What He's Been Missing (21 page)

Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: What He's Been Missing

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A song was ending. I felt Xavier clasp his hands on my waist. The beat kicked up and some Zydeco song started playing. The few people who'd sat down rushed back to the dance floor.

“Want to go for a walk?” Xavier asked me. “It's hot as shit in here.”

Outside of a line of glass doors was a half-moon-shaped terrace with white light bulbs strung up overhead in random, romantic lines that would look like stars when the sun had fully set. The terrace was high up enough from the street that we couldn't see what was going on or hear any noise other than the steady pulse of the Zydeco rhythms coming from inside the ballroom. Two of the young couples from the dance floor were already hugged up in one of the corners looking like they were avoiding their parents.

“Look at them?” Xavier said, nodding over his shoulder at the foursome, “The game never changes.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, looking back into the room and wishing we'd stayed inside somehow. It was hot in there, but it was no competition for the heat outdoors, even though the sun was going down. I reasoned that at least there weren't as many people outside.

Xavier had walked to the edge of the terrace. He was holding two full flutes of champagne he'd grabbed from one of the waitresses on the way outside.

“So, what's really going on with you in Chicago? You dodged the question in thereâthe very elusive Mr. Xavier Hamilton.” I came up behind him.

He handed me one of the flutes.

“That's Hamilton the third!” he pointed out and we laughed.

“Not much. Just trying to live in my father's footsteps without scaring my own shadow. No easy feat for a brother.”

“Business good?”

“It's great. Everything is great. But sometimes, you know, I wonder if this is what I really want.”

“Money? Success?” I joked.

“Well, money and success are nothing if it's not what you want to do. This is my father's empire. I want my own.”

“And what does Xavier Hamilton the third's empire look like?”

“Hum . . .” Xavier scratched his forehead.

“Come on, you can tell me. I can keep a secret,” I pushed.

“Promise you won't laugh?”

“Never! Well, maybe I will . . . if it's funny.”

Xavier playfully looked away and shut his eyes like he was expecting a slap in the face after he let the words come from his mouth. “I want to open an art gallery.” He peeked at me through one eye.

“Art?” I laughed before I could stop myselfâit wasn't that opening an art gallery was so absurd, more that it was Xavier who'd mentioned doing it.

“Why is that funny?” Xavier asked, chuckling, too.

“Art? Come on! You don't exactly strike me as an art lover. Unless you count that Lil' Kim poster you had over your bed in college.”

“For your information, Ms. Rachel, I'm an avid collector.”

“Of Lil' Kim posters?”

“Of art! Fine art. Paintings. Sculptures. Sketches.”

“Really?”

“I took this art history course senior year and I've been collecting ever since. I have two Kara Walker silhouettes.”

“Walker? I love her. I have a print of one of her silhouettes over my couch.”

“She's awesome. A little dark, but rather magical,” he said. “I also have a Bearden. An Alexander.”

“Larry Alexander? I love his work, too. I have one in my office. Well . . . it's a print.” I shrugged.

“Lately, I've been getting into some of the newer guys in Chicago. I back a few.”

“You're a benefactor?” I was almost sure I wasn't speaking to the same person I'd known at FAMU.

“Whoa! Nothing as big as a benefactor,” Xavier said. “I just make sure cats are eating. Might pay rent. Let someone stay at one of my lofts downtown.”

“That's amazing. I never would've thought . . .”

Xavier smiled at me so openly that I just stopped talking.

“So a gallery is the next step?” I said.

“Been thinking about it. The Chicago scene is so swamped, though. Got my eyes on ATL. Know anything about the art scene there?”

“Ashamed to say I don't. For me, art is one of those things I always wished I knew more about but didn't. Guess I've been waiting to meet someone to teach me more about it.”

“Maybe we could find out more about it together.” His voice went deep. His eyes were as soft as his smile. Xavier was flirting with me.

“We?” I'd known him too long to pretend I wasn't clear on where he was going. I laughed and scrunched up my face. I wasn't about to be another name on X's list.

