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  I would have said yes last summer, when I was still enamored with Keanne, before I’d slowly forgotten about him with every tender touch from Jason. I would have said yes when he was still sort of awkward and dorky, instead of the man oozing confidence and charisma that he no longer needed alcohol to conjure up. That wasn’t who we were any more, though. We were so different, and once I got off the plane, I knew that although I could be Keanne assistant, I couldn’t be his, but I knew who had to be mine.

  Chapter Ten:

  KEANNE’S DRIVER WENT TO JASON’S APARTMENT FIRST, where I was dropped off, with a kiss on the cheek and nothing more, before heading upstairs with my bags, expecting the lights to be off when I entered the apartment, which, to my surprise, was already unlocked.

  When I got home, I expected to walk into a darkened room. Instead, the lights were on, and the apartment, in its shades of grey and black and white, took on a golden hue, like that of candle light in the autumn, lit by lamps with special bulbs on the ground. A light instrumental album was playing in the background, which I recognized as a cover of Fall Out Boy’s “Dance, Dance” by the Vitamin String Quartet. The apartment smelled like warm tomatoes, and I looked to the kitchen area.

  There was Jason, in a pair of black slacks, a white shirt, a black apron, a black bow tie, black shoes, and his hair natural, not gelled or styled, just the way I liked it. “Welcome home,” he said, pulling out one of the chairs from the small table in the kitchen.

  “Jason...you didn’t have to do this. Don’t you have work tonight?”

  “I called in a vacation day,” he said. “I want to hear all about your trip.”

  “There really isn’t much to tell,” I said, taking the seat as Jason started to put food onto our plates and brought out a pair of chilled drinks. “Mmm, what is this?” I asked. The drink tasted familiar but at the same time, there was something different about it. The liquid was orange and milky at the top, but an ombre gradient was formed by the whole of the drink, leading to a murky brown bottom.

  “I know how much you love Thai food and how much you love Long Island Iced Teas, so I tried doing a Thai iced tea with a twist for you. The condensed milk and Thai tea concentrate gives it the familiar color. Do you like it?” he asked, still working on the presentation of the food.

  “No, Jason,” I said, and he turned with wide eyes. “I love it.”

  “Oh, good, because I don’t know how to make anything else,” he teased.

  “To answer your question...it wasn’t a great trip. Keanne is the same as he was last summer,” I said, taking another sip of the sweet drink.

  “And I take it that’s a bad thing?” asked Jason, and I saw a smile on his face.

  “It’s terrible. I was hoping maybe he’d gone and done some growing up, and maybe, that after experiencing a gamut of things, he’d realize that what was missing from all his memories was me. That was stupid of me, though, and now...I’m not even sure why I liked him.”

  “What does that mean for your summer?”

  “It means I’m still going to work for him, and I do have to sort out some paperwork with him about that, but I might not work directly for him. I might manage a team of assistants, so that’s good, and it’ll look great on the resume, but...it made me reconsider a lot of stuff.”

  “Like, us?”

  “No, don’t worry.”

  “I meant, maybe, did you think about us in a different light?”

  I knew what Jason was getting at but I had to hear him say it. “Whatever could you mean What we have is good...right?”

  As he placed the plate of pasta in front of me, the sauce’s steam caressing my face, he asked me the question I knew he’d been dying to ask for a long time. “Becca...I was wondering if maybe, you’d like to take our relationship to the next level.”

  “What else is there?” I teased, pretending to be easy breezy, but inside? My heart was throbbing. I knew what I wanted him to say, and finally, I knew I was ready to give an answer that wouldn’t hurt either of us. It had taken a horrible trip with a mediocre man to finally realize what I had with Jason was special and deserved a title, but the fact that I knew with certainty that committing to Jason was the right thing to do made the decision so much easier to make.

  “Becca, will you...be my girlfriend?” he asked, taking a knee and looking up at me as if he was proposing. It was supposed to be a joke, but it was all too fitting, given the fact he’d gone to this much effort just to ask me out.

