Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
Chapter 18
A Series of Rash Decisions
CECE SINCLAIR HAD GREAT TASTE. EVERYONE KNEW IT. SHE WAS THE MOSTpowerful book editor at the most powerful publishing house. Everyone knew that, too. She was also an impeccable hostess, a terrifyingly focused doubles tennis player, and probably the most important advocate of Black and brown authors of her time.
She was many things (some might argue too many), but there was only one thing that kept her pulse racing, her complexion glowing, and her juices flowing. It was being a connector of dots. You needed the best tailor this side of the Hudson? She’d have you covered. You needed a last-minute plus-one to the Studio Museum in Harlem Gala? She’d have a dashing, out-of-work telenovela actor delivered to your doorstep in a tux by 5:30 p.m. Looking for a trainer? A donor egg? A direct route to Valerie Jarrett? Cece Sinclair was your woman.
Cece didn’t have all the answers. But she believed that she did. And it was of vital importance to Cece that her friends and associates, the greater literary community, and the finest Black families up and down the Eastern Seaboard believed it, too.
Right now, she was deep in thought in her Clinton Hill brownstone, sitting in her home office—which was beautifully furnished in a midcentury-lite aesthetic (funded mostly by her husband Ken’s salary as CEO and chief surgeon at Sinclair Reconstructive Surgery Arts). Sporting her casual-Saturday finest—a Proenza Schouler cinch-waist dress and Essie Ballet Slippers–painted toes—she was dead glamorous but also agitated. Because there were two dots she couldn’t connect.
There were several beats missing from this Eva and Shane story. Gaping holes. It was her job to know a fully fleshed-out, no-stone-left-unturned narrative when she saw it—and, ma’am, this wasn’t it. Cece knew good and goddamn well that Shane wasn’t just some sepia-tinted, nostalgic fling. No one was so undone by a fling that they were moved to write about it for their entire adult life.
Eva was withholding information. And it was driving Cece nuts. Shane wouldn’t talk, because Shane was an enigma. Eva wouldn’t talk, either, because she was an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in blackout curtains.
BANG! The sound reverberated through the apartment.
My nerves, she thought. How much longer will Ken subject me to this incessant clatter?
For the past five weekends, Cece’s husband, Ken, had devoted all his time to refurbishing their dining table. Hammering away. The banging set her teeth on edge, but she tried not to show it. He worked so tirelessly at his practice. Household projects were his happy place. Fine. She just wished Ken could find a quieter hobby.
Sucking her teeth, Cece abruptly stood up and began pacing. Ken always called her nosy, and while she pretended to be offended by it, she was nosy. And nosy women bristled at being left out of gossip. It made them irritable and prone to risky decisions made out of sheer desperation.
And, as desperation dictated, she’d throw a party. Tomorrow. A pre-awards party, to kick off Sunday’s Black Literary Excellence Awards. Everyone was already in town for the Litties and looking for trouble to get into. She was due to host one of her exclusive, membership-only soirees, anyway.
Yes, Eva claimed she’d “sooner die” than be trapped at the same party with Shane. But she was also the queen of standing in her own way.
Cece had known Eva since she was a lost nineteen-year-old. She’d more or less helped her grow up, and she felt responsible for her. Cece knew, better than anyone, that Eva was stuck in a rut—a book rut, a life rut, an everything rut—and death of inspiration was ruinous for a writer. Maybe she just needed a little push, to get out of her head. To break free! Cece would gift her with a gorgeous backdrop to properly reunite with her old flame—and hopefully get book inspiration out of it. And wasn’t her job as a book midwife to create a nurturing atmosphere to help her authors to create magic?
Shane would be the special guest. The literary blogs were buzzing; everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of him in real life. There wasn’t a lot of time to party-plan, but conveniently for Cece, her guests never expected her invites to be timely. The spontaneity was part of the fun. And the best part was that Cece could finally get answers. Shane and Eva were her writer children. And as their mama, she had a right to get to the bottom of their situationship.
BANG!
Ken’s been a wonderful husband. But five more minutes of this and I poison his LaCroix.
Cece perched atop her desk, her hostess brain whirring. She’d invite the usual suspects. She’d have to allow kids to come, to make it impossible for Eva to use the “no babysitter” excuse. It’d be fine; she’d corral them in a guest room with Shake Shack sliders, a babysitter, and the Disney Channel.
She’d call her girlfriend Jenna Jones to find her something fabulous to wear. Jenna was a former fashion editor who now hosted a ubiquitous YouTube style show called The Perfect Find. By virtue of her fashion-royalty status, she knew all the PR folks at all the fashion houses (even the small, indie-cool ones that Cece herself couldn’t get to). Jenna was Cece’s secret style weapon.
