by Love Belvin
She gasped, once again going into defense mode. “Before what?”
“Before walking in here braless, making it hella clear you’re no dog or girl, for that matter.”
Tori’s fists balled and she took a step closer to me. “Then what the hell am I, Ashton Spencer?”
“A fuckin’ woman I want to touch and kiss! Okay?” I damn near shouted. At a much lower and appropriate tone, I pointed behind me and shared, “I’m gonna go look for that jacket. Help yourself.” I stormed off for my room.
On the way, I heard the wind and rain beating against the windows. It was a monster out there. When I returned with a zip up hoodie, Tori had begun digging into her pizza. I grabbed a couple of napkins from the drawer and brought them over to the table. After dropping them near our respective plates, I handed her the jacket. Tori wiped her hands and mouth before taking it. Then I went back to the cabinets for glasses.
“What do you want to drink?” Please don’t say beer or wine…
I needed to keep this night rated G for good Ashton.
“Juice is fine.”
“Cranberry cool?”
“Yeah,” she answered around her food.
I poured us both drinks before joining her at the table. Tori had put the jacket on and continued to eat.
“Cloth napkins?” Her forehead hiked before biting into her slice again.
I scoffed, knowing where this was going. Picking up my pizza, I shrugged. “My grandmother again.” I took a huge bite of my pizza.
“Where are you from?”
I chewed, not speaking until I swallowed. “I’m a hybrid cat. Half Newark, half South Orange.”
“Humph…” she snorted.
My head snapped back at her audacity. “What does that mean?”
“I may be from South Jersey, but I know North Jersey.”
“How?”
“From boxing. It’s where I train.” She took another bite of her pizza then waved her hand dismissively. “Anyway. I fought a lot in and around Newark. And one of the kids at the gym was from South Orange. Couldn’t fight for shit.”
“So what you mean?” I dropped my face, eyes challenging her. “I can’t fight?”
Tori rolled her eyes and scoffed. “No. You ain’t no fighter. I’m saying people from South Orange ain’t gotta fight. They just floss.”
I nodded, cool about it. “Do I floss?”
Her face tightened as though considering that. “No. You just…” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“No. Please. Tell me.” I don’t know why I give a shit, but I do.
“Honestly, I don’t know what you are. Maybe you’re on to something with the Newark/South Orange mix. You’re arrogant, stuck up when you want to be, but…”
“But what?” My patience game fleeted me.
“I don’t know.” She sat up in her chair, eyes going to the ceiling. “It’s like… You’re mean, but generous, smart, and…thoughtful.”
“Thoughtful?”
“Like this. You got me my favorite pizza for tutoring.” She winked. “We won’t mention the under clothes on the radiator. And even the blow dryer.”
“That reminds me. You need to hurry with that. I’ve gotta return it.”
“Oh. I thought it was Aivery’s.”
I shook my head. “I was lucky my neighbor was in. She’s usually on the road, working.”
“Working? How much working and traveling can she do as a student?”
I took a sip of my juice then explained, “Dorothy isn’t a student. She’s a BSU rep in admissions. She goes around the country to inner cities and makes our existence known.”
“A Blakewood employee is your neighbor?”
I chuckled at her naivety. I liked it. “Most people in this building are. I think only a handful of us are students. My roommate’s a marine geology major. His ass is never here.”
“What’s that?”
“He studies the ocean and various shit in it. He’s a senior, too, so a lot of his work is in the ocean. He travels more than I do.”
“Wow…” she breathed out. “I’ve never heard of that major. There’s so much up here. What’s your major?” Tori stood to grab the tray of pizza from the stove.
“I’m studying business. What about you?” I pulled apart another slice before she could sit down.
“I don’t know yet.”
“So, you’re undeclared.”
“That’s what my paperwork says. It’s just that there are too many options out here. I’m only eighteen, I don’t know what the hell I wanna do with the rest of my life—other than fight.”
I thought about her statement for a moment while I chewed. “You know why I want to study business?”
The muscles in her forehead flexed. “Why?”
“Because I always knew I wanted to be in the League and be so good at my job, I’d make millions. I’m sure you’ve heard as many bankrupt stories about Black entertainers as I have. I didn’t want that to be me. Of course, you hire competent and specialized talent to handle your finances, but I felt I should have a baseline knowledge of what’s happening to protect my legacy.” Tori had stopped chewing to listen. Her eyes danced until well after I was done speaking. I wondered if I’d lost her. “You follow?”
“I think,” she murmured with food in her mouth.
Why did that not annoy the shit out of me? I humiliated my teammates with less table-manner offenses.
“What I’m saying is if you believe in your talent as a fighter, and you invest in it, use the resources of Blakewood to ensure the legacy of your talent. Learn marketing, analysis, leadership, and finance. You can’t go wrong.”
Slowly, Tori’s head began to rock up and down, lips pushed out. “Good stuff, Spencer.”
“I know.”
Tori spit out a guffaw and quickly picked up the crust from her first slice, tossing it at me over the table. I registered it just as fast and caught it.
Just when I thought we fell into a comfortable spell of silence, she hit me with, “Is she going to want to fight me when she knows I’ve been here tonight?”
