“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Am I okay?” My voice spikes with incredulity. “You’re the one who just choked a white supremacist in a roomful of white supremacists, but yeah, I’m just dandy, Grip. What the hell?”
“I did not choke him. I firmly held him against the wall. The limp dick bastard could have gotten loose at any point if he’d tried hard enough.”
“And why do you think he didn’t try?” I demand. “Why do you think he held back his security? Why’d he grin like a maniac the whole time? You played right into his hands.”
“Fuck this.” He tries to start walking, but I grab his elbow.
“No, listen to me. You’re there for a debate on people of color and mass incarceration and you do something like that? You know what you’re up against. You have everything he thinks you don’t deserve. He wants to discredit you, and you opened the door to let him. You have to be wiser than that.”
“Wiser?” Anger forces a plume of breath out to freeze in the air. “So now you’re telling me how to be a Black man in America? Like I haven’t negotiated this shit my whole life?”
“Oh, is that how it’s gonna be?” Hurt crowds my heart in my chest until it’s just a small thing barely beating. “I don’t get to tell you things like this? Why? Is it a Black thing and I wouldn’t understand?”
“This isn’t going to a good place.” He runs both hands over his head and down his face. “Let’s get home.”
“No, I want to know.” I tuck my hands, like blocks of ice, into the pockets of my cashmere coat. “Are there things that are off limits with us? When we have kids, will it be ‘our’ community and ‘our’ causes and ‘our’ struggle, and Mommy just gets to watch? Is that what you envision for me? Another family where I don’t quite fit?”
Tears blur his face in front of me.
“Because I’ve done that.” I swallow the painful lump searing my throat. “If that’
s how it’s going to be, tell me now. I want to be prepared if you don’t want what I thought you did—something that doesn’t have barriers or boundaries. I would never be disrespectful, you know that, but don’t . . .”
I look down at the cracks in the sidewalk, wondering if some- where inside I’m cracking, too.
“Just don’t leave me out,” I whisper. “Don’t make me feel like there are parts of your life I can’t touch, because I don’t have anything you can’t be a part of.”
He’s quiet . . . not just a quiet that is an absence of words, but a quiet that gives him space to think. He’s turning it over in his mind, the things I’ve said, and I’ve known him long enough to leave him with his thoughts for a while. He’ll come back to it when he’s ready.
“Look.” I take his hand, loosening the tension of the last few moments. “I would never assume I know what it’s like, but I know rich, entitled assholes. I grew up with them, and that one is after you. You gave him ground he should never have.”
I shake my head, bewildered by the idea that he would allow himself to be in that position.
“Why did you get so angry? What did he say to you?”
A wall of ice falls over his face and his lips pull tight at the question, at the memory.
“Let’s go.”
He starts walking again without waiting for me. I stay right where I am in the middle of the sidewalk, and he’s several feet ahead before he realizes I’m not trotting after him like some cocker fucking spaniel. When he glances over his shoulder and I’m where he left me, his shoulders stiffen and swell with a breath I’m sure he draws to keep himself calm.
Good luck. That shit rarely works for me.
He heads back with swift strides, his eyes a dark maelstrom, nostrils flared, and all I can think about is the amazing make-up sex we’ll have after this fight.
“What?” Hands locked at his hips, the leather jacket fitted to the ridges of his chest, his expression a study of irritation. I just want to shake him up like an Etch A Sketch and jar that look off his face.
“My feet hurt.”
“Your feet . . .” He shakes his head as if to clear it. “What are you talking about?”
“You said we’d be fine walking home, but my boots have four-inch heels, and my feet hurt.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have worn four-inch heels.”
“And maybe you should have called for a car like I suggested.”