Mona tips her head toward the fence that separates her backyard from this one. “Why don’t you come over for a glass…or bottle…of wine?”
“Raincheck?”
“You’re about to leave?” Mona probes.
“In a little bit, yeah.”
Her gaze drifts back toward the house. “This won’t end well, Kimba. It can’t.”
As much as she may be right, I hold on to Ezra’s frankness from earlier tonight. “You know him, Mona. Have you ever even suspected him of being unfaithful?”
“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.