I glanced in the direction he was referring to just to make it look good, since I obviously already knew it was her. “Uh, yeah. That’s B.”
“Let’s go say what’s up,” he suggested. “Have a little fun, make ol’ boy sweat a little.”
The server came back with the menu, and I accepted it, then shook my head at Derrick’s suggestion. “Nah, man. Leave her be, let her have her time to herself.”
“What time? A bad one? She looks bored as hell.”
That statement made me really look at her again. She was wearing a polite smile as her date was – seemingly – telling a story that had him rolling, but she didn’t seem amused at all. I wouldn’t agree that she look bored, not exactly. Just like she really didn’t want to be there.
Funny thing was… if this scene had been playing out in front of me before she and I got further involved, I definitely would have been down to make things a little more interesting for her.
But not tonight.
Tonight, I was going to look at this menu, get some food. Have a few drinks with my boy. And hell… maybe see what was up with one of the women eyeing me from the other end of the bar.
Might as well.
&
KJ had swag.
Yeah, yeah, he was just a four – almost five – year old kid, but his coolness was just a damn undeniable fact that even Audrey and I agreed on. We didn’t see eye to eye on who he’d inherited from, but still.
He had swag.
So, as usual, when we swung by the community center after I picked him up from school, his basketball handling got him attention. His little ass thrived on it too, showing off, smiling at the teenage girls who “ooh’ed and ahh’ed” over him, “teaching” the other, older kids some of his moves. More and more lately, I’d been stepping back to let him do his thing and play with the other kids, trying not to hover.
Again, he wasn’t even five yet, so I hesitated to think of it as teaching him some independence, but that’s really what it was. Audrey and I both, admittedly, had a tendency to want to protect him from every little thing, in a way that was probably heightened because of his impairment. But we didn’t want him to feel that. All kids – hell, everybody – had their little differences, and in that way, he was just the same as the rest of them.
Only… with more swag, cause he was mine.
In any case, I sat down on the bleachers and just watched today, since my knees were aching from hooping with Derrick and Rob the week before. We’d been there about ten minutes when the door opened and I saw Zion come in, flanked by a couple of his friends, and my shoulders tightened up a little, waiting for Brandi to appear.
She didn’t.
Apparently, one of the other moms was their chaperone today, and I relaxed. After a while, a different woman slipped onto the bench with me, all the way on the other end though. I acted like I didn’t see her, too busy watching KJ giving the older kids the business in the game they’d started, but there was no way not to notice her once she’d inched her way into sitting right beside me.
“The little one is yours, right?” she asked.
I smiled at her, and nodded my answer. “Yeah, that’s my little man.”
“He is adorable,” she gushed, putting a hand on my arm. “He looks just like you.”
“So you’re saying I’m adorable then too right?”
She giggled about that, pulling her lip between her teeth. “Adorable is not the word I would use. Not for somebody’s… daddy.”
Damn.
The way she said “daddy”, while she was squeezing my arm… I didn’t like to guess women’s intentions, but this was a case where it seemed pretty clear. Before I could say anything though, a commotion broke out on the court.
In no time, the kids had gathered in a circle, blocking my seated view of what was going on. But once I stood, I had a clear line of vision into middle. Right in front of me, in full HD, KJ was on the ground, crying, and Zion was going after some kid his age like he was Adonis Creed.
Instantly, my aching knees were forgotten.
I got to the middle of the circle just before the community center staff did, snatching up KJ under one arm, and helping pull Zion off the other kid with my free one.
“KJ, are you good?” I asked him, and he nodded through his sniffles. “What happened?” I put him down right by me, where he signed that he’d gotten knocked down, and grabbed onto my leg.
Knowing KJ wasn’t likely to give me much while he was upset, I turned to Zion, who was trying his best to get away, and get back to the other kid, who was yelling and cursing across the gym like he hadn’t been getting his ass kicked.
