Willow
Effie Thomas was a librarian who liked to tell patrons to “shut the fuck up” anytime they got a little too loud in her library. She’d been admonished at least a half dozen times when she first landed the gig, but she was damned good at her job, and by the time she’d made head librarian, no one had the nerve to tell her to stop yelling at noisy patrons.
We were dorm mates for two semesters at NYU, sneaking booze we weren’t old enough to buy and kissing boys we had no business knowing. I loved Effie like a sister. Or, at least, like I supposed you should love a sister, if you had one. Effie was also somewhat of a dabbler in transcendental meditation. “Hogwash,” my mom would call it, but Effie, despite the filthy insults she flung at loud mouths in the Reference Department like a monkey with shit at a zoo, Effie happened to be one of the calmest, most well-adjusted people I knew.
But I was a little desperate, a lot annoyed and figured that my mother’s standard “walk around in nature” remedy for de-stressing wasn’t going to cut it this time around. I’d let Effie direct me if it meant I could find my center again.
“Breathe in, Will. Through your nose, releasing through your teeth.” Effie sat up straight, her knees facing mine as we rested cross-legged on the plush rugs draped around my living room. She had her hair elegantly wrapped in an up do with jewel toned scarves twisted around her braids. It was an elaborate, complicated arrangement that Effie had never shared with me, likely with anyone. Her tank top was a little threadbare but so soft, and she wore red yoga pants that clung to her lush thighs like paint. She was beautiful, with wide set eyes and skin the color of wet sand, lips that puckered naturally. Effie was by default quiet, but could shatter the windows of any room with a cool, mean glare or that filthy mouth of hers when riled.
“You paying attention?” she asked, poking me with one long finger, the nail long and painted something she liked to call Bitch Red. “In and out. Easy breaths and when you are relaxed,” she exhaled, and I smelled the hint of clove on her breath, “then and only then do you start your mantra.”
Ah. That was a problem, or it might be.
“You have it, don’t you? A mantra?” I opened my eyes, pushing a sweet smile on my face to lessen the blow that might come when Effie discovered I hadn’t quite chosen my mantra. Not like I hadn’t been thinking of and discarding idea after idea... I shrugged and the tall woman lowered her shoulders, tapping three of those nails on the hardwood floor at her side. “You serious?”
“I couldn’t decide…”
“It’s vital, Willow. Damn, girl, how many times I say that to you? Vital.”
“I know…I’m sorry.” Effie laughed at me when I dropped my face in my hands, rubbing my temples. “Nash has got me so…”
“Sprung?”
I jerked my head up, staring at Effie, mouth open a little. “That’s probably the perfect word for it. Ugh.” When I fell back, laying against the sofa pillows I’d tossed around my floor Effie came to my side, elbow to elbow with me as I watched the ceiling, not seeing the small cracks in the plaster or the dust bunnies collected in the old chandelier. “I never get stupid over men. Not ever.”
Her laugh was warm, and as we lay there, side by side, I was reminded of late nights in our cold dorm when we’d huddle close together because the furnace never worked right. Effie sounded sweet, a little too amused which told me plainly I was about to be teased. “Well,” she started, pushing me over so she could rest her head on the same pillow as me, “there was Micah Wiley sophomore year.”
“Not fair, you went stupid over him too. Every girl with a pulse went stupid over Micah.”
Effie snorted, waving those nails at me as though my accusation had zero merit. “Please. What would I want with some football player? He had nothing between his ears.”
I moved my head slowly, eyes squinted as I watched my friend. “Who the hell cared?” She laughed again, shrugging away her denial. “No one cared if he could quote sonnets. It was that body…”
“True enough.”
A flash of memory circled in my head and it brought me out of the moment. Eyes tight, I tried to block out the voices, the deep, rich sound that I knew I’d never heard but that sounded so familiar. Something I heard only in my dreams. And that face—warm, dark amber eyes with flecks of gold, bright and kind. A mouth that I…that someone I didn’t know…so wanted, dreamed of. My thoughts were complicated with guilt, something I didn’t make a bit of sense. There was no one for me to be unfaithful to and even if there were, the man in my dreams wasn’t real. If he had been once, he would be old by now, older than my parents, because that was the world he lived in. Not mine.
