Young, Rich & Black

by Nia Forrester

  Young, Rich & Black

  An ‘Afterwards’ Novella

  Nia Forrester

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Also by Nia Forrester

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  Copyright © 2019 Stiletto Press

  Philadelphia, PA

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 9781099515392

  For Jacinta, Rae and Lily, my Sisters of the Pen.

  Foreword

  This novella came into being when readers responded with such unexpected positivity to a 2016 holiday short story I wrote about the son of one of the main characters in my books Afterwards and Afterburn. I loved writing those books in part because Chris and Robyn, the main characters had such a rich and varied circle of friends and family. One of those family members was Deuce, who was featured in the holiday short and here, again, in this novella. He intrigued me because he is, as the title says, young, rich and Black — part of a rarefied life that was not earned through sports, a performing career, or longtime family wealth. He is the child of the Black nouveau riche, a generation we’re only just beginning to see come into new adulthood.

  I wonder sometimes about how these young people going to fare in a world where there are still relatively few like them, and even fewer who understand them. How do they feel about the things that preoccupy lots of middle-class young people of color: race, identity politics, interracial relationships, and the relationship of all those things to social justice? I wanted to explore those questions through Deuce. And also, of course, give you a little sweetness, in the form of a good, not-so-old-fashioned love story.

  Happy Reading,

  Nia

  Chapter 1

  “Dude. Are you serious with this?”

  “Sir, I asked you to step out of the car.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “Are you refusing to comply?”

  “Nah, officer, he’s not refusing to comply. Deuce, get out the damn car.”

  Glancing over at Kaleem, in the passenger seat, Deuce sighed and disengaged the seatbelt, unlocking, then opening the door of his brand spanking new Range Rover, and stepping out onto the blacktop. It was cold outside, bitterly so, which only made him resent the command even more. He sized up the police officer standing in front of him—maybe late twenties, reddish-blonde hair and ruddy complexion, icy-blue eyes, thin-lipped and grim-faced.

  “License and registration, please.”

  “For that I needed to get out of the car?”

  “License and registration.” The voice was a little louder now, the tone a little less friendly.

  “Did I offend you, officer?” he asked.

  When he got no answer, Deuce turned toward his vehicle once again and hesitated, looking back before reaching for the door handle. “Can I reach inside to get the registration? My license is in my back pocket.”

  The young cop gave a barely perceptible nod, and Deuce noted that his partner was now also exiting the squad car. His heart rate increased slightly, and he became aware of his breathing—it, too, sped up a little.

  Leaning into the SUV he exchanged a look with Kaleem, and reached for the glovebox, opening it, and pulling out his registration paperwork. Standing upright once again, he handed it over.

  “My license,” he said. “It’s in my wallet. In my back pocket.”

  “Yes. You mentioned. May I have it?” the young officer asked, evenly.

  Deuce reached for his wallet, pulling it out slowly and fishing inside for his license and handing that over. He watched as the officer glanced at it, then at him; then at the license and finally, once again at him.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I was trying to loc it for a minute. So, I look different. Gave up and …” He ran a hand over his almost bald head.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the other officer had moved to the passenger side of the vehicle and was opening the door, beckoning for Kaleem to exit the SUV as well. Deuce felt his heartbeat speed up even more.

  “We’re going to ask you gentlemen to take a seat over here on the curb,” the first cop said, his steely blue eyes meeting Deuce’s.

  Underlying the apprehension, Deuce felt the first threads of actual anger surface.

  “You about to cuff us, too?” he asked.

  The cop’s eyes rose to his once again, but he said nothing.

  “Nah,” Deuce said slowly, maintaining eye contact. “Don’t worry. I’m not ‘refusing to comply’. Officer.”

  Sitting on their hands, Deuce and Kaleem watched as the younger of the two cops went through the routine, sitting in the driver’s seat of the marked police vehicle, no doubt checking the tags, running background checks, searching for open warrants. His partner loomed a few feet behind them.

  “You think he recognized your name?” Kaleem asked under his breath.

  “I dunno,” Deuce mumbled.

  If either of the cops were Black, they would almost certainly recognize the name. Christopher Scaife, even with Jr. as an appellation, almost always raised eyebrows.

  “At least that would explain this bullshit,” Kaleem said.

  “Hey. Both of you, shut the fuck up,” the cop behind them ordered, sounding almost bored.

  Deuce took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm.

  He had been the one to beg his father for the new SUV. He saw a commercial while slouching on a dirty sofa in the basement at someone’s party, drinking a warm beer. Half-asleep, he was planning on heading back to his dorm, but was too lazy to execute the plan. The sound was down on the television, and the channel was tuned to ESPN. A game was on, but he was just about the only one watching; and the room was crowded, noisy, and smelled like a mix of stale alcohol and even staler sweat. Two girls were hovering nearby, trying to get his attention by acting like they weren’t interested in him at all.

