Infinite Us

by Eden Butler

“You said that last year. And six months before that. It’s been almost two years since you came to visit me. That’s three times now I’ve flown out here to see you, little brother.”

  “You said you only came to town to check out a new designer. Don’t play like you came here just to see me.” But that frown was tight and the glare was lethal. Nat might have added me to her itinerary but I was not afterthought. “Sorry.”

  It really had been that long, though I would have sworn she was wrong. Stuff gets messed up in life, promises are made, then broken, intention paves every path you make, even the one that leads to hell. I’d spent so much time focusing on my own stuff that I forgot there were people who needed me. People like Nat who lived on her own in California. People like Roan who pretended he didn’t need anything but a good book, his birds and a windless day. No matter what I’d tried to make of my life, no matter how many times I promised myself I didn’t need anyone, I forgot that people still needed me.

  “Hell, Nat, I’m sorry. Really.” She lost the small wounded look on her face and her expression softened, head tilting as she watched me. “I honestly don’t think…I mean, the business and investors, God I’ve been working so hard on getting ready for this meeting next week that I forget to eat or sleep or even check up on you.” She smiled then, waving her hand to hail a cab as I shook my head. “I got to be the worst damn brother in the world.”

  “Nah,” she said pulling her bag up on her shoulder. “Just sometimes remember the world doesn’t need conquering. Plenty of fools have tried and failed at that.” Nat’s eyebrows went up and she looked over my shoulder, smile lethal now. “And try to remember that even if you manage to rule the world, the view from the top is a little boring when you’re sitting up there all alone.”

  “Sis…”

  “You think, maybe, when you’re ready, when you come to see me that you’d be up for seeing…”

  “No.” I hated to have my sister leave with my frown and that sharp bite in my voice, but there are some things you can’t squash so easy. Natalie shook her head, like she was amazed by me and how tight my grip was on the past, how close I kept my anger. But sometimes, hating my father was the only thing that kept me warm at night. “I’m sorry. You…you know I got you, no matter what. But this, Natalie? I just…I can’t…”

  “I know,” she said, stopping me to pull me close and hug me. “I know. Just, instead of ‘no’, say ‘not yet’, okay? For me.”

  She held me a little, right there out on the sidewalk and for the first time in weeks, my entire body relaxed. I hadn’t felt that since the night in my apartment when Willow worked her wild juju on me. My sister pulled away, touching my cheek and pushed the smile back on her face. “I’ll see you, Nash.” She kissed me then, pulling me into another hug that threatened to break my bones before I opened the cab door for her and she was off, back to her life away from me.

  It was only when I turned around to head toward the station that I noticed Willow on her cell, glancing away from me, then back up again. I wanted to stop her before she walked off. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for being a punk, for trying to make her jealous. I thought about just grabbing her and kissing her and doing my best to forget all those walls I’d built to keep from failing myself or anyone else that came along.

  Willow’s face was drawn, her skin paler than it had been last night. She carried a white box under her arm, more magical cupcakes I guessed, and from the way her hair fell more tousled than normal, I guessed she’d spent the night in her kitchen baking, because it helped when she was restless, because it distracted her from the things she didn’t want to face. Same as me, Willow deflected.

  She still had no clue that Natalie was my sister, and now she had just seen me say goodbye the “morning after”...

  I wondered just then if Willow would talk to me, or if I’d messed things up with my childish jealousy so bad that she wouldn't have anything to do with me again, and I would have messed up any chance I had with her, whether I wanted it or not.

  But before I could make a move, Willow’s phone rang, and she looked down at it, turning away from me, disappearing out down the street before I made it to the front entrance, and something knotted deep inside my chest, something I didn’t think I could loosen on my own. Something I knew I’d put there by being a coward.

  Willow

  There were baking dishes littered around my small kitchen and the entire apartment smelled like cupcakes and the sweet, decadent flavor of frosting and dark ale. I’d attempted Irish Car Bombs again and had spilled have a bottle of Guinness on my floor, the sticky mess collecting to pool into the grout line on my tile floor.

