Thick Love

by Eden Butler

  Being back with them, listening to Keira sing while Ransom played the guitar, watching after Koa, smiling at him and Ransom reading together or playing football, it all made me feel like something was happening. Something I’d never expected to get out of life. It started to feel like a family.

  But with family came annoyances and worry, especially when the person you might consider building something permanent with still kept to himself when life started to bog him down.

  Like two days ago when Ransom picked me up from the diner. He’d wrapped up practice, was readying for the game and as soon as I slipped into the car, I caught on quickly that he’d had a rough day.

  “What happened?” I’d asked, turning toward him.

  “It’s nothing to worry about.”

  He did that a lot, down playing things, and it was equal parts stupid and frustrating. I wanted him open, for there to be nothing between us. I thought he wanted the same thing, but Ransom was an island with only one bridge open for crossing. That bridge was a little frayed, the ropes holding it together, a little worn and you had be damn careful that you didn’t break it trying to cross. And he too easily drew up the drawbridge when the going got tough.

  He’d get this weird wrinkle between his eyebrows any time Emily was invading his mind. I’d caught on to this quickly, watching him as he slept, when something from his day wouldn’t let him relax.

  He’d worn that same wrinkle as we drove through the city, heading toward I-10. “Ransom, what’s wrong?” I tried again, ignoring the non-committal grunt he released when I touched his arm. “Is it...is Emily in your head again?”

  “What?” The question came out loud, shocked, and was followed by his foot on the brake and his gaze snapping at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I heard you,” I told him, not cowering from that quick scowl or his temper. “In the shower the other night, you were talking to her. And you’ve told me she was in your head.” He jerked away when I tried to touch his face and the small gestured pissed me off. “Whatever. Can we just go?”

  “I’m not crazy,” he tried, voice lower, softer then.

  Again I tried to touch him, but Ransom frowned, leaned against his door and I got that he didn’t want me touching him. Fine. He didn’t want my comfort, I wouldn’t give it to him. “Non, you’re not. But you can be a moody asshole sometimes.”

  “Yeah?” He whipped his head toward me, his question coming out sharp. “Well you can be…”

  “You know what? Maybe you should keep your damn mouth shut before you say something that really pisses me off.”

  The door was open and I shrugged my bag over my shoulder before I slammed it closed. I didn’t bother to respond when he called after me. I wouldn’t do this. Ransom had a mother, a good one who loved him. He didn’t need another one and I left the Mustang behind before the fight could escalate.

  The bus stop was only a block ahead and that’s where I waited, even though Ransom had parked his car right there, not talking to me but watching over me. He’d have never left me alone in the city that late at night. And that was us, how we had begun to settle things in the weeks we were…whatever.

  He had a temper, something that seemed to rise often now when I asked him to talk to me about his shit. He’d held everything inside for so long that my prying had become like trying to bend steel. So yes, there had been arguments. There had been irritation, all of which was riled by the distinct lack of sex.

  I was an idiot.

  And I missed him. That night after bailing out of the Mustang, despite the vague I’m sorry texts, I decided to let him cool off. I didn’t call back. I didn’t return his text and I turned down Leann’s offer for a ride to CPU’s game at Texas A&M on Saturday because I also needed a cooling off period.

  But that didn’t keep me from clinging to the extra pillow on my bed, the one that smelled like his cologne. It didn’t stop me from itching to call him just to hear his voice.

  Ransom was a hard man to love, but I did it anyway.

  That’s what I was thinking about—loving the things I shouldn’t, wanting the things that were probably bad for me, definitely not what I needed—when I heard that soft tap on my door.

  I didn’t have to open it to know it was him. No one else would come to my door at two a.m. No one else would come to my door at any time really.

  One jerk of the knob and I could let Ransom have it. Tell him he was impossible and stubborn and so was I and we were a disaster and we should probably just stay clear of each other for a while. That was the plan, at least.

  Then I opened the door.

  “Modi,” I muttered, already giving up my fight.

