Four-seventeen and suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone.
“You following me?” I asked her, itching for something to do with my hands as Willow came close. She wore colors I’d never seen on her; neutral, boring, surprising. Wasn’t like her to wear beige or keep her hair neat and braided so tight. But I wasn’t going to care about her or what she did. Convinced myself of it, didn’t I? The hell did it matter, her wearing boring-ass clothes?
“No,” she said, stepping closer to the edge of the roof. She held her arms crossed and I wondered why she looked so sad, she who was usually always smiling. “I just wanted some air.”
She moved back, stepping behind me to sit in the wicker chairs set in a semi-circle around the Home Depot fire pit Mickey had bought last fall. It had cost him thirty bucks. Discounted for being a display. That was a little shopping tidbit I’d floated his way when he talked about charging us an extra fifty a month for “maintenance” on the roof deck.
But the pit and the chairs, even the bickering couple five stories below faded from my attention as Willow rested against the chair, feet propped on the arm of another one, her head tilted as she watched the black sky above us, and sighed.
“Everyone likes me.”
I told myself I shouldn’t bite. She was casting a line and wanted me to nibble. The kind of thing is that to say anyway? I should have turned my back on her and went down the stairs, leaving her to her sky and sighs and moods.
“It’s a family trait. My people are just universally liked.”
“That right?”
Hell. Look at me, biting at Willow’s line.
“It is. My parents are do-gooder types. They recycle and volunteer and love to go hiking in the mountains just to pick up trash left behind by other hikers. They go to Africa every summer to help build wells. I go with them, most of the time, and for the most part, people like us.” I glanced at her from the corner of my eye, spotted how her face seemed calm, like she was talking to hear the echo of her own voice against the night. But her body was rigid, and she moved her foot in a quick tap that told me she wasn’t calm in the least. Those crossed arms, too, folded tighter as she went on. “We’ve never been told to mind our own business or to go back where we came from.”
Willow stood then, moving back to the edge of the roof but keeping her distance from me. Her voice was soft, a little beige like her clothes, and when she continued, her attention was on the couple down below who’d abandoned their fight for making out against a light pole.
“You probably think I’m some privileged little white girl who’s never had a bad day in her life, don’t you?” I only glanced at her, letting my lone arched eyebrow answer her question. She took that expression for what it was, shaking her head like she wasn’t surprised. “Yeah, I thought so,” Willow said. “But the thing is, Nash, my parents brought me to Africa and Yemen and Costa Rica and a thousand other places because they wanted me to see that privilege doesn’t give you a pass. It gives you responsibility, at least it should. My Granny Nicola started it all, making cakes and pastries for her family, then her friends. Ten years later she was manufacturing ten thousand cakes and hundreds of thousands of scones and turnovers a month. She made our family wealthy. It wasn’t my parents’ money, or mine either, because none of us had earned it. Being born into wealth doesn’t make you rich. For my family, it meant we had to spread the good fortune we’d been given. We have to pay it forward.”
Hell, did I really have to be listening to this self-reverential, poor little rich girl bullshit at four in the morning? “You got a point?” The question was rude but needed to be asked. She looked tired—there were small bags under her eyes and her face was drawn and shadowed, as though she hadn’t slept in a week. Had to be something more to it than bemoaning the burdens that rich white folks bear.
“I got a point,” Willow said, stepping close enough that I saw her eyes were rimmed red. “No one has ever avoided me in my life. Not growing up, whenever I’ve set my eyes on something important. Something that needed to be done. All the times I’ve hassled people to donate to one cause or another, pried their hands away from their eyes so they’ve actually seen what was going on, or shamed some rich fat cat into building a dozen wells for villages on the other side of the world, not even those people avoided me.” She turned toward me and her mouth looked tight, as though she fought her anger and did a piss poor job of it. “You’re the first. Ever, in my life, and that seriously bugs me.”
For a second I only watched her, pushing back that huge need that rose in my chest, the same one that wanted me to touch her, to bring her close enough to taste. But that wouldn’t help me keep her out of my way. It wouldn’t do anything but give her another reason to keep knocking on my door. So I went with being an asshole.
“First time for everything, sweetness.”
Willow dropped her arms and her face went all red and blotchy. “Why are you such a jerk?” Those eyes though, they were cold, steely and it hit me square in the chest when I realized I’d pissed her off. Kinda liked how it looked on her.
Still, I didn’t appreciate that know-it-all shake of her head or how her anger seemed to make her think she was right about me. “Look, you don’t know—”
“I know you’re avoiding me. I know that anytime I see you on the sidewalk or in the lobby, you head in the other direction.”
Willow stood right in front of me. There was an eyelash on her left cheek and I fought to keep my hands in my pocket so I wouldn’t brush it away. Even in boring beige, she was beautiful, something I tried like hell to deny over and over in my head. Something, it seemed, was impossible to do.
“There is something happening here and you’re running from it.”
That had me laughing, a quick, cruel sound that tightened her mouth until there were small lines around her lips. “It ain’t like that.”
“Something happened to you.” Just as she said that a quick breeze floated around us, pushing her bangs into her eyes. She reached up to brush them back. “Something happened to me, too. I don’t know what it is, Nash, but there is something between us.”
“That isn’t what’s happening here.”
“If there is nothing happening, you wouldn’t be avoiding me.” She stepped closer and I refused to back up, to show weakness in retreating, but I couldn’t hide how shallow my breath had become. She spotted it. “If there was nothing, you wouldn’t be so nervous when I get close to you.”
I did step back then, I had to, and I thought she might follow. Willow was a pushy sort of female, the kind that didn’t back away just because you wanted them to. She got inside your head, claws sharp and deep, and wouldn’t let you go without a fight. Part of me liked that about her. The other part of me, the one that reminded me I didn’t need a damn thing but my brain and ambition to get what I wanted, that voice was loud and obnoxious.
But you don’t get rid of a claws-deep woman just by pushing them away. You strike, you hurt and just then, I wanted to hurt Willow so deep that she'd have no choice but to drop me like a toxic bomb. “I’m nervous because you’re insane. Certifiable. I’m not into you.” I put a little gravel in my voice just then, ignoring how wide Willow’s eyes had gone at my insult, how she let her mouth drop open like a guppy out of its tank. “There is nothing happening here.”