Chapter Fourteen

 

Kimba

 

 

“You’re a doctor?”

A dozen thoughts collide in my mind once we’re off the stage and standing with all the recipients, awaiting a group photo, but that’s the one I blurt out. I presented several other awards after Ezra’s, but I couldn’t tell you any of the recipients’ names. I don’t remember their faces. On autopilot, I presented the awards and smiled and posed, but all the while, I knew exactly where Ezra stood with the others behind me onstage. I could feel his stare—the heat and intensity of it tingling across the bare skin of my neck. As soon as all the awards were announced, I wasn’t surprised when Ezra immediately appeared at my side.

“Of sorts,” he replies to my question, shrugging. “Ed.D.”

“Daddy!” The shout comes from the boy who is bigger and more like Ezra than the first time I saw him at the funeral. Noah throws his arms around his father, burying his face in his side. “You won.”

“It wasn’t a competition, son,” Ezra says dryly, brushing a hand over his hair.

“I tried to explain,” says an attractive woman around our age with dreadlocks pulled into a regal arrangement just behind Noah. “But he wasn’t having it. You’re a winner in his eyes.”

I remember Ezra’s wife vividly, a petite woman of Asian ancestry. This woman doesn’t look anything like that, but she does look vaguely familiar.

“All that squinting,” she says, turning laughing dark eyes on me. “And you still haven’t figured out who I am?”

“We have met, right?” I ask, hating to admit I don’t recognize someone, but too curious to pretend.

“He was Jack,” she says, nodding to Ezra. “You were Chrissy, and I was—”

“Janet!” I shout, pulling her into a fierce hug. “Oh my God, Mona.”

Tears prick my eyes, and I’m probably holding her too tight, but I’m overcome with how good it feels to see her again. When her parents decided she wouldn’t bus into our district for high school, we kept in touch at first, but didn’t maintain the friendship, caught up in new schools, new friends, and all the changes that came with growing up and inevitably growing apart. Eventually, with Ezra and Mona both gone, I found a new circle of friends, and so did she. I heard snatches of news about her until I left for college, and then nothing—until now.

“I’ll let you off the hook because it’s been so long since we saw each other,” Mona says, pulling away to look me up and down. “Well, that and you gave us one of the best presidents this country has seen in recent memory. Congratulations, Kimba. When I saw you on CNN, I couldn’t believe you were the same girl who hated reading out loud in class.”

My cheeks go hot, which hasn’t happened to me in years. Sometimes I’m shocked to hear my own voice, my words strong and clear and flowing. Who would believe the girl rattling off stats and details in front of a camera, for millions of viewers, used to hate reading in front of her classmates?

I look up to meet Ezra’s stare, and I know he’s remembering that day in Mrs. Clay’s class. I’d forgotten this kind of telepathy we share, seemingly conducting thoughts between our minds with nothing more than a glance. There’s a disconcerting intimacy to it that feels wrong when his mind isn’t mine. Neither is his face, which settled into a roughly hewn beauty that I can barely tear my eyes from, or the big body standing like a tree offering shelter. I’m not his to shield. He’s not mine to shelter. We’re not each other’s anymore.

I guess we never were.

“Wait,” I say, looking between my old friends. “So you guys stayed in touch?”

“Not until we ran into each other a couple of years ago at a teacher’s job fair,” Mona says.

“I was staffing the school,” Ezra says. “And there was Mona. She practically runs the place now.”

“Now, we know that’s a lie.” Mona tsks. “This one’s a control freak. It’s bad enough I have to put up with him at school. Then we bought houses next door to each other. Aiko’s a good neighbor, even if he isn’t.”

“Aiko’s your wife?” I ask, looking from him to Ezra to Mona. “Where is she tonight?”

His expression freezes and his eyes widen. “Oh. Aiko’s in Tanzania on safari,” he says. “She’s a photographer, but—”

“They’re not married,” Noah interjects. “Mommy says marriage is a social construct like gender and race.”

A tiny startled silence is broken by us three adults laughing. Noah divides a puzzled look between us.

“It’s not funny,” he says, his little face earnest. “It’s fact.”

“Noah’s right,” Ezra says, turning to me. “Aiko and I aren’t married.”

Damn the breathlessness that seizes my lungs. I assumed they were married when I saw the three of them at the funeral and heard Noah call her Mommy. But it doesn’t matter if he’s married or not. He’s taken.

“Just because they’re not married,” Mona says with a smile, “doesn’t mean you aren’t a family, right? Your parents have been together longer than a lot of married couples.”

“I know.” Noah grins, showing a missing tooth. “Mommy doesn’t want Daddy to put a ring on it.”

“And Beyoncé shall teach them the way that they should go.” Mona laughs.

