by Curtis Bunn
“Come to find out, he’s a damn drug dealer. I knew it. He was too flashy and did a whole bunch of stuttering when I asked him what he did. To his credit, he didn’t lie. He said, ‘I have my own thing, my own business.’
“My sister played the naïve role, claiming she didn’t know. Now she’s with this guy afraid to leave because he’s crazy as hell,” Jesse said. “I’m feeling like I want to shoot the guy—if I could get away with it.”
“Well, sometimes you hear stuff to make you feel better about your shit,” Don said.
“What’s going on with you?” Jesse asked.
Don took a deep breath. “I came here for one reason: to get away from all the bad stuff at home,” he said. “Business falling apart. Marriage falling apart. This is about the only place I could think of where I could go and feel energized. Homecoming. Any place else, I’d probably ball up in the fetal position and crawl under a desk.”
“Man, you need drinks more than I do,” Jesse said. “I’m sorry to hear about that. But just as you said, there is always someone worse off than you. And if there’s one thing I know about you, you will overcome—damn, I sound like Martin Luther King. But I’m serious. You’re a fighter. And anything I can do to help, I will. Just let me know.”
Don looked over at his friend. “I appreciate that, man.”
Jesse nodded his head. At that moment his mission was to assure Don had so much fun that he went back home feeling better about his plight, even if the circumstances looked grim.
Just before they arrived at the Holiday Inn for the party, Venita called. Her niece had gone to the bathroom, so she took a few minutes to catch up with her boys.
“Are your panties still on?” Jesse said as he answered the phone.
“Shut up, boy,” she said. “What’s happening?”
“We’re about to go to the party. We just got here,” Jesse said. “What you gonna do?”
“I might come over there with my niece, Diamond.”
“Oh, yeah, the pole dancer. How is she?” Jesse said.
“If I didn’t know you were a lawyer, I would think you’re an idiot,” she said. “As a matter of fact, you’re an idiot lawyer . . . Anyway, her roommate is pregnant and hasn’t talked to anyone about it, so I’m hoping to do that tonight.”
“You?” Jesse asked.
“Look, I’m not even studying you,” she said. “Just text me and let me know how it is.”
“All right, baby girl.”
“I guess Venita isn’t coming, huh?” Don asked as he parked the car in the back of the hotel. “I wanted to see this niece of hers. She said she’s cute.”
“In the meantime, take a shot of this Remy,” Jesse said.
“Make it a double,” Don said.
They sat in the car for about twenty minutes, drinking and watching more people—mostly women—go into the party.
By the time they decided to put down the cognac and, indeed, enter the event, they were more tipsy than they realized.
“I guess this is what it feels like after—how many?—six shots of Remy Martin?” Don said.
A cool breeze provided some relief as they made their way from the car to the entrance. The alcohol, though, was in control. Don’s problems were pushed to the recesses of his mind. Jesse was on the prowl for someone to connect with so he could look to close the deal Saturday night.
“That’s what tonight is about,” he said to Don as they stood in the lobby, checking out the scene, but mostly eyeballing the women. “Meet someone and tomorrow night, go in for the kill. There are enough women who come back here with the same mentality. What happens at homecoming stays at homecoming.”
“I’m down with that,” Don said. “I just need something to happen to leave here.”
Jesse did not hear Don. He was focused on Collette Simpson-Washington with whom he’d had a sexual tryst when they were juniors. As sensual and memorable as it was, there was a problem. There were at least a dozen other guys who had the same kind of sexual tryst with Collette.
“You gotta remember her,” Jesse said after he and Collette hugged and chatted for a minute or two. She was with a girlfriend that neither he nor Don knew.
“I’m surprised she’s here after what happened three years ago at homecoming,” Jesse said.
“Was I here? What happened?” Don said.
“You were here, but you had your wife with you that year,” Jesse said.
“Oh, don’t remind me,” Don said. “I couldn’t do anything. I felt like I was in prison . . . But what happened with her? And why didn’t you tell me about it then?”
“Man, I forgot,” Jesse said. “But check this out: So, back in college, Collette had this boyfriend as a freshman and sophomore. He wore a high-top fade and she always wore dresses, like she was this Southern belle. She’s from Tennessee, I believe.
“Anyway, they broke up and I’m not sure what happened, but she was like a dude. She was getting it in, one guy after another. She had to have slept with at least ten to fifteen guys—or more—in her last two years. It was interesting because she and I were always cool. We were in the bowling league together and just made a connection.
“She would basically say stuff like, ‘I’m just having fun. If men can do it, why can’t women?’ I’m not sure if she was trying to defy stereotypes or was just some little freak. But with how she looked and with that body, who was going to refuse a chance to get with her? We were so cool that I would tell her who she shouldn’t mess with.
“Anyway, she graduates and no one sees her for years. Then she pops up at homecoming three years ago—with her new husband, who was some guy who didn’t go to Norfolk State and who had no idea about how she was in college. Not good. So, the way the tailgate was set up then, she had to walk past the Omegas, the Kappas and then the Alphas. She had slept with at least one or two guys in all those frats. These fools were drunk and when they saw her, one by one, they brought up her past.
