Jawan hadn’t grown up with a male presence at home, but he’d grown up in a time when li’l somethin’s were things that the majority of the time could be walked away from. Times were different now, and unfortunately far too many kids were getting caught up in li’l somethin’s that they weren’t walking away from ever again.
Jawan knew that his role and influence were limited, but he was determined to have some sort of an effect on Brian.
He watched as Brian led Carla to the dance floor as Jamie Foxx’s instant classic, “Blame It,” began to play. Off to his right, someone said, “They didn’t play songs like that at my school dances.”
Jawan turned his head.
A woman stood a few inches away from him, her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her lips were pressed firmly together as she shook her head. He’d only met her once, but he’d never forgotten her soft eyes, capturing smile, or her curvaceous, toned figure.
Brian’s mother.
He’d first laid eyes on her two years ago in the office of the school, when she came to meet with the principal after Brian had gotten into trouble for fighting. Jawan had been getting papers from his mail slot. He didn’t know who she was, but she had captivated him instantly, and he had actually hoped to have Brian for a student one day just so that he’d have a chance to meet her. But, of course, the meeting wouldn’t have really mattered because she would have been his student’s mother, and, because of that, it would have been brief and very professional.
And now here she was, standing beside him, inches away, looking stunning, dressed simply in a beige sweater and a pair of dark blue jeans with black boots on her feet, and her hair lying around her shoulders.
Jawan took a breath and said, “It’s a good song.”
Deahnna Moore turned toward him. “He’s singing about alcohol making him feel loose,” she said.
Jawan laughed. “It’s a harmless song.”
“Mm-hmm. You say that now. But just wait until your daughter or son is singing about blaming their actions on alcohol.”
Jawan laughed again, as did Deahnna. After a few seconds, he stuck out his hand. “Jawan White.”
Deahnna took it, smiled, and said, “Deahnna Moore.”
Jawan nodded in Brian’s direction. “I’m Brian’s English teacher.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, smiling again. “I hope Brian doesn’t give you a hard time in class. He’s going through a phase right now. The kind where he thinks he knows it all.”
Jawan shook his head. “He’s no trouble at all. He’s got a good head on his shoulders. You’ve done a great job with him.”
Deahnna smiled. “Thank you. It’s just me at home. I do the best I can.”
“I wish you could do the best you could for a lot of my other students,” Jawan said sincerely.
“Thank you,” Deahnna said again.
“My pleasure.”
“So, Mr. White—”
“Jawan, please.”
“OK. Jawan. So are you chaperoning?”
Jawan nodded. “I am. My arm kind of got twisted into it by my boss. Kind of had no choice.”
“I’d say so.”
“But I’m actually having a good time. I didn’t expect to see so many of the kids here. What about yourself? I assume you’re chaperoning also.”
Deahnna gave a nod. “I overheard him on the phone talking about this dance to his girlfriend, and how big of a deal it was since Lane hadn’t had one in a while. I figured coming here would be a way to see who his girlfriend was, so I called the school and volunteered.”
Jawan looked toward the floor. The DJ was playing a Ne-Yo track now, and while everyone was still dancing, their bodies were just a little closer. “You don’t have to worry. Her name’s Carla and she’s a good girl. Just like Brian, she focuses on her schoolwork and gets good grades.”
“That’s good to know.” Deahnna sighed. “I wish all of his friends were that way.”
“Believe me,” Jawan said, his eyes back on her, “I talk to him all the time about the company he keeps.”
“Well, I’m glad someone else does besides me. I know I sound like a broken record when I speak to him about his”—she put up her fingers and made air quotation marks—“boys.”
“I’m sure I sound just as broken,” Jawan said, “But you have to keep talking, you know.”
“I definitely know.”
“Brian’s a smart kid. He just needs a reminder sometimes to help keep his head on straight. All kids do. I don’t know about you, but I know I did.”
“So you were a troublemaker, huh?” Deahnna said with a smile.
Jawan shook his head. “Not really a troublemaker. I just went through a period trying to find myself. You know, the old hanging with the wrong crowd trying to be part of the in-crowd thing. Did some things I’m not proud of.”
“And look at you now,” Deahnna said, staring at him with a smile.
“Luckily I had an uncle who stepped into my life at the right time to rein me in when I’d become too much for my mother to handle.”
Deahnna nodded. “The power of a male presence,” she said with a touch of sadness in her voice.
Jawan looked at her. “I take it Brian’s father isn’t around?”
Deahnna raised her eyebrows and frowned. “Never was,” she said bluntly.
Jawan looked back to Brian, who was laughing playfully as he twirled Carla around. “Wherever he is, he’s missing out on a special kid,” he said genuinely.
“He’s locked up,” Deahnna said bluntly. “He’s missing out on a hell of a lot. And he will for a very long time.”
Jawan turned and looked at her closely. She didn’t need to give any more information than she had for him to see that she’d been hurt somehow by Brian’s father. He could hear it beneath the strength in her voice. There was hurt there. He turned and looked back to Brian. Maybe a seventeen-year hurt, he surmised.