“I mean . . . like I could come visit and you could show me around. Help me get my feet wet. What? I meant that strictly in a professional way. However you took it in your dirty little mind is on you.” He placed his empty champagne flute on a little table beside the ledge. Straightened and crossed his arms over his chest, and then I wasn't sure if I'd read him correctly. My champagne flute was almost empty, too. Was the alcohol making me see what I wanted to see? What did I want to see?

The foursome must've gotten tired of the heat. They went inside, and through the open door there was the sound of Mr. Dupree's band playing.

“I just wouldn't think you'd need me to show you around. I'm sure one of your many FAMU concubines would love to hear you're coming to town,” I said to Xavier. “Hell, half of them flocked to GA after graduation.”

“Rattlers are everywhere,” Xavier said, nodding. “But maybe I don't want just anyone's company.” His voice slowed and he moved in closer to me. This time, it was obvious that he was flirting and he wasn't bothering to cover anything up. He took my empty champagne glass and slid it onto the table close enough to kiss his. The moon was out now and daylight was swallowed whole. The white lights overhead were so bright. “Maybe I want yours.” He looked back into my eyes and just the two of us breathing seemed to collapse every inch of air between us. We were drawing closer.

The moonlight in his eyes. The throbbing of the band from inside the ballroom beneath our feet. The champagne tickling my heart. I closed my eyes. I breathed him in like all those other girls. I waited, too. Waited for his lips to touch mine.

But then . . .

“Come inside, Rach!” Krista's voice cut in all away. So quickly, we turned from whatever was happening to her standing halfway out the doors we'd exited. “They're about to cut the cake.”

Xavier grabbed my hand proudly under Krista's stare and we walked inside without saying a word to her.

Aliens in ATL

#Shesaidhe'dcomeinthemorning. But I wasn't ready for what he had in store.

I thought I'd crumble watching Ian cut his wedding cake and feed the moist white insides to the woman he wouldn't leave for me. After everything that had happened, after everything that I did and he'd said to me, it didn't make any sense that I'd still be standing, another smiling and hopeful face in pictures from the wedding reception right there behind Scarlet and her girls. But I was. Still, a close look at those pictures would show that I was too busy looking across the room at Xavier behind Ian and his boys to think of losing my footing and crumbling over Ian. Xavier's coming so close to kissing me was like handing a baby a new toy. From across the room I saw him in a new way. And damn, he looked good.

He had my attention. I was thinking of him incessantly after the wedding. And while my mind told me that I was probably just masking the pain of the disaster with Ian at the pier with the promise of Xavier's kiss, the pounding in my heart was much louder. Being a hopeless romantic, my heart was filled with an acute case of the “what if's.” What if I'd stumbled upon my “and I wasn't even looking for him” fairy-tale man? What if he could be mine? What if he was what I'd been missing?

“Dammmnnnn,” Journey said, looking at me on the computer. She and I had matching wineglasses and our favorite bottle of pink Moscato. “I'm just saying, I expected fireworks in New Orleans, but dammmmnnnnn, you traded in your best friend for his best friend?”

“Xavier is not Ian's best friend. Well, he was his best friend in undergrad, but they don't really get with each other like that anymore. You know, life.”

“Does Ian know about this budding love affair?” Journey asked.

“No,” I said. “We haven't really spoken since I saw him walking out of the reception with Scarlet in New Orleans. The office sent them flowers when they got back from the honeymoon and I know Scarlet was e-mailing Krista about some loose ends. But Ian hasn't called me . . . so. I guess he wants it this way. It's been almost a month now.”

“And you don't think Xavier has said anything to Ian?” She sipped her wine.

Journey and I shared a toast at the start of the conversation. She was in Dublin. Dame had taken the kids on a walk. They'd be there for a few months as Dame taped his scenes for a movie he was starring in with Colin Farrell. She'd been traveling and constantly on the go for the last few weeks, so I had to get her caught up on everything that had happened in New Orleans. About the pier. Oh my God. Tante Heru. She laughed about that and said she was sending the “Holy Ghost Drop Squad” from her father's church in Alabama to pick me up for talking to a roots woman. I told her about the romantic scene outside the reception with Xavier.

