Audre & Bash Are Just Friends(60)

“Audre, what’s going on?” asked Bash, starting to panic himself.

She just shook her head, eyes welling up.

“Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“It’s E-Ellison,” she rasped, her voice almost too flimsy for him to hear. “He… he was my prom date. He recorded me having a panic attack. And he laughed at me, and…”

She wasn’t finished. But Bash was gone. He’d approached Ellison, knocking into his shoulder. To him, time seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time. The music faded, the humid surge of the crowd disappeared, and all that was left was him, Ellison, and Audre.

“Watch where you’re going, man,” said Ellison. “Do I know you?”

“What’s your name?” asked Bash calmly.

“Ellison.”

“Who was your prom date?”

“Audre Mercy-Moore…”

“Did you laugh at her?”

Ellison’s jaw went slack. “You saw the video? How? We deleted…”

He never finished. Bash, in a white-hot rage, reared back and punched him in the jaw—putting all one-hundred-and-ninety pounds of lean, powerful muscle behind it. Ellison went flying into a group of girls, innocently shaking their asses, and then they all toppled to the floor. Bash was on him in seconds, trapping him in a headlock as Ellison blindly punched at nothing. Then the party devolved into mayhem. Bash and Ellison were rolling around on the ground, tripping people up. Folks were screaming, chairs were flying, and people were recording it all on their phones. Unfortunately for Ellison, Bash was a whole head taller than him and quick on his feet. Unfortunately for Bash, Ellison was a quarterback and a wrestler, and knew how to slide out of headlocks.

So, he flipped Bash over and clocked him in the nose.

“Stop recording!” a curvy blond girl screamed at her three blond friends. “Recording two African American guys fighting is a wild microaggression!”

“It’s a macroaggression!” yelled her boyfriend. “PHONES DOWN.”

Quickly, everyone in the vicinity stopped recording and deleted.

That’s when Audre jumped in, stunning Ellison with a quick, hard kick to his shin. As he roared, she helped Bash to his feet. Suddenly hit with an overwhelming sense of purpose, she grabbed his hand and dragged him outside. Then they took off running into the night.





Chapter 24


Powered by pure adrenaline, Audre and Bash ran several blocks and then turned a corner, stopping at a bodega. And now they were sharing a bottled water and pacing. He was bruised and furious. She was shaky and shocked.

“Bash, what the hell?” Audre’s breath came in short gasps. “Why’d you punch him?”

“I couldn’t let him get away with hurting you like that,” he said, pacing, his fists opening and closing. His right eye was puffy and turning purple, and he had a bloody cut along his cheek.

“But I didn’t ask you to do that!”

He stopped pacing, standing in front of her and practically vibrating with anger. “You think I wanted to jump that guy? I fucking hate fighting, man. I’m a pacifist! I walked out of Creed 2! I did it because he hurt you.”

“Oh, of course you did.” Audre was now raging herself. She stormed over to him so that they were face-to-face—only a few feet apart.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you think you did it for me. But the truth? Men always use women as an excuse to perform toxic masculinity, and if I’m being honest, I—”

“Audre!”

Her eyes widened. Bash took one step closer to her, his expression mellowing from fury to wide-open, vulnerable hurt. And something else. Something Audre couldn’t place. Not then. Because in that moment, she was physically too close to Bash to think clearly. The air went vivid, so electric it crackled. There was a steady buzz under her feet, like she was standing on a subway platform. She was lost in the overwhelming intensity of his expression, his physicality, his words.

Lost.

“Doesn’t he know that was a private thing?” rasped Bash, overcome with emotion. “He saw something that you don’t show anyone. It was a privilege that he ever got to be that close to you. To see you like that. Why didn’t he make you feel better? Try to help, or comfort you, whatever. Why wasn’t he good to you? You deserve that. And now you’ll always remember your prom like that. I wish I could correct all your bad memories, Audre. Erase them and give you better ones. If I see him again, I fucking promise you, if I see him…”

Bash’s face was pulsing different colors under the neon lights of the bodega. Something that was frozen in her melted into a puddle. Audre was standing there in front of him, but she didn’t feel whole. She felt shattered into a million pieces.

Later, they wouldn’t be able to remember who reached for who first. But they collided into each other, locking into an all-consuming embrace. It wasn’t careful, polite, or unsure. It was certain. The entire length of their bodies were pressed against each other’s. And still, it didn’t feel close enough.

Audre clung to him, inhaling his sunny, beachy scent. Intoxicated, Bash buried his face in the warmth of Audre’s neck. A low, vulnerable sound escaped his throat. Arms wrapped around her, he bent down, drew her in even closer, and then stood up to his full height—lifting her feet off the ground.