Ritual - Palm South University

“I’m sorry for distracting you, my shoulders too bare, my thighs too exposed in these shorts. I’m sorry for speaking too loud, my words ugly with truth, your ears sensitive from ignorance.”

Each word she says hits like a beat of a drum, the cadence powerful and seductive, and I lean into every line.

“I’m sorry for chasing my dream, how selfish of me, to not ask for permission first.”

A few girls snap at that, firing up the energy in the room.

“I’m sorry for leaving you, how careless to stand on my own when you begged me to bend.”

“Preach, girl!” someone calls out in the dark.

“I’m sorry for proving you wrong,” the poet says, grabbing the mic and raising her voice as her haunting brown eyes sweep the room. “How embarrassing my smile is for you, I’m sure. I’m sorry the flower you tried so long to drown bloomed anyway — that stem, once so fragile and weak, now roots dug deep.”

A few more snaps ring out, and I snap, too, completely lost in the moment.

“I’m sorry,” she says, louder now, her eyes boring into the crowd. “That I was never sorry.”

“Yes!”

“Go on, then!”

The poet pauses, lowering the mic back into the stand before she whispers, “And that I never will be.”

Applause rings out as she takes a little bow and exits the stage, leaving the mic open once again for the next performer, and I shake my head in awe, leaning back in my chair with my muscles relaxing all at once like I was just holding onto a speeding train for my life rather than listening to spoken word.

“She’s amazing,” I whisper, glancing at Gavin. “All of these performers are.”

“Open mic is pretty cool, huh?”

“Very,” I say, reaching for my tea to take a sip. “You come here a lot?”

“Almost every Sunday. It’s a cool place on a regular night, too, but… for me? Open mic is where you get the real. The raw. The brave.” He nods toward the stage. “It takes a lot of guts to get up there.”

“Do you ever?”

He shakes his head easily. “I’m more of the lurk in the corner kind of guy than the one who wants a mic in his hand.”

“Fair,” I say with a smile. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

“Of course.”

I study him for a moment while the next performer gets set up — a young man, no older than eighteen if I had to guess, with an acoustic guitar and a wide, unabashed grin.

“Have you thought about our little therapy assignment?”

Gavin frowns. “What assignment?”

I chuckle. “Don’t you ever listen? Jackie asked us to think about what we miss about the old us.”

“Oh,” Gavin says with a frown. “Yeah, well, I instantly wrote that off as stupid and never considered it again.”

“Why do you think it’s stupid?”

“Why do you think it’s not?”

A little laugh bubbles in my throat. “I don’t know. I guess I’m open to any and everything therapy has to offer. I’ve tried handling this all on my own,” I confess. “It didn’t work out well.”

Gavin watches me curiously. “Okay. Tell me yours. What do you miss about the you before you were all fucked up?”

He waves his hands in the air like a fortune teller with those words, making me giggle.

“I miss a lot of things, actually,” I say, playing with the handle on my teacup. “I miss when my biggest worry was what to wear to a sorority event. I miss when all my friends trusted me and looked up to me.” I swallow. “I miss wanting to have sex.”

I can’t look at Grayson when I say those words, and they hang between us for a long time before he responds.

“I just miss my sister.”

My heart cracks in my chest, and I close my eyes, inhaling a breath before I open them to meet his gaze. For a long while, he watches me unashamed, but slowly, he lowers his eyes to the table, jaw ticking, nose flaring.

He looks so old and tired and broken in that moment that I can’t help but reach over and shelter his hand with mine.

Gavin swallows at the contact, covering my knuckles with his thumb, smoothing skin over skin, his eyes flicking up to meet mine. I offer a small smile, squeezing his hand in return.

“Thank you for sharing.”

I get a genuine smile for that, and Gavin shakes his head, bringing my knuckles to his lips briefly before he pulls his grasp from mine to reach into his back pocket.

“Alright,” he says, slapping a twenty down to pay for our tea and leave a generous tip. He stands then, holding out his hand for mine again. “I promised to get you back early.”

“I just need to use the restroom.”

“Come on, I’ll take you.”

Gavin leads me through a dark hallway in the back of the venue, waiting outside the bathroom for me. Then, we slip out the back door, and it’s just the two of us alone in the alley.