“Punishing you. I’m sorry for punishing you … And for being a hypocrite. And a coward.”
Makayla’s eyes opened wide and she turned around so she was still caged in but now facing him.
“You didn’t … You weren’t …”
He nodded. “I did. I was.”
She waited for him to say more.
“At first, I was angry because you doubted me, about whether I was using that story to get Devin to sign with SE. So, I punished you for that.
“And then I was angry because of those pictures on the blog, even though I knew they were old pictures, and didn’t mean any of what they were saying they meant. I always told you not to pay attention to that shit, when it was me … so I was a hypocrite.
“And then I was angry just because of how much you love and care for him … and because when you told me that story about his childhood, it made it impossible for me to not understand why.
“And I was a coward because … I didn’t admit any of that to you. I just let you keep believing that everything that was going wrong between us was your fault.”
Makayla felt the tears on her cheeks before she even knew they had formed. Jamal pressed his forehead against hers.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I’m sorry t …”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Kayla.” Jamal nudged her nose with his. “You’ve lost a lot, and given up a lot to be with me. And I let you.”
“I didn’t give up …”
“You did. Not just Devin, but … being a twenty-seven-year-old, going out with girlfriends … having a man who’s with you, next to you when you need him to be … I haven’t been that for you. I took you to Puerto Rico and expected it all to be better.”
“Who have you been talking to?” Makayla asked with narrowed eyes, wanting to lighten the mood.
He’d said a lot, owned a lot. A lot more than she would have given him ownership for. She wasn’t blameless, by any means. She had allowed Devin to come first, and to come between them. She had expected more of him sometimes than was reasonable. There was plenty of blame to go around.
“You’d be surprised,” Jamal said, “what you learn, what you’ll be reminded of, just from watching other people’s relationships.”
He brushed his lightly lips against hers, as if testing her willingness to kiss him. Lifting up onto her toes to get closer, Makayla left no doubt about her willingness.
“What did you get reminded of?”
“That you’re my heart,” he said. “That you’re my home.”
“Look at you! Furniture. Real furniture.”
Makayla spun around in Devin’s living room, taking in the side-tables, the shelving unit, the new TV stand and armchairs to accent the sofa that she had, so long ago, gone with him to buy.
When she peeked in the bedroom, there had been a transformation there as well—a matching dresser to go with the bed they picked out, a rack for his three bass-guitars. A side-table, upon which there was a halfway-decent lamp.
“Can’t take credit for it, though,” Devin said. “Got lots of help.”
“Harper?” she asked, trying to keep the hope out of her voice.
“Nah.” Devin looked away. “Prentice and the other guys. I told you. Me and Harper? That ain’t happenin’.”
He collapsed on his sofa, legs stretched out in front of him and Makayla tried not to stare. He looked the same, but different. Healthier, more solid. And happier in his skin.
“Why you lookin’ at me like that?” he laughed.
“Because you look amazing. And because I missed your face.”
“Come over here,” Devin said. “You’re too far away.”
Makayla went to sit next to him and he put an arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him and it became a full-bodied hug, her legs folded next to her on the sofa.
“Did you miss me at all?” she asked quietly.
Devin gave a short laugh. “Miss you? It was like someone cut my arm off.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s probably not healthy, right?”
“Having your arm cut off? Nah, I’d have to say that it’s not.”
She laughed and sat up to look at him. “You know what I mean. It shouldn’t feel like that, being apart. Not seeing each other all the time. I mean, we should be …”
“I don’t know what we should be,” Devin interrupted her. “I don’t know what we should have been. I just know what we were. What we are.”
“What were we?”
“Everything,” Devin said. “We … you were everything, Kay.”
“I can’t be that for you, though. Not anymore.”
“I know.” He nodded, but there was pain in his eyes. Makayla looked away to avoid seeing it.
“I feel like I chased Harper away.”
“Maybe she wasn’t ever gon’ stay anyway.”
“Not sure I believe that.”