“Saying, stuff like, ‘Collette, are you still easy to get?’
“Cruel, ignorant stuff by some ignorant, drunk guys. By the time I saw her, she had passed all those groups. She had a look on her face that told me she was humiliated. She looked at me with a look that said, ‘Please do not embarrass me any further.’
“I picked right up on it. I hugged her and was like, ‘So good to see you.’ She introduced me to her husband and I smiled at him, shook his hand. I even gave him the two-handed shake, like the President does when he’s really trying to make a connection.
“Dude looked at me like he had been through hell. He was waiting for me to say something; he had his fist balled up. I believe that if I had said something he would have swung on me. He had had enough. He learned that his wife was not who he thought she was. It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t see her the rest of homecoming; they didn’t even come to the parties.”
“I don’t think she has on a wedding ring,” Don said. “That’s terrible. I hope what happened here didn’t ruin her marriage.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it did,” Jesse said. “It was that bad.”
The party was not bad at all. It fact, it was good. Something about homecoming put everyone is such high spirits.
“And,” Jesse said, “you can start a conversation so easily because socializing is what this whole weekend is about. You have an easy entrée into a conversation because you went to the same school.”
Don heard Jesse, but he didn’t process much of it. The alcohol had him going, and he was sipping on another. There was such commotion at the entrance to the party, with so many converging at once, that Don and Jesse did as they had any number of times: They walked right into the event without paying.
“The key is to keep moving and to not make eye contact with anyone who’s working the door,” Jesse told Collette when they were inside. “You have to look like you are supposed to be inside. You have to be confident. We were willing to pay. But I didn’t want to have to wait through all that drama to spend my money.
”
“So what’s been going on with you?” she said, more interested in Jesse than how he got into the party. “I remember clearly the last time I saw you.”
“I remember it, too,” he said. “It was kinda awkward.”
“Very awkward,” she said. “But I should have thanked you long before now, but you saved me from hell that weekend. You treated me and my husband with respect, and that was right on time with all I had been dealing with.”
“I can only imagine,” Jesse said.
“No, you can’t,” Collette said. “You can’t imagine what it felt like to look into your husband’s eyes and see so much pain and disappointment . . . in you. Those assholes had some pretty mean things to say to me in front of my husband. That was totally unnecessary. What might have happened years ago, when I was nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old, had nothing to do with who I am today. And there was no reason to humiliate me in front of my husband.”
Collette looked and sounded sad. “To this day, I don’t understand them. I know they were drunk, but you have to have a mean spirit in you to be that way to someone who was always nice to them.”
“Well, I agree with you on almost everything you said,” Jesse told Collette. “Remember how close we were and how much you used to share with me. I told you to not deal with certain people. And those people were the same people who turned on you three years ago.”
“Really? I can’t even count how many years later and you’re telling me ‘I told you so’?” Collette said, smiling. “I really don’t mind them talking about me to my face. I don’t mind facing that because that was me at that time. But to try to hurt me by saying those things in front of my husband . . . ?
“If you notice, you didn’t see me at any more events the entire weekend. I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I just knew someone was going to make it worse for me and my relationship. We didn’t even go to the game. We watched on television—him not even speaking to me. Finally, we had a heart-to-heart.
“He wanted to know why those guys were so vulgar and mean toward me. I told him he had his chance to ask them himself, that I couldn’t account for anyone’s actions but my own. He asked me what my relationship was with them; I told him we went to school together and that some of them I knew, some I didn’t. Then he finally came out with it: He said, ‘Did you fuck all those guys?’ I just looked at him.
“Here’s the thing, Jesse: From what I could tell, I didn’t sleep with any of the idiots making comments. They were just drunk and talking shit. So I told my husband, ‘No, I didn’t, which was the truth.’ He didn’t believe me and kept asking me questions about why they would act the way they did.
“Finally, I had it. I told him, ‘You just stood there and let them say things about me and you didn’t say a word; you got mad at me. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to protect me and if it came down to it, take an ass-whipping defending me. But you didn’t. You didn’t say one damn word.”
“Ah, man,” Jesse said. “I’m sorry it got so ugly.”
“Me, too,” she said. “But I learned he didn’t have my back. I would have pulled some bitch’s eyes out if they had disrespected him in front of me. Or I would have at least tried to. That whole episode wasn’t the reason we broke up, but it was the beginning of the end.”
“I’m sorry, Collette,” Jesse said.
“It wasn’t your fault. And I’m fine now,” she said. “I guess I learned two things; if you’re not going to be proud of it later, don’t do it. In college I wanted to experiment; I wanted to test the waters. I guess when a woman does that, she’d better be ready to get labeled.”
“The double standard is true,” Jesse said. “What’s the other thing you learned?”
“Oh,” Collette said, “don’t bring your spouse to homecoming.”
