Reunion in paradise

Exotic Bali is the perfect place to stage a wedding. If ambitious attorney Zena Shaw has her way, it’ll also be the perfect place to prevent one. Zena loves her younger sister too much to watch her rush into a marriage she’ll later regret. But Zena’s mission hits an obstacle in the form of gorgeous Adan Douglass, the groom-to-be’s brother—and the man who once broke Zena’s heart.

Adan was just a college kid when he chose career ambition over love, but years later he regrets it. Now he’s hoping to persuade the beautiful workaholic to join him at their siblings’ union...and think about rekindling their own. From stunning beaches to magnificent temples, he’ll show her everything this lush island has to offer—and hope these magical nights are only the beginning of forever...

She opened her eyes to see him, to confirm that this was him and look at Adan as he kissed her so passionately.

And he was there. Adan was before her with his eyes closed and joy written all over his face.

Twinkling or sparkling behind his right ear caught Zena’s eye. She refocused and saw something that looked like fireworks, but then she knew it couldn’t be, so she broke the lip-lock from Adan and ordered him to turn around.

“Look! Look!” she screamed, pointing at the shining, clear black night.

As soon as Adan turned, in one second there was a flicker and pop, and two shooting stars raced across the sky.

“Did you see that? Did you see that?” Zena rushed out, still in shock at what she’d just seen.

“Yes! I did! I did! I think it was a shooting star—two shooting stars!” Adan said with his voice half-confused or in awe.

“Oh my God! I can’t believe we just saw that!” Zena was ecstatic then and jumping in the sand. She turned to Adan and said with significant cadence, “We just saw that. We just saw that together. Right as we kissed.”

Dear Reader,

If we’re lucky, our first love is a mirror to self. He or she comes into our lives when we are at our most honest, vulnerable and open. If we’re really lucky, like Zena and Adan, that love endures and never leaves us.

Enjoy this intimate narrative of the power of first love and the humble prayer of its return. Escape to the wonder of Bali, Indonesia, with Zena and Adan where they must find their way to a kind of emotional intimacy that promises such an amazing gift of love to us all.

In celebration of love,

Grace O.

Under the Bali Moon
Grace Octavia

www.millsandboon.co.uk

GRACE OCTAVIA is a native of Long Island and a graduate of New York University. She also completed her PhD in English at Georgia State University. A proud sister of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, she is also a member of the Sigma Tau Delta National English Honor Society. The former editor of Rolling Out Urbanstyle Weekly, she lives in Atlanta, GA. She enjoys international travel, hiking, cooking and being with her girlfriends. She currently teaches writing at Spelman College.

To my first love, who helped me discover my first true self and grow boundlessly from there.

Acknowledgments

My dedicated editor, Glenda Howard, whose help and guidance through this process was appreciated and invaluable.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Part II

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Copyright

Part I

Total Eclipse

Chapter 1

Attorney Zena Nefertiti Shaw looked like a million bucks in the courtroom that afternoon. She was wearing burgundy, thin-heeled suede pumps with matching straps and golden buckles at the ankles that made her feet arch downward with unmistakable femininity. A fitted merlot skirt paired with a dramatic black suit jacket that was gathered in pleats in the small of her back showed off her tiny waist and flat stomach. Her long black hair was pressed and hanging down her back with a subtle curl at the bottom. When Zena moved, her hair floated as if an invisible fan was blowing in her direction for dramatic allure.

In the courtroom in downtown Atlanta, Zena knew she looked good while delivering her closing argument.

“In closing, dear jury, what I want to ask all of you, each of you, is, what would you want if the one you love, the person who stood before man, his family and friends and your family and friends, the church and God in heaven and swore to always love you back, dishonored the innocence of your vows with the unspeakable behaviors Mr. Rayland has imposed upon my client’s ever-delicate heart?” Zena posed, releasing the stare that had been locked upon the jury and turning to face Tanisha Rayland, her thirty-seven-year-old client who was at the center of a very ugly and controversial divorce from her bed-hopping R & B husband of twelve years.

Zena stood with her profile parallel to the jury as she gazed at Tanisha. She wanted them to see the connection she had with this woman. Wanted them to see what sympathy for this woman could look like. She folded her arms and exhaled long and deep and dramatically.

“As you all learned throughout these proceedings, and as this woman had to relive, Mrs. Rayland’s college sweetheart slept with and impregnated the eighteen-year-old they hired to enter their home to care for their children. And that’s only the worst part. Maybe. Because in twelve years of marriage, Mrs. Rayland can’t recall one year when she wasn’t sharing her husband’s affections with another woman. Especially not after the fame came to him. Not after the singing career she helped him build took off. After the money started rolling in. Well, then she had to share him with three and four young women at a time.”

A tear fell from Tanisha’s left eye. She was a woman of striking beauty. Light skin with a red undertone that made her ethnicity unclear until she opened her mouth and the South Side of Chicago came out. Full, pouty lips. Long eyelashes. If it wasn’t for the weight she’d put on after having five children—she’d confessed to Zena that she had the last three with hopes of keeping her husband at home and other women away from him—she might look like one of the video vixens with whom Mr. Rayland enjoyed his many indiscretions. And even with the weight, Zena thought Tanisha could easily find work as a full-figured model.

Zena exhaled again, adding hyperbole to Tanisha’s tears. She turned back to the jury. As she rolled her eyes along her path, she got a glimpse of Mr. Rayland sitting beside his attorney on the other side of the courtroom. His head was hung low and twisting back and forth in embarrassment or disagreement, as if Zena had shone a light on his deepest, darkest secret. When the divorce proceedings had started, days ago, he’d arrived with huge diamonds in his ears, a pernicious smile and a Rolex on his wrist that seemed to connote this would be a breeze; his wealth would prevail. He was confident. He stated he would beat the entitlement case. But after days in the courtroom, he didn’t look so sure of this articulation. That wicked smile was so yesterday. Also gone were the diamond earrings. That Rolex was a ghost. He was in his simplest form now. A man without airs. Humbled.

