Courtship: A 'Snowflake' Novel

by Nia Forrester

  “To see you? Did she come to see you?”

  She was being inquisitorial now and felt almost powerful. Because he was answering her questions so willingly, she was reminded that she had every right to ask them.

  “Yes.”

  Jada shook her head. “Why would she be coming to see you?”

  “She’s my homegirl. A longtime, complicated, messy, you-wouldn’t-understand kind of homegirl. Okay? But there’s nothing more than that between us. Not anymore.”

  “Anymore.” Jada let her entire body sag. She leaned against the railing. “So once upon a time …”

  “Yeah. Once upon a time. But no more.”

  His gaze didn’t falter as he said the words. He was telling the truth.

  Jada said nothing for a long while. People entered and exited the library. Some paused as they came out, looking around for cars, adjusting books into bags, lingering long enough to make Jada want to yell at them to get the hell on with wherever they were going and stop interrupting the fight she was trying to have with her boyfriend.

  Ibrahim, too, seemed to lose patience, because he sighed loudly.

  A woman who was fidgeting with a bus pass, hearing the sigh, looked at him then at Jada and moved away so she was no longer standing in the line of sight between them.

  Ibrahim was standing with his legs apart, arms at his sides.

  “Can you come over here?” he said.

  Pushing herself up, Jada went to him, stopping when they were inches apart. He took the fabric of her uniform shirt between his thumb and forefinger, gently tugging her closer until her face was almost touching his chest. She leaned in, the remaining two inches, her face pressing into his t-shirt.

  She was so weak with him. Weak, and easy. And she knew it but couldn’t make herself do otherwise, be otherwise.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she said. “Even before I went to your house, you didn’t call me.”

  “Because I was all messed up in the head. By what you told me. And I know that’s not fair. But that’s what it was. It was messing with me and I was trying to deal with it before I called you back.”

  “You can’t do that,” she said, pulling back so she could look up at him. “Disappear like that. Because that messes with my head.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Can you promise never to do that again? To just … ghost me like that?”

  “Promise,” he said.

  Jada felt his slight hardness between them. Ibrahim pressed his lips to her forehead, then to her temple.

  “I don’t even know what to do with you, Jada Green,” he said.

  “What do you want to do with me?”

  “Everything.” He exhaled a slow breath against her skin. “I want to do everything with you.”

  “Then … do it,” she breathed. “It’s what I want, too.”

  “Hey. Come over here, lemme show you something,” he said, abruptly switching tacks and pushing away from the railing he was leaning on.

  Taking her by the hand, he led her out toward the parking lot.

  Jada followed along, frustrated that just as it seemed they were about to get to the heart of the matter, he was changing gears again, putting them back in ‘park.’

  She allowed herself to be led until they stopped at a random spot in the parking lot. She spun around, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, looked at Ibrahim and shrugged.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “This.” He pointed at a car. A silver Honda Accord, spotless but not brand new.

  “Did you …?”

  “Yeah. Just bought it. Drove it off the lot yesterday.”

  Jada walked around the car.

  It shone in the sunlight, obviously having been waxed and polished recently.

  Ibrahim unlocked it and opened the door for her on the passenger side. She got in, and he got in behind the wheel.

  “It’s definitely not my dream car or anything,” he said. “But …”

  “It’s perfect,” Jada said, cutting short his self-deprecation.

  “Need me to take you home?”

  She shook her head. “Lisa and me …”

  “It’s okay. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after. Whenever.”

  “You work tonight?” Jada asked, remembering something.

  “Nah. I did this morning.”

  “My parents …” She swallowed hard. “They’re … My father drives my mother to San Francisco tonight. For this thing they do once a month? They’re staying over.”

  Ibrahim stared at her for a long time.

