After Class (Janet and Aaliyah)

Chapter 20

Acacia

Khori's new house was about 30 minutes away from where I lived, on the east side of town. I'd picked her up the ice cream she requested, and the whole ride there, I prepared myself mentally to keep in mind the circumstances we were in. She was sick. I was too nice. Or something like that. It was getting easier to hold conversations with her and not get so upset over things that happened too long ago to be upset about still.

When I pulled up to her house, my jaw literally dropped. All of that law school was good to her. It was nothing short of a mansion, extremely appealing with all of the lights in the yard to make it glow from the bottom up against the night sky, making it seem like one of the stars, or like it grew from the soil beneath it. The roof seemed to touch outer space, with at least an acre of green, freshly trimmed grass on every side. All that was missing were some floodgates. It was hard to believe she was living in there all by herself.

I made my tread up the long driveway with my purse and the grocery bag draped from my forearm. I wondered how much she'd changed. How much she thought I'd changed. To me, personally, not much, other than a change in hair color.

She opened the door before I could even knock, and the woman before me was someone I almost recognized. I was surprised to see all of her hair already gone, shaved down to a nearly nonexistent buzz, but dyed platinum blonde. Her ears were adorned with large hoops, her neck with a delicate chain, and though her face was beginning to look sunken with illness, I remembered every detail of it like it was yesterday, and it all stood before me like nothing had changed. Those light eyes; green something; I'd tried to pin point the exact color millions of times before with no such luck. They were their own. Those tan freckles still peppered the bridge of her petite nose and her sharply defined cheek bones. That was Khori. It was an exotic, rather intimidating face, if you didn't know her as intimately as I did.

"Sorry if I scared you, it takes me a while to come to the door sometimes. I just saw your car pull up... look at you." She scanned my body once and then settled on my own face, and I mustered up the emotions somewhere to put a smile on it. "Come in, thank you so much for coming, I know you had plans."

I took a moment to look at the decor of her house from what I could see at the foyer, and it screamed her from the inside out. She really hadn't changed a bit. Her style was a little like mine; lots of tribal art hung against cream white walls, and I felt as though I was in a modern jungle of some kind. I could appreciate it.

"Oh, this is for you," I gave her the bag with ice cream. She took it politely.

"Yes, thank you. Here, come in the kitchen while I scoop it out."

"Would you like me to take my shoes off?" I asked, still hugging closely to the front door.

"If you don't mind, I just got my floors cleaned."

I looked down at the dark, cherry wood underneath me, blending seamlessly to a plush black carpet in another room adjacent this one. There was something comforting about it.

"Come on, do you want something to drink? I have cranberry juice, and vodka, red wine... Do you still like cranberry juice, Acacia? That used to be your drink of choice." She asked me casually. How was she already so easy about this? I took a seat on a high barstool in the kitchen.

"I do, and sure, I'll take a glass. A small one. Thank you." I was hoping a little alcohol would relax me.

"It's been so long, God, how have you been?"

"Alright, actually. Really good. And you? I mean, besides the-"

"Yeah. Before this whole thing, I was really starting to get the hang of all of this," she motioned around her. "Just being self-sufficient, being alone, all of it. I got a steady job at a really nice firm in the city, so everything is okay, except for that little cancer part." She chuckled. She could play something so serious off so cool.