  The oven had sounded ten minutes ago, five minutes after I should have opened the door and the latest batch was a burnt mess.

  “Stupid Guinness,” I called to the oven and the dark brown cupcakes that had cost me ten bucks to make. That definitely wouldn’t make the cut. I pulled on the room temperature beer, letting the half-empty bottle empty down my throat. “Stupid me.”

  My sofa was large and comfy; a hand-me-down piece Effie had given me when her second job as a spa owner had finally turned a profit. It seemed everyone wanted to meditation and get a facial on the same day. My friend capitalized on it. But me and the cupcakes? No. Today wasn’t a good day for my little business and I thought about my great-grandmother just then, wondering how many burned batches of cookies and brownies she had to go through to get her recipes perfected. I wondered if she liked the weight of her life keeping her from concentrating on getting the job done.

  At my right, on the hall table that led out of the front room, sat a picture of my great-grandparents on their wedding day. Their smiles were bright and lit up their entire faces and I glanced between that picture and my own reflection in the mirror above the mantel. My face was shaped precisely like my great-grandfather’s, but my eyes, they belonged to her. I tried to smile, thinking of the cookies I’d delivered to the homeless shelter a few blocks down from our building. The director had been kind, had thanked me over and over and I watched myself in the mirror, gaze shifting back to my grandparents’ picture and back to the mirror as I thought of that day at the shelter. But my eyes didn’t gleam quite as bright and my smile, no matter how closely it resembled my grandfather’s, didn’t seem as wide.

  I kept watching, zoning out, forgetting the shelter, forgetting that picture and Nash’s face slipped to my conscience and stayed at the front of my mind. His mouth, his smile, that sweet, beautiful smile, the sound of his laughter and the rich, full sound of his voice. Before I knew I’d done it, my face ached a little with the smile that wouldn’t leave my features and I shot my gaze back and forth from the picture and the mirror and slouched against the billowing pillows arranged around the sofa.

  Nash. He was the only thing that made my eyes sparkle like my great-grandmother’s. He was the only thought that made me look exactly like my grandfather.

  I turned on my side, stuffing the pillow against my chest as I recalled the precise arc of his face, the exact bend of his mouth and the soft brush of his tongue. It was only then that I let the day go from me. I put away thoughts of burnt cupcakes and smiles that didn’t match my great-grandparents’. It was only with Nash’s face frozen in my thoughts, that I thought my dreams would stay in the present.

  I was wrong.

  Washington D.C.

  We existed in our own world. Away from my classes, from my family, from his friends, Isaac and I became an island, distant, exotic and wholly decadent. There were moments when just the stretch of his smile would send a thrill to my stomach, to other places tantalized by that look and I was left breathless and weak. Other times I nestled against his chest with those wide arms around me and his mouth at the shell of my ear whispering promises that we pretended were real and honest and true. They felt that way, in those stolen moments.

  I met him every night after his shift ended with Lenny keeping watch and the library free from anyone who’d care what we
were up to. The curve of his top lip and the tiny space between his front teeth were small imperfections I found delicious, irresistible and Isaac knew it. He knew me, in just those few short weeks, he had discovered how to hold my neck so that our mouths met at the perfect angle. He knew that a kiss on the base of my throat would have me frantic and eager and desperate for his mouth. Isaac knew that I didn’t like being called “baby” the way Trent always had. He knew my brother was my best friend and that in my eyes, no one’s father was better than mine.

  And that’s where the problems started to surface.

  “No matter what you say, no man is gonna be too happy about someone like me…”

  “Don’t you finish that sentence.” My face was flushed and my lips still swollen from his kisses when I pushed him back. It was the same argument we’d had for a week and it stemmed from my parents wanting details about why I’d broken up with Trent.

  “Someone like me coming to knock at his front door telling him I’m there for his little girl.”

  “You don’t know him. My family isn’t like that, especially not my Dad.”

