Ridge
A short story excerpt by Amira Al Amin. A wedding gone wrong, until it goes right.
All rights are my own.
Ron nods, “I survived.”
​
“Peter or Vanderbilt?”
Ron raises her brows, surprised by her gaul, and then it erupts – the laughter needed to shatter the tension between them. It streams out of Ayla’s throat like a yelp and echoes through the clouds, over the moon, and ricochets right back to her chest, lifting her heart an inch from where it had deflated. “He still eats grilled cheese with peanut butter?”
​
“Only when he’s drunk.”
​
“He’s a fucking kid.” Ron laughs again, offering Ayla her joint. She glances at it, it's a few centimeters shorter than her pinkie. Ayla doesn’t smoke, that was true, but a lot of tonight has felt abnormal – such as getting married, or giving speeches, or crying in front of someone who isn’t her sister or Peter. But she shakes her head, knowing herself, this one feeling final to the both of them. “That’s tough, though. All Peter no vice.”
​
Ayla shrugs, but she knows what Ron’s referring to. To Peter’s inability to cook a legitimate meal unless prompted because he’s “a takeout guy”. To nights when he’ll watch MSNBC and feel like he can probe Ayla, to tell her more than ask about low Black voter turnout in elections, or how Atlanta is becoming more gentrified and that, in his eyes, is the beatification the city needs. To times when he’ll embarrass her around her family by referring to dressing as stuffing, or will vernacularly disguise Black people as African American, but only when he’s around African Americans. Yet she’ll appease him with apologies because he’s the odd one out for the first time in his life and doesn’t know or doesn’t care to assimilate, because he’s never had to.
​
“I think I just…” She slackens her body, leaning on the railing, “I just weighed my options. I could leave him the first time he did something stupid like…like when he asked Saprhine, my sister, if she washes her locks. Or when he said ‘blacks’ and didn’t stop until a month after we started dating. I could’ve left then, and really I wanted to, but Peter, he…he loves like no one I’ve ever met. Really, he loves me for things I’ve never been loved for before, because I think he understands me, and challenges me, and he lets himself be challenged, which I’m also shit at. I’m shit at challenging people and confronting people and I wish I were better at it but I’m not. And with Peter I don’t have to be, I don’t think, I think we just love each other through our growth.” She shrugs, “Two sides to a coin, I guess.” She pauses, realizing that she’s started smiling, and then she laughs, “Scott, though–”
​
“Scott.” Ron hisses as Ayla explains the sequence at the bar.
​
“I never met Scott until tonight,” Ron starts. “I had no idea who the fuck he was but he comes up to me, calls me boy, asks me where I’m at.” Ayla laughs, “Verbatim asks me ‘Where you ‘sposed to be at boy?’ And he laughs, and I’m like who the fuck is this white nigga talking to? But then I remember the function is caucasian, so I laugh to make him feel good then I tell him I’m a groomsmen and he starts laughing hard as shit, ‘till his face gets red, and he goes ‘I didn’t know Pete had a Black friend.’ And then he just leaves. Walks the fuck away. I didn’t even get the chance to tell him I’m a woman.”
​
Ayla nods, understanding. “He’s insane.”
​
“He’s insane.” Ron shakes her head. “But he doesn’t give a fuck. And all tonight I kept thinking about that and I’m like, I wish I could do that. To not give a fuck in any interaction I have. No matter what. And for it to never affect me.” She pauses. “Because him speaking to me like that will never bite him in the ass or something, he’ll just keep walking up to people and do whatever he wants, and then do it again and again and again.” She flicks her roach over the roof. “And it’ll never mean anything.”
​
Ayla lets a moment pass between them as if to give resonance to Ron, “But then you’d be a dick. And no one would like you.”
​
“And people would talk shit about me during a rooftop smoke sesh.” Ron nods, smiling, and Ayla laughs in agreement. “But then I would rule the world.”
​
“Yes. You would.” She nods, but words don’t have to be said, amity has been developed. There is nothing, Ayla realizes, more solidifying to people like them than the power of men like Scott. It ruins worlds and makes them, it kills people and it connects them, and tonight, on the roof, Ayla feels an allyship forming, like a scab over a laceration.