Eyes on the jury, Zena added, “And the torment didn’t stop with the many affairs. Add in the drugs, the weeks away from home, the year Mr. Rayland was in jail and my client had to care for their five children alone, and the lies.” She pursed her lips. Gave the jury time to recall these infractions she’d been feeding them over the past few days. Time to be disgusted with the images of Mr. Rayland she’d so carefully painted. “The lies. Lie after lie.” She glanced back at Tanisha and her tears. “So, I ask again, what would you want in return? What should she want? Can we really place limitations on what this woman deserves when all she wants is enough support to care for her children in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed, a return on her investment in her husband and to stay in the home where she’s been living for the last six years? Respectfully, in contrast with how Mr. Rayland’s attorneys have painted this woman’s request, this isn’t about anger or being vindictive or asking for someone to support her. This is about justice. It’s about making things right.”

Amid grumbles from her opposition, Zena paused and straightened her suit jacket. She leaned against the jury box to appear more vulnerable, as if she was one of them sharing some secret. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I implore you to return to this room with a righteous verdict. To do what’s fair. What’s just. Award Mrs. Tanisha Rayland twenty-five million dollars in entitlements as she dissolves ties from Mr. Rayland and her sad past with him. Release her, so she can move on. Do what you would want done. What she deserves.”

Zena bowed deeply toward the jury, and she actually saw some heads nod back to her. One older woman who’d always smiled at her looked as if she was about to clap. Zena turned back to her seat and winked at her client as she walked toward her. When she sat and grabbed Tanisha’s hand beneath the table to reassure her of their success, Zena’s assistant and best friend, Malak, who was sitting in the front row, leaned forward smiling.

“This one is in the bag, Z!” Malak cheered in a low voice.

“I hope you’re right,” Zena whispered, eyeing Mr. Rayland’s attorney, who was standing before the jury, ready to present his closing arguments before the jury would return to their room to vote. Zena really did need to have this one in the bag. When Tanisha left her husband, he froze all of her accounts and she had little money to cover Zena’s high hourly fee. Since news of the Raylands’ pending divorce broke, the hungry media made a gossip sensation of Tanisha’s life and split from the R & B crooner many saw as a stable and loving husband—at least that’s how his team had been portraying him in all the gossip rags. Zena had to play offense and defense, creating a team for her client, which now included her firm’s personal publicist, security staff member and photographer. This robbed her other cases of valuable time—and her bank account of precious dollars. Zena told herself this was the cost of maintaining her firm’s reputation. All of this while praying a big payday would come when, as Malak predicted, “this one is in the bag.”

“Don’t worry,” Zena said to Tanisha, but it was clear she was also trying to encourage herself. “Everything will be fine.”

* * *

Luckily, Malak’s psychic sensibilities were better than her jet-black-and-blond ombré weave.

After just twenty minutes of deliberating, the jury returned with a verdict that made a rich woman of Zena’s client. She’d be able to pay Zena’s fees and those of her associates and, more importantly, move on with her life.

Moving on for Zena, though, meant her usual posttrial trip to Margarita Town with Malak in tow. After debriefing Tanisha on their next steps and assuring her this was “really it—she’d won,” Zena hopped into a Town Car waiting outside the courthouse and quietly thanked God for the magical mix of tequila and strawberry flavoring awaiting her arrival at Margarita Town. It would wash away all of her thoughts of Mr. Priest Rayland and his deplorable behavior.

“You shut that fool all the way down,” Malak said later, sitting across from Zena at Margarita Town. Before her was a behemoth of a margarita glass, the size of a baby’s head, filled to the rim with frothy blue ice chips and liquid. “I thought he was going to hop out of his chair and run across the room to start choking you at any moment.” Malak laughed and held her hands up as if she had them wrapped around Zena’s neck.

Behind her was the normal fare of a margarita bar. Nothing fancy. Nothing too nice. Soft red lights set aglow garage-sale rainbow ponchos, sombreros and dusty, half-clothed Lupita dolls tacked to the walls. No one was there for the decor, though. It was just a theme for the real prize that attracted professionals to Margarita Town’s lopsided high-top tables and sticky bar each night after work. The clientele included burned-out teachers, lawyers, doctors, publicists, business owners, even yoga teachers.

The red ice in Zena’s significantly smaller margarita glass was nearly gone, and Zena was already feeling the soothing affects of the concoction, so she laughed more deeply than Malak had expected.

“Slow down, cowgirl,” Malak teased. “You know you’re a lightweight. I don’t want to carry you out of here.”

Malak and Zena had been best friends since high school. They were nothing alike, but since the first day they met when Zena had moved to Atlanta, Georgia, from Queens, New York, and chose a seat behind Malak in her first-period history class, they were together through most of life’s laughs and hard times. That was why when Zena finished law school at Howard and returned to Atlanta to start her own practice, she called Malak, who only finished high school with a GED, and offered Malak a job as her assistant. Zena trusted Malak, and as a new attorney building a practice in the ever-cliquish legal field, she wanted someone by her side who would anticipate her moves, encourage her and keep her laughing. Malak was good at all of those things, but what made her most valuable to Zena, what she knew when she hired Malak, was that she was whip smart. While she’d made some poor choices, including getting pregnant by her boyfriend senior year of high school, Malak was smarter than many of the cohorts Zena went up against during mock trials in law school. While Zena always made it a point to check in on her old friend and encourage her to go back to school, Malak wanted to try to make her family work and got married right out of high school. By the time she was twenty-five, she was divorced with two children. Zena vowed to return home to make sure Malak had a chance to really turn things around.

“No slowing down for me tonight. Actually, I think I’ll have another,” Zena said, signaling for the waitress to bring a second margarita. “I need to wash the memory of that sneaky, slithering snake out of my mind. We have new blood in the morning, and I don’t want to stay up all night thinking about—” She stopped and looked off, forlorn.

“I know what you mean,” Malak agreed pensively, flipping ombré tendrils over her shoulder. “He really did a number on her. A number on you, too.”

“Me?” Zena smiled as if Malak had to be joking. “How did he do a number on me?”

“Um...” Malak nodded to the new margarita the waitress was sliding on the table before Zena.

Zena was no drinker. While she always indulged a little after they’d closed a case, too much alcohol almost always made her a bit emotional.

“Come on. I’m just celebrating. Of course, I hated that toad, but it’s not like I took anything he did personally. It’s not like he did that mess to me.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Malak pointed out. “Not the way you were carrying on these last few days—hell, since the case began. It was like you had to win. You had to beat him.”

