Commitment

by Forrester, Nia

  And who knew what it had been about for Riley? He didn’t understand her at all, so any of his guesses were sure to be way off base.

  But in case she was angry, he would try to slip out without waking her and by the time he got back, hopefully the whole thing would be squashed. If he was lucky, she would sweat it out at yoga. He went into the sitting room and dialed Chris’ number, practically whispering into the phone, arranging for a ride to the studio.

  “I got those two kids with me,” Chris told him.

  “Yeah,” Shawn said. “A’ight. Whatever.”

  He was getting tired of sharing studio time – and frankly Chris’ time as a producer – with two seventeen-year olds who didn’t know how played out it was trying to prove you were hard by naming your group after a damn gun. But from what he’d heard, dumb name or not, Glock was likely to be close on his heels when their CD dropped. So if he could contain his impatience, it made good business sense to keep them close before they became his competition.

  When he got out of the shower it was just his luck that Riley was wide awake, lying on her back, knees up, one crossed over the other, flipping channels. Her eyes were puffy and she yawned, stretching her arms above her head, causing the sheets to fall away from her chest exposing the smooth, firm globes of her breasts, her nipples like perfect copper-colored coins, firm from the cold hotel room air.

  “Hey,” she said. She didn’t sound angry at all. “Where you headed?”

  “Studio.”

  “I have yoga with Tracy,” she said. “You’ll be there all day, right?”

  “After yoga come back here,” he said. “So we can go home together.”

  She turned onto her stomach and scooted around so that her head was at the foot of the bed. “Okay.”

  Shawn dug through his bag and pulled out a clean pair of jeans and a shirt. Riley was watching him as he changed.

  “Who else is going to the studio?” she asked.

  “Chris. A couple young ‘uns.”

  “And who else?”

  “What you mean who else? I don’t know,” he shrugged.

  “Women?”

  Shawn looked up. He should have known she wasn’t going to let last night go.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes. Maybe.”

  “But I don’t have anything to worry about, right? Because I can trust you.”

  He said nothing, until she arched an eyebrow and smiled at him.

  “You think that’s the same thing?” he asked looking at her. “You going out to dinner with your ex-boyfriend a couple weeks after your honeymoon, and there being some random chicks hanging out – who I ignore anyway – at the studio?”

  “In a sense, yes.”

  Shawn gave a short laugh. “In what sense are they the same?”

  He’d been so focused on deflecting her anger he wasn’t prepared for his own to resurface.

  “In both instances, it requires trust. I have to trust that those ‘random chicks’ don’t interest you, and you have to trust that . . .” she looked him directly at him, “I do not, could not, want anyone but you, Shawn Gardner.”

  Their eyes locked and Shawn’s irritation turned to mist. Damn. When she said shit like that, looking at him the way she was, it was game-fucking-over.

  “C’mere a sec,” she said beckoning to him.

  Shawn pulled his shirt over his head and went to sit next to her on the bed. She wiped something from the corner of his mouth and licked her finger.

  “Toothpaste. So you’ll come get me at what time?”

  “Around six this evening.”

  She turned her attention to the television again.

  “Okay. Have fun.”

  g

  As luck would have it, the first person Shawn noticed when he got to the studio was Mike’s cousin. He tried to remember her name but couldn’t access it. The wannabe dancer who had invited him to watch her dance at the club that time. But he hadn’t made it to the club that night and now he would no doubt have to listen to her babble on about wanting to make it in the music video business. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t worth looking at, but today he wanted to work in the studio for a change. He would have to ask Chris to start getting strict about who could show up and hang out in the control room.

  “You layin’ something down today, Smooth?”

  It was Darryl, the younger of the two youngsters. He reminded Shawn of the homeboys he used to hang with in DC. Even though he was probably no more than eighteen, he looked like he’d seen a lifetime of hard knocks. His face still had some traces of preteen roundness but was marred by old faded scars crisscrossing his cheeks and forehead, as though he’d once been in a pretty serious knife fight. Shawn tried to control it, but he couldn’t help feeling competitive toward this kid who probably wanted nothing more than to hear someone who’d made it tell him that he had what it takes to make it too.

