Between Lovers Read Online Free Page A

work.”
    She wants me to ask, but I don’t.
    With a wounded smile, she hand-combs her locks, untangles that hairstyle that started off as a sign of resistance, and still is, and she takes my running shoes from the closet, tosses them at my feet.
    She gently says, “Get dressed.”
    Â 
    Fog walks the streets. Dark skies give Oaktown that Seattle appeal.
    I have on black running tights, white T-shirt, gray St. Patrick’s Day 10K sweatshirt. She wears blue tights and a black hooded sweat top, a red scarf over her golden hair.
    We take a slow jog out of the Waterfront, by all the gift shops, head through the light fog. Rows of warehouses that are being converted into lofts line the streets. All in the name of profit and gentrification, the reversal of the White Flight is in progress. The homeless are out peddling Street Spirit papers for a buck a pop. Some are sleeping on the oil-stained pavement while people pass by in super-size SUVs and foreign cars that cost more than a house in the ‘burbs of Atlanta, Georgia. The dirt poor, the filthy rich, all live a paper cup away from each other in the land of perpetual oxymorons.
    I say, “You want me to meet this chick—”
    â€œDon’t say chick. That’s a misogynistic word.”
    â€œNicer than what I usually call her.”
    â€œWhich is disrespectful. Yeah, I think meeting will benefit us all.”
    â€œSo, this thing with her is pretty serious?”
    She smiles because I’ve given up the silent treatment. “It’s serious. There’s more to it.”
    Acid swirls in my belly.
    Nicole goes on, “I think we can resolve this situation.”
    â€œMore like what?” I ask. “What more is there?”
    â€œâ€˜We ... just more.” She has a look that tells me this is deeper than it seems, but can’t tell me all, not right now. She says, “Let’s talk while we run.”
    We take the incline up Broadway, my mind trying to react to what she just asked me about meeting her soft-legged lover, whirring and clicking and whirring as we jog by the Probation Department. We come up on a red light and stretch some more while we wait for it to change. The signal makes a coo-coo, coo-coo, coo-coo sound when it changes to green, that good old audio signal for the blind folks heading north and south. It chirps like a sweet bird going east and west, so we know we have the right-of-way and it’s okay to get back to running north toward freedom.
    Before we make a step, a Soul Train of impatient drivers almost mows us down.
    We jump back. Both of us almost get hit. That lets me know that both of our minds are elsewhere.
    Nicole says, “Be careful here, sweetie. This is where all the assholes rush to get on the Tube.”
    Someone driving a black car with a rainbow flag in its window slows and allows us to cross.
    I run behind Nicole. Check out the fluid movement of her thighs. Seven years ago they weren’t so firm. Back then she had a whacked Atlantic Star hairdo that hung over one eye and she looked like Janet Jackson, not the Velvet Rope version, but the chubby-faced Penny on Good Times version. Now her belly is flat and the muscles in her calves rise and fall, lines in her hamstrings appear, her butt tightens; all of that shows how much she’s been running, doing aerobics, hiking up every hill she can find.
    It fucks with me. I try not to, don’t want to, but it fucks with me and I can’t help thinking about her being naked with another woman. Keep thinking about all the videos I’ve seen with women serving women satisfaction, but refuse to see Nicole in that light, in that life. I want to believe that they sit around baking cookies, knitting sweaters, and watching Lifetime Television for Women.
    Those silver bracelets jingle as she gets a little ahead of me, not much. My shoes crunch potato chip bags and golden leaves. Buses spit black clouds of carbon monoxide in our