14
Nina
Nicole asked me a questionbut I didn’t hear her. “Come back to earth, Nina,” she said. Her chirpy voice grated on my bruised emotions. I wasn’t in the mood for chirpy.
“She’s thinking of him,” Nellie cut in.
I ignored them. They were here for me. They were trying to cheer me up. All I wanted was to make sense of what had happened.
How had I ended up jobless? How had I ended up with my heart hanging on the edge of a precipice about to plummet to its death. A dying heart. Just what I needed at the moment.
I thanked God I was not homeless to boot. I was more thankful the house my parents left me had no vacationers at the moment.
My parents had built this house for their retirement. They envisaged they would spend the winters here for about half the year, then spend the other half traveling. But God had other plans for them.
I was angry for years. I grieved. I had outbursts of rage. I went from passive-aggressive defiance to full-blown rebellion during my college days. I learned to build a protective cage around my heart.
No one was going to leave me. No one was going to die on me. No one was going to leave me broken, wounded, lost. I became the girl who left. Always.
Now, for the first time, I felt like I was on the edge of a precipice. I felt I was about to find out what happens when someone pushes you off the ledge.
“Come back to earth,” my cousin”s voice sang too close to my ears. I covered my ears with my hands.
“This looks like our sign to leave,” Nicole said, and she picked up her bag.
Good. I need to be alone with my thoughts.
Next Nellie asked me, “Did you hear the knock, Nina. Are you expecting anyone?”
“Who knows I’m here?” I asked.
“Good question. But several people. You know how news spreads around Nassau. Like a wildfire out of control,” Nellie said with a laugh.
“No laughing. I can’t laugh today.”
Nellie got the door. My eyes bulged. When the door swung open. My heart sped up like a racecar. He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.
He smiled and it flushed the fear and tension out of me. I jumped up from the kitchen stool with bionic arms and legs and jumped on him. I squeezed him with a death grip and he did the same. We squeezed as if we’d been separated for months and not hours . . . or was it days? I wasn’t sure.
I was just so happy he’d come. He’d kept his word. It got a big fat one hundred percent reward in my book. I hugged him again and buried my face into his neck. He smelled of warm tobacco and sweet vanilla. I nuzzled his neck, luxuriating in his scent. I released him the moment I wanted to do more than nuzzle.
My grandfather was wrong. My cousins were wrong. Only my grandmother had voted in support of Adrian. “That boy is smitten,” she’d said in her soothing voice.
“Granny Betty was right. He’s here.” Nicole”s voice rang out in the room. “Let’s go, sis. Let’s leave for Mr. Smitten, here.”
“I’m okay. You all can leave now,” I said.
Nellie picked up her bag from the kitchen counter and I walked them both to the open front door . . . which is when I noticed Chef Dominique standing next to the Bentley.
“What is he doing here?” I asked Adrian.
“I had to find you. I’d gone straight to the house and you weren’t there. I asked you to stay, Nina,” he said, pleading.
“I called my support system, and Adrian and they came running.”
“I heard your grandfather was preaching brimstone and fire.”
I laughed. A small nervous laugh. Because it was so true.
“Yes, he did. That’s my grandfather.”
“Will he really call the prime minister?” he asked me with trepidation, his gaze darting around the room.
“Yes, you can bet on it. He has access. And he never backs down on expressing his opinions on what he considers the ills in society. He is either feared or loved for his opinions. ‘Thus saith the Lord’ is a favorite precursor to his fully loaded admonishments and opinions.”
“I hear your admiration for him.”
“I do admire him. We hardly see eye to eye on a lot of things. We had many fights during my teenage years. When I left for college, I never came back to Nassau. I went to my mother’s family in New York.”
“You went to school in New York? How would you describe your college days?”
I responded in a flash. “Wild?”
“You didn’t hesitate.” He scrubbed his face and cradled the sides of his head.
“I don’t have to. I took my complete freedom when I was away from my grandparents and explored who I was. What I wanted. What I wanted to give. I gave freely. I took freely. I wanted what my twin cousins had chosen for themselves in high school. You know, in high school there was a big rift in the family. My uncle allowed Nicole and Nellie to run around like wild cats; my grandfather’s words. He banished my uncle and he banished me from them.” The memory caused me to clench and unclench my fists and I could feel the veins on my neck harden. Feeling the walls closing in, I decided to lead Adrian outside.
****
“Come, let us sit outon the patio, we can stare at the ocean in the distance. It’s a beautiful day. The sun is in its full tropical glory. Look—a perfect day for sailing. Look at how flat the ocean lies,” I said.
“No white waves breaking on the beach. I love this view, Nina. It feels like we are on a hill.”
“Hill? There are no hills per se in Nassau,” I said to Adrian.
“Excuse my ignorance, Nina.”