  “Not today,” Shawn said. “I’m here checking you out.”

  Mike’s cousin had gotten up from her perch across the room and was headed right for him. Shawn looked toward the one place that remained sacred in the studio – the live room. Right now Mike was in there experimenting with his vocals, but he could easily join him and circumvent the intrusion. But he was too slow. Just as he was about to reach for the door, she touched him on the shoulder. He turned and smiled at her.

  “You never came to see me dance,” she said, pouting prettily.

  “When?” He pretended not to recall. No point giving her more encouragement.

  “The day I met you? You said you was going to Sans Souci with Mike and them.”

  “I did?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be there tonight too. Mike said Chris and them are going.”

  Shawn nodded noncommittally. He would tell Mike to keep her out of the studio from now on. The last thing he needed when he came to work was someone hitting him up for a gig. Or for other things.

  She sat on the arm of a nearby chair and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

  “How old are you?” he asked, suddenly curious.

  She looked like she was barely out of high school.

  “Twenty-one.”

  He seriously doubted that. Nineteen, tops. Funny how every single young girl he met backstage or hanging out at the studio looking for attention was twenty-one. They never seemed to have the imagination to claim to be twenty-two.

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Keisha.” She smiled, pleased to have elicited even the tiniest degree of his interest.

  “Keisha, why are you here?” he asked.

  She blushed. “I’m Mike’s cousin,” she began.

  “I know why he’s here,” Shawn cut her off. “But why are you here with him?”

  “C’mon, man.”Chris Scaife seemed to come out of nowhere, putting an arm about Keisha’s shoulders. “That’s not how we treat our guests.”

  Keisha looked relieved to have been saved from having to answer his question. Relieved, and smug. Because if Chris said she could be there, then no one, not even the talent, could second-guess him.

  Shawn turned away, looking once again into the live room. He was itching to get in front of the mike himself but the smart thing would be to stand back, watch and listen. It was one thing when Glock was performing at a show – the energy from the crowd, the lights and the overwhelming din of the music sometimes helped even the most lackluster performer look and sound good.

  From what he remembered though, these kids were high-energy, and their performance was far from lackluster. Last time he’d seen them in the studio and listened to them raw – without accompaniment and mixing and digitizing – they had been equally impressive. They had hoarse voices that would record well, especially for the hardcore stuff they liked to rhyme about. They reminded him of that old group Das EFX vocally. If Chris exploited that similarity, they would blow up in no time. People were hungry for a return to old-school sounds. Hell, even Riley said she used to listen to hip-hop back in the day. He
would have to remember to ask her what she thought of Glock when she saw them perform in L.A.

  “Even though last time you embarrassed me by not showing up, I’m inviting you one more time to come to Sans Souci,” Chris said from behind him. “Come sip some champagne and kick back.”

  Shawn turned. “I’ll let you know.”

  The briefest look of annoyance crossed Chris’ face. He wasn’t used to having his invitations rebuffed, but the real, unspoken issue, the reason for the invitation was Riley. Chris had never met her and was irritated that Shawn hadn’t invited him to the wedding, even though his ego would never permit him to say it out loud. So Shawn would bring Riley to Sans Souci tonight, and get that out of the way but from then on he had no plans to expose her further to Chris or his crazy lifestyle.

  Hell, he wished she didn’t have to be exposed to his crazy lifestyle. They’d been married a little more than a month, and already he had another multi-city trip on the horizon. He wasn’t looking forward to it as much, which was new. There was nothing like being onstage – nothing. But still, he was just getting used to knowing that Riley was there, whenever he wanted her. Now at least he knew she would be home – wherever that turned out to be – when he got back.

