Infinite Us(37)

"The same dreams you were telling me about? With the redhead and the janitor?"

"No. It's different, somewhere older, something I can't remember nearly as well … "

"The dream doesn't matter, sugar. Just the mantra. What is it?"

When I tried to recall the dream, the details got fuzzy. There were only minute flashes of memory that seemed clear-there'd been a night wind and a purple sky. There'd been a boy, the one whose eyes I was seeing through, and a girl I-he-loved, more than anything, and there had been a promise that stuck, something around which their world-and mine, by extension- pivoted. Over and over, it had planted itself inside my heart.

"With everything I am." I said that over the rim of my mug. The warmth from the hot liquid heated my skin as Effie looked back at me, waiting for an explanation I wasn't sure I could give her. "I don't know what it means." I took a sip, watched her do the same. "Will it work?"

Effie polished off her tea and smiled, motioning back toward the floor and the assortment of rugs and blankets and throw pillows assembled that made for a comfortable place to focus and meditate. "It's a start at least." 

We settled back down on the floor facing each other and at Effie's urging I let the words collect in my mind, pushing them past my lips soft but focused.

"With everything I am," I said under my breath, like a whisper meant only for my ears. Maybe it was remembered hope. Maybe it was a promise made decades before that meant something then. Whatever it was, I took it for my own, not really sure who it should be meant for-the man in my dreams or the man who liked to pretend I didn't matter at all.

"With everything I am," I thought, letting the silence move around me, letting my breath and energy and the collection of thoughts and moments lull me into another time, another space. I'd found my center and it brought me to the past.



Washington D.C.



Isaac's face took my attention for most of the weekend. It was a sad state, really and one that hadn't gone unnoticed.

I shifted my skirt, laying my forehead on my arm as I hid among the stacks, wondering how I could have been such an idiot to let it go so far. I was here only because the library felt safe to me. There was a warmth to this place that had nothing to do with the stacked stone fireplaces in the four sitting areas or the ceilings that pitched high, fifty feet or more, and several stories that seemed to stretch out into the clouds visible through the glass at the top of the ceiling. The place was old, nearly as old as the Lincoln University itself. And books? Thousands upon thousands that took up ten floors, every shelf stacked with hundreds of books, some right of the presses, some older than my folks.

It felt like a castle and me, tiny speck of a girl that I was, I felt safe here, away from the raised eyebrows of the city where women still weren't so commonplace around our university or any others housed in D.C. Here where it didn't matter if you were rich or poor, black or white, male or female.

Where there weren't bastards who lost their temper and struck out.

"Don't let anyone keep your eyes on the ground, my little pepper." Dad had said that so often it had become something I repeated to myself as a reminder of what was expected of me. My parents expected me to be great, but I demanded perfection of myself. It was stupid really, but I wanted to make them proud. That perfection had been expected by Trent as well. And like the fool I was, I let him go on thinking it was alright to demand that perfection from me. But his idea of perfect and mine weren't the same. They never would be.

My lip still throbbed and when I wiped away blood, my anger rose something fierce. It became a ridiculous pulse of rage that I tried to keep down, deep inside my chest where all my worries and sorrows lived. It would not do to let my anger overtake me. If it did, then he had won, he had made me into something I didn't want to be. Weak. Hysterical. Out of control.

But it was damn hard reminding myself of that fact.

My parents would be upset, not at me, of course. But upset that I had allowed myself to be so upset, to fall short of expectations. Trent had been sure to remind me of that. There were always expectations.

"Your father won't want Senator Mansfield to catch wind of this unpleasantness, Riley. You know that as well as I do. With my father working on the President's staff, there's just too much riding on getting the Voting Rights Act passed and we've all worked so hard. Your father, too. It would be a shame to let any other concerns worry your father or our office when they should all be focused on other things. Important things."

He was a coward. Trent was also full of himself. My father wouldn't care what Trent's father thought of him putting his hands on me. My father was a big man with a quick fuse when tested and I was his only daughter. He'd throttle Trent without thinking twice about it. But then, that was the problem, wasn't it? Dad had worked tirelessly helping Mansfield get the Voting Rights Act on the President's desk. It was monumental. Essential. I needed to remember that before I went off telling him that Trent Dexter had smacked me when I told him I wanted to end things between us.