“I got somethin’ to lay on you, man,” he said, before he even completely shut the door. “And it’s heavy.”
“Yeah?” Deuce was, only half-listening.
He was distracted, wondering where the girls were, whether Zora had backed out, and whether she might have spent the night somewhere other than in her own bed.
“I want you to be godfather to my kid.”
For a moment, the words made no sense. Deuce had to put each piece together one by one.
My kid? But Kal had no kids. Did he? Nah, for certain he had no kids, unless …
“What’d you say?” He looked up.
Kal was smiling and nodding. “Yeah man, I’m ‘bout to be a father.”
And the other part that Deuce couldn’t wrap his mind around was that Kal looked happy. Fucking ecstatic.
“What?” He moved in closer to his friend, grasping his shoulder, and leaning in as though it was a lack of proximity that made him mishear.
Kal nodded, still grinning. “You heard me.”
“Bruh …”
“Yeah man. Asha’s pregnant.”
“Damn.” Deuce sank onto the nearby sofa, running a hand over his face. “You … ready for that?” he asked carefully.
This time Kal shook his head and laughed, a soul-deep belly-laugh of the kind that only came from the purest joy.
“Hell, nah, I ain’t ready. But I’m happy, bruh. I feel like … this is it. This is what’s s’posed to happen.”
“Damn,” Deuce said again.
For a moment, Kal was serious. He nodded and looked Deuce directly in the eyes.
“Yeah.” He said it like he was realizing it again for the first time. “I’m about to be a father.”
“I just barely walk in the door and you drop some shit like this?”
“I wanted to tell you earlier, but …” Kal shrugged. “Didn’t want to do it with Ash around. ‘Cause real talk? I’m scared as fuck.”
Deuce nodded. “I would be too,” he said, looking down at the floor for a moment. “But …” He stood and embraced Kal, giving him a strong firm hold. “Congratulations man. You ‘bout to build that strong Black nation you always talkin’ ‘bout.”
“Yeah. But didn’t know it would be this soon.”
“That’s a’ight,” Deuce said. “You got this. If there’s anybody I know who’d take some shit like this serious, it’s you.”
After that, Deuce was in something like a trance as he listened. Kal was more determined now than ever to get to the Olympics.
“I can’t just ‘make the team’ now,” he said. “I gotta show out. Big-time.”
He had a few sponsorship offers that he had been holding off on, because he thought it would get him out of his training mindset, thinking about deals, and checks, meetings and endorsements. But for good or ill, that was how the sport worked.
People got the best trainers, the best doctors, the time to train because they had sponsors who agreed to foot the bill, and Kal had been doing his workouts old-school and on a shoestring. He had been going to school, holding down a part-time job and training only early in the morning and late at night.
That ruggedly individualistic way of looking at the world, and shunning help was just part of Kal’s DNA, Deuce knew. So, he didn’t even bother asking him why he’d taken that hardline and ultimately untenable position.
“But I can’t do that now,” Kal said, unexpectedly. “Ash’s teaching gig ain’t bringin’ in much, and when she gets bigger, I don’t want her workin’ at all. So, I gotta take a sponsorship. And check out some of those endorsement deals. If I’ma train and take care of my family, I need the cash.”
Take care of my family.
That phrase was one that Deuce never would have thought he’d hear from one of his friends for many years to come. They weren’t even twenty-five yet. They were still building their careers, thinking about what they wanted from life.
But life waited on no man’s plans. It just happened when it happened.
He listened as Kal went on talking, still fast, still excitable except now Deuce didn’t know if it was from his run, or just euphoria from sharing his news.
Ibrahim, Kal’s father, thought the sponsorships were okay, but didn’t think he should entertain any endorsements just yet. Companies were already out there looking at Olympic prospects, making overtures and banking on their likely success. And Kal was among those being approached, well before he even made Team USA.
“I’ll sponsor you,” Deuce said.
Kal looked at him. “That’s not why I …”
“I know that’s not why you brought it up, man. But your pops is right. The endorsement stuff is a distraction right now. You don’t need to waste time thinking about agents and shit. Wait till you win that gold. In the meantime, I’ll sponsor you. You just train and look after Asha. And get that MBA.”
“All I was thinkin’ was you’d look out for my family if I’m in a car wreck or a plane goes down. Agree to look after my wife and kid if …”
“That goes without sayin’. But for right now, I’ll … Wait. You said your what now?”
“Asha is not a baby-momma type chick. And I’m not that dude.” Kal shrugged. “I’m pretty sure this is it for me.”
Then Kal shook his head, his eyes clouding with emotion in a way that was a rare thing to witness.
“Married too?”
Kal nodded slowly.
In a matter of minutes, he seemed to have leapfrogged over Deuce in life changes. Kal, who when Deuce was thinking and talking about the inevitability marrying Zora told him he was crazy.
Now, Kal was getting married, and he and Zora … they’d basically fucked everything up, and he didn’t even know how it had happened, or why.
“Whatever you need, man,” Deuce said. “I got you. Just take care of your training. And your wife and kid.”
Kal grinned and offered Deuce a fist. “That’s what’s up.”
