Commitment (14 page)

“Yeah, he has this tendency to get verbose when he’s in his cups,” Brian said. “But the sentiment is appreciated.”

They all took a swig and for a moment, there was quiet.
Brian had called her at work with the news and Riley had left early to join him and his study group for drinks and dinner at a bar near the university.

She knew all of them well by now – Malik, the tall, dark
-skinned bald
West African, Serena the
boriqua
who was the first in her family to go to college let alone make it to law school; and Terence, a Wisconsin native who’d come to New York for law school and been excited to meet other
smart, driven African
Americans and not be considered a curiosity.

Over the time that she and Brian had been together, they’d all become good friends because Riley recognized them: young, ambitious, upwardly-mobile people-of-color who lived in a world of ideas and achievement.
Many a Sunday afternoon had been spent with this group, eating Indian food and arguing good-naturedly about politics, religion and the state of the world. Afterwards, they went off to study and Riley returned to her writing, which was always enriched by her time spent with them. Even though Brian and his friends had chosen different paths in law school and no longer took the same classes, they’d remained thick as thieves.

“You okay?” Brian leaned toward her. “I know you have lots of work to do, so if you have to leave early . . .”

“Oh
hells
no,” Serena said. “She is staying right here and taking one for the team. If we can blow off all our work, Riley can too.”

“That’s right,” Terence said.
“At least
she’s already gainfully employed.”

Riley smiled at them. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Let’s get another round and order up some of those greasy
Buffalo
wings.”

“Now you’re talking.”

Brian kissed her on the neck. “Thank you,” he
said
.

It was past midnight when the party finally broke up and Riley stood a little apart, watching as Brian and his friends said their boozy goodbyes. She’d managed to sober up just a little by drinking only water for the last couple hours, but Brian was still pretty wasted and unsteady on his feet.

“You up to the train?” she asked him once everyone else had gone.
“Or should I call you a cab?”

“Call
me
a cab?” Brian said, leaning on her. “I’m coming with you. We can continue the celebration back at your place.”

Riley’s heart pounded against her ribs. She had only been back from L.A. for a week and hadn’t
slept
with Brian since. It had been easy to avoid him, breaking a couple of their dates because she had to play catch-up at work. And he’d been stressed about law review, so hadn’t wanted to sleep over.

She had the engagement ring in her apartment, stuffed in the back of one of her dresser drawers where she didn’t have to look at it and face the confusion and longing that just the sight of it aroused.

Shawn had called her once since the trip and was a little different on the phone, like he was holding back.
T
he
careful distance in his voice made the
call unsatisfying and they’d only spoken for about five minutes.

“You’re in no shape for that kind of ‘celebrating’,” Riley finally managed, putting an arm about Brian’s
shoulder
.

“Want to bet?”

Brian turned her in his arms and kissed her, and she responded more out of habit than
genuine
feeling but he was too inebriated to notice.

“Okay, come home with me, but I think we both better try to get some rest. Tomorrow all eyes are going to be on you.”

Within minutes of them getting into her apartment, Brian was passed out on the sofa. Riley sighed with relief and removed his shoes, peeling his sweatshirt over his head and covering him with an afghan. In bed, she reached for her phone, wanting to hear Shawn’s voice. Instead, she dialed Tracy’s number on the off chance that she was still awake. She was, though barely.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I just got back from a little party celebrating Brian making president of law review.”

“Don’t sound so excited.”

“I am excited for him. He’s worked very hard for this. You should have seen him
. .
.”

Tracy said nothing.

“I really wanted this for him,” Riley said.

“And he got it, so what’s the problem?”

“The problem is I have to tell him. About Shawn.”

“Not that I’m condoning what went on before, but why would you tell him now? Unless you’re planning on accepting Shawn’s proposal.”

“I can’t accept his proposal,” Riley snapped. “I barely know him.
He barely knows me.
It would be crazy.”

“Then I guess I don’t see the problem. And I definitely don’t see why you would play true confessions all of sudden either.”

All or nothing
, Shawn had said. All or
nothing
.

“Are you saying I should break it off with Shawn?”

“Don’t sound so hysterical at the thought, Riley.
Y
ou’re
asking me to give you answers that only you have,” Tracy said yawning.

“No, I’m asking you to tell me what you think.”

“What I think . . .” Tracy yawned again, “. . . is that Shawn is crazy about you. It was practically coming out of his pores. And I think you feel the
same way about him. Where that leaves you, I have no idea.”

“Me neither,” Riley said, her voice barely audible.

“Look, get some sleep. You don’t have to decide anything at one in the morning.”

After Tracy hung up, Riley lay awake for hours more, thinking about her non-response when Brian kissed her. She tried to recall the early days when she and Brian lay in the sun in Central Park, hands at their sides, fingers
barely t
ouching
and it was effortless. Those memories – and dozens more like it – were easy to summon but the feelings that once came along with them were gone.

g

“Are you hung over?” Brian asked from across the breakfast table. “Because I feel like shit.”

Riley smiled. “No, I’m not hung over.”

