A Love Like the Sun

Chapter 4 Girl Next Door Meets Most Gorgeous Man Alive

The front lawn is freshly mowed by the time I wake up. Without me having to ask, Issac watered my plants and cut down the bush in front of my window with a hedge trimmer he found in the shed. He asks me to call out of my shift at the hotel, insisting he’ll pay me to spend time with him and knowing I’ll refuse to take his money, even though I’m so broke I should. But I call out anyway, greedy for more of him too, with the condition that we’d have to drop off baskets to customers who couldn’t pick their orders up at Wildly Green. He remembered the days we’d do drop-offs for Mom when we were young, then he helped me pack up the products pretty.

By noon, we have only one basket left in the back seat of my car, but we take a break and stop at a local music store first. Just outside, there’s a group of men laughing with their whole bodies. Issac stares at them, a soft smile spreading. I picture his father, who Issac has described as someone that would debate with his boys on the block about basketball games before his mother called her husband home.

He turns and holds the door open for me, says simply, “I wish you could’ve met my dad,” and I feel a rush at being let into his mind, that he doesn’t feel the need to explain why he said it in this moment and that I’d already thought the same.

I reach for his wrist, give it a reassuring squeeze. “Sometimes it feels like I did. Especially when you sing Aretha Franklin and make a squinty face.”

“Like this?” Issac asks, and makes a series of outlandish faces.

“The last one,” I say. “You look just like him when you squint that way.”

“Guess I’ll have to sing Aretha more often,” Issac says. “My old man was handsome.”

I roll my eyes. If Issac was any more handsome than he is, someone might lock him away in a museum and the only way I’d see him is through shiny glass.

Once we’re inside the store, he carefully browses the old CDs before we sit on the floor with stereo headphones to listen to samples like we did back when we couldn’t afford to buy anything. We fail to notice the store getting busier, and we’re only halfway through Tyler, The Creator’s Igor record when a teenager rolls her finger across the vinyls on display in the rock section, eyes growing wide upon spotting us. I nudge Issac because his glasses are sliding off his face, the bucket hat he borrowed from me is tipped, and his curls are showing.

“I think your disguise has failed you, sir.”

He looks up, but before he can even blink, the teen whips out her phone and starts to record. “It’s Issac Jordan, everyone,” she squeals. “My husband.”

“Uh…,” Issac says, clearly horrified by the last declaration.

I’m stunned silent, but Issac gives her a forced smile, waves at the camera, and says “Good to meet you,” his voice like butter.

“He spoke to me,” the girl says, takes one last look at us, and disappears down an aisle.

With her out of sight, I’m quick to get up off the rug. “Where did she go?”

Issac laughs. “Maybe you frightened her with that look on your face.” He dusts off his pants when he stands. “Or maybe she went to go get the crew.”

The crew? Something flickers across my chest right before we’re ambushed, suddenly surrounded by teenagers in a frenzy of asking Issac for hugs and pictures with them. For a moment, I remember how silly I acted with my friends at my first concert, and I didn’t even get to meet the band, but then one of the girls looks at me—acknowledges my existence—and I shrink back. She has thick lip gloss on, hair down to her waist, says to Issac, “Are you dating again already? Why haven’t you posted about it?”

“Is this why you couldn’t commit to Melinda?” another says.

“You chose this plain girl over Ms. Melinda Martinez?” one chimes in.

“She’s not that plain,” calls someone at the back. “Her curly hair is nice.”

“Hold up,” Issac starts, hands in the air, but they drown him out.

“Plain, but in that sort of gorgeous girl-next-door kind of way,” the one with the glossed lips says, pointing her phone camera straight at me. “What’s your name? Are you Hispanic?”

“Wait. Isn’t she his childhood best friend?” one of them cuts in. “She’s a mixed chick.”

“Oh, yup. She’d be a biracial baddie if she got her eyebrows microbladed. Maybe a BBL,” Lip Gloss decides.

They’re talking so fast, Issac can’t even get a word in, and even though I’m used to people wondering out loud what my race is, I’m done with this entire conversation.

“You’re on your own,” I tell him, before hurrying away and leaving him in the wake of madness that being what the magazines call Most Beautiful Human of the Year has created.

My Instagram page is six pictures of fallen leaves and flowers and random pieces of poetry. I’m sitting on the hood of my car, scrolling my feed and wondering if Issac is trying to convince the girls to delete the videos. What will people think of me if they post them with captions like plain, comparing me to Melinda the model, who is the opposite of plain?

Issac surprises me when he raps his knuckle against one of my windows. I didn’t see him coming.

“You left me back there.” He frowns. “Are you ever gonna be okay with the fact that this is my life now?”

My stomach sinks. “I am okay with it. I’m happy for you, so happy. But it’s your life.”

“And you’ve always been a part of it.” The words are said softly, but they still feel sharp enough to sting. I watch him pull something from his pocket. “Anyway, I got you this. Tried to get you Shida Anala’s new record, but the girls noticed me looking and snatched up the last one.”

