Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
touré
Janelle smiles at me from her little box on the screen for our video conference call. It feels like we didn’t miss a beat, despite the fact we’ve missed nearly two decades.
“The committee is so hyped for this,” she says. “I’m everyone’s favorite person right now. The only people happier are Niomi’s producers.”
I frown and ask myself again if I’m sure about this.
I want to please Celine by doing the interview on campus, but that doesn’t mean it has to air on national television.
I could have turned down Niomi’s request to air portions of it on her show, but I can admit to myself that this interview isn’t just for my daughter.
It’s for my old friend who could have been more had things not happened the way they did.
The chance to talk to Niomi, even if it’s with cameras rolling, appeals more than I’d like to admit.
“She just texted me.” Janelle looks down at her phone. “She’ll be on in a few minutes. Production meeting went long.”
“No problem.”
“Your agent sent you the questions she submitted?”
“Yeah. They seem pretty straightforward.”
A little too straightforward. If Niomi’s half the journalist I know she is, she’ll manage to get more out of me than the questions she sent over would yield.
And then she’s there, her image popping into a third block onscreen.
I’ve seen her on television, of course, and on the rare occasion in passing at events, but not this version of her.
Her face is free of makeup, and her hair, usually straight and shiny around her shoulders, is pulled atop her head in a knot of waves and curls.
She wears a Finley sweatshirt and simple gold hoop earrings.
For a moment it feels like no time has passed and we’re huddled around a table, the three of us cramming for an exam in the library.
“Sorry I’m late.” Shallow lines of fatigue bracket Niomi’s full lips, reminding me her days begin hours before most of us wake up. “Got away as soon as I could.”
“No problem,” Janelle says. “You’re getting on a little late and I have to leave a little early. I’ll get you guys started and then I have to bounce for a meeting. You can leave the video running, though.”
My eyes meet Niomi’s, and the miles separating us don’t lessen the impact seeing her again this close up for the first time in so long has on me.
Like a fist punching through my breastbone as I take in all the ways she has changed, and how she is exactly the same.
Just like the first time I saw her, it’s hard to look away.
“Hey, Touré,” Niomi says in that smooth voice that always stirred something low in my belly. Even lower in my pants. “Good to see you.”
It feels insufficient as a greeting considering how close we once were and how long it’s been. The wry grins we exchange seem to acknowledge the potential awkwardness of this first encounter.
“Good to see you, too, Ni. I’m looking forward to the interview.”
“Liar.” Her chuckle reaches through the screen to tease me and I release a laugh of my own.
“Okay. I hate talking about myself. You probably know that, but I’m here, ain’t I?”
“You’re here,” Janelle chimes in. “And it’s gonna be a highlight of homecoming, along with your daughter being crowned, of course.”
“Is she excited?” Niomi asks. “Your daughter, I mean.”
“Celine’s shopping. It’s all about the dress right now. Excited would be an understatement.”
“I know you’re coming for the interview,” Janelle says. “But some of the old crew has confirmed and I’m hoping we can get some real time in over the weekend to hang. We past due on catching up.”
“Some of us more than others.” Niomi shoots me a look that is mostly teasing, but carries a touch of censure.
“You can grill him during the interview,” Janelle smirks.
“Do the questions I sent meet your approval, Touré?” Niomi asks.
“They do, but is this all you want to ask me?”
The pause, a beat of silence, swells as she watches me with some combination of openness and wariness that matches my own.
“Before you get too deep into questions,” Janelle interjects.
“Lemme give you the run down, ‘cause I gotta go soon. As we discussed, we’ve decided to move the interview to Friday. Most panels and workshops and symposia are earlier in the week, but with this being such a big deal, we wanted to position it more prominently. There will be a stage on the Yard Friday and events, artists, etcetera, will be showcased throughout the day. That’s where we’ll set up the interview. ”
“This sounds really cool,” Niomi says.
“There’s a lot of excitement about it,” Janelle agrees, grinning.
“We know students will be gearing up for the step show that night, but there is a lot of excitement about this. The J School is sponsoring. The interview will be broadcast on campus radio and shown on the big screen so more of the students can see it.”
“Is Friday the only time you need me?” I ask.
“Planning your exit already?” Niomi queries with a twist of her lips.
