Nina stared at him.Boy, if only you knew,she thought.
Cairo panicked. He’d shown his weirdness way too soon. He didn’t even know this lady. “I know I sound stupid. Sometimes I can be-”
“No,” she said softly. “Not at all. Don’t apologize for thinking out loud. Your thoughts are safe with me,” she reassured him like she wished someone would’ve done when she was his age. Life had matured her faster than she expected. Nina wasn’t even ten years older than him, but she surely felt like it.
His face relaxed and his shoulders loosened as he took a deep breath. The permission felt like a relief.
They spent hours moving through the city. Nina took him into a couple of different fabric stores that she knew her mom used to visit back in the day when she was redecorating their brownstone and wanted the curtains to match the pillows. Everything was custom in their home. The new duo stopped by Ephrem’s bookstore, but he had one of the kids he mentored working today. Nina told Cairo to get whatever he wanted, andas expected, he picked up three coffee table books on the history of Fashion.
With every stop, he slowly began to open up more. Nina learned a lot about him throughout the day, and they were genuinely enjoying each other’s company. He was mixed and growing up in the South, that came with its own challenges. He shared with her that he felt like people tried to decide what he was before he could decide who he wanted to be.
In North Carolina, he was too Black in some spaces and not Black enough in others.
In fashion, he said, maybe he could build something where nobody got to tell him which parts of himself belonged.
Nina listened quietly. It made sense as to why Jio’s mama pushed so hard for them to link. He wasn’t just looking for an opportunity by moving to New York. Cairo was in search of his identity and a language to define who he was and ultimately, who he wanted to become. Nina understood him.
By late afternoon, they sat at a café with shopping bags piled at their feet.
Cairo pulled a sketchbook from his backpack and hesitated before sliding it across the table.
“Take a look,” he said quietly.
Nina opened it carefully.
The sketches stunned her. Nina loved that all of his coats had dramatic shoulders like the 80s and the dresses that he designed seemed to be inspired by church fans with an added flair of a matching veil.
He seemed to have an eye for Menswear that could’ve given Fashion Week in Milan a run for its money.
Nina dragged her finger along the page. “These are all so beautiful.”
Cairo shrugged. “No one is taking me serious. I’m not airbrushing street signs on t-shirts. I think I have a real chance of being someone.”
“Don’t wait on anyone to give you anything. Go get it yourself,” she preached.
“My cousin didn’t even want to answer the phone. I need somebody to care just as much as I do.”
“Jio cares.”
“No, he doesn’t and that’s okay. He doesn’t owe me anything. I haven’t seen him since I was a little kid, but I’m not stupid. I know that they’re our rich side of the family.”
“That’s just Jio. He acts annoyed so that nobody knows he cares.”
“I used to be scared of him when I was younger,” he shared with her.
Nina laughed. “You’re not the only one.”
“Are yall in love?”
For a second, she didn’t know how to answer, so instead she closed the sketchbook and slid it back across the table. She glanced out the window and stared at all of the people moving along the street. Hands filled with cell phones, coffee cups, and grocery bags.
“We are…sometimes.”
Her phone rang, pausing the conversation. She looked down to see that her mother was calling.
Nina knew it wasn’t cool how agitated she got whenever anyone with her last name reached out to her. It couldn’t have been normal. She’d been doing this thing where she reminded herself that there was a young woman out there wishing she could just hear her mama’s voice one last time. She needed to work on being more grateful to still have her mother here on earth.
She didn’t want to answer but she did anyway. Something in her spirit tightened before she even slid her thumb across the screen.
