“Well …” Bryant Staynor spoke up. “The thing about the resources is, the only way we could … marshal them. At least if they’re SE resources we’re talking about, is to have Devin come on as …”
Jamal lifted a hand to silence him. “We ain’t talkin’ ‘bout that right now. Let’s figure out what he wants to do first, and then we’ll worry about who pays for what.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Devin said.
Next to him, Robyn sighed. “This is … a little awkward, Devin, but what Bryant is saying is that you could decide you want to counter-punch, but for SE to be the one doing the counter-punching on your behalf, you’d have to be one of our artists, and currently …”
Making a sound of disgust, Devin stood, putting both his hands on the dome of his head. For the first time, he looked over at Makayla, and she could swear that what she saw in his eyes was hurt.
“So now we get down to it,” he said. “The big payback. That’s why you wanted to do this shit.” He stabbed a finger in Jamal’s direction. “And that’s why you asked me not to tell her. You mother…”
“That’s not what this is, and you know it,” Jamal said calmly. “If all I wanted was to have you sign, I would’ve asked you that from jump. I don’t …”
“Yeah, okay, man.” Devin turned and headed toward the door. Once there, he paused with his hand on the doorknob, and looked at Jamal once again. “Fuck you, man. Fuck you.”
And then he was gone.
Standing, frozen in place, Makayla turned and looked at Jamal. She didn’t understand everything, but she understood enough.
“So, that went well,” Robyn quipped.
Jamal turned and looked at Bryant. “Who the hell authorized you to …?”
“Look, why else am I even here if we weren’t going to do at least a soft approach about him coming on?”
“You call that a soft approach?” Jamal pinched the bridge of his nose. “You just don’t know, Bryant. You have no clue …”
“Jamal.” Makayla spoke up for the first time.
“Baby, gimme a …”
“Jamal!”
Everyone in the room turned to look at her.
“I need to talk to you right now.”
“Kayla …”
She gave him a look but said nothing further and he stood, following her to the rear of their apartment, and into the master bedroom. Once there, he shut the door behind him and leaned against it.
“Okay,” she said, struggling to maintain her calm. “Speak.”
~23~
He thought it might be Kay. But it wasn’t.
Harper stood at his threshold, on the other side of the door, her expression unreadable.
“Can I come in?” she asked when, after a moment he still hadn’t said anything, nor stood aside to admit her.
Turning, Devin went back into his apartment, leaving the door open. He heard as she entered and then shut it behind her. Since she was in the music business, it was very unlikely that she hadn’t heard the news. Even though it had been less than forty-eight hours, this kind of thing traveled fast, especially in the circles where people had a “need to know.” And as someone whose job it was to watch what was happening with upcoming talent, Harper was very solidly a part of that group.
“Guess what I did today,” she said.
“What?” he asked, not really caring one way or another.
She was obviously pretending she hadn’t heard. He was sick of people pretending.
“I landed Prentice Michel.”
That, he hadn’t been expecting. Devin turned to look at her. Harper was smiling and doing a little dance, biting in her lower lip.
“Biggest get of my career so far. They are going to be licking my boots in that department for the foreseeable future. Especially fake-ass DeJuan. I know he thought he would be the one to get Prentice because behind my back, he was calling him, trying to take him to titty-bars and shit like that.”
Devin grinned at the words “titty-bars.”
“Congratulations,” he said.
“Thank you.” Harper took a deep bow.
“I’m happy for you and all,” he continued, “but I thought Prentice was one of the real ones. Never figured him for a sell-out.”
Harper’s face fell and she stood upright from her bow. “Just because he wants to position himself so he can get paid what he deserves doesn’t make him a sell-out. And anyway, I’m not going to let that happen. His sound doesn’t need to be messed with and remastered.”
Devin shook his head and looked away from her, going to sit on his sofa. What the hell was he starting that fight with her for anyway? If Prentice Michel and all those dudes out there wanted to throw their lot in with the faux-music business, why should he care?
Except that Prentice Michel seemed like he might be one of his tribe—a hold-out for something musically authentic. But why should he have turned out to be anything other than a disappointment? It was pretty much consistent with the theme of the day.
“So, that’s what’s happening with me,” Harper said, coming over to sit next to him. “What’s been happening with you?”
He looked at her, and she stared evenly back at him. Then he smirked, and she did too.
“You already know,” he said, in a part-question, part-statement.
She nodded, then shrugged. “I already know.”
“That’s what’s up with me.”
“I’ve had all kinds of shit written about me on the music blogs …”
“Yeah, but this stuff they wrote about me? It’s true,” Devin said, short-circuiting her attempt to commiserate. “I don’t remember this dude, or … the details, but the gist of it? It’s not a lie.”
Harper looked surprised, but not shocked.
“Wow,” she said finally.
“So, if you need to bounce, I get that.” He couldn’t look at her. And he definitely didn’t want to watch her leave.
“What d’you mean?” she asked.
“You read the stuff that dude said I did, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not a lie, Harper.”
“I hear you.”
“Dudes who do shit like that, are gay.”
“Are they?”