“Isn’t that common? Why I have an unblemished record in the courtroom?” Zena’s tone was snarky. Overly confident. But still comical. While she was just thirty-one, after six years in the courtroom as the sole attorney at Z. Shaw Law, she made a name for herself as a fearless and swift attorney. One of her first cases was a long shot. Her sorority sister from Bethune-Cookman had married a football pro who was smart enough to lock her into an ironclad prenup before making her his punching bag. The football wife came to Zena with no money and no way out of the dysfunctional marriage. While Zena had little experience and could barely pay her bills, she took on the case pro bono. There was something about the messy marriage that turned a knife in Zena’s gut, and she spent day and night on the case. In the end, she found a loophole in the prenup and won a nice settlement for her client.

Of course, the case took over news headlines for weeks, making young Zena a new name to know in legal circles. Quickly, Z. Shaw became one of a few top firms in the city that represented high-profile clients in divorce cases involving entitlement hearings where large sums of money were on the table. Ninety-nine percent of her clients were women seeking settlements from their cheating and very wealthy husbands. These were cases with obvious winners and losers. Bad boys who’d done good girls wrong. Zena knew the right buttons to push in the courtroom. She always got her ruling.

Zena’s cell phone started rattling beside her margarita on the table. She looked down. Zola was on the screen.

“Oh, man, I don’t even feel like talking to her right now,” Zena said, letting the phone vibrate. “You know she only calls if she needs money—or to borrow something.”

“Maybe you should answer. She’s been calling all day,” Malak said.

“All day?” Zena repeated, surprised and staring at Malak as if she’d somehow failed as an assistant. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Zena moved to answer the phone, but the ringing had already stopped and was replaced with the clatter of an incoming text message:

ZOLA: Z, call me back. I’ve been calling you all day. I have news.

Zena looked at the screen and repeated “news” aloud. “What the hell?” she added. “What kind of news could she have?”

Malak looked away nervously, but Zena didn’t question her because she was busy getting up from her seat to return Zola’s call.

“I’ll be right back,” Zena said, already out of the booth across from Malak. “Don’t let anyone spike my drink.”

“Sure won’t, Boss Lady,” Malak confirmed solidly.

The friends laughed, and Zena made her way through the joyous, drunken crowd of now-smiling professionals. Zena recognized a guy she’d met on a dating website standing by the bar with a beer in his hand. His white business shirt was unbuttoned to his chest; opposing ends of an open tie flanked each shoulder. Men and women who looked as if they must be his colleagues stood laughing at something he’d just said. When he saw Zena, he waved, but she turned her head, pressed her cold cell phone to her ear to pretend to be on a call and padded quickly toward the door.

Outside Margartia Town, Zena found a place on the curb beside a skinny and stylish East Indian couple smoking cigarettes and dialed Zola’s number. Beneath the amber glow of an oversize blow-up margarita glass filled with plastic golden liquid, she pressed the phone to her ear again, crossed her arms and rolled her eyes at the couple in heightened disgust at their activity. While the early-summer afternoon heat had cleared with the sunset, it was still too hot and muggy outside in Georgia to withstand the stale, dry air of cigarette smoke. Just when Zena was about to mention the local ordinance banning smoking in the private dining zone, Zola answered.

“Zeeeennnaaaa!” Zola squealed into the phone so loudly Zena winced and pulled the receiver back from her ear. There was a brazen exuberance and cheeriness to Zola’s voice. She sounded like a pregame high school cheerleader, eager and enthusiastic, but decidedly so. Determinedly so. The voice was simply the calling card of everything else about the little sister on the other end of the phone. She was the metaphor of a smile. Anxiously happy. Not only was her glass always half-full, but it was also filled with sugary pink lemonade and she was all too excited to share with everyone else. But that was how she’d decided to be; how Zola made herself function.

As the sisters exchanged common salutations filled with updates and weather predictions, Zena relaxed in the comfort of her sister’s arbitrary joyfulness. There was always something about the sweet spirit in Zola that calmed and loosened the uptight and upright spirit in Zena.

“I was actually surprised we won,” Zena acknowledged on the tail end of a summary about her adventure in the courtroom closing Priest Rayland’s case. “Of course, we had enough evidence stacked against that fool to make it impossible for the jury to rule in his favor, but you just never know these days. I used to expect the jury to rule based upon facts, but it’s really all emotion. All feeling. You’ll see.” Zena inhaled deeply as the couple departed after taking their final puffs. “Enough about me. What’s up with you? How’s studying going for my future partner?” Zena’s voice was wrapped in giddiness then.

Just two weeks ago, Zena was in Washington, DC, for Zola’s law school graduation at Howard. Though Zola originally planned to move to New York City to pursue her dream of being a fashion critic after undergrad, with much prodding and planning and some strings pulled by Zena, Zola attended her big sister’s law school alma mater, graduated with decent marks, and now it was just a matter of getting Zola to pass the Georgia Bar Exam before she’d be the newest addition to Z. Shaw Law, soon to be Z. and Z. Shaw Law.

“Um...it’s going fine,” Zola let out with a marked zip in her zeal. “Okay, I guess... It’s cool—”

Zena cut in, ready to inspire, ready to employ the swift hand of big sister judgment that had already decided that Zola wasn’t living up to her potential. She needed to let Zola know this slacking was dangerous. She needed to inspire Zola to do better. And this was the way things had always been between the sisters.

“You don’t sound like it’s ‘cool.’ Come on, Zola. Don’t drop the ball now. You can do this. I’m paying your bills, so you don’t have to work. All you have to do every day is study. You know how many people wish they had that privilege? I know I did.”

Sounding diminished, Zola started, “I know. I know—but—”

Zena cut her off again, though. “Look, you’re smart. You can do this. You have to focus. Focus and don’t accept mediocrity. I keep telling you that.”

“I know I can do it, Zena, but that’s what I’m calling to talk to you about—I don’t think I want to do it right now.”

“What? What do you mean ‘want’?” Zena’s face contorted into something that looked like an angered question mark. She looked at the phone as if Zola could see her cold stare. As she had all of those times in the past, Zena felt she just needed to find the right words of encouragement to entice Zola to change her view. Should she be stern or sensitive? What would work best at such a crossroads just shy of eight weeks before the July Georgia Bar Exam?

