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“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.”
“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.”
A new-to-me hunger rumbles inside, not for food, but for her.
Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love” floats in muted tones to our stall.
Beyond these walls, back in the gym, they’re at the dance, but in this corner on our last night of middle school, we have our own theme. Our own rainbows and lights and music and magic.
It was perfect. A snow-globe moment where everything was shaken and all my particles are still drifting to the ground, resettling into a completely new person.
“Our pact is that we’ll always be friends,” he says, his voice quiet, sure. “That nothing will come between us, not even each other.” Not even each other.
“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.”
“My father always used to say whatever you do, be excellent,” Kimba says. “Whatever you do, consider others. Big moves make big waves. Do big things. Make big waves.
“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.”
“You could never be a lot of people, Ez. There’s everyone else, and then there’s you.”
And we kiss like there’s no tomorrow because there have already been too many yesterdays, too many years we were apart.
We were never lost, and this place has always been waiting for our wandering hearts, for our prodigal souls to finally, together rest.
“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.”
“It’s a queen move.”
“For black and brown girls, the world is full of sharp edges, and with every step forward, we risk being cut,” I say. “We have enough to worry about. Our hair shouldn’t be a hazard. Our hair shouldn’t be an impediment to success.
I love her. And from here on out, I want to be her last.
“Daddy used to say don’t waste time on things that don’t set you on fire inside, and I haven’t.
“I belong to myself,” she says, a spark of defiance in her eyes. “And to the boy who married me when I was six years old.”
“I remember everything. You owe me a lifetime.”
“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.”
“I was six years old.” I chuckle humorlessly and touch my empty ring finger. “And again when I was seven. Eight. Nine and ten. I think I fell in love with her every day for the first thirteen years of my life, and as soon as I saw her again, my heart just remembered.”
“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.”
“When it comes to love, some messes take longer than others to clean up.”
I sniff, appreciating the silence he allows me. He told me once I could take off my armor with him, and even though he can’t see me, I’m naked, vulnerable in a way no one ever sees me. I hope it’s all the hormones I’m taking and not my actual emotions.
“You save all your tears for the things that set you on fire inside. Anyone who’s ever thought you were cold never got to hear your passion for people, never got to see you fight for them when it’s inconvenient or even a lost cause.”
“All you did to make these other folks happy,” Mama asks. “When is it Kimba’s turn?”
“Study your queen so you can give her what she wants without asking.” Nipsey Hussle, Musician, Activist, Entrepreneur