He turned and gave Deahnna a smile. She was truly captivating. Although he didn’t know her well, he felt a desire to reach out and hold her close. A need to protect her.
Deahnna watched him as he studied her. And then her eyes grew wide. “I love this song!” she exclaimed.
The DJ had just started playing “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé. It was a hit from the previous year, but just like Jamie Foxx’s song, it was a classic.
Jawan laughed. “That’s the ladies’ anthem.”
Deahnna began to move her hips and shoulders to the groove. Jawan watched her, and felt a stirring in his jeans. Her moves were subtle, but almost sensual. “I’m a big Beyoncé fan,” she said.
Jawan nodded. “Yeah. I’m a fan too,” he said with a sneaky glint in his eye.
Deahnna looked at him. “Mm-hmm. I bet you are.”
Jawan shrugged one shoulder. “Hey, Beyoncé’s got, um . . . skills.”
Deahnna gave him another “Mm-hmm.”
Jawan laughed and watched as she lost herself in the song and did a turn. As she did, someone came behind him and whispered, “Watch those eyes, Mr. White.”
Jawan turned around to see Brian walking off backward, giving him the “I’m watching you” motion that Robert DeNiro made famous in the movie Meet the Parents . Jawan gave him a nod and did his own “I’m watching you” motion, and then turned back to Deahnna.
She was fanning herself. “I get caught up when I hear that song.”
“Believe me,” Jawan said, adding a touch of machismo to his voice, “it was all good. You really don’t have to stop on my account.”
Deahnna looked at him with a slight rise in the corner of her mouth. “Is that right?”
Jawan nodded. “Most definitely.”
Deahnna looked at him for a lingering second, and then gave another “Mm-hmm.”
Jawan laughed. “So, Deahnna, would you like something to drink?”
“Do they serve mojitos here?”
Jawan chuckled. “I don’t know what I can do about the mojitos, but I know I can get y
ou a slamming bottle of water.”
Deahnna laughed. “Water will be fine,” she said.
“Be right back.”
Jawan walked away, and as he did, he couldn’t help but smile. There was definitely a very strong and very mutual attraction going on. He had his policy about students’ mothers, but still, he couldn’t keep his mind from wondering what it would be like to see her again, outside of school.
He got the water with that thought on his mind. When he came back, Deahnna was watching her son on the floor. “Trust me,” Jawan said, handing her a bottle, “your son has good taste.”
Deahnna thanked him for the water. “I work so much. I’m looking at him now just thinking about how much of his life I’m missing out on. Yesterday we had a disagreement and he said to me that he was practically a man. I told him he was far from being a man, but looking at him now . . .” She paused and gave a half shake with her head. “He’s growing so damned fast. I want so much for him.”
“So do I,” Jawan said. “He’s a really great kid. I think he’s going to be just fine,” he said reassuringly.
Deahnna smiled, took a sip of her water, and continued to watch her son.
A few minutes of silence passed between them. As they did, Jawan watched her with keen eyes. Off-limits, he told himself. It didn’t matter how sexy she was. It didn’t matter how intriguing, or how much she stirred his senses. Senses that had been dulled since Kim.
She’s Brian’s mother.
He’s your student.
She’s off-limits.
Off.
Limits.
Move on.
He watched her, and, suddenly, as if reading his mind, she turned and looked at him and smiled.
Dammit.
She was wrong for that.
Before he could stop himself, he said, “Maybe someday I can treat you to that mojito.”
Deahnna closed her eyes a bit and then smiled. “Someday might be nice,” she said.
Jawan gave her a nod, then took a sip of his own bottle and turned back to look at his students. Policy? What policy? he thought.
They were both chaperoning the dance, yet for the rest of the night, neither he nor Deahnna moved from where they stood. They chatted some more about light topics, and then, before they parted ways, they exchanged phone numbers.
“Policy be damned,” Jawan said later that night to Grady, who lay with him on his bed, watching ESPN.
In his dreams later on, with the crashing waves, and the moonlight, it wasn’t Janet Jackson he was caressing. It was Deahnna Moore. And in the background, Beyoncé’s song was playing.
7
Brian sat quietly in his seat, waiting for the bell to ring. Unlike any other day, he had no plans to rush out of the classroom. He wanted to have a conversation with his English teacher. There was something that he needed to make clear. He’d seen the way Mr. White had been talking with his mom. More importantly, he’d seen the way he’d looked at her.
So had his friends.
And they hadn’t hesitated to comment about it at the dance, after the dance, via text message the next day, and all day during school. All of the chattering and sarcastic comments had been getting on his fucking nerves. So he waited for the bell to help his teacher understand . . .
His mom was off-limits to everyone.
There was nothing personal against Mr. White. It was just a rule that he’d set in stone when he was six years old. That was when he’d first begun to ask questions about his father’s existence. Who was he? Was he still alive? If he was, why wasn’t he around? Didn’t he love them? Was he mad at them?
They were innocent questions. Questions that, at six years old, Brian expected to be answered. But they never were. Eventually Brian stopped asking, and the older he got, the more it became evident to him that his mother’s unwillingness to provide even the simplest of answers had been because, at some point in time, the man who’d given his sperm to create him had hurt her badly.