Riley watched him as he went to get more milk from the refrigerator for his cereal. He was good-looking in a pretty-boy GQ sort of way. Café au lait complexion
, light brown eyes
and curly hair that made people constantly question his racial heritage. That and the fact that he sounded like exactly what he was – a kid who’d grown up in the privileged community of Darien, Connecticut and not seen a moments hardship in his entire twenty-six years.

He tended to overcompensate for his lack of street cred by wearing a lot of Afrocentric symbols, like the Black Power fist carved in wood that hung on a leather string around his neck. His physical appearance was not what had attracted her to him.
In fact, he was totally against type for her.

They’d met at a lecture she’d audited at his law school titled “Race and the Criminal Justice System
.”
He was the only person in the lecture who didn’t just ask questions of the professor, but issued challenges and engaged in spirited debate. And you got the sense he wasn’t showing off, but was genuinely present and thinking critically when everyone else just wanted to make sure they took good notes.

“I emailed Lorna,” he said now. “About law review.”

Riley looked down into her breakfast. Lorna. That’s right. Brian and her mother had their own relationship as well, forged over time mostly through email and the occasional phone call. They’d only met once, but on that occasion – a lunch at Sylvia’s – they had slipped easily into conversation
like old friends.

“What did she say?”

“She said she wasn’t surprised. Which I appreciated since everyone in my family seemed to think I must have paid someone off.”

Brian came from a family of well-heeled trial lawyers. His father, brother and sister were all members of the bar, high-powered types who didn’t understand Brian’s fascination with the messier side of the law like civil rights cases and the death penalty. He was snide when he talked about them but only because it hurt so much that he had yet to gain their respect. Riley knew all this about him and more because he was more than a “boyfriend”, he was one of h
er best friends. A confidante.
And yet she’d lied to him so convincingly and for so long.

“Brian,” she said abruptly.
“I have something to tell you.”

He leaned forward. “Okay?” Something in her voice must have told him it was important because he put down his spoon and gave her his
full
attention.

g

It shamed her to admit it, but her first reaction to
Brian’s
departure was relief.
And then she’d simply gotten up from the breakfast table, showered, dressed for work and left. On the subway, she sat staring, strangely devoid of emotion. She’d just ended a yearlong relationship; surely
that
should have commanded more feeling than it had.

When she got to work, Riley was hoping that Shawn had call
ed and left voicemail, but there was nothing there.
Occasionally he did that,
leaving her messages that
were almost stream of consciousness in nature – disjointed and exhausted, talking about his schedule or the view from his hotel room. Just the sound of his voice made things better. When he spoke to her, even if it was just a voicemail message, his tone was always different than it was with other people; deeper, richer and more intimate. And when they were together, he leaned in ever so slightly, completely focused on only her when she spoke to him
, making her feel like she was the only person in the world
.

Things like this were difficult to explain but they tugged at something deep inside her that n
o one had ever touched before, as though she was tethered to him with an invisible string. Brian had been a buffer to all that. Without him, honestly, she was
feeling
a little frightened and completely exposed.

She dumped her things on the chair next to her desk and sat. She’d promised Tracy a phone call, but reliving the scene with Brian felt like more than she could handle right now.
The look on his face, the sound in his voice when she admitted that she’d deceived him for more than nine months.

No, not Tracy, not now.
She would call her mother instead, make small talk, get caught up, and fill the silence so she wouldn’t think so damn much.

Lorna picked up the phone after only two rings, sounding like she was in a good mood and Riley hesitated for a moment before speaking, making sure her tone was carefully neutral.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Riley? Did you get my message?”

“No, what’s going on?”

“Nothing urgent. I have a symposium at Columbia next week and I wanted us to have lunch or something. Maybe I
’ll
take Brian out to celebrate his news.”

Her mother was a Sociology professor at the same college Riley and Tracy had attended upstate. Her expertise was Women’s Studies and she was one of only a handful of remaining true radical feminists. All over the country she was in demand for speeches and presentations about feminism, but, as she was always telling Riley, these days it was more because of the ‘freak factor’ than anything else.

“I’m sure he would love that
,
Mom.”

“You sound distracted. What’s wrong?”

Never mind Tracy, her mother had the original bullshit-o-meter – it only ever took her a couple of syllables to hear when something wasn’t right.
And the fact that she’d called her ‘Mom’ was a dead giveaway.

“I don’t know that you could say something is
wrong
exactly,” Riley stalled.

There was no reply for a moment. She could hear her mother exhaling and pictured her sitting at the kitchen counter, one of her Marlboros suspended between her lips, her eyes squinting against the smoke. It was
morning
,
well before she customarily walked over to the college,
so
Lorna
would be wearing one of those dashikis Riley had always hated, blue jeans and her braids pulled back into a loose ponytail with some escapees falling about her heart-shaped face.

Riley didn’t look at all like her mother, so she assumed she resembled
her father. Not that she had too many memories of him. Her parents had never married and her father was nothing more than a vague and blurry picture in her mind. Sometimes she thought she remembered a mocha-skinned man with curly hair and slightly crooked front teeth, throwing her into the air, kissing her face, giving her chocolate and Archie comic books.