​
“Peter’s not the only person who will understand you.” Ron starts. “Or who will challenge you. At least I hope, but…I don’t know, I think…I don’t think he should get that much credit.”
​
Ayla laughs, “I hope.”
​
“And there’s three sides to a coin.” When Ayla doesn’t respond, she continues. “There’s the head and the tail,” Ayla nods. “And then the ridge. It’s the other side. So there’s three.”
​
Ayla shakes her head, “But it’s not a side, it's…the middle.”
​
“But sandwiches aren’t just two pieces of bread.” Ron argues. “There’s the center with the meat and sauce and vegetables that make it three dimensional.”
​
“But coins aren’t three dimensional.”
​
“They aren’t dimensional at all. Which is why they have a side.” Ron laughs to herself, “So Peter, he’s not just his good and his bad. There’s his third thing, his third side. Or I guess his third dimension if you wanna call it that.”
​
“Is that why…” She trails, almost letting her thought remain in its rumination. But satisfaction wins, “Is that why you two broke up? Because of his third thing?”
​
“I don’t think I ever found it.” Ron turns around so that her back is against the rail, “Peter’s just a guy. And he’s great, you know? He’s nice and he’s charismatic but I think when I dated him that I wanted him to be special. Like, I wanted him to change my world, and no man could’ve done that.” She looks down at her hands, clasped together against her stomach. “But I pushed him so hard to do it, in my head, that in reality I think I was pushing myself away. And then he dumped me and I was like…aw.” She shrugs. “And now I only fuck women.”
​
“So why are you a groomsman?” Another whisper of wind has passed, Ayla brushes her hair from her face. “Do you think?”
​
Ron is silent, staring straight ahead. Ayla watches her, her face unmoving save for her jaw that wiggles – the only inclination of her rumination. “Honestly. I think he wanted to see me again.” She doesn’t look at Ayla as she speaks. “I think he wanted to know we were cool. Which I mean he could’ve texted or called or, fuck, wrote a letter. And he did call – we caught up on the phone and shit and then he told me he was getting married. And he described you, you know, didn’t say anything physical, and the whole time I’m waiting to ask. So I ask. And he’s like ‘Yeah, she’s Black.’ And then I realized that he wouldn’t have called me or asked me if you weren’t.” She shrugs. “And I still worked in Savannah, didn’t have to travel too far. Free alcohol. Free entertainment. So I did it.”
​
“Wow.” Ayla blanches.
​
Ron nods. “And then a week later I called him back to ask why I’m a groomsmen and not just a guest at your wedding.”
​
“Right.”
​
“And he says he wants five. Which is weird to me.” She shrugs. “But he says it’s important to you.” Ron points her head towards Ayla. “And says he’ll pay for my suit.” She examines her suit, smiling at the cuffs. “He got it tailored to fit me and everything. And I figured if he cared that much about you to invite me to be his fifth groomsmen than you had to be someone he fucking loved. Plus I look good as shit in this suit and I want people to see it.”
​
Ayla does not answer at first, instead focusing on trying to fight her elation. But it’s her wedding day, she reminds herself, one of the days she’s expected to be happy. And this is the happiness she yearned for, the happiness she should be showing people, the happiness people would believe. “It’s my favorite number.” She steadies her voice enough to share, “It’s dumb, I just…it calms me down whenever I see it or think about it and I'll count sometimes when I feel overwhelmed. I didn’t think he’d remember something so stupid.”
​
“Maybe it isn’t stupid.” Ron suggests.
​
“Maybe,” Ayla murmurs, wiping her eyes. “Peter, he…he challenges me. And I don’t have a lot of people in my life who do that.” She admits. “I guess. I have people who criticize me and make me feel like shit but…I don’t gain anything from that.” She exhales, feeling the breath, small and tranquil, moving through her like a low tide. “He makes me feel like I'm worth it, like I’m worth being challenged. And that’s the most special thing I know.”