Xavier and I had been regular phone buddies since we left New Orleans. In fact, he'd called me every night. Sometimes twice in one night. Sometimes three times in a day. He wanted to know what I was eating. Maybe have me text him pictures of me brushing my teeth in the morning, my office, the red truck parked in Bird's garage. We'd talk for hours. Like boyfriend and girlfriend in a long-distance relationship. He made me laugh like we were still in college. He was so funny and so smart, I was almost embarrassed that I didn't know these things about him. Xavier could tell a joke one minute and make me cry the next. He'd finished the Ironman Triathlon twice in Hawaii. Had traveled to every continent. Taught himself Mandarin. He donated half of his salary each year to scholarships for first-generation college students enrolled in the business school at FAMU. He was the first man I'd met in a long time who made me feel like I needed to do better. Hearing all these new things in late-night chats over the phone, I guessed that previously my young mind had just been happy believing what every other girl had to say about Xavier. But then he'd openly admitted that those girls weren't making it all up. It had taken him a lot of time and a lot of heartbreak to get to where he was right then. One night while we were Skyping at 3:00
AM
, he yawned after reading Rumi's “The Springtime of Lovers Has Come” and said, so eloquently, “Sometimes a man's got to get to his future to know how important it is.”

“You know I have to tell you that this is probably nothing, right?” Journey looked nervous, playing with the stem of her glass. “But, you know, you're probably kind ofâ”

“I know,” I interrupted her. “I'm substituting my feelings for Ian with this thing with Xavier, so I don't have to think about what happened with Ian.”

“Good shit, Rach. What do you need me for?” Journey said and I laughed. “You've got it all figured out.”

“You'd think I would, after all this drama, but I don't know, Journey. There's something about him. Xavier. A clean slate. I mean, we have a past, but where we are right now is so new. Just cute.” I laughed. Looked down at the wine in my glass. It was so sweet. That's why I like cheap wine. Cheap and sweet. “I hope I'm not just spinning my wheels with him.”

“What is he saying? Like what kind of stuff is he saying to you?”

“Girl, what isn't he saying?” I grinned. “It's like he knows me. Like he knows just what I want. Just what to say at any moment.”

“And you think it's the roots woman.”

“I didn't say that.”

“Well, I know you.”

“OK. But what about me says I'd believe anything some bearded roots woman in the French Quarter would promise for fifty dollars?”

“You want love,” Journey said. “You believe in love. I never told you this before, but you were the first person I thought really believed in me and Dameâin our love. You were so ready to accept it. I never felt like you were working with us just because it was your job. You stand for what you do. For love. And that's all I've ever wanted for you. For you to find it. And I know you desperately want the same. That's reason enough to believe the bearded roots woman.”

“He is some kind of miracle, though,” I said. “Guess I'll just have to wait and see where it goesâif it goes anywhere. Who knows: this could all amount to a series of phone conversations that lead nowhere.” I tried to play it down a little. “X seems to have slowed down with the ladies, but I'm sure he's still out there playing.”

“Don't let him decide if it's going to be all about you. You hold the power,” Journey instructed. “You decide if you want to be down with him. I'm just requesting one thing.”

“What?”

“Figure out the deal with Ian before you move onto something else. I could be wrong, but something tells me that some of this is just in your mind. We believe what we want to believe for whatever reasons. We keep secrets from others and sometimes ourselves.”

“But Ian married someone else,” I said. “Who cares?”

“You'll care, if it's not resolved,” Journey said. “Because if it has to resolve itself, it's going to be a motherfucker.”

I closed the laptop and went to bed drunk and thinking about Ian and Xavier. I'm not stupid. I've been in and out of my feelings enough to know when I'm lying to myself. I've made bad choices. But they were because I didn't want to hide my feelings. I didn't know which one was betterâbad choices or hidden feelingsâbut I knew Journey was right. Whichever one it was, I had to figure it all out before I could move forward.

