“I do,” Nikki said smiling and jarring Taariq out of his private reverie.
A beat later, it was Hylan’s turn. “I do.”
It was all Taariq could do not to groan out loud.
“With the power invested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” Reverend Oxford slapped his Bible closed. “You may now kiss the bride.
Hylan sealed the fiasco with a kiss.
The house roared with applause and a second later the bride and groom were literally bum-rushed for handshakes, hugs and kisses. After seeing her sister being jerked from one embrace to another, Barbara Jamison panicked and took on the role of bodyguard.
“Careful, careful. The woman is pregnant!”
A hush fell over the crowd as Barbara gasped and then slapped both hands over her mouth.
Nikki timidly hunched her shoulders up. “Surprise, honey.”
Charlie reached over and waved his hand before his friend’s eyes to make sure that he was still with them. “I think you’re supposed to say something,” he whispered.
Hylan pumped his fists straight into the air. “Yeah, baby! Victory!” He rushed over and swooped his wife into his arms and spun her around.
Nikki squealed with delight before Hylan smothered her with kisses.
Taariq glared and then shook his head. Another Kappa brother down.
Chapter 8
“If you’re going to be my number one wingman then you’re going to have to start looking the part,” Taariq informed Stanley as they headed toward the weight room at Gold’s Gym. “First things first, we’re going to have to start putting some real muscles on that scrawny little frame of yours. I can’t have you messing up my A-game with the ladies.”
“Yo, man. You don’t have to worry about that,” Stanley said, puffing up his chest. “You know I gets mine. When we roll up in the club we’re going to be like the perfect one-two punch. You know what I mean?”
Taariq would have laughed if it wasn’t for the fact that Stanley was being dead serious. Instead, Taariq cracked a patient smile and swung his arm around his new best buddy’s pencil-thin neck. “Look, my man, having confidence is one thing—being delusional is another.”
Charlie, who was marching two paces behind them, cracked up.
Stanley tried to turn around, but Taariq held him firm. “Don’t pay him no mind. Charlie’s macking days are behind him. All he has to look forward to are sleepless nights and Diaper Genies.”
“And don’t forget a beautiful wife to spoon at night and wake up next to every morning,” Charlie interrupted, clearly unfazed by his Kappa brother’s endless teasing.
“Spoon?” Taariq asked, stopping dead in his tracks. “Damn, brotha. You’re already whipped that bad? Only women want to spoon. Men fork. You feel me?”
“Yeah,” Stanley agreed, bobbing his head. “Men fork.”
Taariq and Charlie’s gaze cut over toward Stanley who looked like a Howdie-Doody bobblehead.
Stanley’s smile cut in half. “What? I’m just saying.”
Charlie cracked up. “You got your work cut out for you, man. Good luck.”
Taariq couldn’t agree more, but he’d always enjoyed a good challenge. “Chuckle it up,” he said. “When I get through with Stanley, he’s going to have so many ladies giving up the panties he’ll have a permanent hump and lockjaw.”
Frowning, Stanley pressed a hand against the side of his jaw. “Really? Why?”
Taariq and Charlie stood staring at Stanley like a couple of deer caught in headlights. When it was clear that their buddy was serious, Taariq felt his first stab of doubt about turning Stanley into a good club wingman. All the real playas know that they are only as good as their wingman since women travel in packs. A good wingman distracts and flirts with the rejected women while the playa makes a move on his target dime piece. If all goes right, the playa scores the digits or is able to pry his target away from the pack for some one-on-one time either on the dance floor or in a corner booth.
However, if the wingman steps to the pack with a weak game, they’ll chew him up and then spit him out. No way are they going to let their girl give up the real digits, let alone allow one of their own to escape to the dance floor. They’ll just circle around and start talking so much trash, both playa and wingman would be lucky to limp away from the table with their pride and ego shredded to hell and back.
Taariq wasn’t going out like that. From this day forward, Stanley was in some serious training, like Rocky before going after the big Russian dude.
