There’s a slight pause on the line before he says, “Am I in trouble?”
I suck my teeth. This fool. “No, I am, I guess. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.” There. I said it. He doesn’t respond. Instead, he lets the silence stretch for so long I have to check the screen in my car to make sure the call didn’t disconnect. “Did you hear me?”
“Oh, I heard you. I was just absorbing the moment, really savoring it.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“To be clear, this is you admitting you were bothered, right?”
“And now I gots to go.”
His rich laugh floats across the line like butter. “Nah, wait. Forreal, I accept your apology.”
“Thank you.” The debate in my head about whether I should tell him what I know about New York is short-lived. He tried to tell me himself at his gallery years ago, but I didn’t want to hear it. I still don’t. The time to tell me was when it could’ve prevented our foundation from crumbling beneath our feet.
There is a freedom in knowing the truth, though. It rescues me from the resentment I didn’t even realize I was holding on to. It paves the way for a new path, a safer one.
“And I’m sorry for keeping you at arm’s length. I want us to be … friends. Going forward,” I add.
He hums contemplatively before speaking. “Friends, huh? No more friend’s husband’s friend?”
“Keep it up.”
“Hey, hey, I was just clarifying. I’m okay with that. I like the sound of friends.”
“Good.”It’s your only option.
“Good,” he echoes. “So, friend. On a scale of one to ten, how close was I to getting knocked upside the head when I said you looked stiff?”
My response is immediate. “Twenty-five.”
“I could tell. You know we gotta go back to recording those videos at some point though, right?”
Or, I could come up with a new project.No. Don’t be silly.I know the documentary and portrait are the perfect auction item, so why does it feel so wrong when I contribute to it? “I know that. I’m just frustrated with myself.”
The halls of my building are eerily quiet when I get home, still on the line with Micah. The only sound is my sneakers against the ornate flooring as I make my way up to my unit.
“Okay, well, let’s talk it out. What is it about this project that’s different from your social media videos?” Micah’s voice seems to bounce off the walls even when I don’t have him on speakerphone.
The answer to his question claws at my throat, begging to be freed. “It’s personal,” I lament.
“What do you mean?” There’s no judgment in his tone, just a need to understand.
I sigh. “Okay so, when I do videos for social media, there’s a level of separation from it for me.”
“Because?”
I hate admitting this. It makes me feel like a fraud. “Because I’m not really being myself. I mean, I am, but an exaggerated version of myself. At the end of the day, the people watching my videos don’t know me and I don’t know them. I want to connect with them, of course, but I’m not laying myself bare in front of them. That’s just not something I do.”
I consider myself an actor of sorts. I signed up for the world to know me in one particular fashion. I signed up to be a face people recognize and for their lenses to be pointed at my every public move. I did not sign up for them to point their lenses inside my home.
“And with this video for Tanya, you have to do just that,” he agrees.
“There’s no other way to do it,” I concede. “I keep imagining her looking down at us and seeing the video. She’d roast me within an inch of my life if I didn’t dive deep.” I throw my keys in the bowl on my entryway table and make my way to my bedroom.
“Okay. Trigger warning, because you might be at a fifty out of ten after I say what I’m about to say.”
I suck my teeth. “A fifty out of ten? At that point, I should just kill you, but I gotta get past this shit, so go ahead.”