“This isn’t about your clock, Zola. It’s not about whether now is the time for you. Now is the only time. You have to take the Bar. You have to take it this summer.”

There was silence then—the kind that signifies that there’s more information coming.

“Wait, didn’t your text say you had news?” Zena recalled. “Is that what this is about? What’s going on?” Images depicting a reel of disaster rolled through Zena’s mind—Zola had already run off to New York to dance in hip-hop music videos; she’d used all the money Zena had been giving her for rent to pay for a secret drug habit; she hadn’t even started studying; she was preg— “Are you preg—?”

Zola stopped her sister’s stream of dark thoughts with a soft and mousy revelation: “Alton asked me to elope. That’s what I’ve been trying to get out. That’s why I’ve been calling you all day. We decided to just do it—to just get married. Now.” Zola was referring to her recent status as the fiancée of Alton Douglass, her childhood sweetheart and long-term boyfriend, who’d just popped the question at Zola’s graduation in DC. While Zena wasn’t exactly hip to the idea of Alton and Zola getting married right when Zola was about to really start her career, as she watched her baby sister cry when Alton slid the stoneless silver ring he’d called “antique” onto Zola’s finger, Zena was reconciled knowing that it would be at least one year before there was even a discussion about a wedding. By then, Zola would be back in Atlanta, have passed the Bar Exam and be a practicing attorney.

“Zena? Zena? You there?” Zola called after a long pause.

“Yes. I am.” Zena’s words were void of emotion but somehow also overly laden with something else.

“So?” Zola paused awkwardly. “What do you think? No big wedding. We’re just going to do it. Get married and start living our lives. It’s a smart decision—right?”

Though there was the common glee in Zola’s tone, there was a stiffness there now, too—a covering used to veil her joy in some way. To protect it.

Zena could sense all of this.

Zena began pacing in small circles, subconsciously reaffirming the existence of her environment as she prepared to quiz Zola. She felt as if she was being sucked away. As if the smoking couple had returned and lit up new cigarettes to steal her air.

She looked back up at the oversize plastic margarita glass hovering over her. It was glowy and amber. Happy. This was her happy place.

She wished Malak was outside Margarita Town standing beside her to hear this. She’d put Zola on speaker and have her best friend there to share her disbelief, confirm this horrible mistake Zola was about to make. A mistake Zena would have to clean up. The thing was, Zena had been protecting her baby sister for so long, there was no way she would let anything like that happen. She loved Zola so much, and she’d gotten her so far. They were almost there—almost at the finish line.

“Well did you tell Mommy and Daddy? What did they say about this?” Zena asked.

“Daddy’s too busy with whatever up in New York. And Mommy loves Alton, of course. Who doesn’t love Alton?” The adoration in Zola’s voice was so absolute Zena imagined that Alton must be standing right beside her, listening in and probably laughing at Zena’s reaction. Maybe Zena was the one on speakerphone.

“Of course everyone loves Alton,” Zena said with years of knowing and, yes, loving sweet and kind Alton, Zola’s spiritual twin, laced in her words. While Zena, at fifteen, was nearly in love with the mere vision of Alton’s older brother, Adan, Alton was actually like a little brother to Zena.

“All of this seems so sudden. Like, who’s going to pay for all of this?”

“Really, Z? I can’t believe you asked me that. I say I’m getting married and you ask who’s paying?”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable question. I’ve been supporting you, and Alton isn’t exactly rolling in the dough.”

“He’s a singer. That’s just how it goes when you’re just starting out. But he is getting money for his songwriting. And he’s about to sign a deal with a major label. We just have to hold out.”

“Sure, ‘hold out,’” Zena shot nastily, though she hadn’t intended on sounding so awful.

“Z, I knew you wouldn’t take this well—especially since I’m supposed to be preparing and everything. But I at least thought you’d be excited. Like happy for me,” Zola said.

“I am happy for you. It’s just—” Zena paused and looked at the inflated margarita glass again for inspiration. She needed to say the right thing, find the right words. She needed to support her sister. Be there for her sister. But how could she do that if she felt her sister was doing the wrong thing? Marriage? It wasn’t the right time. How could she support that? Be there for that? Didn’t support and being “there” for her sister mean telling the truth? Telling it like it is? Zena looked away from the margarita glass and let go of the idea of saying the right thing. She decided to say exactly what was on her mind. “What about your life...your future?” Zena let out, and she immediately hated every word she’d said. She sounded like their mother, like their grandmother.

“My future?” Zola laughed at this assertion in a way that Zena hated. The statement and tone reeked of “my big sister is crazy and cold. She doesn’t get it.” Zola took to using the tone whenever Zena said something with which Zola found fault or could easily deconstruct. “Z, listen, Alton is my future. Not being an attorney. That’s just a job. I know how you feel about it—it’s your life—but that’s not how I see it.”

Zola’s last sentence grated against something in Zena.

“Don’t do that. Don’t go there.” Suddenly, Zena felt incredibly lonely standing out there in front of Margarita Town. Cold. Bare. Though no breeze had passed, she shuddered and turned to peek through the front window of Margarita Town to find Malak’s face. “I’m just trying to look out for you. You know? That’s all I’m doing. That’s all I’ve ever done.”

“I know. And I love you for it. And I’m still taking the Bar Exam. Just not this year.”

“What? Why not? It’s scheduled for July—that’s like eight weeks from now. You’ve been studying, right?”

“Well, that’s kind of the other thing I wanted to tell you.”

“What?”

“Alton is so excited about this whole thing—well, we both are—anyway, he really wants to do it right away. And I agree with him—I love him and I want to be his wife—sooner rather than later, of course,” Zola clattered out as if she was explaining this all to herself. “He wants to elope—now.”

Again, Zena felt herself drifting away. What was happening?

“So, we’re getting married in two weeks,” Zola went on, ignoring her sister’s silence.

“Two? Two weeks? I thought you meant like six months—three at the very least. How are you going to get married in two weeks? And where are you going to get married in two weeks? That’s like impossible. Any decent place has a waiting list of like nine months. And please don’t tell me you two are going to the Justice of the Peace. And not Vegas!” Zena felt herself growing more aggravated, so she paused for a second before beginning again with less sharpness in her tone. “Listen, Zol, why are you doing this? Is there something you need to tell me? Are you pregnant?”

