Commitment

by Forrester, Nia

  Riley leaned back into the armchair and looked about the lobby, taking in the tourists and business travelers; people with varying degrees of enthusiasm about being in Manhattan. Most occupied themselves with their luggage and keys and travelers’ check transactions, but a romantic few stood near the glass revolving doors, staring wistfully out at the city streets. Others stared unabashedly at Shawn or excitedly pointed him out to friends or family. A few took his photo surreptitiously with their cell phones. Riley looked away. They’d only been back from Jamaica for two and a half weeks and his other life had already aggressively reasserted itself.

  Yellow cabs and Lincoln Town Cars at the curb competing for room to pick up and drop off passengers and valet whistles screeched over the general din of the city. Riley spotted her reflection in the coffee table in front of her and grimaced. She looked tired. She’d barely had time to shower before they left the apartment this morning. Brendan had called at a quarter to six insisting that Shawn get up and come into the city even though his promotional appearance wasn’t until two that afternoon. Since it was a Saturday, she had no excuse not to tag along, though to be fair, a couple nights in a hotel with Shawn was always something she’d looked forward to before they were married.

  Riley had run her fingers through her hair and thrown some things into an overnight bag, pulling on a pair of jeans, a Henley and hiking boots. There was no time for make-up or trying to look cute because Brendan was outside honking the horn by six-twenty.

  Brendan, whom she’d always loved, she had come to view as the unwelcome ambassador for K Smooth – Shawn’s other identity. As far as she could tell, ninety percent of his job consisted of reminding Shawn of K Smooth’s career maintenance needs and making sure he followed through on them which was no small feat since all Shawn cared about was performing onstage; the rest of it was background noise as far as he was concerned. Brendan made sure he did it all anyway and as a result undoubtedly helped make him the star he was.

  Riley leaned closer and looked at her reflection again. Her pleasantly darker complexion from the honeymoon had faded, and her skin now looked blotchy and sickly, particularly this early in the morning.

  “Riley.”

  She yawned, shoving herself up to go to front desk where Shawn was finally getting a keycard from the clerk.

  “They only have one keycard for the suite,” he said. “So we have to leave it at the desk when we go out.”

  He looked at the clerk again. “This is my wife, Riley. Don’t let anyone get the key except for her and this guy – Brendan Cole,” he inclined his head in Brendan’s direction.

  His wife. He’d mentioned her name almost as an afterthought. They’d been married less than a month, and already she was just “my wife”.

  “Yes sir. And again, we apologize for the inconvenience. As soon as the programmer is functional, we’ll send up another keycard.”

  The clerk scribbled something on a piece of paper. She was somewhere around Riley’s age, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, and had her hair swept away from her face, fastened in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. The nametag she wore said ‘Lisa’. She avoided looking Shawn in the eye as she spoke to him as though afraid she couldn’t trust herself not to flirt. Riley had watched this scenario play out countless times before, and by far preferred it to those where women threw themselves at him as though she wasn’t even there.

  “We’re just here for the weekend so it should be a’ight. But nobody else can get in in the meantime, right?”

  “No, no,” she said hastily. “No one else can get in except for housekeeping and security.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  Shawn pointed out their bags to the bellboy who gathered everything on his cart, following them toward the elevators.

  “I told you you’d want to check in early,” Brendan said as they stepped in. “See how crazy it is already?”

  “I know, B. But six in the morning?” Shawn said.

  “You’re all the way in Queens, man. I wasn’t taking any chances you got stuck in traffic trying to make it to the venue later.”

  Riley smiled. Brendan and Shawn talked about Queens as though it was at the far end of the earth. She leaned back against Shawn, who wrapped his arms over her shoulders, his chin resting on top of her head.

  “Excuse me.” It was the bellboy. “Smooth?”

  “Yeah. What’s up, man?”

  Riley knew without looking, precisely the expression Shawn had on his face right at that moment. A half-hearted smile. Not encouraging, but not off-putting either. He didn’t enjoy being approached, but felt guilty about it, since he knew full well that he owed everything to his fans. In private time he wanted to be able to shed his image like a coat but unfortunately, it just didn’t work that way.

  “I was wondering – if it’s no problem, man – could you sign something for my girl?”

  Guys always said that. It was always “for my girl” or “for my little brother.”

  “Yeah. No problem.”

  Riley leaned instead against the elevator door while Shawn took a pen and paper Brendan handed to him.

  “What’s your girl’s name, man?”

  “You could just sign it K Smooth,” he suggested.

  Shawn obliged and handed him the paper. “You check out the new CD yet?”

  “Nah man,” the bellboy seemed excited that Shawn was actually having a conversation with him. “But I heard that joint is the sh . . .” He cut himself off, realizing it would probably not be appropriate to use profanity to a guest. Even if the guest in question made a living with profanity-laced lyrics.

  Shawn turned to Brendan. “B, you got any product in the car?”

  Brendan nodded.

  “Hook ol’ boy up,” Shawn said.

  “Thanks, man!”

