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“Justin! Oh, my God, I had no idea you were in town. If I had, even if I didn’t think you’d know where I live--and I have no idea how you found out, by the way--I’d have done something else with myself.” The black-haired girl in front of him laughed nervously, self-consciously. “It’s been so long.”
He stood in front of her door, looking down at her, letting his sexiest smile play on his lips, as the slim brown fingers on her right hand toyed with a necklace he recognized as one he’d given her. Yancey Jacobs was beautiful. The realization of that fact had always been with him, but until today, until he had seen her again for the first time in over three years, he had not fully appreciated it. She thought that she must look a mess, but to him, she had never looked more radiant. It was all he could do to keep from grabbing her and taking her into her bedroom. He wanted to be with her in a way that he had really missed. There would be time for that, of course.
“Yeah, it has. You look fine, Yancey. And I mean that,” he replied carefully, trying not to show in his voice any trace of the desire he felt.
“Thanks, Justin. You look good, too.”
They shared a quick smile and Justin looked over her head into her apartment. “Are you gonna make me stand out here while we talk?”
For a second he thought he saw panic on Yancey’s face. If it had been panic, she calmed enough to proffer another laugh, albeit a strained one. “Um, of course not. Come on in.”
There wasn't much by way of decoration but she had managed to make it comfortable and homely. The small apartment was also immaculate. She had always been overly concerned with the appearance of things. It had been one of the reasons they had broken up. Her concern with how they appeared to others had torn them apart. He thought she knew it; Justin had felt he had no reason to rub it in her face.
“It’s small, I know, but it works for us--me,” she corrected hurriedly. Justin caught the slip, but decided not to comment. It had been a while. He’d wait to question her about her personal life. If she had had other boyfriends that was fine, because he’d had other women. He wanted Yancey back, though, that was the difference. He didn’t want her with anyone else except him now. They’d get to that topic eventually, too.
“It’s fine. Looks great. I knew it’d be spotless, too. Everything in its place. You were always like that. A neat freak.” Justin took a seat in the middle of her couch and spread his arms over the back of it. She stood near the front door, her arms hugging her body. Her eyes darted to the hallway, just off to the side of the living room, and back to Justin.
“Come sit down. Let’s talk, okay?” He patted the space next to him. Reluctantly, with a slight frown invading her countenance, she moved towards him and sat. His right arm wrapped around her shoulder and he gave her a quick hug. “I didn’t get one of those from you when you opened the door. So, how’s everything?”
“It’s pretty much perfect,” she nodded, smiling slowly. “You?”
“Well, it’s as great as my life can get without you in it.”
Yancey groaned and started to ascend from her seat. “Justin, don’t start with me, especially not after all this time. You know I can’t go through that again--“
“Go through what, Yancey? Whatever problems we had were because of your own imagination. Every time I turned around, somebody was always looking at you, looking at me, talking about us and our relationship.” He winced as soon as the words left his mouth. He hadn’t meant to go there.
“They were!” she insisted forcefully. “Don’t sit there and act like we never had any problems because of them!”
“Who the fuck is “them”? Come on! There was no them. It was you, and the fact that you didn’t want to be with me.”
Yancey stared at him, her clear brown eyes shining with unexpected tears. “I didn’t want anything other than to be with you. You knew that.”
“No, I didn’t know that. If that’s the truth, than why couldn’t we work it out? I don’t even know why we’re arguing. I didn’t come back here to talk about some shit that went on three years ago. I want to get past that. I want to start over.”
Yancey lifted her left arm to check her watch. “I’ve got to get going, Justin. I haven’t even gotten dressed yet, and I have to be somewhere in about thirty minutes.”
“So you’re putting me out?”
“There’s no reason for you to stay,” she shrugged. “This whole thing, Justin? This ‘me and you’ thing? It’s nonexistent. Leave it alone.” With that she turned and disappeared into the hallway.
Justin closed his eyes when he heard a door shut. Why was she acting like this? He waited for ten minutes for her to come back out. She had substituted her red jogging pants and baby tee for a pair of blue denim cargo shorts and white Jackson State University t-shirt. A pair of startling white Nike Air Max and barely visible ankle socks now covered her once-bare feet. Yancey had donned a pair of sunglasses with a dark blue tint. Her long, thick black hair had been in a ponytail when she first opened the door for Justin, but now it hung freely down her back.
“Why are you still here? Didn’t I tell you we had nothing else to talk about?” It seemed that with her change of clothes, her attitude had also changed, and not for the better. “You’re going to make me late, Justin. I really have to go.”
“I’ll leave now, but I’m coming back. I’m going to be in town for a while, and I want to see you again.”
“Whatever.” She ushered him out the door of her apartment and locked it behind them. Yancey pulled her cell phone out of her purse and checked to see if she had missed any calls. She saw that she had one from her sister and made a note to call Angie back.
“Where are you going?”
“To see a man about a mule.”
Justin grunted unappreciatively at her way of telling him it was none of his business. He followed her to the elevator and outside into the apartment building’s parking lot. He did not walk with her to her car, but instead stopped at his own and watched her get into a silver Honda Accord. Yancey drove away without looking again in his direction.
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Yancey gripped the steering wheel, willing herself not to cry. It was all too much. Justin coming back to town, finding out where she lived (how, she had no idea), and appearing in front of her door. She had just moved back home six weeks ago, having lived in Mississippi’s capital city with her grandmother for the past three years.
At age twenty, one year younger than Justin, she thought she was doing rather well. She had graduated from high school in Unit, Tennessee, a small town just outside of Memphis, on her seventeenth birthday. From there, Yancey had advanced to Jackson State University, her grandmother and father's alma mater. Through sheer determination and will, she had maintained an ‘A’ average and graduated with an English degree in three years. Her plan was to go to law school, but she wanted to put away at least enough funds to cover her first semester.
She believed that everything she had she owed to her parents and maternal grandmother. They had stuck by her through a few very rough and challenging times and had not ventured to judge her even once. ‘Everybody makes mistakes,’ her grandmother had said. ‘It’s up to you to learn from them.’ Yancey vowed that she would never let anything keep her from reaching her goals. They shouldn’t, because she had already gone through some of the hardest times of her life, and she was making it.
Yancey drove into the Forest Hill community and turned into the driveway of her parents’ two-story redbrick home, the first house built in the neighborhood. She took a deep breath and turned off the engine. “Learn from my mistakes,” she repeated to herself as she walked up the steps of the home. After knocking twice, Yancey twisted the knob to the front door. “Mama? I’m here!”
She immediately heard the patter of small feet and turned to see advancing in her direction a fair-skinned boy, close to three years of age, with dark brown hair that threatened to curl at any moment cut close to his head. His thunderously dark blue eyes focused steadily on her as he ran.
She bent down and opened her arms to accept him, this child who reminded her so much of his father. “My baby,” she murmured, hugging him close to her body.
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