“Hey, baby.”
And here was one of his occupations right now.
Deuce turned at the sound of Regan’s voice.
On any other day, he might have been annoyed that she had posted up in his building lobby, waiting for him to make it home. It smelled too much like checking-up. He should have known she might be here, since his phone had remained silent since six o’clock.
Regan generally didn’t have that much self-control. Especially since he’d told her about the mixer that morning, she would have been thinking all day about who might be there and what temptations might come his way. He’d mentioned that he was probably going get home around nine. And here it was, eight fifty-three, and so … here was Regan.
Svelte in skinny jeans and high-heeled boots, she came toward him, flipping her long, dark hair off her neck and over her shoulder. The move looked practiced, and probably was. Regan was a model-actress-hostess and looking perfect was a requirement for all three of her professions.
“Hey,” Deuce returned her greeting. “Been here long?”
She walked into him, pressing her chest against his.
“Not too long.”
“Thought you were working tonight,” he said, inhaling her subtle perfume. Their faces were inches apart.
“Someone covered my shift. Decided I wanted to spend the night with my boyfriend instead.” She pressed even closer, her hand falling between them and glancing over him. “Unless … he has other plans.”
“He doesn’t,” Deuce said, reaching behind him to press the elevator call button.
CHAPTER TWO
So, it had been a miscalculation. A gross miscalculation. She figured it might be easier if the first time they saw each other was in public. So much for that.
When she got the Facebook invitation from Summer, Zora had messaged to ask whether she knew if Deuce was coming. She got a predictably Summer-y response: I sure hope so!
That had been enough for Zora to pull herself together, get her hair done and drag Asif along with her for moral support. He hadn’t been particularly interested, but came anyway, insisting he wanted to drive even though Zora reminded him that no one in New York City drove, unless they were going out of town, or moving their car because of alternate-side-of-the-street parking days.
So, let’s say we’re moving the car to the other side of the street, Asif said. When we get back to the apartment.
She had rolled her eyes and gone along with it. And when they arrived at Le Bar, they predictably couldn’t find a spot, so Zora had him let her out while he went on a hunt for the ever-elusive free Midtown parking space. Since she’d wasted the time in the car bickering with Asif, she thought she would have a few minutes once inside to compose herself and come up with some talking points. But no such luck.
Moments after Summer greeted her, she’d spotted Deuce across the room. He looked heartbreakingly familiar, but so different. His hair was still low-cut, but he’d grown some facial hair—a moustache and goatee—and looked so grown. From that distance, across a crowded room, she saw him as other women must see him. Tall, handsome and broad-shouldered, and with the intense, serious eyes of someone very ambitious and driven. A man who was, or would be, someone to be reckoned with.
He was certainly all those things. But he was also funny and silly, and the keeper of almost all that was joyful about her life. Or at least he had been.
The way Deuce looked at her across the bar bore glimmers of the way he used to look at her. With longing. But only glimmers. If he felt more than that, he wasn’t inclined to let it show. And that was unlike him, at least where she was concerned.
In a dark-blue button-down with a white t-shirt just visible at the neck and chocolate pants, he looked like a model for business-casual wear. Peripherally, though he didn’t seem to notice, other women were checking him out as well. Zora did what she had long trained herself to do—pretended they weren’t there, and that there was only her and Deuce. That had been easy at one time, because there had been only her and Deuce.
Once he committed, he committed. No one else seemed to exist for him.
“You planning to eat this?”
Asif seemed to occupy the entire doorway between the kitchen and living room. He held up a takeout container.
“What is it?” Zora asked, sitting on the sofa and pulling off her shoes.
“The leftover Chinese food.”
“From Tuesday?” Zora asked. “No, I definitely don’t want it. And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t eat it either.”
“I’m nuking it first,” he said, turning away.
“Not in that container, though,” she called after his back. “It’ll melt.”
Asif stuck his head back in the doorway. “I know how microwaves work, but thanks.”
For the hundredth time, she wondered whether this arrangement was a terrible mistake. Living with her cousin sounded like a great idea in principle, but when Zora’s father mentioned it, she had pictured her skinny cousin from childhood, her father’s brother’s eldest son.
Since they lived in Detroit, Zora had only seen that branch of her family intermittently, because her father was so often abroad. It never occurred to her that Asif would be six-four, two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of brawn and a Ho Magnet. If she was a non-practicing Muslim, he was a downright infidel.
Asif went out four nights a week in the short time they had been living together, and often brought girls home who Zora heard through the paper-thin walls howling in pleasure and squealing his name. And when he wasn’t going out, he was foraging through the groceries she bought or asking whether she planned to cook. But her parents felt better having her live with a male relative than alone, imagining that under Asif’s guidance, she might be reading the Quran, shopping for halal meat and going to the mosque on Fridays.
California never sat well with them, so her return from UCLA had been cause for celebration, especially since her brother, Ousmane, was living in France. And Zora was happy to pretend to them—and often to herself—that her return East was all about family.
