Chapter 13: Reckoning
I open the door to Kennedy’s residence to see a group of faces I do not recognize. From the crowd I hear, “Surprise!” and I see Kennedy, Nina, Blake, and JJ come from the back of the group with a cake full of candles.
“Welcome to your party.” Blake says. I examine the room, comforted with the familiar faces of friends and close bonds, yet shaken by the background of onlookers that seem to have inhabited the same space.
“Who are all these people?” I ask Kennedy.
“Friends of Blake and JJ,” he says, forcibly smiling and gesturing the background to invade the comfort of the foreground of familiarity.
“This is all great…please excuse me…work clothes,” I lied to escape the crowd, and drift to the back room of Kennedy’s house I usually stayed in whenever he and I would go out and I would crash here. I found some casual, comfortable clothes I left in a drawer and breathed in the last twenty minutes.
I heard the door close; I jump up to see Nina.
“I had no hand in the group of unknowns.”
Shaking from laughter, Nina and I reflect on our discord for new faces and unfamiliarity.
“I have a surprise I wanted to reveal to you first, before I told Kennedy and the others,” she whispers. “I’m moving to Atlanta.”
The shock hit me like a new fine black man at a northern state school. Nina trying something different, especially on the scale of living and location was a total surprise.
“What inspired this?” I asked, examining her from head to toe.
“I have been privately working from Jackson via networking with this company here. They offered me a better package deal, a house, a company car, and a increase in pay if I relocated. I never had much incentive to leave before, even when I accepted the job, I made my position quite clear I was not going to move. However, I just never had any incentive to leave. Now, I do, and I know you and Kennedy stay here, and I have been here a couple of times and the city has grown on me.”
We exchanged a hug that felt more of a shattering of a curse. Nina was evolving in front of my eyes. She was beginning to break her guard of unfamiliarity and her being in a crowd that was new to her was an additional testimony to her growth. I was forced to glance at her another time and then reflect on my reaction to the crowd, waiting for me outside the safety of the room.
It was time for a change of my traditional self, it was time for growth. I took Nina’s hand and we headed back into the party.
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