CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ezekiel
Zeek pulled his djembe from its straps and toed off his shoes before making his way onto the stage.
Pushing the microphone to the side, he settled in the chair and placed the djembe between his thighs, letting his hands glide over the supplicant skin, fingers readying at the edge before he lifted his hand and let it fall.
The sound reverberated through the room like a gunshot.
The space quieted.
His hand struck again, then both hands created something new. For her.
The tempo started slow and built in speed as memories of the older women, wearing colorful flowing skirts, danced in a circle as his grandfather played in his village in Colombia.
The women, some with light skin, some with brown, some with deep ochre, danced in a shaded clearing as their feet and bodies channeled something primordial.
Zeek played the very same drum his grandfather made and played all those years ago.
As he drummed, Zeek’s music reached into the cradle of time and collapsed past and present. He felt the moment his grandfather’s spirit joined him on stage, felt the spirits of the men his grandfather played with join them, playing various brass and percussion instruments.
Ezekiel felt the power of the drum. Watched the people in the café dance beside the spirits of the past.
Every cell of Zeek’s being was focused on the one he played for. His wildflower. And she blossomed under the pulsating rhythms of his music as it bound them in inextricable ways.
The rise and fall of Zeek’s hands increased, the rhythm driving her, and she absorbed it, held it, wove it. His music lived in her and that link reverberated within him.
Zeek felt full, as if fed by the sun and moon and earth.
With his final strike of the drum, Sierra’s dance stopped, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her eyes were locked with his but he wondered how much of him she saw before her eyes fluttered closed and she fell toward the ground. Destiny and Anna scrambled to catch her before she landed.
Zeek stepped off the stage, barely registering the thunderous applause and hands reaching out to touch him with appreciation and congratulations.
Lifting Sierra in his arms he walked back to their table and held her in his arms until the spirits released her.
When she opened her eyes she smiled at him. “I knew you were magical. When I opened my front door this morning I thought you were a shifter. Now I know you are something much more powerful. And now you’re mine.”
His heart swelled with pride, with love, with a deep hunger. Too many emotions to try to speak into existence.
Sierra sat up higher. “I don’t know if it was a vision or a dream or just my imagination, but I saw women dancing around me. I saw my mother. I saw you holding our children. I saw fire, and then it consumed me and there was only darkness. Then I opened my eyes and all I saw was you.”
He tightened his arms around her, content to hear, see, and breathe her. She was meant for him. He’d never believed there was a woman who’d ever be meant for him. He was never letting this one go.
“Let’s give another round of applause for our boy, Zeek. I think that man just turned his love into a ritual, and brotha I am still quaking inside.”
The applause registered. The people stopping by the table and thanking him filled the fifteen minute break, and holding Sierra allowed him to receive it openly.
When the break was over, Sierra pulled away from him and stepped onto the stage.
She was a goddess surrounded by fairy lights.
Magical.
“When Destiny invited me here, I was originally going to read a poem I wrote a few years back. But that was before I met EZ,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “You played magnificently for me and I’ll sing...maybe decently, for you.”
She could’ve sounded like a choking frog and her song would still be a siren’s call.
The DJ queued the music and twangy guitar strands filled the space.
“This is a song by Kate Nash. It’s called ‘Nicest Thing,’” Sierra announced.
Then she sang to him, and she didn’t sound like a frog.
“What kind of Peter, Paul, and Mary folksy shit is this?” Maribelle shouted out, but Sierra must’ve been deaf to anything but her own voice.
It was a siren’s call.
His soul felt speared and battered by her song. The yearning in it left him cut down the middle and splayed bare for all to see.
When the song ended, Sierra leaned forward and stroked his cheek before she kissed him.
He didn’t know how or when he’d moved to the edge of the stage but he was there in front of her standing in silence. The room was silent, held in suspension just as he had been.
“Damn girl,” Maribelle shouted out. “Desperate much?”
Sierra smiled at Maribelle.
“Yes, I am very much desperate for this man,” she said before looking back down at Zeek. “Just in case you had any doubts. I am desperate for you.”
“Shit darlin’,” a gruff voice called out. “You got me desperate too; but not for Ezekiel Evers’s mean ass.” The man’s words seemed to pull people out of their trance and they laughed.
“Come on Billy,” a woman called out. “Let’s go do some desperate things together.”
The sound of chair legs scraping the floor proceeded the couple’s exit. A few more couples left, including his sister and Jean Pierre.
“See y’all soon,” Anna called out, waving.
“A lot of babies will be made tonight,” Destiny predicted.
“Time for you to get your djembe, EZ. Oh, and my purse please. I’m ready to go home too.”
Done.
Zeek turned to retrieve the items then he heard Sierra say, “If he wanted you he’d be with you. Grow the fuck up and move on.”
What sounded like a slap cracked through the room like a lightening striking.
Zeek struggled to control the pressure building in his head, tried to push back the violence that wanted him to destroy everything in the room.