In Every Mirror She's Black

by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström

  What was happening between them? This stranger had made her come again and again while never leaving his knees, rendering her senseless on her couch until sleep had claimed her.

  She needed to hear Tanesha’s voice now more than ever. Jonny’s droning voice weaseled into her thoughts instead. “I am so sorry I’ve hurt you. I want to fix it. I want to make this right. I-­I-­I’m not good at this.”

  They stopped in front of her car.

  She turned to look at him, arms wrapped around herself in protection. His hooded stare fixed on her in desperation.

  “You came to my house uninvited,” she started. “You kept sending flowers I didn’t want. You won’t take no for an answer!”

  “You never told me to stop sending flowers. You never said no.”

  Her eyebrows contorted, confused. Was the bastard turning this all on her?

  “Are you kidding me?” Rage gathered steam within her. “Are you freaking serious right now?”

  “You never said no,” Jonny continued. “You never said you wanted me to stop contacting you. I need people to be direct with me. I need to know.”

  She took deep breaths to calm herself down. She’d already hit him twice before, and she wasn’t that “angry” Black woman he seemed to be conjuring up with ease from within her. Brittany was breathing heavily now, her eyes searching his face.

  Her mind kept giving off alarms about this man, but her body kept failing her.

  The same way it had when he sought her attention from his seat in 6A. The same way it responded when he swallowed up the space in the galley when he handed her his card. The same way it prickled when he assessed her over the rim of his sake-­filled glass in London. Not to mention last night, when he claimed her so dutifully, studying her face, trying to memorize what she liked with each moan.

  She contemplated either letting him back in her car or leaving him in that empty parking lot to find his way back into whatever hole he crawled out of.

  The alarms got louder and louder until she finally asked, “What is wrong with you?”

  After their failed date in London, Brittany had googled him the second she burst into her hotel room in West India Quay. She spent the rest of the night scrolling through photos of him. Reading articles and gossip spreads about him, though there were no one-­on-­one interviews with him. Finding him more intriguing with each click. Wallowing deeper in guilt each time she looked at Jamal, his face glistening with hope of their future together.

  And here was Jonny, looking like shit with bruises and a new bandage over the cut on his eyebrow, gaping at her, trying to convince her he wasn’t a stalker.

  You never said no.

  Those words floated back at her, and she shut her eyes, remembering specific rumors she’d read. Links to articles that were purely speculative about his unwillingness to engage with the press, his strange intensity. Social awkwardness. Boundary issues. Nothing that anyone could prove or point to in a real way, but something Brittany saw in him too. He seemed to live in an explicit world of black and white.

  Jonny stared intently, unrelentingly. The look exacerbated by his crush on her, because he couldn’t seem to lie. Every inch of him wanted her, and he didn’t know how to hide it.

  When her eyelids fluttered open, he was inches from her face, studying her. He shook his head one more time.

  “Nothing is wrong with me. You didn’t tell me to stop,” he whispered. “I would have if you’d told me to. If you had said no.”

  Tears pooled in Brittany’s eyes, and she watched his brows dip in concern, watching her cry.

  “Are you okay?”

  She kept shaking her head. No, she was not okay. She was confused. Flustered. Falling apart. Unraveling faster than she could compose herself. Jonny traced his fingers up her cheeks to soothe her.

  “Ssshhh. Please don’t cry,” he pleaded. His lips covered hers softly, his tongue sweeping in between them gently. She sobbed against his kiss, receiving his remedy for her rapidly beating heart.

  “Is it because he’s white?”

  “So he can protect you?”

  “Can he open doors I can’t?”

  Jamal’s words slowly lost their sting as Jonny wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. He deepened their kiss, and she relished this new intimacy.

  Wealth and power weren’t the only reasons she was letting him devour her at the crack of dawn in that parking lot. Protection through privilege wasn’t why she wasn’t pushing him off her and swiping a palm across his face for the third time.

