She had signed with an agency but complained that they didn’t pick her for many jobs, preferring girls who were more racially ambiguous. Regan was biracial, but she looked white, and sometimes resented that about herself.
Especially now, the industry wants melting pot girls, she’d told him. And I look like … Regan from Cincinnati.
Having her meet his mother hadn’t been on purpose. Regan had spent the night at his place, and his mother was in the city one Saturday and stopped by unannounced. Regan being who she was, opened the door while Deuce was in the shower, so when he came out, they were in his living room having coffee. And after that, his mother kept asking about her.
So, he occasionally took her with him when he drove up to Bedford to visit, reminding himself that this wasn’t like the 1950s. You didn’t have to wife some chick just because she visited your family home a handful of times.
Regan took the pressure off with his mother. Instead of her focusing on him, and what was happening at his father’s company, she and Regan talked about clothes and designers and hair and women’s stuff.
This Saturday, because she’d woken up in his bed, he was probably going to take her to Bedford with him again, even though he worried it might be creating expectations he wasn’t sure he would live up to.
Standing on the balcony of his apartment, looking down at the still-dark streets below, he thought about the previous evening. Behind him, he heard his coffeemaker activate. Deuce had it timed for five-thirty a.m. every morning, because if his alarm didn’t work to get him out of bed, the aroma of java always did.
His father was up every day at four-thirty. But that was just crazy. Deuce compromised by getting up an hour later than that, drinking some coffee, working out in his home gym—the converted second bedroom of his apartment—and then showering and heading to the office. He kept the early-up routine even on weekends, because it made it easier for the habit to stick. This morning he was up long before his alarm sounded, and before the coffeemaker kicked on.
But now, all that meant was he was up before the sun, standing looking out at the skyline, with Regan asleep in his bed, and Zora in his head.
If she hadn’t showed up last night, he had been on the cusp of doing something really stupid. Over the past week he had convinced himself that he should probably give Regan a key to his crib. Not because he was feeling her like that, but because that whole routine with her waiting in the building lobby was a little strange.
Since non-residents couldn’t even ride the elevator to a specific floor, she was often forced to wait downstairs for him. Her sitting there, in those plush visitors’ sofas, waiting for him felt wrong, for a woman he had begun to call his “girlfriend” almost three months earlier.
Your “girlfriend” should at least be able to get to your front door without undue obstruction. But the only way for her to do that would be for him to give Regan his extra fob, which would let her both up to his apartment and inside. Otherwise, a doorman could let her up, but she’d still have to lean on his door and wait for him to get home. And what the hell would that look like?
When he mentioned the idea to Kaleem, he had warned Deuce against it.
Don’t do it, man. Give her your key, and the next thing you know, you standin’ in front of a preacher sayin’ ‘I do’ and don’t even remember how the hell you got there.
He was one to talk. Kaleem already lived with his woman, and there was a fair chance he was about to be saying ‘I do’ long before Deuce ever got close to considering such a thing. At least with Regan.
The second he saw Zora walk into that bar, the second he saw her, the idea of giving Regan a key became out of the question. Not that he consciously thought about it in the moment, but the world had shifted. Everything looked and felt different.
Even sex with Regan last night felt different. It was still good, but part of him wasn’t there with her. Part of him was already making unfair comparisons.
Turning, Deuce went inside and grabbed the mug that was under the coffeemaker, now filled with hot coffee. He added brown sugar and creamer, lots of creamer.
That’s officially a hot milkshake now, Zee said to him matter-of-factly, one morning after she’d spent the night with him at his father’s house. When he made them coffee, she always said it was too milky, too sweet.
You’re not a real coffee-drinker, she’d teased. You’re just drinking it to be cool like the rest of us. You have … ‘coffee pretensions’.
Coffee pretensions? he’d laughed. Yeah, okay.
That was near the end of senior year. A little after that, she’d dropped on him her plans to go to UCLA. It wasn’t even the better law school than the ones she was considering on the East Coast. And she didn’t even tell him she’d applied.
If I went to Stanford, I know what you’d say, she’d argued.
Whether it’s Stanford or UCLA, you’d be in the same state as him, Deuce said.
California is a big state, Deuce. If I go to UCLA, he’ll be over three-hundred miles away.
And you’ll be almost three-thousand miles from me in New York.
We’ll work it out, she’d promised.
But they hadn’t. Within weeks of her moving out there, they had been bickering by phone and within months, and just after his second visit, she had ended it.
“What’s up, early bird?”
Regan emerged from the hallway, her long hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, her eyes puffy, and wearing only her panties and a tank top. Deuce didn’t think the tank was something from last night, so assumed it was one of many items she had “forgotten” around his apartment—bras, panties, t-shirts and tanks. A pair of slides, tennis shoes and a toothbrush.
She thought she was slick, but he noticed each and every one, and knew almost to the day when they had been left behind. He didn’t mess with her about it because when they got together, he’d promised himself he would give monogamy another shot.
