“Beating another victim at chess.” He doesn’t look at me as he continues loading the dishwasher.
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.
The silence that settles between us doesn’t have the chance to grow awkward because laughter and shouts reach us through the window. I peer out to the backyard. Overhead lights strung in trees lend the scene a warm glow. Two lines form, people facing each other, and Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” drifts into the kitchen, the dance standard that no cookout is complete without.
“Oh, it’s on!” Mona says, hips already swaying, fingers already snapping, arms already in the air. “Soul Train line! Come on.”
“You guys go on ahead,” Ezra says, giving Mona an indulgent smile. “I’ll finish up in here.”
“You sure?” I ask, meeting his eyes for the first time since my awkward comment. “I can help.”
“Nah.” He extends his smile to me, though it’s less natural. “You know I never met a dance floor I liked, even if it is grass.”
A memory takes shape. Me dancing with Jeremy, and Ezra swaying awkwardly with Hannah, our eyes meeting over their shoulders. Boyz II Men singing “I’ll Make Love to You” before we even knew what it meant to make love. We had no idea our first kiss was right around the corner and down the hall. No idea it’d be with each other. Breathless innocence. The first taste of passion. My heart pounding through my training bra, and Ezra’s hands so strangely certain even at that age of how to touch me. Not in bases, first or second or third, but in stages. Exploring, easing, caring.
“Girl, he hates dancing,” Mona says, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the door. “You know that.”
I shoot one last look over my shoulder as we’re heading out back, and he’s watching me again. I don’t have to wonder if he’s remembering that night, that dance, that kiss.
That ending.
I know he is.
Chapter Nineteen
Ezra
I’ve always had two left feet.
My father tried teaching me to dance. He used to say my mother’s genes took all my rhythm in the womb. I used to think black people just knew how to dance. It was something I missed out on. A stray piece of my puzzle I never found.
My parents were shocked when I decided after high school in Italy that I wanted to attend Howard University. My mother didn’t know how to ask it, but she didn’t have to. The but why was all over her face. I’d received acceptance letters from Cornell, UCLA, and Columbia, my father’s alma mater. I didn’t even have a scholarship to Howard, but I chose it; I wanted to immerse myself into the unique experience I could only have at an HBCU. I needed to explore that aspect of myself, that black part of myself, in a place where it was affirmed.
I’ve never regretted it. It solidified so many things about who I am. All the parts of who I am. My senior year, I did my student teaching in some of D.C.’s toughest schools and saw how the system had failed a lot of those kids. Saw how hamstrung many educators were by the very system that charged them to teach. That was when the vision for YLA first took root.
The kids at YLA love to dance, most of them executing the latest moves with an ease my body has never managed. Noah’s still too young for YLA, but he’s around a lot, and as soon as they turn on the music and start dancing spontaneously in the gym, the cafeteria, the courtyard, he’s up and moving.
Like now. I’m sitting on this stacked stone wall encircling Mona’s backyard, still the “potted plant” wallflower, while my son is dabbing, sliding and Fortnite flossing, his face lit up as he stands in one of the lines awaiting his turn in the spotlight. Mona powers down the open lane between the two lines, moonwalking, pop locking and freestyling with Marvin Gaye crooning encouragingly.
And then it’s Kimba’s turn.
That damn little dress she’s wearing has tortured me ever since it walked through the door, swishing around her toned legs, hinting at an ass which, I remember from the times I’ve seen her in form-fitting clothes, is spectacular. The spaghetti straps slip off smooth brown shoulders as she shuffles down the open lane. She lifts her hands in the air, arms extended, worshiping the beat, twirling carelessly as the hem of her dress flies up, flashing the tops of her thighs.
I haven’t been this hard in weeks. Months. Years.
Ever?
I don’t remember having an erection around Kimba when we were growing up. We were kids. We were young. Even when we shared our first kiss, I wasn’t afraid my body might betray me, confess to her the urges we weren’t ready to act on. But now, watching her, wanting her as a man, not an untried kid, there’s no hiding the effect she has on me. I’m sitting on the sidelines, not just because I’m apparently the only dude at the cookout who can’t dance, but because if I stand, everyone will know my situation. Immediately.
There’s no hiding this fully erect dick in my pants.
I’ve tried not to watch her, but I’m obsessed with the curve of her waist, the shadowy dip between her breasts, the elegant line of her neck, the way her hands dance in the air when she’s animated. The intricate whorl of her ear when she pushes the curls away from her face. The regal profile and perennially-kissed pout of her lips. Hers is a boudoir body out in the open, a bold sketch of elongation and exaggerated curves.
I have to stop.
But I can’t.
It’s a compulsion. It’s a high. After all these years, she’s here. And I can’t get my fill. All these people—I wish they’d disappear and I could have her to myself. I could excavate her mind and dig around in her soul and get close enough to hear her heartbeat. Beyond the desire to lay her down in the grass and plunge between those long legs, there’s something I want even more. To know her the way I did before. No, deeper than I did before because now we’re adults, re-formed by time and experiences.