“It’s pretty,” I say, taking the sunflower key chain from him. The fact that he thought of getting my favorite singer’s album makes me feel worse for leaving him in the store.

“A token of forgiveness for attracting that attention with your face?” I tease, hoping it breaks the tension.

“Something like that,” he says. “Did it work?”

“Only if you forgive me for being a hermit.” I pout.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he tells me. “Sometimes, I just can’t understand how you’re brave enough to climb a mountain but not brave enough to post a picture of you doing it.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve climbed a mountain. In fact, I’m completely out of shape,” I joke, but Issac just narrows his eyes. “And it’s…different. I don’t like to be the center of attention the way you like it.”

“I know,” he concedes. Then, with a cheeky grin: “Let’s go make that last delivery, because I’m sure Katrina can’t wait to see my face, and I do like attention. No matter the kind.”

“I’m sure she’s so excited.” I laugh.

He met my friend Katrina the last time he was here, and he seemed to enjoy that she wasn’t exactly starstruck.

“Great,” he says, “and I’m controlling the Bluetooth on the way. No more of your sad music today.”

“Hozier’s music is not sad; it just has soul,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah.”

If there’s one thing to know about Katrina Ashley, it’s that she’s notoriously known to leave you waiting outside her door. The day before her thirtieth birthday, she called me over after a bad breakup but took twenty minutes to let me inside because she’d decided to get in the bath to shave her legs before I arrived. We’re waiting on her steps when Issac’s manager calls him.

“I’m good, Bernie,” he says as soon as he answers it. “Yeah. I’m laying low.”

I shoot him a look, fighting off my laughter. He’s not a good liar. He probably gives his manager headaches. I bet Bernie won’t even be surprised if the teens upload a video.

“Nah, I don’t want you tagging along,” Issac tells him. “Three days is all I need. Uh-huh. Yeah, my best friend will protect me.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me. “She knows jujitsu.”

I snort, and he jabs a finger into my side before walking across the lawn to finish his conversation in private. Finally, the door opens. Katrina answers in her bathrobe with a toothbrush in hand. She takes the bag from me with her left, struggles to hand me some money with her right, mumbling about my bad timing. Katrina’s been a customer since the shop opened because she lives two streets from it, but over the past year we’ve fallen into a friendship. I ask if she has work today and she shakes her head.

“I desperately needed a personal day.”

“And clearly you’re taking one,” I say, reaching to poke one of the rollers in her hair.

Katrina’s career issues are different from mine. She has too much success at her job but not enough respect and credit for it. Her eyes go wide when she finally notices Issac on her lawn, but she’s only surprised he’s here for ten seconds before: “Do you want to do nasty things with him?”

I’m taken aback by her randomness, though I shouldn’t be by now. “Excuse me?”

She points a finger at me. “Correct answer. That was a test. We don’t need you falling for him and ruining your friendship. Especially now that he’s not dating and is emotional.”

“Do I really have to explain platonic love again, Kat?” I ask, annoyed by how often Issac and I have had to defend our friendship because people have seen romance where there wasn’t.

But then Katrina says, “Until you tell me he’s like a brother,” and heat curls in my cheeks. We’re close, but brother feels like something else.

I ignore her and shift to glance at him. He’s still on the phone but waves a hand and smiles at Katrina.

“He’s certainly sexy,” she purrs. “Too bad he’s commitment averse.”

I turn toward her, ask, “You really think he’s sad?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” she says. “Who wouldn’t be if Melinda Martinez cut them off?”

This surprises me. Issac said it was mutual, but is the internet saying something different?

“Anyway, he better start dating again soon,” Katrina tells me. “His image is being tarnished. Some outlets are saying he preached dating with purpose, then proceeded to waste Melinda’s time; others are wondering if she found him hard to love. They have photos of him looking sad on the streets.”

Issac…hard to love? A feeling stirs inside of me. A protectiveness of him. He hasn’t mentioned anything about his image, but haven’t I noticed that he’s more pensive? Is he sad?

“So, have any celeb gossip for me?” Katrina asks, snapping me from my thoughts.

I push down the worry for Issac and roll my eyes. “Bye, Kat.”

She grumbles something about me being stingy and other things I choose to ignore. Before I turn away, she says, “I feel like you must be hiding bad prom sex because of regret. Or even a first kiss back when you were kids. Something.”

There was that one time we almost kissed when we were thirteen and curious. It would’ve been the first time for us both, but after leaning in, we agreed it was the grossest thing we’ve almost experienced. That was the end of that. Besides, relationships are messy, and one thing that’s never felt messy is our friendship.

“We’ve never done anything. Ever,” I tell her.

“That’s what scares me. Until you try it, how will you ever know you’re strictly platonic? And believe me, Laniah, you don’t want to try it now that he’s a sad superstar.”

I laugh at her persistence but humor her with, “Don’t worry, my heart is safe.”

“Fine,” she says, blows me some kisses and shuts the door.

On the walk over to Issac, I do a quick Google search and stare at the first headline I find:

Issac Jordan, heartbroken over Melinda Martinez and finally ready for a relationship, but is he even relationship material?