  Those black eyes looked right through me, shining like he had a fever. He wore his fitted leather jacket over his CPU hoodie and a charcoal beanie. He looked delicious, but even that was secondary when I took in the split on the side of his thick bottom lip and the shadow bruising all around his left eye.

  That didn’t look like a football injury and I doubted getting tackled would put that haunted, lost look in his eyes.

  There were two sides of my brain: Logic and Love. Logic would have had me slamming the door in his face. We drove each other crazy. He couldn’t keep his hands off of me and I wouldn’t touch him for fear it wasn’t me he was thinking about when he kissed me. We were both stubborn assholes sometimes. All of this Logic was excuse enough to shut that door.

  Then there was Love. It reminded me that Ransom softened my frigid heart when he threatened my father, when he had been the only person outside of my grann to stick up for me against the old man. Love reminded me that if it hadn’t been for Ransom I would have never met Koa or Keira and Kona and I wouldn’t have them in life. Love told me that Ransom was still lost, still drifting but sometimes he let me pull him closer toward the shore. Love reminded me that things were possible.

  Love was louder than Logic.

  I opened my mouth, was going to tell him to come in, but then Ransom stepped over the threshold, immediately wrapping his big hands around my waist. He didn’t grip me like he was desperate, like he needed me just to breath. He didn’t explain who had bloodied his mouth or why.

  Ransom just stood in front of me looking down, giving me that same, relieved expression he’d offer whenever he greeted me. It said “hello” and “thank you” all in one glance. Then he touched my face, traced my lips with his finger and rested against my forehead.

  “Dance with me.”

  It was all he needed to say. “I’m sorry” and “Forgive me” in three small words that didn’t require a response. There was no music, no slow beat that seeped inside us, moved us to sway against each other. There was Ransom and me and nothing else but that aching need to be together, to feel and touch, and silence the world around us.

  He led, I followed.

  His chest, those arms wrapped tightly around me, were safety, promises of protection and I leaned my face against his chest, rubbing my cheek against the fabric of his jacket. It was cold from the November chill. And while I touched him, moved against him, Ransom kissed the top of my head, held me like he needed to, like he would never be free of that need.

  I knew I wouldn’t be either.

  “Trent Marshall told me he remembered you from Summerland’s.” When I looked up at him, Ransom shrugged as though he didn’t care what his teammate thought. “He asked if I’d loan you out for parties.” I felt sick then, embarrassed that the asshole I’d seen that day in Ransom’s car was the same drunk idiot that had groped me after I danced for Ransom.

  “Ransom…”

  “I don’t care what he thinks,” he said, holding my chin up. “I bloodied his nose anyway so it’s over.” He kissed me, soft, quick and then pushed my head back to his chest, not stopping our dance once.

  I said it before I lost my nerve. I said it knowing it would breach the quiet around us.

  “I love you, Ransom.” And when he stilled, when I could hear the speed of his heart thum
ping against my ear, I looked up at him and smiled. Then I settled my cheek back on his chest so I didn’t pressure him into anything by looking into his eyes. “It won’t break me if you don’t love me back.” I snuggled into him.

  It wouldn’t. I didn’t need that yet. I would one day, but not just yet. I’d once told him I didn’t know love, that I didn’t want to know it at all. That had changed with a kiss, with those dances and the haunted, broken look in his eyes. It had changed when he touched me, when he looked through me like no one ever had before.

  I meant the words even though I’d never intended to.

  Since I wanted to, since there was no better time to say everything I was thinking, I looked back up at him and smiled, and let him have it all. “It’s like I’ve spent an entire lifetime only seeing the world in black and white.”

  “And now you don’t?” His voice was low, sounded a little awed.

  “Now there is you. Even the you that pisses me off and has me ignoring your texts.” I breathed easier when he grinned. “Now there is light and sparkle and the most beautiful colors. It’s all right there in front of me and I see every time you kiss me, every damn time you smile at me.” I flicked my gaze down and played with his collar. “Don’t you dare ask me to go back to being colorblind.”