“It’s Friday. You sittin’ home again?”
Asif came out of the kitchen with a bowl of food that he was digging into, eating with loud smacking noises of satisfaction.
“I have to study,” she said. Her perennial excuse.
“You haven’t even started classes, Zora.”
She shook her head. “Law school doesn’t work like that. I already know what classes I’m going to have. I can read ahead.”
Asif rolled his eyes.
As a filmmaker, he had no clue what her life was about. His was about scouting locations, raising capital and convincing people that he had a “point of view.”
“You’re always welcome to come with me,” he said.
“Where to?” she asked.
She was curious but had no intention of going anywhere with Asif only to be abandoned for some skank who would lift her skirt at the mere sight of his biceps.
“Don’t know. Downtown somewhere.” He spoke with his mouth full, so she had full view of bits of rice and broccoli churning about on his tongue.
Although her cousin was, objectively speaking, very good-looking, some of his habits repulsed her in a way that only those of male relatives could.
“I’ll pass,” she said.
“So, what’re you gon’ do? Stay home and cry over dude back at the bar?”
“What dude?” she asked, reaching for her Commercial Transactions textbook.
“Yeah, right. Okay.”
Zora felt her face grow hot.
“That’s your ex-boyfriend, right? Chris Scaife’s kid?”
Zora’s head shot up. “How’d you …?”
“Ousmane told me,” Asif said still chewing.
“What did he tell you?”
Asif shrugged. “That you were all boo’ed up with some rich kid. But that was a while ago. So, y’all broke up?”
Zora gave a small nod.
“H
e dumped you, huh?”
“What makes you think he dumped me?” Zora asked, insulted.
“I don’t know. His lifestyle … music industry … rich-boy, you know … all that.”
“Well, he was nothing like that.”
Or at least, not while he was with her. But once she’d moved to California, Zora occasionally worried that he would revert to that life once again.
“Then what did it? You cheated on him?”
“Asif. No. I did not cheat on him.”
Her cousin shrugged and turned to head back toward the kitchen. Now that his food was finished, he had lost interest in the history of her love-life and was probably thinking only about where he would begin this weekend’s festivities.
Moments later, he was in the bathroom brushing his teeth, and then minutes after that, was leaving the apartment, waving over his shoulder without looking back. As much as she mentally griped about his habits and transience in their shared living space, Zora felt immediately lonely.
She read her textbook for another half-hour before giving up and going in to watch Netflix in bed.
~~~
She had fallen asleep while watching The Best Man and woke up to the sound of her phone ringing. On television, the Netflix home-screen was scrolling through programming options. Grappling for her phone, expecting to see either her brother’s name or Asif’s, Zora sat upright when she saw the initials DS.
Why don’t you have my whole name in your contacts?
Because you’re kind of famous.
Deuce had twisted his lips and narrowed his eyes skeptically.
Here’s what we can do about that, he said. Just change it to ‘My Man’. I can live with that. So, whenever you see it, you know.
I already know, she’d said, trying not to blush.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded gravelly, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “Hello.”
“Hey. I wake you?”
“No. I mean, yeah, but it’s fine. I was …” She didn’t finish her sentence, imagining how pathetic it might sound.
I was watching Netflix all on my own. On a Friday night. Yes, I was.
“You alone?”
Zora thought for a moment, wondering why he would think … Oh, yes. Asif. He hadn’t allowed her to explain earlier that Asif was her cousin. One would have thought he would figure it out. Asif and she could have passed for siblings.
“Yes. I’m alone. And Deuce …”
“I just … I wanted to say I was sorry,” he said. “For speaking to you the way I did.”
Zora felt her throat tighten.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said.
“What’re you sorry for?”
“Springing up on you. I mean, it wasn’t fair. I should’ve …”
On the other end of the line, Deuce sighed. “I don’t know that it would have made a difference anyway,” he said.
“Why?”
“Zee, you know when it comes to you …”
She held her breath.
“Anyway. I’m just sorry I came off like that,” he said in a rush.
The silence stretched.
“How … how are you?” she asked finally. “Lately. How have you been? With work and everything. And that plan you had.”
The last time they spoke he mentioned he was about to make a pitch for a special project with an artist his father’s company had high hopes for. But after the way the rest of that conversation went, they hadn’t spoken of his work since.
“You mean with Devin Parks?” Deuce asked.
“Yes. Did Jamal ever give you the go-ahead to have him as the first …”
“Nah. He shot it down. Said he couldn’t give me an artist of Devin Parks’ caliber right out the gate. That I wasn’t ready. Then he told me to work with the team to find my own people.”
“Ouch. That’s harsh,” Zora said, settling back into her pillows again.
“Not really. He was right. Devin Parks is going to be huge. He is huge. Lettin’ me have him for this new label would have been giving me something I didn’t earn. Hell, I didn’t even earn the right to develop a new label.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true though. Who graduates from undergrad and gets that kind of opportunity from jump? I mean, if I was just some regular dude, I’d be lucky to be an intern at SE for real.”
