Him
Present Day
I turn the key in the door and push. It doesn’t move.
I try again, this time with my whole hand, and it budges a little. I sigh, pulling off my suit jacket and take a breath before gathering my strength to lean against the rusted door with my whole body. It opens, reluctantly, each inch a fight. Like the door of a sinking car, the pressure outside bearing against the action.
My cough from the dust echoes around me as I take a step into the abandoned building and look around, flicking a switch that does nothing.
There are paper thin streams of sunlight filtering through the dirty windows, just enough to light the large space. It used to be a furniture display storefront, the main area vast and open, with four or five smaller offices in the back, along with a small kitchen and two bathrooms. Around the back is a warehouse, big enough for a gym or indoor basketball court.
I feel myself nod as I scan the room, as satisfied with this space as the first time I saw it months ago. It’s going to make a great youth center up here in Harlem.
Kaine and I had picked out this spot especially due to the proximity to the high school just a block away and also just a few steps to the nearest subway and bus stations. The council approval was a little trickier; not everyone wants a spot where kids will be hanging around. But neither did they want to be seen as turning down the opportunity for an organization to come in and try to do some good.
I wasn’t worried. Neither was Kaine when he put me in charge of this project or what he affectionately calls “letting his dog off his leash.” He knows I care about these youth centers as much as he does and will fight for it just as hard as he would.
How our own teenage years might’ve have been different if we’d had access to some of the services and facilities we’re hoping to provide.
Not that we turned out too badly, I think, as I brush the dust from my Armani suit.
But not every poor child has the luck that we had. Kaine with his adopted father, and then me, in turn, with Kaine. I close my eyes and picture this place once it’s finished. Computers, books, games. Counselors and tutors on hand. Then I imagine them all over the city, before I stop myself.
One kid. Let’s just help one kid, we tell ourselves when the dreams get too big.
One kid can make the difference.
Never underestimate the effect of a single act of kindness.
In my musings, I almost miss the sound of high heels clicking on the floor. It takes the sound of her clearing her throat before I turn around, her silhouette against the door, tall, shapely. Her name isn’t the only thing that changed, I can’t help but think. I don’t remember her having those hips. Hips that have my fingers itching at my side.
“Oh, um, hi. I was supposed to meet someone from the ASH Foundation here,” Malynda says. Is it just me or does she sound a little nervous?
“Well, that would be me,” I tell her, wondering if I sound as nervous as she does.
“You? You work for them?”
“I work for ASH Industries and well, yes, the foundation as well.” I say each word slowly. Maybe I’m stalling, already not wanting this encounter with her to end. Taking in every detail, things that are different about her, things that are so the same. It feels like we’re eighteen again.
She comes up level to me, and I can’t take my eyes off her.
Everything about her commands my attention: her body, the way she moves, her eyes, open and earnest looking back at me.
I’ve missed her so much.
So much; and now she’s here, after all these years.
It makes me mad to think about all the wasted time.
“Malynda.”
She sucks in her breath. “It’s Isabella. Please.”
I shake my head. “Don’t do that, it’s just us here. Don’t make me call you… that fake name.” I won’t bring myself to say it, give life to it. She’s Malynda. She’s always been Malynda.
“It’s who I am now, Xavier.” Her voice saying my name strips the years away, and with it, any hope that I’m going to let her have her way.
“No, you’re Malynda,” I respond forcefully, grabbing her by the wrist. “You’re MY Malynda.”
She doesn’t shake me off, just looks into my eyes. They’re closed off now. Cold. Flat.
“‘Malynda’ doesn’t exist. So, whatever you think happened between you and her, never ever existed. I’m not her. And I’m not yours.” The cold in her voice stings and I struggle not to let go of her wrist, enduring the frostbite.
“What the hell happened to you? Tell me. You owe me at least that.”
“I don’t owe you anything.” This time she does shake me off, ripping her arm away from me.
I catch her face in my hands instead.
“I know you’re in there. Malynda, I know you’re in there!” Before I can stop myself, I bury my face in her hair. She still smells the same. Vanilla. Sweet, heady, musky. Driving me insane.
“Stop it, Xavier!” she shouts, and I step away out of shock at how she can be so cold. “I don’t know you. And you certainly don’t know me.”
“You want proof? Is that what you want? You need me to remind you? You want me to remind you of the first time we met? You want me to remind you about my black eye and split lip? The hours we spent at the basketball court? The hours we spent at the lake?” There’s a knot in my throat that forces me to stop talking. I take a deep breath and pull something out of my pocket. “Or this maybe this will prove it to you that I do know you.” I take her hand and shove the wrinkled unopened envelope into it.
She looks down, her mouth falling open before she looks up at me again. There’s a flash of something nostalgic, vulnerable in her eyes.
“Is this? Is this what I think it is, the letter I wrote you that day? You still have this? How? Why?”
“I found it at the lake after you were there the first time. You must’ve dropped it. ”
“You never told me you saved this.”