The Brightest Day: A Juneteenth Historical Romance Anthology

by Alexander, Kianna

  “You busy in the afternoon?” he asked her.

  She regarded him suspiciously, and Ivan hated that she didn’t trust him, but loved that she was smart enough not to.

  “I have a class in the morning, but I’m free in the afternoon. Why?”

  “Because if what we just saw is any indication of how bad things can go, you’re going to have to learn how to take a hit.” He looked at the other students. “And if you can’t come tomorrow night, you’ll be missing some important information.”

  He knew that last line was a little manipulative. The Sofronia he’d known hated missing out on anything, and hated not having all the information available to her. She’d even refused to read their children’s books out of order because she wanted to know what happen in the rest of the series.

  “Do you want to swing by my place after your class? Or would you prefer I come to you?” He tried to make the interaction as normal as possible, like it made complete sense for the two of them to be alone.

  “I’m not sure about being alone in a house with you,” she said.

  Ivan ran a hand through his hair. “I guess I can pretend to attack you outside and we can see how that goes.”

  “The same way it always goes when a white man attacks a black woman,” she said, a hand dropping onto her hip. “No one would do anything to help me and you could go on about your day afterward.”

  Ivan felt her words like a hard right to the jaw. He knew that the bond they shared was based on childhood friendship, and that many things had happened to them both in the intervening time. But for her to lump him in with them, with men who would hurt her because they could, was a low blow. The fact that everyone around them was not pretending to be otherwise engaged meant they felt the sting of her words too.

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair to you when you’re just trying to help.” Her lips pressed into a line. “Do you still live…” She paused and Ivan filled in the blank. Where Miss Delia died? “…at the same address?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll be there around three,” she said. Ivan realized he had expected her to say no, and tried not to show how surprised he was by her response.

  “I’ll be waiting,” he said.

  Chapter 6

  Dragging your feet wasn’t very ladylike, but Sofie was second-guessing her decision as she walked down the tree-lined street leading up to the Friedmans’ house. She didn’t want to see Ivan and his mother and be reminded of all that she’d lost—and what more she might lose if her father continued to greet her with a stony silence.

  She hated that a part of her was looking forward to being visiting the scene of the most awful moment of her life. She’d never returned after her mother’s death; that meant she’d never gotten to taste Mrs. Friedman’s delicious food again, or to tell her how Mama had loved the challenge of mastering the specialized cuisine.

  She rang the bell, then adjusted the plate of cookies she had baked the night before when thoughts of Ivan and sit-ins and bloodied students had stolen her sleep. She often turned to the comfort of her mother’s recipe box when she was unsettled. She knew it was strange, but the notes were so detailed she felt like her mother had channeled some of herself into those family secrets, as if she had known that she wouldn’t be around to show Sofie just how long to simmer the collards or how much sugar she meant by “to taste.” Sofie sometimes pretended her Mama was with her as she whisked and chopped and folded, only it didn’t always feel like pretend.

  Ivan pulled the door open then, and the smile Sofie had plastered on crumbled away. He stood before her freshly showered and smelling of ninety-nine point forty-four percent pure goodness. His hair was still wet, his face freshly shaved. That was all well and good, but her gaze was drawn to his body: the ropy muscles of his arms, the broad chest—Sofie’s lingering sense of decorum didn’t allow her to look any further down than that.

  “Hey! Come on in.” He stood aside, and she was forced to pass close to the warmth that radiated off him. She didn’t know why he was affecting her this way. She’d been close to him more than once already, but there had been other people around before. The delicious smell of onions and garlic was emanating from the kitchen, and she realized it was Friday. His mother was probably making the stew for Shabbos. His mother or whomever they had hired in place of hers. Sofie felt a little bit nauseated at the thought of stepping into the kitchen and seeing another black woman working there, as if her mother were easily replaceable.

  “I made some cookies,” she said. “Is your mother in the kitchen? I can bring them in to her.”