Because of that, Brian refused to let any man get close to her, and so as the years passed, he did whatever he had to do to sabotage any relationships she tried to have, by letting the men know with either words or actions that their presence was unwanted. How well they treated his mother never mattered, because in his eyes, they had the potential to bring his mother more pain.
Mr. White was cool, and seemed to be a good and, to a certain extent, trustworthy man. Brian had actually allowed the wall that masked the pain he’d felt from being a bastard child to come down a notch, because he appreciated the fact that, other than his mother, his teacher had been the only other person in his life who was constantly on his ass about him doing the right thing for his future. Brian put up resistance to the talks because, well, he couldn’t just make things that easy, and he also wanted to do things his way. But he appreciated the talks nonetheless.
Deep down he believed that Mr. White had nothing but good intentions, but Brian still owed it to his mother to let the man know what was up. Whatever thoughts Mr. White had in his head concerning his mother, he needed to let them go quickly.
When the bell rang he would send that message loud and clear.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket suddenly. Brian looked to make sure Mr. White hadn’t noticed, as cell phones were prohibited, and when he was sure that he hadn’t, he pulled his phone out to see a text message from Tyrel:
Meet me an’ Will at pizza shop. Wanna talk more bidness.
Brian looked up at the clock on the wall above the classroom door. School would be over in five minutes.
Discreetly, he replied:
A’ight. But I’ma B a minute. Gotta do somethin’.
Seconds later, Tyrel responded:
A’ight then meet me at Will’s crib at 7.
Brian replied that he would, and then slipped the phone back into his pocket. As he did, he wondered about what business Tyrel wanted to discuss. After the way things had gone down with the Laundromat, he was surprised Tyrel even wanted to be around Will. They’d had little beefs here and there growing up, but things had never been as bad as they’d been that night. There’d been a look in Tyrel’s eyes that made Brian feel that had the .45s been loaded, something very tragic would have happened. Will had challenged him in a way he never had before, and that surprised Brian.
Business.
The business that night hadn’t really been for shit, and that frustrated Brian. But Carla had helped to ease that frustration. So much so that he couldn’t bring himself to leave her side before her mother came home, so he hid in her closet until her mother went to bed, and then spent the rest of the night holding her in his arms. He’d slept longer than he intended, and he had to hightail the two blocks home, trying to beat his mother’s early rise.
Of course, he hadn’t.
At the party after the Laundromat heist, Tyrel and Will were cool, but the tension had been thick between them and they’d barely spoken to one another. Brian hoped that when he got to Will’s later that night, things would be back to normal.
The bell rang for dismissal. Brian waited for the other students to hustle out, and then approached his teacher, who was erasing the chalkboard. “Mr. White, you got a second?”
His teacher turned around and looked down at his watch. “Sure,” he said. “I have about fifteen minutes to spare.”
“Cool. This won’t take too long. I just wanna talk about somethin’ really quick.”
Mr. White nodded, and then sat down on the edge of his desk. “What’s up?”
Brian cleared his throat. “I just wanted to talk about the dance on Saturday.”
His teacher smiled. “It was fun,” he said. “It looked like you and Carla had a good time.”
Brian gritted his teeth as his teacher continued to smile. He couldn’t help but think he was smiling because of his mother. “Yeah,” he said unenthusiastically. “It was cool.”
“So, what’s going on?”
Brian gave his teacher a hard stare. “Remember
when I said I was watching you?”
Mr. White nodded and laughed. “I remember.” Brian wasn’t smiling as he said, “Mr. White, you’re a cool dude, and I have mad respect for you, but I’ma need for you to leave my mom alone.”
His teacher’s smile dropped instantly. “Excuse me?”
Brian straightened his back as he puffed out his chest a little. “Look, it’s nothing personal, but I have to look out for my mom. She has enough to deal with, and the last thing she needs right now is for some nigga to be pressing up on her.”
Mr. White raised a single eyebrow and folded his arms across his chest. He looked at Brian for a cool couple of seconds before speaking. “Look, Brian, first things first, I’m no nigga. So save that for your boys. Second, as out of line as it is, I respect what you’re trying to do. You’re looking out for your mother’s best interests and that’s honorable.”
“My mom—” Brian started.
“Your mother is a grown woman, Brian. And she’s free to talk to whomever she chooses. She knows more than you do what she has on her plate. Now, as I said, I respect your intentions. You care about your mother and don’t want anyone hurting her. I get it. And if I were in your position, I might do the same thing, although a little differently. But let me assure you, I’m not out to hurt your mother. As a matter of fact, I’m not out for anything at all. We talked, we enjoyed each other’s company, and we said good-bye. End of story. Now, do yourself a favor and don’t approach me this way again. I’m your teacher, and, more importantly, I’m a man who demands respect, and believe me, the last thing I’m going to do is sit here and listen to you warn me about who I’m allowed to interact with.”
“You—”
“We’re done, Mr. Moore. I have somewhere I need to be, and you need to be somewhere else.”
Growing Pains Page 5