“You need a mantra,” Effie said, lifting up on one elbow to look down at me. “It focuses your thoughts. It’s the center that you concentrate on while your mind bends to the will of the universe. The mantra is key, Will. I’ve only ever…” she paused just then and the silence brought my gaze to her face and the hard set of her mouth as she frowned. “What the hell has you looking all dreamy-eyed and simple?”
“Nothing…it’s…” It was everything—the dream and the emotions that Isaac stirred in me but it was the memory of a man I’d never known. It was Nash, too, and the stupid way he ran—from me, from life, from everything he saw as a complication. “I can’t stop thinking about him, Effie and it’s pissing me off.”
“Girl, please. He’s just a man.”
I blinked at her, unable to make her see reason with that stupid gobsmacked expression I no doubt had plastered on my face. “Honey, he’s not just a man. He’s…Nash is…God is he just…”
“Unavailable?”
“What? No! I’d never move in on someone else's guy.”
“I dunno, Will, sure seems to me like you’re chasing after something you can’t get. You sure that’s not it? That you only want him because he’s one of the few things that has been out of your reach and that scratch you can’t itch is what’s driving you crazy.”
I gave her the skank eye. “Are you crazy? Damn, Effie, you know me better than that.”
“So what, then? He’s hot? How hot can he be, really?” When I cocked an eyebrow my friend’s doubtful frown loosened into a grin. “What? Like Jesse Williams fine?”
“Better.”
“Shemar?”
“Better.”
She held up a hand. “No damn way.”
“It’s not just those eyes or that smile…”
“Liar.” She ducked when I tossed a pillow at her head, laughing at me and the stupid blush I knew she could make out on my cheeks. “So you’re into him? I get that. Bout damn time.”
“I’ve been trying to start a business, you know.”
Effie tilted her head, waving me off like I was a little pathetic. “Yes, tell me how hard that is, Ms. Moneybags.”
“Not fair.” I moved my braid around my shoulder, twisting the ends between my fingers as habit. “Besides, I’m not using my parents’ money. I got a loan.”
“Will…”
Effie’s gaze shot to me, followed me around the apartment when I slipped into the small kitchen to fill the kettle for tea. “Do me a favor and don’t start in with the ‘you’re being stubborn’ lecture, okay?”
“But you are.”
“Not the point.” I dug the tea tin from the cabinet, ignoring Effie when she stretched, mumbling something under her breath that sounded a lot like judgment. “You and my dad, the pair of you think I should just take advantage of that money, but the business wouldn’t be mine if I did. This way, it is mine. Completely, utterly mine. Plus, this way I know what every small business person feels like when they have to come up with a business plan and try to land capital. Pride and experience. It’s essential, Eff.”
She sat on the sofa, crossing her legs under herself as she watched me. “I wasn’t going to lecture you…except about not finding your mantra.”
The kettle sounded and I dropped two tea bags in each of our mugs, bringing Effie’s hers as she fiddled with the trim along the arm of the sofa, those red nails pushing against the purple fabric.
“Well,” I started, sitting across from her in the plush chair my mom had handed down to me. It was a chevron pattern she’d gotten bored of last summer and the gray color corresponded nicely with the purple and white of the lap blanket I’d draped across its back. “There was one thing that kept cropping up in my head. I think it was something I’d dreamed of and can’t forget, even though I also can't quite remember exactly where it came from.”
“The same dreams you were telling me about? With the redhead and the janitor?”
“No. It’s different, somewhere older, something I can’t remember nearly as well…”
“The dream doesn’t matter, sugar. Just the mantra. What is it?”
When I tried to recall the dream, the details got fuzzy. There were only minute flashes of memory that seemed clear—there’d been a night wind and a purple sky. There’d been a boy, the one whose eyes I was seeing through, and a girl I—he—loved, more than anything, and there had been a promise that stuck, something around which their world—and mine, by extension— pivoted. Over and over, it had planted itself inside my heart.
“With everything I am.” I said that over the rim of my mug. The warmth from the hot liquid heated my skin as Effie looked back at me, waiting for an explanation I wasn’t sure I could give her. “I don’t know what it means.” I took a sip, watched her do the same. “Will it work?”