“I don’t want to talk about Harper. I want to talk about my music. I want to talk about you … and your man. Y’all good now?”
Makayla nodded, unable to keep herself from smiling.
“Is it safe for me to come around again? Visit your fancy-ass apartment again every once in a while?”
“I would like that. I think he would, too.”
“Turns out he’s a’ight,” Devin said nodding.
“He wants us to do it. To get married. Soon.”
“Good.” There it was again, the flash of pain. But Devin nodded. He bit into his lower lip. “He’s gon’ be good to you.”
“That’s what Nana said about him.”
“And she was always right, so … must be true.”
“I miss her.”
“Me too.”
“And sometimes,” Makayla admitted, “I miss when it was just the three of us, in that small, cluttered, hot apartment.”
“Remember those blackouts?” Devin said. “That summer?”
“Yeah. And the ice on the roof, in the pillowcases. Yup.”
“Yup.”
He turned to look at her, and Makayla looked at him, staring into those mysterious blue-green eyes. And though he seemed not to have formed the intention, he leaned in, and pressed his lips against hers. It was a dry, closemouthed kiss, like they were kids again and didn’t quite know how to do it.
When Devin lifted his head, Makayla smiled and saw that he was smiling as well.
“Ew,” she said.
And they both laughed.
~Epilogue ~
She looked like a bride.
But her kind of bride, with her locs high on her head in an intricate crown; and placed throughout them, little white flowers. She didn’t wear a veil or a train, and the dress was a simple, white linen sheath, ankle-length and sleeveless, though it was somewhat cold. From afar, it looked like crushed tissue. And when Devin hugged her, it felt like that, too.
He didn’t know how, or why Kay and Jamal had chosen the upstate vineyard to get married, but when she asked him to walk her down the aisle, she said it was because it was a special place for them. Devin didn’t ask what made it special, because he figured there were things about her life he should get used to not knowing, and get used to her not telling him.
He was a little late getting there because he had never been up as far as Millbrook before, and had foolishly refused the offer of a ride in the car with Jamal and his brothers. But he needed to be alone before he went to give his best friend, his love, away.
Because he was late, just as he got out of his own hired car (damn, he had it like that now—he could ‘hire’ cars), Jamal greeted him first with a frown.
“Not today, man,” he said. “Not today.”
And then he hugged him, and thanked him for “doing this.”
This. Giving Kay away.
He said he would “give her away” because that was—for better, or for worse—what he was doing. And it made sense also because there was simply no one else to do it. Kay hadn’t invited he
r mother, didn’t know where her father was, and she had only Candace as a maid-of-honor. No bridesmaids at all, because there were still so few friends.
But behind the rustic barn, where they would have the reception, when the wedding party was getting ready, Robyn Scaife, K Smooth’s wife, and a third, very beautiful woman Devin didn’t know, were all fussing around Kay.
They might not be friends yet. Or maybe they were. But if not, he could feel that they would be. They checked her makeup, smoothing her deliberately-rumpled dress, and clucking about how beautiful she looked.
She did look beautiful. And happy.
Her happiness both relieved and caused the stone-like lump that sat there all through the ceremony, in the back of this throat.
But Devin didn’t cry when he walked her down the makeshift aisle, which was just the path between two sections of wooden seats, arranged in the middle of a field.
He didn’t cry when the preacher asked, ‘Who gives this woman …?’
And he didn’t cry when Jamal told Devin he should have the first dance, and that he—her new husband— would take the second.
They were honeymooning in Fiji. Kay said Jamal wanted them to go to a place that “no one can find.” She smiled when she said that, and her eyes … her eyes … they reflected all the love she had for the man she had just married.
“Devin,” she said, when she was hugging him, her arms tightly wrapped about her neck.
Her voice was whispery, and breathy, like it used to be when they were kids and groped their way through the dark to the basement of their building, and kissed, and kissed, and kissed.
“Devin …” she said. “Can you believe it?”
