Nine
“Don’t ever let a man show any signs of violence around you,” my daddy told me when I came back home during winter break my freshman year of college and confessed that I’d finally acquired my first boyfriend. “Not even as a joke. He uses his fists to solve a problem his mind should be able to handle, you leave him, and you don’t look back, ’cause one day, he might decide you’re the problem. And your daddy doesn’t want to get locked away for murder, you understand?”
My father never hit my mother, but he showed his contempt in other ways: birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays during which he expected to be celebrated but routinely neglected her, temper tantrums thrown about herdisrespectwhen she didn’t jump to attend to his every need. For him, the line was clear: he would never raise a hand against her. As long as he did that, he was a good man, and my mother agreed.
I thought that Eric was a good man. On the surface, he had all the markers of one: an educational background that promised financial stability, a close-knit family, the kind of homegrown chivalry that dictated that he bring flowers to a first date. My father thought he was a good man too. The first time I came crying to him—becauseEric had called meselfishand threatened to leave me for considering an offer to attend my dream training program—my father warned me that my ambitions, while nice, would limit my romantic options and that good men like my boyfriend, who would be fine with my stubborn insistence against “continuing his legacy” with children and my constant need for schooling, were hard to come by. When I caught Eric flirting with one of his female coworkers over text and he claimed to feelneglected, my father insisted that, well, men were weak to sins of the flesh, and it was my job to keep him satisfied or be content to watch him stray.
It was all bullshit. A part of me knew that even then, but I buried those voices down deep and did what I was told: trusted and believed. Eric was too stressed by his postdoc to cook, so I made sure to meal prep for two and keep the fridge stocked on the weeks when I was on service in the intensive care unit. Eric wanted a woman who prioritized him, so I neglected my friendships in favor of his and ended our relationship with a circle significantly smaller than the one with which I’d entered it. Eric hated when I cried, claimed that my tears weremanipulative, and so when I couldn’t hold back my frustration and hurt I cloistered myself in the bathroom, gripped the edges of the sink, and waited for my sobs to subside. I didn’t question if I deserved comfort, only why I was so weak as to want it.
Which was probably why I felt so tense, receiving it from Julian now.
“How’re you feeling?” Julian asks when we pull into his building’s garage.
I lean back against the headrest and close my eyes.
“Like I need a stiff drink and a day-long nap,” I say.
“Lucky for you, I make a pretty good whiskey sour,” Julian says. He snaps the locks open. “You want to try one?”
I do. I follow him through his heated garage and into the mirrored elevator. Julian’s apartment is on the twenty-fourth floor, and the first thing I notice when he swings the door open is its dazzling view of the city.
“Wow,” I say as I step inside. The Chicago skyline glitters outside his window, the lake a dark expanse just beyond it. I imagine the view in the daytime is just as breathtaking. “You wake up to this every day?”
Julian snorts as he helps me out of my coat. I wander farther in, marveling at the beauty of this space. It’s not a sparse bachelor pad, nor is it outfitted in the typical neutral palette favored by most young professionals. Instead, the walls are a rich, dark navy blue, the decor a mixture of golds, greens, and burnt oranges. A healthy fiddle-leaf fig tree sits in a carved concrete pot by the window, and a patchwork throw is tossed artfully over the back of a plush couch. And then there’s the bookcase, cherrywood, floor to ceiling, and filled to the brim.
It’s the home of an established man who has clear and distinct tastes. Difficult to form at his age, and yet he’s managed.
At his kitchen island, Julian is assembling supplies to make our drinks.
“Make yourself at home,” he instructs.
I slip off my boots, arrange them carefully by the door.
“Your place is beautiful,” I say. It’s the truth. Julian’s apartment is imbued with so much personality that I feel like I know him better just by standing in it. I bend to examine a small polished wooden sculpture that resembles a fertility goddess, listening to the steady clink of glasses hitting granite, the slosh of his shaker. There is art hidden throughout his living room: a painting in the undercarriage of his coffee table, a bronze figure tucked under the lamp on awalnut buffet. Prints and pieces in eclectic frames, sizes, and subjects cover the wall across from the television.
My gaze snaps to one, a medium-sized canvas adorned by an ornate gold frame. It’s a different style than the rest, impressionistic and dreamily depicted. The label tells me that it was painted by one Ifeoma Nwagwu in oil, and the title isTogether. It features four teenagers, two girls and two boys. The first girl, sharp featured and brown skinned with thick wavy hair that skims past her hips, grins knowingly at her companions: a laughing woman with thick golden waves; a pale, slight man with a face like an angel and shoulder-length black hair; and a man with dark springy curls and smiling eyes. Their clothes are light and airy, white linen shirts and dresses that shroud them in innocence and meld into a sky bleached by a noonday sun.
It takes me a moment to realize why they look familiar.
“Is this you?” I ask, pointing to one of the figures.
Julian moves so silently that I don’t realize he is right next to me until I feel the coolness of a glass being pressed into my hand.
“Yes,” he says.
“That’s Leila,” I realize, looking at the blonde. “And these ones…”
“Old friends. This is Rose,” Julian says softly, pointing to the other woman. His finger drifts, then lingers on the man. “Alphonse.”
“Together,” I read the title out loud.
“I commissioned it a few years back,” Julian says. “The artist has this exceptional ability to capture personality and movement. She had an exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York last year.”
I marvel at the effort he’s taken. It’s clear these people are important to Julian, and that makes me want to know them.
“Tell me about them,” I say.
Julian sips his drink, and I echo him, lifting my glass to my lips. His whiskey sour is sweet, tangy, and concerningly drinkable.