They both laughed.
“Come on,” Jesse said, “let’s dance.”
“You were always really nice to me,” she said. “I always appreciated that about you. Even as I was going through my wild stage, you never judged me or looked at me differently. That’s a true friend.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE TAILGATE, PART I
Catherine and Earl
Earl and Catherine skipped the step show, the jazz concert and the all-black party on Friday night and the parade on Saturday morning. They were in the homecoming spirit, but more into their own world. Elevating their relationship by making love on Thursday night (and Friday morning), had created an insatiable desire that was hard to harness.
Those displays of passion grew their affection into the stratosphere, and so, after Earl played golf and hung out with friends in the clubhouse, he and Catherine spent Friday evening over dinner at Catch 31 on the Virginia Beach oceanfront. There was time to make the all-black party afterward, but they bypassed that opportunity for a chance to spend more intimate time together.
“What’s so special about what I’m feeling right now,” Earl said to Catherine, “is that I expected you to be so wonderful and special just based on what I knew about you in college, from being around you and observing you. But you’re better than I even imagined.”
He leaned over and kissed her waiting lips, another show of public affection that surprised him. He considered himself a romantic, but the women of his past hardly appreciated his actions. If they did, they did not let him know it, which made him vow to hold back displays of thoughtfulness until he had a confident grasp on the person he was seeing.
Earl never felt as comfortable and confident with a woman as he did with Catherine, but he still told himself he would hold back. And yet, he could not. There was a magnetic force between them, and so trying to play coy simply would not work. They were drawn to each other, like human magnets.
“Thank you for saying that, Earl,” Catherine said, blushing like a schoolgirl. “That means a lot to me. And I hope you know the feeling is mutual. I knew you as Earl Manning, a gentleman who seemed serious about his career. I had no idea about who you really were. And the more I get to know, the more I like, the more I love.
“You do know I love you, right? Can you feel it? I hope you can feel it.”
“I can feel it—when I’m inside you, when I’m close to you and even when we’re apart, which really speaks to our connection,” he said. “We’re good together. And I think we can be great together.”
The passion they shared was almost touchable. There was a mutual respect, admiration and attraction. They could not mask it if they tried; making their impending appearance together on campus something that would send the gossipy folks into a craze.
They planned to go to the tailgate and the game separately: Catherine with her girlfriends and Earl with his fellas. They would no doubt see each other there, but it would not be obvious they were in a relationship. But the Saturday night Best of Friends party was the big capper to a phenomenal weekend. Alumni came out by the hundreds, dressed beautifully and in wonderful spirits. It also was the last opportunity for those looking for love (or sex) to close the deal before the close of homecoming. So, the drinks flowed and people danced and mingled all the way beyond 3 a.m.
“You know this is going to be news when we show up together at that party,” Earl said.
“You think so?” Catherine asked, which was typical. Her spirit was so pure that she seldom made assumptions. She took a moment or an occasion for what it was. She certainly did not expect that a buzz would be created because of her and Earl’s hook-up.
So, Earl had to break it down for her. “It’s human nature for people to whisper and spread the word when two people they did not expect to be together become a couple. In our case, you were thought of as among the finest one or two women during our era at Norfolk State. I can tell you that with one hundred percent confidence. That’s what men thought then and, baby, it is amazing, but you look better now, almost thirty years after graduating. So, if you showed up at the Best of Friends party with anyone, it would be gossip.
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sp; “But you’re showing up with me. People knew we knew each other but they would not put us together. I can’t say how I was regarded in college. I do know I have a lot of friends from Norfolk State—and gained even more through Facebook. And we’re pretty much here today because of your friends and how they regarded me. I’m grateful to them because I know your girls, but only on the surface. I didn’t know any of them in-depth. So, for them to encourage you to reach out to me says something about how people looked at me.
“Us together? At the Best of Friends party? That’s going to be the subject of much discussion. I can promise you that.”
“Well, I guess you’re right, huh?” Catherine said. “You said something about people not expecting us to be together. I understand your point, but being with you, really knowing you now . . . it makes sense that we would be together.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she added. “I didn’t reach out to you a year ago when you sent me a friend request on Facebook because something in me told me that you were wonderful and I wasn’t ready for you. I was in a relationship and I don’t see more than one man at a time. Shoot, I haven’t dated but three or four men since college. But my point is I felt something about you a long time ago. I wasn’t sure what it was. But the last time I saw you before September was ten years ago. And I was married and I had to walk away from you. There was something about you that made me know I needed to leave. So I did.
“This summer, my girls kept saying, ‘Catherine, Earl is such a nice guy.’ This went on for a while until I promised I would e-mail you . . . That was the smartest thing I have ever done.”
They smiled at each other. “Thank you,” Earl said.
“For what?”
“For saying that. For e-mailing me. For being who you are. For loving me,” he said.
They spent the rest of their dinner eating and sharing loving thoughts. When it was time to go, Catherine suggested they go back to her place to relax. That sounded great to Earl.
