Page 9 of Coming Home
“That’s really admirable,” Niomi says.
“Don’t be too impressed,” I say dryly. “She isn’t.”
Niomi and Janelle’s brows lift in simultaneous speculation, but neither presses. Maybe Niomi is saving all her pressing for the interview.
Janelle grimaces, glancing down at her phone. “I’m getting pinged. Gotta go, but you guys feel free to discuss the interview. Just log off when you’re done.”
She disappears from her onscreen square, leaving an empty chair and cluttered desk as her proxy.
“Um, so you never said.” Niomi sits up straight and shuffles through a stack of papers on her desk. “Areyou okay with the questions?”
“Yeah, but . . .” I shake my head. “You’re too good for that to be your full list.”
She stops shuffling papers and meets my gaze squarely, the sunlight through her office window rimming her topknot like a halo. Hers are not angel eyes, though. They are shrewd and assessing, everything her questions were not.
“Considering how little you’ve wanted to talk about yourself through the years, I thought you’d appreciate questions that didn’t probe too much.”
“I haven’t wanted to talk about myself because as a journalist I’m an observer, documenting the world around me.” I shrug. “I don’t like people’s perceptions of my personal life coloring how they process the news I’m delivering.”
“Professionally, I understand that, as is your right, but you have become one of the most trusted journalists of our time. You’ve made us cry reporting with so much compassion from the front lines of war. We felt outrage,youroutrage, when you exposed human rights violations in foreign lands. Hell, sometimes inourland. Right here at home.” Her dark brows gather over the intensity of her stare. “You are maybe the most trusted reporter working today, and it feels like we trust someone we don’t really know.”
“You’veknown me for twenty years.”
“Correction. I knew you for three years and then you disappeared until today.”
“We’ve seen each other half a dozen times since graduation at press dinners, awards, events?—”
“You barely spoke to me.”
“That goes both ways, Ni. Felt to me like you always made a beeline in the opposite direction.”
It’s quiet for a moment with our shared truths sitting between us. With two decades of unspoken questions gurgling beneath the sterile quiet of our Zoom call.
“I didn’t . . .” She clears her throat, dropping her eyes to the notes on the desk in front of her. “I guess I never knew what to say. You just fell off the face of the earth. I mean the next time I saw you was on television.”
“I know. Things got really complicated in Paris.” I pause before going on. “And I didn’t know if you felt weird about how things ended with us. At the party?—”
“It was a little awkward. I was dating someone else so I shouldn’t have kissed you, but disappearing like that wasn’t cool. We were friends.” She raises her eyes to meet mine again. “Besides it was just a kiss, right?”
“Didn’t feel like a ‘just’ to me,” I admit, my voice quiet.
“To me either.” She allows a small smile. “It felt like a big deal. Big enough to tell Randy about.”
“You told him?” My brows lift in surprise, but I shouldn’t be. Even then Niomi wasn’t the kind of woman to keep something like that from a guy she was dating. “What’d he say?”
“It took me awhile to confess. We got through most of the summer, and I kept telling myself you and I had been drinking, that the kiss wasn’t a big deal, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
I had thought about it all summer, too, tortured by the fact that once again, I was too late and Niomi was some other guy’s girl. I’ve never really admitted it to myself, but on some level, I may have, at least in part, accepted the Paris opportunity so I didn’t have to spend senior year knowing how she tasted, how soft her lips were, how perfectly we fit together, only to watch her with someone else.
“If I had known you broke up with him, maybe I would . . .” I trail off, unsure what I would have done with that information. I was in another country. Young. Irresponsible. Careless.
“It’s ancient history,” she says, her tone almost forced in its lightness. “Though I did wonder why you couldn’t even come back to walk for graduation. That day felt kind of incomplete without you there with us.”
“Celine was due right around graduation, and Annette, her mother, couldn’t travel. I didn’t want to risk leaving her . . .them, so I decided I wouldn’t walk. I got my diploma in the mail.”
“Kyle told us you weren’t coming. He seems to be one of the few you’ve kept in touch with.”
“He’s Celine’s godfather, yeah. There are a few from the old crew who are still close.”
