by Kennedy Ryan
“No, but you were never around.”
“That wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“I would have said that, too, before I saw him with you. Kimba, I know how a man looks at someone who is just a friend, and that is not how Ezra looks at you. I just hope no one else noticed. He’s a pillar of this community. A hero for these kids. I don’t want him throwing that away because he’s curious about what might have been.”
“I don’t want that either, and it won’t happen. We’re just talking, Mo. We haven’t seen each other in a very long time. We were best friends from the cradle. Just trust us, okay?”
“Okay.” Her one word lilts with notes of doubt and warning, but she turns toward the fence, unlatches the door and walks through to her side.
Once she returns to her house, it’s so quiet. Not even an hour ago, this yard was teeming with activity and music and food and partygoers. After Mona leaves, I only hear the lonely chirp of crickets.
“What are you doing here, Tru?” I ask aloud.
Ezra’s assurances, Mona’s warnings—none of them weigh more than the knowledge that lines the secret crevices of my own heart.
I want him.
But I would hate to hurt Noah, or tempt Ezra to cheat on Aiko. I don’t want to compromise my own convictions. So why the hell am I still here? He said I could trust him, but that’s not what I’m worried about.
I can’t trust myself.
I fall back through the split in the net enclosure, flopping onto the trampoline. The surface answers with a little bounce. That tiny hiccup of buoyancy lifts the heaviness, the doubt inside of me. With no audience but an empty backyard, I kick off my flats, stand on the trampoline and attempt one tentative hop. And then another. A bigger one that propels me higher and higher still. So high my arms fly over my head. My feet and legs absorb the shock, the energy of each bounce, and I’m soaring and landing and springing and laughing. For just a few moments, I don’t want to think about my ovaries betraying me, or that I’m never done proving myself, no matter how much I succeed. Someone still needs to see more from me before they give me a chance. I want to forget that the boy who used to feel like mine is now a man I can’t have. I leave all my problems on the ground and just jump.
I catch sight of Ezra watching me, one shoulder leaned into the back doorjamb, an old affection on his new face. In some ways, I’m still reconciling this adult “fine ass” Ezra with the boy who took up much less space in the world, but who was even then, my whole world. I lose my focus mid-jump and fall on my butt. The trampoline, bouncily forgiving, throws me back up and springing to my feet. My forced breaths come loud in the quiet night as our stares tangle. We’ve snared each other with a look and I can’t wiggle free. Ezra’s smile dwindles and he takes a few steps forward until he’s at the lip of the trampoline.
“Can you imagine if we’d had one of these growing up?” he asks.
“We would never have gone to school.”
He nods to the surface where my feet still lift a few inches reflexively. “May I?”
“It’s your trampoline,” I say, as breathless from his proximity as I am from exertion.
He steps through the net and onto the taut surface, taking my hand. A kaleidoscope of butterflies instantly migrates from my belly to my throat. I should object even to this contact, but I don’t. I simply look from our joined hands to the smile on his face.
“Let’s jump,” he says.
And then we’re bouncing, facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes as the trampoline tosses us into the air. It hits him first, the laughter. A smothered chuckle when he releases my hand to bounce on his butt, then to his feet, and then springing higher into the air. And then I’m in its clutches, the mirth, the giggle spilling out of me like an overturned bin of pixie dust. It suffuses the air around us, the joy. We’re kids again, without cares or responsibilities. There are no ceilings on our dreams or walls on what could be. We could jump all night and laugh until dawn. Except after a few minutes, we stop bouncing to land on our butts and lie on our backs and look up. There’s a silver scythe moon slicing through the black velvet sky.
“The stars are a blessing tonight,” Ezra says, his voice hushed like if he speaks too loudly, he’ll scare them off. “Living in the city, you don’t always see them like this. These are special occasion stars.”
I smile at the whimsy of the boy that survived in the man. “And what’s the occasion?” I turn my head to study the rugged beauty of his profile.
