We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

  I don’t let myself look at my phone the entire ride back to the newsroom even though it takes twice as long with Bart following the speed limit. And I don’t look when I’m back in the dressing room, wiping off my makeup. It remains tucked deep in the reaches of my tote bag as I walk home. It starts to rain on the way, a freezing drizzle, and I don’t bother to cover my hair. Umbrellas, weather, my hair, it’s all irrelevant.

  In my apartment, I change into sweatpants as if it’s a normal evening. My phone lies on the counter while I assemble the ingredients to make a vodka tonic, dragging the process out as long as possible, even cutting up a slice of a shriveled lemon that’s been languishing on the counter. By this point my anticipation has become a sort of frenzy, almost euphoric. It’s an exquisite torture to delay the inevitable, to speculate about what Corey might say, rather than to actually know.

  I let the vodka do its job as our three-year relationship plays out in my mind like a short film. In fact, it started exactly like a movie, complete with the sudden rainstorm I wasn’t supposed to get caught in. I’d been in Chicago for an NABJ conference. During a break, I’d walked a few blocks from the hotel to grab a pastry at a bakery on Michigan Avenue that everyone had raved about, and the skies opened up out of nowhere and I was stuck without an umbrella, a true catastrophe, considering my freshly straightened hair and the panel I was supposed to attend in twenty minutes that would be filled with top network producers.

  Like a fool, I tried to hail a taxi from underneath the bakery’s awning. Then, when I finally spotted a yellow light, I dashed out into the street so fast I tripped and rolled my ankle on the curb and fell straight into the arms of a man with a sexy buzz cut and the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen. If it didn’t happen to me, I would swear I’d made it up. Maybe it was the sheer romantic absurdity of it all that sucked me in at first, because this stranger wasn’t my type. Shaun may have a taste for white girls, but I’d never even looked twice at a white guy.

  He happened to be staying at the Hilton too, in town for a real estate conference. So we walked back, huddled together beneath his giant umbrella. He asked me to have dinner with him as soon as we made it through the revolving doors to the lobby.

  “If I’m going to dinner with you, I’ll need to know your name,” I said, impressed with my attempt at flirting.

  “I’m Corey, and you’re Riley.”

  He met my confused and slightly panicked expression by pointing to the name tag pinned to my chest.

  That night, we ate at a touristy diner in Greektown. There was something disarming and intimate about eating pancakes in one of those curved old booths, where you have to sit nearly side by side like you just ordered breakfast in bed. The whole time, I kept thinking that he must have slipped something in my drink. Otherwise, how could I account for how giddy I felt, bubbly even, drunk off the cheap sparkling wine, and why I kept telling him things, personal, embarrassing things—how I was jealous of Gabrielle’s trust fund and big salary working at Nike; how I say I’m fluent in Spanish, when really I’m passable at best; or how I like to act all worldly when I don’t even have a passport.

  Corey had his own confessions, though they were more charming than embarrassing. He talked with a lisp until he was ten; he once failed miserably on an episode of college Jeopardy!; his first sex dream involved Maria from Sesame Street. His favorite movie was The Lion King.

  “I cry every single time.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I replied.

  “Sociopaths,” he said.

  With each question he asked, I was more disarmed—and he was full of them, like he didn’t want to waste time on small talk. After dinner, we walked through Grant Park, skipping straight to our romantic histories, six years with a college sweetheart for Corey, ended the year before; three underwhelming relationships for me, if you could even call them that: two lackluster flings in college with dudes who didn’t worry too much about me not letting them in—it was enough just to be a pretty light-skinned girl with long hair—and then Alex, a fellow reporter in Joplin. That yearlong relationship was maybe the closest I’d ever come to love, but that was still eons away from the actual feeling. Sometimes I wondered if I was even capable of falling in love. I actually said that to him. Out loud. I had never vomited up so much personal information to a stranger before. It was an out-of-body experience for me, even more so when we headed back to his hotel room, which at some point in the evening became an unspoken inevitability.

