MY LIP BURNS FROM THE pressure of kissing him. I’ve never kissed a boy. Ever. I’ve kissed girls, sure, little nips on the rooftop of the finishing school. Sleepovers. This is different. He’s like steel that only heats more with each kiss, but all I want is more. I want to be burned, seared by him. By this moment. He tastes like coffee and traces of lemon. I hold his face to mine, but it’s not close enough. I want him on me, around me, tracing every inch of my skin.
I kneel in front of him, and when that isn’t enough, I move closer, hooking my leg over his hips. He moves his kisses to my jaw, my neck, and I forget how to breathe. He grips my ankle to pull me even closer. His fingertips are rough and sure, calloused like mine. Does he play music as well?
Thunder rolls under my skin and he strikes lightning down my collarbone to the top of my dress. He nudges the light cotton of my collar to the side with his nose. I kiss his face, his ear, his neck. I lick the skin there and he tastes just like unripe watermelon, just ready enough to shake a bit of salt on to bring out the sweet. And—
An image flashes across my mind, and my heart squeezes and flutters. I’ve been here before. Together, with him, like this. The rhythm of the train rocks us in its arms and—
I know him.
I see Fayard. I see us, just behind my eyes, in a memory I can’t place. Our fingers are entwined under a tree at the edge of a farm. I feed him strawberries. The juice stains his lips, my fingers. He’s laughing at something I’ve said. We’re both dressed a bit funny. Him in a loose-fitting white shirt made out of coarse fabric and loose homespun pants. His hair is longer, but his smile is still the same. My hair is tied up in a scarf and tucked under a straw hat.
Flash.
He kisses me as tears slide down my face. Why am I crying? We’re tumbling through tall grass at the edge of a lake. His face is scarred with ritual markings on each of his cheeks. He looks at me as if I’m food. He always looks at me like this, but it doesn’t scare me. I’m the opposite of scared. He strokes my face and tackles me so that we’re a ball of laughter tangled in soft, sandy ground. He traces kisses down my belly.
Flash.
I remember. And remember. And remember.
He’s in short pants on a beach, wrapped in a white robe at the edge of a desert, bent over double planting rice.
My father is asleep nearby. I place my hand against his chest, and his eyes, they plead, full of hunger—they look just like they did at the edge of the lake, and now I am afraid.
Flash.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Fayard pants. His chest is heaving and sweat gathers on his brow. His whole face is glowing, just like it did when he had that fishing accident. His father, Ade? Adesola! Adesola had sent him out early and he’d caught his leg in a net and… that didn’t happen.
I shake my head and close my eyes to shut out his too-familiar face as I come crashing back to the here and now.
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who kissed you,” I say.
“Oh, yes, you did. Uh… did you… while we were…”
I cover my hand with his. Whatever he’s about to ask, I don’t want to answer. I need to catch my breath. I need my mind to slow down. I hinge back a bit to rest my head on the frame behind me and I see his face twitch.
“I’m sorry, let me get off,” I say.
His hands grip gently but firmly on my hips and hold me in place.
“Please. Stay. Having you sit here is the best my leg has felt in a year.”
“How bad is it?” I ask, because I care, but also to get him to talk.
I need him to tell me about the real him, the train porter Fayard. He looks at me, a bit surprised, but with that same intensity, like he’s peeling away the layers of my mind to get to what’s underneath. He says it’s worse in the morning and tells me about his stay in the hospital. I watch his mouth move and try to keep from looking him directly in the eye. It doesn’t stop my brain from conjuring up images of him somewhere else, sometime else. He continues and I remember listening just like this, knotted in a pretzel of limbs on dirt, on sand, in a bed of hay, a bed of silk.
I tell him to stop and climb off. I push myself against the wall and I see a rope of hammered gold around his neck and a braided white cloth wrapped around his head.
“Are you okay?”
I don’t hear him at first, but I can tell from the way his brow knits that he’s concerned. He says it again and again until he pushes himself up from the floor on his one good leg and leaves, returning with a glass of water. I drink all of it.
“I must be tired,” I say when I’m done, and I almost believe it. I could run a mile with as much nervous energy as I have built up in my body, but my mind—my mind must be weary. “It’s the excitement of the day, I think.”
“Or the worries of tomorrow,” he replies.
The concern has deepened his voice. I can’t look up at him.
“Do you really think he’s gonna marry you off? You came all this way. It ain’t that much farther to Atlanta.”
“Daddy doesn’t make threats, and he never changes his mind. He prides himself on that. Once he makes a decision, that’s it.”
“Wasn’t it his idea to bring you to Atlanta?” he asks.
I reach back in my memory to pick apart all the words he used regarding the trip, me, Mama, and Spelman. Not once did he ever say the words “I’m taking you to college.” It was me who reminded him of the start date. I sent off the letters of confirmation. I even arranged the travel. He just nodded his head whenever I told him what I’d done.
“I don’t know. Mama said she told him what she wanted for me, but I wasn’t there. I didn’t see him promise her, and he never promised me, not to my face. I… I’m in real trouble,” I say, fighting the urge to cry again.
The panic rises in my chest, and Fayard bridges the distance between us. He places his hand on my back, drawing small circles up and down my spine until my breathing evens out.
“I can help you,” Fayard says.
“No one can help me.”
“I can. I’ve got money.”
I chance a glance up at him, grateful it’s just him there and not some other version of him, slightly changed and bewildering.
“I hustle. I told you that. I just needed to get out of Philly, and this was the easiest way. I haven’t really thought about what would come next, but maybe, maybe you’re what’s next,” he says in earnest.
“But you don’t know me.” No one has ever been this generous to me before. We just met. And while my mind is telling me that I know him deeply and completely, it doesn’t feel right.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t feel what I felt when you kissed me. Like we fit together somehow, like I’ve known you all my life. I felt it the moment I first saw you on the platform.”
I tear my eyes away from his and drop my arms from around his waist. When did I put them there?
I shake my head and straighten my dress. Suddenly I’m desperate for a mirror. “You’re mistaken. Maybe you’re not as experienced as you think you are. Kisses are always like that.” I’m rambling.
He hooks a finger under my chin and lifts my face so that I have to look at him again.
“No, Tamar, they are not.”
I don’t think either of us registered that anyone was approaching until they were there. Two warriors waging battles of their own—Daddy and Mr. Max, quiet and accusing in the doorway.
And whatever fairy tale I might have thought I’d fallen into is over.