Let It Shine (6 page)

“They’ll likely be destroyed at a real sit-in,” she said.

He took her hand from where it rested on the counter and undid the small button at the base of her glove, and it was if that one flick of his finger released a torrent of tingling heat that spread from her wrist to her arm and through the rest of her body. “I can only be responsible for my own actions,” he said. “And I don’t want to be the man who shredded these dainty little things.” He pinched the fingertip of the glove and gave it a tug, and Sofie felt the responding pull between her thighs.

She should have grabbed her hand away from him then, as soon as that first bolt of pleasure went through her, but she simply stared up at him with wide eyes as he gave four more swift, gentle pulls and freed her hand from its encasement. He took the other hand, moving one step forward as he did, so that now the roughness of his denim pants rubbed against her knee as he worked.

Sofie knew he could see her hand shaking, and her chest rising and falling heavily, and the way her knees were pressed together. She was embarrassed, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t disappointed too when he pulled her second glove off the final digit, her pinky, and laid it down besides its mate.

She forced herself to look up at him, and was happy to see that his cheeks were flushed beneath his fading bruises. Ivan may have been cool now, but not so cool that she didn’t affect him, too. “Okay, we should go into the living room.”

She stood on wobbly legs and clicked after him across the tiled kitchen floor. “Should I take off my shoes, too?” she asked. It was a brazen thing to ask, but her fingers were still tingling from his touch.

Ivan stopped and looked back over his shoulder. His gaze fixed on her pointy black leather heels, then up her stocking leg until her skirt obstructed his view. His voice was low and his gaze intense when he answered, and his words made her throat go dry.

“Leave your heels on.”

Chapter 7

Half an hour later, they sat stiffly beside each other on the couch.

“It’s okay. I’m sure it happens to the best of boxers,” she said. Mortification clenched him by the back of the neck.

He hadn’t thought through the most important part of the training: pretending to hit her. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even bring himself to throw a fake, loose-fisted punch that he knew would miss her by a mile. Sofie had stood in front of him, eyes wide and lovely, lips soft and distracting, and his fists had hung limply at his side. And now they sat in awkward silence.

“This is ridiculous,” Ivan said. He grabbed Sofie’s hand and stood, pulling her up after him. When he turned she was giving him that ingénue look again, the one he usually only saw on the screen at the Saturday matinee. In the films, a look like that was an invitation, but he doubted Sofronia was offering him any such thing. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “First things first: you need to relax.” He gave her a gentle shake to loosen her muscles, which had tensed up as soon as he laid his hands on her. “You need to be a little soft to take a hit; leave a little give so the impact won’t hurt as much.”

He wished he had phrased it differently—thinking of the soft parts of Sofie was making him uncomfortably hard, and that wasn’t what this afternoon was supposed to be about.

She nodded, but the relaxation didn’t come. Instead, she started to tremble a little beneath his palms and her gaze dropped to the floor.

“No.” Ivan slid his fingers under her chin and lifted her head. He didn’t miss that her skin was smooth beneath his fingertips. “Maintain eye contact. If someone is about to hit you, you want to see it coming so you can act accordingly.”

“Okay.” She locked her gaze on his, and his stomach executed an unfamiliar twisting maneuver. It was a funny thing to look into a woman’s eyes like this. Intimate encounters were nothing new for him; ladies liked a guy who could hit and punch and dominate in the ring. Caveman attraction, and all that jazz. But no one had ever looked at him the way Sofie did, that’s for sure. Her eyes were full of contradictions: fear and longing, humor and distaste. Maybe he’d been wrong about the invitation. Maybe she was just waiting for his RSVP, like any proper lady would. Ivan’s groin tightened at the thought and wisps of desire feathered down his spine.

He slid one hand over the crisp fabric that nipped in at her shoulder and then his palm was on smooth, warm skin. He cradled the back of her neck, and the way the curls at her nape tickled his palm was enough to make him want to pull the pins out of her bun and dive his fingers into the soft mass. Instead he exhaled slowly and continued his instruction. “You can be stiff here.” He gave her neck a little squeeze. “And tuck in your chin. Yeah, like that. That way your head won’t snap back if you take one to the face.” He didn’t move his hand away; not just yet. Neither Jack nor any of the other boxers had ever touched him this gently during training, but this wasn’t the gym. This was Sofie, for Pete’s sake.