  Of all his peculiarities, the one that bubbled up to wrap itself around her with comfort was this:

  Brittany had finally found a man who couldn’t lie to her face.

  Part Two

  Seven

  BRITTANY-­RAE

  Jonny came from old money. The von Lundin name was entrenched in Sweden. It spanned centuries of patriarchs who had been Hanseatic merchants on Gotland, an island off Sweden’s eastern coast. Once dropped, the name fluidly unlocked doors and removed barricades. It seeped into various arts and culture committees, sat on the board of different philanthropic initiatives, and had an easy audience with the Swedish monarchy. Wealth so calcified, it hadn’t expected Brittany in its future.

  Brittany never wanted this thing with Jonny she couldn’t quite define exposed. A foreboding sense of shame took root within her. It came skipping along, holding hands with guilt over the way she had easily hurt Jamal. Guilt wore a veil of judgment. Had she held Jonny to different standards?

  After their raw kiss in the parking lot of the twenty-­four-­hour clinic as daylight fully broke, fissures had snapped open within her. From their sulfuric cracks oozed the malaise-­inducing trinity—­shame, guilt, and judgment. She drove Jonny home in silence. He fiddled with his hair nervously all the way. She quietly scrambled eggs while he sat on the barstool by the kitchen’s center island, his focus following her movements.

  He seemed to be silently studying her. The way she pushed away stubborn strands of hair as she bowed over the sizzling frying pan. The way she simultaneously scrunched her brows and pursed her lips when pondering her next moves.

  Brittany dished out a large scoop of golden mush atop a slice of buttered toast and slid the plate over to Jonny. He caught it with both hands, looked at the hastily presented breakfast on his plate, and then glanced back up at her.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked.

  Jonny lowered his gaze and said nothing. She passed him a fork, settled in next to him with her own plate, and dug in. Jonny didn’t eat but continued scanning her as she chewed, her jaw working, not savoring. He watched her a few moments longer.

  “If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to stop doing that.” She broke his leering midbite without glancing at him then continued shoveling eggs into her mouth.

  “Doing what?”

  Brittany shot him an icy glare, and in return, Jonny shone that grin of a thousand teeth.

  That toothy grin sealed Jonny as Brittany’s secret. Something—­rather, someone—­she could indulge in because he was so besotted and couldn’t hide it. With her, he lacked emotional restraint and laid himself bare for all to see. With each touch, he meticulously crawled closer into her sphere. He seemed to be learning her like a textbook, scanning her features like topography on a map. Sooner or later, he’d be ready to take his test, this she knew.

  Jonny left for Sweden the next day with the details he’d been craving from her for weeks: her phone number and email address.

  Later that day, Jamal came by for the rest of his stuff. This time around, there was no pleading for him to stay. The unholy trinity had settled within her, so she busied herself with nothing in the kitchen as Jamal pulled books and vinyl records off shelves in the living room. If anyone else had walked into that space, the palpable tension would have suffocated the
m.

  Once two more suitcases had been loaded and rolled toward the front door, Jamal did a curious thing. He went in search of her and found Brittany sitting on a barstool with a mug in hand, flipping through coupon booklets—­daily junk mail she often trashed right away. He chuckled, and she knew it was at her pretense of being busy. He walked up to her, slipped a hand around her waist, and bent low to kiss her cheek.

  “Goodbye, Brit,” Jamal delivered. Relief escaped her as a low sigh. They would remain cordial. She’d feared a complete shutout. She spun to look at him. As if propelled by a crazed spirit, she flew into his arms.

  “I’ll help out for three months until you decide what to do with it,” he said, referring to the town house they shared. He paid their monthly rent, his attorney’s salary being more than enough to afford it. She covered their utility expenses on her meager cabin crew salary, despite her experience and seniority at the airline.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t want us to end like this.” Jamal’s grip tightened on her back in wordless loss.

  All he offered her was a pained smile before turning to leave.