Zora had heard him speak this way about himself before, and it gutted her every time.
“You’re always underestimating yourself,” she said. “So what if you’re not ‘some regular dude’? So what if you got a foot in the door because of your father? Now that you’re in, you just have to prove you deserve to be there.”
“Tryin’,” he said.
“And?”
“It’s goin’ okay, I guess. Mostly I’m learning the business, y’know?”
“Does your father help?”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t ask him.”
“Deuce.”
“What?”
“That’s such a wasted opportunity. Your father probably has an encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge about how to develop a record label. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?”
“So he can get confirmation that I’m just fakin’ through it right now?”
“Are you?” she asked.
Deuce said nothing for a few beats.
“Not really. I mean, I did my homework. I’ma have to take a couple risks, but I feel good about where things are at, considering.”
“Okay, so where are they?”
“What d’you mean?”
“I mean, tell me where things are. What stage are you at in developing the label?”
Deuce didn’t realize this about himself, but Zora knew he needed to process things aloud. To talk them over with a thought-partner, and problem-solve through conversation. When he did, his confidence strengthened. Not that he was short on confidence by any means, but Chris Scaife Sr. was a formidable yardstick to measure oneself by.
“You won’t be bored by all that?”
“Have I ever been?” she asked, before she caught herself.
Then they both laughed at the same time.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “There were moments, I admit …”
“Moments?” Deuce echoed, laughter still in his voice. “You fell asleep on me, Zee. When I was talking about …”
“In my defense, it was right after …” She broke off.
Right after they’d made love. Made love. It sounded like a corny, old-fashioned way to describe sex, but that’s what it was with him. Every time, maybe even including the very first time.
After lovemaking, Deuce was wide open. He talked. Told her his greatest fears, his biggest dreams. He talked until he was exhausted, and sometimes until she was, as well.
“Yeah,” he said now. “I’ll give you that. The moment wasn’t … opportune.”
“Baby?”
The sound of a female voice, interrupting their conversation was so unexpected that Zora for a moment didn’t know where it was coming from. Her eyes instinctively shifted to her tv even though the voice was clearly coming from her phone.
She heard shuffling, and the muffled sound of Deuce talking to someone. To the someone who had called him ‘baby.’
Zora’s heart dropped like a stone and settled somewhere in the pit of her stomach. Her first impulse was to hang up. To hang up and bury her face in a pillow and sob. But that would have been childish.
Deuce had called to apologize and that was all. She was the one who had led them off into some prolonged conversation that he probably didn’t even intend to have. Especially not with a woman waiting for him in his bed.
In his bed, though? Was she in his bed, or maybe they were just hanging out, Netflix-and-chilling? But that, of course, almost always invariably led to other things. And if this person hadn’t been asleep in his bed, or at least in some other part of his apartment, why would Deuce have chosen now, afte
r eleven at night to call?
“Hey. Zee, I gotta …” He was back, his voice no longer muffled, but instead sounding vaguely embarrassed.
“Go. Yes, I figured,” she said, trying to keep the tremors out of her voice.
“Okay, well I …”
He didn’t seem to know what to say to end the call.
See you later? Glad I ran into you?
None of those felt right between them. Like they were strangers. Like they hadn’t at one time filled each other up so much that there was no room for anything else.
“Before you go, Deuce? In case we don’t talk … I just … About your father?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe he’s waiting for you to ask him for his help. Maybe he’d want you to ask, and just doesn’t want to presume anything, y’know?”
Deuce said nothing, but Zora could tell he was listening keenly, thinking about what she said. So, she continued.
“You’re his eldest son, his heir. I feel like he has to be kind of proud that you want to follow in his footsteps. Maybe he’d love to mentor you, show you what he knows. If only you’d ask.”
Still, Deuce said nothing.
“Anyway,” Zora said. “G’night. And …”
“Zee.”
Only he had ever called her that.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
And then the line went silent.
CHAPTER THREE
His mother loved Regan. Deuce had always believed it was because she saw some of herself in his girlfriend. The girl from Nowhere, USA, hustling her way through the big, bad city on her wits, smarts and good looks alone.
Regan was from Cincinnati and had come to New York for college but dropped out after only one semester when some guy on the subway recruited her for print modeling work. When she told that story, Deuce didn’t say how dumb that was, and how oft-repeated a story it was. Pretty girls who dropped out of college to model were more than a dime-a-dozen in New York.
But Regan had done okay with it, landing some work for Macy’s catalogs and a couple of local magazines before someone told her she would never work high-fashion if she became too recognizable as the face of some of the low-end gigs. So, she stopped accepting those jobs as often, got a job as a restaurant hostess and started going on cattle-calls to be an extra on soaps and in movies, and auditioning for Bryant Park shows during Fashion Week.
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