  When Corey slipped his hand in my pants before we’d even made it to his room, we were both shocked at how wet I was. It felt like my own body had betrayed me with this evidence of my desire. I would have been embarrassed by how primal it was, I would have been concerned about the cameras in the elevator and who might be watching, reminding myself, Nice girls don’t do this—had I been capable of having any thoughts and feelings beyond This, now. Nothing else mattered. I didn’t even care that after two hours of sex I’d sweated out my blowout. The entire night, I was a stranger to myself, free of any and all inhibitions.

  Even thinking about it now brings a stirring between my legs. I press a throw pillow into my lap as if to muffle any lingering lust.

  When I’d woken the next morning in Corey’s suite, sore and spent, it had felt like waking from a fever dream, or what I imagine a heroin bender must feel like. I hobbled around, naked, to collect my clothes that had been scattered around the room, reaching under the bed for my bra, all while Corey watched me with this look, like he could see right through me. I didn’t want him to look at me like that. I didn’t want to feel the way I did. I didn’t want to date a white guy. I didn’t want a long-distance relationship. As I dressed, I explained that as best as I could (except for the white-guy part).

  “Okay, Riley,” Corey said, in a tone I couldn’t read. Playful? Resigned? Annoyed? “It sounds like you know best. At least kiss me goodbye.”

  I leaned over the bed to give him a peck. Before I could pull away, he grabbed my face and drew me closer, his tongue probing mine, until I surrendered completely, too shaky and weak to resist. When I finally managed to tear myself away, I didn’t trust myself to say goodbye; I just flew out of the room. Not an hour later, after I’d showered away all the last traces of sex and chalked it up as a once-in-a-lifetime blip that no one needed to know about, I received a text.

  I’m booking a flight to Birmingham. You can’t get rid of me that easily. We have to see where this goes.

  I both loved and hated this about Core: his ability to proceed as if everything was going to fall into place for him, because it always had—the privilege of being a good-looking white guy from Connecticut. His confidence bordered on arrogance, and it was sexy as hell when it wasn’t infuriating. In any case, his Jedi mind tricks worked. Nine months later, I was introducing him to my family the weekend before Thanksgiving. God, how I had dreaded that visit. But then, there I was, watching Corey taking in our “Wall of Pride,” the long hallway between the front door and the living room, every square inch covered in family portraits and the requisite photo of Martin Luther King Jr., along with framed mementos of Black excellence and history: the New York Times from the day Obama was elected president, two poems by Maya Angelou, a poster with a listing of Black inventions, etc. I explained the origins of the wall, parroting Momma.

  “The world outside may try to tell you that you’re less than, but as you come and go from this house, you’re going to look at this wall and remember who you really are and who you can be.” It was practically the family slogan.

  Corey proclaimed the display “very cool.” I was busy wondering if he’d ever even been inside a Black person’s home before and why I’d never asked him this, when he leaned in for a closer look at the inventor poster.

  “You know, it was a Black man who created the recipe for Jack Daniel’s whiskey,” Corey said. “Nathan Green, it was his creation.”

  By this point I was used to Corey being a fountain of random facts, but this one endeared him t
o my parents, who were watching from the hall. I let myself enjoy the tiniest bit of relief that this might go well.

  I hadn’t expected Corey to be so at ease at my family’s table, though he was, completely, gamely submitting to piles of food and some friendly ribbing. (“I bet you never had grits before, have you, son?” Daddy asked. He hadn’t.) I was the one on edge. I tried to calm myself by refilling glasses of iced tea and ferrying plates of food back and forth to the table. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with this picture, that I was doing something illicit, like the first time I drank under my parents’ roof or cursed or got my belly button pierced with Jen at that grimy shop on South Street.

