before you ask me, I cannot.”
“We’ll see.” She bites her lip, swallows. “But I think at least until the baby is born, we go our separate ways.”
“And will you be with someone else?” I’m holding my breath, holding my heart out to her, offering her the chance to break it. “No,” she laughs and swipes at the tears on her cheeks. “I don’t want anyone else. Only you.”
“And once the governor is elected and the baby is born and I’ve taken the book world by storm?”
She smiles. Not a wide smile that makes any promises, but one that says what she intends. “Then we’ll see.”
I’ve been lonely. I’ve been, at times, uncertain how this would work, how it would end. And now—love, relief, reunion.
“Well, we survived our first Christmas,” Kimba says, walking up beside me at the fireplace, taking my hand. “I mean, I’m not sure you can call it just Christmas when there’s Baptists, Buddhists and Jews, but you know what I mean. The holidays.”
Her shoulders shake against me. “Your ex and her boyfriend were there with the children you had together. Our mothers were in the same room for the first time in twenty-five years since they broke off their affair. And your stepfather is here. It’s just…all so weird. I thought Aiko getting pregnant was some Jerry Springer shit.”
There was no long engagement. Why would there be? We were both sure. We married on Valentine’s Day, barely a month past Governor Ruiz’s inaugural ball, and started trying for a baby immediately. Actually before immediately.
“It’s our secret. I want to keep it just ours as long as we can. It’s been a lot of work and some disappointment. I just want to savor it for a bit.”
This isn’t our first pregnancy. We lost one, so early we barely had time to celebrate, but it still hurt. Trying to have a baby when your body is hormonally resisting it in every way is difficult.