“Don’t worry,” Stanley said, his chest swelling with confidence again. “Just think of me as your blank canvas. I’m here to learn from the master.”
Taariq shook off that one stab of doubt and then thrust up his thumb. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Total commitment to the cause. You see this, Charlie?”
“I see it. I’m just choosing not to believe it.” He trucked on toward the weight room.
“What? You’re doubting my skills?” Taariq asked, following.
Charlie kept shaking his head. “My name is Les. I ain’t in that mess.”
“Yeah. All right, Mr. Married Man. Trust and believe that you’re going to miss club-hopping with your boys. That one-man-one-chick thing is just too old-school.” They pushed open the weight room door and made a beeline straight toward their regular bench press. “Now, don’t get me wrong. With you three stooges out of the picture that just means more ladies for me.”
“Us,” Stanley corrected, thumbing his chest. “More ladies for us. I’m the wingman, right?”
Taariq’s smile turned plastic. “Right. That’s what I meant. Us.”
Still snickering, Charlie started adding weights to the weight bar. Clearly he didn’t see the point of hiding his doubts about Taariq’s makeover plan. After all, hadn’t they all tried at one time or another? Stanley was who he was, a nice, smart guy who was loyal to his friends. He was also goofy and awkward when it came to anything dealing with grace and movement, and he didn’t have an athletic gene in his entire body.
“All right. You’ll see,” Taariq stressed, having nowhere else to go with his argument. He tossed his black bag down near Charlie’s.
“If you say so.” Charlie squatted down onto the bench and started strapping on his gloves.
Taariq restrained the impulse to ask Charlie whether he’d like to put his money where his doubt was, mainly because that one sliver of doubt he felt ten minutes ago was already starting to widen and expand. How did one go about establishing a playa boot camp? He snuck a side-glance at Stanley who was busy stripping out of his wife-beater and revealing a thin and pasty white chest that could probably heal the blind if he was standing in direct sunlight.
“Damn, Stan. Haven’t you at least attempted a push-up in your entire life?” Taariq asked, reaching over to see whether there was any muscle definition in his biceps.
“Sure.” He hedged a bit. “Well, not the full-on army-type push-ups.”
Taariq frowned. “Then what kind do you do?”
“The half ones.” At Taariq’s confused look, Stanley went on to explain. “You know. The ones where you bend your knees and you spread your hands out farther apart.”
Taariq’s heart dropped like a stone. “You mean girl push-ups?”
Charlie slapped his knee and rocked his head back with a hearty laugh while Taariq weighed the option of working the clubs as a solo pickup artist.
A red wave of embarrassment crept up Stanley’s face. “Well, I don’t think that it’s fair to call them girl push-ups. It’s harder to do than it looks.”
“I’m sure it is,” Charlie said, lying back and positioning his hands on the bar. “T, get over here and spot me.”
Petulant, Taariq folded his arms. “Let Stanley do it. He needs to get the practice in.”
Charlie’s eyes doubled in size. “Say what?”
“Really? Can I?”
Taariq gave Stanley a sly grin as he slapped him on the back. “Of course you can. There’s
nothing to it. You just stand over here behind Charlie’s big football head while he pushes out about four sets of twelve. Any time you see that he needs a little help pushing the bar up, you just reach down for the bar and help him lift it back onto the weight stand. Simple. I’m sure that you’ve seen us all do this a million times.”
“Yeah. But no one ever said that I could spot for them.”
“Well, I certainly don’t want to be the one to break that record,” Charlie said.
Taariq waved off Charlie’s concern. “Don’t mind him. He’s just acting like a punk. You can do this.”
However, Charlie wasn’t having any of this crap. He hopped up off the bench so fast, Taariq and Stanley halfway expected to discover a spring in the center of the bench. “You know what? If you’re serious about this makeover, maybe Stanley should go first.”
“All right. I’m down.” Stanley jumped to take Charlie’s place.
“Chicken,” Taariq mumbled under his breath.
