by Love Belvin
“Damn! That’s why you been swerving talks of your marriage. Y’all been beefin, huhn!” He scoffed rowdily. “Those divorce rumors was true! I bet my brother’s baby moms a half a stack it wasn’t true!” He laughed with Rico and a few other guys in the studio I wasn’t that acquainted with.
“Niggas always get one side of the story.” Jemah stepped next to me in solidarity. “I heard she put it on his ass so good, he rethinking his sweet Jesus!” She tried high-fiving me.
My not reciprocating had the room go eerily silent again. Young Lord’s raven orbs were on me, too. I felt the unspoken judgment in them. His distrust of me had been hidden beneath every hour he’d spent grooming me these past few days. It had lurked each second Teke had been within a five-foot radius of me. In fact, the feeling of suspicion hadn’t been new. Each of my peers had given me shady stares and smiles whenever Teke was near or one of the executives gave me two minutes more of their attention than the rest of the group.
A burn zipped through my belly and I knew what that meant. An emotional display I wouldn’t share with a bunch of industry people. So, I turned on my heel and left the room. I headed straight toward the living room where on this side of the house, let out to a second-outdoor dining room. From there, I passed the stony patio and dropped down the steps to the beach. The sun was setting just as I sat on the sand, crossing my legs and inhaling the salted breeze. The tears receded before they spilled and I was grateful. This crying shit was truly for the birds.
That one release did something I hadn’t counted on. It changed the dynamic of the group. It dismantled the playing field in a tangible way. I’d been given special attention on this ride, but it had been unspoken and subtle because the root of it hadn’t been unearthed. Ragee had just made himself evident, and the state of our marriage, too.
One more day…
That’s all I had to go before this boot camp would be over. And as much as that sounded like a milestone, it wasn’t. I had so much shit to sort through. The only silver lining in the sky was Van’s release in a couple of weeks. That still didn’t resolve where I’d live or how I’d make a living once I touched ground on East Coast soil.
“You good, girl?” I heard in the distance behind me and turned to peer over my shoulder.
Chuckling dryly, I scoffed, turning back to the calm water.
When I felt him near, I muttered, “You’re just like Puffy…”
Teke sat next to me. “How so?” He strained while meeting the sand.
“You just won’t stop.”
He tossed back his head, laughing. Those green pupils hidden behind squinted lids as he did.
“You funny as hell, yo!” He tried catching his breath. “Stop what, though?”
“Stop coming around me.”
“Kinda hard when we’re both in this boot camp shit.”
“None of the guys come around me like you do, though,” I tried.
“Jon fucks with you.”
“I think everyone does. But none have the wanna fuck me vibe like you do.”
Teke froze, not prepared for my gross candor. My regard went back out to the orange water. It was beautiful and different from every other sunset I’d seen.
“I do.”
My head whipped to the right. “What?”
Teke shrugged. “I wanna fuck you. I ain’t gone lie.” I rolled my eyes, not sure if I should laugh at him or be grateful for his gross candor. “But I get it. You’re married.”
His eyes burned a hole in the side of my face. Teke was likely looking for direction: Should he stay on this path or try to claw his way out.
“I am.” I nodded, facing the water.
“And I get married people go through shit. Especially in the industry. It ain’t no place for love. Nah mean?”
I shook my head again, a polite smile inching on my face to hide the pain he had no clue of while spitting bullshit game.
“No. I don’t.” I finally peered into his eyes again. “I don’t know much about this industry, and I’m good with it. I may want to exercise and explore my talent here, but I don’t want to be a part of the community. The machine of it. I’m just a basic chic from Garfield. I met and married a wonderfully influential man, who brought me to this opportunity. I won’t be taking anything from it back with me.” My eyes narrowed as I considered that statement. “Unless L.I.T. offers a deal.” We laughed together. “Now that’s some shit you bring home.” My humor slowed. “Not a jumpoff.”
“How you know you wouldn’t be my jumpoff?” he posed playfully.
