From: [email protected]
Subject: One Last Request
Dani—
This place took something from you—take it back.
Love you deeply,
Tanya
Fuck.
Take it back? Take it back?! What if I don’t want to get it back, Tanya? Did you ever think about that? Whatever I lost there was meant to be lost and stay that way.
My softness? My belief in humankind? My naivety? New York can keep all that.
What about the piece of you that never recovered from that hotel room? You don’t want that back?
Shit, could she really be asking me to face Nigel? To take back what he took from me?
That’s very on brand for her, but I’m not sure I’m ready to do it.
I look over to Micah’s furrowed brows and smooth out the wrinkle between them with my thumb. “Why so serious?” I ask.
“I don’t like this. I don’t want you to do something you’re not comfortable with. Not when it comes to this and … him. I love Tanya, but you come first.”
Why does he always have to make me feel things? I was trying to approach this dilemma with logic, and now my heart has entered the conversation and it’s very loud.
“You’ll be with me, won’t you?”
He looks at me with dreary, half-lidded eyes before his eyebrows jump up to his hairline. “Oh, that was a serious question.”
“Now, why else would I ask?”
“Storm, I told you from the jump we’re partners in this. I’ma be wherever you are.”
I take a deep breath and say what’s on my heart. “Then I’ll be okay.”
Micah and I will head to New York in a couple of days, but today I’m going with him to Our Place to talk to his cousins.
I haven’t been back here since the day we met. I always wanted to, but I had drawn a line in the sand. All places associated with Micah were off my radar.
I’m excited to see the inside of this place. All I had ever seen was Micah’s mural on the back wall, which I’m glad to see is untouched, but I always wanted to immerse myself in the place that meant so much to him.
When I step inside, I immediately understand the magnitude of this place.
The layout is pretty standard for a community center and there aren’t any decorations that particularly stand out. It’s the energy.
When you walk in, there’s this overwhelming sense of … joy. This isn’t just a place where kids go to be a warm body in a seat until they can go home. This is a place where they can explore who they want to be in this world. I saw a little girl tell a teenager that she wants to run for her class treasurer but was afraid she’d be made fun of, and the teenager has been helping her ever since with making signs for her campaign and a cute slogan. The kids here understand the importance of a place like this, and they do everything they can to protect it.
Two women walk up to Micah and me. The one with box braids in a messy bun is wearing a brown blazer over a white T-shirt and jeans. The other, with coily hair framing her face, wears a cardigan over a tank top and jeans. The woman in the blazer, whom Micah introduces as Paris, has a kind smile, while Penelope, the woman in the cardigan, has a kind face until she smiles. Her smile and laugh are a bit diabolical sounding and looking.
“This is Dani—”
Paris interrupts Micah before he can say anything else. “Oh my God,you’reDani.”