His other hand left her shoulder, ghosted past her breast, and rested on her stomach. “You should brace here, too, if someone hits you. That way the wind won’t get knocked out of you. A blow to the diaphragm while your stomach is soft can make you feel like you’re dying.”

He felt like he was dying, all right. Sofie still had her eyes locked on his, and her tongue slicked nervously over her lips. Her skin had gone hot beneath the fabric of her dress, and he could feel the way her heart was racing just above where his hand rested.

Ivan didn’t think. His fist tightened, twisting up the fabric under his hand and pulling Sofie two steps closer to him.

“Ivan.” His name was almost a question. What was the right answer? Damned if he knew.

“Last thing: roll with the punches. When something comes at you, you have to roll with it. Go in the same direction to lessen the impact.” His face was lowering as he spoke, his mouth on a slow collision course with hers. At the last minute, she turned her face to the side and back, leaving his mouth beside her ear. Disappointment rocked through him, but he said what any good trainer would say. “Good job. You’re a fast learner.”

Both of her hands came over his, pulling it closer to the soft curve of her belly. Her fingertips traced the indentations in his knuckles before she exhaled shakily and pushed his hand away. “You’re wrinkling my dress,” she whispered, then stepped back. “I should go.”

He moved away from her and she turned and marched away, hips swaying as she balanced on those pointy heels. She grabbed her bag and trotted down the hall. “Thank you very much for the lesson!” she called over her shoulder.

Ivan stood staring long after the door slammed. Sofie had learned to take a hit, so why was he the one left feeling punch drunk? He bounded up the stairs to change into his gym clothes. Only a long round with the heavy bag, and maybe a sparring match, would be able to rid him of the foolish notion that Sofie could ever be his.

Chapter 8

“They want to stop the rides,” Henrietta said when Sofie walked into the community center the following Monday. Sofie was supposed to be studying at the university, but she’d gotten off the bus early and come to the community center.

“Why,” she asked.

“Did you see what happened in Birmingham?” Henrietta asked. Sofie shook her head. “After beating those people half to death at the bus depot, they wouldn’t let them leave. They were trapped at the airport for hours with the same mob that attacked them because no flights would take them. It’s a miracle they got out of there, but now they’re not going to try to reach New Orleans.”

Sofie’s heart dropped. “But that means…”

“That means violence took the day,” David said, rubbing the crease between his eyes. He was sprawled in his chair, looking as tired as Sofie had ever seen him. “It means people will think that the movement can be stopped by bats and pipes and heartlessness.”

“Well, we have to do something,” Sofie said. David and Henrietta looked at her warily. After all, it was an un-Sofie-like thing to say. Heck, she was wary of herself these days. But that fire in her chest was going again, and the idea that was forming in her mind made more and more sense.

“Like what?” Henrietta asked.

“I’m feeling a mite peckish. I think I might take a trip downtown and order myself a nice hamburger.” Sofie pulled on her gloves and a memory flashed in her mind, of her and Ivan pretending to go into battle during one of their childhood games. Then the memory of him unbuttoning the very same gloves the day before. She’d been out with boys before, had kissed and fumbled and explored—even good girls did that. But the way Ivan touched her had seared into her. None of the other boys had ever made her feel like that, and that just added to her guilt, because none of them had looked like Ivan either.

What is wrong with me
? She couldn’t be entirely upset. Whatever this madness within her was, it was about to take her to the Special K diner, and that was exactly where she needed to be.

“Sofie, we aren’t prepared,” David said. “I know you’re upset right now, but flying off the handle isn’t going to change anything.”

