“I don’t know,” Alonzo said, “we’re working.”
Ada dipped her fingertips into the plastic bag of bud in her lap and sprinkled it into the rolling paper cradled in her other hand, carefully, as if she was making a gourmet dish.
Alonzo liked the way concentration looked on her face, her top lip trapped between her teeth, her eyes narrowed, her chest still. Not that the seriousness of her task stopped Ada’s sharp tongue.
“So you’re a square,” she laughed mockingly.
“I’m not a square.”
“You sure about that? Look, if you don’t smoke, just say so. I won’t hold it against you.” Her gaze lifted from the joint she was constructing, and she winked. “Promise.”
Alonzo sighed and looked away. Night had fully fallen. They’d staked out a patch of grass near enough to the stage to see the act but not close enough to be crushed in the thick of the crowd. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t smoke; the problem was that the idea of passing a joint from his mouth to Ada’s and back again had made him hard the minute she’d pulled that baggie from her backpack.
He also didn’t think he could trust his body to behave. Alonzo had a loose tongue when he smoked. Or, as Toonie said, “You just don’t ever shut the fuck up when you high. I ask you one question, and you be talking all night.” He didn’t want Ada to see him like that. He didn’t really think he had a chance with her, but if he did, he didn’t want to ruin it because he couldn’t stop telling her everything he knew about Black musicians in bluegrass or listing every Motown artist by year.
But he couldn’t tell her that he was a motormouth, so he avoided her question altogether and went back to watching her hands instead.
He thought watching her roll the joint would be safe. It was not.
Her fingers, like the rest of Ada, were delicate, long and slender. She used her fingertips to break up the small particles of marijuana, moving from the bag to the rolling paper and back again in measured movements. She carefully massaged the weed, evenly distributing it inside the paper with the same kind of focus as he’d seen earlier today as she’d directed her camera at the crowd.
And then there was her tongue, wetting the rolling paper in one long, slow swipe before those fingers began to roll.
Every muscle in Alonzo’s body tensed painfully. All the blood in his body headed south. Every thought he’d had today that wasn’t about Ada was gone.
There was only Ada Carr.
“You can be straight with me, Alonzo,” she said. “Come on, just say it. Tell me you’re a square.” Her voice was pure molasses, thick and sweet, a slow drawl that made him wonder where her people were from. But her words were sour provocation, meant to sting, but maybe only just a little before she soothed.
He lifted his eyes from the joint to her face to find her staring at him as she rolled it closed.
“You get on your man’s nerves like this?” he rasped, trying to find some purchase in this exchange.
“You trying to find out if I got a man?” she bit back quickly, throwing him off-balance once again.
“Would you tell me if you did?” He was watching her hands again.
“I’m an honest woman,” she said.
He saw a small smile grace her lips, but he refused to focus on that. He couldn’t. “Is that an answer?”
“Would be if you’d asked a direct question.”
His eyes flitted up to hers, but she wasn’t watching him now; she was inspecting the joint carefully, making sure it was perfectly formed with no tears.
And then her tongue appeared again. Alonzo was too wound up to do anything but swallow the whimper in his throat and hope she couldn’t hear the soft squeak that escaped his lips.
Alonzo had seen so many beautiful things in his life, and he regularly reminded himself of them when he needed to remember that life wasn’t always bad. The sequoias in high summer. The redwoods on the rainiest day. A rainbow cutting through wet, oil-slicked streets. But none of that could hold a candle to Ada Carr, her deep brown skin, those mahogany eyes, and her bright pink tongue, poking between her white teeth and smoothing soft as butter across the thin paper to seal it closed.
She literally took his breath away.
“One toke,” he breathed, transfixed.
Her tongue trailed off the edge of the rolling paper as if she was savoring the taste, as if she wanted to torture him with thoughts of what she tasted like. And she was.
“I’m not impressed by men who try to impress me,” she said.
“Now I know that’s a lie.”
“Told you I don’t lie.”
“That mighta been a lie too, all I know.”
Her smile tricked him into thinking the sun hadn’t set.
She held the joint out to him in one hand and her lighter in the other. It was a challenge. He took it.
Alonzo held Ada’s gaze as he placed the joint between his lips. Her eyes didn’t waver, but her lashes did flutter, and he felt that movement in his gut. He flicked his thumb over the ridged edge of the lighter, and the flame came to life between them.
Ada sucked in a sharp breath as Alonzo inhaled deeply.
He held the smoke in his lungs and handed the joint back to her.
She took it, and their fingers brushed together. She lingered. Alonzo exhaled slowly, the thick smoke obscuring their vision of one another, but not the sure knowledge that the other person was still there, that they were in this moment together. Her eyes stayed on him as she brought the joint to her mouth, her lips closing over the slightly damp paper where his mouth had been. The smoke wafted in the air between them, making this moment feel otherworldly.
He wanted to tell her that. He was about to tell her that, even though the weed hadn’t yet hit his system. The words were already filling up his mouth, not because he was high but just because he wanted to tell Ada everything about him and every thought that filtered through his head. He wanted Ada to know him because he wanted to know her.
“I’m single,” she said on the sexiest smoky exhale. “Not looking to date.” She passed the joint back to him.
“Me either,” he lied.
She licked her lips, and he shifted uncomfortably. She smirked, dipping her head forward, reminding him that he was letting the weed burn out.
He took a hurried breath in, the smoke singeing his lungs, as Ada lifted onto her knees.
When her hands landed on his shoulders, he huffed out a breath before he got the chance to really inhale.
“So you smoke?” she asked, throwing one leg over his waist.
