When You Come to Me (3 page)

“You look hungry,” he told her, approaching her slowly.

“Can’t,” she said, clearing her throat. “I have to work…”

“And what time do you get off?”

“Six o’clock,” she said with a sigh.

She watched him check his watch and say, “Hm, that’s funny…because it’s six-thirty…so…do you always sleep through your shift?”

#

They approached a green Ford Explorer, parked on the side of the library and he let her in first, shutting the door behind her. The sun was setting to the right of the sky, turning its hue into a milky coral. He entered behind the tan wheel thereafter, fumbling with his keys.

"So, where are we eating?" she asked.

He looked in her direction and grinned. "Don't know, really...most times I just like to get in my car and see where my subconscious takes me..."

She figured he would say something like that. She didn't have the brainpower to respond in a witty way.

He took off in the direction of downtown. She couldn’t really afford going out to dinner. She’d made a pact to herself to not spend money on trivial things. But she felt that this Brandon Greene was a different breed. His appearance gave way to his fortunate financial upbringing. He wore a crisp buttoned-down sky blue shirt, rolled at the sleeves, bringing out the color of his eyes. And the smell of his proximity caught her attention…the freshly scented cologne.

His appearance, in addition to the music that came out of his stereo, was most certainly a lot different than the white boys she saw around her parts. He exuded a special air of sophistication, old-world handsomeness; his black hair parted and styled and gelled just right, his beige skin a rather warm complexion.

#

“Jack and Martha Greene,” Brandon told her over cheeseburgers downtown. They watched the sun set over the magnolias that lined the street; the breeze was light, the sky a fiery red, the sound of the traffic, whirring by slowly, minute chatter surrounding them. “That sounds very pretentious doesn’t it?”

Natalie nodded. “Sounds very
white
,” she said coyly, licking ketchup off of her brown fingers.

He laughed. “Yea, that too.”

Brandon Greene's strong northern accent, reverberating off the depth of tone in his voice, didn’t seem to be affected by southern culture and its heavy drawl. It was more articulate, sharper, more refined.

The level of comfort she felt around him was alarmingly instant, and she arched her eyebrow at the feeling that this oatmeal-skinned northerner was an old friend, someone whose smile she’d always loved, because it always eased her.

“Helen…Helen Chandler.”

He looked at her, as though he were waiting for her to continue. “So…there’s no father?”

Natalie shook her head. “Nope. Hasn’t been since I was a child. Mama kicked his alcoholic behind out and that’s the last that I saw of him.”

She realized then that that was the first time she’d spoken of her father since it happened…to anyone.

He didn’t say anything, only nodded.

“Brothers or sisters?” she asked him, catching the light of the fading sun along his cheek.

He wiped the remains of spilled mustard from the noticeable cleft in his chin and said, “Three brothers…I’m the youngest…Mark, John and Matthew…I’m the only one that wasn’t named after a gospel.”

She giggled.

“Spiritual?”

“Hardly…Catholic by birth…parents kind of strict, turned me off of it as I got older. Still believe in God, though.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“God-fearing girl…”

“I can tell that…that’s not what I meant,” he told her. “Any brothers or sisters?”

“Um, two sisters. Maya, the youngest and the coolest and the prettiest, and Sidney…who’s older than me, who’s more of the homemaker type, lives in Columbia…can cook up a storm. I chose to stay closer to home.”

“And that’s because…?”

“I love my mama…”

“A good reason,” he said. “So, I’m guessing that you’re her favorite?”

“Arguably so…”

“Oh, of course. Middle name?”

“Savannah.”

“’Natalie Savannah…let me guess…it’s your grandmother’s name?”

“Nope. It’s where my mother was born. And it’s Spanish…my…my father was Dominican.”

“Ah! So close,” he said with the defeated snap of his fingers.

“And your middle name?”

“David…no real significance…except for the fact that…“

“That it came from the Old Testament…” Natalie finished for him, smiling.

“Precisely! Couldn’t escape it.”