At that Devin, turned to look directly at her. Harper’s gaze was unfaltering. She wasn’t looking at him with sympathy, nor with disgust. She was just looking, directly in his eyes, unflinchingly and without judgment.
She shrugged again. “Are you gay?” she asked.
He said nothing for a while, and she waited.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“But you don’t know.”
“I don’t think I am. But then I think about the things I did. The things …” He exhaled and looked away from her, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Y’know what I know?” Harper asked.
Devin looked at her again.
“I know … and believe me, if there is anyone who would know this, it’s me. I know that sex doesn’t always have anything to do with desire. I know that sex doesn’t always have anything to do with … sex. That’s what I know.”
Devin looked down at his lap and ran his hands over his thighs. “I know you probably think I’m, like, embarrassed that this came out or something,” he said. “And I am …” He gave a bitter laugh. “But more than that, I’m kind of relieved. Isn’t that crazy?”
Harper shook her head.
“You want to hear something crazy?” she asked. “I have crazy for your ass. You ready?”
Devin grinned despite himself. “Hit me.”
“You may or may not have heard,” she said, her tone glib. “But I have a little bit of a rep. ‘Get Harper Bailey in the studio, she’ll suck your dick’ and crap like that. And worse yet, ‘When you’re done with her, she might even suck your boy’s dick. She’s out there like that.’ That kind of shit. That was me. I did some things, Devin …” She stopped and took a breath, her chest heaving before s
he continued. “I don’t even … well, I didn’t even know why I did them. I would hook up with these guys … grimy-ass dudes who just wanted to use me. And I let them. And I hated myself for it, but I kept doing it, just repeating the same pattern …
“My specialty? Guys who were already with somebody. Married, got two baby mommas? Or one baby momma and four kids? I couldn’t care less. I don’t know what I was thinking, I don’t even know that I was thinking.”
“But you did it anyway.”
She nodded. “And then I met this guy. He was married, like the others, pretty famous. A name you’d recognize. I was working on his new CD and we started hooking up, spending time on the road, sneaking around when we were back in New York. He had three kids, and I didn’t give a shit. I think his wife was even pregnant at one point.
“And after we’d been at this for like, I don’t know, maybe seven months? He told me he loved me. Said he was done sneaking around and wanted to leave his wife because he’d fallen in love with me.” Harper paused to laugh and shake her head. “He knew what I was, what I’d done. He would go to places with me and dudes would talk shit about me, and he was willing to stare down all of that. And leave his wife, and take me out in public as his girl. And y’know what I did?”
“What?” Devin’s voice was quiet.
“I just stopped returning his calls, eventually blocked his ass when he wouldn’t stop. Shifted my work to someone else on the team, and avoided him until he eventually left me alone.”
He waited for her to go on.
“And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘That’s cool, Harper. You saw how wrong you were, and didn’t want to break up a family’…” She mimicked applause. “But that wasn’t it. The minute he said he wanted me like that? The minute he was ready to treat me like a person? I was done. I didn’t want him anymore. I couldn’t even … it literally turned me off. So, I moved on to the next asshole, someone who treated me like crap. Like I was used to, and comfortable with.”
There was a hint of remembered pain in her eyes, but Harper held his gaze.
“But I couldn’t shake it, remembering how I was disgusted by the one dude who ever … That’s when I realized for the first time just how messed up I am … was. Am.” She laughed, but Devin didn’t laugh with her.
“That’s pretty messed-up,” he agreed.
Harper laughed again and moved closer, leaning into him.
“Is that why you keep comin’ around here?” Devin asked quietly. “Because I treat you like shit?”
For a moment, she seemed to contemplate this, and then shook her head. “You don’t know what being treated like shit means, if you think anything you do even compares.”
Oh, but he did know. He had lived it. But that wasn’t something he would share with her. His therapist didn’t even know. He’d been going to talk to Wendell Harris for a dog’s age, but the man had no clue just how much Devin still concealed.
Putting her feet up on the sofa, and leaning back into him, even further, Harper sighed.
“This is going to be okay,” she said, like she was almost talking to herself. “The good thing about being a creative is that people almost expect you to do freaky shit.”
At that, Devin laughed his first genuine laugh in almost three days.
“I’m serious!” Harper said. “I mean, look at Prince. Who would’ve been surprised to hear that he fucked unicorns in his spare time, or had a harem, or …”
“Yeah. Except I’m not Prince,” he pointed out.
“No but you’re hella-talented. The kind that can overcome a rumor way back from whenever about something you might have done with someone whose name no one can remember. There are ways to work through this. This is what I do, remember?”
That sounded a little too much like the conversation about “counter-punches” he had just had in Jamal and Makayla’s living room. Devin sat up, shoving Harper aside.
“Did he send you?”
She squinted in confusion. “Did who send me?”
“Jamal.”
“Jamal?” She looked even more confused. “What does he have to do with this?”
Devin recounted everything, starting with the call he got to meet Jamal at a restaurant one evening, where he first heard about Tyree; and ending at the meeting in Jamal and Makayla’s apartment not two hours ago.
