One To Watch(85)

Gwen looked up at Bea, piecing it together. “You went to talk to Dad.”

“Yeah.” Bea swallowed hard. “That was when I told him how I felt about him, and it was when he told me about you guys.”

“I didn’t know that,” Asher said quietly. She turned to him, hoping she could convey with her expression how much that moment had meant to her—and how much this one did.

“I know what a big deal this is for you, Gwen, I promise,” Bea assured her. “But I want you to know that, for me, this is about us deciding if we all want to choose each other. Not just me, and not just your dad, but both of you too. All of us have to choose together. I can’t speak for your dad, but I know I would never feel comfortable joining your family if all four of us didn’t agree it was the right thing to do. Okay?”

Gwen looked at Bea for a long moment … then nodded. “Okay.”

“Do you have any other questions?” Bea asked. “I’ll do my best to answer everything.”

“Hey guys,” Asher said gently, “do you think we can stop grilling Bea for a minute so we can eat? The food is getting cold.”

The kids nodded, and for a few moments, the only sound was forks and knives scraping on plates as they all started eating. Then Gwen looked up at Asher.

“You’re home tomorrow, right?”

Asher nodded. “I leave for New York on Saturday.”

“Can we watch Bea’s movie tomorrow night, then? So you can tell her whether we liked it next time you see her.”

“That sounds like a great plan,” Asher agreed. He looked up and caught Bea’s eye across the table. With the smallest of smiles, he mouthed the words, I told you.

“Cool,” Gwen said, then went back to her chicken and mashed potatoes like nothing big had just happened, like this hadn’t suddenly become one of the best nights of Bea’s entire life.



Bea couldn’t believe she was only two weeks away from this whole insane experience being over; she also couldn’t believe how, well, okay everything seemed considering how shaken she’d been by the Jefferson meltdown just a week ago. Bea’s spirits were high as she pulled up to meet Sam on the steps of Shirley Chisholm Elementary in downtown Newark, where he’d spent two years teaching, and where he still volunteered coaching the girls’ basketball team.

“Hey, beautiful.” He wrapped Bea in a tight hug. “I missed you this week.”

“I missed you too.” She realized the words were true as she kissed him hello.

“I don’t want to bring us down right away, but I do have some bad news I need to share.”

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“On our last date, at the hammam, I took off my clothes to impress you—”

“Oh, is that what happened?”

“Yeah, and it worked too.” Sam grinned.

“Okay,” Bea teased, “confidence, I like that. So what’s the bad news?”

“Well”—Sam affected a hushed, serious tone—“this is a place of learning. For children. So I think it behooves us both to keep our clothes on.”

“Maybe we should just go back to Morocco.” Bea leaned close to him.

“I think that’s a really good idea,” he whispered, then pulled her in for a kiss. “We just gotta do something first.”

“Oh?” Bea raised an eyebrow, and Sam took her hand and led her through mural-covered hallways toward the school gym. She expected he might introduce her to the basketball team, but when he opened the door, she saw the room was absolutely packed with people—dozens of adults and kids sitting in rows of folding chairs with a long aisle spaced out in the middle—and they all started clapping and shouting as Bea and Sam walked in.

“You guys doing all right?” Sam shouted, to general assent.

“Sam, what is this?” Bea asked as he escorted her to a seat in the front row.

Sam stood in front of the audience, and spoke into a handheld microphone. “Bea, when I told the girls on the basketball team I coach that you were coming to visit, and suggested that maybe we could do something special to welcome you, they said, ‘Coach Sam, tell us about Bea. Who is she? What does she like?’”

The whole audience turned toward Bea as if to divine this information by looking at her, but Sam kept going.

“And I told them, ‘Bea is a very beautiful, very funny, very smart lady. And she loves fashion—she writes about fashion for her job.’ The kids loved that. So they wanted to know if they could welcome you to our town with their very own fashion show.”

On cue, the lights changed in the gym, Lizzo started blaring over the gym’s loudspeakers, and the aisle between the rows of chairs turned into a makeshift catwalk.

“Oh my God!” Bea cheered and applauded as each little girl strutted her stuff down the aisle, all while Sam served as emcee.

“Keria is wearing a hand-draped outfit, that’s her nod to traditional Grecian dresswear,” he explained as a little girl with a very fierce attitude worked her bedsheet creation.

“Keria, that looks excellent,” Bea shouted, and Keria tossed her hair and spun in a perfectly timed pivot when she hit the end of the runway.

“Sam, where did you learn about Grecian draping?” Bea called to him.