He turns his head, too, and his smile evaporates like cotton candy on your tongue, a sweet vanishing. “Us,” he says. “We’re the special occasion.”
Who moves first, I’m not sure. Later my pride will say he did, but that could be a lie to exonerate myself. Regardless, his hand is cupping my face and my fingers burrow into the shorn curls at his neck. His thumb brushes my mouth, an echo of our first innocent kiss, but this kiss isn’t tentative or shy. He tugs my chin until my mouth opens and he licks into me, hungry and reckless. I lick back, I suck back, I groan back. This kiss flies into the sun, melting my iron will and burning my reservations to ashes. I fight my way through the lust fog and search for reason, a mirage in the distance, something flickering in and out of sight between hot fantasy and cold, hard reality.
“You said I could trust you,” I pant between kisses. “I don’t cheat, Ezra.”
He stills, opens his eyes, rests his forehead against mine, his harshly drawn breaths fanning over my lips both wet and burning. “Neither do I.”
He rolls away onto his back and runs a hand through his hair. The motion flexes his bicep, and I allow my eyes to wander over him, so big and fit and finely made. The wide chest beneath his T-shirt heaves like he’s been running. I am, too. Running from this, from him, from the traitorous desires that threaten to flatten my convictions to nothing. Just below the taut line of his stomach, his pants are tented with an erection.
Shit.
“I need to go.” I sit up, but he takes my wrist gently and pulls me back down. His scent, the heat emanating from his body intoxicate me, and I draw deep breaths of him. Fill my lungs with stunted possibilities and forbidden desires.
“Don’t go yet,” he says. “Let me explain.”
I feel his eyes on my face, but refuse to turn my head, to get caught in the violet-hued trap of his eyes. “You’ll explain why you say you don’t cheat, but then you kissed me?”
We both know I kissed him back.
He’s the one to sit up this time, drawing his knees to his chest and looping muscle-corded arms around his long legs. The T-shirt strains across the width of his back.
“Aiko and I have been having trouble for a long time.”
“Oh, Ezra, don’t be that cliché. What else? She just doesn’t understand you? Do you also have some etchings inside you’d like to show me?”
“She actually understands me very well,” he replies, his voice unamused but not annoyed. “It was one of the things that first drew me to her—how we got each other. I hadn’t really had that with another girl since you.” His laugh comes short and self-deprecating. “I mean, that and the fact that she was gorgeous. That didn’t hurt either.”
Jealousy I have no right to burns a hole in my belly.
“I don’t know if . . .” He grips the back of his neck. “I’ve never said this out loud, but I don’t know that we would have lasted very long if she hadn’t gotten pregnant. Had it not been for Noah.”
He glances over his shoulder, and his eyes are sad. “We tried, Kimba. I’ve tried. We’ve been in counseling the last couple of years. It hasn’t gotten much better. She even wanted to try an open relationship, which I shot down.”
“Oh, wow.” I’ve never been a possessive chick, but I know I couldn’t share Ezra. “You’re still with her, though, right? It’s still cheating for us to…it’s still not right.”
“She’s in Tanzania sleeping with someone else as we speak, with my blessing.”
“I d
on’t…” I frown and press my palm to my forehead. “I don’t understand.”
“We broke up before she left, but didn’t want to ruin Noah’s birthday, especially with her leaving so soon. We both need to be here to help him process it once we tell him.”
I want to look away, to break the contact between our eyes, but this moment is quicksand, holding me immobile and pulling me under. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
My body comes to life at his words, under the intensity of his stare and the promise of satisfaction for us both. He doesn’t say any more for a moment and then clears his throat, goes on. “Mona’s trying to hook you up with Barry.”
“And?” I ask, watching to see if his impassive expression tells me more than he has.
“Don’t.”
Just one word. Downright polite, but when he lifts his lashes, his eyes are black-blue, midnight swimming in the deepest ocean.
