“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I scoff, forcing myself to maintain eye contact. “Oh, no, you’re not.”

He stops us on the sidewalk, bending until our faces align and our lips almost touch in the meager space separating us.

“Oh, yes, I am.”

16

Kenan

“So you weren’t kidding when you said blisters, huh?” I ask the question jokingly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve walked a hole in my Glads. Besides one Uber ride, we’ve been hoofing it all day.

Lotus laughs, walking backward and a little ahead of me.

“Technically, Yari mentioned blisters, not me,” she says, giving her ice cream cone a long lick. “Now I know a man in such superior shape is not complaining about a little bit of walking.”

“A little bit?” I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and wait for her to do the same. She finally rolls her eyes and walks back to me. “You’ve dragged my ass from Bushwick to Kingdom Come—”

“Did you or did you not enjoy the Botanical Gardens?” she demands, one hand on her hip, the other clutching her ice cream cone.

“I mean, I—”

“Yes or no?”

I look down at her tiny self with narrow eyes. “Yes, but—”

“And did you or did you not love riding Jane’s Carousel?”

“A six-foot-seven-inch grown-ass man on a—”

“Yes. Or. No?” She lifts sleek brows and tilts her head for the answer she already knows I’m going to give her.

“Okay. Yes. It was fun because it was ridiculous. There were four-year-olds riding with us.”

She flings her head back and laughs with such gusto it shakes her whole body. She doesn’t care that people are strolling past us, staring at the loud woman busting up in the middle of the sidewalk with her dripping ice cream cone. I love that about her.

“And was Roberta’s not the best pizza you’ve ever had?” she asks.

“It was aight.” I shrug and understate about the best pizza I’ve ever had.

“You lying . . .” She slits her already-tilted eyes and twists her full, pouty, lipstick-long-gone lips. “It was bomb, and you know it. And what can we say about this ice cream?”

She licks the vanilla dome. “Hmmmm. You probably can’t remember the last time you had something this sweet.”

Her tongue circuits the ice cream, and my mouth waters remembering that tongue in my mouth, licking inside, sparring with mine, both of us gasping for air.

“Nope,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t sound too hoarse. “It’s been a while since I had something that sweet. You’re right about that.”

Her licks slow to occasional swipes while we stand on the sidewalk eye-fucking each other, which we’ve been doing intermittently all day. To my great frustration and delight.

Frustration because I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want Lotus. Her breasts in that strapless shirt and smooth, lean legs in those miniature shorts? I’d trade one of my championship rings to have her. I mean, I got two rings. There’s only one Lotus, as far as I can tell.

And delight because it is so obvious she wants me, too. I’m not a conceited guy. I’ve been a baller half my life—high school, college, pro. I could never be sure if women wanted me for my prospects and earning potential, or for me.

Lotus wants me for me. There’s no artifice to her—no tricks. No game she’s running. No agenda. When she looks at me and her eyes burn hot and her breath comes short, it’s for me. The pure way she wants me back and the hard time she has fighting it may be one of the most alluring things about her.

“Well, we’re almost done,” she finally says, and starts walking again. “You survived.”

I match my stride to her shorter one, and for a few minutes we’re quiet while she finishes her ice cream.

“I feel like today I’ve used all my words for the next month,” I tell her with a chuckle.

She turns her face slightly up toward me. Her profile scallops delicate curves into the shadows falling with the approaching sunset.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I just . . . don’t talk much usually.”

“I think we can safely say that has not been the case today,” she says, her laugh low and sarcastic. “I couldn’t get in a word edgewise.”

“Okay, now you’re exaggerating.”

“Well at least I found a nickname for you.”

“What is it? I’m not gonna like this.”

“Big mouth.”

“Not creative or accurate.” I tug on one of her braids that has fallen down to her shoulder. “Back to the drawing board.”

“You keep telling me you’re an introvert, but I don’t see it.”

I slow my steps a little as we approach the long stretch of the Brooklyn Promenade’s railing. I weigh the words, wondering if I should say them. They’re true, but they may tell her too much too soon.

“I’m not this way with anyone else,” I say softly. “I know it sounds crazy since we don’t know each other that well, and haven’t known each other long, but I’m only this way with you.”