“Aye, man! Chill! What’s up?” I asked, moving in front of him. “You’re out here fighting and shit, knocking little kids down? That’s not like you, lil’ homie, what’s up?”
“I didn’t knock him down,” Zion snapped, but I knew he was just hyped up, so I let it go. He used his arm to wipe the sweat from his forehead as he scowled. “Alan’s punk ass got mad cause KJ scored on him. Called him… that word, and pushed him down.”
I frowned. “That word… what word?”
“I don’t… I don’t want to say it.”
“You just said ass in front of me, but you can’t say this one?”
Zion shook his head, chest still heaving. I waved off one of the staff members who approached us trying to talk to him. “It’s not the same, though. You know… the “R” word.”
Immediately, anger gripped my chest.
Yeah, I knew the damn “R” word.
Alan’s little bitch ass was lucky Zion had gotten to him first.
I took a deep breath, then clapped Zion on the shoulder. “I appreciate you looking out for KJ, man. But you can’t be fighting and shit. They’re probably about to suspend you from being able to come out here for a little bit.”
Zion shrugged. “It was worth it,” he said, then grinned as he leaned toward me a little bit. “Jess is here.”
Just as soon as those words were out of his mouth, a mass of hair shot past me, latching onto him. I quickly realized that the girl it was attached to was “Jess”, who I’d heard about from Brandi lamenting the fact that her son had a girlfriend, whether she wanted to call it that or not.
Zion looked incredibly pleased with himself as Jess fawned over him, touching his face and asking if he was okay. I left them to that, kneeling to get on KJ’s level to ask him again if he was okay.
He nodded, and then asked me what the word that boy had called him meant, and… I wasn’t sure if I was okay. I’d never really understood the purpose in adults being violent with kids, but yeah… if Zion hadn’t already handled that, I would’ve kicked a teenager’s ass on this day.
“It’s just an ugly word that you don’t have to concern yourself with, okay?”
He gave me another nod, and then I wiped the tears from his face before I picked him up, pulling him into a hug. With KJ in my arms, I looked back to Zion, who was being talked to by a few members of the community center staff. His friend’s mom, who was supposed to be there with him, was nowhere around, which made me a little uneasy.
I reached into my pocket for my phone, to call Brandi. Despite our miscommunication, I wasn’t about to stand here and not let her know something was going on with her son. Before I could unlock it, the main door came flying open, and Brandi herself rushed in.
Good.
Saved me an awkward moment.
I didn’t hang around, because there was no need to. I shook Zion’s hand again, making sure the staff heard me thank him for looking out for KJ, who was sleepy and overwhelmed at this point, looking like a surviving victim in my arms, which probably helped Zion’s case. Brandi tried to make eye contact, but I wasn’t trying to get caught up.
Especially not when I had a whole incident to explain to my son’s mother now.
&
Circuits.
Gears.
Technical drawings.
I sat back in th
e my chair, absently chewing on the end of my pencil as I stared at the list I’d jotted down for the design I’d be starting on soon.
“Maybe some… electric currents?” I mused out loud, swiveling back and forth like that was going to help me come up with something else. “And maybe formulas and equations.”
Eh.
I’d have to research it a little more first.
I leaned back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling. This project was a last minute addition to my schedule anyway, only possible because I’d thrown myself into my art for the last several days. If I wasn’t with my son, or maybe with my homeboys, I had my ass in this chair, trying to get lost in something that had nothing to with Brandi, who I couldn’t seem to get off my mind.
Probably because before that little falling out… a lot of my time had been spent with her. Now, it felt strange as hell for her to not be around. Before our falling out, I hadn’t realized how often we were together, but now that I had to fill the time with something else, it was glaring.
I was still avoiding her attempts at communication though, and by this point, I knew the shit was petty. I just wasn’t ready to deal.