Yes, she’d call Jenna! If only she could remember where she’d put her phone. She couldn’t hear herself think over Ken’s incessant banging.
Cece swept out of the office and across the floor to the dining room. The room was chaotic. The table was upside down on the floor, and Ken was crouched next to it, hammering a leg back into its socket.
“Ken. You. Are. Killing. Me.”
Dashing Ken, a.k.a. Billy Dee Williams Lite, pushed his glasses up his nose and asked, “Do the legs look even to you?”
With an extravagant exhale, she smoothed her dress and crouched down next to him. “Almost there.”
“Good,” he said, and continued to hammer away.
“Sweetheart, I’m going to hear that banging in hell.”
“You’re not going to hell,” Ken muttered, a screw jutting out from between his lips.
“Oh please. I own real estate down there,” she said breezily. Giving his shoulder a squeeze, she stood back up and resumed pacing. There was so much to do between now and tomorrow’s party.
When Cece hostessed, she did it from her soul—with, she supposed, the energy most women her age poured into their children. But she’d never wanted kids. Books were her kids. They cuddled up with her at night, kept her warm, quieted her thoughts when her marriage seemed thin, her life choices felt pointless, or her job seemed stagnant. At brunch, Belinda had asked if she’d ever felt wild, deep love. What Cece didn’t know how to say was that she didn’t need it. She was happy not to feel anything super deeply. The top level of life was enough for her. The beginning of the night, when there was the buzzing possibility of intrigue and drama—instead of the end, when everyone was wasted and weird and dark. Long ago, she’d learned that life could be bitterly disappointing if allowed. There were blows and stumbles, but your job was to stay interested in the world.
It was why Cece was so adept at sniffing out bestsellers. She’d read a manuscript once, and without giving it intense thought, without letting the words marinate, she’d know if it worked. Cece barely took a breath between reading the last page of a novel and convincing Parker + Rowe to buy it. And after forty bestsellers, no one doubted her instincts.
Not even Michelle, of the Chicago Robinsons (whom Cece had met at the Farm Neck Golf Club in the Vineyard when Sasha and Malia were just toddlers). At the 2017 National Congressional Black Caucus Conference, when Michelle divulged that she was conceptualizing a memoir, Cece didn’t need to hear the pitch. She knew the hook at first blush.
“South Side, darling,” she whispered into Michelle’s diamond-studded ear. “Make sure you give us South Side.”
“Really? You think people want to know about my childhood?”
“I don’t think, Shelly,” said Cece wisely. “I know.”
She also knew, instinctively, that there was delicious potential in Eva and Shane. They just needed…a push. Cece couldn’t wait to see what lusty magic her party would inspire—and she prayed that Eva would pour it into the pages of her new manuscript. She may be over Cursed, but her fans weren’t, and their publishing house wasn’t. Eva had to deliver.
Just then, Ken chuckled at her from where he was sitting on their pristine amber-wood-paneled floor.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“You’re plotting, Celia. I can tell.”
“I’m not plotting; I’m planning.”
He snickered to himself, the same screw sticking out of his mouth. “My nosy girl.”
Cece grinned. She was nosy, and she was his girl. Both were true, for better or for worse.
“Work on the left leg a bit more,” she said, then blew him a kiss and swept out of the room.
* * *
On the other side of Brooklyn, Shane was leaning into the doorway of Eva’s brownstone. He rang the doorbell twice—and nothing. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Now he was rethinking every life choice he’d made until this moment.
The sensible thing to do would be to leave. But what if she hadn’t heard the buzzer? No. He’d wait a while longer. He couldn’t go yet.
Yesterday was both too much and not enough. The day had left him in knots, and now Shane had a restless, bone-deep itch to be in her vicinity. He wanted to watch her do things, say things. Hold her hand, make her laugh. Fuck her senseless. Give her everything she hadn’t had in so long. Give her the best of him.
According to AA guidelines, relationships were forbidden until you were two years sober. This rule made sense, but Shane couldn’t have anticipated this happening.
High school relationships aren’t supposed to be meaningful, he reasoned. Our frontal lobes weren’t even developed. How did we know it was real?
Teenagers didn’t know how to distinguish between a crush and something deeper—let alone be right about it. At seventeen, Shane hadn’t been right about anything. But her.
His mind flashed back to one small moment at the Dream House. Eva was under him, breathless and blissed out, her mouth plush from kissing and her cheeks on fire from climaxing. And Shane was deeply, existentially happy. He buried his face in her neck and gathered her up in his arms, clinging to her so tightly, he couldn’t fathom ever letting her go.