~~~
When Zora and Asha made it back to the apartment with three large bags from Zabar’s Deuce’s head was full of what Kal had shared with him. It still was while he walked Zora through his apartment. Watching her move, and look around, he felt the same quiet desperation as when he went to visit her in her place in California and saw that she was setting up house and putting down roots so far away from him.
“It almost looks like no one lives here at all,” Zora told him, arching an eyebrow.
Then she made some smart comment about him not wanting to hang stuff on the walls, and he told her he thought his woman should do that. The second he said it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say, because to Zee, and to everyone else, Regan was his woman.
He was the only one who knew that she never had been. But Zora wasn’t trying to hear that.
She practically ran out of the room rather than have that conversation. And truth be told, it wasn’t a conversation he was prepared to have just yet either. Not with Regan still waiting for him back at her place, thinking that all they were going through was a “rough patch” in their relationship.
Kal and Asha were by then in the kitchen, joking and laughing, playing around and looking domestic. Deuce walked in just as Asha was complaining about “the deal” being a dud since she was the one scrambling the eggs.
“You were supposed to cook!”
“Sorry, baby,” Kal said. “Next time.”
She turned to give him a skeptical look and he leaned in with lips puckered. Pretending to give it grudgingly, Asha kissed him quickly, just as Kal reached down to rest a palm on her ass.
Seeing Deuce at the doorway, the hand on Asha’s rear fell away. And there was a fleeting look of annoyance in Kal’s eyes at the intrusion. Now that he thought about it, Kal was never too heavy on the PDA with Asha. Their intimacy was always implied, but seldom publicly demonstrated.
Whenever in view of other people, he might kiss her, but almost chastely. On the lips, but briefly. On the neck, or forehead. A kiss on the shoulde
r was about as risqué as it got. He never grabbed, groped or did anything that hinted at actual sex.
He respects her too much, Deuce thought.
Kal who had, even while whoring his way through Penn State’s female population, talked about eventually finding his “queen” had finally found the woman he wanted to treat like one.
“I can help finish up.”
Zora’s voice was just over his shoulder. She had been on the balcony when Deuce followed her out of his spare-bedroom-home-gym, but seemed to have regained her composure.
“Cool. Lemme go take a shower before we eat.”
As Kal pushed past them out of the room, Zora entered and looked around.
“Nice kitchen,” she said, sounding like a real estate broker.
“Deuce, you like your eggs scrambled hard, or soft?” Asha asked, glancing up from the skillet.
“Soft,” he and Zora said in unison.
When Kal was out of the shower, they all sat together in the living room, eating at the coffee table, Asha occasionally getting up and fetching things if anyone mentioned wanting salt, pepper, a refresher of their coffee, juice.
“Babe,” Kal said, eventually holding her wrist when she got up yet again to grab more napkins. “We’re good. Relax.”
“I am relaxed,” Asha said, sitting down next to him, nevertheless. “I don’t know why you think it’s like … strenuous for me to get something from the kitchen.”
“It’s not that it’s strenuous, Ash. You just don’t gotta … serve everybody all the time. You didn’t even eat your own food yet.” Kal indicated her almost untouched meal.
“Because I don’t feel … I don’t have that much of an appetite, that’s all.”
“But you should eat,” Zora said. “You know. Especially since you’re …”
She stopped speaking so abruptly that everyone looked up.
Deuce stared at her. She knew.
Kal looked at Zora as well, then narrowed his eyes. Next to him, Asha hunched her shoulders and made a comical grimace when Kal’s gaze turned in her direction.
“Yes,” she said, exhaling deeply. “I told her. I know we said …”
But Kaleem was laughing. “Forget it. I told D, too.”
Asha’s mouth fell open in mock-outrage. “If I hadn’t admitted it, would you have …”
While they were having their love-bird banter, Zora stared studiously down at her plate, moving cold eggs around with her fork.
“Zora,” he said.
She looked up at him.
“C’mon, let’s …” He inclined his head in the direction of the kitchen. Together, they began to clear the detritus of the meal, bringing in plates and glasses, and beginning to load the dishwasher.
They worked for a while in silence, until Zora reached for the skillet on the stovetop.
“Should I hand-wash these, or do you want them in the dishwasher as well?”
“I don’t give a shit,” Deuce said, matter-of-factly, leaning back against the counter.
At that, Zora turned to look at him. She was in white linen shorts today; and a sea-blue tank top with brown sandals. He could smell the faintest scent of coconut oil on her skin from even a few feet away. Maybe one day—though clearly not today—he would stop wanting her with all his five senses. When he heard her on the phone, he wanted to see her. When he saw her, he wanted to touch, what he smelled of her, he wanted to taste.
“You know what I was thinking about the other night?” he said.
She shook her head.
“About when we had lunch with your cousin that time. He wanted to know what my intentions were or whatever, and …”
“Asif did?”
Deuce nodded. “Yeah. I told him that you and me, that … Anyway, he said something to me … something about ‘other relationships.’ At first, I thought he was talking about Regan; that maybe you told him about her. But later … I mean, I know you. You wouldn’t have told him about that.”
