Nash
On any given Thursday night at four a.m., I relive the accident.
The skyline is different. The noises of sirens and the low howl of dogs, and animals skirting along the tree lines, they’re different too. There are no coyotes in Brooklyn and few moments that are quiet enough to hear the damn things if there were. But sometimes on a Thursday morning at four, my body shakes me awake and there I am, twelve years old, holding my sister’s hand, listening from the hallway as the cops explain to the sitter about the accident.
“He was drunk. He’s been arrested. She didn’t make it.”
There wasn’t anything I remember more clearly from my childhood in Atlanta than those words.
It took a village, literally to keep me and Nat out of the system, even though the village was full of blood sucking mercenaries. There were enough Aunts and Uncles, enough cousins, that took pity on us after our grandfather died four years later—or, to be honest, took more to wanting the government payouts supposing watching over us gave them—to let us stick together until we could get the hell out of Atlanta as soon as we finished high school. Most of the time, I manage to keep all that past low down, hidden someplace where I keep all the things I don’t want to remember—like the memory of being fired for the first time, or the first girl who told me I wasn’t good enough for her. Those things got locked away with the memory of a parentless childhood. It stayed there and I never touched it. Until it comes on its own at four a.m. on any random Thursday.
“He was drunk.”
That bastard lived in the low down.
Four-fifteen and I watched from the roof deck of my building as two kids argued on the sidewalk outside of my building. A guy and girl, Latin from the look of them. The yelling sounded like Spanish anyway. I caught puta, understood what that meant, and shook my head when the guy started in with excuses his chica wasn’t feeling. The sky was dark, cloudy. Despite the noise and overhead fog, I could still catch a scent of rain peppering the air, kind of bitter and it set something cold and weary in my bones. The yelling got louder, pulling my gaze away from the dotted cityscape and small stars lighting up night. He was on his knees now, voice high and pathetic, reminding me why I didn’t mess around with anyone for too long. There was always drama. There was always stupidity that weighed you down and I’d never met anyone worth all that drama. This poor jackass was begging for her to stay, begging for the drama to slip around him like a noose.
Four-seventeen and suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone.
“You following me?” I asked her, itching for something to do with my hands as Willow came close. She wore colors I’d never seen on her; neutral, boring, surprising. Wasn’t like her to wear beige or keep her hair neat and braided so tight. But I wasn’t going to care about her or what she did, convinced myself of it, didn’t I? The hell did it matter, her wearing boring ass clothes?
“No,” she said stepping closer to the edge of the roof. She held her arms crossed and I wondered why she looked so sad, her who was usually always smiling. “I just wanted some air.” She moved back, stepping behind me to sit in the wicker chairs set in a semi-circle around the Home Depot fire pit Mickey had bought last fall. It had cost him thirty bucks. Discounted for being a display. That was a little shopping tidbit I’d floated his way when he talked about charging us an extra fifty a month for “maintenance” on the roof deck.
But the pit and the chairs, even the bickering couple five stories below faded from my attention as Willow rested against the chair, feet propped on the arm of another one, her head tilted as she watched the black sky above us, and sighed.
“Everyone likes me.”
I told myself I shouldn’t bite. She was casting a line and wanted me to nibble. The kind of thing is that to say anyway? I should have turned my back on her and went down the stairs, leaving her to her sky and sighs and moods.
“It’s a family trait. My people are just universally liked.”
“That right?”
Hell. Look at me, biting at Willow’s line.
“It is. My parents are do-gooder types. They recycle and volunteer and love to go hiking in the mountains just to pick up trash left behind by other hikers. They go to Africa every summer to help build wells. I go with them, most of the time, and for the most part, people like us.” From the corner of my eye I glanced at her, spotted how her face seemed calm, like she was talking to hear the echo of her own voice against the night. But her body was rigid and she moved her foot in a quick tap that told me she wasn’t calm in the least. Those crossed arms, too, folded tighter as she went on. “We’ve never been told to mind our own business or to go back where we came from.”
Willow stood then, moving back to the edge of the roof but keeping her distance from me. Her voice was soft, a little beige like her clothes and when she continued, her attention was on the couple down below who’d abandoned their fight for making out against a light pole.
“You probably think I’m some privileged little white girl who’s never had a bad day in her life, don’t you?” I only glanced at her, letting my lone arched eyebrow answer her question. She took that expression for what it was, shaking her head like she wasn’t surprised. “Yeah, I thought so,” Willow said. “But the thing is, Nash, my parents brought me to Africa and Yemen and Costa Rica and a thousand other places because they wanted me to see that privilege doesn’t give you a pass. It gives responsibility, at least it should. My Granny Nicola started it all, making cakes and pastries for her family, then her friends. Ten years later she was manufacturing ten thousand cakes and hundreds of thousands of scones and turnovers a month. She made our family wealthy. It wasn’t my parents’ money, or mine either, because none of us had earned it. Being born into wealth doesn’t make you rich. For my family, it meant we had to spread the good fortune we’d been given. We have to pay it forward.”
Hell, did I really have to be listening to this self-reverential, poor little rich girl bullshit at four in the morning? “You got a point?” The question was rude, but needed to be asked. She looked tired—there were small bags under her eyes and her face was drawn and shadowed, as though she hadn’t slept in a week. Had to be something more to it than bemoaning the burdens that rich white folks bear.
“I got a point,” Willow said, stepping close enough that I saw her eyes were rimmed red. “No one has ever avoided me in my life. Not growing up, whenever I’ve set my eyes on something important. Something that needed to be done. All the times I’ve hassled people to donate to one cause or another, pried their hands away from their eyes so they’d actually seen what was going on, or shamed some rich fat cat into building a dozen wells for villages on the other side of the world, not even those people avoided me.” She turned toward me and her mouth looked tight, as though she fought her anger and did a piss poor job of it. “You’re the first. Ever, in my life, and that really bugs me.”