The “she” was Aivery. That shit pissed me the hell off.
“Do you have a boyfriend—” I quickly thought, remembering not to assume. “or a significant other to speak of?”
She blinked hard successively. “That’s none of your business.”
“And my relationship with my girl is yours?”
“I just want to be prepared if she tries to run up on me.”
My head fell to the side and I squinted. “Are you scared of Aivery, Tori?”
“I ain’t scared of nobody on this soft ass campus.”
“Then what do you have to be prepared for?”
“In case she tries me.”
My head dropped even more. “Tries what?”
Tori shrugged, fingering the huge glob of cooled mozzarella on her slice. “To come for me again.”
“Like fight you?”
“Maybe. Girls get that way over their boyfriends, you know.”
I chuckled. “Aivery’s bold and aggressive, but violent, she’s not. None of my friends are. We don’t have to be here. For the most part, physical violence isn’t a concern on this campus. But let me ask you this: Even if the girls did fight, why are you so scary around them?”
“What do you mean?”
“They treat you the way you allow them to. You’re a brawler, the fear should be in reverse.”
Tori shook her head. “Just because I could beat them doesn’t mean it’s my go-to. I just want to be left alone. Invisible. I like being invisible.”
“Isn’t that what you just admonished me for a few minutes ago?”
“No. I asked you not to be mean and rude. I’d rather be ignored than picked on.”
I didn’t reply. It was clear to me Tori wanted to be heard, and oddly, I wanted to hear her. Learn more about her. We continued to eat mutedly, and I moved on to my third slice, though I was no longer hungry.
&n
bsp; “You have any brothers or sisters?”
Tori shook her head. “Not really. You?”
“No. It’s just me.” I wasn’t satisfied with her answer. “What does not really mean?”
“My…‘father,’” she swung her head side to side, emphasizing that title. “has other children, but I’ve never met them.”
“You never met your siblings? How many of them are there?”
“I’ve never really met my father. I’ve seen him from afar a few times, but never knew him. And no, I ain’t never meet his kids. I think he has like three: a boy and a girl for sure. I’m not sure what the third one is. I haven’t heard from them since my Margaret died.”
“Who’s Margaret?”
Tori paid me a suspicious glare. I was asking too many questions. She put her pizza on the plate and wiped her mouth. “My grandma.”
“Was Margaret your father’s mother?”
“No.” She shook her head. “My mom’s mother. My best friend, too.” She smiled with warm nostalgia.
“Oh. So you two were close.”
“The closest. She taught me how to love my mother and take up for myself.”
“Your mother?” I probably forfeited my cool with that question.
“Yeah. Long, boring story.”
“Make it short.” I pushed.
Tori did her favorite thing, which was shrug. “She taught me not to cheat, steal or lie—too much. Margaret told me to be a solid woman, but not take shit. She always told me people won’t like me, and if I be a good, solid woman, them not liking me won’t be because of me. It would be because of them.”
Wow…
“And what does that have to do with your mother?”
“She was the first person I believed didn’t love me. She didn’t hate me, but even at five, I knew she wasn’t a ‘mommy.’ She wasn’t like my friends’ mothers, getting me ready for school, meeting my teachers, taking me to extra-curricular activities…hugging me when I cried or comforting me when I was hurt.”
“Damn…”
She nodded, finger making invisible circles on the glass. “Yeah,” she sighed. “My mother always felt like a big cousin for most of my life. I lived with my Margaret until a couple of years before she died, and my mother lived with us until my grandmother got her an apartment in our…development. She said my mother needed to grow up and be a mother. That meant me having to go live with my mother, without my Margaret for the first time in my life. It was hell. Like… For real. Hell. It got so bad, my Margaret took me back, but it was only for a few months. She died.”
Shit!
“How?”
“Cancer.” Tori’s eyes met mine when she murmured, “I think she knew for a while, but didn’t want us to know.”
“Like that’s why she had you go live with your mother?”
She nodded. “She was teaching me all that time how to love her. My mother’s different.” Her head gestured to my plate with three-quarters of the pizza slice still intact. “You done?”
I nodded, wondering why she asked. Then Tori stood and collected our plates.
When she ran the water, grabbed the soap and dish cloth and began washing them, I informed her, “You know there’s a dishwasher for that?”
“It’s all good. If you’re feeding me, the least I could do is clean. Margaret wouldn’t have it any other way.” How could I argue against that? It made me reflect upon my own grandmother—the one who was still alive—and wish we had a real bond. “You like being the only child? By the way, you don’t exactly act like one.”
I turned to face her in my chair. “And how does an only child act?”
“Selfish.”
“Are you selfish?”
Tori smiled, exposing those shallow dimples. “Never. My Margaret wouldn’t play that.”
“Well, I’ve never been called selfish, I don’t think. And I guess being the only child was cool. I’m not sure I ever felt by myself. I’ve got a big ass family.”
“On which side?”
“Newark.”
“Oh.” Her one syllable affecting. “Maybe you do have some street in ya.” She made a goofy expression, one I wasn’t expecting, making us both fall into laughter.