  Tomorrow, he would call the realtor and make an appointment to look at the condo in the next couple of days while Riley was at work. Even though she said she liked it, he worried that she would settle for something less than he wanted her to have, just because she didn’t want him to spend the money to get it.

  “You listening, man?”

  Shawn looked up. Chris said something to him which he’d missed completely.

  “I was talking about MTV. We booked a spot for Glock. If you rolled in with them, it would make some noise around this CD.”

  But did he want to create hype around Glock’s CD? That was the question.

  “Yeah. No problem,” he said, his better nature winning out. “Call B and let him know.”

  Keisha was still sitting there, her eyes fixed on him. She was wearing skinny jeans and a white tank top with high-heeled white sandals. Around her neck was a complicated array of gold and silver necklaces of varying lengths. Her bracelets – on both wrists – were equally busy, and her fingernails were long and scarlet. She idly twirled a strand of her long, dark hair around her forefinger, her head bopping to Mike’s rhymes. She turned and caught him looking and smiled, but Shawn didn’t smile back.

  Just then, someone turned up the volume so that it was difficult to talk over the music. The sound of a sample Chris was experimenting with filled the control room and then everyone was moving, almost involuntarily, to the music. Shawn’s eyes met Keisha’s for a second time but this time she didn’t smile and instead stood, pretending to be casually moving to a chair at the other end of the room.

  When the music ended he followed her, feeling a stab of remorse at having embarrassed her. She was practically a kid, and a fan. It was just that it was still a fairly new sensation for him, being able to refuse women that looked like her without a second thought.

  “I wasn’t tryin’ to dis’ you before,” he said to her. “I’ve just got work on the brain, y’know?”

  She looked up and nodded eager to accept his explanation. “Yeah, I understand.”

  “If I come to the club tonight I’ll definitely check you out and put in a word to the casting director on my next video.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And Mike and Darryl should be able to do something for you too,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, but they don’t have the same budget as you,” she said. “Might not be no dancers in their video.”

  Shawn nodded. “That’s true.”

  He remembered what that was like – when no one knew for sure if he would sell and budgets were tight. Every video was made on the cheap, every public appearance booked in small venues until he proved himself. He looked at Keisha a little more closely. What did she know about all that?

  “K Smooth. I’ll be damned.”

  Shawn smiled and turned at the sound of the familiar, husky smoker’s voice. Jodi Weeks. The foremost female producer in all of hip-hop who had a big enough mouth that he heard her fine, even over the loud music.

  Jodi was short and dark-skinned with a tight, athletic build. She habitually dressed like the rappers she worked with, even though at thirty-four, she was easily a decade older than most of them. Her eyes, always warm, drew Shawn in just like the old days when he was a kid newly isolated by fame and desperately looking for a hint of something genuine. He stood and went to embrace her. They held each other for a long enough time to draw everyone else’s attention, so Jodi pulled him out into the hallway.

  She stepped back and looked him over. Even though she was only five-foot three, she almost always managed to make him feel like the skinny eighteen-year-old he’d been when they first met. Jodi had that homegirl combination of pretty and tomboyish that he’d always had a weakness for, and she wore it well. He could easily think of a dozen rappers who would love to get them some Jodi but most were too intimidated to even try.

  “Look at you, still fine as I don’t know what. How long has it been?” she teased.

  “Six months at least. Where you been, Jo-Jo?”

  “Never mind where I been. How ‘bout you? I heard a vicious rumor,” she said, looking at him slyly out of the corner of her eyes.

  Shawn shook his head, playing along. “You shouldn’t listen to rumors.”

  “C’mon now, who is she?” Jodi asked, hands on her hips.

  “Her name’s Riley Terry. Was Riley Terry. Riley Gardner now,” Shawn said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice.

  Jodi punched him in the arm, hard enough that it actually hurt. “I can’t believe you upped and got married! She has to be something special.”