“You think he what? Set you up?” Harper was shaking her head.
“Not to have dude in Atlanta say what he did, but to have me sign the agreement. So I would owe him.”
Rolling her eyes, Harper leaned back into the sofa and folded her arms. “Devin.”
“What?”
“He doesn’t have to sweat anybody that damn hard. Not even you, okay? And even if he was all broken-up about not signing you that other time, he would come at you head on. This crap you talkin’ ‘bout? That’s not Jamal Turner. That’s slimy DeJuan Stokes.”
Devin remembered DeJuan Stokes. He was the other member of the development team that had gone along for his promotional tour.
DeJuan, as Devin remembered him, was a little shady, for sure. But he hadn’t paid much attention to him because there was a whole lot more going on. That was the tour that didn’t result in a deal for either him, or Scaife. The one that had thrown Kay and Jamal together and cost him the one person who had ever really known him, and loved him anyway.
“I’ve worked with Jamal for as long as I’ve been in this business, Devin. He wouldn’t do that. If he said he was trying to help you, then that’s what he was doing.”
“Because he’s just a saint like that.”
“No, but he’s a decent guy. As a boss, he could be kind of a hard-ass, but there were so many times he could have let me go … I don’t even want to tell you how many times, with the crap I used to pull. But he didn’t.”
“You think I …”
“Maybe overreacted? Just a little, yeah. And fuck Bryant. He doesn’t have one-tenth of the instincts Jamal has. He was probably just trying to get you while you were in a weakened position … who the hell knows? I mean, he’s no Jamal Turner that’s for damn sure.” Harper rolled her eyes. “Remember that night in Onyx when you kicked Rahim’s ass for me?”
Devin smothered a smile and shook his head. “Yeah?”
“I was there to get Jamal’s advice about how to land Prentice. Bryant is my new boss, but Jamal’s my mentor. I know him. He wouldn’t do what you think he did.”
“I don’ know …”
“Devin.” Harper punched him in the arm. “You need to go back and apologize. He …”
“I ain’ apologizin’ for shit. You shoulda seen how he had me up in there, answering for a decision I made about my own damn life, like he was …”
“Maybe he cares about you,” Harper said matter-of-factly.
Just as he opened his mouth to respond, the doorbell rang. He wasn’t used to hearing it, so it startled him, and he and Harper both turned toward the door at the same time. Getting up to answer it, Devin didn’t bother looking through the peephole.
When he opened it, Kay immediately launched herself at him, arms wrapped around his neck, squeezing him in a tight embrace. Devin hugged her back, resting his head on top of hers, and feeling his body relax into the familiar comfort only she could offer.
“Dev,” she said. She pulled away, but instead put a hand at his cheek. “I am so, so …”
Then she was looking around him, and Devin glanced over his shoulder and stepped aside to let her in.
“Hey,” Kay said. “Harper.”
“Hey, Makayla.” Harper was leaning down, retrieving the shoes that she had toed off earlier.
“Did I interrupt …?”
“Nope,” Harper said too brightly. “I just stopped by to share some news with Devin, that’s all.”
“Why’re you leavin’?” he asked, walking toward her.
Harper stood upright, her shoes now back on.
“Makayla’s here,” she said. “I’m sure sh
e’s got you covered.”
Skirting around him and offering Makayla one quick, tight smile, she walked out of the open door.
~24~
“I hate to say it man, but maybe she’s just not ready.”
Jamal looked over the brim of his glass at his brother.
“The day I start taking relationship advice from you …”
Damon laughed. “It’s not relationship advice. I’m just telling you what I see.”
After Robyn, Bryant and Gayle had vacated the apartment, he had as well. It was too quiet, there. He called Damon up on the off chance that his brother hadn’t already left the city for his commute back to Connecticut and wanted a drink, and got lucky.
They met at a pub near Damon’s job and sat at the bar, which was already crowded with the Happy Hour set. But that was cool, because the last thing Jamal needed to do was to replay the look on Kayla’s face—and the momentary doubt in her eyes—while he convinced her that he hadn’t used Devin’s situation as leverage to get him to sign a deal.
The fact that he had to convince her at all … He got hot just thinking about it. But the heat didn’t overwhelm the sting.
‘Is that who you think I am?’ he’d asked.
And Kayla had blanched at that. ‘No,’ she said. Eventually. ‘Of course not.’
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with taking a minute,” Damon said. “Taking a step back and reconsidering. I mean, she’s young. She ain’t up against a biological clock or nothin’ like that. You could put your wedding off for three years and her eggs would still be fresh and plump.”
Jamal turned on his stool and gave his brother a look. “Bruh … c’mon …”
“I’m jus’ sayin’. You got time.”
In Puerto Rico, watching Kayla take in every new thing with the unabashed delight of a child, she had never seemed so young. And the way she talked about needing him for the wedding planning …
When they first got together she was holding down her job, school, and taking care of her grandmother. She was holding Devin down. That would have been a handful for any average person. But, she was capable, smart, and quietly confident. In her, Jamal saw a kindred spirit. Someone who just got shit done.
The Takedown Page 22