“No. I don’t have a death wish. I have a baby on the way, remember?”
Stanley clapped his hands and then rubbed them together. “Okay. Let’s do this.” He reached for the bar and both Taariq and Charlie nearly had a heart attack.
“Whoa! Wait!”
But Stanley was way ahead of them and foolishly lifted the weight bar off its cradle and just as quickly, it was coming back down toward his head.
Both Charlie and Taariq grabbed the bar and lifted it back up. Once Taariq placed the bar back onto the stand, he barked, “Man, don’t you ever do that again. What are you trying to do, kill yourself?”
Stanley sat up, shaking and clutching at his throat. “I think I just saw my entire life flash before my eyes,” he gasped.
“Was it just as sad and disappointing the second time around?” Derrick asked, strolling into the weight room and catching the tail end of the conversation.
“Yo, man. You’re late.” Taariq walked over to his buddy, slapped hands together and shared a shoulder-bump.
“What? Are you the truancy officer now?” Derrick frowned and shook his head.
“Nah, man. I’m just saying.” Taariq shuffled around and tried to appear nonchalant, but the fact of the matter was that he was having a hard time getting used to all the changes that were happening with his boys. It wasn’t just the fact that he was reduced to transforming Stanley into his wingman. It was the number of cancelled basketball games piling up, Monday Night Football games interrupted with wives buzzing about everything from decorating to showing off their latest baby sonogram images—in the middle of the game. And his boys were cool with it!
Everything was changing.
Taariq hated change.
“Don’t sweat it, man,” Derrick said, shrugging and setting down his bag. “Isabella and I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.”
Taariq’s heart stopped.
“And?” Charlie asked with a twinkle in his eyes and a growing smile.
Derrick’s smile stretched and looked about as goofy as Charlie’s. “And…we’re pregnant!”
“Ahh, man. Congratulations.” Charlie launched toward Derrick and locked him into a bear hug.
Stanley jumped up and got into the mix as well, slapping Derrick’s back as his own form of congratulations. “Big D, man. I know that you’re going to make a cool father.”
“I certainly hope so,” Derrick said. “Right now it just seems so surreal to think I got a little seed growing. You know what I mean?”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Charlie laughed. “These past eight months I’ve been on one long emotional roller-coaster ride. Frankly, there’s nothing out here that really gets a man prepared for the big changes, especially the ones that are going on with my wife. In the past week alone I’ve run out more times in the middle of the night for these weird cravings. Last night it was Krystal burgers and pistachio ice cream.”
The brothers frowned.
“I know. But how about I ate half of it? And it wasn’t that bad.”
Taariq withheld his congratulations and just shook his head. “I don’t even know what to say to all that.”
Derrick snickered. “Oh, you’ll find out one of these days, T. Don’t think you’re going to be able to hold out on that walk down the aisle much longer. Trust me. Your days are numbered.”
Taariq waved him off like he was a gnat bothering him. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, D. When I said that I was a playa for life, I meant that. Just because my three supposed best friends punked out doesn’t mean that I’m about to.”
“Oh. Is that how you see us?” Derrick asked, laughing. “We’re all a bunch of punks?”
Taariq shrugged like he was just calling it like he saw it.
“All right. All right.” Charlie tossed up his hands. “I’m going to let you have that because clearly you’re still tripping.”
Taariq laughed. “If you say so. C’mon, Stanley.” He patted his buddy on the back. “Let’s get you started on something a little simpler—like the dumbbells.”
Stanley’s eager face collapsed into disappointment. “B-but…I thought I was going to learn—”
Taariq swung an arm around Stanley’s neck, choking off the rest of his sentence. “Don’t sweat it, man. We all have to crawl before we can walk and we got to break you in with the basics before you hurt yourself. You feel me?”
Stanley nodded, but a frown still hung on his face.
“Trust me on this. When I get through with you, you’re going to be ready for the cover of GQ magazine.”