With Zora, it hadn’t even been a decision. It had been a certainty. He didn’t want anyone but her, and he damn sure wanted to make sure she wasn’t with anyone but him.
“Hey,” he said, extending one arm to allow Regan to lean against his side.
“Can I get some of that?” she asked, indicating his coffee mug.
Deuce handed it to her and she took a long sip.
“Perfect,” she purred, handing it back to him. “You make the best coffee.”
“I’m driving up to Bedford in a little bit,” he said. “What’re you up to today?”
Normally, he would have asked her along. But today, he just didn’t feel like it. If she volunteered to come, he would acquiesce, but he wouldn’t offer. He wanted the silence and solitude of the time it took to get there. With light traffic, it was only about an hour, but there was rarely light traffic.
“I’m taking the early shift since I swapped out last night with someone. Wish I could come see your mom, but …”
“It’s okay. I’ll tell her you said hello.”
“Good. Make sure. I love your mom. Even more than I love your coffee.” She looked up at him, in the way she did when she wanted him to kiss her.
Deuce leaned in and obliged. She tasted like toothpaste and coffee. He probably just tasted like coffee, and morning breath.
He imagined Regan rolling over and finding herself alone, then going into his bathroom, arranging her hair, brushing her teeth and coming out to find him only after she had the perfect tousled-early-morning look. If he had rolled over in bed and on top of her, she would have giggled, gently pushed him aside and said she needed to shower first or brush her teeth. She would have prepared for their morning sex the way she did for a photo shoot.
With Zee, there was no prep beforehand. They had sex in the morning before showers, warm heavy breaths comingling; rolling around on sex-the-night-before sheets; or they did it immediately after the gym, sweaty and funky and slick with perspiration. Before a shower, after a shower … in the shower.
There w
ere no smells of Zee’s he was unfamiliar with. He knew just from the scent of her skin when she was having her period, when she had just had it, when she was ovulating or PMS-ing. He had never lived with her, but sometimes during their relationship it felt like he lived inside her. And she sure as hell lived deep inside him.
“I’m going to jump in the shower,” Regan said. “I need to get home anyway. Have a couple of errands to run before I get to work at ten.”
“Okay. I’ll be right behind you.”
Deuce watched her walk away, bouncing a little as she moved. It was one of the things that first caught his notice, her sexy little walk. The first time they screwed, she had gotten on top, and moved like someone riding a mechanical bull. But with lots of hair-tossing, and nipple-tweaking.
Deuce knew she was performing for him, but he’d kind of liked it, especially since he hadn’t planned on seeing her again. She was like a Playboy bunny come to life. Because the sex was so good, she wound up staying the night and when he woke up, she had been up ahead of him, and washed all her makeup off. Somehow that made her become … real to him or something.
Without makeup, Regan was pretty, but ordinary, her face even, symmetrical and pleasant to look at, but nothing more than that. That first morning-after, he didn’t see the Playboy bunny. He saw a regular girl, just trying to figure things out. So, he took her to breakfast. And that’s how it started.
Give this a chance, a voice in his head urged him. Just give this a chance.
While she was in the shower now, he called his mother. Her voice was thick, muffled, and laced with annoyance that he’d woken her up.
“I’ma stop by today,” he told her. “You goin’ out?”
“No, I’ll be here. What time?”
“Early. As soon as I get myself together, I’ll prob’ly hit the road. See if I can avoid some of that traffic.”
“Okay. See you when you get here. I need to talk to you about something anyway.”
They hung up, and Deuce wondered at the sound of her voice. She sounded tired. But not just sleepy tired. Bone-tired.
Lately, he hadn’t seen her as much because she didn’t come to the city as often as she used to. His mother, who lived by and loved nightlife, had gradually morphed into a homebody. She rarely left Bedford anymore, preferring to go to the small cafes and movie-theaters nearby, and to shop in the mall. The mall. His mother in a mall sounded almost ludicrous. She was a boutique kind of woman, the kind who made private appointments to get styled and custom-fitted for things.
But ever since her divorce from Andre, she had been different, slowed her roll some, and only mustered up her former fire and energy when she was talking about her latest irritation with his father. Still, what used to look to Deuce like hatred, he now believed was something very different.
His mother, unbeknownst even to herself, was probably in love with his father. But if anyone knew how difficult an emotion love was for her, it was Deuce. Her fierce love for him as her only child was a truth he had never questioned for a second, yet she only seemed to be able to express the ‘fierce’ part. She was sharp-tongued and found physical affection uncomfortable to give or receive. She always tempered her praise with criticism and had never within his memory told him she loved him.
But he knew she did. And he had been raised to accept that knowledge as enough.
He joined Regan in the bathroom, just as she was getting out of the shower. She smiled at him and lingered a little longer than necessary so he could get a good long look at her wet, naked body before she wrapped herself in a towel.
Deuce grinned at her, more because he knew he was supposed to than anything else.
