Damn. Where the hell had that come from? I wasn’t into white girls. I wasn’t against messing around or hooking up with them, maybe dating for a little bit, but I’d never really been into them. I’d always been into Latina girls or sisters, definitely, but white chicks? Not really. Despite my current tatted image, I’d spent high school locked up in the library or the computer lab, away from everyone but my teachers and tutors. College for me was Howard, a historically black college, before I transferred to MIT. Not a lot of chance for white women to enter my orbit. Not a lot of women, period. There was no reason for me to want to watch her the way I did or think about how she’d taste, what it’d feel like to have that smooth skin against my tongue.
“Oh…” Surprise worked across her features the harder she massaged the muscle of my neck. “Oh…”
“Oh?” I saw her expression focus, become determined and deep, and when she licked her bottom lip I almost lost it. Just like that, I forgot about what type of girls I’d always been into.
“It’s…” She blinked twice, her gaze moving around my head, as though she saw something I couldn’t. “It’s changing colors.”
“Weird.” That was weak but I couldn’t think of anything else. I kept the frown on my face, as if that wouldn’t give away what was in my head, but I got the feeling this chick didn’t buy it. At least she didn’t act like it, not the way her cheeks flushed brighter the longer she rubbed my neck.
She paused, and I watched her, wondering what was making her smile like that, wondering why the hell I returned it with one of my own. She noticed.
“You’ve got a great smile.” She moved my face in her hands, revealing the dimples pronounced in her cheek. “I like it.”
Then, just like that, she went all focused and bossy as hell again. “Close your eyes.” That demand came out soft, the smallest hint of something deep between each syllable, like she wanted to say please, but wouldn’t ever. “The tension is here.” There was a small graze of nail against skin when she touched my neck and I breathed deep, liking the way she smelled, how that soft, firm touch warmed my tight traps. “There’s so much tension… you don’t... you don’t sleep well, do you?”
When I opened my eyes, ready to answer her, she brushed her fingers against my lids, making them stay closed. “No.” I didn’t bother sweeping her hand away. She worked some kind of juju on me and for the fucking life of me, I couldn’t stop her. Didn’t want to. “That’s why I came here. Your music…”
“It’s the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz. Well, their chants, anyway. They relax me. You should try listening…”
I opened my eyes despite myself. “That wouldn’t relax me. That’s why I came banging on your door.”
“What would?” She didn’t stop me when I looked at her, but her hands relaxed briefly on my shoulders. “What music would relax you?”
“Coltrane.” She frowned then, back straightening as she rubbed against my muscle firmer, deeper, as though to avoid looking at me. I couldn’t read her expression. “You don’t like jazz?” I asked.
“What? No, I do.” She corrected that frown, her features returning to the sweet softness again. “My świenty dziadek.” I frowned and she waved a hand in apology. “Sorry. I meant my great-grandfather. Our people were Polish. Some things stuck. Anyway, he loved Coltrane.” She smiled, remembering. “He’d sit in his office, smoking a cigar, sipping on a glass of bourbon, listening to Coltrane’s Spiritual. Maybe Louis Armstrong if he was feeling ‘a little New Orleans’, he’d say.” She seemed to be lost in the memories, her face both sweet and sad. “He’d do that for hours.”
“Why does that make you sad?” That made her glance at me, as if she was surprised that either she had been that open, or that I had been that observant.
“He died. Last month.” She moved her chin, her expression evening out as she refocused and stretched and moved her fingers around me, away from my skin. “He was over a hundred years old and I… I loved him a lot.” She shrugged, exhaling like she needed it. “Coltrane makes me a little sad now.”
“Coltrane is supposed to make you sad.” She pushed on my shoulders and I sagged back against the pillows, dismissing how weird it was that I was letting this woman touch me, trusting her to touch me, and not putting up my guard. “That’s what good music does.”
She moved her hands away, head tilting as though she hadn’t heard me quite right. “Good music makes you sad?”
“Nah. Good music makes you feel.”
It always had for me. Jazz, Blues, especially, really good rap like Rakim, P.E. or Common, old school beats that went deeper than the bragging rights most artists spit out these days, back when lyrics were about fighting the man and celebrating the beauty of who we were and where we were going. Music should be elemental. It should be bone-deep. All those thoughts ran through my head, but I wasn’t about to start preaching to some pretty woman I didn’t know, the same woman who somehow managed get me on my back with her scent and fingers all over me, working some weird new wave bullshit over me while remembering her granddaddy and his afternoons with Coltrane. Hell, I’d only come up here to get her to cut off that dumbass chant music. I’d done that. I needed to jet.
So why the hell couldn’t I move?
“Maybe.” The word came out weak, like she didn’t buy the line I’d fed her. “Maybe it should sometimes. But I can’t listen to Armstrong or Coltrane, or smell those Padrón cigars or catch a sip of Pappy’s without it reminding me of him and how he’s not here anymore.”
I shouldn’t care. Not about this woman. She’d kept me up for four nights straight. Looking at her, seeing how she carried herself, how bouji her place was, despite the Technicolor boho mess, how she looked as though she’d never known hardship in her life, I knew we had nothing in common. We were completely different people. But I still wondered what she’d been through, why she felt the way she did. I shouldn’t have cared about this woman. God help me, though, I did.
“He a good man?” It was out of my mouth before I could think about how stupid it might sound.
Without skipping a beat, her face lit up with the most beautiful smile. “The best.”
There was no doubt in her reaction. She believed no one had a better grandfather and I understood the feeling. I let the moment chill, and when her face started to settle again, I cast around for something to say. “Remind me to tell you about my granddaddy one day.” My sister Nat and I only got to live with him for four years after our mother died, but those years had made an impact. My mother’s father had been a good man. He’d been the best, too.
It was an invitation I didn’t mean to make, telling her I’d give her that story, but again, something had spoken for me, some weird, stupid thing that had me itching to let this woman know I’d be back around.
She didn’t miss it, and it seemed like my suggestion had pleased her, even as she tried to distract herself with the tassel on one of her bright red blankets. “Does that mean you’ll come back?” Before I could answer, she shrugged, fronting like it didn’t matter, but there was a wisp of teasing in her voice. “My chanting music or my aura cleansing didn’t completely scare you away from ever speaking to me again?”