Effie polished off her tea and smiled, motioning back toward the floor and the assortment of rugs and blankets and throw pillows assembled that made for a comfortable place to focus and meditate. “It’s a start at least.”
We settled back down on the floor facing each other and at Effie’s urging I let the words collect in my mind, pushing them past my lips soft but focused.
“With everything I am,” I said under my breath, like a whisper meant only for my ears. Maybe it was remembered hope. Maybe it was a promise made decades before that meant something then. Whatever it was, I took it for my own, not really sure who it should be meant for—the man in my dreams or the man who liked to pretend I didn’t matter at all.
“With everything I am,” I thought, letting the silence move around me, letting my breath and energy and the collection of thoughts and moments lull me into another time, another space. I’d found my center and it brought me to the past.
* * *
Washington D.C.
Isaac’s face took my attention for most of the weekend. It was a sad state, really and one that hadn’t gone unnoticed.
I shifted my skirt, laying my forehead on my arm as I hid among the stacks, wondering how I could have been such an idiot to let it go so far. I was here only because the library felt safe to me. There was a warmth to this place that had nothing to do with the stacked stone fireplaces in the four sitting areas or the ceilings that pitched high, fifty feet or more, and several stories that seemed to stretch out into the clouds visible through the glass at the top of the ceiling. The place was old, nearly as old as the Lincoln University itself. And books? Thousands upon thousands that took up ten floors, every shelf stacked with hundreds of books, some right of the presses, some older than my folks.
It felt like a castle and me, tiny speck of a girl that I was, I felt safe here, away from the raised eyebrows of the city where women still weren’t so commonplace around our university or any others housed in D.C. Here where it didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, black or white, male or female.
Where there weren’t bastards who lost their temper and struck out.
“Don’t let anyone keep your eyes on the ground, my little pepper.” Dad had said that so often it had become something I repeated to myself as a reminder of what was expected of me. My parents expected me to be great, but I demanded perfection of myself. It was stupid really, but I wanted to make them proud. That perfection had been expected by Trent as well. And like the fool I was, I let him go on thinking it was alright to demand that perfection from me. But his idea of perfect and mine weren’t the same. They never would be.
My lip still throbbed and when I wiped away blood, my anger rose something fierce. It became a ridiculous pulse of rage that I tried to keep down, deep inside my chest where all my worries and sorrows lived. It would not do to let my anger overtake me. If it did, then he had won, he had made me into something I didn’t want to be. Weak. Hysterical. Out of control.
But it was damn hard reminding myself of that fact.
My parents would be upset, not at me, of course. But upset that I had allowed myself to be so upset, to fall short of expectations. Trent had been sure to remind me of that. There were always expectations.
“Your father won’t want Senator Mansfield to catch wind of this unpleasantness, Riley. You know that as well as I do. With my father working on the President’s staff, there’s just too much riding on getting the Voting Rights Act passed and we’ve all worked so hard. Your father, too. It would be a shame to let any other concerns worry your father or our office when they should all be focused on other things. Important things.”
He was a coward. Trent was also full of himself. My father wouldn’t care what Trent’s father thought of him putting his hands on me. My father was a big man with a quick fuse when tested and I was his only daughter. He’d throttle Trent without thinking twice about it. But then, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Dad had worked tirelessly helping Mansfield get the Voting Rights Act on the President’s desk. It was monumental. Essential. I needed to remember that before I went off telling him that Trent Dexter had smacked me when I told him I wanted to end things between us.
My folks were expecting me home over the weekend. Mom’s sister was flying in from Europe Sunday morning. But I couldn’t let them see me like this, split lip and weak with anger and shame. My parents had survived Hitler’s terror both on the battlefield and in the concentration camps. They were relentless and strong. I couldn’t let them see me being anything less than what they’d always been.
My face felt sticky and wet and I sniffled so loud that the sound went around the library like a calling card advertising that I was being pathetic, crying over some bastard in the fourth-floor Politics and Religion stacks.
It only took that small noise for Isaac to find me. He moved slow and quiet, stopping at the beginning of the row to look to his left, squinting to see me in shadows and darkness.
“Miss Riley?” His voice was soft, as though he wasn’t sure of what he saw when he looked down the aisle. Then he must have spotted my red hair as it hung around my face, and moved toward me with a welcoming smile. It was only when I wiped my face dry with the back of my hand that Isaacs’s steps slowed.