“I can’t believe you just suggested that, but I already told you that I’m not pregnant. I’m just in love. And I’m not getting married in Vegas or at the courthouse. We’re going to do it in Bali. We’re getting married in Bali.”

Zena could hear the smile return to Zola’s face as she went on revealing her plan. The wedding would be a small seaside ceremony. No audience. Only two witnesses in attendance. Zola wanted Zena to be there as her maid of honor. The second witness would be the best man: Alton’s older brother; Zena’s old flame... Adan.

After more minutes of sibling emotional wrangling in the form of probing questions and slick statements, Zola was back in Margarita Town sitting across from Malak.

“You knew? You knew? All this time, you knew they were eloping and you didn’t tell me?” Zena had shifted her interrogation to Malak, who sat there buzzing from her second big blue margarita and holding her hands in the air innocently.

“She just told me a few hours ago. Right before we went into the courtroom,” she said. “I didn’t exactly want to tell you before you were walking in to give your closing.”

“But what about after? Why didn’t you tell me after? Immediately after?”

“Because I wanted Zola to tell you herself. I wanted it to be a surprise. And don’t you think you’re kind of missing the point here? The point is that your little sister is getting married? It’s great news. Right?” Malak smiled, though she knew the expression would not be returned.

“Not exactly. This is a big mistake for her right now. They aren’t ready to get married. Yes, they’re in love. But they don’t have enough money. They’re just banking on Alton getting this record deal. This is a recipe for disaster and you know it. We’re in the business of watching marriages fail. And what makes most marriages fail?”

“Money,” Malak reluctantly mumbled.

“Exactly. When money is short, people start changing. They become horrible versions of themselves. And I’m not saying they’ll always be poor. I’m not going to wish doom on Alton’s career or anything, but being a performer has its ups and downs.”

“Alton and Zola have been together forever. They’ll be okay.”

“They have no idea what they’re in for. What’s going to happen to them,” Zola said to herself as if she hadn’t heard anything Malak said. “I just can’t sit back and watch Zola do this—mess everything up that we’ve worked so hard for.”

Malak’s best attempts to placate her friend turned to annoyance. “Why do you do that to Zola? Always act like she has no clue? Like she’s stupid and can’t make any decisions without you?” Malak paused and looked down into her drink. She exhaled and grimaced frankly, as if she was about to say something she might regret. “You know, maybe this isn’t about the wedding—about Alton and Zena getting engaged. Maybe your reaction is about—you know—him. And the fact that he is going to be there in Bali.”

Him and he needed no further explanation. The words bounced from Malak’s mouth like a fireball and landed on the table before Zena. She wanted to pick it up and throw it across the room, get it away from her as soon as possible, but she was also afraid to touch it, afraid to hear it, to think it, to think of him.

“Don’t bring him up,” Zena scoffed, and she sounded like a little girl.

“I have to. Sorry, Z. But there’s no way you haven’t thought about him. His brother is marrying your little sister. That has to matter. Right? Everyone thought you guys would do it first. And now Zola and Alton are getting married and you two will be together for that. It’s been so long. When was the last time you spoke to Ad—”

“Don’t say his name,” Zena cut in. “I don’t want to hear it. And I don’t want to talk about it. And I don’t care about him. And I don’t think about him. My opinion of this disaster of a wedding that’s about to take place in two freaking weeks has nothing to do with Adan—” Zena tried to stop her diatribe before she got to the name that was flashing in her head, but out it came.

Malak was right. Zena had thought of Adan, of course. And while she’d done a grand but strategic job of avoiding him and all topics concerning him, when Alton proposed to Zola in DC, Zena knew she’d finally have to see Adan. But then she figured she had at least a year—one year to get her head together. She could even meet a wonderful, well-traveled, well-read man, who was also funny and down-to-earth and rich, and get married—at least engaged—okay, at least committed. She’d arrive at Zola and Alton’s wedding to see Adan and his NYC doctor wife and perfect children, and Zena would have to show for her own life a successful law practice, bombshell body and hot judge husband, with dimples—fiancé—okay, boyfriend. But now everything had changed.

“Okay. I won’t make you talk about Adan. If you say you haven’t thought of him and you don’t want to think of him, then we can move on to something else,” Malak agreed patronizingly, as if she was some kind of barroom therapist. “We can focus on what’s really important. And that’s Zola’s happiness. That girl loves you. She trusts you. She adores you. She admires you. She needs your support. Can you just support her?”

“I’ll support the right decision. That’s what I’ll support.” Zena rolled her eyes and waved to a random waitress who was rushing past their table. She asked her, “Can you have our waitress get our check?”

“No problem, hon,” the woman said, sounding more cheerful than she actually looked. “I’ll actually just get it for you.”

“Thanks,” Zena said as the thought of seeing Adan again suddenly hit her. After so many years of blocking painful memories, she wondered if her heart was strong enough to deal with his actual presence. Zena quietly considered that maybe they would be distant, even mockingly cordial. She’d feel like she was meeting a stranger, a stranger who maybe just happened to look like someone she knew. Someone she’d known for a very long time. But Adan was no stranger. He was once Zena’s everything. He was her past, what she’d hoped would become her future. But that was all gone now. And it was all because of him.

Chapter 2

The morning after drowning the news of Zola’s pending Bali wedding in the murky brown liquid of so many shots of reposado tequila she could hardly leave Margarita Town on her feet, Zena awoke to a spinning headache that released her from her morning run. She rolled over in the bed, turning her back to the bedroom window where the late-morning sun was beaming into the room. She was too tired to be fully awake and ready to enter a new day after tossing around in bed through the twilight hours, endlessly replaying worries she had no control over. Problems she’d trained herself to forget, to get away from, but now, there they were right in front of her. While her nighttime thoughts began with Zola, the prickling concern beneath her sister’s future was Zena’s own past.

Malak’s psychic ability—or good sense—had struck gold again at Margarita Town when she boldly shared that maybe much of Zena’s consternation about Alton and Zola getting married wasn’t about them finding love. It was about the love Zena had lost and never forgotten.

Zola wasn’t the only sister to fall in love with a boy who lived up the street. She actually wasn’t even the first.