“I didn’t,” she confirmed, shaking her head.
There was caution in her tone.
“Then in the club, your other thing you had to go to … That’s what your cousin meant, wasn’t it? You have other relationships. That you’re with somebody?”
Zora said nothing. For a couple of beats, she was still, then she shook her head.
“I’m not with him. We …”
Him. So, there was a ‘him’ after all.
Biting hard into his lower lip, Deuce looked down at the floor then at her.
Today, because Kal and Asha were here, he wasn’t in Bedford with his mother. But he had been thinking about her on and off all morning. Thinking about her, and about Zora—the two most important women in his life.
Though he felt like he needed to spend as much time with his friends as he could while they were on the East Coast, part of him was torn. Because every hour here, was one less hour he might have with his mother. Not just this Saturday, but for the rest of her life, which—God, he didn’t like to even think it—might be shorter than either of them had imagined.
And he had comforted himself with the fact that being here would feel slightly less terrible because he would be with Zora, who he loved so hard, that it knew neither rhyme nor reason. Being with her was a balm for what was going on with his mother, most of which he hadn’t even begun to truly face.
But while he was thinking of Zora as his balm, she was what? Dating other dudes?
“You don’t have to explain, Zee,” he said wearily. “And yeah … you can put the skillet in the dishwasher.”
“Deuce, you can’t … I mean, you’re in a situation, and you want to get all weird about me going on a couple dates?”
“A couple dates. Is that all it is?”
“You’re not even entitled to this explanation,” she said, shaking her head. “But yeah. That’s all it was.”
“Was?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said pointedly. “Was. It’s over. Okay?”
“Zee …” He took two steps closer to her, reaching for her arm, but she evaded him. “I know I don’t have the right …”
“Exactly. You don’t. So … let’s just stay in our lanes.”
He nodded.
He would do that. For now.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Guess your boy came through after all,” Asif said emerging from of his bedroom.
Zora looked up from tying her shoelaces. She was due to meet Asha in half an hour for a day of shopping and lunch. Neither of them had anything in particular they needed to buy, but Kal was getting together with some friends and former track teammates who lived in the city, and Asha had some time on her own to kill.
“Who’s my boy and what did he come through with?”
“Deuce Scaife. Got some potential investors together for me. This weekend. And you ain’t gon’ believe where it’s supposed to be at.”
Asif sat on the arm of the sofa.
“Where?”
“His father’s house.”
Zora leaned back and exhaled a puff of breath. “What?”
Nodding, her cousin did a seated cabbage patch move.
“Yup. Dude did that. Just texted me with the news. This might be the one, cuz. If this works out like I want it to, I could get financing to finish this doc, and maybe even drum up some interest in the next one.”
While Deuce was always generous about using his own connections and influence for the benefit of his friends, there was always one line he never crossed. He never brought potential deals, or eager wannabes anywhere near his father. That was a connection he didn’t exploit. And he certainly never brought “prospects” to his father’s house. Never.
Zora hadn’t spent an excessive amount of time with Chris Scaife, Sr. but what she saw of him assured her that he was a man who brooked no nonsense and wasted no time. She had borne witness many times to his barely-contained impatience with pleasantries and shallow conversation at the parties his wife, was always hosting. He rarely smiled, a
nd when he spoke was economical with his words, often being so direct that Robyn Scaife had to step in to moderate his tone and smooth over ruffled feathers with a smile, joke or reassuring touch.
Deuce’s relationship with his father was … complicated. The love between them was clear to anyone on the outside looking in. But to the two men on the inside, those feelings remained difficult to express. For Deuce to bring Asif into that sphere was huge.
“Wow,” she said after absorbing the news for a few moments more.
“Yup. Damn right, wow. So, don’t wait up tonight or tomorrow night, or even the night after that. ‘Cause I’ma put in some serious time in the editing room … maybe get Nic to lay down some … By the way, what’s up with you and him?”
“Nothing.” Zora looked back down at her sneakers.
“Nothing as in ‘nothing interesting to report’, or …”
“Nothing as in ‘literally nothing’. Turns out we we’re not compatible.”
“You know I’ma ask him myself, right?” Asif said just as she stood. “So, you may as well tell me.”
“No, I won’t tell you. And if he’s the gentleman you say he is, he won’t tell you either.”
“Is there something to tell?”
“I didn’t dog him out, and he didn’t dog me if that’s what’s worrying you. We’re just not … We’re both not in a place …” She stood.
“You mean you’re not in a place.”
“Asif.” Zora sighed, grabbing her bag and tossing it over her shoulder. “Could you just …”
“Okay, I’ll leave you alone. But lemme ask you one thing.”
“What?” she asked wearily.
“Why’d you and ol’ boy split up?”
“I was in California. He was here.” She shrugged.
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all,” Zora lied.
“Okay. Well now you’re in the same place, so …”
“So, nothing. There’s other … extenuating circumstances now.”
“A’ight. I see this line of questioning is making you all … twitchy,” Asif said. “But if you see him, make sure you let him know …”
“I’ll be sure to convey my deep, deep appreciation on your behalf,” Zora said as she left the apartment.
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