He squatted in front of me, arms resting on his thighs as he moved his head to the side, looking like he just wanted a glimpse of my face still hidden behind my tangled hair.
“You didn’t show. I waited for you. Almost time to close up.” His voice was soft, the guilt of disappointing someone else, too, swam like piranha in my stomach.
“I’m sorry.” I sniffled, using my nails to comb the knots from my hair. “I got into…there was something that came up and then I just…” I waved a hand, motioning around the books. “I ended up here.”
Failure was not an emotion I generally felt. It simply wasn’t allowed in my father’s home. You worked hard, you were rewarded. You didn’t work hard enough and you tried again. I had not forced Trent’s punch and I damn well knew it wasn’t my fault, but that didn’t make the sensation burning me up from the inside any less painful.
Isaac didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. He simply waited for me to say something else. The silence around us became too much, the weight of it too heavy for me to stand, and I forced my head up, to look right at him. I watched his eyes flick quickly to my busted lip, his gaze steely.
I waited for ten full seconds as he stared at me. His focus was strong, felt like a wave over my features and I fought back more tears, wanting so badly to let him comfort me, but fearing to seem any more weak and pathetic than I already was. The silence between us was uncomfortable, as was the fierce anger that began to shift his expression. There was rage brimming behind his eyes and the disgust and hatred moved his nostrils into a flare. Unbidden, the collection of tears hanging onto my lashes dropped onto my cheek. It was then that he seemed to calm.
“I’m a mess.” It was an excuse I threw out that he ignored, moving to lift a knuckle under my chin.
“You’re so beautiful, Miss Riley.”
My breath caught. No one had looked at me the way Isaac was; like I was remarkable. Like there wasn’t a dozen ginger-headed girls with dark brown eyes running around the city. Like my pale skin and a million freckles were exotic or interesting. Like that busted lip wasn't there, didn’t belong. Isaac looked at me like he saw me, really saw me and it took my breath away.
My body shuddered when he palmed my face and I blinked, wincing when he brought out a handkerchief to my wet cheeks and still bleeding lip. He fixed me up without me asking, so gently, like it was something he’d do if I had or not and I felt the tension in my gut settle, release and vanish the longer Isaac went about cleaning me up.
He made me feel safe, protected in a way no one but my father had before.
“A man does this to a woman,” he said, brushing the hair behind my ears, “and he deserves to be put down like a dog.” Isaac paused, and I could smell sandalwood on his skin, chased by the smallest hint of bleach. “You say the word and I’ll put that dog down.”
Something happened to me then, a fierce rush of something that made me want to do nothing but cling to Isaac, damn his arguments about our differences. I wanted to kiss him then, to hold onto him until we were breathless. He wanted to avenge me, to protect me from the danger I couldn’t protect myself from and some small part of me, a part that was ancient and primal, found this singularly attractive. Oh how I wanted to give him permission; I wanted to be protected. But the world we lived in, even in D.C. as Isaac had always promised, did not allow the freedom to attack and not be punished. Especially for someone like Isaac.
“No,” I finally said. “Trent is not worth the trouble it would cause for you.”
“He can’t go without being…”
“He will be, don’t worry.” I inhaled and my chest constricted with scent of Isaac’s skin and the proximity of his body to mind. “I’ll take care of it.”
It was then that I saw something from Isaac I hadn’t seen before. His stony resolve crumbled and whatever excuses had always kept him from wanting me, from allowing me to act as though I wanted him too, fell away when he began to lower his hand and I held it still against my cheek.
His skin was warm and I could just make out the sharp bite of his calluses against my face. He had an arch along his top lip and eyes like a perfect circle, a play of amber and gold vying for dominance in his irises. Not hazel really, but somewhere in the middle, someplace that said Isaac came from people divergent and varied.
“Riley…” he said, a warning I didn’t want to hear. My gaze didn’t falter; I may have stumbled with Trent, but still, I knew what I wanted, what was best for me, and that was not some overbearing, suit-wearing bully. And Isaac, sweet Isaac, took my lifted chin for the invitation it was, made a sound deep in his throat, and just like that, with a single tilt of his head, stopped fighting and kissed me.