They ended up walking down a quiet sidewalk after dinner in silence. She was surprised that he was so willing to pay for each of their meals. His instant generosity was duly noted. With the sun completely hidden, and the moonlight prevalent, Natalie Chandler and Brandon Greene, reveled in their newly formed alignment, while she became a walking paranoia, expecting all eyes to be on her and this Caucasian boy, questioning why they interacted then. The chilly breeze brought the her closer to him, and Brandon, broad-shouldered and vertically intimidating, became a good source of warmth.

He looked down at her as she rubbed her hands up and down her arms.

“I’m sensing that you’re cold…”

Natalie nodded, laughed a little. “Is it that obvious?”

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you to put clothes on when you leave the house?”

Yes, she felt shameful. The day had been warm and she’d stepped out of her dorm room that afternoon before work, with nothing more on than a small, fitted t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

Brandon Greene clicked his teeth, rolled his big blue eyes, and removed his black nylon jacket from his shoulders.

“Here,” he offered to her.

“I’m fine,” she told him.

“You’re shaking,” he observed. “Take the jacket…”

She huffed, took it from his hands and wrapped the garment around her slender body that smelled strongly of him, and laughed inside at its size and the way it loosely hung off of her dainty shoulders.

“Great, now I can freeze…”

“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling the jacket closer to her body, grinning.

“So…you can be funny too?”

“When I want to be,” she admitted, sucking in her bottom lip slightly.

“I didn’t take you for a funny girl…”

“Like I said, I can be when I want to be...and you don’t know me…I could be the funniest person you’ve ever seen…”

“I find that hard to believe…funny people can’t be quiet people…and you are definitely a quiet person…”

“You don’t know me…” She repeated it this time, hoping that he allowed it to sink in.

“Hell, that doesn’t matter,” he told her. “It’s in your eyes…”

#

He offered her ice cream at Sarah’s on Birch Tree, and following several refusals, she gave into those blue eyes, hidden beneath a flap of black hair caught in a whirring breeze. And they sat on a bench beneath a streetlight, the air, cooling, Brandon’s warmth nearby, the smell of food, filling her nostrils.

Brandon’s cellular phone vibrated then, and after saying, “Excuse me,” politely, he flipped the device open, cleared his throat and answered, “Hello? I’m downtown…on Birch Tree…yes…yes…I’m with a friend…why does it matter who I’m with? No, you don’t know who this friend is…no, it’s not a girl…yes…yes, Sophia, my God, yes…[Brandon shrunk into a little ball then, his broad shoulders rolled forward, indicating that he was most certainly getting an earful]…Sophia, I…yes, Sophia…I will pick you up in a little while…I don’t care…I don’t care if you stay the night…don’t you have class in the morning? Holy shit, Sophia, I swear…okay…okay…we can talk about it in a little while…yes, I promise…I’ll call you when I’m on my way…yes…Goddamnit, Sophia…yes…I—I love you too…goodbye…”

When he replaced the phone in his pocket, he looked at Natalie.

“Sophia?” she asked.

He nodded, sighed heavily, and reached for his keys. “Jeez, you catch on so quickly…”

“Last time I checked, I didn’t have a penis…”

“I didn’t think pretty, innocent freshman girls were allowed to say that word…”

She pursed her lips and balled her hand into a fist, threatening to hit him. He flinched slightly and only laughed at her.

“Sorry about that,” he told her. “If I even mentioned the name
Natalie
, she would have flipped…I’ll tell you now, I don’t have very many girl friends because of her…”

“Well,” Natalie sighed, playing with the remains of her melted vanilla cake cone. “This was fun while it lasted, right?”

Natalie got to her feet, tossed the rest of her cone in the trash can nearby, and dusted off her bottom.

“Do you mind giving me a ride? Or will Sophia have a heart attack? If she calls again, I can do a mean man’s voice…”

He laughed. “Hopefully, that won’t be necessary…I can definitely take you home…”

The green Explorer pulled up to Allen dormitory and he killed the engine.

Looking at her, Brandon said, “Would you like me to walk you up?”

She smiled, and whispered, “So chivalry isn’t dead…”

“I’m halfway decent, I suppose…I can park and we can walk...”

“Why don’t we just call it a night here?”

He sighed. His eyes indicated that he still wanted to push the issue; instead, he flopped back into his leather seat, gripped the steering wheel and nodded.

