If you were hoping for a little bow-chicka-bow-wow after that merry-go-round moment, I'm going to have to disappoint you.
Cause when he leapt up and I lunged forward we butted heads like two rams vying for the same ewe.
Talk about a vibe killer...
Except that grabbing hold of each other and laughing our asses off was kinda sexy. And so was the lingering gaze afterwards. Which lasted until it got weird and made us laugh again.
That's when he held out a hand and I took it and let him stroll me out of the playground and around the grounds nice and slow.
Felt a little bit eerie in the dark. With the huge cottonwoods looming over us. They'd been there for centuries, those trees. Held generations of kids in their bushy branches.
Everything but those trees did seem smaller, though. Even walking the perimeter of the building that had felt like a whole universe when we were kids didn't take us all that long.
We didn't break in like couples always do in romantic movies, though. First, because if we'd really wanted to walk the halls for old times' sake, I had keys.
But also, because in real life, alarm systems go off the minute you touch a door after hours. Even if you shut the thing down, security comes wanting to know who the hell is in the building after hours and why. Especially now with all the school shootings and whatnot.
AJ did peek into the windows of classrooms he remembered. He could also remember teachers' names and some of the assemblies and cringy little after school dances we'd had. And a talent show he hadn't tried out for because he'd thought Belva and her bullies would've done the "ching chong" thing at him, too, if he'd stepped onstage.
(FYI: Belva got married right after high school and birthed three babies in rapid succession just before her trucker husband decided to leave her for some truck stop waitress he'd also had a kid by while the Korean kid she'd scared away from that talent show was on his way to K-pop stardom. You may now pause to savor the irony...)
But anyway, as we made it back around to the front of our little alma mater he paused to look up at the chiseled letters over the doors and said, "I feel like even though we hardly knew each other, just starting out as kids together—I don't know. I just... can be my old self with you. The me I miss so much."
"I think that's more about what we both did after we left than what we did as kids," I said. "Although, well...you're really in show business. I was just...around it..."
He said, "Chef to the stars, right?" To stop me from minimizing my "accomplishments."
And I said, "Oh, please. It was mostly restaurants until I met this head chef who cooked for some ballers and a couple of hip hop guys. Gave her a hand from time to time. Got a few gigs that way."
"That must've been kinda cool."
"Wasn't all that. I mean, you're the help, you know? And you see things you wish you hadn't. But how'd you get from here to there? Did you audition and all that, or..."
"Scouts. At a park where people do all kinds of stuff on weekends. You can sell artwork, jewelry, food and stuff like that. There were singers and dancers, too, because the companies are always sending scouts out looking for talent."
"Were you singing?"
"Nope. I was sitting on a big boulder eating this shaved ice thing they have over there. And this woman walked up, flipped me a card and asked me if she could buy me another one."
"You're like that actress that got discovered at a soda fountain in LA 'way back in the day."
"Was that actually true, though?"
"Was for you."
He gave a weary little sigh and said, "Yeah, I've been in harness a long time. In fact, I almost jumped up and did a Tiktok in the middle of the night last night, thinking I'd missed my weekly quota."
"They make you do that stuff?"
"Not so much now. But back when I was just getting started, me and my angels even ate dinner together online late nights after rehearsals. First time we flew first class to Paris for a fashion show appearance, I streamed part of the flight for them, too. Cause how many of those kids'll ever have a sleeper cubicle like that? Or eat the kind of food they served me?"
"That's sweet, though. That you thought to do that."
"Yeah, we played video games and watched dramas—had listening parties, too, when I dropped a new album. And they'd ask me for all kinds of advice. Hugs. Kisses. But you never know which ones are getting into it a little too much..."
I said, "Okay, it's my turn not to want to talk about stuff like that." And I leapt up on one of the concrete retaining walls next to the front steps to literally distance myself from that topic.
So, he leapt up behind me. And lifted my arms up like Jack and Rose in Titanic.
I leaned and looked back almost just to see what he would do.
Surprised me a little when he pressed his cheek to mine. I got all dizzy from the heat and the amazing scent—I'd noticed it before, actually. The Tom Ford you had to get kind of close to him to get a whiff of. Hundreds of dollars, that cologne cost.
That's the kind of thing I'd learned working in houses where they handed out swag bags at kid's birthday parties full of stuff way more expensive than that. But I'd gone home with leftovers I was grateful to have when gas, rent—and Blaine, later—had gobbled up all the grocery money again.
And then this man who hadn't had to worry about things like that for years gave me a little nuzzle and said, "I used to want to walk right up to those eyes from across the playground. Be all bold and freak everybody out..."
"Your mother would've come up there and slapped me, probably. If she heard about that."
"She would've slapped me. Even after what you did that day."
"Well, it woulda started a whole lotta mess. Even at the store, probably."
He wrapped our arms around us and said, "My Dad started a whole lot more mess than that."
"I'm so sorry he mistreated her that way."
"My grandparents believed he was possessed by demons. Slightest thing could set him off."
I frowned back at him. "Did he hit you?"
"I love how mad you sound."
"Did he?"
He waited a bit, before telling me, "I grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter after he swung and missed. And something in his eyes told me he might've seen just enough of himself in my eyes to know he'd better not swing again."
I craned my neck a little more to look into those eyes. And he said, "Your eyes, though..."
So, I reached to cup the back of his head to draw him a wee bit closer. Since he didn't seem to be ready to make that next move.
And the sweet little kiss I got was a whole mood. That lasted way longer than the kiss itself.
Yeah, it flooded my basement, too, but I almost feel like that cheapens the moment, when I talk about the hormonal stuff. Because it was more like this lovely little gift he'd given me.
And when he murmured "Finally made it across, huh?" I smiled.
Seeing, in my mind, that cute little boy he'd been back in the day when I used to hop up on that wall and "double dog dare" anybody to try to climb up on or chase me off it...
He definitely wasn't that little boy anymore, though. He was a scary beautiful man who'd done us proud and was loved by millions of people.
And one had died for love, too.
In another country where K-pop groups did Black music better than we did even though there were almost no Black people there—don't know where that thought came from, but I had a bona fide "Megan Markle moment" all of a sudden.
Would his people be all mean to me like the Brits had been to her?
Or would we hit an iceberg way before it ever got that far?
An ancestral voice from somewhere deep—probably Sadie's spirit—chastised me to "Cut out the 'we' stuff" and get my mind right.
But that kiss, though...