But shit, was that how Zee was out there now? Wearing outfits like that and going to clubs?
It was one thing to think of her in law school, studying all the time. Then, his worst imaginings had been of some nerdy fellow law student trying to step to her in the stacks with a clumsy, obtuse pick-up line. And knowing what he knew about Zee’s focus when it came to academics, the risk was low that she might meet someone and even recognize or consider him a potential … anything while she was in her books.
But if she was also getting dressed-up and going out looking like she did tonight, then anything was possible.
Deuce searched his memory while he waited for the bartender to attend to him. Was that get-up she was wearing new, or something he might have seen before?
“Young Mr. Scaife!”
A large hand clapped him on the shoulder and then held it firmly. Deuce stood upright from where he had been leaning on the bar and turned to exchange an embrace with Brendan Cole.
Brendan was part of his father’s squad, along with Jamal Turner and K Smooth. All of them in one way or another had been hovering on the outskirts of Deuce’s life for all his life, like unwelcome guardian angels. He was cool with it now, but in his late teens, having one or another of them pop up in a nightclub while he was trying to holler at some girl had been a nightmare. Not to mention the ultimate cock-blocker. Who could compete with any of them?
“Burning off some steam from the job?” Brendan asked.
“Somethin’ like that.” Deuce nodded.
“That your girl over there in the VIP? Ain’t seen her in a minute.”
“She moved back East,” Deuce said, not bothering to correct Brendan’s mistake.
But it was funny that he would make it to begin with, since he had seen Deuce in here a few times before with Regan. More than likely, Brendan thought Regan was something temporary, something casual and extracurricular.
Maybe, that was all she ever had been.
“Lemme send you over a bottle. On the house,” Brendan said. “No need for you to be fighting the crowd over here.”
“Oh … yeah. Thanks, man.”
“Enjoy yourself.”
Brendan clapped him on the shoulder once again before Deuce turned to head back, his chance at a moment to regain his composure now gone.
Though he returned emptyhanded, a server was only seconds behind him, carrying a silver bucket with ice and the telltale black bottle of Dom Perignon P2. Deuce didn’t much care for champagne, even if it came at five-hundred bucks a pop, but he liked being able to share a little luxury with his friends.
“Whoa,” Kal leaned forward, one arm still wrapped around Asha’s waist as she sat on his lap. “What is this? The high-end stuff, huh?”
He reached out to give Deuce some dap, just before he resumed his seat next to Zora.
She smelled so damned good. Like jasmine and vanilla. Like summer. Like the night he had been in her apartment and for a few hours, felt whole again.
Between them now, there was an excruciating intimacy; excruciating because he couldn’t touch her the way he wanted to, nor have her sit on his lap the way Asha was sitting on Kal’s.
The server stayed long enough to pop the cork for them, and fill their flutes, handing one to each of them, then slipping away.
“To my ace, my dude. My brother,” Kal said raising his glass, and his voice.
Embarrassed, Deuce shook his head. “C’mon man …”
“I’m serious. You’re always there when I need you. And pretty soon …” Kal let his voice trail off.
“To Deuce.” Next to him, Zora lifted her glass, and Asha followed suit.
Pretty soon … what? Deuce’s eyes met his friend’s across the distance between them, but Kal just smiled, and emptied his glass. Asha took a sip of her champagne, then set her glass aside as well, leaning back against Kal who said something into her ear, something that made her smile.
“Okay,” Zora drawled from somewhere next to him. “They’re too cute. It’s making me want to throw up.”
Turning to look at her, Deuce laughed unexpectedly, and Zora shook her head.
“Were we as disgusting as all that?” she asked.
Deuce’s smile melted from his lips and his eyes met hers. “Yeah,” he said, slowly. “Worse.”
His answer seemed to catch her unawares, though it seemed stupid that it would. Of course, they were. Their relationship had been—shit, still was—tactile, whether they were alone, or with other people. They reached for each other awake, and in their sleep.
In the late spring just before graduation they tried, for just one night, to stay at Zora’s place in the dorms. Just for a change of pace. It had been more than warm. It was an oven. And even in a room hot and uncomfortable, beads of perspiration surfacing then slowly making their way down the center of their backs, and the side of their faces, he and Zora wrapped themselves around each other. They slept that way, slick and sticky but never seriously considering that it might be better to pull apart.
“Since talking to them is going to be useless, let’s dance,” she suggested.
Deuce downed the last of his champagne and stood. He extended a hand to Zora and she took it. Hers was small and slender, and felt delicate and breakable in his.
Small bones, he’d told her once. His hands easily spanned her ankles when he held them as he sunk between her legs. Her knees were back and up, almost parallel to her torso. You have small bones. Sometimes I feel like I might crush you.
You won’t, she’d said, her voice impatient as she pulled him down to her. You won’t crush me.
The dancefloor was small, because the Lounge wasn’t really about dancing, but it had been included almost as a nod to the fact that where there was music, Black folks would find a way to dance one way or another. So, in Lounge Two-Twelve, there was a mix of slower, softer tunes and the loud and energetic, all piped in through a sophisticated music system rather than cued up by a live deejay.
