by Tanya Chris
I considered telling her about Sherry and Joshua, wanting to describe to someone the flutters of happiness in my stomach, but before I could open my mouth, Desi came in to announce dinner. We trailed her into the kitchen where everyone tried to fill a plate at once.
“Mom, do you have a condom?” Carrington asked as Desi dished him up.
“If I did, I wouldn’t have all of you.”
Carrington’s eyes opened wide. He looked over at me, surprised to have my factoid confirmed. Desi gave me a look that clearly said, “Really?”
“Never too early to learn the important things.”
Ma made a clucking noise. “Maybe you could meet a nice girl and stop worrying about condoms.”
“Not going to happen, Ma.” I shot Bella an I-told-you-so glance. Maybe when I turned forty, Ma would give up on me too.
Chapter 12
“What’ve you got going on today?” Joshua asked me as he wiped down the counter. “If you’re not busy, maybe we can do something.”
“I’m not busy.”
Sherry and I were silently finishing up the French toast he’d whipped up. Apparently French toast with fresh strawberries and whipped cream was enough to get Sherry out of bed, though still not enough to get her to talk.
“No climbing date today?”
“Not for climbing anyway.”
Jenny had plans to spend the day with Tommy for the second Saturday in a row, and although she’d called last weekend for some post-climbing fun, I didn’t expect to hear from her today. When I’d talked to her earlier in the week, her voice had carried that tone of gentle withdrawal with which I was regretfully familiar.
“You want to hit up the gym with me?”
“Don’t ruin him,” Sherry said, opening her mouth for something other than French toast for the first time since she’d left our bed. “His body is fine the way it is.”
“I’m not saying it’s not.”
“I could probably use some more definition.” I looked down at my shirtless torso.
“Your arms are good, but your chest could be bigger.”
“I said don’t ruin him.”
“Am I ruined?” Joshua had a shirt on, but I knew what he looked like without one. His chest was aspirational.
“You’re beautiful,” Sherry said, “but if I wanted two of you, I’d have two of you. I like Nate the way he is.”
“So do I, for what it’s worth, but I’m not thinking about myself. I’m thinking about Nate. You can play leading-man type roles. God knows, I’ll never be able to—being black and all.”
“That’s changing.”
“Not fast enough for me. I’m twenty-eight already. By the time black men are as romantic as white men, I’ll be too old to play the romantic lead.”
“Please,” Sherry said. “You’re a man. You get to play the romantic lead when you’re fat and bald and sixty. Try being a woman expected to do high kicks in a bra top and see what your shelf-life is like then.”
I pushed my empty plate away and held up my hands. “As a person with both male privilege and white privilege, I’m going to stay out of this argument.”
“Let’s all stay out of this argument,” Joshua said. “My point is that if Nate’s going to audition for leading-man type roles in New York, he’d have a better shot with a better upper body.”
“Nate’s not going to audition for leading man roles in New York because Nate is staying right here.” My chest was good enough for Central Playhouse.
“Oh my God, the two of you are exasperating. July. I have spoken. And now I’m going back to bed.” Sherry stood up and swept regally out of the room, her robe parting to reveal the naked body beneath it.
“I think you’re moving to New York in July,” I told Joshua. I was glad he had someone pushing him but I missed him already.
“I don’t see how that’s going to happen.” He stacked our plates and carried them over to the dishwasher where he looked out the kitchen window. “It’s a nice day. Give me half an hour in the gym—I doubt you can handle more than that anyway—and then I’ll take you to one of my favorite places.”
~~~
“Where are we going now?” I asked when we got back into the car. We were both dressed for the gym—me in a pair of Joshua’s sweat pants, the drawstring cinched as tight as it would go, and a shirt that made it embarrassingly clear why I needed to work on my chest. I’d survived forty-five minutes, proving I was stronger than I looked, but my arms and chest throbbed in an unfamiliar way and I could feel the sweat drying into salt against my skin. Joshua looked pristinely clean. He’d worked in on my sets but not hard enough to break a sweat, apparently.
“King’s Forest,” he said as he pulled out of the parking lot.
“How far away is that?”
“Closer than you’d expect from the name. It’s hardly a forest, and I think King must have been some dude’s nickname, but it’s beautiful this time of year when everything’s budding. There’s a hike I like to take that ends at a stream. It’s only about half an hour but I never see anyone else there. Sound OK?”
“Sounds great. The only hiking I’ve done lately is to get to the foot of a cliff.”
“No cliff, sorry. There’s a concrete abutment. Not very picturesque, but when the water’s running high, you can take off your shoes and feel the spray on your feet.”
“I don’t need a cliff.” I would miss Jenny, but not climbing, not particularly.
We drove to the accompaniment of Sherry’s CD playing low on the stereo. In my mind, I sang along with my favorite of her original tunes, the one I best knew the words to. Outside my window, the scenery got progressively more rural.
“You could bring some things over if you wanted,” Joshua said, breaking into my thoughts. “Shower stuff, whatever.”
“What brought that up?” I sniffed at myself. I was sweaty, but clean sweaty. I’d taken a shower before we left the house.