  “What time d’you want me?” he asked.

  ~~~

  He was kissing her, his open mouth against her mouth, their tongues dancing and tangling. In a move that felt more like instinct then intention, he shifted so he was on top of her and between her legs. Jada answered the maneuver by arching upward to meet him. Within moments they had lost control or even any pretense of it and were grinding against each other.

  She twisted her mouth free and instead sucked the solid column of Ibrahim’s neck, loving the low grumble in the back of his throat that produced. Maybe it began to feel too good, because he abruptly pushed himself up, arms extended so his torso no longer touched hers.

  But between their legs they still touched, and Jada felt that Ibrahim was fully erect.

  “Shit,” he said.

  That almost surprised her more than anything that had happened in the last few minutes because he had been successful lately in his quest to stop cussing.

  “Shit,” he said again. “Fuck, Jada.”

  Perversely, the expletives pleased her because it meant he had just about forgotten himself. One rule broken could mean another.

  And apparently it did, because he reached for her top and pulled it upward, pausing at her bra, then pulling that up too, without unfastening the clasps at the back.

  Looking at her for a few moments, lying there beneath him, her chest heaving, he bowed his head and kissed her between her breasts. Jada heard herself breathing hard and was embarrassed at how that gave away how much she wanted him.

  Squirming a little, she reached behind her and unfastened the bra for him, but Ibrahim didn’t take it, or her top completely off. He instead slid the straps aside and moved from her cleavage to the domes of her breasts, kissing them so lightly, artfully avoiding the nipples until she was thrusting herself forward, pressing them toward his mouth. And when he finally took one between his lips, Jada cried out.

  Kissing her along her center, he moved lower and Jada’s mouth opened a little wider, in wonder and surprise when he peeled down her panties. She froze, still feeling the tight, taut need in the base of her stomach, but now also self-conscious and anxious about what he saw, and what he thought about what he saw, and about whether he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

  “Jada.”

  In an instant, he seemed to return to himself. As though staring at her nakedness had jolted him out of a trance and made him focus on what they were about to do.

  Anticipating the inevitable rejection, she shoved against his shoulders so he would lift all his weight from her and rolled free. Turning her back to him, Jada refastened her bra, pulled it back down to cover herself, and put her top back in place.

  The panties were not as easy to reach. For that she had to meet his gaze. And what she saw in his was something tender and maybe even vulnerable.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  It was so unexpected, so unwelcome a thing for him to say that her head snapped upward and once again she looked him in the eyes.

  “What’re you sorry for?” she demanded. She was angry, but her voice was trembling. “For touching me? For wanting me? Or for making me want you?”

  “Jada …”

  “Does that embarrass you?” she continued. “When I like it?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is it?”

  He stared at her for a moment and then shook his head as if in disbeli
ef. Frustration was etched across his face.

  Instead of responding right away, he looked behind him, moved the sheets and searched for something. Only once he found it did Jada realize with a flash of humiliation that he was holding her white cotton panties.

  She leaned forward to snatch them from him, but he held them out of reach.

  He placed his hands on her thighs. They were so big, those hands. He could almost hold one thigh in each, their span was so wide. Ibrahim turned her so her legs were pointed at him, then he slid his hands down, over her calves and to her ankles, holding one in each hand using them to draw her closer.

  He put one foot through one leg of the panties, and the other foot through the other, then slowly, slid the garment up, effortlessly lifting her when he needed to pull it up to her waist.

  Closing her eyes, it was Jada’s turn to shake her head in disbelief.

  He had just made dressing her almost as arousing as undressing her had been.

  “I want you to like it when I touch you,” he said, while her eyes were still shut. “I want to touch you and kiss you and taste you … everywhere. I want to make you say my name like you’ll die if I stop … But not like this. Not when we’re in your bedroom because your parents aren’t home. That’s not how it should be when we do this.”

  “Then how should it be, Ibrahim? Are you going to wait until …”

  “We’re married,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  Jada gave a startled burst of laughter. “What?”

  “That’s what I want. I mean … I’m hoping you want it, too.”

  “I’m eighteen!”

  “So, we’ll wait a while.”

  Jada sat further upright, staring at him through narrowed eyes. “Are you serious? You’re saying …”

  “I’m saying that I don’t want to date you. I want to … court you.”

  “That’s … crazy,” she said. She was shaking her head but wasn’t sure even as she said it that it was all that crazy.

  They had talked about this in Youth Group at church. About the difference between ‘dating’ and ‘courting’.

  The difference, their youth pastor said, is intention. Anyone want to take a guess at what that means?

  Kyle raised his hand. Kyle always raised his hand.

  Jada used to think it was his fearlessness about being wrong. Now, she wondered whether it was just his assurance that he was always right.

  It means, you’re spending time with someone with the intention of making them your partner.

  Your spouse, the youth pastor corrected. Your mate. Your wife, or your husband. Let’s make sure we’re specific about this. Courtship doesn’t lead to some generic ‘partnership’. It leads to holy matrimony.

  “I think that’s what we’ve been doing all along,” Ibrahim said. “Courting. But maybe I didn’t know how to name it. Or was scared to.”

  Jada stared at him.

  Ibrahim and the word ‘scared’ didn’t go together. He was, in her mind, an immovable object—strong, steady, sure.

  “So, if we did that … if we named it, what would that mean … exactly?” she asked slowly.

  “That we’re making plans. Setting goals. Building a life.”

  Jada lifted a hand to her lips, chewing on the corner of her pinkie finger for a moment then abruptly letting it drop. It was an old habit from when she was maybe twelve-years-old, and it only resurfaced in times of extreme stress. Or overwhelming excitement.

  She examined her emotions for a moment and decided that what she was feeling right now was the latter.

  Definitely, the latter.

  29

  Now

  The man who is striding toward Ibrahim might have been unrecognizable if not for the fact that Raj has the same loping walk, slightly leaned forward on the balls of his feet. He still has a full head of hair, though it is now threaded in grey, as is his well-manicured beard. He is darker in complexion, but with a golden tone, and when he removes his sunglasses, there are crinkles about the eyes that confirm him as someone who spends a great deal of time in the sun.

  For the first few seconds when he entered the coffee shop, he didn’t spot Ibrahim, so he paused and looks around. He stood with more self-assurance, Ibrahim noted, no longer a young man vaguely reticent to takes up any space in a room.

  Just above the belt of his perfectly pressed beige slacks, where his peach-colored polo is neatly tucked, there is the slightest softness. Not a belly or paunch—it is way too subtle a bulge to be called either of those things—but it is a hint of a comfortable life with occasional indulgences.

  When Raj finally sees him, his lips part into a broad, white smile. The teeth, once slightly crooked, are perfect now. He nods slowly then advances toward Ibrahim. He extends a hand, perhaps out of habit but when they are standing in front of each other, Raj grasps his hand and yanks him forward into an embrace.

  Ibrahim allows himself to be hugged, and even returns it, though he is aware from his slight stiffness that prison has trained him to recoil from another man’s sudden closeness. He hugs his son, but even then, there is always the barrier of their clasped arms between them.

  Raj though, has always been different from anyone else Ibrahim knew. Always indifferent to social mores that made no sense to him.

  “Ibrahim!” he says now. “Brother!”

  “Look at you, man!”

  Ibrahim uses this as an excuse to pull back. He hasn’t seen Raj in well over fifteen years, and even if his old friend doesn’t feel it, for him there is the smallest awkwardness.

  “Look at us,” Raj says. “We’re old men.”

  He is still grinning, still nodding.

  “My god,” he adds. “How did you find me? How is it … and why is it you never found me sooner?”