Lying in bed that night, Zena’s thoughts went back—way back to the time she was a teenager and met Adan Frederick Douglass. He was the first boy to steal her heart away. He was the first man to tear her heart into tiny smithereens. She’d spent too much of her life and good money in therapy trying to pull the pieces back together.

It all started with her parents’ ruined marriage and a popped bicycle chain.

After her father’s second affair with one of the cashiers at the Sutphin Boulevard Burger King where he was a manager, Zena’s mother paid a few hundred to a pimply-faced attorney who promised “quick” divorces in advertisements on subway cars. The couple had no money, property or belongings to split up. Her mother knew there was no way her husband would petition the courts for custody or shared visitation rights for Zena and Zola, fifteen and nine at the time—he had limited funds and no place for his daughters to stay. Zena overheard her mother telling their neighbor who worked on Jamaica Avenue that she just wanted the marriage to be over and to get her girls out of Queens.

Hearing this hurt Zena beyond repair. While her parents’ marriage was mostly rocky, as her father was unreliable and could never keep a long-term job to support them and often stepped out on her mother, Zena loved her father and just wished he’d do right. During their father-daughter walks around the neighborhood, he’d often promise just that. He explained that he didn’t mean to hurt her mother and said something about New York’s poor public school system that diagnosed his dyslexia too late. His reasoning became scrambled into a massive puzzle in Zena’s head. All she wanted to hear about was how her parents and her family could stay together. But he had no solutions. No plans. “I’m broken, babygirl. I done failed ya’ll,” he’d said.

A week later, Zena was standing in a Greyhound bus line with her mother and sister at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. Everything they owned amounted to five boxes being slid into the cargo hold of a bus en route to Atlanta, Georgia. Speaking as if she was a grown woman who’d lived a life and had the necessary scars on her soul one would need to give another grown woman advice, Zena said in her gruff Jamaica, Queens-girl accent, “You didn’t even give him a chance. He was trying and you didn’t give him a chance. And I resent you for that.” Zena thought she’d really said something. Standing in line at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, she crossed her slender teenage arms over her chest and awaited a defense she felt was impossible.

“Mothers don’t have time to give people chances. You’re my top priority. Not him. Not even me. I did this to save you and your sister from growing up and being stuck in a hole like me and your daddy. I did this so you could be happy,” her mother said.

“Happy? In Georgia?” Zena laughed the way any Queens-born girl who’d been torn from her home to live in Georgia would. “You’re making us move from our friends and school. We’re losing everything, Mommy.”

Zena’s mother paused and responded with unmistakable passion in her voice. “You may feel like that now, but I’m giving you a real opportunity to have a better life.”

* * *

Zena’s bicycle chain had popped the morning she met Adan. Her mother had just gotten the rickety red ten-speed from the Salvation Army and unloaded it from the back of the dented 4Runner some cross-eyed deacon at their new church let her mother borrow. Zena was complaining about being locked up all day in the house looking after Zola and begged for a bicycle. While she’d complained about cobwebs on the frame and the cracking fake-leather seat when they spotted the ten-speed in the back of the secondhand store, once Zena got the thing home and kicked off from the curb, she tasted the kind of freedom every fifteen-year-old knew while riding a bicycle.

At first, she heeded her mother’s instructions and only rode around the corner a few times, but then she became curious about her new surroundings and rode faster, standing up on the pedals as she pushed two and three miles from her front door. The houses got bigger and the cars nicer as she sped along. She noticed that the house she lived in with her mother and her sister was the smallest one in the entire neighborhood. She’d heard her mother mention on the phone to her grandmother that she’d gotten the rental for a quarter of the price through some pilot fair-housing project that would later be known as “Section 8 housing.”

It was late summer, and the Georgia heat kept most people indoors, but she saw some stray gaggles of teenagers entering cars and front doors and wondered if any of them would be her classmates when she started classes at her new high school in a few weeks. Walking up flower-lined driveways in bright colors and smiling, they all looked so solidly middle-class, so happy, so far away from the armor-clad, stone-faced friends she knew back in the New York projects. Right then, Zena decided that she wasn’t going to tell anyone at her new school that she lived in the smallest house in the neighborhood.

Soon, droplets of warm sweat escaped Zena’s underarms and wet her T-shirt. The precipitation seemed to descend on her brow and draw every ounce of energy from her body. Zena, going on pure zeal, continued her tour, but she was panting like a thirsty dog and she began feeling as if she’d been away from home for hours, though it had only been twenty minutes since her departure. This was her official introduction to the stifling Georgia humidity that suffocated everything that had the nerve to move before 7 p.m. in late July. Zena would never forget that feeling, that day; it was as if she’d fallen asleep in a sauna and awoke in a pool of her own sweat.

Growing concerned after considering her wet knuckles and steamy scalp, Zena decided to head home, fearing her mother must be panicked because she’d been gone so long.

She’d been resting her bottom on the prickly cracked bicycle seat but decided to get up and floor it home.

When she rounded the curb onto her new street, catching a breeze that did little to cool her off, Zena noticed a family getting out of their car in the driveway on the side of a house that looked identical to the one she lived in just seven houses down. It was a mother and father with two boys. One of the boys looked her age. The other couldn’t be much older than Zola.

While Zena was two houses away, the family stopped and looked at her as if she was an alien pushing a ten-speed up the street.

Zena’s delicate fifteen-year-old self-esteem made her wonder if she was doing something wrong. Could they see the sweat stains at her underarms? Had the wind swept her hair all over her head and she looked like a parading Medusa? What were they looking at?

The little boy started waving, but Zena was too afraid to wave back, fearing she’d lose control of her bike and crash into one of the cars parked on the street. Instead, her bubbling anxiety under their watching eyes made her want to simply disappear, so Zena decided to race home, where she’d run into the house and never ever emerge again.

That was when the chain popped.

The pedal push that was supposed to send her somewhere quickly actually split the chain. There was a click and then the bike simply stopped moving. Zena’s insistence on continuing her pedaling sent her and the bike, rather quickly and very dramatically, to the hot tar pavement, where she really hoped she would die.

“Lord, she done fainted,” Zena heard a man’s voice say, so she knew she hadn’t actually died, which was a letdown.