“Nothing.” Joshua parked the car and turned it off. “Just telling you it would be OK. Ready to go?” He leaned over into the back seat and grabbed two bottles of water and handed one to me.
I dawdled behind him on the trail, taking inventory. I ran my hand through my hair to see if it was greasy, then looked down at the clothes I’d borrowed form Joshua, which had been clean when I’d put them on.
“Stop, already. It’s stupid.” He swung around to face me and rolled his eyes. “You usually smell like pine trees. Today you don’t smell like anything, probably because you smell like me. I miss the pine.”
“Oh. Spruce, actually, not pine. I didn’t realize it was that strong.”
“It’s not. I told you it was stupid.”
“It’s this shampoo my sister gives me that’s supposed to keep my scalp clean or something. She owns a hair salon. I just do what she tells me.”
“It’s nice, but it’s not important. I’m sorry I brought it up. How do you make me act like such a girl? Now I feel like I need to arm wrestle you or something.”
“And then I’d feel like a girl. Actually, any girl could beat me right now. This bottle of water is heavy.”
Joshua grabbed it from me. “OK, now I’m carrying your books. I feel better. Let’s move.”
As we walked, I hummed a bit of Sherry’s song, the one stuck in my head, until we got to a section where the trail widened enough for the two of us to walk side-by-side.
“I’m told you can sing,” Joshua said.
“Who told you that?”
“Pete’s girlfriend, Hannah. She was down at rehearsal Thursday. I think she was disappointed you had the night off. She’s a treasure trove of interesting Nate facts.”
“Like what?”
“Well, let’s just say I got the entire history of the Nate, Lissie, Derek love triangle. I don’t even know who Derek is, but I now know that I’m apparently not the first man you’ve ever shared a woman with. Lissie’s the lighting designer, right?”
“Jesus Christ. I didn’t tell Hannah any of
that. She must have gotten it from Amanda. Or from eavesdropping. Hannah’s got personal space issues.”
“Amanda, huh? The triangle grows another side.”
I made a sound of exasperation. “Derek is my roommate. Amanda is his girlfriend and also Hannah’s roommate. In a couple of months, Derek and Amanda will move in together and I will definitely not move in with Hannah. And yes, Lissie is our lighting designer. It’s not a secret around the theater that Lissie and I were involved at one point, but Derek’s not part of the theater and doesn’t deserve to be theater gossip. He’s kind of straight-laced.” In his own kinky way.
“Whoa, sorry. I was under the impression you liked having your exploits detailed.”
“No, actually. I don’t hide them—” God damn, Deb “—but I don’t kiss and tell either. Lissie’s happily married and a good friend. I don’t want to change either one of those things.”
“Fair enough. It was none of my business.”
We tromped along for a ways together, my mood not as sunny as it had been, but when we broke out of the woods and into a clearing with a stream running through it, I couldn’t stay grumpy.
Water burbled happily over a tumble of rocks, throwing up spray that did nearly reach our feet when we dangled them over the concrete abutment. The sun bounced off the stream, catching us under the chin. Joshua handed me my bottle of water and I drank from it gratefully.
“Would you sing what you were humming?” he asked. “That’s what I was aiming at when I accidentally brought up Hannah.”
I cleared my throat. I could carry a tune with a full band behind me, but I didn’t consider myself a singer. I didn’t sing well enough to play a romantic lead in a Broadway musical, that was for sure, but I muddled my way through what I could remember of Sherry’s song while Joshua watched the water flow beneath us.
“Thank you,” he said when I was done. “Maybe Sherry could arrange it into a duet. It would be beautiful that way.”
“It’s a great song as it is. I love the words. I’m sorry I mangled some of them.”
“The words were my wedding vows, a poem I wrote for her.”
“Say it for me.” I lay back on the grassy ground behind me and watched the fluffy clouds overhead as I listened to Joshua recite in his deeply, smooth voice.
For you,
I would give anything,
Give up my freedom
Forsake all others, cleave only to you
Give up my dignity
Obey your word, live only to please
Give up my wealth, my world, my will
For you
I would bargain, I would strive
I would steal, I would pay
For what you give me freely every day,
You ask for nothing
I would give you anything
For only something,
But you give me everything
For nothing
Joshua lay back beside me and the two of us watched the clouds together in silence. I knew I should say something, find some way of expressing how his poem made me feel, but I was barely holding myself together enough to lie there. Never before had the vision of what I wanted but might never have been so clear to me.
“Nate?” Joshua rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his arm. “Are you crying?”
“Now who’s making who feel like a girl?” I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes. “It’s a good poem. It must’ve been a beautiful ceremony.”
“It was cheap and what we called intimate—Sherry doesn’t have a functional family and my family didn’t really approve, so we didn’t invite them—but I was marrying the woman I loved, so yeah. It was beautiful.”
“Your family doesn’t approve because Sherry’s not black?”
“No, no, no. We don’t say that. That would be racist. We say she dresses like a tramp and talks like a construction worker and has no visible means of support. Oh, and she fucks around.”
“You told them that?”
