"She's something else," Iz says.
"Yeah, she is, but remember-you don't fuck your students," I can't resist saying.
Iz squints his irritation at me.
"I meant Bristol."
I pause in stuffing the proposal into my saddlebag.
"Even though she's white, you mean?" I douse the words with sarcasm.
"Look, you know I have nothing against white people."
"Except when they date black people, right?"
"It's just not my preference." Exasperation cracks his calm façade. "I get to have my preferences."
"You think I give a damn what color you prefer? Date Smurfette, go blue for all I care. It's you somehow actually buying into the bullshit logic that me being with Bris is a disservice to our community that bothers me."
"All right. You want the real?" He sits back and crosses thickly muscled arms over his broad chest. "I don't think they can ever really understand us or be trusted. I'm not sure you can be white in this country and not somehow be infected by its racial history, by the collective superiority and privilege ingrained in them from birth."
"I'm not spending my life with a collective history." I brush my hand impatiently over the layer of hair I keep so low it's barely there. "I'm in love with one woman, who happens to be white and has never given me reason not to trust her, at least not the way you mean."
"And what if she slipped up and called somebody a nigger one day?" he demands. "How would you feel then?"
I remember Bristol's dismay the day we met when Skeet used that word. It was the first of many conversations we've had about the things most people avoid. Even the night we got engaged, we were still having those conversations, and we'll probably have them for the rest of our lives.
"Bristol would never use that word. If anything, she can't believe we use it to each other. If it were up to her, it would be eradicated and no one could ever use it again."
"Never say never. Do you expect her to truly understand the struggle of a black man in America?"
"That's a fair question," I reply, glad Bristol and I already discussed this. "I don't know that I do expect her to understand everything about the struggle. I know she'll always sympathize, but maybe there will be things she doesn't completely get."
"And you can live with that?" Doubt settles on his face.
"You know better than anyone how hard it can be for us." I shake my head. "I have to ask myself when I come home, do I want someone who completely understands the struggle? Or someone who completely understands me? Someone I can't wait to come home to, someone who makes me laugh on the hardest days of my life? Every single decision isn't filtered through my race. Love isn't."
Iz doesn't look away from me the whole time I'm talking, and I feel like maybe some of what I say lands. He finally clears his throat and shrugs.
"I would just always wonder if I could ever really know a white woman, if she could ever really know me." He shakes his head. "Enough to trust her with my life? With my children?"
"And did your wife really know you? I bet she didn't think you would cheat on her, but you did, and from what I can tell, you're both black."
A heavy silence follows my words, and as we sit in it, Iz slowly raises his eyes.
"I didn't cheat on her." He twists the grim line of his mouth around the words. "She cheated on me."
Damn. Now I feel like a real asshole.
"I'm sorry about that. I assumed . . ." I leave not-well-enough alone and press on. "I do know I don't ever have to worry about that and neither does Bristol. It's nothing to do with our race. I would never do that to her, and I know she would never do that to me. Have you never been captivated by someone so much that the rest of your life without them seems . . . empty? Not even your ex?"
For a moment, Iz's eyes stray to the door Callie recently walked through, and then he clears his throat.
"No, it wasn't like that with us." His tone remains even, but his lips twitch. "But it sounds a lot like being pussy-whipped."
Hearing that word takes me back to the debate with Clem Ford. I shift in my seat a little.
"I, um, I didn't get to thank you for helping Bris talk me down the other night."
"You mean when you almost ripped Clem Ford's throat out?" Iz asks with a mockery of calm. "Sure. Any time. At least I know you have your own money and won't need our bail fund. What the hell were you thinking?"
"He disrespected Bristol." Anger surges through my veins again at the memory.
"Well I hope she's worth going to prison for because you ever pull some shit like that again, that's exactly where you'll end up. You're lucky he didn't press charges."
"Oh, he has no desire to see me in jail yet." My bark of a laugh is certain and cynical. "He's just getting started with me and wouldn't want to end the game this soon."
I grab my saddlebag and motorcycle helmet, determined not to be late for my appointment with Bristol and Charm to finally figure out this book deal.
"Bristol helped me realize that I represent everything he thinks should be impossible. Based on his metrics, I shouldn't exist, much less get to choose someone from his race to spend my life with." I stand and level a disgusted look at him. "I guess that's at least one thing you two agree on."
"Who the hell do you think you are comparing me to that backwards cretin?" Iz demands, indignation pinching his strong features.
"I got a front row seat to your brand of selective progressivism," I fire back. "And at the end of the day, you both judge people you don't know anything about by the color of their skin."
"If I'm such a bigot," Iz snaps, anger darkening his eyes and hardening his jaw, "then why the hell are you still working with me?"
"Because the woman I love is wiser than both of us," I throw back at him. "She cares enough about people who don't even look like her to set aside the gross offense of your discrimination because she believes we can help them more working together than apart."
A silence falls after my bellowed words, a silence teeming with the complexity of our admiration for each other, with our resentment, our shared convictions, our differences. I watch the anger melt from his face in phases, loosening feature by feature until all that's left is a milder expression and uncertainty.
"She used my own words on me, you know," he says, a wry grin tipping the edge of his stern mouth.
"What?" I shift my bag on my shoulder, needing to go but wanting to hear what he has to say. I keep hoping he'll say something to demonstrate his perspective is changing.
"Your girl, Bristol. She had me sign her copy of Virus in a section on inherent bias."
We share a grin because sometimes all you can do is laugh at the things Bristol does.
"She introduced herself as ‘Grip's Bristol,'" he says, his grin deepening to a full-on smile.
Damn right she's Grip's Bristol.
"Oh yeah?"
"And she said if I hurt you again, I'd have to deal with her." His smile dies off, and he looks down at the mess of papers littering his desk. "I didn't mean to hurt-"
"You didn't hurt me."
It's a lie. He did hurt me, but I haven't given any man the satisfaction of truly hurting me since my dad walked away without looking back. I won't let Iz know he held that place in my life until he said those things about Bristol.
"You're just a smart guy with great ideas," I continue, stiffening the words around any emotion left over. "I thought you were something that you're not. My bad, not yours."
If I didn't know Iz better, didn't know he doesn't give a damn about anyone's opinion, I'd think that's guilt in his eyes. Whatever it is, he blinks and it's gone.
"Yeah, well, okay. Good." He takes his glasses off to polish them on the edge of his Howard University sweatshirt. "Well I'm still glad you'll continue with my organization now that the semester is over. I'm ready to get out of the classroom and back to the real grind."
"Of course. The cause is bigger than you and me."
"Right." He twists his lips around, frowns, and releases a sigh. "Look, tomorrow's the exam, and I assume you're leaving the city after."
"Yeah, though we're actually keeping our place here for another six-month lease. Bris has some Broadway stuff popping off for one of her clients, and we love the city, love our place. We'll be back and forth."
"You still want that spot on the board of directors?" he asks as if he doesn't care, but somehow I know he does.
"Yeah, sure." I shrug like I don't care, but I want on that board like nobody's business. "If you think it could work."
"My assistant will send you details about our next meeting and papers you need to sign." He hesitates before going on. "I know it's . . . well, I'm sorry I was a . . . uh, disappointment to you, Grip."