Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum) Read online

  “She’s not. She just . . . she has her own way of seeing things.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Astoria said with a snort.

  I sighed, shook my head, and picked up the magazine I had brought over. We sat there in silence for a while.

  “A few rich, old, white men own everything in this country when you really get down to it. And until that changes, nothing’s gonna change,” Astoria broke the silence when she realized I wasn’t going to say anything else about Suse.

  “Astoria, you’re such a cynic.”

  “But say I’m wrong, though. Say I’m wrong.”

  “I’m saying I hope you’re wrong. Look at all the good things in the world. All the world aid organizations that have really stepped it up in the past few years. And people are discussing race in a serious way. Especially after what just happened. Some—a lot—of people realize it’s still a valid issue and that something needs to be done.”

  “But for every one of those, there’s a discount department store that begrudges its employees minimum wage and basically tells them to not even think about health care. And the products sold in those stores? Made in some sweatshop where children are dying. Brown children. While those greedy old bastards are steadily trying to increase profits.”

  “Well, see, now you’re getting more into a class issue than a race issue.”

  “Maybe. But what ‘class’ are most of us in? Forced into?”

  “Well, I still think there’s hope for a country that elected a black president.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s hope he doesn’t get assassinated somewhere along the way. You heard about those crazy people in Tennessee.”

  “I can never win with you, Astoria.”

  “This country can never win with me. I don’t know how you can be so complacent in a place where hate is constantly running just under the surface.”

  “You can’t give the ignorance any legitimacy.”

  “I can’t have any legitimacy because of the ignorance.” “Astoria, it has to start somewhere. Why can’t you just open your heart and mind to the possibility that love can kill ignorance?”

  “That possibility is taking too long to become a reality. That’s what King died for, and the noose is still a symbol of hatred toward our people. Our women are still being degraded. Our men emasculated.”

  “Well, our ‘emasculated’ men are doing a lot of the degrading.”

  “That’s the only thing they feel like they have left, I guess. I can’t blame a man when the system’s set up against him. Do you blame my brother, an innocent man, for ending up in prison?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Like hell it is.”

  It always depressed me to have that conversation. I felt like there was so much that needed changing and so little we could do in comparison. The easier thing to do was not to think about it. But that was obviously not a solution. And every senseless act of hate was a stabbing reminder of how real the problem was.

  But at the end of the day, all you can do is your part. Anger, while understandable, isn’t going to get anyone very far. Closed-mindedness is exactly what’s caused this mess, so it isn’t going to help to mimic that basic reasoning flaw. Understanding and open-mindedness are much more effective than ignorance and hate.

  It is important to always strive for that elusive line between realism and pessimism. Crossing over can easily throw you into loss.

  I walked down the street that my apartment complex was on, still thinking about Astoria while searching through my bag for my keys.

  Chapter 5

  CAN I GET A RIDE?

  Thursday, after we finished studying at the library, John was nice enough to walk me home even though he lived in the complete opposite direction. Again, I was reminded of one of the million good reasons he was not available. And like it would matter if he was. Dating wasn’t for me. Not my scene.

  We were talking about Halloween, which was only a few weeks away, as could be seen in the red and brown leaves scattering across the sidewalk and the fact that it wasn’t even dinnertime and the sun was almost gone. We turned into the parking lot of my apartment complex. We slipped between two cars parked a little too close to each other and I was awkwardly aware of the lengths we’d gone through not to touch each other since Saturday. Not that we’d said a word about any of it. Mostly because I was insisting to myself that there was nothing to say a word about. I had the feeling John was telling himself something similar. If he even thought about it at all. Maybe I was just creating fantasies in my head. I was good at that.

  John said, “So have you ever been to that haunted hayride thing in Hanover?” We continued to pick our way through rows of parked cars, cutting across the parking lot to reach my place.

  “Please.” I laughed. That thing was a joke.

  John shrugged, grinning that melty grin at me. “I’ve never been on a hay ride. I think it’d be fun.”

  “What? Sitting on stinky hay while some lame-o comes out of the woods with a plastic ax and makes a pathetic attempt at acting like he’s going to kill you? You think that’s fun?”

  “Sure. I think it’d be a good time. If nothing else, hilarious. We should go.”

  “We?” My heart leapt for all of a moment.

  Until he said, “Yeah, and oh, um, you should invite whoever, you know?” He scratched the back of his head and his eyes moved across the parking lot. “I’ll ask my friend Ral. You should invite your friends. Uh, and Erich. You should invite him, too. He’s a fun guy and you should—yeah.”

  “Erich?” What did he know about Erich? “You know Erich?”

  “Yeah, we play racquetball together sometimes. Aren’t you guys . . . friends? Or something?”

  “Yeah.” Or something. Astoria had started dropping not-so-subtle hints about Erich ever since Tuesday. “I guess.”

  Erich was good looking enough. He was light skinned and tall. He had an adorable baby face with dimples. He had black, wavy hair. I couldn’t understand why he was single anyway. I kept intimating he was gay. Astoria kept insisting he was trying to get at me.

  “Well . . . how ’bout it? Hay ride? Halloween night?”