“I try to live an honest life. It’s part of living a sober life. But yeah, maybe I should’ve kept the open marriage part to myself. They’ll never understand it as anything other than her cheating on me.”
“But you cheat on her.”
“Naturally. It’s what men do. Funny thing is, that part’s her fault too. She should be a) pretending she isn’t aware of it and b) more disapproving.”
I laughed, half amused, half bitter. “I know a girl they’d like.”
“Yeah, I’ve known a few myself. Didn’t work out. That Sherry makes me happy isn’t even on my family’s list of criteria for a fitting wife, so I’ve mostly walked away from them. We drop by every year at Christmas, just to keep the door open, and when they treat her like she’s invisible, I close the door again until next year.” Joshua shrugged. “The world is getting more tolerant. Maybe someday my family will catch up.”
My stomach growled. Joshua laughed. “Do I need to feed you again already? We’ll bulk you up yet.” He leaped to his feet and reached a hand back down for me.
“Don’t ruin me,” I warned as I dusted off the back of my sweats.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
~~~
I was surprised when Jenny texted but grateful. I couldn’t keep lurking around Joshua and Sherry’s place, but without somewhere else to be my motivation to leave hadn’t overcome my desire to be near them. When the text came in, I was sprawled on their living room floor with Joshua on the couch above me watching Orson Welles play Othello surrounded by an all-white supporting cast.
Jenny’s text said merely, “Hey.” It could be read a lot of ways, but the fact that she was texting me at all suggested disappointment. I texted back, “Hey, beautiful. How was the day?” and kept half my attention on my phone while Iago convinced Othello of his wife’s infidelity on screen.
“This Iago’s got nothing on you,” I told Joshua.
“Orson Welles is rocking it though.”
“Way to return the compliment, dude.”
“I’m not going to dis Orson Welles, sweet pea, even if making an all-white version of Othello is a seriously asshat move.”
My phone buzzed in my hand and I looked down at Jenny’s response. “It was OK. What are you up to?” There was no point in an endless exchange of texts leading to the inevitable result. Might as well cut to the chase. I pushed the call button and brought the phone to my ear. Joshua put the movie on pause. In the quiet, Sherry’s voice floated in from the spare bedroom where she was working on rearranging Freely Given into a duet.
“Sorry,” I mouthed to Joshua as Jenny’s phone rang. He shrugged and stood up. He picked up my empty bottle and his water glass and carried them into the kitchen.
Jenny answered promptly, gloom evident in her greeting.
“Have you eaten?” I asked her, trying to find a clock in the dim light of the living room. Joshua had made us all dinner before we put the movie in, but I could fake an appetite.
“Yeah, we went out after climbing. Then he said ‘see ya’ and hopped in his car.”
“No move at all, huh?”
“He sort of stood there looking at me for a few seconds, all quiet and awkward. You know, like right before a guy makes a move—”
That wasn’t my strategy for making a move, but not everyone could have my game.
“—then ‘see ya,’ car, gone.”
“So next week you make the move.”
Jenny laughed. Joshua came back into the room with a full glass of water but no new beer for me, as though he already knew I’d leaving. He sat down on the couch and watched me on the phone with his head cocked.
“I’m not kidding,” I told Jenny. “You have no idea how hard it is to swoop in and kiss a girl, especially one as beautiful as you.”
“Aw.”
“Cut him some slack.”
“You know, we climbers have mixed feelings about that term. Slack is bad.”
“Joking aside,” I said.
&nbs
p; Jenny sighed on the other end of the line. “I can’t just kiss a guy.”
“Now you know how he feels. If you want something, you have to be willing to take a risk for it. Like what’s that thing you guys are always saying?”
“Just go get it.”
“Right. Just go get it.”
When I climbed, I was what they called static, meaning that I made sure I was well-latched-on to the next hold before I let go of the previous one. Jenny and Derek were always telling me I needed to be more dynamic, that sometimes I had to take a leap of faith and “just go get it.”
Trouble with that was that if you misjudged or missed, you ended up falling. When it came to climbing, I preferred to be static. Rope or not, I’d rather not fall. But when it came to dating, I’d learned how to just go get it.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” I asked Jenny.
“He could totally tell me no.”
“Exactly. So what? Then you’d know and you’d move on. It’s win-win. How come you can throw yourself from one hold to another fifty feet off the ground like a flying squirrel but you’re afraid of someone saying no?”
“Would you come over?”
“Yes.”
“See?” she said, sounding proud of herself. “I’m learning.”
I hung up the phone and pushed myself to my feet. “I hate to eat and run, but duty calls. Thanks for a nice day.” Three meals, personal training at the gym, a guided hike through the woods. I was still wearing his clothes. Impulsively, I knelt down next to the couch and wrapped him up in a hug.
“It was a nice day,” he echoed when I pulled back. He caught me by the chin and leaned in and kissed the top of my head. “Have fun.”
“I’ll get these back to you.” I gestured at the sweats.
“No rush. I have enough to share.”
I grinned at the double entendre as I walked happily to my car, singing the chorus of Freely Given under my breath as I went.
I would bargain, I would strive
I would steal, I would pay
For what you give me freely every day