I shook my head, closing my eyes as I chuckled. “I’m not going there with you, Teke.”
“Okay. Okay,” he offered, surrendering. “I just came out here to find out if you was coming out with us tomorrow night. Last night here and finna turn up!”
“Damn right, I am.”
“Oh, word?” he snorted. “‘Cause we know how you do, Miss I’m Too Deep in My Writing to Hang Out.”
“That’s not true. I—it’s just I’ve had a lot to juggle since being here.”
“I see.”
He pulled out his phone and I went back to the water, allowing my mind to empty, lost in thought. I didn’t know how long my attention had disappeared from him, but when I turned back to Teke, he was still on his phone.
“What’re you doing?” I teased, “The Gram? I should delete mine. Haven’t been on in so long.”
“Nah. Looking for a flight back home.”
“Oh, shit!” I whispered, head collapsed remembering that major detail.
“What?”
“I forgot I need to book one myself.”
“What?” he smiled, more like chuckled. “The G550 ain’t landing here for you?”
I took a moment to decipher his words.
Oh!
“No.” I finally laughed myself. “I’ll be commercial like my real life.”
“I’m looking at the seat chart for one now. I can book them both if you want. Where you landing?”
“Don’t matter.” I shrugged. “I can do Newark or one of the New Yorks. Let me know how much it is and I’ll get cash tomorrow.” On Raj…
A flight home would totally kill my savings, I was so low on cash. It was as though Raj’s fuck visit was timely. Now, I’d have to see who could pick me up from the airport.
“Listen,” Teke’s sultry voice broke my thought bubble again. “I know the vibe between us has been strange since we met. At first, I ain’t know how to take you and tried saying and doing anything just for your attention. I mean… You was fine as hell and humble as fuck. We was all curious about you. But you wanted your distance and I figured you wanted to play it that way because Raj told you to. Then when I saw he ain’t pull up since you been on this coast and you ain’t beat for talking about him, I guess I allowed myself to fantasize about us being friends.”
“We are friends, Teke,” I tried to ease that insecurity.
“Let me finish.” His eyes were in the Pacific sea distance. “My mom. Growing up, pops used to beat her ass.” Accustomed to hearing stories of trauma, I didn’t react, though I wasn’t expecting this. “For years, since I could remember, he used to slap her around. My big brother I told you about used to hate it just as much as me. Dude always seemed stressed out with her, like she was a kid. But I didn’t fully get it. I only saw my moms with black eyes and busted lips from his open hands—he never hit her with a fist, that I know of. But that palm was enough. I used to sneak behind him when she hid in the closet or the bathroom tub and comfort her. Whenever I saw him getting mad and thought she was about to get hit, I used to try to distract him if I could, and if I couldn’t, I would jump in front of him.
“My brother was too scared to do anything, but not me. As she cried, I’d hug her and sing love songs to her.” He laughed. “Why love songs? I don’t know, but I did. Then pops left. He started messing with the secretary at his job. They’re still married.”
“What about your mother?” I asked, appreciating
the mental escape from my own issues.
Teke nodded. “She ain’t married. My Dad left us the house in Cranford. She stayed and raised us, but it wasn’t easy. We had to deal with her…quirky ways. She wasn’t a drunk but loved her spirits every weekend. And pot. Mom loved herself some damn indo! Probably still do.” He chuckled again. “My big brother, Sean, hated it ‘cause we caught her smoking with his bandmates a few times.”
“Bandmates? He plays instruments, too?”
“Just piano…keys.”
I nodded, though he wasn’t facing me.
“He went through a lot of friends because of that. Sean worked a lot and started when he was a freshman in high school. He played as soon as he got off work and out of school. Shit, even in between. So, there was constantly dudes at the house, waiting on him. We always seemed to be the only musicians in a single family house with a garage, whose parents allowed us to use it.” Teke’s smile waned. “But when Sean came home sometimes, he found some wild shit. Like Moms dancing, high as hell to the music the band started. I used to be there, scared as hell, thinking Sean was going to eventually snap on her like our dad.” His face dropped, and he shook his head.