  The bellboy offered Shawn his hand and they executed one of those complicated homeboy handshakes that Riley could never quite keep track of. When they got to the suite, Shawn tipped him fifty bucks and reminded him to look for Brendan downstairs in a few minutes to get the CD.

  “He’s already a fan,” Riley teased when the door shut behind him. “You didn’t have to buy the guy off.”

  Shawn narrowed his eyes at her and grinned.

  “It’s all about giving back the love they give to me, Riley,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she laughed. “Don’t feed me the lines you give Vibe magazine.”

  Riley did a three-sixty, surveying the layout. The suite looked familiar. She could almost swear they had stayed in this exact room before, which wasn’t impossible or even unlikely given their history with hotel rooms. When Shawn shut the door Riley immediately stretched out on the king-size bed, kicking her boots off and pulling back the covers.

  “Damn, girl. You that tired?” Brendan said.

  “Yup. So if you two need to talk about work you might want to take it back downstairs.”

  Brendan looked over at Shawn, as though expecting him to intercede but Shawn just shrugged.

  “We can take care of business later,” he said. “Holla at me in an hour.”

  Riley climbed under the covers and unzipped her jeans, tugging them off and tossing them across the room onto the sofa in the corner. Shawn shut the curtains. The room became dim, although not quite dark.

  “My wife’s undressing, B.”

  Brendan shook his head and sighed. “C’mon man, we have to take care of this shit, for real.”

  “One hour,” Shawn said again.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and began unlacing his boots, so Brendan headed for the door.

  “A’ight,” he said reluctantly. “But definitely at eight.”

  When they were alone, Shawn peeled off his shirt and shed his jeans. Riley held the covers back for him so he could crawl in next to her.

  “How tired are you?” he asked, his mouth pressed against her forehead.

  “I’m not used to these early mornings like you are Shawn.” She turned away from him and sn
uggled into the pillow. “Especially not on a Saturday.”

  “C’mon, we have this big bed, no neighbors to worry about when you start making your noises.”

  Riley laughed. “When I do what?”

  “You know, make those sounds you make . . .” He emitted a guttural moan, and Riley lifted a pillow over her head, swatting him with it.

  “I don’t make that sound. You make that sound.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said, lowering his voice. “You just take me there . . .”

  Riley turned to find his mouth in the dark, the tip of her tongue just barely touching his. They still couldn’t keep their hands off each other; that much hadn’t changed. So she should have known better - sleeping right now was out of the question.

  g

  Shawn was fully dressed when she woke up, wearing one of what she liked to think of as his “public appearance outfits” – extra baggy jeans, oversized designer t-shirt with label prominently displayed, and shin-high boots with the laces hanging out. Subtle, it definitely was not. Riley couldn’t understand it herself, but people seemed to eat that image up. He was on his mobile phone, with Brendan sitting nearby, his feet up on the table. Riley reached for the shirt that Shawn had shed earlier and pulled it over her head, getting out of bed and heading for the bathroom. They were so engrossed in their own thing neither of them even seemed to notice that she was up. Her entire relationship with Shawn seemed to consist of one or the other of them getting out of bed to go somewhere, leaving the other behind.

  She brushed her teeth and washed her face, running wet fingers through her hair to make it look more presentable. If she had her way, this was all the grooming she would be doing today, but something told her she’d have no such luck. Only when she switched on the lamps after coming out of the bathroom did Shawn and Brendan realize she was awake. They squinted at the sudden light and looked over at her.

  “I was just talking to the realtor,” Shawn said. “You want to go check out the condo today?”

  “How can we look at the apartment today if you have to be at that thing? What time will you be done?”

  “I meant you. By yourself. Or ask Tracy to go with you.”

  “Shawn. You promised.”

  “I have to go to a radio station after, Riley. I told you about that.”

  “Then we’ll see the condo tomorrow. You want to buy a place for that kind of money without even looking at it?”

  Shawn shrugged. “If you like it, then it’s cool with me. Just make sure I got a spot for my music.”

  Before he even finished his sentence, Riley was shaking her head.

  He was throwing her into the deep end and telling her to sink or swim. He wasn’t kidding either, that’s what was so scary. If she liked it, he would be cool with it, no questions asked.

  “No. Cancel the realtor. You have to at least see it, Shawn. I’m not the one who wants to move in the first place. We could live at my place in Flushing and I’d be perfectly fine with that.”

  “Who wants to live in a tiny hole in Flushing when they can live on Central Park West?” Shawn said looking at Brendan for confirmation.

  “Keep me out of it,” Brendan said, going to look out the window at nothing in particular.

  “And why would you even make an appointment without telling me first?” Riley demanded.

  “Because I know you don’t want to come to this thing with me.”

  “So?”

  “So you’ll be here with nothing to do. The least you can do is look at the place we might live at.”

  “Wow. Assume much?” Riley said. “How do you know I won’t have anything to do? Just because I’m not with you doesn’t mean I can’t think of anything to do with myself.”

  “You don’t want to go look at the condo, fine. We’ll buy it without seeing it.”

