“Oh my God,” Guy gasped. “Did you really do all that street art?”
I nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell us? We leave you for five minutes, Lori Palmer, and you go and get yourself in trouble with the law!” Guy put his hands on my shoulders.
“That’s insanely awesome that you did that,” Thembi said to me.
“Thanks.” I looked over at Jake. He was smiling at me.
“Sorry I also didn’t step forward and claim responsibility,” Andile said in a small voice. “But you know, I’m a Black male, I’d probably be the only one arrested for it. It’s street art when someone like you does it, not so much when someone like me does it.”
We all turned and looked at him. His words had stopped us dead. They were sad yet true, and we all fell into a moment of silence as we considered their implications.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him. But what was I sorry for? Sorry for the way the world worked? In that case, sorry wasn’t nearly a big enough word.
He shrugged. “I’m cool,” he said, and then walked up to me and draped a big, protective arm over my shoulder. “I heard what you said to your mom in there. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“Not that she didn’t totally deserve it,” Guy said, also resting a hand on my shoulder.
I nodded at them both and smiled. I was okay. I had finally said what I needed to say to my mom—okay, so I hadn’t imagined it happening with such a large audience. “I’m good,” I said.
“So . . .” Andile declared loudly. “We’re all dressed up, looking gorgeous and have nowhere to go, and I’m desperate to dance.”
“Me too,” Guy said. “Where to?”
“I know, let’s go to Le Beach,” Thembi suggested.
“Le Beach?” Jake widened his eyes. “We’ll never get in there. It’s only for celebs and VIPs.”
“Lucky you guys know me then,” she cooed.
“Oh yeah, and which celebrities do you know?” Andile walked up to her and put a hand on his hip, eyeballing her playfully. I looked at the two of them together and smiled; they were destined to become friends.
“I work at Simone Couture and her husband owns the club. He said I could go there anytime I wanted.”
We all looked at each other. “Then what the hell are we waiting for?” Andile said.
The nightclub was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It dripped with opulence. Everything was white. Huge chandeliers that looked like crystal jellyfish hung from the ceilings. The bar was a long, glass fish tank full of tropical fish, and the bar stools were transparent plastic. We headed straight for the dance floor as a particularly bassy house track started playing. Andile and Guy began doing their choreographed dance, the one they always did when they hit any kind of a dance floor anywhere, and soon a crowd had gathered. The crowd laughed and clapped as they incorporated ballet into their routine (like they always did). I watched them and laughed. For Andile, ballet had been his outlet, like my art. Growing up as a gay, Black teen in rural Limpopo had been hard, and dancing was the only thing that had gotten him through it. It was also what got him out when he received a scholarship to art school. And when he danced, you could see the passion and raw emotion that poured out of him. As for Guy, he came from a theater family and it was in his blood. We were all from completely different worlds, and yet our worlds had all come together, and now we were family.
I watched as the dance turned into an unofficial dance off as others joined in and showed their best moves. I looked to my left and there was Jake, staring at me. He waved his hand at me, beckoning me to come with him as he walked backward away from the dancing. We walked through the crowd together, out of the club, and onto its private beach. It was lit up with pink and purple lights, turning the sand and water luminous. It reminded me of the bioluminescence that Jake had taken me to see. Loungers dotted the sand, and the occasional couple were lying on them, sipping cocktails.
“This way,” Jake said, walking to the edge of the sea. I looked at the water and felt that cold, clammy feeling that hits me in the chest. I looked up from the water and into Jake’s eyes. They were almost the same color as the sea, which made the sea feel less terrifying.
“This way.” He spoke again, his voice soft and warm, like a gentle spring rain, and then he held his hand out.
I looked down at it. Big. Reassuring, and I wanted to take it. I hiked my dress up slowly. I’d already ditched the high heels—you couldn’t walk on a beach with them. I took a step and stopped when I got to the water’s edge. I glanced down at the small waves. They looked harmless like this, but I knew better. I knew what lurked beyond the breakers. I knew that other world intimately, that one in which you can’t breathe and where you finally let go.
Let go.
The thought hit me like a wave might do. The thought that if I was out there now—falling into the water, sinking under—that this time, I would fight. I wouldn’t let go. I would fight to breathe and live, and fight my way up to the surface with everything I had. The thought made me take a step into the water. The cool water lapped at my ankles and at first I gasped, but then it started to feel good.
I slipped my hand through Jake’s as he stepped in farther.
He held my hand so tightly, and gently coaxed me in.
“Not too deep,” I said nervously.
“Not too deep,” he reassured me.
The water climbed over my ankle to my calf. I jumped and giggled as a small wave broke against my knee and splashed me in the face.
Jake stopped walking. “Hi, Anything But JustLori,” he said.
“Hi, Jake,” I replied.
We smiled at each other in the water, the music and bass coming from the club thumping through the air. He moved closer to me and his eyes drifted down to my lips.
“There’s something I didn’t get to do at the dance,” he said.
“What?” I asked, my eyes leaving his and also traveling down to his lips.
“This.” And then he pulled me into his arms and kissed me. The music throbbed through us as the kiss started out slowly and then deepened. He took my face between his hands and I dropped my dress, letting it fall into the water below as the kiss intensified. And then his hands left my face and traveled across my shoulders and started to blaze a hot trail down my arms . . .
This was it. Don’t pull away. Don’t pull away, I told myself. Let him touch you.
His hands drifted down my arms to my fingertips, where they stopped for a while, before moving off again. And then I gasped against his lips when I felt his hands on my lower back. I wrapped my arms around his neck and allowed my body to fall into his. No one’s hands had been on my body like this before—except his.
I felt a buildup of energy and pressure all over, and then millions of tiny explosions on my skin as he traced the length of my spine. And then I think I almost blacked out when his lips left mine and he trailed kisses down my neck. I laced my hands through his hair, the loose curls that were blowing slightly in the breeze, and held on tight as his lips trailed kisses back up to my chin and then to my lips again. We stopped kissing, pulled away, and looked at each other for the longest time, and then he smiled. He reached up and ran his thumb over my lip. It quivered.
“Oh my God, why didn’t you say this was turning into a pool party!” We both looked back at the beach. Andile, Guy, and Thembi—with a gold bottle of champagne in her hand—all stood there looking at us.
“Well, that’s it!” Andile declared, whipping his jacket off and tossing it to the sand. Guy quickly followed suit, also tossing his jacket down. And soon they were all discarding their shoes and running into the sea. Even Thembi, who’d hiked her dress up high in one hand and had the bottle in the other.
“Best dance, ever!” Andile declared as he splashed Guy with water.
“Bastard!” Guy splashed him back, and we all laughed.
“Noooo!” I squealed as I got covered in the residual spray of water. Soon, we were all racing through the water in our fancy clothes splashing each other and laughing.
Last time I’d been in the water I’d been dying, but now, I was living in full-blown color. When we stopped racing around, Thembi held the bottle of champagne up in the air and popped the cork. The sparkling liquid shot up into the sky, and Guy tried to catch some in his mouth.
“A toast!” Thembi held the bottle out.
“What are we toasting?” Jake asked.
Thembi looked thoughtful for a moment. “To making new friends,” she finally said.
Andile shot me a conspiratorial look. “To making new friends . . . and more.”
I nudged him in the ribs and blushed.
“I’m good with that,” Jake said, shooting me a very loaded look.
“Great!” Thembi held the bottle high in the air and we all shouted together.
“To making new friends. . . and more.”