24. Red Beans and Reckoning
N aomi’s apartment smells like ginger and cardamom when she answers her door barefoot, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel.
Dinner is simmering on the stove, and incense curls from a dish on the windowsill.
Mismatched pillows spill across the couch, and dim amber light glows from a lamp with a beaded fringe.
Naomi always knows how to make a space feel like it gives a damn.
“You’re late,” she greets me.
“You said around six,” I reply.
She raises an eyebrow. “Get in here, boy,” she says, swiping my behind with the dish towel as I enter.
Mateo is slouched in the corner of the couch, arms folded, giving me a look as if I arrived late on purpose to endure Naomi’s commentary on whatever social fire she’s decided to put out tonight alone.
“Look who showed,” he says. “Thought maybe you got swept away by your noble quest for closure.”
“Traffic,” I respond, shooting him a glance and an insincere smile.
“Traffic from 2B? Bullshit. ”
Naomi returns from the kitchen with three glasses of a deep brown liquid. She hands me one.
I take a sip of the small but potent cocktail. “Damn, girl. We’re drinking straight bourbon now?”
“Boy disappears for a week and acts surprised we restocked the good stuff,” she says, speaking to Mateo but nodding in my direction as she settles into the armchair with her glass.
“So let’s go around the room. How was work, Daniel?”
“Fine.”
“You seem off,” she says, casually but not. “Actually, you’ve been off for weeks.”
Mateo doesn’t wait to comment. “He’s not off. He’s spiraling.”
Naomi leans forward, studying me. “I haven’t heard a single late-night shenanigan from your apartment in a while. I haven’t heard you bringing in or taking out any of that trash.”
“Haven’t seen you at Burkhart’s either, since when, that night you blew off dinner at the Colonnade with Naomi?” Mateo adds.
“I’ve been lying low,” I tell them, “staying out of trouble.”
“That’s not like you,” Naomi says. “You disappear when you’re being bad, not when you’re good.”
There’s a silence, and then Naomi lifts her glass. “Well, whatever’s going on, I’m still glad we’re here. Good friends are hard to find. Cheers.”
Mateo clinks his glass to hers. “And harder to keep if you lie to them.”
I raise mine reluctantly. “To good friends.”
Naomi sips. “Now. About what’s been keeping you in hiding.”
“I’ve just been busy. That’s all. ”
“Doing what?” Mateo asks. “Watching Kevin from the bushes?”
My drink freezes halfway to my lips. I shoot Mateo a look, but he doesn’t flinch.
It’s the third time he’s brought up Kevin in front of Naomi—like he’s daring me to say it out loud.
I can’t tell if he’s annoyed, trying to be funny, or just trying to crack the silence open enough for the truth to fall out.
Naomi’s voice is quieter. “Are you stalking that boy?”
“Dinner smells great, by the way. What are we having?” I ask.
“Red beans and rice with andouille sausage, and you didn’t answer my question,” she says.
I tell myself it’ll sound different out loud—that once I say it, maybe they’ll finally get why I keep showing up for someone who told me not to.
I exhale and glance at Naomi. “We went swimming two weeks ago, a couple of days after I used your phone. He kissed me. Now he says we should forget it. Okay?”
Mateo straightens. “You told me a week ago that you guys went to the movies. You didn’t mention swimming together. What else has happened that you haven’t mentioned?”
“A week ago?” Naomi shouts. “And you haven’t said shit to me?”
I take another gulp from the glass, and it burns all the way down.
“He invited me to swim at Emory, and I went. That night, I ran into him and his boyfriend at the Thai place when I was picking up our order. Then he invited me to see a double feature the week before last. That’s when he kissed me.”
Naomi shifts forward in her chair. “You met his boyfriend and the next week were kissing each other at the movies? ”
Mateo stares at me. “That’s not what you said at the record shop. You skipped the swim. You skipped the restaurant. You skipped the boyfriend.”
“I didn’t skip it. I just didn’t think it mattered.” I saw no point in mentioning the lunch we shared or our phone calls.
“It matters,” Naomi says. “You know he has a boyfriend, yet you guys are going swimming and to the movies and kissing? What else aren’t you telling us?”
“We’re not doing anything anymore. Kevin told me to forget it. To forget it all.”
Mateo frowns. “He told you that when?”
“Last Wednesday. I saw him at Ansley. I waited for him outside his gym at lunchtime.”
“You waited?” Naomi repeats. “Why haven’t you told us any of this?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I tell them. “He told me the kiss was nothing, not to make it more than it was.”
“What an asshole,” Naomi remarks.
Mateo stands and paces. “Jesus, Daniel. That’s not reconnecting with an old friend. That’s chasing someone already in a relationship.”
“I know what it looks like.”
“Do you? Because from here, it looks like an obsession.”
Naomi doesn’t speak right away. When she does, she does it carefully. “This isn’t about Kevin. You said you were trying to figure things out, but you’re not. You’re trying to make a moment from four years ago come back to life.”
“You don’t know what happened. ”
“Of course we don’t,” she says. “So why don’t you enlighten us?”
I look down. My glass is empty.
“We were friends. We hung out together and worked at the same place. He moved away, I got married, and then we ran into each other one night a couple of years later when he moved back.”
“Yeah, and?” Naomi presses.
“And—we had sex one night. Well, kind of. Kevin was my first, but I didn’t handle it well, I guess. I kinda freaked out and ran out on him. That was four years ago—before I came out and burned everything down.”
“And here you both are living in the big ‘ol gay city of Atlanta,” Mateo says.
For a moment, no one speaks until Naomi stands and takes my glass to refill it. “We’re not your audience, Daniel. We’re your friends, so stop performing and tell us what the hell you’re doing with this guy.”
Trying to think of something to say, I tell myself that if I can find that thread again between Kevin and me, maybe I can undo the damage between us.
The trouble is, I’m the only one who sees the damage.
I’m the only one in the room who feels the scars.
Kevin must feel them, too. He must. I don’t say any of it, though.
I take the refilled glass from Naomi’s hand and sit back down.
“Dinner’s ready,” she calls from the kitchen, her voice more relaxed and distant now. She heads to the table and starts dishing out red beans and rice.
Neither Mateo nor I move right away. The air is too congested with everything said—and a few things unsaid. Then he breaks first, standing and stretching like it’s just another Monday.
“Come on,” he says. “If we’re gonna judge you, might as well do it over food. ”
The bourbon still burns in my chest, but the silence burns deeper. The table feels larger tonight, as if the three of us share a room but not the same moment.
Naomi glances at Mateo, and for a second, no one moves. We’re still in the wreckage of our words, but the rice is ready. And so, we eat.
After dinner, Naomi puts on a record—something low and bluesy. Mateo clears the dishes without being asked. I stay seated, staring at the bottom of my glass like it might hold an answer.
Naomi finally breaks the quiet. “Dessert is in the fridge if either of you wants it.”
I stand and shake my head. “I should go.”
“You always say that right before you disappear for days,” she says.
“I won’t disappear.” That’s a lie.
Mateo watches me move toward the door. “You keep chasing the past like it owes you something. It doesn’t, mi amigo.”
Naomi’s voice follows, low and firm. “You think this ends with Kevin loving you. But it ends with you hollowed out and alone.”
Opening the door and stepping into the hallway, the music plays on behind me.
The smell of red beans and rice still lingers.
I walk into 2B, but part of me is still at that table—sitting in the silence, waiting for affirmation that I’m not crazy or self-destructive for wanting Kevin.
It won’t come from them, however, so I close the door behind me.
It doesn’t feel closed. Not really.