You’re right, all this time I’ve been trying to pass it off as my need to protect you, but it was just my misguided machismo at having failed you all those years ago. I should’ve been here convincing you, showing you that the things that happened to you mean nothing in the scheme of how I see you, how I respect and admire you… how I love you. I was off nursing my own bruised ego, and getting more bloody bruised in the process. And then to blame it on you? I don’t even know why you’re still here listening to me. I don’t deserve it. But I need you to know how sorry I am. The truth is, I’ve been in a state of suspended animation for so long. I thought I’d grown up, matured, when I’ve just been making excuses for my immature way of thinking. While I’ve been waiting and searching, I should’ve been working on making myself worthy of you, for the day you might come back. I realize that now. I also realize that my role was never to protect you; it’s to support you. It’s not to inspire you; it’s to help you inspire yourself. And that I should never have put that burden on you, to be my reason for living. And I should’ve told you, there’s nothing you can’t do without me. You don’t need me. I need you. Then, you might’ve known that there’s nothing you should’ve been afraid to tell me. Because I would never have stopped loving you because of something that had happened to you, or something you had done. My love was never contingent on you staying the same. You were always meant to grow. I just wanted to get to watch it. It’s still what I want.” I take a deep breath and say the final thing I came here to say. I hold out my hand to her, outstretched, open. “Come with me. Please, I want to take you somewhere.”
She doesn’t answer me right away, just stands and stares at me for a moment.
She looks down at my hand and there’s the slightest shake of her head.
“I can’t, Xavier. It’s – it’s the youth center opening today. I have to be here. And so do you.”
Her words slash through the breath I’m holding, and I feel every cell in my body convulse.
I had never thought about what would happen if she said no. If she wouldn’t let me take her back to where it all happened. I had never thought about the fact that I could be too late. I drop my hand and take a few steps back, tripping over the curb behind me and stumble onto the street.
A car horn beeps and startles me out of my thoughts.
“Xavier!” She runs over and grabs my arm pulling me back onto the footpath. “You idiot!”
She lets go and looks me over, “Are you okay?”
I nod, the years ahead of me without her in my life arranging themselves in my head and weighing on my heart.
“Er, yeah. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. It’s your day.” I say.
She frowns. “No. It’s our day. You’ve worked on this for much longer than I have. Don’t let me ruin it for you. And anyway, I have something to show you.” There’s a twinkle in her eye and this time it’s her reaching her hand out to me. “Are you game?” she asks.
And I say the only thing there is to say as I take her hand, “Fuck, yes.”
I’m not sure what I’m expecting as I grip her hand and she pulls me through the entrance of the youth center. I haven’t been here in two weeks, since I checked in one last time before I left for the airport and out of New York for the first time in twelve years. At that point, the construction was almost finished, but as most people know, that’s when it can look the worst. There had still been debris everywhere, the partitions were erected by still bare drywall. The cement floor was covered in layers and decades of dust and the erratic pattern of footprints of the construction workers.
So when I step through the doors, and into the now bright and clean and modern space, it is unrecognizable as the warehouse that Kaine and I first saw, peering through a broken window one Thursday night all those months ago when we’d gone location scouting on a whim. We’d ignored the advice to go through a real estate agent, instead, hoofing it ourselves through the better part of Harlem until we’d found the place that called out to us.
Now it’s here.
A literal dream come to life.
And I can hardly care less because my hand is in Malynda’s hand, and the future as unknown as ever.
“Where are we going?” I say, staring at the back of her head as she leads me through the center.
“You’ll see! So impatient. Have you always been this way?”
I stop and give her a look that even she can’t help but laugh at in this strange and crazy moment.
“Come on! You’d think I was taking you to your public hanging.”
“I’m not so sure it isn’t.”
“Be quiet.”
The warehouse has never felt so big to me before, but it seems like it takes forever for her to drag me through it, passing the new kitchen and study rooms and offices in the back. We come to a small door and she winks at me before throwing it open.
She leads me into a full-size indoor basketball court, complete with hoops on either end. On one side of the room are racks with nets and poles for what looks like volleyball and badminton. The opposite wall is covered in a long mirror, and two long wooden barres stretching almost the length of the entire room. All the way on the back wall, is a blank sheet, hanging from ceiling to floor.
And in the middle of the court, standing and watching me, is Kaine, Jade, Ram, Gabriel, Harriet, everyone I know from Ash Foundation, my mom and my brothers and over fifty or sixty kids I recognize from the neighboring schools.
“Er. Wh… what’s going on?” I whisper, suddenly self-conscious, trying to shield myself behind her tiny frame.
She laughs and moves out the way. “Today’s the grand opening of the youth center… you know that!”
“Yes, but…”
“Well, we can’t have the opening of The Ash Center without you.”
Kaine steps forward from the group and hands me a microphone. “Go on, everyone’s been waiting for you.”