“Not at all. Saturday’s a big day for Celine. The parade that morning, the presentation of the court at the game. I just want to be there for her since her mom will be out of town.”
“That’s really admirable,” Niomi says.
“Don’t be too impressed,” I say dryly. “She isn’t.”
Niomi and Janelle’s brows lift in simultaneous speculation, but neither presses. Maybe Niomi is saving all her pressing for the interview.
Janelle grimaces, glancing down at her phone. “I’m getting pinged. Gotta go, but you guys feel free to discuss the interview. Just log off when you’re done.”
She disappears from her onscreen square, leaving an empty chair and cluttered desk as her proxy.
“Um, so you never said.” Niomi sits up straight and shuffles through a stack of papers on her desk. “Are you okay with the questions?”
“Yeah, but . . .” I shake my head. “You’re too good for that to be your full list.”
She stops shuffling papers and meets my gaze squarely, the sunlight through her office window rimming her topknot like a halo. Hers are not angel eyes, though. They are shrewd and assessing, everything her questions were not.
“Considering how little you’ve wanted to talk about yourself through the years, I thought you’d appreciate questions that didn’t probe too much.”
“I haven’t wanted to talk about myself because as a journalist I’m an observer, documenting the world around me.” I shrug. “I don’t like people’s perceptions of my personal life coloring how they process the news I’m delivering.”
“Professionally, I understand that, as is your right, but you have become one of the most trusted journalists of our time. You’ve made us cry reporting with so much compassion from the front lines of war.
We felt outrage, your outrage, when you exposed human rights violations in foreign lands.
Hell, sometimes in our land. Right here at home.
” Her dark brows gather over the intensity of her stare.
“You are maybe the most trusted reporter working today, and it feels like we trust someone we don’t really know. ”
“You’ve known me for twenty years.”
“Correction. I knew you for three years and then you disappeared until today.”
“We’ve seen each other half a dozen times since graduation at press dinners, awards, events—”
“You barely spoke to me.”
“That goes both ways, Ni. Felt to me like you always made a beeline in the opposite direction.”
It’s quiet for a moment with our shared truths sitting between us. With two decades of unspoken questions gurgling beneath the sterile quiet of our Zoom call.
“I didn’t . . .” She clears her throat, dropping her eyes to the notes on the desk in front of her. “I guess I never knew what to say. You just fell off the face of the earth. I mean the next time I saw you was on television.”
“I know. Things got really complicated in Paris.” I pause before going on. “And I didn’t know if you felt weird about how things ended with us. At the party—”
“It was a little awkward. I was dating someone else so I shouldn’t have kissed you, but disappearing like that wasn’t cool. We were friends.” She raises her eyes to meet mine again. “Besides it was just a kiss, right?”
“Didn’t feel like a ‘just’ to me,” I admit, my voice quiet.
“To me either.” She allows a small smile. “It felt like a big deal. Big enough to tell Randy about.”
“You told him?” My brows lift in surprise, but I shouldn’t be. Even then Niomi wasn’t the kind of woman to keep something like that from a guy she was dating. “What’d he say?”
“It took me awhile to confess. We got through most of the summer, and I kept telling myself you and I had been drinking, that the kiss wasn’t a big deal, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
I had thought about it all summer, too, tortured by the fact that once again, I was too late and Niomi was some other guy’s girl.
I’ve never really admitted it to myself, but on some level, I may have, at least in part, accepted the Paris opportunity so I didn’t have to spend senior year knowing how she tasted, how soft her lips were, how perfectly we fit together, only to watch her with someone else.
“If I had known you broke up with him, maybe I would . . .” I trail off, unsure what I would have done with that information. I was in another country. Young. Irresponsible. Careless.
“It’s ancient history,” she says, her tone almost forced in its lightness. “Though I did wonder why you couldn’t even come back to walk for graduation. That day felt kind of incomplete without you there with us.”
“Celine was due right around graduation, and Annette, her mother, couldn’t travel. I didn’t want to risk leaving her . . .them, so I decided I wouldn’t walk. I got my diploma in the mail.”
“Kyle told us you weren’t coming. He seems to be one of the few you’ve kept in touch with.”
“He’s Celine’s godfather, yeah. There are a few from the old crew who are still close.”