“I overheard you tell Mona you like to fuck,” he says, trapping the fullness of his bottom lip between his teeth. “So do I. If you’re in the market for someone, I’d like it to be me.”
The seductive offer, the dark rasp of his voice caressing the word "fuck" snatches my breath. I’m not sure which is more dangerous. Ezra taken or Ezra for the taking. Rarely have any of my sexual relationships been complicated. It was a release, a transaction of pleasure between two consenting adults who were free to transact with whomever they pleased.
I already know Ezra would be a different story.
“Ez—”
“I don’t want to see you with him.”
“I know you’ve been off the market,” I say dryly. “But that’s not exactly how a man talks when all he wants to do is to fuck.”
“What do you want me to say? That I don’t feel anything for you? You know that’s a lie. Whatever was between us when we were young never got the chance to become…more. But it’s still there, and it could never be nothing.”
The words resonate with truth, and all I can do is agree. I felt it at the funeral. I felt it as soon as I saw him again. God knows I felt it when he kissed me.
“You don’t have to worry. I was gonna let Barry down easy when he calls.”
“Good,” he says, satisfaction in his narrowed eyes. “Do that.”
I look down at my hands. “I don’t want Barry.”
“Do you want me?”
It’s a bold question. Everything about this conversation is bold, unabashed, bare.
“Yes.” I shake my head before he can pounce on my admission. “But I’m not sure this is the best thing right now for either of us.”
“Let me decide what’s best for me.”
“You’re just getting out of a long-term relationship. I’m starting a new campaign.” Fingers crossed.
Not to mention all I’m going through with my health. I won’t mention it, but it’s yet another reason why I don’t want emotional attachments right now. And he’s right. Between Ezra and me, it could never not be emotional.
I scoot to the edge of the trampoline, still inside the net, but with my legs hanging over the side. I’m poised to leave but can’t make myself go. He tenses and doesn’t speak.
”The attraction between us…” I scrub my hands over my face. “Well, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t strong.”
He angles a look at me that is at once heated and sly. “You must admit we both kiss a lot better than we did at thirteen.”
I lean into him and drop my head to his shoulder like I did so often when we were growing up. ”Oh, I don’t know. For a first kiss, I thought it was pretty perfect.”
He links our fingers together on his leg. “It was. I had high hopes for us after that kiss.”
“What did you hope?” I ask, my voice soft, hesitant, a careful tread.
“I hoped it was just the beginning. I hoped that I’d come back from camp for high school and we’d be…” He turns his head to look at me, and the intensity, the tenderness there is familiar because it’s always been there. I’ve seen it a million times and never fully knew what it was. How could I have then? “I hoped we’d be together.”
I don’t know what to say. It was a long time ago and we were so young, but I wanted him then as much as my fledgling heart knew how to want someone.
“Look, I don’t want to lose you again.” His fingers tightening around mine underscore his words. “If you decide you can’t…don’t want to…I want you in my life, Tru, even if it’s only as a friend. Just don’t leave me again.”
I’m not sure what to say to that, so I glance down at our linked hands and find a distraction sketched into his skin. “You have a tattoo.”
He turns his wrist over so I can see the Hebrew characters better.
תיקון עולם
“What is it?”
“Tikkum Olam. Basically, ‘repair the world.’ I started thinking about this concept when I had to do my Bar Mitzvah project. I went through that for Bubbe, but it actually did shape a lot about me as a man. I started YLA because I saw it as my contribution to make the world, at least one part of it, better.”
“I’m really proud of you, Ez. I knew you would be amazing, but what you’ve done for those kids, for those families? It’s life-changing.”
“You’re proud of me? I was in the airport waiting for a flight, and you came on one of those televisions in the gate waiting area, commentating for MSNBC or something. Some candidate. I almost missed my flight. They were shutting the doors, but I couldn’t move. It was my first time seeing you grown up. I was transfixed. I knew you’d be beautiful, but…” He shakes his head wonderingly. “And you were so fluent. So confident. Not a stutter in sight.”