For a second I only watched her, pushing back that huge need that rose up in my chest, the same one that wanted me to touch her, to bring her close enough to taste. But that wouldn’t help me keep her out of my way. It wouldn’t do anything but give her another reason to keep knocking on my door. So I went with being an asshole.
“First time for everything, sweetness.”
Willow dropped her arms and her face went all red and blotchy. “Why are you such a jerk?” Those eyes though, they were cold, steely and it hit me square in the chest when I realized I’d pissed her off. Kinda liked how it looked on her.
Still, I didn’t appreciate that know-it-all shake of her head or how her anger seemed to make her think she was right about me. “Look, you don’t know…”
“I know you’re avoiding me. I know that anytime I see you on the sidewalk or in the lobby, you head in the other direction.”
Willow stood right in front of me. There was an eyelash on her left cheek and I fought to keep my hands in my pocket so I wouldn’t brush it away. Even in boring beige, she was beautiful, something I tried like hell to deny over and over in my head. Something, it seemed, was impossible to do.
“There is something happening here and you’re running from it.”
That had me laughing, a quick, cruel sound that tightened her mouth until there were small lines around her lips. “It ain’t like that.”
“Something happened to you.” Just as she said that a quick breeze floated around us, pushing her bangs into her eyes. She reached up to brush them back. “Something happened to me, too. I don’t know what it is, Nash, but there is something between us.”
“That isn’t what’s happening here.”
“If there was nothing happening, you wouldn’t be avoiding me.” She stepped closer and I refused to back up, to show weakness in retreating, but I couldn’t hide how shallow my breath had become. She spotted it. “If there was nothing, you wouldn’t be so nervous when I get close to you.”
I did step back then, I had to, and I thought she might follow. Willow was a pushy sort of female, the kind that didn’t back away just because you wanted them to. She got inside your head, claws sharp and deep and wouldn’t let you go without a fight. Part of me liked that about her. The other part of me, the one that reminded me I didn’t need a damn thing but my brain and ambition to get what I wanted, that voice was loud and obnoxious.
But you don’t get rid of a claws-deep woman just by pushing them away. You strike, you hurt and just then, I wanted to hurt Willow so deep that she'd have no choice but to drop me like a toxic bomb. “I’m nervous because you’re insane. Certifiable. I’m not into you.” I put a little gravel in my voice just then, ignoring how wide Willow’s eyes had gone at my insult, how she let her mouth drop open like a guppy out of its tank. “There is nothing happening here.”
“I am not crazy.”
Just then, she didn’t look convincing and I understood why. This was the woman who believed in auras. She was the same female who pulled me into her boho madhouse because one glance at me told her there was something wrong with me. I wouldn’t admit to her she’d been right about that, but who she was, how she was, I understood why she was so insulted. I was willing to bet it wasn’t the first time someone had called her crazy. It sure as hell pissed her off.
It hurt just a little to see that frown, but my plan had been to keep her away. My plan had been to remember the work I’d spent years doing, to keep focused because I was nearly there, had nearly made it. My plans didn’t include some white-assed hippie chick who promised things with a look, who expected the same from me.
I needed her angry. I needed Willow to hate me. “Whatever you say, nutjob.”
I expected her to rage, to fight back. To come at me swinging. Instead, she didn’t flinch, or even frown at my insult. It was almost as if she had expected me to be an asshole. And hell, I wasn’t ready for how cool, how cruel, how correct she could be. It only took a small brush of her hand under her chin and that sad, disgusted frown to show that she could see through me.
“You’re such a coward.”
It was a gut punch I hated feeling, one I tried hard not let show on my face. “What did you say to me?”
“You heard me and you know it’s true.” She was in my face with three small steps, taunting me, accusing me. “You’re running. You felt something between us. That night in my apartment, then in yours. There is something happening, I have no idea what it is, but you feel it too.”
“No. I don’t!” Willow stepped back when I yelled, but she didn’t cower. . I desperately held on to my lie, despite feeling like I was being outmaneuvered. “Sorry to bust your bubble, nut job, but no. The only thing happening is I have a crazy ass neighbor who keeps leaving cupcakes at my door. The same crazy neighbor who pulled me into her apartment the first night we met because she swore she could see my aura.” I made sure to accent that word as sarcastically as possible. “So yeah…like I said…crazy.”
Willow stood her ground, that same impassive frown pinching her features, her eyes hard and sparking. She didn’t buy my excuses and that look of hers was nailing me to the wall despite my noise and the shit I was trying to spill. Willow might be a little weird, she might be a lot in her own world, but she wasn’t afraid of a damn thing—not me, not my loud yelling voice or the thing that pulsed between us, the very same thing I refused to admit was there.
“You’ll figure it out. Eventually,” she said, stepping back. “One day you’ll get over your issues and admit that I’m right.”
“I damn well won’t.”
“And when you do,” she interrupted, cocked up an eyebrow, curious, a little worried before her expression changed and her lips twitched. “Maybe then, Nash, you’ll stop running from whatever it is that’s got you spooked.”
It was another gut punch moment. I’d only ever heard that expression once in my life and it had never come out of Willow’s mouth.
“I just hope I’m still around when you’re ready to admit it.”
She left the roof then, reaching for her braid. It was loose and her hair hanging in a huge mass down her back by the time she made it to the stairs. I could only watch her, heart pounding like a drum inside my head. The only other time I’d heard about being spooked was some girl named Sookie in my dream and there was no way Willow could know about that.
Was there?