  But he hadn’t believed me, not then, not even when I told him my brother had come to see me, not batting an eye over why I’d decided to remain on campus during the summer break instead of staying with our family at the lake house.

  Ryan had come to my dorm, a care package from my mother under his arm, and had gotten downright nosey about how I’d been spending my time.

  “It’s a man.”

  “What?” He watched me shove the box into my room and waited in the hallway to walk with me to the park. “You’ve been drinking, right? Long night at Gadsby’s that you haven’t recovered from? I know how the ice well fascinates you.”

  “Listen to me, little sister, I know you better than anyone. If you were just busy with studying and school projects you wouldn’t have missed Sunday out on Lake Deer Creek. Not with the Crafts joining us. You love Joanie Craft and haven’t missed a chance to race her to the pier since you were twelve.”

  “I’m not twelve, Ryan.”

  “Obviously,” he said holding the door open for me as we left the building, “but that whole not being twelve thing didn’t stop you last summer. She complained the entire weekend about not being able to have a rematch.”

  He hadn’t been wrong. No amount of studying could quell my competitive nature, especially not against Joanie Craft. She was a sore loser and I’d wanted to beat her two years running. But then Isaac borrowed Lenny’s Bel Air and we drove down the G.W. Parkway for hours. The roads twisted into loops along the backdrop of lush green forests that seem to stretch on for acres and hilltops that billowed up and down among all that thick greenery. They were supposed to be building a state park in the area, but the day had been a little overcast and the road was nearly empty. It had been a perfect afternoon. Isaac parked along a dip in the tree line, hiding the Bel Air behind thick-hanging limbs that brushed the ground. I blushed to think of how we spent those next few hours hidden behind the greenery, with the birds serenading us and the breeze blowing through the open windows.

  I hadn’t thought about Joanie Craft or our swimming races all afternoon. There had been Isaac kissing my neck, quoting Zora Neale Hurston, telling me with his mouth and fingers what he thought it felt like when “love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” He loved her work, so did I and we got drunk on Hurston’s words, on the slow, honeyed sound of Billie Holiday working her own poetry on the radio, on the scent of sweat and sweetness of each other in that car. There had only been Isaac and me and the sound of his heartbeat against my ear as we watched the purple sky becoming inky black.

  “So?” Ryan had said, the question hidden in the inflection of his voice.

  “So, maybe there’s a guy.”

  There was a little tease edging around his laugh and I knew I’d be harassed relentlessly. We cleared the main campus water fountain and neared the park benches, a row of thirteen to symbolize Lincoln’s greatest accomplishment. It was on the last bench that I sat with Ryan’s focused stare waiting on me to elaborate.

  “Do I know him?” Ryan stretched an arm behind me on the bench and I concentrated on two pigeons flying between the spray of fountain water across from our seat. The day was warmer than it should have been for early summer, but there was a breeze that made it bearable.

  “Not unless you’re familiar with the cleaning crew in the library.”

  Ryan’s smile dimmed, and an eyebrow shot up. “Cleaning crew?” I nodded, silently inviting him to ask the accusatory questions. “As in, janitor?” Another nod and my brother went quiet.

  He knew what that meant. There weren’t many white men doing service work at the university. As part of their cultural policy, the university had made work-study enrollment possible, had even offered audited classes to their employees who wanted to improve well enough to become full time students. Students of any race could subsidize their tuition with student worker jobs. Lenny was one of those students and Isaac was working toward that as well, aiming to start at Lincoln the next semester. He just needed to perfect his application and work on his admissions essay. But it was common knowledge that many of the student worker service positions were held by black students.

  It was one thing for my family to champion equality—they had, my entire life. My Jewish mother had seen her entire family wiped out in concentration camps; my father had been one of the soldiers liberating her camp. Intolerance wasn’t something they forgave easily. It’s why they had devoted themselves to working towards Civil Rights. But their only daughter, their little girl, falling for a black man? In D.C. at the height of the Civil Rights movement? Well. I wasn’t sure how they’d react. The longer Ryan's silence stretched, the more uneasy I felt with my belief that who I loved, no matter who they were, didn’t really matter to my family.