  The door slammed shut and the effortless sex appeal Ivan had exuded shifted as he hunched in on himself. He cleared his throat. “Mom died two years ago. Cancer.”

  “Oh! Oh.” Tears pressed at her eyes suddenly. She hadn’t seen Mrs. Friedman in years but the news still hurt. Another part of her childhood, gone. Ivan been there for her in those awful moments when she’d lost her own mother. Who had been there for him?

  She lifted a hand, but it hung in the air between them, not quite able to span the distance. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  He nodded, then lifted the plate of cookies from her other hand and walked toward the kitchen. She followed behind him, searching for something to say to make up for her atrocious error. She was surprised to see him place the cookies on the table, pick up a large knife, and begin chopping potatoes. Her arrival had obviously interrupted him. “Sorry. I just need to throw this stuff into the slow cooker. Dad still hasn’t learned how to make cholent, and if I don’t cook it, he just won’t eat tomorrow.”

  She pulled up a seat at the kitchen island, warding off memories of so many years before. It was strange to remember the young, frail Ivan who would sit next to her at this very counter and listen to her mother’s stories as she looked at him before her, all grown up and cooking for the family himself. “That’s nice of you,” she said. “Sometimes I think the same thing about my father. I try to make something good most nights. Otherwise, he would just survive on TV Dinners.”

  Ivan chuckled, then reached behind him with the knife and used it pull open the freezer, which was stuffed to the gills with the distinctive frozen meals. Sofie gave a bittersweet laugh.

  “Women from our synagogue cook extra food and bring him their ‘leftovers,’ but he hates eating that. He says it makes him feel ungrateful when he thinks their food isn’t as good as my mom’s.” Ivan dumped the barley, potatoes, and beans into the slow cooker, then took the onions off the stove and scraped them in as well. “The only person who could ever match Mom in the kitchen was Miss Delia. She never stopped talking about her, you know. Even on her death bed she said, ‘If Delia were here she could show these di skeynes how to make some real matzah ball soup!’”

  Sofie smiled. She remembered how hard Mrs. Friedman had been on her mother during the first few weeks. Mama came home complaining about the woman every night. But when Mama had shown her she was no one’s fool in the kitchen, they’d developed a type of friendship. As much friendship as could exist between a servant and the woman she worked for.

  Ivan washed his hands and wiped them off on his jeans. “Okay, you ready to get to it?”

  Sofie nodded, and felt the oddest trembling in her stomach as he approached her. She didn’t think she’d ever paid much attention to the way a man walked before, but she watched the play of muscle as he took each step and how his arms swung in a way that projected an unconscious self-confidence. He gave her his chip-toothed grin as he stopped in front of her and nodded in the direction of her hands. “You should take those off. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for sullying your gloves.”

  “They’ll likely be destroyed at a real sit-in,” she said.

  He took her hand from where it rested on the counter and undid the small button at the base of her glove, and it was if that one flick of his finger released a torrent of tingling heat that spread from her wrist to her arm and through the rest of her body. “I ca
n only be responsible for my own actions,” he said. “And I don’t want to be the man who shredded these dainty little things.” He pinched the fingertip of the glove and gave it a tug, and Sofie felt the responding pull between her thighs.

  She should have grabbed her hand away from him then, as soon as that first bolt of pleasure went through her, but she simply stared up at him with wide eyes as he gave four more swift, gentle pulls and freed her hand from its encasement. He took the other hand, moving one step forward as he did, so that now the roughness of his denim pants rubbed against her knee as he worked.

  Sofie knew he could see her hand shaking, and her chest rising and falling heavily, and the way her knees were pressed together. She was embarrassed, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t disappointed too when he pulled her second glove off the final digit, her pinky, and laid it down besides its mate.

  She forced herself to look up at him, and was happy to see that his cheeks were flushed beneath his fading bruises. Ivan may have been cool now, but not so cool that she didn’t affect him, too. “Okay, we should go into the living room.”

