“Bree,” he says, his voice deep, deliberate, and a little bit desperate. “I just came to say I’ll disappear, if you want. I’ll change schools. Go live with my dad. I won’t ever come close to you again.”
But that isn’t what I want. That was never what I wanted. I shake my head and step closer to Vince, afraid the longing alone will eat me alive if I’m not careful. I place my palm flat against his chest and let out a shaky exhale. I can feel that his heart is beating as hard and fast as mine.
“I need to talk to Talia first,” I say, because Vince already knows my deepest secret, and he’s somehow still here. “I have to make her understand. I have to figure out what to say to Aunt Gigi, too.”
He nods and lifts my hand from his chest to his mouth. He kisses each of my knuckles and then presses my hand to his heart again, like he doesn’t want to let me go.
“Are you sure I’m worth it?” he asks. And I look past him to see Talia coming toward us. I wish I had more time to come up with a plan, more time to decide exactly what to say and how, but I can feel something starting, like a fire in my veins, so I have to act now.
I look back at Vince and I think of my mother. I grasp one of his warm hands, and trace the kind curve of his lips.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure. You’re worth everything.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
That night, before Giselle got home, Aubrey told Talia the ugly truth of her family.
Of Claudette, who had affairs with dozens of men and women, until she fell in love with a man named Rudy, and the second they began their affair, her skin began to wrinkle.
About Madeline, who loved a man called Loren so deeply that she nearly went mad trying to stay away from him. On the day of their wedding, when they shared their first kiss, she lost nearly all of her teeth.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Talia frowns. She sits farther back in her seat and asks, “Are you shittin’ me?”
And I shake my head. “I swear, Talia. I’m telling you the truth.”
“But, I don’t get it,” Talia says. She takes out her phone and I get nervous she’s going to leave. So I keep talking.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Aubrey told her the story of Elizabeth next. How she hated every man she met, but fell suddenly and completely in love with a woman named Esperanza after years and years of living alone. She was so enraptured that she didn’t even notice when she began losing fistfuls of her curly black hair the second their lips touched.
For Abigail it had happened early—the finding of her love. She was still in college when she met a boy named Clark, who changed everything. She was young and beautiful until she fell in love, just as they all were. She would have been young and gorgeous forever if she hadn’t.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“My mother and my aunt Giselle were the last two Dunn women left,” I explain. “When my mother got pregnant with me, Giselle was sure that would be the end of her. But my mother, her name was Josie, she didn’t love my father. And so she stayed herself: young and lovelier than ever.”
“Until last year,” Talia says, really listening now, filling in the part of the story she knows.
“Yeah. Until she met Marquez.”
Until then, the Dunn curse had only been a story. That my grandmother, after having a stillborn child, had traded something unimaginable to have children who stayed young and beautiful forever, and how there had been a curse wrapped inside the blessing.
“But with my mom, I saw it happen. Hell, you saw it happen.”
“She was in love,” Talia says, and I nod.
“And so, once they kissed, she began to age quickly . . . almost instantly. And I don’t know for sure, because I’m a daughter of a cursed daughter, but I think that’s what will happen to me the second I kiss your brother.”
“The Dunn women was all beautiful and eternally young. And people was always falling in love with us. The curse only worked its dark magic if we fell in love back.”
I jump at the sound of Aunt Gigi’s raspy voice, as it fills the room like a thin veil of smoke. It’s full of disappointment. It’s full of something else, too.
“Aunt Gigi,” I say, standing. “I was going to talk to you about it all tomorrow.”
Gigi levels Talia with one of her serious stares like I haven’t said a word—like I’m not even in the room. “Me and Bree? We the only two left.”
Gigi sits down, like she’s tired, and starts to peel off her pantyhose. And that’s when I realize that my aunt is home hours earlier than she usually is.
“I ain’t want us to end up like my sisters,” Giselle says simply, sadly. “I thought if I ain’t let love take me, you’d be safe.”
“But wait, Gi,” I say. I look at Gigi more closely and notice a streak of gray in her hair that wasn’t there this morning. “What are you doing home?”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Just then, the doorbell rang. Giselle looked at Aubrey, and Aubrey looked at Talia. No one visited the strange, beautiful women—no one but Talia—ever.
The three of them walked to the door together slowly, Giselle still holding her pantyhose in the ball of her loose fist. Aubrey peered through the peephole, while the portraits of all the other Dunn women watched.
Vince was standing there, and everything about him was bronze and beautiful. But just behind him was another man, tall and dark as a shadow, who Aubrey had never seen before. She looked up at Giselle, and there was a kind of gentleness to the expression on her face—a kind of peace. Aubrey thought maybe this man was the reason why.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Aunt Gigi swipes on some red lipstick. She looks at me and winks.
“He betta be worth it,” she said, but I can’t tell if she’s talking about Vince, the love of my life, or this shadow of a man, who is clearly the love of her own.
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
By Charlotte Nicole Davis
You’re on your way home from the bus stop when you realize you can stop the rain just by thinking about it.
The weatherman said there would only be a 20 percent chance of scattered showers this afternoon, and you liked those odds. You left your umbrella at home by the door. But now the ankles of your jeans are soaked black and your Steele City East High hoodie hangs heavy as a wet blanket on your shoulders. The water is cold, thinks it’s still winter. It drips down your chin, seeps into your socks, wrinkles your fingers and turns them numb. The trig homework in your backpack is probably dissolving into gray paste right about now—maybe there is a God.