  “Um, I’ll check my calendar. Let you know. I think I might have something for BLSA that night,” I said. BLSA, the Black Law Students Association, was doing something, but I wasn’t going to it. I didn’t have anything planned for Halloween since it fell on a Thursday. I just didn’t know how to respond to John yet. I didn’t know if I wanted to go sit on hay between Erich and John. And I was still reeling from this new info about John and Erich hanging out. Weird. The guy I had a crush on and the guy Astoria wanted me to have a crush on. I should have picked a bigger school.

  “Sure,” John said.

  We reached my front door and I stood there. My mood had crashed from where it’d been leaving the library. And it kept getting worse. Thinking about Erich led to thinking about how little John mentioned Sasha and wondering if he’d mentioned me to her. I didn’t want to have any of these thoughts.

  “See you in class tomorrow,” I said, pulling my keys out of my pocket.

  “Yeah.” John looked surprised by the suddenness of my goodbye.

  We said good-bye and he walked back toward the parking lot. I turned the key in the lock and slumped against the door, pushing it open. For some reason, my mind chose that moment to fill itself with images of John and I sanding the wall together. Traitorous mind.

  I sat across from Astoria and next to Suse at a diner downtown Friday afternoon, waiting for my salad and wishing I had ordered country-fried steak. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to them pick at each other. My mind was firmly on John Archer and riding . . . hay.

  It was frustrating not to even be able to whine to Suse, though. There were not many people who could put up with my constant complaining without rolling their eyes and telling me to shut up. Especially not Astoria. I’d never met anyone in the world before like Astoria Banks. And I don’t think I ever wil
l again. Most of the time, I thought that was a good thing.

  “This food is never coming. Imma starve to death,” Astoria grumbled, pushing a salt shaker around the table.

  I barked a short laugh, shaking my head. That just about summed Astoria up. Impatient and always having something to say.

  “Astoria, must you complain about everything?” Suse asked, raising her eyebrows.

  Astoria snorted, sat back in the booth and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Are you really this angry about the food? I thought you said you weren’t even that hungry,” I said, slowly bringing myself back to the table, noticing the conversation had nearly died.

  “I’m angry I have to go to that stupid training tomorrow. I’m angry I didn’t get that job I interviewed for last week with that civil rights group. I’m angry Yeardley is the worst faculty advisor alive. I’m angry about a lot of things.” Astoria tapped a long, manicured nail against her fork. Her lips scrunched up in irritation.Suse muttered something under her breath about not knowing why Astoria had come. I looked over at Astoria, worried, hoping she hadn’t heard. If she had, she was ignoring the comment. I breathed a sigh of relief and went back to my reverie.

  I didn’t really want to participate in their conversation. I wanted to think thoughts about John Archer. And I didn’t dare tell them that, especially Astoria. So I wallowed alone in my uncertainty about the John situation.

  What was wrong with me? Even if John was single and interested, he wouldn’t have been an option.

  I’d already had my brush with death—okay, love, but were they really all that different? I could have done quite fine without another, thank you very much. I had the single thing down. I had plenty to keep me busy. And whenever I did get lonely, Astoria and Suse were there for me.

  Single was easier. Less to think about. Less to agonize over. I didn’t have time, energy or heart left for relationships. Romance was the furthest thing from my mind, and I would thank John Archer very much not to confuse me.

  Law school protected me. I enjoyed the challenge. Thrived on the stress. I was able to hide behind casebooks and journal articles. In a way, I resented John for transferring. As irrational as it was, I felt as if he had intruded on my life by coming to Richmond. My crush was a little scary. John stood for so many of the things I had tried to block out of my life.

  I had a plan to avoid all things too emotional and too real and things started to get a lot better. Emotion was dangerous. Emotion had almost cost me my bachelor’s degree. Joe had ripped everything out of me that I needed to love a man.

  I thrived. And a lot of it came from avoidance. I didn’t want to acknowledge a lot of the ugly feelings I had inside. A lot of the disappointments life had rained down on me in the past. I managed to trick myself into thinking everything was fine. That my life was great. And from the outside, what wasn’t to love? Law review. Good grades. Trial team. Friends that loved me. It was easy to not think about the missing pieces.

  After graduating law school, I’d be able to support myself and I’d be too busy being a lawyer to miss the companionship much. And I could always get a dog. Or a fish. Or a Chia pet.

  After our food came, I picked at it, but I suddenly didn’t want it. I made myself participate in a miserable conversation about something a Republican had said on CNN that morning. That quickly turned into an argument between Suse and Astoria. Overall, I was pretty successful in keeping the conversation away from myself. Which only caused me to feel even more twisted and wrong inside.

  But through all of those thoughts about not thinking about John and not wanting him came the ugly truth. I had made my decision about the hayride. I shifted in my seat, realizing I couldn’t put off bringing it up any longer. During a lull in the conversation in which everyone had fallen into their plates, I said, “So, any Halloween plans yet?”

  They both shook their heads no.

  I looked down at the half-wilted romaine lettuce leaves on my plate. “What do you think about a hayride?”