  He turned away from her, starting to dial out a number on his mobile phone. Riley watched him stubbornly for a moment then sighed.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll go look at the stupid condo. Give me the realtor’s number.”

  Shawn handed a business card over his head without looking back at her and she snatched it from his fingers, heading for the bathroom to get showered and dressed.

  “I should be back around ten tonight,” Shawn called after her.

  “Fine. Me too.”

  Riley shut the bathroom door and turned on the shower, allowing the water to run until the entire room was steamy. She shed the shirt and tested the temperature before getting in. She’d only been standing under the warm jet of water for about a minute when she heard the door open and Shawn pulled back the glass door.

  “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said sourly.

  “Okay?” he asked again. He leaned forward and kissed her on the collarbone getting the front of his shirt damp in the process. The kiss melted away every ounce of her earlier irritation, damn him.

  “Yes, okay,” she smiled.

  “A’ight,” he turned and left, the half open bathroom door letting in a stream of cold air that made her shiver.

  g

  Although Riley may have found it intimidating to go look at a multi-million dollar condo that by herself she would never be able to afford, Tracy did not share the same concerns. She pulled up at the hotel in her BMW convertible an hour after Riley called her, and they headed off into the afternoon traffic. Tracy’s hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a Pucci scarf and she was wearing a blue blazer, white oxford and chinos with loafers.

  “You look like a Connecticut socialite, Riley commented dryly.

  Tracy whipped her head around. “I do, right? That’s the look I was going for.”

  “You’re crazy,” Riley laughed. “What the hell for?”

  “I just knew you were going to show up looking like that.”Tracy inclined her head in the direction of Riley’s black wide-legged pants and white t-shirt. “So I had to try to raise our profile a little bit.”

  “I’m sure this woman couldn’t care less what we wear. All she wants to know is that we can afford to buy the damn place.”

  “Why am I getting the feeling you don’t want to do this at all?”

  “Well let’s see. Maybe because I don’t want to do this at all?”

  Tracy shook her head in disbelief.

  “Y’know what Riley? If you remember, I wasn’t exactly one hundred percent in favor of you getting married in the first place. But even I can see that buying a kick-ass Manhattan townhouse is one of the perks of walking down the aisle with someone who calls himself ‘K Smooth’.”

  “It’s not a townhouse, it’s a condo. And I didn’t marry him for ‘perks’,” Riley said.

  “Yeah, yeah. But does that mean you can’t enjoy them?”

  “But I like it in Flushing. It’s a real neighborhood, with real people.”

  “And what does your husband say about the ‘real neighborhood with the real people’?”

  “Stop calling him that. You only do it to make me crazy.”

  Tracy laughed. “Why isn’t he doing this with you anyway?”

  “Some promotional thing.”

  “So when’s he going to look at it?”

  Riley shrugged. “Maybe not till we move in.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. He says he’ll go with whatever I decide.”

  “The decorating too?”

  “I don’t know, Tracy. And I don’t care. I like where I live now. And since he spends so much time on the road anyway, I don’t see why I can’t stay there.”

  Tracy put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Riley? Maybe this is something you should have discussed before you started packing boxes.”

  “Yeah, I know. But when he gets swept up in one of his big ideas, it’s impossible to get him to think of anything else. Besides, he hates the Flushing apartment. He associates it with Brian, although he tries to pretend that’s not the reason he doesn’t like it.”

  “Men are so rid
iculous. He won. You’re married. Game over. He even convinced you to change your name. A Herculean feat in and of itself considering . . .”

  “It was really important to him that we have the same last name,” Riley said, a little defensively. “And not at all important to me that I keep the one I had.”

  “Hey, I don’t care. I’m just wondering what your mother’s going to say about it, that’s all.”

  “Never mind that. We were talking about apartments, remember? So the deal is that Shawn thinks Brian still wants me or something and the place in Flushing reminds him of all that.”

  Tracy swerved in front of a Yellow cab, cutting across two lanes to turn onto Central Park West.

  “Brian does still want you.”

  “Not really. He still wants to have the option. There’s a difference.”

  “Not in a man’s mind. And definitely not in your man’s mind.”

  “Yeah but as you pointed out, now we’re married so he can finally calm down.”

  Tracy laughed. “Unless he’s one of those men who think that now you’re married he has license to really show his butt.”

  Riley said nothing. Well, it was true – Shawn was not exactly the mellowest brother in the world when he felt threatened.

  “Is this it?”

  Tracy pulled up in front of a mammoth building facing the park. A doorman watched their approach and stepped closer to the car as they slowed down, poised to open their doors.

  “I think so.” Riley checked the address she’d scribbled on a piece of paper along with the realtor’s name. “Yeah.”

  Moments after the car came to a complete stop, the doorman had opened Riley’s door and she climbed out.

  “Would it be alright for us to park here?” she asked him. “We’ll only be about an hour or so.”

  “Of course.” He smiled at her as though she’d just told him she was leaving the car for his personal use.