“You independent girls make me sick,” he chuckled. “You make the guys that actually want to do something for you look bad…”

She opened the door to his car, and stepped out slowly, retrieving her bag in the process. She gave him an expression of a solid thank you and a solid goodbye, figuring in her mind that this would be the last time she’d see this person.

“Goodnight, Brandon,” she’d said quietly, smiling softly at him.

“Natalie,” he’d returned, obviously reading her expression, knowing.

#

The December frostbitten air kept her inside more often, and she found it a struggle to go to class each morning. The cold weather simply made her uncomfortable. She was relieved when final exams had passed, anticipating the moment when she could return home to Decatur, to her family, to comfort, to safety, to a honey cured ham, sweet potato pie, and collard greens, to slinky red stockings with each family members name on them written in black permanent marker hanging over a humble fireplace, to an off-key rendition of “Silent Night” provided by her drunken Uncle Joe, to helping her younger cousins put out cookies and milk for Santa, and reading them a story before bed, hoping that they slept through the entire night.

Natalie became friends with three girls who lived on the same floor as she shortly after midterms were done. She knew that they weren’t the kind of friends that would last her, and she could easily admit that their childish antics, especially in the pranks that they played on the boys that lived below them, would be something she wouldn’t be able to stand in the long run. But Brie, short, big-headed and authoritative, Kina, wild and flirtatious, and Jasmine, big, loud, and entertaining, gave her enough laughs that could last her the rest of the year, and always encouraged her to dress better, wear a little make-up on her plain brown face, and never wasted time picking on her taste in R&B.

Yes, at times, they could be irritating, yes, they stayed in her room, more and longer than she wanted them to, and they invited the attention of too many boys. Nevertheless, they were fun to be around, kept her on her toes, kept her from calling her mama every five seconds, kept her submersed in her cultural upbringing, kept her from being lonely.

“Come with us, Nat,” Kina encouraged, busting into her room one Saturday night.

Brie followed shortly after. “Yes, finals are over…so now you have no excuses…”

There was a Christmas party after finals, at an apartment five minutes from campus. It was a part of Athens she’d only heard about but never, in her wildest dreams, expected to be. The area, not only served as a breeding ground for its vivacious and slightly dangerous drunken college fools, of any race, but served as a hotspot for law enforcement, who always seemed to get a kick out of breaking up as many parties as possible. A weekend didn’t go by where her three hall mates returned to Allen with a riveting story about how they got chased by these guys or that group of guys, or how they barely escaped the cops’ clutches.

The three girls, all dressed and ready to go, had to drag her out her dorm room.

"Damn it, Natalie, just come on," Jasmine said. "You'll have fun, I promise...and we won't let anything bad happen to you..."

She wasn’t sure why she gave into them that night or why she felt bold enough to steal Sammy’s slinky black shirt from her closet. It was the same shirt that Sammy had been wearing at the last party she’d gone to.

Jasmine, the only one of them that had a car, liked her music loud, loved to scream obscene rap music at the top of her lungs, and prided herself in being the largest of them. She was the dancer of them, could easily lure any black boy in this side of Georgia into her plus size web, using her curves and her shining smile to her advantage, wowing them with her knowledge of rap music.

For a week, Jas had bragged about being friends with the DJ, who was spinning at the party; some amazingly talented white boy who talked the slang, loved the music, and wasn’t too bad to look at. Jas admitted that she’d met him awhile ago, at another party before Fall Break. She had expressed her love of rap, he had concurred, and a quick musical connection had been born.

That was the night that Natalie met Scotland Kelly, a soft-spoken, curly-headed something, with a slender frame, and a southern slouch. He’d come from behind the turntables that night, had removed his ridiculously large headphones from his ears, had shaken her hand firmly, smiling his pretty white bread smile.

“Natalie, nice to meet you, pretty girl,” he’d said.

They called him Scotty, and he was known at all the black parties as “DJ K”, and she learned that he got hired on a regular basis.

Scotty, from Memphis, was an old junior, had just turned twenty-two that November, and the sweetest drawl escaped his sandy-bearded mouth.

He was funny, flirted easily with Jas, and Natalie took a liking to him instantly, though she watched his interaction with Jas from afar.