  Dating a white man—marrying one, if it came to that—felt disloyal. I always thought I should end up with a fine upstanding brother, build up the community, have two beautiful brown-skinned children who would be a credit as well, advance their race, the cause. Not with this white guy who played lacrosse in high school, went to Williams, and came from money to boot. Sometimes, as I lay beside him in bed, his pale body against mine, one word would float through my mind: “sellout.” I swore I saw the same word floating like a cartoon bubble above Gigi’s head when he visited that weekend. She was perfectly polite to Corey, but as soon as he was out of earshot, she couldn’t help reminding me, “He’s never going to get you, and you won’t get him. Why add more heartache to your plate? The world is hard enough as it is. Find one of your own.”

  The entire time he was with my family, I was preoccupied, wondering what it would be like to meet Corey’s parents, Steve and Catharine, an environmental lawyer and a landscape architect from Connecticut. All the energy it would take to make sure they understood that I was one of the good ones. All the condescending comments I might have to ignore, the fear that they’d be one way to my face and another behind my back. It was enough to make me want to avoid the whole thing altogether.

  I brought it up once after we’d been dating a few months, after trying out the question in my mind for weeks. “What will your parents think of you dating someone… like me?” In the versions I rehearsed, I’d said, “a Black girl.”

  “My dad is gonna be pissed.” He paused for too long, long enough for me to get up off the couch. He grabbed my hand and pulled me back down, grinning. “I’ve never brought a Sixers fan home. Seriously, though, my parents are cool, Rye. They’re gonna love you.”

  But what did “cool” mean exactly? Would his mom pull me into a hug and call me “girl”? Would they start talking about how they were die-hard Obama supporters, or gush about how “impressive” I was, or proudly tell me they’d just finished the new Ta-Nehisi Coates?

  I’d never find out. I’d always have to wonder how “cool” Corey’s parents were, because time ran out for us before I ever met them.

  I finish the vodka, and force myself to remember the end of our story. The text:

  We’re not right for each other. I’m sorry.

  If only I could call Jen so we could read his email together over the phone. She’d be able to come up with a plan, craft the best response. When Corey and I first started dating, she was my Cyrano de Bergerac, composing all my text messages so they hit the perfect tone, funny or witty or sexy. I sometimes wonder if Corey actually fell in love with me or with her texts. She even convinced me to send a selfie once, insisting I wear an over-the-top bright-red push-up bra, even though the thought of my boobs traveling through cyberspace and landing on his phone had me nauseous with mortification.

  Jen styled the cleavage shot, helped me find the right angle, scooping my left boob up a little, tightening my bra straps, even running a swipe of bronzer across my collarbone. After about twenty-three takes, the photo was ready to send. We both waited, equally nervous for the reply. Minutes later Corey wrote back:

  Oh, shit. I forwarded that to my mom.

  Seconds later, another text.

  Kidding. You should be on a runway.

  But I can’t call Jen, because we’re in this weird unspoken standoff and also because I have a secret about her husband and I can’t talk to her as long as this stone is in my stomach.

  I need to read this email and get it over with. My fingers quiver as I tap and swipe until it’s right there. I skim the message, frantically scanning for terrifying words like “pregnant,” “married,” or “dying,” and take in its length—which is short. I skip to the end to see how he signed it. Just “Corey.” No “love.” Then, finally, I return to the beginning and read each word, slowly this time, to make it last. He writes that he saw on my Facebook page that my grandmother passed away. So this is a condolence note. Nice, though disappointing. His tone is polite, like he’s an old professor or colleague, not someone who’s seen every inch of me naked. I read on, moderating my expectations. He writes how sorry he is. He writes that he knows I’ve moved back to Philadelphia and that he saw my interview with Tamara. “So powerful!” Corey doesn’t use exclamation marks lightly, so I read that part twice. Then he says that he’ll be in town next month, coming from New York for a work trip.

  Finally, the last line, and when I get to it, a swarm of moths takes flight behind my rib cage. It’s been a long time. Can I see you when I’m in town?