  Ransom pulled my face up again so I would look at him as though he needed to say something, but whatever it was I knew would be some excuse to stop feeling the way I did. I wouldn’t listen to that. His face had gone flush and the frown hardening his mouth made him look older. I kissed that frown away, relaxing when he kissed me back. “It’s okay to let someone love you.”

  Ransom pressed his lips together, like he had to force something back, maybe words that would do more than break me. “I don’t deserve it.”

  And because I meant it, because I typically did whatever the hell I wanted—and what I wanted was him—I smiled. “I’m still gonna love you anyway.”

  Tremé was the oldest African American neighborhood in the country. The tourism bureau could offer a history lesson about the hat maker, Claude Tremé, who came to the city from France when America was a baby nation, and all the property he owned in the area, how Free Peoples of Color or those who bought or bargained for their freedom settled the neighborhood. There was always a Second Line—that happy, loud crowd following the bright brass instruments of a band, our own Jazz funeral without a body—in Tremé, always music and spice and the welcoming vibe of community in the area.

  But the tourism folks couldn’t tell you about that small Creole cottage with the powder blue siding and yellow shutters right off of North Rampart. They wouldn’t tell you that my father’s people had lived in that place for four generations. They didn’t know that the original hardwood carried a stain near the stove where I dropped a pan of hot grease at nine because the cast iron pot was too heavy for me to lift. They didn’t know that my father made me scrub the floor for five hours a night for a week, until my knuckles bled. They wouldn’t know that there were two porches and a veranda, gas fireplaces and that any time I wanted to avoid my father, I’d run to the back bedroom on the second floor because the ceiling was sloped and he didn’t like bending over when he called me a worthless, stupid whore. They wouldn’t tell you that when I left that cottage almost two years ago, I did it without looking over my shoulder once.

  Today I did.

  Even with Ransom on my left and Kona on the far right next to a slow-walking Keira, I kept glancing over my shoulder as we passed that house. It was Creole Gumbo Festival day in Tremé and Keira had begged Kona to take her despite her pregnancy, then demanded that Ransom and I come along because a weird bout of energy had struck her and she was sick of looking at the slow moving waves outside her patio or the perfectly painted walls inside her home.

  This neighborhood had been my home until I was seventeen and walking through it, with the people who had whispered some small promise of family, felt more comfortable to me than that small cottage behind me ever had.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Keira said, smiling so wide, looking so beautiful that for a second I forgot where I was or that the likelihood of running into my father was high.

  “It is,” I told her, grinning back at her when she slipped her arm around my shoulder.

  “You think I should chance some spicy gumbo? I got my TUMs.”

  There was a twinkle in her eyes that I loved, something I’d only ever seen from Keira when she was laughing hard or when Kona said something that warmed her heart. Keira was fearless about everything. I wanted to be just like her. “You’re almost nine months pregnant, Keira, I’d have to say you can do whatever the hell you want.”

  “Aly Cat, don’t encourage her,” Kona said, but I caught the tease in his eyes when Keira glared at him.

  “Aly Rillieux!” The voice was old, but I recognized it immediately. I turned around, with the Hale-Rileys pausing behind me. “Bonjou! Sak pase?”

  Millie Dade didn’t give me a chance to respond before she wrapped her arms around me and kissed both of my cheeks.

  “M ap viv. Et ou? She waved off my inquiry about her health and patted my face. It was the first time I’d seen the old woman since I left Tremé. She was small, with curly white hair that looked blue in the sunlight and she had faint age spots along her forehead and dotted over her thin fingers. Likely pushing eighty, Millie had been grann’s oldest friend. She was also just as messy and nosy as my grandmother had been, a fact that came back to me when she looked over my shoulder straight at Ransom, and that familiar smile of hers beamed.

  There was no avoiding it. The old woman would grin and gawk until I was forced into an introduction. “Millie, this is my…um, this is Ransom,” I told her, nodding for him to greet her.