  “Okay, but first, I have to ask you a question,” I said, getting out of my chair and taking a knee myself. “Jason. Will you be my boyfriend?”

  “Of course,” he said, leaning in to kiss me. “Sorry, it’s just –”

  This time, it was my turn to cut him off. “Is that of an of course yes, or an of course no?” I teased.

  “Yes, Becca, I’d love to be your boyfriend, I love you so much,” he said, and then, realizing what he’d added on the end before even I could, he retracted it. “I mean – ”

  “Are you implying you don’t love me?” I asked slyly.

  “No,” he said.

  “No, you don’t love me?”

  “No, I mean –”

  “Jason, you know I’m a dreadful tease. It’s fine. It’s actually more than fine, because I’m asking you to be my boyfriend because I love you. I love you, Jason. I feel like the biggest jerk in the world, needing a trip with Keanne to figure that out, but I think that what happened was I idealized him in my head, I made him into something he wasn’t, when what I wanted all along was what I’d already had.”

  “Does that mean you two...?”

  “Had sex? No. We didn’t.”

  “So is this relationship still open or – ”

  “You know how you said you hadn’t been dating anybody else? Since we met?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I’ll just put it this way. I only went home with guys when I went to Club Grit. I don’t go to Frat Fridays or Thirsty Thursdays, just Club Grit.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Probably what you’re trying to figure out: I haven’t been with anyone since I’ve been with you. That scared me, Jason, for the longest time. And trust me, it wasn’t on purpose, but for some reason, ever since I met you, I just didn’t need anyone else. I know it sounds weird and strange and obsessive, but I haven’t wanted another man since I’ve been with you. It’s not about the sex, it’s not about your appearance, it’s about the way you get me, and more and more, I’ve been realizing most people don’t get me.”

  “What about like, the rumors?”

  “About me and other guys?”

  Jason nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s exaggerated. I’ve taken a few guys back to Beta Rho from the Omega House, but only because they were too drunk to get there on their own. The rumors about me sleeping around are only half true. I did before I met you, but haven’t since. However, I never made any sort of effort to prove those rumors false. People are going to attach labels to me no matter what. It’s what happens: I’m either going to be called a slut or a bitch. Honestly, what’s so bad about being either, or being both? If I fight it, I’m just giving people power, giving them a word to use against me, a label that they’ll assume that, because I’m fighting, I think is negative. It sounds weird, I know, but...I just didn’t care enough to combat the rumors. Plus, I didn’t want you getting the wrong idea about us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You and I...we never had the conversation, about what we were, about what to call what we had, about what the limits and boundaries were. We ended up okay, but you know that it’s a fluke, right? We’re not supposed to be okay, we’re not supposed to work out, but somehow, we’re still together. It’s pretty nuts, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  As Jason and I sat together at the table, talking about our weekends, eating the spaghetti he’d made from scratch and taking our macarons on small plates into the living room, to b
e enjoyed with some white wine spritzers he’d made from scratch, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked Jason out earlier. Nothing had changed but that’s exactly why I should have: I never wanted my life to be any different than it was right now, just being with Jason in our apartment, enjoying ourselves with simple pleasures.

  As Jason did the dishes (he insisted!), I went to the bedroom. All my stuff was still packed in bags, as if I was going to leave, but that wasn’t an option any more. I hadn’t been scared to commit to Jason when it had finally come up, and I was going to make this space mine. At least, I was going to, until I was distracting by the faint shadow of gauzy curtains floating in a gentle breeze, the curtains over the bedroom’s large pane window.

  I pulled aside the curtains to let in the natural light which had been slightly muted before by the sheer white panes. The light orange and pink lights of the setting sun, reflected and refracted by buildings and windows, burst into the room, in the way that made you wonder, for a second, whether it was sunrise or sunset, whether you’d woken from sleep or from an afternoon nap. Squares and tetrahedrons and kites and rectangles of pale white light scattered across the wall like a thousand shattered prisms, some edged with colors, some plain. Even in the middle of Los Angeles, the tender touch of California entered the fifth story bedroom, and more importantly, it entered our story.

