Page 55 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

“You’re odd, Ezra Walker. You not like anyone I’ve ever met.”

“I know,” he said, raising a glass of water to his mouth. “I’m a mystery.”

“I’m jealous. Everything shows on my face, I hear.”

“It does, and it’s fucking charming.” He groaned a little. “Pardon.”

“Ezra, you can curse in front of me. You’re following an old-school rule based on the idea that women are fragile. I’m not fragile.”

“Obviously not. But I told you, I’m chivalrous.”

“Yeah?” Her expression flickered with challenge. “Hypothetically speaking, what else would you do in the name of chivalry? Order for me? Dress me? Throw me over your shoulder and carry me across a puddle?”

Ezra focused his eyes on hers, then leisurely, his gaze traveled down to her lips and back up again. He drank her in. It was boldly intimate.

“Depends. What do you want me to do?”

I’m losing focus, thought Ricki, pressing her thighs together, willing the ache to subside.

“Anyway,” she continued, stomach fluttering, “speaking of music, I wanted to ask you what you were playing at Bar Exquise. I can’t get those few chords out of my head.”

It’s like you wrote it for me, she thought.It’s haunting me.

“Not sure. I hear bits of the melody, but I can’t turn it into a full song. Something’s missing.”

“What do you think’s missing, Ezra?”

“Remains to be seen, Ricki.” His eyes danced. “Where did your name come from?”

She groaned. “God, I hoped you wouldn’t ask. I’m named after my dad. Richard Wilde.”

Ezra’s face lit up in pure, wholesome delight.

“Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m not.” He was. “Iloveit. So he’s Big Richard and you’re… Little Richard?”

“Call me Little Richard and I’ll throw hands. My parents were expecting a boy! And the Tiffany silver spoon had already been engraved, so…” She shrugged. “It’s a lot to live up to. I’ll never be as successful as my dad.”

“But it’s your life, not his. You’re happy with your choices, right?”

Ricki inhaled deeply, mulling this over. “I think so. Yeah, I am.”

“Then nothing else matters,” he told her. “Love well. Eat well. Fuck well. And leave the world better off than you found it. That’s success.”

Ricki folded her arms across her chest. “You’re not gonna apologize for ‘fuck well’?”

Ezra curled his mouth into something dangerous, somewhere between a smirk and a grin. Leisurely, he finished off his water.

“I never apologize for fucking well.”

The bare-legged waiter had returned to take their order, and sensing the palpable erotic flame flickering between them, he immediately scurried back inside. They never noticed him.

Ricki and Ezra stayed for hours, getting tipsy on cocktails named after euphemisms. They debated the best Entenmann’s dessert (Ricki: Louisiana crunch cake; Ezra: cinnamon buns), the weirdest Black TV sibling (Ricki: Sondra Huxtable; Ezra: that kid onShameless), and their favorite pastimes (Ricki: refurbishing other people’s clothes; Ezra: walking other people’s dogs). They barely even touched their banana pancakes.

By the time they decided to walk off the drinks, it was almost dark, that dusky, in-between time where the setting sun took its last gasp of the day. Neither wanted it to end. With the night came the reality of Ezra’s secret, and so they were both playing with time—prolonging it, trying to savor each moment before whatever this was dissolved into dust.

They walked till they reached the Riverside Drive Viaduct, a fifty-foot-tall roadway atop a row of picturesque arches. Tonight, a sign shoutingHARLEM UPTOWN NIGHT MARKETblanketed the top of an arch, and underneath was a rollicking block party. There was glow-in-the-dark mini golf, food trucks, and a deejay painted iridescent colors. In the center, folks danced to throwback hip-hop mixed with Doja Cat, SZA, and Bad Bunny.

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