17

Lotus

I bite my lip, not sure how to respond to Kenan’s words.

I talk to everyone all the time, and I’m hyper-social, but I know what he means. I think the point isn’t that he actually talks to me when he doesn’t talk to other people much. I think the point is that he wants to talk to me, and that I get because even though I talk to everyone, there’s something unique about my time with him. Something I wish I could replicate with other people, but at the same time love that I’ve only experienced it with him. I haven’t even shared my deepest, darkest secrets yet—the things that chase me into my dreams and arrest me in the middle of the night.

But I think I will.

Soon I will share those things with him, and he’s right. It makes no sense. But I, unlike Kenan, am used to things that don’t add up. I’m accustomed to things that defy explanation. I was raised on hope and weaned on miracles so the exceptional feels familiar to me.

Even so, this is different.

I stand on the base of the rail, placing my feet between the rungs, and face the New York skyline and the water lapping at the city’s edge.

“Nothing to say to that?” Kenan asks softly.

“Oh, I have a lot to say to that, but right now I just want to watch the sunset,” I whisper, not because there are other people around who might hear—tourists and natives alike lining the rail to catch the last of the day like us. I whisper because there’s something sacred in the sky. Every time the sky speaks to me, I’m reverent, whether it heralds good news or bad.

“Cotton candy clouds,” I say, turning to smile at Kenan.

“What?” He blinks in that way he does when someone says something unexpected. He blinked like that when Chase said he had great forearms. I chuckle, recalling how Kenan looked at him at the Christmas party. Like Chase was gum he’d stepped in.

“What’s so funny?” Kenan asks.

“Nothing.” I shake my head because saying Chase’s name, saying any name that isn’t Kenan’s or mine right now, feels wrong.

He leans his elbows on the rail, so close the heat from his body reaches out to stroke my skin. I feel his eyes on my profile as tactile as a caress. Like his touch over the verse on my collarbone, soft and curious and savoring. He looks away from my face to the horizon. The Statue of Liberty. The Brooklyn Bridge. Bulky buildings hugging the river’s edge. And the pointy tip of one skyscraper that seems to pierce right through a pink cloud.

“I was saying the clouds are pink,” I go on with a smile. “Pink clouds mean happy days.”

“Huh?” he asks.

I climb down, turn my back to the view, and climb back up, propping my elbows on the rail. I’m facing him now and can see his response as he watches the sunset.

“I looked it up once,” I say. “I used to love watching the sunset from a tree in MiMi’s backyard.”

“This tree is magic, child. When you’re feeling blue, climb this tree.”

I swallow emotion. Still, after two years, it hurts that I can’t ask her advice. Can’t hop on a plane and see her when I want.

“What’d you find out about pink clouds?” he asks, tracing the shell of my ear, running a finger over the studs, leaving a trail of shivers in his wake.

“Well, they say—”

“’They’ being?”

“Scientists, I guess.” I laugh and shrug. “Whoever they are, they say when the sun sits low, sunlight passes through more air than during the day when it’s higher. More air means more molecules to make the violet and blue in the sky seem more distant. It literally chases the blues away.”

I catch his eyes when he turns from contemplating the pink clouds and contemplates me.

“So happy clouds because no more blues.” I smile, and I wonder if he can tell it’s ironically tinged with sadness. I long for that tree. Even on days when the sky tells me through pink clouds to be happy, it doesn’t feel the same as it did from my perch in MiMi’s backyard.

“Cotton candy clouds?” he asks, watching me closely.

“Yeah, they’re like cotton candy. I had to design a dress for my final project at FIT. It was cotton candy pink and absolutely perfect.”

“Did you make it for a model-sized person or a you-sized person?” he asks, chuckling low and deep.

“Oh, I made it for me. Exactly to my measurements.”

“I’d love to see it on you.”

“I’ve never worn it.”

“What are you saving it for? Why not wear it?”

“I’ll know when. It’ll be a special occasion,” I tell him, fake-defensive. “Get outta my closet.”

We laugh just as his phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and scowls at the screen, but answers. “Hey, Bridge. What’s up?”