“No, she didn’t. I think she just fell,” she heard a woman’s voice say, and she knew it was the mother, who’d been standing by the car, because as she looked up from the ground, she could see the woman’s coral espadrilles rushing toward her.

Soon, the family of four was gathered around Zena as if she was a fallen angel. Worry was on everyone’s face. Everyone but the boy who looked her age. He was smiling. Almost laughing at the sight.

Zena was quiet, quieter than she’d ever been in life. She watched as the four fussed over her, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. The father discovered that it was the broken chain that sent her tumbling to the ground, but he kept saying something about the heat and that it was too hot for anyone to be riding a bicycle at 3 p.m. And didn’t she know that? The mother tried to quiet him after sending the little boy into the house for water.

She asked, “Where are your parents, honey? You live around here?” Her voice was Southern sweet. She sounded as if she could get anything from anyone. Zena had never heard a woman sound quite like that. It made her instantly like the woman.

Zena was listening but not speaking so the mother made the father check for broken bones. He found none and announced that Zena was just in shock. Just afraid because she’d fallen from her bike and here they were hawking over her like police officers. The couple laughed in unison at their hovering in a way that Zena had never heard her parents connect. It was as if they were suddenly alone and had heard lines in a conversation no one else could hear. Then the father kissed the mother. He said, “That’s the nurse in my baby. Always worried about somebody.” They kissed again and giggled.

The boy who was about Zena’s age, the one who’d been ready to laugh at her fall, was frowning then and rolling his eyes at his parents as if he’d seen this all before and it was making him sick. He turned to Zena and pointed his index finger into his open mouth toward his tonsils as if he was about to make himself vomit.

The little comical gesture introduced Zena to the saying, “I have butterflies in my stomach,” because some new feeling was literally tickling her insides, from her navel to her throat. At that very moment, the tough girl from Queens awakened into feelings she’d never known. It was as if those little butterflies fluttered their delicate wings at her insides all at once and sent some mellifluous whispers of what she’d later recognize as first love straight to her heart. She’d never even thought of looking at a boy the way she did at that moment. She wanted to know everything about him. To smell him. To touch his curly black hair. Kiss those full lips. And if she’d ever heard the word imbibe, she’d want that—to imbibe him. Drink him in. Soak him up. Absorb him so she could feel what she was feeling in her stomach again and again. But that would come later. Junior year in high school. In someone’s basement after a football game. Right then, she just wanted to know one thing—his name.

And without Zena even asking, he acquiesced.

“I’m Adan,” he said, struggling so hard to make his pubescent voice sound masculine as his parents came out of their love bubble and noticed the teenagers’ quick connection.

“I’m Zena,” was returned.

“She speaks,” the father said, looking at the mother with a kind of adult knowing in his voice.

“Good to hear, honey,” the mother said. “We’re the Douglasses. You’ve met Adan already. This is Mr. Roy.” She pointed to the father and then to herself. “I’m Mrs. Pam. And that little hellion who never came out with the water is Adan’s little brother, Alton. He’s probably playing his Nintendo game.”

After helping Zena to her feet and carrying her bicycle to the sidewalk as she reluctantly revealed that she lived up the street and had just moved to Georgia from New York with her mother and sister, Roy abruptly excused himself and his wife. Attempting to pull Pam toward the house, he winked at Adan and ordered him to fix the chain with the supplies in the garage. Pam ignored Roy’s clear desire that Adan and Zena get better acquainted and asked about Zena’s mother again. She wanted to make sure Zena got home okay.

“The girl just told you she lives up the street. I think they’re renting the Jefferson’s old house. That ain’t far. She’ll be fine, Pam!” Roy protested. “Let these young folks figure it out. Everything will work out fine.” He winked at Adan again and pulled his wife up the walkway and into the house.

“They’re so weird. Weird and embarrassing,” Adan said when they were gone, and with every word he spoke, Zena felt those wondrous flutters all through her body again.

“My parents are divorced,” Zena announced as if she’d been holding it in her stomach all that time and needed to let someone know. “My dad cheated. He’s having a baby.”

Adan hardly reacted. He just shrugged in his learned teenage boy way. Zena would soon recognize this as his cool routine. “My mom would kill my dad if he cheated. She told him that one night. I think he believes her.”

Adan picked up the bicycle and began rolling it toward the garage.

Zena followed close behind, watching him walk, spying his muscular arms and calves. She kept thinking that he had to be the cutest boy she’d ever seen. But, then, she couldn’t remember ever really seeing any other boys. Memories of the ones who’d chased her around her neighborhood in Queens had faded so quickly. Who were they? What were their names again?

“Your chain is mad rusty. Where’d you get this bike? The Salvation Army?” he asked jokingly once they were in the garage and out of the hot sun.

“Yes,” Zena admitted, embarrassed, and then she wished she hadn’t fessed up to it. She didn’t want Adan to know she was poor. Then he wouldn’t like her. Could he like her? Did he? Zena looked into Adan’s eyes for signs of something. Anything.

“Really?” Adan seemed surprised by the news and the obvious fumble of his joke about the Salvation Army. His light brown cheeks turned ruddy, and suddenly Zena saw in his eyes reflections of the same feelings she felt in her stomach. He liked her. Maybe he did. She felt her own cheeks turning red then.

“That’s cool anyway. The bike is a little rusty. It could use some cleaning. But it’s a nice bike. A Huffy,” Adan said, suddenly cutting his gaze away from Zena as if he was becoming more nervous.

“You think it’s nice?”

“Yes. It is. I could help you fix it up if you like. We could spray paint it. Make it dope.” Adan looked back at Zena and smiled.

Zena smiled back. She felt as if she’d been asked out on her first date. “That would be cool,” she said.

“We could set it up here in the garage. Work on it. Like a project.”

Zena had never heard a boy her age use that word before—project.

She nodded and helped Adan flip the bike over. Standing beside him, she didn’t want to breathe. She didn’t want a second more to pass. She wanted everything to stop so she could just be right there, right then with him. She was afraid she’d miss something. Forget something about that moment. But she never would.

