Homecoming Weekend

by Curtis Bunn

  “This is why I come to homecoming,” Bob said. “This is the only place and the only time a year where you can get these stories that will bring you back to the best time of your life.”

  Earl, chugging on his third Heineken, challenged one part of Bob’s claim.

  “You think college was the best time of your life?” Earl asked. “The absolute best time?”

  “Yeah, it was,” Bob said. “Think about it. You were young, full of life and energy and hope for the future. You didn’t have any bills or responsibilities. The world hadn’t kicked you in the ass yet. There was a—what?—12-to-1 women-to-men ratio at Norfolk State. It was the best time because we were in college and didn’t have a care in the world outside of the classroom. I just felt like I was at a great place, around a lot of friends and not having to scrape and scratch to pay bills made it the best time . . . Anyone else feel me?”

  “Anytime you don’t have to pay any bills, that’s a good thing,” said Bruce Lee, who left NSU after three years, but remained connected to the school.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t make any money in college, either,” Earl said. “I LOVED college. I wouldn’t trade going to Norfolk State for anything. I come back for homecoming almost every year because the memories are great. But since I have graduated, I have lived my best life. I have a career, I have traveled and seen a lot of the world—and there are far more women in the world than they were at Norfolk State. And here’s the biggest and best part: I have grown.

  “College is four years for a reason. It’s enough time for you to grow so you can be prepared for the world. The world is a big place. If you go after it, you’ll grow even more and you’ll be fond of your college and your college days. But, to me, anyway, those days should be the foundation for a great life. Not the best days of your life.”

  “Both of you make sense, actually,” Jack said. “I can honestly say I maximized college from the social aspects of it to the academic to the leadership part of it. It was a blessing for me—especially being at a historically black college. At the time I was at Norfolk State, I didn’t think I could have a better time. But then you get out there and live . . . and you can do more and see more and enjoy it more—even with the responsibilities we all wish we didn’t have.”

  “I wish I could go back to college now, with the knowledge I have,” Warren said.

  “It wouldn’t even be fair,” Jack said. “People think I was a terror back then. Let me go back to college now, with all the knowledge on how to deal with women. I’d bang every bad honey on campus.”

  “So you get to go back to college as a forty-something man in a teenager’s body—and that’s what you’d use that gift for? To bang every bad honey?”

  “Damn, right,” Jack said. “What would you use it for?”

  “That’s exactly what I would do,” Earl said, and the groups of men laughed loudly.

  As they did, he checked his watch.

  “What, you have somewhere to be?’ Bruce asked. “He’s been checking his watch the whole time we’ve been here.”

  “Actually, I do,” Earl said.

  “He’s all in love,” Jack said. “Sending text messages during the whole round.”

  “And still beat all of you,” Earl said.

  “To who?” Bruce asked. “Who you in love with?”

  That was the question that Earl could not pass on. He loved Catherine unashamedly, and this was his moment to say so.

  “Catherine,” he said. “Catherine Harmon.”

  Bruce sat up in his seat. “I told you two years ago to step to Catherine,” he said. “That girl looks great.”

  “I know; I remember,” Earl said. “But that wasn’t our time. Now is our time.”

  “Are you serious?” Bruce asked. “How? What happened?”

  “She sent me an e-mail in June and that was the beginning,” Earl answered. He was humble in his remarks, but inside he was bubbling.

  “She’s my girl now, Bruce,” he said. “We’ve built something.”

  “I’ll be damned. Y’all know she was about the baddest honey at Norfolk State when we were there,” said Bruce, whose wife, Holly, was also a prime catch. “I haven’t seen her in a while, Earl. She still looking good?”

  “Awesome,” Earl said, smiling. “You’ll see. She’s coming with me to the Best of Friends party tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, this I gotta see,” Bruce said. “No wonder you looking at the time. I understand now.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DISPLEASURE IN THE AIR

  Jimmy, Carter and Barbara

  When Friday evening wore down, Barbara expected Carter to invite her to his room, as he had the previous five years. He didn’t. And that angered and hurt Barbara—and made her regret taking the cross-country trip to homecoming.

  “I can’t believe you’re not going to see me tonight,” she said to Carter in a text message. “We talked about this for a whole year. Now you change your mind? Why?”

  She knew, but she wanted him to tell her. Carter and Jimmy sat at their hotel bar, sipping on water to hydrate after a day of drinking. They chatted with more classmates they came across and caught up more on each other’s lives. But Barbara’s message altered the lighthearted tone of the evening. Carter turned to Jimmy, who was reading a text of his own from his wife, Monica, who remained pissed off about not being at homecoming with her husband.

  “We need to have a serious talk when you get back,” she wrote to him. “I have some decisions to make.”

  Carter and Jimmy looked at each other with quizzical expressions. They needed each other’s advice.

  “Go ahead,” Jimmy said. “You first. What is it?”

  “So, Barbara wants to know why we’re not spending the night together,” Carter said. “And I don’t know what to tell her.”

  “Well, what would you tell me?” Jimmy asked.

  “That I’m not feeling this move to New York,” Carter said.