  She actually blushed when he kissed her hand and that blush got deeper when Kona stepped to her side and laid on his best Hale charm.

  “And this is Ransom’s folks Keira and Kona.”

  “Sekonsa! I heard about them,” she said, pulling Kona down to kiss his cheek even before he offered it. “Oh! Li ansent! Bien!” she said, waving a hand over Keira’s large stomach, her eyes sparkling.

  “Millie, pinga ou fè sa!” I told her, narrowing my eyes at her when she looked a little too eager to touch Keira’s belly. Keira had complained often enough about hating how even total strangers felt entitled to patting her stomach, often without even asking first.

  The old woman stopped smiling, but brushed off the small reprimand by shrugging and pulling on my wrist. “You see your papa today?”

  “Non,” I told her, warning her with a glare. “And I’m not going to.”

  “Aly…”

  “Mind your own business, old woman.” My tone was teasing, but firm.

  Millie was good natured, but a little too aggressive when it came to what she thought was giving out good advice to broken up families. And my family was as broken as one could ever be.

  “Well, then, cheri, you be well.” She finally caught my hint and nodded to us with a brief “se te on plezi” to Ransom and his parents—I doubted she’d really enjoyed meeting them, especially when she couldn’t get any dirt on me or them or what I was doing with Ransom—before Ransom ushered me down the side walk. Still, there was that Hale charm…

  Ransom’s smile was ridiculous and when he kept throwing it my way, I jabbed him in the rib. “What?”

  I shook my head when he pulled me to his side with his arm around my shoulder. “You’re full of surprises.”

  I shrugged. “You know I speak the language.” I squinted, mocking a frown. “Did you think I was cursing in Spanish or something all those times Koa tried my patience, or… um, whenever?”

  “I guessed Creole,” Kona interrupted, smiling at Keira like he’d won a bet.

  “He did,” she started, pulling me free of Ransom’s large arm. “And now he’s going to be all superior.” Keira looped her arm in my elbow and ignored her smug-looking husband. “Kona spent time in Tremé before I came around b
ecause he had a crush on the barmaid at the Candlelight,” she whispered to me conspiratorially.

  “Oh?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at the man in question. He couldn’t hear us, I knew. “You think he’s gonna go check if she’s still there?”

  “Nah,” Keira said through a laugh. “Luka told me once that the girl’s brother chased Kona out with a shotgun in his hand.”

  “What’s so funny?” Kona asked when our laughter pulled his attention away from whatever animated story Ransom was telling his father.

  Keira was cool, and merely gave out a sing-songy whistle and glance towards the sky in an “I’ll never tell” tease.

  The woman was legendary.

  “This your place?” Keira asked after leveling a saucy wink at her husband.

  I knew she meant the neighborhood. Ransom and Kona often asked me about my people, my childhood, but Keira wasn’t one to pry. Her curiosity about my neighborhood surprised me, and I liked her wanting to know more about me.

  “Yeah. I grew up here before Leann let me take the loft.”

  Keira stopped, glancing back to where Millie had disappeared as though something had just occurred to her. “We can leave if you’re worried about running into your father.”

  “No, Keira.” It was a sweet suggestion, but the day was too beautiful and I felt comfortable with Ransom and his family. “I’m not gonna let anyone spoil the day, especially not that mean old man,” I told Keira, patting Ransom’s hand when he came up to me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

  The smell of gumbo was thick in the air, with its aroma of Cayenne pepper, garlic and bell peppers so heavy that my mouth watered. I quietly pulled Ransom behind me as Keira walked toward a long line queuing for bowls of that delicious concoction.

  It had been a relaxing day, laughing with Ransom and his family, forgetting about the struggles I’d endured in Tremé, and Ransom not once looking away from me. He stood in front of me, those dark eyes roaming my features, and I thought that nothing but his look and the slow smile he gave me could make the moment more perfect.