Identity, Mystique, and Coffee
311 Words
Later, after she’d changed into a flowy cotton dress and he’d finally fixed the screen door, they sat on her terrace drinking coffee. Jazz played softly from an old radio. A lazy breeze tugged at her hair.
He stared at her face—not inappropriately, just curiously. Trying to place her. Her skin was warm bronze, kissed by sun or ancestry or both. Her eyes held flecks of gold and mischief. Her nose was full, proud. Her hair, streaked with silver, fell in soft, coiled waves.
“I’ve been trying to figure it out,” he said, sipping. “What you are.”
She tilted her head. “Ah. The guessing game.”
“I mean, you could be—Italian? Dominican? I don’t know. Some kind of—”
“Exotic cocktail?” she finished, amused.
“I didn’t say that,” he laughed, a little embarrassed.
“You thought it.”
He shrugged. “Fair.”
She smiled and stretched her arms out lazily.
“Well, since you’re curious, I’m Black and Lebanese,” she said. “My mother was from Georgia. My father from Beirut. I was born under a hurricane, raised between the two.”
Julian blinked. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“You. Everything.” He paused, then muttered, “I guess it’s true what they say about—”
He stopped, suddenly sheepish. “About Black not… you know… cracking.”
She let out a laugh, deep and delicious.
“Say it, Julian. Say the thing you’re not supposed to say.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “No way. I’m not trying to get canceled in your garden.”
She leaned in, eyes glinting. “Darling, I’ve been called every name you’re afraid to say. It didn’t stop me then, and it sure as hell doesn’t now.”
- Writer