  Chapter Eleven:

  THE CAR CAME AT NOON, JUST LIKE KEANNE PROMISED. I guess he could keep a promise, when it suited him. I just had no idea how much he thought this meeting would be rewarding to him, after I’d refused his advances in the plane. A job was a job, though, and I wasn’t about to let personal feelings get in the way of my professional life again. I knew that I couldn’t fall for Keanne, after having my heart broken by him before, slowly and over the months in which he hadn’t bothered to contact me, but I also knew that being his right hand woman would open up many doors for me.

  Sitting in the black Lincoln on the way to the Beverly Hills mansion Keanne had been staying at, I found myself feeling more alone than ever. This was so sterile, so quiet, nothing like being with Jason in a cab from Club Grit to his apartment, chatting with each other, with the driver who we always tipped well, and I resisted the urge to get my phone out and text Jason. I didn’t know how he’d react to knowing I was seeing Keanne today. I didn’t want him to worry or to be ashamed of me.

  Surprisingly, once I arrived, there was no butler to let me in. I thought Keanne would have hired one, but no, he greeted me, in just black basketball shorts and a white tank top. “Hey, girl, I was just getting in some hoops before our meeting,” he said, leaning in to give me a side hug, leaving a wet sweat stain on my cardigan. Typical Keanne. “Let me give you the tour.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes, but instead, I smiled. “Sure, you have a lovely home.” He laughed and just led me to the large kitchen, where he poured himself a large glass of water (without offering me one as well), then to the dining room, the living room, and a plethora of other rooms most people didn’t have, including a dedicated spa room, before heading upstairs, to see his large black walk in closet, filled with designer goods.

  From ceiling to floor, there were racks, shelves, and islands filled with luxury goods, from white cotton shirts that looked like a Hanes tee but costs hundreds times more to fur coats that were definitely not from a thrift shop. On the walls were mounted heads of exotic animals like rhinos and elephants, and on the floor, rugs from exotic Asian countries and bear pelts. Although the rest of the house had a modern look, the dark wood walls made this look like some Victorian opium den, but the only drug that was currently out was that of excess, not ecstasy. There were items in that closet that cost more than my entire wardrobe combined, bags that cost more than my yearly tuition. I didn’t find myself impressed, though. I knew Keanne had money. I knew he had the means to buy these items. Did he have the means to earn back my trust? That’s what mattered, and that’s what I didn’t have an answer to.

  Finally, we just ended up at the entrance to this manly version of a boudoir. There were a few articles of women’s clothing lying around, probably from another drunken orgy the night before, and I didn’t think anything of it. Keanne had a reputation and I was no longer going to allow myself to be affected by anything that was tasteless or classless that he did, because I knew I was worth more. My parents had raised me to have a strong sense of self-worth and if Keanne didn’t see that I was worth a certain level of dignity, well, the worst thing I could say, that I could possibly say, was that we weren’t compatible.

  “So, what do you think?” he asked as we sat on one of the sofas.

  “It’s...it’s something else,” I lied between my teeth, because just like all the other mansions, it was just another display of excess. Just a few miles away, there were people that wouldn’t make as much money as Keanne made in a month in their entire lifetime, and he wanted to know what I thought? I knew I couldn’t say anything or else I’d risk losing the summer job. It was too late to find anything else, and I found my “dream” job becoming my only option for the summer. Even though I’d be graduating in a few weeks, I didn’t want to be a burden to my parents. I was 21, and at my age, it didn’t make sense for be to living at home, on their dime. I wanted to make them proud and if that meant I had to bite my tongue and smile when guys like Keanne tried to show off, then I was willing to do it.

  “Do you want something like this, eventually?” he asked, and even though I didn’t want it to happen, my heart started to pound more heavily. Was this Keanne finally admitting some feelings for me? Was it him actually talking about wanting a future with me, about wanting something more real? Something more than the assistant-boss relationship that we had?