“Really?” His smile returned while his eyes started to twinkle as if he was trying to picture himself on the cover.
“C’mon, man. Would I ever steer you wrong?”
Charlie and Derrick opened their mouths, but Taariq quickly shot them a deadly stare that successfully shut them up. Well, almost. They did snicker a bit.
Taariq allowed them to get it out of their systems. It didn’t matter. He was going to give Stanley the makeover of his life. Before he directed his protégé toward the other end of the weight room, Derrick pressed a hand against Taariq’s shoulder and stopped him.
“Are you forgetting something?”
There was a second where Taariq wondered what his buddy was talking about before he remembered. “Congratulations on the kid. You and Isabella are going to make great parents.”
Derrick’s brow quirked up. “You mean that?”
“Partially. I think Isabella is going to make a great mother. You—I’ll be praying for.”
They all barked with laughter and then went about getting their morning workout in. Mentally, Taariq still struggled with the changing dynamics between him and his friends. But the truth of the matter was that Taariq was never big on change, despite it being something that happened all the time. Being the only child and raised by a single father, he grew up constantly moving from one city to another, never staying long enough to develop any relationships—male or female.
So when he finally enrolled in college and joined the Kappa Psi Kappa fraternity, it was the first time in his life he felt like he’d actually found or belonged to a real family. The Kappas were his brothers, through and through. There was nothing that he wouldn’t do for them and vice versa. Well, at least he hoped that was still true.
Taariq pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind and tried to concentrate on the sweaty mess that was Stanley. The man was a waterfall just after the warm-up.
“How is it that you’ve been coming to the gym with us every morning for the past fifteen years and you have no muscle definition?”
Stanley grabbed his towel and mopped his forehead. “Well, actually, I just, um, come to shoot the breeze. Keep up with the 411. You know.” He gave Taariq a sheepish grin. “But don’t worry. I’m committed to the grind. Just think of me as a blank slate. Do with me as you wish.” His words drifted across the weight room, causing Charlie and Derrick to start snickering.
Taariq twisted his fac
e.
“Okay. That didn’t come out right,” Stanley said.
“You think?” Taariq drew a deep breath. “Just keep you and your blank slate far away from me and we’ll get along just fine.”
There was more laughter from the two peanut-heads across the room, but Taariq ignored them and proceeded to put Stanley through a modest workout to see what he was working with. Answer: not much.
Sweat continued to pour off Stanley just curling twenty-pound dumbbells. When it came to doing leg squats, Taariq had never seen so much shaking and trembling going on. He kept checking around to make sure that they weren’t in the middle of an earthquake. But it turned out that nothing else was shaking—just Stanley’s bony legs.
“This is going to take longer than I thought,” Taariq mumbled under his breath. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t going to toss in the towel. He loved a challenge.
An hour later, the four grabbed their bags and headed back to the showers and then left the gym. Derrick and Charlie headed out to the airport. Charlie was flying Derrick to Washington for some political event. A sore Stanley walked out to the parking lot like he had a stick rammed up his butt.
“I don’t think I’m going into the office,” Stanley moaned, heading toward his car. “I need a nap.”
Taariq slapped a hand across Stanley’s back and encouraged him. “Toughen up because this is just the beginning.” He tossed him a wink and then headed over to his baby: a brand-new, week-old, black Mercedes-Benz. Walking toward the driver’s side, he stopped briefly to check out his reflection in the shine on the hood. After giving himself a wink, he quickly jumped behind the wheel and peeled out of the parking lot. Ten minutes later, he was stuck in Atlanta’s morning traffic and cursing himself for not leaving the gym sooner.
As usual his mind started wandering while he inched along downtown. But before he could get into anything too deep, Stevie Wonders’s “Isn’t She Lovely?” started playing somewhere in the car. Confused, Taariq started looking around. When he discovered it was coming out of his gym bag, he crammed his hand inside and pulled out an iPhone.
Taariq didn’t own an iPhone.
My Only Desire Page 8