The world went away and I heard the song of hundreds of voices inside of me that sounded so familiar, yet were unlike anything I’d ever heard before. Maybe it was that active imagination of mine working in overdrive. I had wanted Isaac’s touch for months, had daydreamed about it for hours and now that it was here, I realized that my imagination was dull and pathetic. Reality was so much better.
He moved his mouth over mine, tentative at first, but fueled by my reaction and the awesome magnitude of what this felt like, he moved more confidently, more surely. Isaac wanted me and took what I offered freely—his lips soft, directing, his tongue teasing and satisfying all at once, careful of my broken lip yes, but oh, so absolute.
He moved his hands, fanning his fingers into my hair, holding my head steady and I pulled back, feeling the smile against my mouth.
“Miss Riley,” he said again, but the words were like a prayer, and I decided just then, with Isaac watching the strands of my hair slip through his fingers, that he could me call me anything he wanted as long as he kept touching me. “You could tempt an angel with this mess of fine hair. I like it. It suits you.”
I responded, pulling him close, wanting the taste of his mouth again. He delivered, leading me in the movement, mouth and lips soft and sweet, a little desperate, a lot greedy and my breath grew labored, fanned out against his face and I lifted with him, following as he pulled us to our feet, as he pressed close to me and my back came up against the books on the stacks that surrounded us.
My mind was full of the outline of Isaac’s hips and thighs as we pressed together and the sturdy, guiding strength of his hand as he held a palm against my lower back. I felt like a decadent sinner, taking and taking with no concern for consequences.
But the heat of the moment and the shadows that hid us would not keep our secrets forever. As quickly as we had come together, a voice sounded at the end of aisle, a low, amazed curse, and we pulled apart to see Lenny’s grim face.
“Time to lock up, man.” Lenny didn’t look at me. He kept his attention on Isaac, watching him as though saying more would cause the world to shatter.
“I hear you. Give me a minute.”
One beat, then two. Then the slightest nod of his head, and Lenny turned around, stalked off without a backwards glance.
Isaac took a moment, watching after his friend, then he turned back to me. Before he could say anything, I spoke up.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” I told him, hoping he didn’t think I regretted wanting him, what we had done. A quick jerk of his head and I smiled, eager to take that worried look from his expression. “No, Isaac.... I’m sorry we got interrupted.”
A slow, easy smile spread against his face, then Isaac’s gaze drifted to my mouth and I thought he might kiss me one more time, but he frowned, pushing his eyebrows together as he ran a fingertip against the cut in my lip. “Did I make this worse?”
“I didn’t feel a thing but the hum of your kiss.”
“My kisses hum?”
“Absolutely.”
He watched me then, eyes sharp and focused and I wondered if he’d ever tell me about all the thoughts I could read on his face; all the secrets he protected so fiercely.
“This thing between me and you, it could lead to a lot of trouble for both of us.”
“Isaac, I’m not worried. Trouble comes even if we plan for it. It comes when we don’t.”
He shook his head, smile sweet, those amber-glinted eyes sparkling like he thought I was naive or simple or a dreamer who wouldn’t be told to give up. Isaac gave me one last kiss, the first of what I prayed would be a thousand more, a million more, and then he pressed his lips to my forehead.
“Come on then, I’ll walk you to your dorm and make sure you get inside safe.”
And for the first time in hours, right then with Isaac, that’s how I felt—safe.
Isaac and Riley cleared from my head as the fog of meditation ebbed until I realized where I was and what I was doing. Then, the realization hit me hard, a slap of comprehension and clarity I hadn’t felt before. I could still feel those broad hands against my back, those thick, full lips working hard over mine. Isaac had felt so familiar. He’d felt so real.
He’d felt just like…
“Oh my God,” I said, pulling Effie from her own thoughts, spurring her loud shudder and gasp with one loud oath.
“What now? Man, I was in a good place…”
“I’m sorry,” I told her, jumping up from the floor to rummage around for a jacket. “I’ve got to find Nash. I have to tell him.”
“What?” Effie said, following me as I found my tennis shoes and slipped them on at the same time. I was to my door, had it flung open before she stopped me. “Tell me. What do you think you discovered?”
“I know why I feel something between us. It’s the past, Effie. Nash and me, I’m sure of it—we knew each other in another life.”