Talking it out would require facing some facts that I didn’t know how to handle. Starting with the fact that I’d blown up at her for not thinking I was interested in her as more than a friend, when I hadn’t even fully realized the shit until about two seconds before that. Yeah, I knew something was off, but it wasn’t until she was obliviously telling me about this other dude that it clicked. I wasn’t feeling that “just friends” shit she was talking about because while I couldn’t say what it was, I knew it was more than that.
And what did I expect her to do, read my damn mind?
That aside, the fact that she hadn’t even considered it wasn’t sitting well with me. Especially since her reasoning was based on shit I thought we’d already debunked. I thought she knew me. But… maybe not.
“You look so deep in thought that I feel bad for interrupting.”
I sat up to find the object of my thoughts standing in the doorway to my studio. One look at her eyes told me something was up.
Because I knew her.
“Must not feel too bad, since you still interrupted,” I said, writing “binary numbers?” down on my list before I tossed the pencil down. “What’s up?”
“Zion told me what happened,” she said, stepping fully into the room. Now, I could see that she’d taken her braids down since just yesterday, when I’d seen her briefly after the fight. She was back to her short, soft natural curls, and it annoyed the shit out of me. I wanted to bury my fingers in those curls bad. “Kids can be assholes. I’m sorry KJ got caught in the crossfire. Is he okay?”
I nodded. “He’s good. Was right back to bouncing all over the place once he had a nap. His usual happy self.”
“Good,” she smiled. “Zion has actually had problems with that same kid before. Little incidents at school, something about him trying to push up on Jess. I really think his ass was glad for an excuse to hit him. Especially in front of Jess. I guess he earned himself some street cred now.”
“Sounds about right.”
There were too many seconds of awkward silence, and then, “I tried to call you a couple of times,” she said, in a careful, measured tone. “Or… maybe a hundred. A lot. Texted you too. Trying to check in on you, and check on KJ.”
“He’s good,” I repeated. “And you can tell Zion I said thanks, again. He’s a good kid.”
“Yeah, he is.”
Another long moment passed, and I raised my eyebrows. “So… was that all?”
“No. And you know it’s not.”
“I don’t know shit, B. So why don’t you tell me what’s up?”
Her gaze came up to mine, and I instantly felt bad for being pissy with her when I saw the gloss of unshed tears in her eyes. She stared for a second, then shook her head.
“You know what… never mind. Sorry I bothered you.” She turned to leave, and I pushed out a sigh.
“B, damn. Just tell me what’s up!”
She swung back around, scowling at me, and when she spoke, it was obvious from the crack in her voice that she was barely containing her emotions. “What’s up is that it has been an absolutely shitty day already, and this isn’t helping. I’ve been trying to talk to you, trying to apologize, trying to talk this through because I don’t want to be at odds with you, and you’re treating me like I did something terrible, or unforgiveable to you. I didn’t mean to upset you by telling you about Marshall. You were upset with Audrey when she didn’t tell you she was involved with someone else – I was trying not to do the same thing.
“And besides that… I was confused about how I felt about you. Me even accepting that date was an attempt to put my own feelings in check. Telling you about it? That was me trying to make sure you didn’t think I was mistaking our arrangement for something it wasn’t. I wasn’t friend-zoning you. I was friend-zoning myself. I had no idea that you… might have been just as confused as I was.”
“But when I told you, you refused to even see the possibility, based on some bullshit,” I said, sitting back. “You know I’m done with Audrey. You know I’m not sleeping around. You know I’m not some dude that just wants to run wild, trying to get through as much pussy as I can.”
“Okay so what do you want, Kyle?” she asked, taking a step back toward me. “You don’t even have to answer that question – I’m just making the point that it’s something we haven’t discussed. Yeah, we’ve talked about Audrey, so maybe the possibility of you going back to her is a nonstarter. And you’re right – I do know you’re not sleeping around, but exclusivity certainly isn’t something that we’ve put on the table. You’re a single man, Kyle, and it would be idiotic of me, in 2017, to believe that the friends-with-benefits situation I thought we had was something that would keep you from pursuing someone else. And as far you wanting or not wanting a relationship, it may be fully fleshed in your mind, but I’m not privy to that. Maybe I should have asked, maybe you should have told me. But it’s not fair to act like it was something I just should’ve known.”
