30 Love, page 1
30 Love
A Novel
Ran Walker
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
© 2012, 2019 Randolph Walker, Jr.
* * *
Image used courtesy of CreateHerStock.com
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author. The author may be reached via his website, www.ranwalker.com.
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45 Alternate Press, LLC
Hampton, Virginia
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
20. Epilogue
Other Books By Ran Walker
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
I’m not totally sure, but I sense that our parents intended for us to be twins. Lailah and I were born on the same day in the same hospital, while our parents, who’ve been best friends since childhood, anxiously awaited our arrivals. Lailah came first, beating me into this world by nearly two hours, but to her credit, she’s never held this over my head.
Because our mothers picked out our names, we were nearly given the same one. My name is Dominic Parker, and Lailah’s full name is Dominique Lailah Landfair. Thank goodness our fathers intervened and suggested that we each be called by other names, for the sake of avoiding confusion, because if our mothers had had their way, the only distinction in the pronunciation of our two names would have been whether a person chose to emphasize the “ih” sound in my name, as opposed to the “ee” sound in hers. Instead, I got the nickname of Dizzy, which my father gave me because he said I had these huge cheeks (plus, pops is a serious jazz aficionado), and Lailah’s parents started calling her by her middle name. One would think they could have just given us different names, rather than complicate the situation.
An even more interesting tidbit is that Lailah and I have been having joint birthday parties ever since we were three years old, just like real twins. At first our parents tried to throw us our own individual parties at different times on the same day, but according to my mother, all I could do was talk about Lailah’s party, with no interest whatsoever in my own, and to hear Lailah’s mom tell it, it was the same way on her end, as well. We ended up sharing our birthday parties up until we graduated from Daily High School. From there, things changed a bit.
We both ended up moving from Daily, Mississippi, to Atlanta, Georgia, for college, although we ended up at different institutions. From there, we tried celebrating our birthday together freshman year, but after that, it seemed that the idea of doing such a thing had already run its course. It wasn’t until this year that I suggested to Lailah that we restore our old ritual and go out to dinner to celebrate our thirtieth birthday. She agreed without fanfare.
I guess if she had better options, she probably would have exercised them.
It’s easy to think that a boy and a girl who had spent so much time around each other would have naturally gone the way of Love and Basketball and Brown Sugar by trying to hook up at some point. I was definitely down with the idea, but apparently Lailah wasn’t. I can’t lie, though. I have had a crush on her since we started kindergarten, although I never hinted at it until we were in the eleventh grade.
I remember leaning against my battered old Honda Accord, trying to keep warm, while my nerves buzzed so hard that I thought I was going to pass out. I had been hinting at my feelings for weeks using a variety of different methods, but that particular day, with all of my earlier attempts having failed, I couldn’t take it any more. I broke down and spilled my guts on why I thought we should be together.
She didn’t look as surprised as I thought she would be, but her words were distant and calculated, nonetheless. “Dizzy, you’re my best friend. Best friend,” she emphasized. “If we start dating and it doesn’t work out, then where will that leave us? I want to always have you in my life, and the only way to guarantee that is not to complicate things.”
I was floored by her comments. I even rationalized against what she was saying.
“We’re just taking our friendship to a new level. That’s all. We won’t stop being friends just because we open this new door and walk through it.”
Then she used the words that caused me to acquiesce: “I love you, and I want to always have you in my life. I value you more than having you as just my boyfriend.”
All I could hear was “I love you,” and I was happy just hearing that part. From that point forward, I never pushed the issue. Just knowing that she loved me was enough for me to not rock the boat.
While I was at Ellison-Wright College and she was over at Georgia State University, we had a solitary moment that tested this idea of us just being friends and nothing more. It was during our junior years, shortly after Ellison-Wright’s homecoming game, and Lailah had just come out of a bad relationship two weeks earlier (I had been single since the beginning of the semester). She was pretty heartbroken and wrestling with whether or not she should forgive her ex-boyfriend for cheating on her with a girl who had just crossed into his sister sorority. Halfway through our conversation, she decided to take a shower, so I just sat on the bed in her room, waiting for her to return.
When she finally came through the door fifteen minutes later, her petite caramel complexion wrapped in a large beach towel, droplets of water still peppering her shoulders and legs, my jaw dropped. When she saw my reaction, she smiled.
“Dayum!” I said, not even attempting to avert my eyes. I didn’t feel that there was a reason to, especially since it was no secret that I was attracted to her and had been harboring suppressed feelings for quite a few years.