“That took years to get rid of. And it comes back if I get really nervous. I still hate public speaking. I always made Lennix do that stuff as much as possible.”
“Something changed for me after that. I had known you were out there somewhere, but to see you? I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“When you showed up at Daddy’s funeral, I couldn’t believe it.” I chuckle. “I’m pretty sure I flung myself at you.”
“I was glad. I wanted to hug you, but it had been so long since we’d known each other, I wasn’t sure if there was protocol. And I imagine a lot of people you grew up with try to insinuate themselves into your life knowing you’re close to such important people.”
“You could never be a lot of people, Ez. There’s everyone else, and then there’s you.”
The look on his face is something hot and needy, ardent, mirroring what’s building inside of me. My heart swells in my chest, scraping against my rib cage, barely contained. This time, I don’t have to wonder who moves first.
It’s me.
I lean closer and press our lips together, eyes open and looking right into his. His glance, his frown, asks if I’m sure.
I’m not. How could I be?
But I close my eyes and deepen the kiss, a foolhardy fall I may pay for later. It’s not even all the rationalizations that spur me to kiss him again. I could tell myself they broke up and that Aiko moved on first, but none of that actually runs through my mind when our tongues wrap around each other and our sighs entwine. My mind, consumed with the taste and feel of him, shouts one word over and over, an insistent refrain.
Finally. Finally. Finally.
He lays me down back onto the trampoline, and in the dark, the netting makes a world of mesh and magic, population: us. Our kisses turn desperate. What was gentle grows urgent, and he’s clutching me, squeezing my leg, my arms, my ass. Exploring my body like a blind man seeing with his hands. The pressure is just right and too much and not nearly enough. I tear my mouth away, kiss his jaw, drag my lips down his neck. He sucks my earlobe, finding a direct lust line to my pussy. I squirm and whimper.
“You like that?” he breathes into the tiny cove between my neck and ear.
I nod, tightening my hands at his lean waist when he does it again, taking time with my ear
s and ghosting kisses down my neck and over my shoulders. When his lips meet the barrier of my strapless top, he pauses, hovering over my breast.
“I want to touch you here so badly my hands are shaking,” he says, his voice a husky rumble. “Can I?”
I can’t even breathe to get the “yes” out. Anticipation thieves my breath and beads my nipples. I barely manage to nod before he’s cupping my breast through the shirt, dusting kisses along my collarbone. All the while, he pinches my nipples, squeezes my breast.
Oh my God. Please suck it.
I press deeper into his palm, willing him to pull the top down so he can see how hard my nipples are. How much I want his mouth on me. He just keeps raining infuriating, drugging kisses everywhere but there, churning a frenzy inside of me. I close my eyes, willing myself not to beg, and then I feel the wet heat of his mouth through the thin fabric.
“Ez,” I moan. “Yes, please.”
Hallelujah, he tugs the shirt down, slowly sliding it until the night air mists my nipples into proud peaks. I open my eyes and he’s staring at my chest like it’s Christmas morning. His breath is hot at the underside of my breast, blowing steam through my body. He takes my nipple into his mouth with an insistent, starving suction of his lips and tongue. It’s not gentle, but it is a long, hard draw, transporting me through a tiny tunnel of pain to pleasure that explodes between my legs. A hundred words, a thousand ways to tell him that feels soooooo good flood my mind, and my mouth falls open, but no sound escapes. Ezra alternates, laving and sucking and biting one breast, pinching and plucking and kneading the other. I think I could come from just this, but he recruits other parts of my body in this sensual attack. He presses lightly at the juncture of my thighs, asking not with words, but with his touch.
I already know my voice will fail me, so I simply nod. He unsnaps my jeans, slides the zipper down, his fingers deft, eager. There’s no fumbling or searching. He skates under the lacy rim of my panties, finding my clit unerringly quickly and passing the pad of one finger over the cluster of heat and nerves.