1. “The Prophecy” #3
“I think, at this point, I’d like to talk about you dragging me out of the restaurant, taking my ear thingy, then picking me up and dumping me in your truck.”
“You were walking away from me, and I wasn’t done talking to you,” he explained, like doing what he did was the most natural thing in the world.
I was already staring at him, but when he said this, I stared harder.
When I could find my voice, I asked, “Did it matter that I was done talking to you?”
He glanced at me. I could see by the city lights his gaze dropped to where I was sitting next to him. He then looked back to the road.
I guessed that was his answer, and it actually was, since it obviously didn’t matter where I was in our conversation at the restaurant since I was where I was right then.
I didn’t know what to do at this juncture. I was in his truck. I didn’t know where he lived. What I did know was that we were headed in the direction of where I lived.
With my choices being yelling at him, attempting to find calm and explaining the myriads of reasons what he did was not okay, giving in and sharing what the Angels were up to, and going silent and fuming, I picked fuming.
Therefore, I turned to stare straight ahead and commenced fuming.
Flounces came naturally to me, and fuming did the same.
When I was with my girls, time taught me I could share my mind. I could be me just as I was. They made it safe. They loved me. I loved them. They were the sisters I never had.
Elsewhere in my life (Hi, Mom!), none of this was the same.
Elsewhere in my life, I did not speak my mind.
When I got angry, I flounced. I fumed. I didn’t share because it wouldn’t matter. What I thought, what I felt, had no meaning. And the only way to nurse emotion was to do it inwardly, experiencing the totality of it myself.
Therefore, our trek down Camelback then 7 th was entirely silent.
Javi’s truck was so big, he wisely didn’t attempt to park in one of the allotted visitor spots in the complex’s narrow, hard-to-maneuver parking lot. He parked on the street right near the entrance.
He hadn’t even switched off the truck when I was out.
I nearly broke an ankle jumping down from the height of the truck, but I kept my feet, and more importantly my dignity, as I again flounced, this time doing it up the drive to the courtyard gate, feeling Javi follow me.
I let myself in the gate and it didn’t fall shut right behind me because Javi caught it and entered after me.
Some of my Oasis neighbors, Bill, Zach, Patsy and Sally, were in the courtyard, enjoying the somewhat cool (it was May in Phoenix, so we wouldn’t get really cool until October) evening night by the pool with some cocktails.
They all turned toward us when we appeared, and I knew they were going to call out greetings, but they saw Javi behind me, so they did not.
This wasn’t because he was huge and scary.
This was because they all knew him, and me, and I’d probably not kept my crush on him as secret as I should have, so me all dressed up in date clothes and Javi bringing me home shocked them silent.
I walked directly to my apartment and let myself in.
Javi, of course, came in right after me.
The door snicked shut and I heard him turn the lock.
I tapped my toe on the foot switch of a standing lamp that looked like a tulip—green stem, spiked leaves, white tulip-shaped shade and all.
I then turned on him and put my all into ignoring both him staring in open shock at my décor (a reminder, I was ultra girlie and everything about me reflected that, absolutely everything) and how I felt that Javi was standing in my space, somewhere he’d never been, somewhere I’d wanted him to be for six whole months.
“I’m home safe,” I pointed out the obvious. “You’re off your self-imposed duty now.”
His attention shifted from the teal-green-and-white-striped, large glass mushroom that was one of the things that adorned my white, curvy coffee table, to me.
“Props, you women want to do good things for good reasons,” he began. “But that doesn’t mean you know what you’re doin’ when you do them.”
Mm-hmm.
This announcement made me no less fume-y.
Nope.
It made me more.
A whole lot more.
I tossed my clutch to the dusty-rose velvet covered, semi-structured beanbag chair, crossed my arms on my chest, and returned, “Sorry, except for the last five months with NI&S, where did you get your formal training when you and your Shadow Soldiers were taking on the streets?”
“I got it on the streets ,” he shot back. “As in, livin’ on them for most my life.”
He had me there.
“It isn’t like this is my first rodeo,” I retorted. “You knew I had the ear thingy?—”
“Ear thingy,” he muttered, like me calling it that proved his point.
I ignored him and carried on. “My guess is, you knew all the girls were there, taking my back. I was in no danger having dinner with a stranger at Oceans 44. Even if I knew beforehand he’s a big jerk.”
Javi appeared to be losing patience, but for the most part (and what was beginning to freak me), he was no longer angry. He didn’t seem much of anything, but he was this like he was trying to be like this.
Like there was a mask he’d put on to hide something from me.
And I hadn’t known him from birth, but since I’d met him, Javi had always been a kind of put-it-all-out-there guy.
But then, still wearing his mask, he put it all out there.
And I would wish to the bottom of my soul he hadn’t.
“Raye, she can take care of herself,” he declared.