“No, it’s not. But I’m tired of being afraid.” The words came out almost a shout, and she calmed herself. David wasn’t responsible for Jim Crow, or for the way her father tried to cut off everything he deemed bad about her, like eyes off a potato. “I’m tired of living like this,” she said more calmly. “And I refuse to let any bigot in Richmond sit and pat himself on the back and think for
one minute
that people like us got put in their place. I’m going, David. I’m a grown woman and I don’t need your permission to do as I wish.”

That thought was a revelation to her. She hated that her father was mad, but she only needed his love, not his permission. If he would deny her the former, well, that said more about him than it ever would about her.

“Well, you do need one thing from me,” David said.

“And what’s that?” Henrietta asked, standing beside Sofie. Her friend had put on her Jackie Kennedy sunglasses, which meant she was ready for serious business.

David held up his key ring and jingled it. “A ride.”

~~~

“Hell and damnation,” David said, as they walked into the popular Greek diner. Sofie knew he was more than nervous if he was getting biblical with his cursing.

Sofie noted with the bit of humor that was available through her fear that Elvis’s “It’s Now or Never” was playing on the jukebox when they walked in.

The place was packed, but they had just seen four men get up and leave the lunch counter from their perch outside. Purpose was the only thing that had carried Sofie in through the door after Henrietta, the support that kept her legs from wobbling and giving way as they approached the counter. The place was noisy, raucous, full of teenagers enjoying their weekend and families taking a break from a day of shopping downtown. The happy chatter got quieter as David took his seat. By the time Sofie dropped onto the round leather stool, a low, ugly murmur was going through the crowd, accentuated by the happy, tinkling piano of the Elvis song.

A man approached the counter, wiping his hands on his towel. Sofie’s body stiffened, and then she heard Ivan’s voice say “Relax,” and she did that to the best of her ability. She expected the man to yell at them, to look at them with derision, but instead his eyes were filled with sadness. “Please don’t do this. Not here,” he said. His voice was heavily accented and shaking, but not with anger.

Once when she was a girl, a carnival had come through town; only after Sofie had been strapped into the tilt-o-whirl did she see that the operator was a boy not much older than her. The same deep, primordial terror that her life may, indeed, be over pressed down on her as she sat at the counter. She began relisting the rules of a sit-in over and over in her mind in order to calm herself.

1.) Behave in a friendly manner.

“Can we get three coffees, please, sir?” Henrietta asked sweetly.

“I can’t,” the man said. “You know I can’t. Why you want to make my life hell?”

2.) Sit straight and always face the counter.

“Okay, we’re just going to read here until you change your mind,” David said with a smile. They remained silent then, each clutching a book they could use to study for finals. Sofie opened her book, but the words were so much gibberish, and she thought it would shake right out of her hands. She read the same line over and over because she didn’t think she’d be able to turn the page.

“I can’t let you stay,” the man said. Sofie heard the scrape of chairs as patrons stood up. “They’re gonna hurt me and they’re gonna hurt you. I don’t want things to be like this, but what can I do? I just came here a few years ago.”

And you already have a diner because you have blue eyes and light skin and can pass for one of them
, Sofie wanted to say. She knew the man was distraught, but that didn’t change the fact that she would not stand up.

3.) Don’t strike back if struck, or curse back if cursed upon.

“What do you niggers think you’re doing?” a voice said from behind them. “This ain’t Nashville.” She could feel the people coming up behind her and realized this was one thing they hadn’t practiced, this innate desire to turn and ward off a dangerous animal creeping up on you. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck, and when someone gripped her chair from behind, the word “Mama” was incomprehensibly heavy on her tongue. But her mother couldn’t help her.

David had repeated a version of Psalm 118 to them as they approached the diner, and Sofie let those words fortify her.
The Lord is for us. We shall not fear. What can man do to us?
The Lord is for us among those who help us; therefore, we shall look with satisfaction on those who hate us.

A bulky frame brushed past her left side and slid into the seat, and Sofie tensed, then relaxed, preparing for a blow. “Can I get a milkshake?” a familiar voice asked. “I know things are a little hectic, but I’ve had a day. A malted would be perfect.”

4) Don’t laugh out.