  “Honestly, not really. I just want a medium sized house big enough to raise a few kids, but not that big.”

  “You grew up in Compton, right?” he asked gently. I was honestly surprised he remembered, given that it had seemed like he’d forgotten about me for the last year.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I said.

  “What was that like? I know it’s not the easiest place to grow up in.” Keanne sounded more normal, more human, and more sympathetic than I’d hear him be before. As stupid as it sounds, I’d kept a Google alert active for Keanne the summer before and had never “bothered to turn it off”, so I received every news item about him, whether it was from the New York Times or Radar Online, and every time I read an interview with him, an interview that had conflicting information or something that just didn’t make sense given the time I’d spent with him, my heart had fallen. Why couldn’t he be honest with the press? Why didn’t he let anyone in emotionally?

  And why did his behavior remind me of mine?

  I hadn’t seen this side of Keanne before, but I’d also never really let other people into my life. Maybe it had started as a defensive maneuver, because I’d been taught by my family that if I was weak, that if I shared too much, I was giving people the tools to bully me, to make my life a living hell.

  They’d warned me about guys like Keanne, guys that seemed seductive and charismatic, but that’d leave you with a baby and no child support, like one of my female cousin who, after a few years, finally realized that “her man” wasn’t going to come back, that he’d never loved her the way he’d loved the woman he settled down with and had another baby with, and who was only just starting to get her life together. They’d warned me that, in this fucked up country, the fact I was born into what basically was a caste system, that I was born black, female, and relatively poor, I would have a harder time getting what other people had, people who were born into a lifestyle that as a younger child, I’d envied.

  They’d also believed in me, and told me that if I worked hard, I could get what those people had, and more, but that men were a distraction. So were feelings, so were emotions, and so was weakness.

  Dad had always told me that I shouldn’t start fights at school, and I hadn’t, but that I needed to have the skills to defend
myself in case somebody had a problem with me, and so he’d taught me, in the basement, multiple times a week, how to spar, how to defend myself, because we couldn’t afford karate lessons but dad had checked out books from the library to learn how to teach me how to defend myself, even given my, at the time, short stature and rather bilious physique.

  Mom had taught me how, even though I might not be interested in the same stuff as other girls my age, because I wasn’t allowed to watch the same TV shows they watched, or the same movies, or go to the mall every weekend, I needed to be able to be able to fake it to fit in. I needed to know when to laugh, when to roll my eyes, but she never taught me how to feel and how to be emotional, how to embrace the feminine side of myself.

  “Well, I’m an only child. My mom and dad both went to community college, which is where they met. They were both the only people in their families to go to college, and they thought that maybe the reason was because their parents had too many kids, so they weren’t able to give them all the sort of guidance they needed. It’s hard, though. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just, living in Compton isn’t easy.”

  “Tell me more about that,” he said, taking my hand in his. Was this real? Was Keanne actually showing a real interest in my life, after all that had happened?

  “My mom and dad raised me well. Dad worked at factories and saved up to go to a trade school so that he could work as a mechanic before proposing to my mom. My mom worked as a secretary and goes to night class, she’s on her way to getting her nursing degree. We lived in Compton because my dad’s uncle, who had no kids, left my dad the house, and it was better than the small apartment we lived in. My parents were always around, and they planned their hours so that someone would always be home. Even when they were dead tired, they helped me with my school work,” I explained. I felt like I was babbling, but Keanne didn’t try to interrupt me. In some ways, I thought maybe he understood what I was talking about, stuff that I thought Jason might not really understand. I pushed that thought out of my head. Jason wouldn’t even understand why I was here, with Keanne. He had his job at Club Grit. He had a nice apartment, he had no worries, at least none he shared with me, and he didn’t have to struggle. Neither had Keanne, but at least he was familiar with the narrative of people outside the Beverly Hills, and at least he didn’t pretend that everyone in Southern California lived our lifestyles.