“Luna, the same. Jessie gets the life because she’s lived it.
Not you. Your parents are both doctors. So is your brother.
On both sides, your mother and father come from money.
You grew up in a six-bedroom house with a pool and a tennis court.
You went to Phoenix Country Day. You had a nanny.
A woman of my culture lived in your pool house and vacuumed your floors, did your grocery shopping, your laundry and cooked your food.
And you walk into uncertain situations wearing shoes you can’t run in.
You got no fuckin’ business doin’ that Angel shit, and my guess is, you know it as much as I do. ”
It should weird me out he knew so much about me, stuff I’d never told him, but in that moment, I couldn’t get weirded out because I was far too ticked.
“Obviously, since I’m doing it, I know nothing of the sort.”
Suddenly, he was in my space, the tip of his perfect nose brushing mine, and I was so shocked at his quick movement and unexpected nearness, I wasn’t breathing.
“You’re marking time here, Harlow,” he whispered irately. “And I know you know that .”
With his proximity, the scent of him, which was not cologne, it was all about a mountain of hot guy, and all of that doing a number on me, I had no choice but to stammer, “Wh-what are you talking about?”
“You’re slumming,” he declared, his words making what felt like a boulder block my throat.
“Probably to prove a point to your parents for whatever stupid-ass reasons you got. You’re gonna hang with your girls while it’s fun.
Then, when it’s not, and they all get hooked up, you’re gonna find a doctor or a lawyer or a banker or whatever the fuck and move into your own six-bedroom house with a pool and a tennis court, get a nanny, and a Latina that makes good tamales to cook your family’s dinner. ”
He didn’t just say that to me.
I stared into his amber eyes.
But…he did.
And now I understood why there had been no plays, no moves.
I’d been so wrong about those sparks.
Javier Montoya not only didn’t like me.
He didn’t like me .
Having this laid out so brutally for me, I wanted to cry, I really did.
I could flounce with the best, fume even better, but I was heck on wheels crying.
I had to unfollow good news accounts on Insta because I couldn’t scroll through stories of kindergartners giving kids with cancer returning to school standing ovations, or firefighters holding cats they saved from fires without losing it every time a heartwarming story came up on my feed.
I didn’t know how I found the strength, but I found the strength not to cry, and instead, in a wavering voice, I said, “You don’t know me.”
“Figure I know you better than you do yourself.”
“And how do you figure that?” I asked, even if I really didn’t want to know.
“I didn’t have money or a nanny or a maid to cushion the shit of life, Harlow.
You live what I lived, you learn to read people, and you’re an open book.
This Angel shit is a lark for you. It means something to Raye.
To Jess. Even to Luna. To you, it’s a story to tell the new friends you’re gonna get about the days when you were single and looking for a thrill. ”
“The new friends I’m going to get?” I whispered, unable to raise my voice further, because that hurt most of all.
“The boys at NI&S do well. But Mace and Stella don’t have that huge fuckin’ compound in Paradise Valley because Mace is worth a couple hundred million dollars. It’s because Stella is. You’re gonna aim for the top, and bein’ you, you’re gonna get it.”
I again asked a question I didn’t want the answer to. “Being me?”
He moved away enough to take in my tulip lamp, my glass mushroom, the baby-pink, shell-shaped toss pillow on my seafoam-green couch, then back to me.
And then he dealt his death blow.
“Everything about you is designed to land a man who’ll take care of you the way you expect him to.”
I vaguely noticed the flicker of remorse that flashed in his eyes when there was no way to hide my reaction.
That reaction being, I flinched like his words were a physical blow and I instantly stepped away from him like he was a threat.
“Harlow—” he started, the tone of his deep, gruff voice no longer irritable and matter-of fact, the mask he’d kept on his handsome face dropping, but I refused to read what it said.
I backed away to my bean bag, not taking my eyes from his as I bent to the side and nabbed my clutch.
“Babe,” he murmured, not moving but tracking my movements closely, that look on his face demanding to be let into my brain as I battened the hatches to keep it out.
I continued to keep my eyes on him as I backed down my hall to my bedroom, just as Javi continued to watch me.
I closed the door between us and locked it, not that it would keep him out if he wanted to get in.
But he didn’t try to get in.
I didn’t hear the front door close, so to make my point, I did what any self-respecting girl would do.
I dug my phone out of my clutch, opened my Sonos app to the apartment-wide speaker system that, yes, my father bought me for Christmas, and it was expensive, and I activated it.
I then played Taylor Swift’s “The Prophecy,” because everyone knew Tay-Tay could say it better than anyone.
I didn’t know if Javi got it.
I just knew, when the song was over, I heard the front door slam.
And that was when I threw myself on my bed and did what came naturally.
I let myself be weak.
Which meant I shoved my face in my comforter…
And I sobbed.