The music had taken a turn in the last few minutes toward the mellower side of West Coast rap, so Deuce and Zora were able to dance without working up too much of a sweat. She moved with her eyes shut, spinning and twirling, head sometimes flung back, arms sometimes in the air.
After a while, because there was nothing to lose and everything to be gained, Deuce moved in closer, and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her toward him. Zora’s eyes flew open and she stiffened. He saw that her impulse for just a second was to pull away, but then she relaxed, and they continued moving together, but with their pelvises almost touching now, both of them swaying on beat.
For a long while, he was the only one doing the holding, then slowly, gradually, Zora’s arms came up and around his neck. He bowed his head, pressing his nose into her hair.
“Deuce,” he thought he heard her say.
He ignored it, because it sounded like the beginning of her asking him to let her go.
The music changed, picking up the pace once again, but their rhythm stayed the same. Deuce felt her heartbeat against his chest.
Pulling back, he took her by the hand and led her off the dancefloor, toward the back where it was much quieter. Zora followed without protest, until they were at the end of the hall and facing the locked door of the office where Brendan Cole and K Smooth worked when they were on the premises.
“Deuce.” Zora was already shaking her head.
But she had come back here with him, so he had to believe that meant something.
Walking toward her, until she moved backward and collided with the wall, he said nothing before leaning in to kiss her. Her chin lifted, naturally, instinctively and then they were deep into it. Her lips parted as he slid his tongue between them, searching for and finding hers.
A few feet away, a door opened, and someone emerged from the restrooms, interrupting their kiss. Zora pressed her palms against his chest.
“We can’t,” she said when they were alone again, shaking her head. “We can’t.”
“Deuce,” Zora said shaking her head. “I’m not that girl who knows that someone is with someone, and still …”
“You know I don’t think that,” he said, stepping back from her, frustrated.
“Okay,” she said. “So then … we can’t.” She shook her head again.
“Regan and me …”
Her expression became pained, as though the mere mention of his girlfriend’s name hurt her.
“Let’s make tonight about Kaleem and Asha. Can we just do that?”
It sounded like a plea.
Deuce exhaled, looked down at his feet then up at her again. “Yeah,” he said. “We can do that. But later, we …”
“Later,” she agreed, already turning to leave. And when he didn’t follow right away, she paused, turned and held out a hand to him. He took it.
Kal looked up at them as they arrived back at the table. He was chewing on a small plastic straw, looking amused.
“Where’d y’all disappear to?” he asked, an expression of mock-confusion on his face. “I looked up and you were gone.”
Asha nudged him in the shoulder, and Kal exploded into laughter.
Deuce tried to make eye contact with Zora, but she avoided it, going instead to get her phone out of her clutch and looking at the screen.
“We still doin’ brunch tomorrow and hangin’ out though, right?” Kal said. “You in, Zora D?”
“Yeah, of course,” she said. She smiled but looked distracted, sinking into her seat. “Asha and I need to catch up someplace where we can actually hear each other while we talk.”
“Cool,” Kal said.
As a server walked by, Deuce lifted a hand, to order himself a cognac, and instead of sitting next to Zora, watched her from the perimeter. She was texting with someone, her forehead furrowed, and a half-smile playing about her lips.
He had smudged her lipstick when he kissed her, so that the color was now a hint of what it had been before.
He shouldn’t have done it. Kissed Zora when not too long ago he had been with Regan, plowing her into the mattress like his life depended on it. A stab of guilt twisted his gut.
It felt like he had cheated. And not on Regan, either.
He needed to get his shit together. In more ways than one.
After that little tête-à-tête with Jamal Turner, he had to tighten up at work for sure. And then there was everything going on with his mother. Once-weekly visits weren’t going to cut it anymore.
And of course, there was Regan. She was needy. She had always been, even before her workplace got robbed. He had tolerated it in part because the sex was good, and because he had learned from having been with Zee that monogamy didn’t have to mean boredom. Making your girl into your homie, your best friend, your everything … that was something powerful.
Except, he didn’t ‘make’ Zora into those things. She just was. It happened, completely organically. Her return to New York helped him realize—in an instant—that he would never have that with Regan. There was no way to force genuine attachment, no matter how off-the-chain things were in the bedroom.
But to just summarily dismiss her right now, when she was going through these changes … Nah. He couldn’t make himself do it; and ironically, that was mostly because he wouldn’t be the man Zora thought he was if he did.
Zora was right. They couldn’t do anything right now. Or he would turn her, turn them into something they were not. They were not about sneaking around, lying, pretending. So, for now, he’d take friendship. If that was what she was offering, he would take it until he got everything straight.
They spent the next couple of hours with everyone trying—mostly fruitlessly—to have conversations talking over the music. Asha and Zora finally gave up on that and danced while Deuce and Kal talked about running, and about Kal and his father’s efforts to rebuild their relationship. The way Kal told it, it felt intentional, with both him and his pops making a genuine effort to create the time and space to bond again.