  She stood on wobbly legs and clicked after him across the tiled kitchen floor. “Should I take off my shoes, too?” she asked. It was a brazen thing to ask, but her fingers were still tingling from his touch.

  Ivan stopped and looked back over his shoulder. His gaze fixed on her pointy black leather heels, then up her stocking leg until her skirt obstructed his view. His voice was low and his gaze intense when he answered, and his words made her throat go dry.

  “Leave your heels on.”

  Chapter 7

  Half an hour later, they sat stiffly beside each other on the couch.

  “It’s okay. I’m sure it happens to the best of boxers,” she said. Mortification clenched him by the back of the neck.

  He hadn’t thought through the most important part of the training: pretending to hit her. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even bring himself to throw a fake, loose-fisted punch that he knew would miss her by a mile. Sofie had stood in front of him, eyes wide and lovely, lips soft and distracting, and his fists had hung limply at his side. And now they sat in awkward silence.

  “This is ridiculous,” Ivan said. He grabbed Sofie’s hand and stood, pulling her up after him. When he turned she was giving him that ingénue look again, the one he usually only saw on the screen at the Saturday matinee. In the films, a look like that was an invitation, but he doubted Sofronia was offering him any such thing. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “First things first: you need to relax.” He gave her a gentle shake to loosen her muscles, which had tensed up as soon as he laid his hands on her. “You need to be a little soft to take a hit; leave a little give so the impact won’t hurt as much.”

  He wished he had phrased it differently—thinking of the soft parts of Sofie was making him uncomfortably hard, and that wasn’t what this afternoon was supposed to be about.

  She nodded, but the relaxation didn’t come. Instead, she started to tremble a little beneath his palms and her gaze dropped to the floor.

  “No.” Ivan slid his fingers under her chin and lifted her head. He didn’t miss that her skin was smooth beneath his fingertips. “Maintain eye contact. If someone is about to hit you, you want to see it coming so you can act accordingly.”

  “Okay.” She locked her gaze on his, and his stomach executed an unfamiliar twisting maneuver. It was a funny thing to look into a woman’s eyes like this. Intimate encounters were nothing new for him; ladies liked a guy who could hit and punch and dominate in the ring. Caveman attraction, and all that jazz. But no one had ever looked at him the way Sofie did, that’s for sure. Her eyes were full of contradictions: fear and longing, humor and distaste. Maybe he’d been wrong about the invitation. Maybe she was just waiting for his RSVP, like any proper lady would. Ivan’s groin tightened at the thought and wisps of desire feathered down his spine.

  He slid one hand over the crisp fabric that nipped in at her shoulder and then his palm was on smooth, warm skin. He cradled the back of her neck, and the way the curls at her nape tickled his palm was enough to make him want to pull the pins out of her bun and dive his fingers into the soft mass. Instead he exhaled slowly and continued his instruction. “You can be stiff here.” He gave her neck a little squeeze. “And tuck in your chin. Yeah, like that. That way your head won’t snap back if you take one to the face.” He didn’t move his hand away; not just yet. Neither Jack nor any of the other boxers had ever touched him this gently during training, but this wasn’t the gym. This was Sofie, for Pete’s sake.

  His other hand left her shoulder, ghosted past her breast, and rested on her stomach. “You should brace here, too, if someone hits you. That way the wind won’t get knocked out of you. A blow to the diaphragm while your stomach is soft can make you feel like you’re dying.”

  He felt like he was dying, all right. Sofie still had her eyes locked on his, and her tongue slicked nervously over her lips. Her skin had gone hot beneath the fabric of her dress, and he could feel the way her heart was racing just above where his hand rested.

  Ivan didn’t think. His fist tightened, twisting up the fabric under his hand and pulling Sofie two steps closer to him.

  “Ivan.” His name was almost a question. What was the right answer? Damned if he knew.