He nodded up at her, leaning back on his hand even though he wanted to place that palm on her waist again.
“But you let me call you a square? ‘Cause you didn’t want to smoke with me?” She didn’t seem hurt, just like she was filtering through new information to arrive at her own conclusion. She plucked the joint from his fingers and took a drag as she lowered herself down into his lap.
He moaned. He couldn’t stop himself.
She smiled, a thin tendril of smoke escaping between the sexy O of her parted lips.
“I—” The single word was all he could muster before Ada moved her head back and released the smoke in her mouth straight into the sky. “Fuck,” Alonzo breathed.
“You?” she asked. Teased, more like. “Fuck?” She laughed as she lowered her head and then ground down to settle her ass firmly, unmistakably onto his dick.
He swallowed a groan but just barely. “Okay, I believe you don’t have a man.”
She shook her head and brought the joint back to her lips.
Alonzo had to look away. He couldn’t watch her take this drag directly, not when her pussy was so damn close to his dick. So he watched her mouth out of the corner of his eye and tried not to let his body betray his reaction to the surprising shock of Ada on top of him.
She exhaled a beautiful plume of smoke, but she didn’t pass the joint back to him. “I don’t get you, Alonzo Reid.”
Her words shocked him, and he turned back to her. “Are you trying to get me, Ada Carr?”
A cymbal tissed, and a ripple of excitement moved through the crowd, but all that was happening elsewhere. Here there was only Alonzo and Ada in their own little bubble, making their own music.
“I shouldn’t be,” she said, “but I’m doing it anyway.”
There were so many questions he wanted to ask in that moment. And he guessed there were probably just as many questions Ada seemed to want to ask right back. But for all her brashness and all his yearning, neither of them said a word.
Instead, Ada slipped the joint between her lips, and Alonzo didn’t pretend as if he was looking elsewhere.
Her chest expanded, and the burning orange tip of the joint illuminated a small circle of the space between their faces. He inhaled with her.
She placed her left palm flat on his chest and pressed into him.
Alonzo exhaled. Ada did not.
She leaned forward slowly, deliberately. And even though he’d spent all day wanting just this, he didn’t meet her. He waited for Ada to come to him, afraid that if he made a move, he’d ruin whatever this was, and he couldn’t risk that. Ada Carr was touching him and looking at him, and now that cymbal tiss had turned into a soft thrum over a drum and a plucking, exploratory bass beat. If there was ever a more perfect moment in Alonzo’s life, this wiped it out of his mind completely.
Her hand moved over his shoulder as she leaned forward. The tips of her breasts met his chest.
Alonzo opened his mouth to…do…or say…something.
Ada smiled as her face descended on his, and her lips parted just enough to show him the white smoke in its depths.
The dark pools of her eyes were bright with the reflection of a constellation of stars. And finally, Alonzo stuttered into action. His arms wrapped around her waist, and he pulled her forward, crushing her breasts firmly into his chest just as her mouth covered his.
They both moaned as their lips touched. She blew the smoke from her mouth into his. He gladly accepted.
Her hand crushed the back of his afro, digging deep into the soft crown of his hair. They crushed their lips together. Alonzo was not usually a fan of shotgunning, but with Ada, it was better than he’d ever imagined.
She scratched lightly at his scalp, and he could have sworn that he felt that touch circling the base of his dick.
He moaned into Ada’s mouth, and her tongue dipped between his lips, but only for the briefest taste.
Alonzo found himself leaning forward, chasing Ada’s quickly retreating mouth.
When their lips finally broke apart, he exhaled the residual smoke from his lips. The air cleared between them, and he found her sitting above him with another of those mocking smiles that he was rapidly coming to adore.
And then horns ripped through the night.
“Oooh shit, I love this song!” Ada yelled, jumping to her feet.
Alonzo felt Ada’s absence like a quick cut to his soul. He missed the weight of her, the smell of peaches, cocoa butter, and marijuana, the brush of her warm skin against his, the taste of her tongue. He felt sluggish now that she was gone, and she’d barely touched him. He felt woozy and hungover after the tiniest taste, and he wondered what that loss would feel like tomorrow or the week after that or a year from now.
He looked up at her, jumping in the air and swaying to the beat. In that moment, he knew, as sure as he knew his own name, that if he spent too much time with Ada, losing her would hurt. She would hollow him to the core. Normally, he would take the overwhelming feeling of loss as instructive and move on. Under normal circumstances, Alonzo might have felt something maybe half as strong as he felt in this moment, and he would run away.
She turned to look down at him with a grin. She shook her shoulders and turned in a circle. “You gon’ sit there all night?” she yelled.
Alonzo didn’t want to run away from Ada.
“Pop, I love you and mama, but I definitely did not need to know most of that,” Amir said with a frustrated sigh, both hands gripping the steering wheel uncomfortably. He normally drove with one hand on the wheel and one at his waist — the same pose Alonzo used to strike behind the wheel — but hearing his father describe his mother shotgunning some old-timey cannabis had him on edge.
Go figure.
Alonzo’s window was down, even though they were on the freeway, and he was resting a bent elbow on it. “What part was too much?” Alonzo asked, his voice nothing but faux innocence. “The weed?”
“And the…other stuff too.”
Alonzo sucked his teeth and waved a hand dismissively. “Boy, please. How the hell you think you and your sister got here?”
“Magic,” Amir deadpanned. “Immaculate fucking conception.”
“Watch your mouth and take that exit.”
“You want me to take the streets back to the house?”
“No, I wanna see the water,” Alonzo breathed, turning to look out the window toward the blue bay in the distance.