  “Well, maybe you should talk to her about it,” Jimmy surmised. “It seems like something is missing to me, so it has to feel that way to her, too. You told me earlier today that you all are in love. That was this morning. Now, tonight, you don’t want to be bothered with her. That’s a big switch. You owe her an explanation.”

  Carter nodded his head. He knew that answer before Jimmy gave it. He was hoping for something creative that would ease his mind, and Barbara’s, too, without having to express his dissatisfaction with her move. But the reality was iron-clad: She and her kids were moving to New York and he had to deal with it.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said to Jimmy. “And I will have a heart-to-heart with her. Tonight. This won’t be easy . . . So what’s up with you?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “The wife is tripping,” he said. “She hit me with ‘we have to talk’ and she ‘has some decisions to make.’ What does that sound like to you?”

  “Well, whenever I heard, ‘we have to talk’ or told somebody that, it was about breaking up,” Carter said. “I don’t know what she means. But the part about having decisions to make doesn’t sound good, either.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” Jimmy said. “We’ve had our issues in the past, but nothing that would threaten the marriage. I never cheated on her. I don’t go anywhere, really. For her to trip like this is crazy.”

  “Maybe you should do like I’m about to do—have a heart-to-heart,” Carter said. “It can’t hurt.”

  “You don’t know Monica,” Jimmy said. “That girl can make a mountain out of a pimple.”

  They laughed. “Excuse me,” Carter said, hailing the bartender. “Can we get a shot of tequila?”

  “I don’t even want a shot,” Jimmy said. “But I’ll take it.”

  They tapped glasses of Herradura Reposada and downed the tequila.

  “Okay, man, good luck,” Jimmy said as he and Carter walked to the elevators. “I’m going to my room to call my wife. If I’m not too rundown afterward, I might go to the all-black party at
the Holiday Inn.”

  “Same here,” Carter said. “I’ll let you know when I get off the phone.”

  The two men went separate ways down the hallway of the eleventh floor. In his room, Jimmy turned on the television and hit the mute button. He always liked the TV on, whether he was watching it or not.

  Before he could press the keys to reach Monica, his phone rang. It was Regina Anderson, his college girlfriend that he had seen at The Broadway.

  Unfamiliar with the number, he answered anyway. “Hello.”

  “Why didn’t you come and speak to me at the party?” she said.

  “Huh? Who is this?” he asked.

  “Regina.”

  “Oh, hi, Regina. How are you?” he said. “How did you get my number?”

  “Don’t worry about that; I did. Why didn’t you say hello to me?”

  “I planned to; I did,” Jimmy said. “Then some other things happened and when it was time to go, I never saw you again.”

  “I was there the whole time, with Sharon Prince, Sharon King and Debra Hall,” Regina said. “You just ignored me. Eventually we went up to the third level, where the lounge is. But I was so disappointed. I know you saw me.”

  “Why didn’t you just come over to me?”

  “I see you’re the same old Jimmy.”

  “Really? How?”

  “You’ve started an argument in less than a minute, that’s how,” she said.

  “You called me with an attitude; not the other way around.”

  Suddenly, there was a familiar silence and awkwardness for both of them. They’d had an explosive relationship in a good and bad way. Intense passion, intense arguments.

  Finally, it hit Jimmy that he had grown and should handle Regina differently.

  “So, listen, I’m sorry I didn’t get to say hello to you,” he said. “But how are you? I did see you and you looked great.”

  “I couldn’t have looked that great; you would have come over,” she said.

  “Regina, I have apologized and I’m trying to move on,” he said, getting exasperated. “You gonna move on with me or am I gonna get the same old Regina from ten years ago?”

  “Okay, Jimmy, I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just so excited to see you and then to not get a hug and a kiss made me mad.”

  “That should make you disappointed maybe, but not mad.”

  “Well, I’m all right now,” she said. “Where you staying?”

  “Why?” Jimmy asked.

  “Because I want to come over and see you,” she answered. “Don’t you think we should spend some time together? It’s been too long.”

  “I guess it depends on what you mean by that,” he said. “I’m married and I hear you’re married. So we have some limitations.”

  “Jim, we have too much history to have limitations,” Regina said.

  He knew what that meant. One of the reasons he liked Regina was her boldness. When she wanted sex, she asked for it.

  “I’m not messing with you, Regina,” he said. “We can get together for a drink and to catch up, but that’s it.”

  “Yeah, right; I’ve heard that before,” she said. “Where are you staying?”

  “The Marriott.”

  “Waterside?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you serious?” Regina said. “Me, too.”

  Jimmy closed his eyes and dropped his head. He did not want that kind of access to Regina. As adamant as he was about not giving in to her, he also knew he could be weak to her. They’d had a hot and heavy past that still burned in his mind, all these years later.

  “Well, let’s meet at the bar on the mezzanine level,” he said. “How’s nine o’clock?”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be the one at the bar in the sexy dress. The short, sexy dress. Don’t be late.”