Deuce thought about his own father, and how they rarely did that. It made him almost envious.
A little after two a.m. when the girls had danced their last dance, Kal stretched, and Deuce knew he was about to break up the party. But maybe, he could persuade Zora to go somewhere with him for a late-night meal, or to talk.
“Anyway, y’all … Ash over here tryna fall asleep with her head in my lap, so … we ‘bout to dip in a short.”
“Soon as we kill this,” Deuce said, holding the second bottle of Dom aloft, delaying the inevitable.
He refilled everyone’s flutes, and Zora picked hers up right away taking a long gulp. She glanced down at her phone as she did.
“Just because I want to go doesn’t mean everyone else has to,” Asha said. “This is my hometown. I don’t need an escort to get back to Deuce’s.”
“No, it’s fine,” Zora said. “We can leave soon. I have a … I’ve got somewhere to be, anyway so …” Her voice faltered when Deuce turned to look directly at her.
At two in the morning, where the hell did she have to be?
He stared at her for so long her eyes fell once again, and once again, she looked at her phone.
Kal gave him a grimace as though pained and Asha looked discreetly away from the uncomfortable, wordless exchange.
It came to Deuce in that moment with frightening clarity. In all his calculations about what he needed to do, he couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him what might be happening with Zora. There was someone else. There was someone else and if he didn’t move fast, he might lose her.
This time, for good.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“who were these folks again?”
Zora was sitting with Nicolas, in the same diner, where they had had their second first date. He said he came here whenever he was gigging nearby. Afterwards he was always ravenous. Even though the act of playing an instrument shouldn’t have been strenuous, he claimed his body responded as though it was.
“Friends from college,” she said. “A couple we used to hang out with, and …”
“Wait. Who’s ‘we’?”
“Did I say we?”
She knew she had. It was a habit, thinking of her and Deuce as a couple.
Nicolas nodded. “Yeah. You did.”
And now he was looking at her closely. Over the past week he had shared a little more about his long-term relationship that recently ended. Turned out there was more to it than that his girlfriend wanted to be famous. She cheated on him, with a much older man, someone who would be helpful in her career.
Nicolas tried to forgive her, and she pretended she wanted to be forgiven. But he said eventually, he realized that what she really wanted, was for him to be angry enough to break up with her. He obliged. And now, he had explained to Zora, he had some “trust issues to work out” because of it.
“My ex and I, I guess,” she said, glancing down at the table and then looking up at him again.
“The same ex you mentioned who’s in music?”
Zora nodded. “Yeah.”
“What’s his name?” Nicolas resumed eating his waffle. His tone was casual.
“Deuce.”
One corner of Nicolas’ mouth twitched a little, like he wanted to comment on the unusualness of the name but had decided better of it. Then, surprising her, he said something else.
“Deuce Scaife?”
“You know him?”
Nicolas shrugged. “Nah. I know of him. Word is he’s starting a new label, looking for new talent. That kind of thing gets around in my business, that’s all.”
“Yeah. He is.” Zora spoke slowly.
“So, that’s where you were?” Nicolas asked. “With him?”
“Yes. And with the couple we’re friends with from college,” she added. “Yes.”
He looked up at her again. “His father owns the company. When you mentioned that he worked in music business for SE, you didn’t say he owned a large p
art of it.”
He laughed a little, though he didn’t sound amused. He sounded betrayed.
“That’s actually kind of a misconception. He doesn’t own anything. He works there. Just like anyone else.”
“Just like anyone else, huh?” Nicolas shook his head. “That’s naïve.”
“Excuse me?”
“He works in a company his father owns, and he’s starting a new label when he’s just … how old are you anyway?”
Zora let herself lean back into her seat and folded her arms. “I am so not cool with where this conversation seems to be headed.”
“I’m twenty-nine,” Nicolas said. “You are …”
“Twenty-two,” Zora said finally.
“And Deuce Scaife is about the same age, right?”
She didn’t answer, feeling the familiar defensive reflex arise; the one that always surfaced when someone tried to criticize Deuce, or portray him as some indolent rich kid.
“In this business, twentysomethings that start labels come with serious backing. All I’m saying is, Deuce Scaife has that backing. Because he’s Deuce Scaife.”
“Or, because he knows the business.”
Nicolas shrugged. “I guess that’s possible. Probably grew up around it, so …”
“Are we having a fight?” Zora asked, trying to keep her tone light.
At that, Nicolas smiled, and this time it seemed genuine, but when he spoke, there was still some reservation in his tone.
“Our first fight,” he said. “Cool.”
Smiling back at him, Zora unfolded her arms and sat forward again. Nicolas’ eyes scanned her.
She was still wearing the outfit from the club—the miniskirt, the skintight top—because she had come straight from there to meet him. But now she could tell that Nicolas was seeing it differently. He was seeing it as something revealing that she had worn while in the company of Deuce Scaife, a music mogul’s son with whom she once had a relationship.
Reaching for her fork, she cut off a piece of his waffle and ate it while he watched. She licked a trickle of syrup from her lower lip and Nicolas watched that too.
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