  After what felt like hours, Ryan sat up, joining me in my distracted focus on the pigeons and their fountain diving. When he spoke, his attention stayed on the birds. “Is he a good man, Riley?” Then he held up his hand, stopping me before I could answer. “What am I saying? Of course he is. You wouldn’t fall for a jerk.”

  “No,” I said, coming close to admitting what had pushed me and Isaac together, but that would bring Trent’s obnoxious behavior front and center right at a crucial time for the Voting Rights Act. “No, I couldn’t be with anything but a good man.” I paused, turning to face my brother and he glanced at me, his face relaxing when I smiled. “He…he makes me feel safe, Ryan. He makes me, just so damn happy.”

  I didn’t have the words to explain to my brother the thousand small things that Isaac did that made me laugh, made me think. I only knew that our conversations went on for hours, even before he first kissed me. I only knew that he asked me what I thought about issues and actually listened to my answers, that he would tell me what he honestly thought, and didn’t try to change my mind when our opinions differed. We read together at the library when there was no one around. Sometimes he read pages and pages with that rich, booming voice and it sounded like heaven to me. Isaac liked to hold my hand even when we walked down the street, even when his pinky curled around mine drew the attention of total strangers. He made me laugh, he made me think and I liked to believe I did the same to him. But Ryan didn’t seem to need to know any of that. Ryan loved me. He was my best friend in the whole world and he likely could see that I was truly happy. The rush of it colored my face.

  “Well then,” he finally said, smile wide, eyes brightened with laughter again. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it?” The pigeons flew off and my brother ignored them, took to shaking his head as though the questions he had didn’t matter in the least. Ryan nudged my arm, a playful gesture he’d always done when he wanted to tease me. “Imagine that, my kid sister in love. Wonders never cease.”

  “Very funny.” He stood, lead me away from the bench and past the fountains. “You never know, maybe you’ll luck up and find someone someday,” I quippe
d.

  “No way, sis. One O’Bryant in love is more than this city can handle.”

  The phone had not stopped ringing for a solid week. The summer still moved on, but Trent hadn't moved on with it. As August approached, word was the President was about to sign the Voting Rights Act. That meant Trent would lose the leverage he had that kept me from announcing to my family and the world the reasons why we had broken up. It had been nearly a month since he'd hit me. A month since the first time Isaac kissed me. It made no sense for Trent to be so relentless, but then, Trent wasn’t used to being denied anything. His image was more important to him than anything, and like most bullies, he didn't mind who got hurt as long as he got his way. I very well might have been the only one who’d ever told him no, and I was pretty sure his vanity hadn't accepted it, even a month later.

  “I’m going to take the phone off the hook,” I threatened Trent when I finally answered the phone after an hour had passed and he kept calling with no let up. I didn’t much worry about him coming to my dorm; Mr. Thomas, an older Texan around my father’s age who took shrapnel to the knee in Japan during the war took his security guard duties seriously. He wouldn’t even let Ryan sit for too long in the lobby unless I was with him.

  “You’re being a little ridiculous, Riley. This childish behavior of yours has gone on too long and Senator Mansfield is sponsoring an important dinner. I’m sure your father has mentioned it.”

  “He might have.”

  “Of course he has.” There was a confident ease to his tone that made him sound too familiar, too sure of himself. “I’ll need you to accompany me. My father doesn’t know that you and I have quarreled and he’ll expect you there with me.”

  “You and your father can expect all you want Trent. I'll be there, but I won’t be with you.”

  I hung up before he could make a complaint, in a hurry to meet Isaac at the library after his shift. He’d gone to see his sister, up from Atlanta, in Richmond while she visited friends and I’d not seen him in nearly two days. My fingertips tingled the closer I came to the library. I’d missed touching him, kissing him. I missed everything that only Isaac could make me feel.