No. That wouldn’t do.
It was only him reaching forward, the space between us getting smaller and smaller that made the fog that had come with the smell of those roses lift from my head. Dempsey leaned, eyes already closed and I pushed him back with the flowers against his chest.
“Oh no you don’t, Dempsey.” He moved again, taking the flowers out of my hand to stand right in front of me and I shook my head. “No indeed. You stop right there.”
“Why would you want me to do that?” I hated that smile, just a little bit. I hated it because before it had loosened my strength that night in the fishing shack. It had me forgetting that I had no business kissing boys like Dempsey. By the end of that night, my lips were swollen and beat with a throb from all the kissing. That smile told me enough that Dempsey wanted to make my lips throbbing and swollen again.
“Come on now… just a little kiss. I did bring you flowers.”
“Uh huh, from your mama’s garden. You had to steal them. She wouldn’t give the Wise Men a single flower for Jesus’s birth, much less her son. Especially when he wants to give them to a no-account colored girl like me.” He really didn’t think sometimes and it had me fuming. God knows the trouble he’d be in now. “She’s gonna whip you good.”
“Ah, sweet Sookie, it’s worth the beating… or it would be if you’d kiss me.” He was taller than me by about three inches and it was that long stretch of shadow that distracted me, that and the thick scent of his hair, the clean smell from his soap that came off his skin as he moved closer. Dempsey got his kiss, a slow, wet one before my good sense returned and I pushed on his chest again.
“That’s enough. Go on, get out of here before your daddy’s people see us together.”
“I ain’t worried so much about that.” He moved closer but stopped short when I shot him an ugly frown. Dempsey leaned on the wall next to me pulling one of the flowers from the bunch in my hand. “He don’t much care for Joe Andres and so when the fool told my daddy that you’d attacked him…” He went quiet when I let out of muffled noise between my breaths, but waved off my worried frown. “Daddy had to drag it out of him. Damn idiot didn’t want to go around telling people some girl got him good.”
“How is it they haven’t come looking for me?” My throat felt tight and I worried something fierce that Dempsey might have sassed his daddy just to keep the man from nosing after me. But looking at him quick, there wasn’t nothing that told me he’d been beaten. The same sweet, wide smile met me just then. The same thick top lip twitched a little when he smiled. The same gray-blue eyes shined, lit with something like laughter as he looked down at me.
“Because, Sook…” There was a giggle between his breath that made me loosen some of my worry as Dempsey’s smile grew wide. “For once in my miserable life, my daddy believed me when I told him you weren’t to blame.”
“Wha… how is that possible?”
“Like I said, he don’t much care for Joe. He was likely to believe me when I said that fool was too drunk to remember passing out in the north field. My daddy believed me when I fibbed a little and said I’d seen him falling over the half-cut stump of that oak that got struck by lightning last summer.”
It was unbelievable. Dempsey’s daddy didn’t agree with him about anything. Dang sure didn’t seem the type that would listen to his son over one of his loud, drunk friends. But the longer I watched Dempsey, the wider his smile became and just like that my worry didn’t feel like such a heavy thing.
“So, your daddy isn’t going to change his mind? They aren’t gonna come looking for me?”
Just then Dempsey’s smile went a little weak, like he’d only just realized how worried I’d been, how scared the threat of his daddy’s anger had made me. Until I spoke it, if I’m telling the truth, I didn’t know how worried I was myself. But Dempsey’s lowering smile and the way his tall body ate up the space between us as he stood in front of me had me not remembering that I’d been so scared.
“How many times do I have to say it, Sookie?” He moved closer still and I swore the air around us started to sizzle. There was a heat that I didn’t reckon came from the humidity in the spring air. The noise of the city fell away then, just with one look from the boy who didn’t care about things that were fittin’, things that those staring eyes would eat up like a juicy steak. “Long as I’m breathing, I’ll look after you.” He held my face, tilting my chin up, so close, just inches from his mouth. His breath was sweeter today than it had been Saturday and I wondered for a second what he’d eaten that made it seem so. “Promise,” he said, like a whisper only half-remembered.
And just when Dempsey pressed his lips against mine, the noise of the city and the stench of the alley came back, like the ripping of a bandage on a sore not healed.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I’d never heard Dempsey scream so loud, all flustered and surprised. Not even when he wanted to kill his daddy for breaking one of his ribs, but just then it seemed his anger would bubble over.
Sylv pushed Dempsey away from me, standing between us like some sad buffer. “You need to get on, Dempsey. Right damn now.”
“The hell I do.”
They stood there squaring off like a dozen dumb men do in the city every night. But this wasn’t a fuss over a woman they both wanted or money won and lost in a round of dice. This was my brother, who had always liked Dempsey almost as much as me, wanting to keep us both safe. This was Dempsey thinking only he could do that job.
When Dempsey showed no real sign that he’d back down, Sylv shook his head, lowering his shoulders like some sign that he wasn’t really mad. “Man, I mean it now. This thing here between you two, it stops right now.”
I didn’t much like my brother making decisions for me and I gave him a look, mouth tight from the quick flash of irritation that rushed up inside me. “Don’t you tell me my business, Sylv.”
“Think I need to since you won’t listen.” He didn’t bother looking my way as he spoke, seemed too wrapped up in watching Dempsey like he needed to be ready for a tussle when it came.
Dempsey was honest. Always had been, even when his face was all bloody and his eye had swollen shut and my Bastie had asked how he’d gotten that way, his answer had come without him taking a breath to invent some lie. “My daddy beat me for helping mend your fence, Mrs. Bastie.” Part of me thought he didn’t know how to lie so when he looked right at Sylv, all the anger gone from his face, I believed him. I think so did Sylv and maybe that was the problem.
“Sylv, I’d never let anyone come near her. Not my blood… no one.”
My brother let out a long, slow breath, like he wanted everything Dempsey said to be true. They’d been friends a long time. Maybe they weren’t close like me and Dempsey were, but Sylv liked him fine. That’s why I knew it hurt Sylv to tell Dempsey he wanted him gone. Maybe he didn’t really want to see the back of Dempsey, but in Sylv’s mind, it was the only way to keep us all safe.
Our world wouldn’t understand. Not now, not a year from now, and with my brother shaking his head, with him giving Dempsey a look that seemed like good riddance, I realized that maybe Sylv was right. There were men on the other side of this alley hell-bent on seeing the end of my family, of all families like ours. They’d want Dempsey to keep away and would likely go about making that happen in any way they could. It’s what his daddy had been trying to beat into his head for years.