“You better take that ass on outta here,” he said. “Unless you want it to get smacked.”
Regan presented her butt to him and playfully stuck out her tongue before dancing out of reach just as he raised his hand.
“I’ll wait till you get out before leaving,” she said.
“Yup. Cool,” Deuce said.
He swallowed hard, shoving aside the guilty realization that he had been hoping, secretly, that when he was done showering, she would already be gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Sorry I had to jump off the call like that last night.”
Zora looked at the phone, still a little surprised that he had called again. And barely nine in the morning. Wouldn’t his girlfriend still be there?
“Oh. No. No problem. I heard … It was obvious you were … busy, or whatever.”
“Ahm, so … yeah. That was Regan.”
She had a name. Well, of course she had a name. But he was telling her what it was. That had to mean she was more than a one-night stand.
Zora leaned against her kitchen counter, trying to figure out how she was supposed to respond to that, and wondering why he’d called. Especially if all he had to share was that he was with someone.
“Oh,” she said, her voice quiet.
She felt a pang in her chest, that something told her would be there for a long time to come.
On the stove, her fried egg was getting crispy around the edges. She turned off the burner and went to attend to her toast.
“We started …”
“You don’t need to explain,” Zora said. Her tone was sharper than she intended.
“No, I know. But, I mean, it’s not like you’re not with dude, right? Whatshisname. Asim?”
“Asif. And no, I’m not with him.”
“Okay. So, he’s what? Just a …”
“Cousin.”
There was a long silence.
Zora took the bread out of the toaster and set it on the counter, not bothering to look for a plate. She spread some butter on both slices then reached for the spatula to get the egg.
“Cousin?” Deuce finally spoke.
“Yes. My cousin,” she said.
There was a mean satisfaction in sharing that and showing him how wrong he had been. She may have been the one to end their relationship, but she hadn’t jumped into something new practically overnight like he had.
“I thought …”
“I know what you thought.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried. But you just started yelling at me and stormed out of the bar.”
“You could have told me when I called later on.”
What difference would that have made? she wanted to ask. You have Regan.
Zora assembled her breakfast sandwich and brushed the toast crumbs from the counter. She didn’t even know if Asif was in the apartment. If he had come home—alone or with company—she hadn’t heard him.
After the call with Deuce last night, she watched another two movies and finally fell asleep again around three-thirty in the morning, arms around her middle with a pain like cramps in her gut, thinking of him, across town, his arms wrapped around someone else.
“He’s visiting you here, or …?”
“No, we’re roomies,” Zora said. “You know how my parents are. Asif moved from Michigan, and since I’m uptown, they wanted to make sure I was safe, all the usual … So, we’re sharing an apartment.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He’s kind of a pig. But even I have to admit, no one in the neighborhood’s likely to mess with me once they’re on notice that I live with Asif.”
Deuce gave a short laugh. “Yeah. I think that’s a safe bet. That’s a big dude. I’m happy I won’t have to fight him.”
Zora didn’t respond to that. She didn’t say, for instance that even if Asif wasn’t her cousin, there would be no reason for Deuce to fight him. Because he had a girlfriend.
“So, was that all?” she said instead.
“Was what all?”
“You called to say you were sorry you hung up abruptly, but you had Regan waiting. And I understand, and it’s fine. So, is that all?”
“Zee, c’mon …”
“C’mon what?”
She put the tea kettle on for the instant coffee she was about to
make. Coffeemakers took up too much counterspace in the small kitchen, so she and Asif didn’t have one. And, as he’d pointed out, there was a Starbucks basically every three blocks.
“Don’t be all …”
“All what? I assume Regan isn’t your cousin, right?”
“No.”
“Then, yeah. I mean, I don’t know what the point of us continuing to speak would be, then.”
She didn’t mean it. She didn’t mean anything close to that.
“The point is that I don’t think I can know you’re in this city, shit, in this world, and not want to speak to you, Zee. That’s the point.”
And in an instant, tears rose to her eyes. She angrily blinked them away.
“You there?” He sounded almost irritable.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Did you block me?” he asked, unexpectedly. “After we …”
“No. Why?”
“When you told me we shouldn’t talk for a while, I called you anyway. And texted you. And then I stopped, because I was … I don’t know. I thought you might block me, and I didn’t want to keep trying, and find out that you had.”
“I would never do that.”
“Really?” His voice was quiet, and Zora thought there might even be some vulnerability there.
She felt herself soften toward him even further.
“Do you even have to ask? Yes, really. I mean, what if you … needed me or something?” And because he said nothing, she rushed on. “Not that you would. I mean, not that you don’t already have someone who …”
Deuce gave a short, sharp laugh the meaning of which she couldn’t interpret, but otherwise, he didn’t respond.
In the background, Zora heard the muffled sounds of traffic—car horns, and street noise.
“Where are you?” she asked, less out of curiosity than that she wanted to move on from her embarrassing assumption that he might “need” her.
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