With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
Cozy
The bar is small and smoky; when we walk in the bartender is setting a green drink on fire.
A group of Americans take the shots and cheer. Two of them turn around and I see Richard and Amanda. They wave but we don’t walk over. Malachi grabs my hand and moves past clusters of people to a small table at the back.
We sit down side by side. I rest my head on his shoulder. “Your sweater is nice.”
“You’re nicer,” he says.
“Yeah? What do you find nice about me?”
Malachi’s hand is on my knee and he brushes his fingers up and down my leg.
“Everything. The way you dress, the way you fix your hair. The way you used to tell me we were not friends. It’s all nice.” I laugh and press my hand against his so it stops moving on my leg.
“I didn’t mean to be mean to you before. Well, maybe I did, but I just have a hard time trusting people.” I shrug and lift my head from his shoulder. Make a move to scoot away, but he wraps an arm around me and pulls me back.
“What were you saying? Talk to me, Santi,” Malachi says, and kisses my ear. It’s like now that we’ve started touching this way and kissing we can’t keep our bodies away from each other. But I pull back just enough so that I can look at him.
“When I broke up with Tyrone, when I was pregnant with Babygirl, after I was pregnant with Babygirl, guys thought that gave them a reason to be able to come up to me and say anything they wanted, to just grab me or invite me to their houses. They all treated me like a ho.” I rub my finger along the tabletop. The wood is sticky with spilled drinks and I put my hand in my lap. “I’m not. I’m not a ho. Not that it should matter if I was, but I’m still not having sex with you.”
I know what saying something like that does. Dudes either stop being interested or they think I’m just playing hard to get. But I’m not doing either. I just want to be real clear.
“Look at me, Santi.” I keep my eyes firmly on the wooden table. Malachi lowers his face near mine. “I’m serious, look at me.”
I look at his ear.
He groans. “At me, Santi, not behind me.”
“I was looking at you. At your ear,” I mumble, and finally stare into his eyes. I open mine real big so he can tell I see him.
“You’re such a smart-ass.” He laughs and the fist in my chest curls open its fingers. I take a breath.
“Listen, I don’t know what other guys thought. And if you point them out to me when we get back, I’ll make sure they never think it again.” His voice is dead serious and I believe him. Malachi would fight people for me. I know that already.
“But I’m not those guys. I wanted to talk to you before I knew you had a kid. Wanted to talk to you after you did all your hair flipping, ‘we ain’t friends,’ finger waving—”
“I never waved my finger!”
“—teeth sucking, eye rolling, hip switching, lip pursing, locker-door slamming. All of that was like a damn beautiful dance and I was drawn all the way in. And cool, you don’t want to have sex. You’ve told me you want to take it slow and I get it. But, I been wanting to talk to you since the beginning.”
“Just talk?” I raise an eyebrow, and flip my hair, and wave my finger.
Malachi grins and ducks his head. “I mean, you know you fine! At first, I wouldn’t have been mad at you if you wanted to do more than talk,” he says. “But now, I know my day is better because you are in it and I want to keep you there. I hope I make your day better, too.”