“Sorry to hear this.”
Teke’s head drew up again. “It’s all good now. She’s been diagnosed with depression, which explains her drinking, smoking, and bad judgment. Sean says he now gets what our father went through. I still don’t. You don’t hit or abuse women. As soon as I got the advance from my L.I.T. deal last year, I got a doctor to help her with therapy and not just meds. It’s been helping. She ain’t so down and depressed from me leaving to work like I am out here. My brother moved out like ten years ago. She ain’t do well with that. I feel bad for her. Like everybody abandoned her.”
His greens finally hit me. “I remember the first time she told me I should sing instead of play. She said I’mma feeler. Feelers can relay love better than musicians. So, I guess when I met you and could feel something was sad about you, I didn’t always come at you right, but I meant no harm. Jackson Hunter told me I was the quintessential R&B dude because I connected to women in a special way. That’s all I wanna do with you, Wynter.”
“And fuck me, too?”
He recoiled, grimaced. “I shouldn’t have said that. My bad.”
“You told the truth.” I shrugged, going back to the water.
“But they’re two separate things. I really like you as a woman. An individual. You’re smart as hell. Look how you came out here and learned as much about music as I know in three weeks? Where they do that at?”
I sighed internally. There was no damn way Teke believed my knowledge of music matched his. Fucking game. But I appreciated the attempt. I had learned a ton out here and wished my “husband” was around to acknowledge it. This field was his playground.
“We cool?”
I glanced over to find his extended hand. Without thought, I obliged. Teke may have tried using his mentally ill mother as a ploy for sympathy, but I was okay with that. That childhood issue was trivial compared to what I’d recorded from monsters transitioning from the state’s custody to their own. And it certainly wasn’t as bad as being molested by an aunt as a child and still feeling the traumatic distress to the point of not being able to maintain an erection as a grown ass man.
Besides, Teke had been supportive of my learning curve out here. He’d put me in front to shine and though I didn’t understand why, wholly, I knew it was strategic. I’d take that.
So, I reciprocated by meeting his palm.
“Friends,” I agreed.
Half of Teke’s face opened with a smile as we shook hands.
“Good!” He strained as he stood again. “‘Cause I gotta get back to Massah.”
“Oh, yeah!” I peered up to him, remembering how he and Young Lord had been hard at work on a track themselves. “How’s that going? You writing for someone else?” Lord had been generous.
“Nah,” he peered out to the water, brushing off the back of his shorts. “Something for me. I came up with something hot and pitched it to him.”
“For B City? Cool!”
“No. Just me. Not an album. Just a fun single to flex on ‘em.” His cocky beam was at play.
Going back to the singing ocean, I nodded, and grinned. That was the Teke I knew. Full of himself, and oh, so unapologetically.
“Anything I’ve heard?”
“Not really. But it’s probably my best to date: music and lyrically.”
“Okay. Have fun!” I bade as he began jogging toward the house.
The following morning, I told Kennedi I wouldn’t be returning that night. We’d worked it out that I’d fly into Newark with B City and Ivie would pick me up from the airport. It was a matter of convenience that I’d ride with the guys to L.A.X. She seemed to be cool with it, and likely because she was preparing for a flight back to the East Coast, too, the day after I was due to leave. Like Rayna, I agreed to empty promises of keeping in touch. It was stupid and arguably cruel, but I wouldn’t dare tell them the truth about my state of affairs with their friend, Ragee. Hell, I didn’t know myself.
I went out with my crew the final night. It would possibly be the last time all seven of us would be together. We went to a local bar near the house they were staying at. We drank, sang, beat on the tables, talked shit about how talented we were, even if the heads of L.I.T. Music didn’t know enough to hire us all. It was actually fun letting my hair down with them while drinking.