“You’ve never seen me naked, have you?” she asked casually.
“Not like this. All grown up.”
“Remember when we used to play behind your house and you would show me yours and I would show you mine?”
I couldn’t pull the memory to mind, but I nodded anyway.
“There have been times that I wondered what you looked like naked,” she said.
I couldn’t tell if she was just teasing me or if she was trying to get it on and poppin’ in that room.
“All you have to do is just ask,” I said.
“We definitely don’t need to open that door.”
“Okay, but if we’re as close as you say we are, you should be able to walk around naked in front of me.”
I was just saying something to be coy, but when she faced me, unwrapped her towel, and dropped it to the floor, standing before me completely naked, I was speechless. My eyes went straight to her firm breasts and silver dollar-sized chocolate areolas, nipples growing erect in the cool room. I scanned down her lean frame to the trimmed upside down triangle of hair that rested atop the intersection of her thighs. And just as soon as she revealed herself to me, she reached for a large t-shirt and pulled it down over herself, covering up all of the treasures I had just laid my eyes upon.
“Whoa!” I said. “Back track. Pon de replay! Let me see that again!”
“Once is enough,” she said, with a smirk on her face, clearly satisfied by my expression.
I tried again to negotiate, sounding almost like a little kid in the process. “Please show me again. Just one more time!”
She laughed. “You’re funny.”
Turning on the television atop her dresser, she walked over to the bed I was sitting on and lay down next to me. “Can you rub my back?”
“Sure,” I responded.
I reached over and grabbed some lotion from her dresser, moistened my hands, and then slowly eased them over her sexy ass onto her lower back. In the back of my mind, I felt that if I did her back right, she might let me massage a bit more of her. As she lay there with my hands sweeping softly across her shoulder blades and onto the muscles on either side of her backbone, she talked about how being alone sucked, about how relationships were never what they were supposed to be, and about how what we had was the purest form of love that she believed she could experience.
“Maybe we should get together romantically,” I said, careful to make it sound like I was only proposing something that was logical and not necessarily emotionally based.
“I can’t lie and say that I haven’t thought about it, but I don’t want to be lying here again on some night in the future, feeling the pain that I’m feeling right now, and not have anyone to comfort me and tell me that everything is going to be okay. You can’t be both things to me, and I don’t want to lose your friendship, so I think we should keep things the way they are.”
I sighed, but continued to knead the muscles in her back. “But what if you never meet a man as good for you as I am? Be honest. We get each other more than anyone else possibly could. I think the longer we play this game, the more time we’re gonna waste.”
“I’m sure you’ll graduate and find the perfect woma
That’s when I said it: “I’ll make a deal with you. If we’re both single and have no potential prospects on the horizon when we turn thirty, then we should marry each other.”
She slid away from my hands and sat up on the bed. “I seriously doubt that either of us will be single by the time we’re thirty. That’s ten years. A lot can happen in all of that time.”
“That’s all the more reason to agree to it then. I’m serious. If we’ve made it that far in our lives and both come up empty-handed, then that would be proof positive that we’re supposed to be together.”
She sat quietly, pondering this.
“I don’t want to be old when I start a family,” I added. “And from what you’ve told me, you don’t either.”
I sat watching her, wondering what she was thinking, and then she slowly leaned over and kissed me softly on the lips. It was simple, and might have even been platonic, but it was amazing all the same. Looking directly into my eyes, she said, “If we’re still available by the time we turn thirty, I will definitely marry you.”
I remember feeling a glow overtake my body—even though the likelihood of our getting married was so remote that I figured there would be a black president of the United States before such a thing occurred.
As if to yank a little bit of the wind from my sails, she added, “I don’t plan on being single when I turn thirty, though.”
That was all ten years ago, and I’m not sure if Lailah even remembers it. I would like to believe that she does and that I’m not the only one who has replayed what happened that night at various points throughout these past ten years. So tonight after dinner, I will propose to her. I’m open to the possibility of a life with her (and always have been), but I realize that it takes two for that.
We will just have to see what happens.
2
I had originally planned on doing something far more elaborate for my proposal, but when I considered that there was a looming possibility she would say “no,” I cowered and opted for something that was ninety-five percent more low key.
I drive by her house around 6:30 on Thursday evening, wearing a pair of dark jeans, a white button-up, and a navy blue blazer. As soon as she lets me in, she comments on how I’m dressed.
“You must have something special planned tonight,” she says, smiling and looking me up and down.