My phone rattled on the nightstand and I read a text from Xavier:

I know I've called you three times today, so I'll text
you instead of picking up the phone and bothering
you.

I'm lying here on the couch and I just finished
watching
Love & Basketball
and I was thinking about
you. I wish you were with me right now. I wish I'd
taken that kiss. Can you send me one right now?

It took me ten tries and a walk to my purse to get my lip gloss to get the picture of the perfect pucker on my phone and text it to Xavier.

He responded with a picture of his lips.

I went to sleep with the phone on the pillow beside me.

“Oh my God, look at you two! Is that the Mediterranean behind you again? You guys spent your entire honeymoon in the water.” I was sitting in the conference room with one of my former clients, Bisa Ojaku, looking at pictures from her honeymoon in Cannes. Her wedding to an Arabian prince was my last wedding of 2010 and, like most of my brides, Bisa was still a little attached to me. I hadn't seen her since the wedding six months ago because Prince Ayat insisted that she move to Dubai with him right after the wedding; still, Bisa e-mailed Krista and me updates of her marital bliss every week. She'd called the office a few days ago saying that she was in town visiting and asked Krista if it would be OK for her to stop by to show us her wedding album.

“Yes, the Mediterranean was so beautiful,” Bisa said, sliding her hand over the water in the picture like she was imagining that she was still there. In the shot, she and Prince Ayat were embraced at the helm of a yacht with the sun setting behind them. “We didn't want to leave Cannes. As soon as we got back to Dubai, Ayat bought a yacht. Can you believe it? All those years living in Dubai and that man didn't own a yacht.” Bisa had been as single as a drop of water in the Arabian Desert until her fortieth birthday, when she met Ayat on a sleepover camping expedition in the Arabian Desert. She was a retired porn star. She was sure she'd never find a man who could accept her past and envision her in his future. But her prince, and I mean he really is a prince, came to pick her up on his camel in the middle of the night. Prince Ayat was filthy, stinking rich, and too old and tired to care about Bisa's past. He just wanted good company and great conversation for the rest of his life. Basically, someone to spend his money with him. And he loved black women. There was one catch, thoughâBisa had to move from Atlanta to Dubai right after the wedding. A friend had told her about my company and she called me two weeks before she and Prince Ayat would be in Atlanta to say their vows. It was a rush, but he'd paid handsomely for the rush. We rebuilt a desert camp with real camels, hookahs, and tents on the turf at the Georgia Dome.

“Must be nice to go yacht shopping, Princess!” I joked with Bisa.

She laughed and kissed Prince Ayat's image in the picture. She seemed so happy. Still had the sparkle in her eye of a new bride. Some people say there's a difference between a young woman and a more mature woman getting married. I never noticed. The heart was the same. Both Bisa and Ayat had seen it all and done it all, but their love was baby new. Fine newborn-baby new. Looking at them made me think of Xavier and his late-night sweet nothings. Bisa turned the album to a picture on the last page; it was of Ayat and her standing on the strand in Cannes hand in hand. She fingered the link between them.

“My prince charming. He found me! It's a miracle. A real fairy tale.” Bisa smiled and did a little dance in her seat before closing the book.

“So how's Dubai?” I asked.

“It like a big resort. Beautiful every day. It's still taking me time to get used to some of the customs, but Ayat and I hardly get out of the house right about now”âBisa winked suggestively and we laughedâ“so I'm cool. Lord knows that man is a freak. What's up with you? You know Ayat has a few friends who love the sisters, too. You should come visit.”

“I'll visit, but I don't know about needing a date. I'm kind ofâ”

“Wait a minute,” Bisa started, “I knew there was something different about you.”

“What?”

“Your eyes . . . your smile . . . your clothes . . .” She sat back and looked at me from head to toe with a sistergirl glance. “Uhh-mmm hum.”

“What?” I laughed, knowing what she was getting at.

“You been getting some!”

“Noânot exactly.”

“You're in love?”

“Noânot exactly.”