After we did the drunk walk back to the house, thankfully with three guards circling our staggering group, no one was ready to go to bed. Well, especially not Rico, Jon, Irv, and Steve, the other standing candidate in boot camp. They brought home company from the bar and retreated anywhere in the small house they could find privacy. That left Teke, Jemah, and me to be drunk and restless. So what did we do? Music. That’s all these people knew. They ate, drank, and shit that one thing. The field was new to me, but the passion was not.
We worked on new material, as what we’d done in boot camp was now with the label and owned by them, per our contracts to participate. This meant I got more practice in creating a song from scratch with experienced people. Jemah and I lay across the bed in Teke’s assigned room while he sat on the floor with his keyboard and guitar, going between both. Jemah and Teke could sing and did while I listened to learn more about keys and melodies. I recorded significant points of the songs to refer back to at a time when I was sober, and study from. It was fun, even to the point of dozing. At three in the morning, Teke kept going like a pro while I lagged on. Poor Jemah next to me was knocked out cold. At some point, I followed.
~8~
The next morning, constant muffled noises roused me from my sleep. The sun was up and shouting; I could hardly open my eyes from its bright rays. My mouth was dry, tongue pasty, rubbing against the roof of my mouth. And on an itch, I felt the crust at the side of my mouth.
Did I drool? Ilk!
It felt like I’d just gone to sleep. Memories of last night came rushing in and I tried turning for Jemah. We had a flight to catch this morning, and I couldn’t afford to be late for it. Only, on a gentle swing of my arm, I didn’t feel the soft flesh of a petite woman. My hands brushed over silky hairs covering a plank of muscle. A man?
My torso leaped around so I could see.
“Teke, what the fuck!” I demanded.
He lay with his head at the foot of the bed and his feet to the top; the opposite of me. And it seemed he limited himself to the lower right quadrant, nowhere near me. His body jerked then he turned over his shoulder and with squinted eyes peered over to me. I noted right away he was dressed like last night, just as I was. But when the fuck did he get in the bed?
He smiled through his morning slant spell. “Morning,” he mumbled.
“Where’s Jemah?”
“In her room.” His head turned back and he began to get up, sitting on the side of the bed, and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Where she slept.”
“I thought Irv took the Indian girl in there last night.”
“That party wasn’t supposed to last until the sun woke up, sweetheart,” he jeered.
I wanted to ask him why was he in the bed, but sensing his sarcasm, I knew he’d resort to the fact that this was his bed and I should be lucky I wasn’t asked to sleep on the couch. Maybe I’d expected him to sleep on the floor, which was unreasonable. This was his room. Instead, I grabbed my phone for the time and saw it was dead.
Fuck…
I stood from the bed, straightening my dress. “What time is it?”
Teke stood to his feet and searched for his phone. He held it in his hand. “Battery dead.” He wiped the cold from his eyes, reminding me I needed the bathroom.
He went to the wall on the other side of the small room and plugged his phone in. I didn’t wait. Needing to distance myself from him, I headed to the door. It opened just as I’d made it.
Irv stuck his head inside. “Shit…” he uttered, appearing just as out of it as Teke. I stopped, taking a deep breath, and covering my swollen, crusty morning face. “I was just coming in here to make sure you was up, bro. We leave in thirty minutes.”
Fuck!
I brushed past him and marched straight into the living room where I’d left my luggage before the bar. Thankfully, it was in the same place. It took three minutes to extract the few things I needed for a shower and to get dressed. As I approached the bathroom, Jemah was coming out, wrapped in a towel.
“Thanks for not waking me when you crept out for your bed,” I hissed on my way into the bathroom.
“Huhn? Teke woke my ass outta my sleep and kicked me out. I had to sleep with fartin’ ass Irv all night,” she tried explaining.
I had no time, so I closed the door and got started reviving my mind and body. Fifteen minutes later, I was out and going back to my luggage to pack up again. Everyone was moving about the place, packing, surfing for last minute grub to soothe their grumbling, liquor ailed bellies.
“The van’s outside,” Rico yawned, dragging his things into the living room.