  * * *

  Her June work schedule arrived early Monday morning. A jam-­packed 120 hours of scheduled airtime shuttling between DC and London as well as having New York, Miami, Austin, and Los Angeles roundtrips. Plus, she was currently bidding for her July schedule. As a member of the senior crew who worked first class and business cabins, she still had some flexibility. Her phone danced on the table next to her laptop.

  “I need to see you.” Jonny’s words were rushed.

  “Are you back in Stockholm?”

  “Yes, I just landed. I need to see you.” A long pause hung between them. She hadn’t thought this far ahead.

  “I need to sort out my schedule for June. It arrived today, and I need to plan out the month.”

  “Send it to me,” he demanded, before adding, “please.”

  She did.

  A week later, Brittany landed at Heathrow Terminal 5. As she walked amid a gaggle of navy-­blue-­clad colleagues click-­clacking and dragging carry-­ons down the arrivals hall, Jonny startled her by calling out her name. Her secret was trying to burst out of its cage when she wasn’t ready to show it to the world.

  Caught midlaugh in response to an inside joke from another crew member, her smile slid off her face as she caught sight of him. Collecting herself, she turned to wave off her curious colleagues who craned their necks backward to fill up on gossip as they continued their trip down polished halls. When she turned back to him, he’d transported himself within inches of her face.

  He tried leaning in for a kiss, but a firm hand to his chest halted his advance.

  “Not here. I’m at work,” Brittany deterred him, her eyes sweeping over her shoulder in search of an invisible snitch.

  “I needed to see you,” he said. She looked around them. “I want to get to know you. I know you have to work the flight tomorrow at two in the afternoon, so I wanted to spend the day with you,” he divulged. She shouldn’t have given him her schedule.

  “At your command? Regardless of my own plans?” she countered, touching her hat and patting it a half inch in place. She noticed Jonny’s gaze following her movements.

  “If you want to,” he corrected himself, fists balled at his sides again. Brittany tugged at her lower lip as she scrutinized the man frozen in front of her. A man who turned heads as people in the arrivals hall rubbernecked past him. His piercing focus blotted out Heathrow, turning it into a deserted ghost town, his eyes only for the lady in front of him.

  She could never let him out of her secret box. Her parents wouldn’t understand. Right now, they were placing bets on if Jamal would get on one knee before year’s end. She couldn’t face Tanesha either.

  She would ride this thing out. Indulge his steadfastness until they both tired of the relationship. His track record according to Google estimated about one month after catching his flavor of the week—­er, month. By her calculation, they had about two and a half weeks left.

  She finally answered him. Yes, he could spend the day with her.

  Jonny walked them to the outdoor pickup area, where a burly white man in a dark suit and a petite blond wearing a shirtdress, cinched at the waist with a belt, came rushing to the couple.

  “Good day, ma’am.” The chauffeur reached for her carry-­on luggage before she could protest. She thanked him after receiving his name. Frank. The petite blond with a bob cut and precision bangs seemed mesmerized.

  “You’re even more beautiful in person, Ms. Johnson,” she said in a tone tinged with a Swedish accent. “Can I call you Brittany?”

  “Thank you. Yes, of course. And you are?” Brittany stretched out a hand to greet her.

  “Eva!” she squealed. “Jonny’s assistant here in London…and sender of flowers,” she finished in a whisper. From Brittany’s brief encounters with him, witnessing him failing to properly wring out his own shirt and his need not to upset her, it made perfect sense that he would delegate romantic gestures to his assistant.

  “Great to meet you, Eva.”

  The pixie smiled in response before turning to Jonny and releasing a barrage of Swedish. He nodded as words streamed out of Eva, occasionally interjecting with a halting air-­sucking sound, which intrigued Brittany. She realized she loved listening to him speak in Swedish. His inflections. Those soft sounds—­like catching one’s breath—­that weren’t actual words but seemed to be moving his conversation with Eva forward. After watching him listen to Eva intently, she realized not only did she want to know why he was making those odd Swedish sounds, she also wanted to know him better.