He couldn’t, wouldn’t have believed it, had he not seen it with his own eyes. Kay was somebody’s wife now.
So, instead, he said, “You look so beautiful.”
She smiled at that, pleased. And then she kissed him on the side of his face and pressed her cheek to his for a long, long time.
He inhaled her.
After that, she was with her guests, most of them friends of Jamal’s; family of Jamal’s who had today become her family. They took both her hands in theirs and pulled her close and Kay smiled, unaccustomed to all that love, all that acceptance from strangers.
Devin walked through the reception in a daze, his mind fuzzy like someone in a dream. Everything felt unreal and indistinct. Then he saw her.
Harper.
She was real, and distinct. She was standing near the dance-floor and had a glass in her hand. She raised it, then came toward him, pausing to first touch the arm of the man next to her, Damon, Jamal’s brother.
“Devin,” she said. She smiled, and reached up to touch her hair, self-consciously.
It was all prettied-up and straightened. Devin had never seen it straight before. He didn’t like it, but Harper still looked pretty.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” she said.
“I guess this must be …” She searched for the words. “This is hard for you.”
He nodded, but what he said was, “she’s happy.”
“She is.” Harper looked down, and then she took a breath. “And you and me, we’re going to be working together soon.”
“Yeah,” he said.
Her lips were stained pink. Too pink. He didn’t like that either, but Harper still looked pretty.
“So …” she began.
But then she was interrupted by the sound of someone summoning everyone to the front. The bride and groom were about to leave. And everyone who wanted to be there for the send-off needed to come, right away.
Devin stayed put, because he didn’t want to be there to see Kay leave; because with her, so much more would be gone for good.
He was standing alone, hands shoved deep in his pockets when someone burst from the crowd that had its back to him. It was Jamal. He came right up to Devin and grasped his hand, pulling him in for a hug.
“We’re brothers now,” he said.
The stone in the back of his throat grew larger then, and Devin could not speak. So, he nodded and watched Jamal walk away, and disappear once again into the throng. Moments later, cheers went up and there was noise and clapping.
They were gone.
But Devin did not cry.
A few dozen people stayed behind to exhaust the food and drink, but most headed for cars, eager to get back to the city. He found his hired car, and the two-hour ride seemed to pass in an instant, while he played in his head, scenes from his life. And in most of them—in all the good ones—there was Kay.
In the city, he almost slipped. He almost slipped and asked the driver to take him down to the West Village because there, he knew he could find something—someone—to obscure the pain. But this wasn’t pain that should be obscured. This was pain he had to feel. Because it was right, and it was good, that he should let Kay go.
Instead, on a hunch, and on a hope, he had the driver take him somewhere else. When he got there, he told him he could leave, and went in. There was no bell. Just a knocker on the door. He knocked, and the door opened.
Harper looked surprised to see him, but not surprised. She was still in her party dress, still wearing her pink lipstick.
“Devin,” she said. “Are you … Come in. Just … come in.”
He went in, and she looked at him. He looked at her. She sat on her sofa and sighed, but said nothing more.
Devin sat next to her. He put his head in her lap. And felt as her fingers raked over his head, soothing and rhythmic, through his hair that was beginning to grow out once again.
And it was then, finally—head in Harper’s lap, her fingers in his hair—that he cried.
Also by Nia Forrester
Commitment
Unsuitable Men
Maybe Never
Mistress
Wife
Mother
The Seduction of Dylan Acosta
The Education of Miri Acosta
In the Nothing
Secret
The Art of Endings
Lifted
The Come Up
Ivy’s League
Afterwards
Young, Rich & Black
The Fall
Acceptable Losses
Paid Companion
30 Days, 30 Stories
The Lover
Nia Forrester lives and writes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where, by day, she is an attorney working on public policy, and by night, she crafts woman-centered fiction that examines the complexities of life, love and the human condition.
She welcomes feedback and email from her readers at [email protected] or tweets @NiaForrester. And visit with her, at NiaForrester.com
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