“But not me.”
Her words, though brief and simple, demand an explanation. After all these years, even after just one kiss, an explanation.
“There was a group of us American students who hung together. We were all away from home for internships or studying abroad and formed a small kind of expat community. Annette was the only other Black student. She was there from Northwestern interning with a fashion magazine.”
“You don’t have to tell me this.”
“I think I need to. There’s a reason every time we saw each other over the years, though it wasn’t often, that we avoided each other. I don’t know your reason, but let me tell you mine.”
She nods jerkily and fiddles with the gold earring caressing the curve of her neck.
“Annette and I started hanging out. I was in a foreign country. The only brother. Lonely as hell. Horny as fuck.”
I give her a sheepish glance, grateful when she just shoots me a grin and shakes her head. “The fact that men’s dicks develop before their frontal lobe is an anatomical travesty.”
“Agreed.” I blow out a laugh. “I didn’t have my shit under control. Annette was a friend, and we upgraded to friends with benefits. We liked each other. We were cool. No strings.”
I release a heavy sigh, lifting and dropping my shoulders in a shrug.
“Man, when she got pregnant, we were both shocked. We had agreed she’d . . .ya know, not keep it. Not it. Celine. Not keep Celine, but at the last minute, Annette didn’t want to go through with it.”
“How’d you feel at the time?” Niomi asks with that gentle probing I’ve seen on display with many a morning guest.
“If I’m honest? Keeping it a buck? I was kinda pissed initially. I know. That’s not what you say, but I was young and stupid and selfish. I had a plan and this messed up my plan. I was going to spend a year in France working abroad. I was gonna come back to Finley to graduate.”
I search her face, looking for judgment in her eyes. When I don’t find it, I go on.
“That was my knee-jerk response. I didn’t voice it to Annette.
I never have. I realized keeping the baby was, of course, even more disruptive for Annette.
She was lucky the French magazine was really understanding.
She did a whole online diary of her pregnancy, including maternity clothes.
Hugely popular. She landed on her feet.”
“And you? Where’d you land?”
“Wherever I could get paid. There was a job waiting for me at the Chicago Tribune, but Annette wanted to stay in France. Her career had exploded there. I wanted to be close to Celine and took a job that allowed me to be based anywhere in the world so I could be to my daughter.”
“Afghanistan.”
“Yeah. I embedded there and . . .well the rest is history I guess. It’s like I got on the road and never quite got off. The irony is that I took that first assignment so I could support my daughter, but it took me away so much now she barely . . .”
I clamp my lips around truths I didn’t intend to share. Not on the stage, of course, but not at all. Not here with Niomi. I’m convinced half of good reporting is listening. People talk if you give them a chance. Niomi’s really good at giving people a chance.
Her lips part like she’s about to ask another question, when the door behind her opens and a tall man walks through. Medium brown complexion. Muscular build. Short twists in his textured hair. He leans down and kisses the top of her head.
“Ni, you ready? We better go.”
My jaw tightens and I grit my teeth. I read that Niomi’s marriage to a television exec ended in divorce a couple of years ago. A woman as beautiful and talented as she is could have her choice of partners. Looks like she has chosen.
“Okay, lemme finish this, Ron.” She smiles up at the man and squeezes the hand resting on her shoulder. When he leaves the room, she turns back to me. “Sorry. We have plans.”
I didn’t even realize that some part of me wondered .
. .maybe now. After all these years, maybe us .
. .until Ron walked through the door and said nope.
When I first started out, I still had all the soft parts youth allows.
Huddling with soldiers in deserts, dodging bombs, witnessing the death of innocent children for years obliterated everything soft.
In its place I sprouted weeds. Tough, stubborn leaves with roots of cynicism.
The last thing I need to be is soft for a woman who was only ever my friend and obviously isn’t available to be more.
I paste on a stiff smile. The kind you sign off with on camera even in the midst of a bloody revolution.
“’No worries. I need to go, too. We can correspond by email if you have any more questions. Make sure to copy my agent.”
At the abrupt formality of my words, her easy smile wobbles and her eyes cool some before she offers a brusque nod. “Will do. Guess I’ll see you at homecoming.”
I hang up and can’t shake the feeling that I missed my shot . . .again.