  “She is.”

  “Lemme see that damn ring.” She grabbed his left hand. “And I’ll meet her, right?”

  “If you promise not to trip,” Shawn said, only half joking.

  Jodi pretended to be hurt. “So I can’t tell her about me and you?”

  Shawn looked at her blankly.

  “Okay, so it was almost eight years ago, but it was still the best five months of your young life.”

  Shawn laughed. “It was.” Emphasis on the second word.

  Jodi wrinkled her small, cute nose. “I don’t know. I might get jealous. Maybe I shouldn’t meet her.”

  “I want you to,” Shawn said. “I think you’d like each other.”

  Jodi laughed. “Smooth, you still don’t understand women worth a damn. Your wife and I will not be friends, okay? And if she gets even a whiff of what went on between us, she might even hate my guts.”

  “She ain’t nothin’ like that. And you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. You’d like her,” Shawn said confidently.

  Jodi shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll see. And I have to admit, I am definitely curious to see who this chick is that was able to convince you to get married. Brendan says she got you straight sprung.”

  “Is that what I am?” Shawn asked, surprisingly untroubled by Brendan’s assessment. “But she didn’t convince me of anything. I had to convince her.”

  Jodi nodded. “Sprung,” she confirmed. “But I see your appeal with the ladies hasn’t changed, married or not.” She inclined her head in the direction of the studio control room.

  It took Shawn a moment to realize she was talking about Keisha.

  “That ain’t nuthin’,” he dismissed. “She’s somebody’s cousin.”

  “She was looking at you like my fat aunt looks at a piece of sweet potato pie.”

  Shawn grinned. “You ain’t changed a bit, with your country ass.”

  “Speaking of which. When’s the last time you been back home?”

  Jodi was from Portsmouth, Virginia and had lived in DC while she attended Howard University. She and Shawn had bonded in part over their memories of Georgia Avenue and parties near the dorms where he hung out, try
ing to mack on college girls.

  “About six weeks ago. Sold my place in Largo.”

  “Word?”Jodi looked surprised. “So you’re a bona fide New Yorker now, huh?”

  Shawn shrugged. “Guess so.”

  “So much for your DC cred,” Jodi teased. “Is that what she wanted? To live here?”

  Shawn tried not to sound defensive. “She works here and her life is here, so I did what I had to do. Besides, it doesn’t matter where I live. Traveling as much as I do.”

  Jodi shook her head. “I’m not sure I know how to handle the new, improved and mature K Smooth,” she said. “Putting his woman first.”

  Shawn heard the hidden rebuke and touched the side of Jodi’s face briefly. “I wasn’t nowhere near ready then, Jo-Jo,” he said quietly.

  Jodi moved away from his touch.

  “Ancient history, Smooth. I’m just sayin’. Nice to see this change in you. Now c’mon let’s go see what’s these young guns talkin’ ‘bout.”

  g

  The apartment was stuffy, hot and smelled as though they’d been gone for a lot longer than one night. Shawn threw open a window and tossed their bags on the sofa. The day they moved out of this place could not come soon enough to suit him. The entire building smelled like day-old Chinese food, and the temperature controls were on another floor entirely, making it impossible to predict whether you were coming home to a sweatbox or a freezer. And that nosy landlady was no bargain either. Shawn saw the way she looked at him, as though she expected him to mug her or something. He’d even heard her ask a few times what happened to that “nice boy, Brian” and Riley would explain patiently over and over that she was married now, and that Brian was fine. But still, she kept asking, like she was holding out the hope that one day Shawn would be replaced.

  Riley was checking voicemail messages, hitting the forward button after listening to the first five seconds or so of each message. She didn’t say it, but Shawn knew she was hoping that her mother had called. They hadn’t spoken since two days before the wedding ceremony, when Riley called to let her know when and where, she’d responded that she didn’t think it would be “real” of her to be in attendance or some weak shit like that.