  Frank helped Brittany into a shiny, charcoal-­colored Range Rover then placed her bag in its trunk. Jonny strode around to the other side. Eva rode shotgun, and soon the foursome shuttled toward Jonny’s eighteenth-­floor penthouse made of glass and steel in Canary Wharf.

  En route, Eva rattled off the day’s plan.

  “First, you’ll get a chance to clean up. Then, you’ll enjoy a catered lunch, followed by VIP tickets to a late-­afternoon play. Finally, a boat will pick you two up from Victoria Embankment and take you back to Canary Wharf for a redo dinner at Yamamoto.”

  “A redo?” Brittany asked.

  “Yes,” Eva said. “Your last dinner was abruptly interrupted.”

  “Interrupted?”

  “Yes,” Eva continued. “Jonny doesn’t like loose ends.”

  Eva turned back to her phone and continued furiously swiping up and down.

  Brittany turned to Jonny, who was sitting skin-­close to her, gorging on her presence. “You assumed I would spend my one free day with you?” Low-­grade irritation broiled within her.

  “I knew you would spend the day with me,” he said.

  “But…”

  He caught her words in a kiss that instantly derailed any further sentences. One hand moved up to cradle her right cheek as he kissed her. He’d missed her desperately, his lips showed her. Flashes of Beaufount floated across his face, and Brittany fought them off as Jonny deepened their kiss.

  His phone beeped with a text message, which suddenly tore him away from her.

  Brittany caught the message when he checked it. Klart!

  A grin stretched across his face.

  “Good news?” Brittany was curious. Their Range Rover became a desert once again as he peered at her.

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Floor-­to-­ceiling windows wrapped around Jonny’s Canary Wharf flat in East London’s Docklands. Brittany stepped in and took a deep breath as she soaked up the sparsely furnished space that screamed wealth. She was ordered to take her heels off and park them by the door.

  “It’s a Swedish thing.” Eva beamed before running loose inside while Jonny stood by the mahogany shoe rack.
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br />   The caterers delivered lunch right on time and laid out the essentials: freshly baked bread, whipped butter, spring mix salad, a dressed-­up dining table, and wine glasses. Their meal—­Cornish hens, sweet potato mash, roasted vegetables—­was warming on low heat in the oven. Eva walked up to a man standing next to the table and wearing a white jacket, a tattoo peeking out just above his collar. After a few hushed words, she dismissed him. Then Eva hurried around the place, adjusting, patting, and inspecting before running back to Brittany.

  “Your room’s this way, so you can freshen up.” She trotted off with Brittany’s carry-­on, which burly Frank had insisted on bringing up for her despite the fact it weighed nothing. Eva flipped on lights to an en suite room torn out of the pages of an upscale home decor catalog. Large, plush, light-­gray duvets. Pillows stuffed with feathers, easily responsible for the death of a hundred geese. Fresh flowers. Lots of them. A mix of yellow and lilac tulips. More of those floor-­to-­ceiling windows. A full-­length mirror on the remaining real wall, which was also painted light gray.

  So much gray, Brittany thought. The car, the decor, the walls—­everything was so gray. It was probably Jonny’s favorite color.

  Brittany stepped into the room on unsteady feet. A room this strange woman was now calling hers. She’d been around affluence and had experienced many things, but she’d never seen such exquisite views of the Thames before. As the gravity of the situation slowly dawned on her, she felt herself fading away, unable to recognize the woman staring back at her through the glass window reflecting clouds and sky.

  She stood there, surveying the city of London—­which seemed to stretch out in every direction—­when Eva took her leave. She was still standing there when Jonny leaned against the jamb of the door, observing her. The slight sound of a sniff, and he was instantly behind her, hands on her waist, asking what was wrong in a hushed voice. Why was she upset? Did she hate it?

  Brittany shook her head, words long gone, swallowed up by the unholy trinity—­shame, guilt, and judgment. They had firmly lodged themselves now, and there was no going back.