  And then the sleek, black SUV appeared, seeming to float across the screen. He sat upright. It did a couple of figure-8s on a wet pavement and lurched to a stop; the doors opened revealing the beautiful tan leather interior. Deuce felt something like love, and decided he had to have it. He was a little drunk, and not exactly alert. Now, he was inclined to believe that the way he felt about the Range Rover in that moment was kind of the way he often thought he felt about a girl he might pick up at two a.m. in a bar—that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  And like that girl from the bar, the Range Rover had turned out to be nice enough, pretty enough, but not quite as awe-inspiring as it appeared on that 65-inch screen in the basement of a party when he wasn’t exactly sober. Now, it was more of a pain-in-the-ass than anything else. He’d had the damn thing three weeks and already been stopped twice. It was much too tricked-out and flashy for a sleepy college town in Penn
sylvania.

  When he got home for Christmas, he was leaving it at his father’s house, and would drive the three-year old Beemer back to school, because this shit was just too stressful. The first traffic stop, he had actually been speeding, and had earned himself a two-hundred-dollar ticket. And right now, his ass was warming the curb instead of being warmed by the Range Rover’s heated leather seats.

  “Hey,” the cop standing over him and Kaleem said. “I know you …”

  Here we go.

  “You’re Deuce Scaife.”

  He said nothing.

  “Decided you didn’t want to play for the Lions, huh? Even after going through all that trouble to dump your spot with the Fighting Irish?” There was a sardonic edge to the cop’s voice, and a note of goading.

  Deuce tried to think of what the least offensive thing to say would be. Penn State football fans weren’t even like fans; they were more like a cult. Even more so since the sex abuse scandal rocked their world some years back. Now they were a doomsday cult—convinced that the world was conspiring against and persecuting them. And because of that, much, much more dangerous than your common garden-variety football cult. That kind he had encountered when he was a freshman at Notre Dame, along with a sustained campaign of hazing that made his mother insist—in a hysterical tirade—that his father get him transferred out of there after only one semester.

  “Decided I didn’t want to play football at all,” Deuce said.

  “How ‘bout you, sport?” the cop seemed to be addressing Kaleem. “You play ball?” The cop gave a bitter laugh. “What am I sayin’? Of course you do.”

  Kaleem put his hands up as though in surrender. “Actually not, sir. Not a lick of athletic talent in me.”

  Deuce tried not to laugh. Kaleem was not only an excellent athlete, but the far superior sportsman between the two of them, as evidenced by the track-and-field scholarship that was giving him a full ride on tuition. That, and the fact that he was being looked at very seriously as a prospect for the 2020 Olympics.

  “Yeah, right,” the cop responded.

  Because after all, in his world, two tall Black dudes in a nice ride had to be athletes. And Penn State athletes had a way of getting lots of favors, like nice cars to cruise around in on a Friday night. Strictly on loan of course. Because there were rules about stuff like that, and the last thing the school and boosters wanted to do after all that nasty Sandusky business was break any rules.

  The first cop stepped out of the marked car and came striding back toward them. He extended a hand with Deuce’s license and registration and when Deuce reached for them, let both drop onto the street.

  “Thanks for your cooperation, gentlemen,” he said. “Have a nice night.”

  He turned to walk away, leaving them sitting on the curb while his partner followed him back to the patrol car.

  “Yo, you still mad?”

  Deuce looked up at Kaleem who was tearing into a buffalo wing across the table, his lips, and fingers red and greasy from the sauce. “And you’re not?”

  “Nope. That shit used to happen to me practically on a daily back home in Oakland. And that was without the bad-ass whip.”

  “I don’t know why we gotta live like that,” Deuce mumbled, lifting his beer bottle to his lips.

  “This is news to you? That we live like that? And you was mouthy as fuck by the way. That ain’t the time to prove you got big balls. For real. You see the shit be happenin’ out here?”

  “Yeah, man. But …” Deuce broke off, realizing that he was beginning to sound like a whiner. It was true, it wasn’t news to him. But as a personal experience, yeah, it was new.

  Back in New York, he was always insulated from all that. Growing up in a suburb where it was considered downright impolite to even acknowledge racial differences; and having the father he had, ensured that the only grit Deuce got exposed to was that which was manufactured for the music videos of his father’s performing artists.

  He had summered in the Hamptons, traveled extensively, and gotten VIP access to the hottest nightclubs in Manhattan before he even turned eighteen. But he didn’t live under a rock. Of course, he knew cops got hard-ons for young Black men in decent rides. But never until just now had he experienced the apprehension and then the indignity of being pulled out of his car simply for driving while Black.