“You are excused. Enjoy the garden view. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I returned to the patio to find Adrian looking out to the ocean with a blaze of intensity. He was twisting his class ring round and round and round. He startled me when I placed the tray with the pitcher of fruit punch and a platter of pastries.
He gave me a shaky smile. I caught a rare look of nervousness in Adrian. His confidence. His calm. His charm. The qualities I loved most about him. Where were these traits today?
I needed the real Adrian to show up.
“When did you bake these?” he asked, stumbling over his words, rubbing the back of his neck.
“I couldn’t sleep last night, so I baked and I thought.”
“I’m sorry, Nina. You don’t deserve this treatment.”
“Why was I dismissed? Do you know?”
He took a long time to respond.
Was he trying to gauge what he could tell me?
Did I need protection from it?
“Tell me the truth, Adrian. Why?” My voice cracked on my last word.
He still said nothing.
“My grandfather is exhaling smoke. My grandmother is fighting a losing battle to calm him down. The two of them have always been overprotective of me. They believed they had to shield me from the world. They believed they had to shield me from myself.” The look in Adrian’s eyes was foreign to me now. He looked at me with love and sadness.
“They are angry. They are threatening to speak to the local and international press. I had to inject the non-disclosure clause into the conversation. My grandfather vowed to hire the most fearless law firm here to take up the case. ‘We need to teach these people a lesson,’ he vowed.” Suddenly the weariness took over and my energy faded. I stopped talking. I waited in the silence with Adrian.
I watched Adrian pop one of my strawberry tarts into his mouth. He closed his eyes and his lips curved into a smile of appreciation. It softened the lines of his mouth, of his full lips. I remembered the softness, the firmness, the demand of his lips on my lips.
“This is so good, Nina.”
I ignored his statement.
“Do you know why I was summarily dismissed without reasons? My emails to your mother stand unanswered.”
“They sent me and my sister away to school.”
“Adrian, are you avoiding answering my question?” I asked and stopped to listen with intent to his response, glancing at him quickly before pulling my gaze away.
“I have always been away from home, in preparation to take over the firm. It’s only ever been about the firm. About our reputation. Our position in the legal world. Our position in high-society New York. I have my own dreams. My own plans. None of it matters. Only the pact my great grandfather made to acquire more money, more prestige, more power. Always about more.” He tried to bridle the anger but it escaped in the strangled words he uttered.
He took a piece of guava duff.
“You have to dip it into the sauce.”
“What is it?”
“This is the guava duff I told you about last week. Remember—when I beat you to a guava pulp.”
“Oh, yes, our first swim meet.”
“So tell me about this guava duff.”
“It’s a Bahamian delicacy. It is a steamed pudding. Always served in a rich cream sauce.”
“Hmmm, the pastry, the flavor of the guava, the thick, rich cream is a pure taste of pastry heaven. I’ve died and gone to pastry heaven.”
Then he shifted the gear of the conversation suddenly.
“I’ve told you about Aimee already.”
“Yes, if I have to hear about Aimee, one more time I’ll scream and throw myself into the deep blue sea.” I smiled a bare smile. I had to push down my feelings and thoughts to my feet.
Ignoring my statements, he continued.
“I never exposed Aimee to them. My parents. My family. There were no attacks. There were no investigations. There were no reports. There were no ultimatums.”
“Where are you heading with this, Adrian,” I asked, breaking the spell of his low baritone. And it wasn’t a good spell. Bad feelings were twirling in the bottom of my stomach the more he spoke.
“I was wrong. I was weak. She left me. I had been more concerned about dealing with my vulnerability. I wanted to be loved for me. I had found it and I let it slip out of my hand. I don’t want what we have discovered to slip from us, Nina. But my parents have taken the steps to break us up. Your dismissal is to break us up. It’s the reason why I wanted you to stay at the house, to begin our defiance,” he said, sounding strained and weary.
Was he breaking under the pressure already?
“You wanted me to defy what I don’t know. I will ask you again, Adrian, why was I fired?” I demanded, my heart begging that he would answer this time.
“They have a dossier on you, Nina.”
“I’m flattered that I’m worthy of investigation.”
“I am mad enough to crush bones,” he said through gritted teeth. “Why go and dig into your college years? I did a lot of bad stuff too. They found everything you did.”
“Such as?”
“The men you slept with on campus.”
My posture crumbled. I pressed my fist to my mouth, turning away from him because I knew I wasn”t strong enough to see whatever look was in his eyes. A heavy chain of regret and shame dragged through my stomach making me dizzy. I squeezed my eyes shut and mustered the inner strength to respond.
“It was the time I created my rebellious world. I rejected my grandparents’ teachings and chose my own way. I experimented. I became a serial dater. I discovered what I wanted. I discovered my capacity for pain, my capacity for love, my capacity for passion.”
Stung by his revelations, strung out by emotions, I fled to the safety of my room and left him out on the patio.
I needed a timeout.
My heart cannot come alive and then die in one week.