He turned on an old, dusty radio that his father listened to sometimes when he worked on his car in the garage. Some Goodie Mob song was playing, and Zena revealed that she’d never heard of the group. Adan’s eyes widened. He didn’t believe her. He then went through the entire history of the Dungeon Family, a local rap consortium that Adan heralded as the best MCs in the world. Zena laughed and pointed out that the best MCs were Biggie, Nas and Jay Z. This debate would continue throughout their relationship. But at that moment, Adan controlled the dial on the radio, so he turned up Goodie Mob’s “Black Ice.” Loud and proud, he rapped along about waking up and touching the sky.

Zena watched, listened and laughed. Soon, just as she’d done with the boys back in NYC, she forgot all about the time. The sun went down and her mother came looking for her.

* * *

It took Adan three long, hot weeks to make Zena’s old rusty bike the envy of the street. With his father’s help, he spray painted the Huffy hot pink and electric blue, reupholstered the seat with purple fabric and Pam even added a bell that Zena’s mother insisted on paying for. As the repairs went on and the summer came to a close, Zena learned more about the Douglasses and everything about Adan. He was so smart. He seemed so much older than her. Sometimes he reminded her of Mr. Roy in the way he was always joking and pretending he was keen on a secret. He was cool, too. Seldom overexcited or sad. He seemed to have feelings right down the middle at all times. He took care of his little brother. Listened to his mother. Followed his father’s direction. This all comforted Zena. Made her open up to Adan about everything that had her out pedaling fast on that old red bike that day. Over those afternoons in the garage she told him all about her parents’ divorce. Her empty feelings. Her fear. He always seemed to know just what to say. Just when to be silent. Just when to reach out to wipe her tears.

One evening, Zena’s mother had to work a double shift at the airport, where she’d lucked up on a job at Delta Air Lines. Zena was stuck in the house taking care of Zola, though she’d promised Adan she’d meet him at the local roller-skating rink. She was too embarrassed to call his house to say why she couldn’t go, so she decided to just let the moment pass and later lie and say she forgot. While this line of thinking sounded crazy to her now, back then, it was a perfectly rational decision made out of shame and humiliation that her family had such limited funds that she was basically her sister’s primary caretaker while her mother plated flight meals at the airport. Zena had been spending so much time at the Douglasses, and she now envied the ease and reliability of Mr. Roy and Mrs. Pam’s stable marriage and home. Adan never had to take care of Alton. There was always someone at home to look after them.

After watching too many music videos on BET, Zena told Zola that it was time to get ready for bed and ordered her little sister to go take a shower. Once Zola finished complaining about the shower and begged to watch more videos, Zena scolded her as if she was the mother, and Zola stomped out of the living room toward the bathroom.

“I don’t hear the water,” Zena hollered after a while, and then the sound of the water in the shower finally started. She reminded herself to bust into the bathroom in a few minutes to make sure Zola was really in the shower and not just looking at the water—her mother always did that.

Zena got up to turn off the television and there was a faint, soft knock at the front door.

On instinct, Zena looked around the room for her father’s baseball bat, but then reminded herself that she was no longer in the projects and that bat was still in New York.

“Who is it?” Zena demanded forcefully, trying to make her voice sound louder, gruffer in case there was a dangerous criminal at the door.

“Adan.”

An alarm sounded in Zena’s heart. She was quickly frantic. Why was Adan at her front door? He’d been past her house. He’d walked her home on some nights when she’d been at his house until it was too dark for her to walk home alone. But he’d never rung the front door. He’d certainly never been inside. Did he want to come inside? Everything around Zena seemed to be in complete disarray. Messy. Too messy. Zola’s stupid Oreo crumbs on the secondhand couch. Their dirty sneakers lined up beside the front door. Her mother’s work clothes on the chair. Zena looked into the dining room. They didn’t even have a set in there yet. No chairs. No table. Just a bright light and an empty room.

“Zena?” Adan called from outside as if he sensed that he’d been forgotten.

“Yes.”

“You going to open the door?”

Zena exhaled and walked to the entrance, where she forced a casual smile before opening the door only a few inches.

Adan was standing on the steps with his hands in his pockets. He looked confused. Maybe sad.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Why?” Zena said.

“Because you weren’t at the skating rink. I figured something was wrong.” Adan tried to peek into the house, but Zena shifted her head to block him.

“Oh, that,” Zena said vaguely. “I forgot.”

“Forgot? But you seemed so excited.”

“I was but, you know how it is. I just got busy.”

“Oh.” Adan’s face went from maybe confused and maybe sad to definitely hurt.

Zena’s heart sank. She hated her world for making her say what she’d said. She didn’t want to hurt Adan. She was saying what she was saying because she wanted him to like her. Well, she didn’t want him to not like her because her family was struggling and her mother wasn’t a nurse and had to work overtime and she had to take care of her baby sister.

“Adan—”

“Zena—”

The two teenagers said each other’s names at the same time as they tried to stumble out their feelings.

“You first,” Adan said.

“No, you first,” Zena countered.

“I’ll just say this,” Adan started with his voice cracking from its usual cool. “It’s fine if you don’t want to hang out and, like, be friends. I know school is starting soon and you’ll make other friends. Okay? I know that. But I want to be your friend. I like you and I want to be your friend.” He looked into Zena’s eyes. “I really like you.”

“Like, I like you, too,” Zena blurted out clumsily.

The words were innocent enough, but the intentions had deep meaning behind them. What the two of them knew was their relationship had strengthened and left so much heightened emotional residue that they both laughed to lighten the moment.

“Hey, can I come in for a little while?” Adan asked.

“In here?”

“Yes. Into your house.”

“Ohh.” Zena looked over her shoulder as if maybe there was a circus breaking out in the living room behind her. She turned back to Adan. “You sure?” she asked him.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Look, Adan. We don’t have anything. I don’t have a Nintendo like you do. Our television is on the floor,” Zena said.

“That’s fine,” Adan answered in his cool tone. “I’m not here to play Nintendo or watch television. I’m here to see you.”

“Ohh,” Zena repeated. She stepped back and let Adan in. He kept her company and left right before her mother was to be home from work. That became their nightly ritual when her mother worked doubles. They swore Zola to secrecy and bribed her with Twix candy bars.

Zena was sure all of this would change when school started and all of the best friends Adan had, who frequently stopped by the house, got his attention before her. While she hadn’t met any of the girls in the neighborhood, she imagined they’d all be prettier than her and have nicer bikes and already know all of the lyrics to the popular songs Adan played incessantly.

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