  Jimmy disconnected the call and dismissed thoughts of Regina. His thoughts shifted quickly to Monica, although he did not know exactly what he would say to her. They’d had conversations in the past about one thing or another that put him on the edge. Not the edge of leaving, but the edge of thinking about leaving. It was that kind of marriage. They loved hard, but dealt with myriad hard times because of Monica’s sensitivity regarding fidelity—or the idea of infidelity. Growing up, she lay awake in bed and listened to her mother and father argue about his late-nights out with “women not good enough to have their own men,” as her mother called them.

  She never understood how her mom accepted her dad’s philandering—they remained married, going on their thirty-fourth year. Still, Regina vowed to never let a man treat her as her father had her mother. That position was paramount in her developing what Jimmy called a “psychosis” that made her question anything that seemed out of sorts to her.

  More than twice Jimmy underwent a battery of questions and drama over his actions, questions and drama he found unwarranted. “All men have something to hide,” Monica had said. “It’s just a matter of where they hide it.”

  Once, they did not speak for three days because Jimmy arrived home after midnight one Monday night. When he told her he had been at a sports bar with his friends watching a Monday Night Football game, just as he had told her he would, she told him he was “a liar. Men do not hang out this late unless women are involved.”

  Another time she refused him sex because she read one of his e-mails from a female that said: “Thanks for walking me to my car.” Monica’s position was he walked her to the car after a date with her. His position was she was a co-worker who left the building after dark and he did the gentlemanly thing to make sure she was safe.

  Arguments Monica initiated that questioned his commitment and morals ate at Jimmy like acid. He loved his wife but hated some of her positions. And here they were again, at a relationship crossroads for what he deemed a logical choice.

  “So, I received your text,” he said when Monica answered the phone. “What are you so upset about? And you have some decisions to make? What does that mean?”

  “It means, Jimmy, that I’m tired of feeling like I should sit at home while you gallivant all over the place, chasing women,” she said. “I just can’t—”

  “What, Monica?” Jimmy interrupted. “You can’t what? You can’t trust me? That’s a real problem. Let’s just put it out there because I’m tired of it. You’re one of those women who cannot stand prosperity. I have not cheated on you. Period. And yet all I get from you is doubts. I can’t take it anymore. You’re going to have to do something or we really are going to have some problems.”

  In that one tirade, Jimmy put the onus on Monica, who could not get a word in because Jimmy was in a rage.

  “There are men who do whatever they like, married or not,” he said. “They cheat just because they can. There are men who consider being with other women a sport, as if it’s a game. I know these men. I’m not one of them. And here’s the crazy part: They get no grief from their wives because their wives trust them. And here I am, being faithful, and I catch hell from you almost every day about one thing or another. Well, I’m sick of it. It’s stupid, but mostly it’s wrong and I don’t deserve it.”

  “You talking all loud and with conviction doesn’t convince me of anything, James,” Monica said. “I know what I feel, and I feel like you’d rather be out there among a bunch of women than with your wife. And I don’t deserve that.”

  Both of them were seething, and Jimmy knew that was a conflict that was combustible. But he didn’t care.

  “Do you like drama or are you just dumb?” he went on.

  “You calling me ‘dumb’?” she said.

  “I didn’t,” Jimmy said. “I asked if you were ‘dumb.’ You have to be something to ignore what I said to you. But I’m going to take my time and repeat it so maybe you feel me on it: I have not cheated on you. Period. If you don’t believe me, if that is not good enough for you, then I don’t know what else to say.”

  Monica did not know where to go with that one. Jimmy had effectively put her i
n defensive mode. But that did not stop her from firing right back at him.

  “I heard what you said, but that doesn’t mean it’s the truth,” she said. “Any man who is proud of his wife would take her to his homecoming. Any man who wouldn’t must not be proud of her or must have a reason for not wanting her around. And with a man, that reason is usually another woman.”

  “Forget talking about what a ‘man’ would do,” Jimmy responded. “Talk about me, about what I do. Not even what I would do, but what I do. What I have done since the day I met you is be available to you, respect you, honor our relationship. I haven’t been out there at strip clubs or at clubs partying every night. You seem intent on placing me in a category with any common man, which would be okay if I acted like any other man. But I haven’t.

  “Like I said, get yourself together, Monica,” he said. “I have been good to you. I’m not taking it anymore. One of my friends is here with his wife and he’s miserable. She’s acting just as I expected you to act—insecure, petty, driving him crazy. You’re not even here and you’re doing that to me. You can’t even be honest with yourself about yourself. You’re insecure, baby. You think every woman is interested in me and that I’m interested in every woman I see.

  “It’s not like that at all. I have been committed to you. You don’t see it or believe it, but I have. But—and this is not some kind of threat or anything, I’m telling you because I’m supposed to tell you—I’m not going to take it anymore.”

  “If that’s not a threat, then what is?” Monica said. “I’m the one at home by myself while you hang out and party and do whatever you want to do. I guess I’m supposed to take this, huh? Well, I’m not taking it anymore, either.”

  “Taking what, Monica?” Jimmy said. “You’re unbelievable. I don’t go anywhere. I haven’t taken a trip by myself before. When you go to wherever—Atlanta, New York on shopping trips—I say have a good time. I look up places online to make sure you have a good time. I trust you. I can’t stop you from doing something if you wanted to, and I’m not going to try. If we don’t trust each other, what do we have?”