  I’m about to go out on the balcony, as if fleeing from the question, but take a detour through the kitchen instead. I dig into the far recesses of the freezer, where I know there’s an ancient pack of Parliaments hidden behind a stack of frozen pizzas. I found them in a box of lightbulbs and batteries when I moved in. I should have thrown the nasty things away. I hid them here in case of an emergency. I’ve never been a real smoker, but I learned on my first job in Joplin that most people in the news business are, and if I wanted one-on-one time with my producer, I’d better start. Gaby clowned me big-time when she first saw me with a cigarette. “Black girls don’t smoke.” Like it was a fact.

  “Well, we also don’t listen to Ani DiFranco or Taylor Swift, and I have whole albums on my phone,” I said.

  “Who the hell is Ani DiFranco?” Gaby said, grabbing my cigarette and taking a big inhale that ended in a spasm of violent coughs. “Girl, this is disgusting. I just killed a lung.”

  “You smoke weed, Gaby,” I reminded her.

  “That’s different. I’m Jamaican, my genes are built for that.”

  And now I miss Gaby and want to call her, but she was always skeptical of Corey. She dated one white guy our freshman year, whose family had a house in Jamaica for forever and who’d once “joked” that it would be funny if his ancestors had owned her ancestors at some point. And she “joked” that it would be funny if she poured her red wine on him and then she did. Gaby had said it was “maybe for the best” when I’d called to tell her it was over with Corey. So I’m not going to call her. Not yet. Not till I’m ready for her to tell me what a bad idea it would be to write him back.

  When I step out on the balcony, my bare arms erupt in goose bumps in the cold.

  Can I see you? Can I see you?

  Why now? I agonize over the question as I flick the rusted wheel of a lighter I found in the junk drawer. The first inhale tastes like heaven. I regret the decision by the second, and I’m nauseous by the third.

  My balcony is so tiny, if I spread my arms, I can touch both walls on either side. After I first moved in, I happened by a garage sale on one of my runs and found a cute little wicker chair and a matching side table that fit just right. I was so focused on the thrill of having a balcony with a view of Center City, giddy about my triumphant return, the chair felt like a victory. Now, when I look at it, the pathetic single chair, loneliness hits me with such force it’s a minute before I remember to breathe. I smash the cigarette out on the iron railing and flee back inside, into the warm air. I go straight for my phone to reread Corey’s email. Instead, my in-box opens to the last one from Jen, the one I never responded to.

  All our lives can go back to normal.

  That’s not true, Jenny. It could be about to get a lot worse. T
he district attorney wants to convict your husband of murder.

  I lunge for the glass on the coffee table and refill it, this time not even bothering with the tonic. I sip and sip, knowing I shouldn’t be drinking alone right now, not with this stone in my stomach and Corey’s email on my phone. But I’m not stopping. I sip until I can no longer picture the look on Jen’s face when her husband and the father of her child is handcuffed and taken away to prison. I keep sipping until I’m tipsy enough to let myself do the thing I most want to do, the thing I’ll later blame on the booze. I open my email and start to type.

  Chapter Twelve JEN

  Someone forgot to tell the manager at Target that it’s time to change the music. Mariah Carey should not be telling you what she wants for Christmas two weeks into January. And yet here she is, belting it out of the too-loud speakers.

  I had to get out this morning. I was like a feverish prisoner ready to make a break for it. If you asked me when I left the house before today, I couldn’t tell you. I could tell you the last time I almost left. Last Thursday. I was supposed to meet Riley for a coffee. I was looking forward to it so bad. I was all dressed up, even blew out my hair, put on some lip gloss; then she canceled on me an hour before. Something came up at work. It was just an excuse. I wrote back, No problem. Even adding an emoji. And then I decided that I was officially done. I wasn’t going to try again. The ball was in her court, and I wasn’t holding my breath.

  I was desperate for a change of scenery, and Target seemed as good a destination as any, especially since I have a $100 gift card, a Christmas present from Annie and Matt, burning a hole in my pocket. Since I’m not having a shower, I need to buy all the baby gear on my own, see how far I can stretch this $100, because I can’t spend anything else.