  Astoria looked up at me, resting her fork on top of the pile of pasta on her plate. “A hayride?” I could have just suggested a walk on the moon, judging by the look on her face.

  “Yeah, sure, you know the one they do on that old farm up the road. They advertise it on the radio all the time.” I returned to staring at my salad as I said this. I could feel their eyes on me.

  “You really want to do that?”

  “Well, John—”

  “I should have known.” Astoria pushed her plate away and threw her hands up.

  I watched them both. Suse had become a lot less enthusiastic about the John thing since she’d heard about Sasha. Or so the story went.

  “Well, it’s going to be a group of us. We’re all going,” I said defensively. I almost mentioned that he’d told me to invite Erich, but I was afraid that if I did, Astoria would insist he come along.

  “I guess we better go then. Keep an eye on you if nothing else,” Astoria said. She and Suse laughed. Like that was actually funny.

  Halloween night, it was freezing out. The day before, the high had been almost eighty degrees, which made the cold even worse. Cruel, cruel. Virginia and its schizophrenic weather. I wore jeans, boots, two shirts under my sweater and a jacket over it all and I still couldn’t stop shivering. Astoria, who hates the cold, outside, anything that has to do with nature, grumbled all the way to the farm. Of course, we were amongst only a handful of fools who had actually showed up for the thing. Our breath puffed out around us as we headed for the hay-filled truck. I almost expected it to freeze in front of our faces.

  “I hope you know nobody else could have gotten me out here,” Astoria said.

  “I know, I know,” I said, wiggling my nose to make sure it was still there and hadn’t frozen off my face.

  A few minutes later, John and Ral jogged up to us. They stopped, breathing on their hands and stomping their feet against the cold. Ral had short blond hair and blue eyes. He’d been an All-American on his college football team, and he still looked the part.

  “Hi,” John said to me, his eyes making my stomach drop. They locked on me in a way they hadn’t since that day of the house building. Or maybe I was imagining things. Or maybe it was the moon. Or my poor, frozen brain malfunctioning. He then said hi to Astoria and Suse. Ral went over to Suse to talk about something journal-related; they were both on the Technology and Law Journal.

  “I don’t see Erich.” John seemed a little too happy about it, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t want to be sure.

  I was about to brush that comment off and try to change the subject when Astoria said, “I asked you about him and I thought you said you were going to ask him to come. You didn’t, did you?” She narrowed her eyes at me.

  Just then, I was saved by a bat. I think.

  There was a fluttering of wings and an animal swooped down near Astoria’s face and then flew away. Astoria screamed and ran several yards away from the truck.

  “What are you doing?” I called after her.

  “What was that?” she said, her loud voice carrying across the distance between us with ease.

  “I dunno. A bird?”

  “What? No birds out this late, are there?”

  “What, a bat, then?”

  “A bat? Are there even bats in Virginia? I don’t want to be out here anymore. I hate the country, man.”

  She hadn’t wanted to be out there to begin with. I had to laugh.

  “What you laughing at? This ain’t funny. You know I don’t fool with nothing that comes out at night.”

  “Or during the day. Or that’s outside at all,” I said before walking over and putting my arm around her. “C’mon. Let’s get in the truck.”

  She gave me a wary look.

  “It’s okay. The sound of the engine will scare off all the outside things,” I said in a mock patronizing voice.

  “Shut up, Denise,” she said as we climbed into the truck, but we were both laughing.


  Astoria made a point of directing Suse to sit on the other side of me. John and Ral climbed onto the bale of hay behind us. I was disappointed, but I had no right to be. Still, John kept tapping me on the shoulder and leaning close to my ear to tell me a bunch of unimportant things, and that made my frustration lessen a little.

  Once, John leaned forward and placed his hand on my shoulder to ask me something about registering for spring classes. After I answered, he didn’t move his hand. I turned to look at him. He motioned for me to turn around and I did. I ran my hands up and down my arms and my teeth chattered. And it wasn’t all from the cold. I was a bundle of nerves and uncertainty.

  “You okay, Denise? You’re really shaking,” he said. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “What? You call this cold?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re from the Arctic.”

  He laughed. “Connecticut is not the Arctic.” He shrugged out of his jacket and put it around my shoulders. I stopped shivering. I stopped everything. “Better?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. His hands slipped from my shoulders to my elbows. I was sorry there were so many layers of fabric between his hands and my skin. I suddenly wondered what it would be like to feel his hands on my skin. Sliding over my arms, down to my waist. Well, one good thing about the cold and the dark was that nobody could see me blushing.

  “John,” Astoria said. John and I both jumped at the sound of her voice. “How’s your girlfriend? Sasha?”

  John removed his hands from my arms. “She’s good.”

  I wanted to kill Astoria. I tried to send her death threats with my eyes. She kept her attention turned toward John. I knew what she was doing. And I hadn’t been doing anything wrong. Nothing illegal. No reason to bring up Sasha.

  “Oh. Don’t you miss her? She’s all the way up in Boston. She ever coming to visit?”

  I didn’t listen to John’s reply. I cast a sullen gaze out over the field, looking for the next tired farmer to jump out of the woods or something so I could pretend to be scared. That would give me something to do at least.