The embrace felt monumental, like they were melding together all the people they’d ever been over the years. Closing the loop. Eva nuzzled her face against Shane’s throat, lips skimming just under his jaw.
“Missing you never ends,” she said on an exhale.
But before he had a chance to say the same thing back to her, she slipped out from under him. And was gone.
Shane understood why she’d left. But it had crushed him. He’d gotten her back, only to lose her again.
Shane had always felt tortured by his memory of that week. He saw it all, so clearly. Every detail, in vivid technicolor. No drink could make him forget. But what he hadn’t banked on was the seemingly insignificant but monumentally important details he’d forgotten about Eva coming back to him.
Like when Spotify plays a song you haven’t heard since childhood, and it reminds you who you are. Like “Oh yeah, I’m a person who knows all the words to Will Smith’s ‘Wild Wild West.’”
When Eva left yesterday, Shane had been resigned to leaving her alone. It hurt like hell, but he deserved it. So he kept himself busy for the rest of the day. He went for a six-mile run, chilled, didn’t drink, ate something, didn’t drink, tried to write, didn’t drink, and then slept. But then Eva sent that text. And somehow, he’d found himself sitting on her stoop, waiting for her to open the door.
His phone buzzed, and he yanked it out of his jeans so fast, his pocket went inside out.
It was Ty.
“WYD,” said the teen.
“It remains to be seen,” said Shane, peering up into Eva’s window.
Shane had talked to Ty yesterday. And two days before that. He committed to twice-weekly check-ins with all his mentees. Sometimes, just hearing the voice of someone who believed in you could turn a shit day into something a bit brighter.
“Ty, why aren’t you in school?”
“It’s the second-to-last day of the year,” he said, offering no further explanation.
“How’s your girl?”
“Good.”
And then Shane launched into the rapid-fire questions he asked all his kids.
“You turning in completed homework?”
“Yeah.”
“You engaging in any illegal or nefarious activity?”
“What ‘nefarious’ means.”
“Criminal.”
Ty paused, thinking. “Nah?”
“You fighting?”
“Not since you was here.”
“You staying hydrated? Sleeping eight hours?”
“Sleeping be mad hard sometimes. My brain don’t turn off. But a nigga trying. My mantra helps.”
“Proud of you, my dude.”
Shane could feel Ty’s smile, thousands of miles away.
“Mr. Hall? Can I…Could you lemme hold two hundred?”
“Two hundred US dollars? What for?”
“My sister’s nigga rents out studio time or whatever, and I thought…I just been trying to get on this rap shit for a minute. Get on SoundCloud, get a deal.”
Shane burst out laughing. When Ty didn’t join him, he shut up, quick.
“Oh. Okay, but since when are you an emcee? You’ve never mentioned rap.”
“My shit’s flames.”
“Interesting. Ty, what’s your rap name?”
“Undecided.”
“Undecided is your name?”
“Nah, my name’s undecided.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” started Shane, with caution. “But the fact that you don’t even have a rap name makes me question your sincerity. Every Black male invents a fake rap name by third grade.”
The teen was silent.
“Your sister introduced you to this dude? Princess?”
“Yeah.”
“Princess lives in a hollowed-out Chrysler parked inside of a condemned Tastee Freez. Does it check out to you that she’d date a dude with a legit studio rental space? Or is it more probable that they’re hustling you?”
Cornered, Ty let out an exasperated sigh.
“I gotta get out of here,” begged Ty. “I lied. I haven’t eaten in two days. Niggas think I eat, ’cause I’m big-boneded, but I don’t. Princess and Mom take all my money. Maybe rap will get me out. This dude knows managers and producers and what have you.”
“Ty, I’m not giving you money for this. I don’t trust it. I gotta go, but we’ll talk about it later.”
“I thought you was a real one,” Ty said, and his voice was barely audible. He sounded destroyed. “Peace.”
The phone clicked, and Shane slumped against the front door. He fucking knew Ty wouldn’t be able to stay on the straight and narrow. Maybe Shane was too hard on him. Maybe he should send him money. Besieged by conflicting emotions, he took a massive chug out of his water bottle just as a tall redhead strolled by with a full-grown toddler strapped to her chest and did a double take.
“My God. You’re Ta-Nehisi Coates!”
“Nah. But he’d appreciate that you pronounced his name right,” he said, downing the last of his water. “I learned the hard way.”
And then finally, finally, he heard the buzz. Before Shane could pick an emotion to focus on, he flew through the heavy mahogany door.