Seven Days in June

by Tia Williams

Looking at those bawdy broads, she felt the low-grade envy she always felt in a group. They were normal. They could do things.

I’m an alien, Eva thought. She’d always felt as if she were impersonating a human, and she accepted it. But she’d never stop fantasizing about being unsick.

Sickness wasn’t sexy.

“Stop writing about me.” Only Eva could’ve noticed the change in his expression. She saw the flinch. The slow, satisfied curl of his lip. His bronzy-amber eyes flashing. It was like he’d been waiting years to hear those words. Like the girl whose pigtails he’d been yanking during recess all year had finally shoved him back. He looked gratified. In a voice both raspy and low, and so, so familiar, Shane said, “You first.”

Mr. Hall, you should really go to therapy. Black men don’t go, and it’s an epidemic.

And maybe that was what real, adult love was. Being fearless enough to hold each other close no matter how catastrophic the world became. Loving each other with enough ferocity to quell the fears of the past.