“I didn’t realize you’d started a school,” I say. “That’s amazing, Ezra.”

“Thank you.” He shrugs, a gesture I remember from when we were kids to downplay praise and attention. “Like I said at the funeral, your father convinced me I should when I ran into him.”

“Then it’s only fitting you’d receive an award in his name.” I twist the gold ring on my thumb Daddy gave me years ago. “It sounds incredible, what you’re doing at the school.”

“We’re on summer break.” Ezra hesitates, his glance fixed at some point on the floor, and then lifted to look me directly in the eye. “But you should come by sometime when you’re in town. How long are you here?”

The question probably only feels loaded to me. Maybe the intensity of his stare, the heat generated by his nearness, is my imagination, but I can’t look up when I answer, staring at my fresh manicure.

“Um, a couple of weeks,” I say. “I’m taking some time between campaigns.”

“We have to hang out,” Mona says. “The Three’s Company crew. Can’t we get together for lunch or something?”

“Oh.” I look up to find Ezra watching me closely, waiting. “Sure. That would be great.”

“You used to love barbecue,” she says. “You gotten all bougie on us, or you still okay with getting a little messy with your food?”

“It’s been too long,” I admit. “I’d love some good barbecue.”

“You’re thinking Tips?” Ezra asks Mona.

“Yeah. It’s this new place near Ponce City Market,” she says. “What do you have going on tomorrow?”

“This guy’s got a play date.” Ezra nods to Noah. “He’s leaving me all day to go to Stone Mountain.”

“Yup,” Noah says, his smile wide. “You guys can keep my dad company.”

“What do you ladies say?” Ezra asks us both, but looks at me. “You wanna keep me company?”

It’s like that moment at the funeral when we could’ve exchanged numbers. It felt like a risk then. With this invisible live wire that seems to connect me to him, it still is.

Before I can reply, my mother walks up to join us.

“Ezra Stern,” she says, a slight smile tugging at her lips. “Lord above, it is you. I hadn’t looked at the final list so you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw you and heard your name.”

“It’s me,” Ezra says, his smile tentative. “How are you, Mrs. Allen?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone and got stingy with your hugs,” Mama says, resting her hands on her hips.

“No, ma’am.” Ezra reaches down to squeeze my much shorter mother.

“Who would have thought?” Mama pats his back and then pulls away to peer up at him. “Tall as your daddy. It’s good to see you.”

It is? The last time she saw Ezra was the night of the argument. She did everything in her power to convince me I shouldn’t look for him and seemed satisfied when my defiant efforts to find him proved fruitless.

“Good seeing you, too,” Ezra says.

“How are your parents doing?” Mama asks, her tone polite and only mildly interested in the couple who used to be like family to us.

“My father passed away a few years ago.” Sadness flits through Ezra’s dark blue eyes, making them that near-purple color they’d become when he felt something deeply. Everything else about him may have changed, but at least that is the same. “Mom’s doing well. She remarried last year.”

“I’m so sorry about your father.” Mama squeezes Ezra’s hand. “Please give Ruth my best.”

“I sure will.” He turns to his son. “This is Noah, Mrs. Allen, the only grandchild and subsequently, spoiled rotten. Noah, this is Mrs. Allen, Kimba’s mom.”

“Hi.” He glances up through long lashes at my mother. “My bubbe lives in New York.”

“Ezra, you used to call your grandmother Bubbe, too. Ruth was so devastated when she passed.” Compassion gathers in Mama’s eyes. “Poor Ruth, losing so much.”

“Mrs. Allen.” A slim woman wearing glasses and a semi-anxious expression steps into our circle. “The board wants a few photos with you. You, too, Kimba.”

“Thank you, Brenda,” she says. “We better go. It was so good seeing you again, Ezra and Mona. Lovely meeting you, Noah.”

“What about lunch tomorrow?” Mona says quickly, taking my arm. “We need to hang, girl. Catch up. It’ll be fun.”

Ezra doesn’t speak, but the muscle in his jaw draws tight beneath his skin. He’s looking down at the ground in that deliberate way he used to have. A casual posture that did little to hide his alertness. At least, not from me. Do I still know him?

“Kimba!” Mama says from a few feet away, already lining up for pictures. Something akin to anxiety marks her expression when her glance flicks between Ezra and me. “Come on.”

I hear it again. Our parents’ raised voices. The angry demands that separated me from my best friend. The desolation of watching from my porch as he left, knowing somehow, despite what he said, that it was for good.

“Say noon?” Mona asks. “Give me your number and I’ll text you the address.”

Ezra does glance at me then, and the look in his eyes wills me to say yes, even as Mama’s expression urges me to pull away.

Not again.

“Noon?” I grab Mona’s phone, punching in my number. “I can’t wait.”