  And even so, he knew that a little ‘apprehension’ was the best outcome. Many brothers out there weren’t as lucky.

  “You just need to take the edge off,” Kaleem said. “Have you a little …” He vaguely inclined his head in the direction of the bar, and Deuce turned to see what he was talking about. Three girls were sitting there, nursing drinks of their own and occasionally casting coy looks in Kaleem and his direction.

  Deuce glanced at them and then did a double-take. One of the girls—the one who seemed least interested in looking over at either him or Kaleem—he recognized. Her name was Zora. She had been in his freshman African American Literature class and everyone had made much of the fact that she was named for the writer Zora Neale Hurston; and since then, she had just about lived up to her namesake. Now, she was a campus firebrand and flamethrower, who had helped organize a local Black Lives Matter chapter and seemed to be constantly on the look-out for her next boycott-and-protest opportunity.

  On an average day, Deuce found her and the rest of that power-to-the-people crowd to be amusing; and on a bad day, annoying. Tonight though, he was curious. He wondered what she would say about his experiences over the last couple of weeks being stopped by the cops. She would probably tell him he should get used to it, and that it was convenient for him to finally start caring about it now that it happened to him. She might even give him a vaguely scornful look because he was wealthy, and was known to more than occasionally date White chicks.

  “I’m not in the mood for all that right now,” Deuce said, looking away from the trio of girls.

  “A’ight. So just humor me,” Kaleem said. “Because I am definitely in the mood. Especially for that one honey, Zola, whatshername. With the bushy natural.”

  Deuce’s head shot up. “Zora?”

  “Yeah. Her. She fine as fuck.”

  Deuce casually turned and looked over at the girls again. He hadn’t thought of her that way before but, yeah … there was a little something about her.

  Zora had a wild natural that looked like she basically woke up and yanked at it by the handful until it stood on end like the hair of that little Black character from that old show with all the kids, Little Ragamuffins, or something like that. And her skin was dark, and smooth as stone, with high prominent cheekbones and full, plump lips. She didn’t need the foundation that her two friends had plastered on because her complexion was dark enough to appear completely uniform, and there were few shades of lipstick that would successfully compete with the apparently natural dark plum hue. Her eyes were almost catlike in shape, but large and dark. Her nose was small but with flared nostrils that gave her a look of fierce determination.

  “I think you better give up on that one, son. She’s all about the struggle.”

  “Hell, black as I am? She’s just looking for her African king, man. I think she messin’ with that nigga, Rashad, but I just might be The One.”

  Deuce laughed despite himself. Kaleem was dark, though not as dark as Zora. And truth be told, it was that darkness, along with the movie-star white teeth and lean runner’s body that probably got Kaleem so much play. He was handsome enough probably—Deuce didn’t feel equipped to assess other dudes’ looks—but there was something about Kaleem that drew women to him in droves. Mostly blonde chicks, often athletes themselves. Kal sometimes partook of those delights, as did he, but his friend had a definite and strong preference for the sisters.

  In college, anything goes, man, Kal had told him once. But once I graduate I’m marrying a queen and building a Black nation. Four, maybe five little Kaleems. Nah mean?

  Deuce didn’t know what he meant. Because he wasn’t thi
nking about nation-building at all. He was thinking about enjoying life; and as a secondary goal, getting the degree that meant so much to both his parents. The rest of it, he would figure out as he went along.

  “G’on invite them over, then,” Deuce offered.

  “You sure?” Kaleem asked, licking buffalo sauce off his fingers. “You can’t just sit here though, man. You gotta keep the conversation goin’ with her girls while I do my thing.”

  “Yeah, I got you.”

  Kaleem didn’t ask twice. He slid out of the booth and with complete confidence strode across the crowded bar in the direction of the three girls. In the meantime, Deuce looked down at his phone, whose face had lit up with an incoming text message.

  It was his mother, confirming that he still planned to drive up that weekend for the Christmas holiday, and asking whether he wanted her to ask his father to send someone.

  Deuce responded, telling her that he preferred to drive. He didn’t mention why, or tell her that he planned to leave the Range Rover when he came back. She would have a fit if he told her he was stopped, and probably want to call someone up to complain. His mother was fiercely protective and never shy about name-dropping and throwing around her connection to his father if she thought that would get her the result she wanted. He loved her, but that shit was embarrassing.

  “You all know my boy, Deuce, right?”

  He looked up at Kaleem who had escorted the three girls over, two of them giggling as he extended a hand.

  “This is Sophie …” Pretty with long, auburn hair that was most likely not hers, and hazel eyes that may or may not be her real eye-color. “And Mia …” Much prettier than Sophie with shoulder-length black curls and a cute gap-toothed smile. “And Zora.”