  ~~~

  Being in the old neighborhood, the one where Ibrahim used to clean, and where Kaleem now lives reminded Ibrahim of Raj. And earlier that day, his friend had drifted through his mind once before when he and Jada were in Free Range. It seemed like too much of a coincidence, and Ibrahim does not believe in coincidences. He believes in signs.

  He hadn’t slept well or very much at all, the exchange with Jada still weighing heavily on his mind. To have words with his wife was uncommon. To have made her cry even less so. She fell asleep eventually, but he could not.

  He finally chose wakefulness, going to sit at his son’s computer and idly surf the internet, looking for anything he could find about his friend. What he found had been remarkable, so remarkable that the listing of an email address, buried deep on one of the pages he browsed had frankly surprised him. Raj was no longer the kind of person who should be as accessible as he was.

  Idly, and with little expectation of a response—let alone one that came only forty minutes later—he wrote a quick note.

  Hey, old friend, it said. Holla if you hear me.

  And then he added his cellphone number, and name at the end.

  Raj did “holla.” He pinged Ibrahim’s cellphone with a question: the mean girl, you remember the one, what was her name?

  Ibrahim had smiled at that, figuring that it was Raj’s way of testing his identity.

  Molly, he responded. The name had sprung to mind almost immediately and seemingly from nowhere. It had been years, and she wasn’t even an acquaintance of his, but of Raj’s.

  Moments later, his cellphone rang, and he answered right away keeping his voice low, not wanting to wake the house.

  ~~~

  Raj is wearing a Patek Phillipe watch. Ibrahim only recognizes that’s what it is because crooks tend to be materialistic. And while he was locked up, Ibrahim was surrounded by them. In prison, occasionally they had access to magazines, like GQ, and Maxim and some inmates pored over those with the same hungry looks usually reserved for pornography.

  Since images that were considered provocative of sex or violence were routinely censored, all that was left were those of places and … things. The cars, jewelry, and shoes were what was
interesting to most inmates. Some guys liked the look of the suits. And others liked the look of the guys wearing the suits.

  Ibrahim was most drawn colors, the bright, shiny newness of every image, and the reminiscence of the outside world. A glossy ad for a timepiece that featured some young guy trotting across a city street to a waiting car (usually with a pretty girl in it) could occupy him for fifteen minutes. To walk across a street—any street—seemed like both an impossible future and a far-too-distant past.

  And probably, despite his preoccupation with other details about the ad besides the timepiece, the ability to recognize it had slipped into Ibrahim’s consciousness nevertheless.

  Noticing his scrutiny, Raj touches the watch and twists it a little on his wrist.

  “A gift from my wife,” he explains. “For our anniversary last year.”

  “Your wife,” Ibrahim says. “So, you’re still …?”

  “Married to Vidhya? No.” Raj looks embarrassed. “We divorced about five years ago. I remarried almost straightaway.”

  Ibrahim nods.

  “But there were good years with Vidhya. Good years and two children. Let me show you …”

  Raj fishes out his phone, and taps the screen a few times, sliding it across the table toward Ibrahim.

  The picture is of a pretty, South East Asian woman with long, dark hair, a fashionable streak of grey at her widow’s peak. She is flanked by two bright-eyed girls. They are sitting on a beach, all of them in white shirts and jeans, barefoot in the sand. The girls are grinning widely at the camera. The younger of the two looks like Raj, and both have his ectomorphic lankiness.

  “That’s Noor, on the right, and Shashi on the left,” Raj says, the pride evident in his voice. “Eleven and nine.”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  Raj nods and slides the phone back toward him, darkening the screen. “They are,” he agrees. “My loves.”