“Can’t a brotha throw on a coat to take his best friend out for her birthday? I was trying not to look like a damn jheri curl baybo up in this piece.”
She laughs, placing her hand against my chest. I love it when she does that.
“Well, do I need to change then?” she asks, pointing to her ribbed tank-top, tight jeans, and a pair of stylish wine colored heels that match her purse.
“You look good to me. Plus, it’s your birthday! Wear what the hell you want to wear.”
“It’s your birthday, too, Dizzy! I don’t even know why I expected you to come by here looking more casual, maybe wearing a t-shirt and a pair of Jordans.”
“Well, these are Cole Haan with Nike Air soles,” I say, modeling the shoe as if I’m a sales rep for Nike. “Comfort and style!”
She laughs, reaching for her purse. “As long as you don’t have me walking all over Atlanta tonight, I should be okay in these.”
“Nice pedicure.”
“You know a sister couldn’t go out on her birthday without getting her toe game straight.”
“You actually have very nice feet,” I say. This comment is not original to our conversations, but I know she can appreciate it more now that she is preparing to strut through the city.
“Thanks,” she responds. “I’m thinking about getting a tattoo on top of my foot.”
“A tattoo of what?”
“I’m thinking a lotus or something like that.”
“One of those Buddhist things, I’m guessing.”
She smiles. “You should try it sometime. Maybe you wouldn’t be so stressed.”
“I’m working on it. Maybe if I found the right woman I wouldn’t be so stressed.”
I toss out the comment as a hint—a bit of foreshadowing, if you will. She just touches my chest again and grabs her purse.
We hop in my Jeep Wrangler, which I’m very thankful hasn’t given me any problems this month. I open the door for her, and in spite of her heels, she hops up into the vehicle with hardly any effort, leaning over to crack open my door for me.
“Ready to kick off number thirty?” I ask.
“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? I mean, who would think that we’d still be celebrating our birthdays together after all of these years.”
“That’s not a bad thing. In fact, I can’t think of any other way that I’d rather spend it.”
“You’re sweet,” she says. “Now let’s go and grab dinner. A sista is starting to get hungry!”
Lailah had made reservations at Houston’s, her favorite restaurant in Buckhead. It’s a place that I don’t eat at unless I’m with her. I prefer that rather nice assortment of wings offered by more Southwest Atlanta establishments like J. R. Crickets. I figure for the price of a meal at Houston’s I can get a whole heap of wings, fries, and drinks—plus a perfect view of whatever game is playing on the giant HD LED screens hanging around the restaurant. It’s paradise for a guy like me, but it’s not surprising that Houston’s won out tonight, though. I don’t think that Lailah would have ever forgiven me if I made her eat wings for her birthday and she ended up getting wing sauce on her clothes.
Thank goodness for the reservation, because without it, we would be at the end of a very long waiting list—which is a bit surprising to me since it’s a Thursday.
We are seated at a dimly lit booth in the back of the restaurant, and there are more than enough young professionals in here. I look down at my clothing and realize that I have accidentally put on the official uniform for single black men. Now I wish I had opted for the Jordans, just so that I wouldn’t look like another one of the buppie clones in here.
Lailah orders a filet mignon medium, and I order a well-done Ahi Tuna plate.
“Why do you like your steaks bloody?” I ask, messing with her.
“Medium is pink, not bloody. What you’re talking about is rare.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Are you serious? Don’t tell me you’re the kind of brotha who would ruin a fine cut of beef by overcooking it!”
“Don’t make this about me,” I say, laughing. “This is about you eating pink meat. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll eat pink meat, but not steak.”
“Dang, Dizzy!” Lailah squeals. “You are so crass!”
One of the perks of having known a person for your entire life is that you have a wide and complete understanding of the other person’s personality and you’re able to laugh off what might otherwise offend anyone else.
“Goony goo-goo!” I say playfully.
“Goony goo-goo, boo boo,” she responds, plucking my wrist with her nicely manicured nails.
“I’m convinced that we’re the only people who will ever get us.”
“Maybe,” she says, chuckling. “Remember back when we were little and we had an entire language worked out?”
“Yeah. I still can’t believe we could stretch that Eddie Murphy joke so far.”
“Well, we were creative back then.”
“Back then?” I say. “We’re still creative now, Miss Writer Extraordinaire.”
She smiles, lifting her glass of white zinfandel. “Well, let’s toast to it then. To remaining creative in this thirtieth year of life!”