  “Last thing: roll with the punches. When something comes at you, you have to roll with it. Go in the same direction to lessen the impact.” His face was lowering as he spoke, his mouth on a slow collision course with hers. At the last minute, she turned her face to the side and back, leaving his mouth beside her ear. Disappointment rocked through him, but he said what any good trainer would say. “Good job. You’re a fast learner.”

  Both of her hands came over his, pulling it closer to the soft curve of her belly. Her fingertips traced the indentations in his knuckles before she exhaled shakily and pushed his hand away. “You’re wrinkling my dress,” she whispered, then stepped back. “I should go.”

  He moved away from her and she turned and marched away, hips swaying as she balanced on those pointy heels. She grabbed her bag and trotted down the hall. “Thank you very much for the lesson!” she called over her shoulder.

  Ivan stood staring long after the door slammed. Sofie had learned to take a hit, so why was he the one left feeling punch drunk? He bounded up the stairs to change into his gym clothes. Only a long round with the heavy bag, and maybe a sparring match, would be able to rid him of the foolish notion that Sofie could ever be his.

  Chapter 8

  “They want to stop the rides,” Henrietta said when Sofie walked into the community center the following Monday. Sofie was supposed to be studying at the university, but she’d gotten off the bus early and come to the community center.

  “Why,” she asked.

  “Did you see what happened in Birmingham?” Henrietta asked. Sofie shook her head. “After beating those people half to death at the bus depot, they wouldn’t let them leave. They were trapped at the airport for hours with the same mob that attacked them because no flights would take them. It’s a miracle they got out of there, but now they’re not going to try to reach New Orleans.”

  Sofie’s heart dropped. “But that means…”

  “That means violence took the day,” David said, rubbing the crease between his eyes. He was sprawled in his chair, looking as tired as Sofie had ever seen him. “It means people will think that the movement can be stopped by bats and pipes and heartlessness.”

  “Well, we have to do something,” Sofie said. David and Henrietta looked at her warily. After all, it was an un-Sofie-like thing to say. Heck, she was wary of herself these days. But that fire in her chest was going again, and the idea that was forming in her mind made more and more sense.

  “Like what?” Henrietta asked.

  “I’m feeling a mite peckish. I think I might take a trip downtown and order myself a nice hamburger.” Sofie pulled on her gloves and a memory flashed in her mind, of her and Ivan pr
etending to go into battle during one of their childhood games. Then the memory of him unbuttoning the very same gloves the day before. She’d been out with boys before, had kissed and fumbled and explored—even good girls did that. But the way Ivan touched her had seared into her. None of the other boys had ever made her feel like that, and that just added to her guilt, because none of them had looked like Ivan either.

  What is wrong with me? She couldn’t be entirely upset. Whatever this madness within her was, it was about to take her to the Special K diner, and that was exactly where she needed to be.

  “Sofie, we aren’t prepared,” David said. “I know you’re upset right now, but flying off the handle isn’t going to change anything.”

  “No, it’s not. But I’m tired of being afraid.” The words came out almost a shout, and she calmed herself. David wasn’t responsible for Jim Crow, or for the way her father tried to cut off everything he deemed bad about her, like eyes off a potato. “I’m tired of living like this,” she said more calmly. “And I refuse to let any bigot in Richmond sit and pat himself on the back and think for one minute that people like us got put in their place. I’m going, David. I’m a grown woman and I don’t need your permission to do as I wish.”

  That thought was a revelation to her. She hated that her father was mad, but she only needed his love, not his permission. If he would deny her the former, well, that said more about him than it ever would about her.

  “Well, you do need one thing from me,” David said.

  “And what’s that?” Henrietta asked, standing beside Sofie. Her friend had put on her Jackie Kennedy sunglasses, which meant she was ready for serious business.

  David held up his key ring and jingled it. “A ride.”

  ~~~

  “Hell and damnation,” David said, as they walked into the popular Greek diner. Sofie knew he was more than nervous if he was getting biblical with his cursing.