I pushed out a sigh, not saying anything as I hooked my fingers together and propped them behind my head before I returned my gaze to the ceiling. I didn’t have a rebuttal for her, because… there was nothing I could deny. We’d been so busy talking about everything else under the sun between screwing each other’s brains out, that we’d apparently fallen into some kind of “what’s understood doesn’t need to be explained” situation.
Only, apparently… neither of us understood.
I’d put her under the same umbrella of unfair judgement with Audrey and Rob, but it really wasn’t quite the same thing. Yeah, she was misunderstanding me, but I wasn’t exactly reading her that well either.
And it was because of the mess that we had created.
“I don’t know what this is right now,” she said, and I looked at her just in time to see her wiping tears from her eyes. “But I woke up feeling… you know. Because you know me. And I went for a run, and I cut my braids out, and I tried all the little tips that you gave me, about getting out of it. Nothing worked. And I just… all I wanted to do was talk to you. All I wanted was my friend, and I couldn’t stand another second of not talking to you after weeks and weeks of vibing with you damn near every day. I miss you.”
By the time she finished, tears were flowing freely down her face, which I couldn’t stand. I knew she hated openly crying, so this had to be bothering the hell out of her, and it bothered the hell out of me that I’d caused it.
I got up and moved to where she was, hooking my arms around her shoulders to pull her into me. For the first few moments that her head was against my chest, she cried harder, wrapping her arms around my waist to get closer. After a few minutes, her tears subsided, and I cupped her face in my hands, turning it up to mine to look at her up close for the first time in days.
There was real, lingering sadness in her ey
es, that I couldn’t just wipe away and force to disappear. The tears though, I could, and used the pads of my thumbs to wipe the moisture from her face.
I kissed her.
There was no reason to rush it, so I didn’t, giving her a lingering, teasing, slow-burn kind of kiss that I knew she hated and loved, but loved more than she hated it. Just… a soft brush of lips first, that made her eyes widen in surprise. Then a bit firmer, a full press, followed up with a little nibble at the corner of her mouth, then a harder one just before her eyelids fluttered closed.
I nibbled, licked, sucked that plush bottom lip of hers before I moved in closer, using my tongue to explore the sweetness of her mouth. I’d missed this too – her presence, how she felt, how she tasted, the damn-near high-inducing shift in atmosphere between us.
Brandi moaned into my mouth as she eagerly kissed me back. Her fingers tangled in fistfuls of my tee-shirt, breasts pressed against my chest as she tried to get closer. My fingers went to those soft curls at the back of her neck, where I’d wanted to put them since she walked in. I pressed my lips to hers one more time, then pulled back and waited.
“You felt that, right?” I asked, when she finally opened her eyes, and I could meet her gaze. “That exchange between us?”
Her lips parted for a second, but then she nodded. I wasn’t just imagining shit.
“I… don’t know when that happened. I mean, yeah, we had chemistry, but this is something other than just sexual attraction. Or… it feels that way to me. And again, I don’t know when we… shifted… but, it’s not an anomaly. That’s every time I’m around you, every time I touch you, kiss you, when I’m inside of you. Maybe it’s not like that for you, you know? And it doesn’t have to be,” I added quickly, not wanting to give the wrong impression of what I was saying. “But… that’s why this “friends” shit… that just can’t cut it anymore, B.”
She chewed at her lip a bit as she nodded. “It’s not as if I don’t feel it. It’s been so organic that it barely registers as something different anymore. I expect you to make me feel… butterflies.” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s where I went wrong. I wasn’t supposed to feel that, so I minimized it to just me being overeager or something. But it’s not just you.” She sighed a little, shaking her head. “We did this all wrong, didn’t we? This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
The Lies: The Lies We Tell About Love, Life, and Everything in Between Page 17