When she was done, Tori neared me in the kitchen.
“Well, as much as I would love nothing more than to continue this chat, you’ve got to handle that so I can get the blow dryer back to my neighbor.”
“You would want to keep talking to me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I couldn’t explain it, but I would. Tori shrugged, eyes falling. “Whatever that meant.” I shook off her odd question. “Lucky for you, I got started on my game prep early or this tutoring session would’ve been dead when you rang my doorbell.” But it was still late on the eve of a big game for me. Time was of the essence. “I’ve got my laptop set up in the living room already.”
“Man!” she grumbled. “I didn’t bring anything to work with.”
“You didn’t start shit.”
Tori pulled the muscles around her mouth back to express coyness. “Right.”
I snorted, slightly amused by her unprofessionalism. “I have a thumb drive you can borrow. Let’s go. It’s getting late.”
11
-Then-
“We have—” The sudden sound of a clack against one of the windows caught both our attention. Ashton took a deep breath, roughly wiping his hands down his face. “Sounded like a small tree branch.” As long as it wasn’t one of the garbage cans from the side of the building that we saw rolling around the lawn earlier. The rain and wind were still brutal outside. “Like I was saying.” His attention went back to the laptop. “We have the introduction of the philosophy of Marxist–Leninist then your argument of its relevance now, in 2006. Then we move on to the biography of George Lester Jackson and what led him to his conviction. Next will be the—”
“I got it. Jackson’s ‘encounter’—as you put it—with George “Big Jake” Lewis and W. L. Nolen—”
“No.” He turned the screen of his laptop toward me. “The climate of San Quentin State Prison.” He gave me a testy stare. It was late and we were tired. And to add to the late hour, I’d been showered, fed, and my scalp felt good after a thorough wash, conditioner, and blow dry. The blow dryer Ashton gave me may have been his neighbor’s, but I suspected the shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom belonged to his girlfriend. I expected to see Victoria’s Secret and other expensive feminine products, but I didn’t. He did mention her underclothes being here, though. “Then comes the encounters with his co-founders, and then The Black Guerilla Family.”
I nodded, avoiding saying something slick and setting him off. Chilling with Ashton tonight was…peaceful. It didn’t matter that we’d argued about me being late or my ridiculously annoying beach ball tits. He was nice and that was cool.
I pointed to the screen. “It’s all there, Spencer.”
Ashton yawned. “I know. I just want you to get the layout.”
“I do.” I sat up, uncrossing my legs. “You’ve made it crystal clear. It’s all on that thumb thing. Right?” I stood to my feet, lifting my arms and stretching as I yawned.
“Thumb drive.” He corrected. “Yeah.”
“Alright. I’m gonna get dressed to go. I know you have a busy day to rest up for.” His apartment and cellular phones rang all night. It sounded like his coaches, trainers, and a few of his teammates. The guys on his team wanted to hang out. Ashton declined, telling them the weather was no good. “You have an umbrella I can borrow?”
Ashton’s attention went to one of the windows in the living room. “I don’t know of an umbrella that’s going to survive that, and neither will your dry body.” He stood, going to the window, fully pulling back the curtains and lifting the blinds. “You can’t go out in that, Tori.”
My face screwed into a hard ball. “So what am I supposed to do?”
Ashton’s tight, sleepy eyes closed, squeezing. He rubbed them. “Fuck,” he whispered. Then he
took a deep breath and looked at me. “You can stay.”
“Stay?” My eyes burst wide and pulse beat hard in my neck. “Like… Here?” I glanced around.
“Yeah. There are no common area lounges in the building like other dormitories on campus. Where else can you stay?”
I pointed to his couch. “I’m way too big to stretch out on that little thing.” It was a two-seater. “Unless it pulls out?”
Ashton shook his head, eyes closing again. “This is so awkward,” he whispered again.
“What is?”
“The fact that there’s only two places to sleep in here.”
“Where?”
“My bed or the floor.”
“What about your roommate’s room?”
Ashton’s hand swung to the back of the apartment. “He keeps his door locked because he’s got lots of the school’s water equipment in there on loan. If it comes up missing or broken, dude has to answer for it.” He smacked his curly lashes together and forged a fake, charming grin.
My eyes swept across the wood floors. I have to share a room with Ashton Spencer. My eyes closed, processing it. I could do this. He was cool now. Ashton wouldn’t hurt me…not like that anyway. “You—” I swallowed unintentionally while trying to speak. Then I tried again. “There’s no carpet out here. You got carpet in your room?”
Ashton chewed on his lips, brows in a straight line. He shook his head no. Realization washed over me and I sucked in a breath.
“I’ll sleep out here.”
Panic ran through me. “On this little couch? Hell no!”
“Why are you trippin’?”
“You’re the star player on your team! It’s enough you stayed up late with me and not your teammates, helping me with a stupid paper. Ain’t no way you’re showing up tomorrow cramped and tired because of me. No!”
“It’s all goo—”
“No! Get me a pillow and blanket, and I’ll make do.”
“Tori, you’re like 5’10, ain’t no way in hell you can sleep on there.”
“So the both of us are supposed to sardine in your bed?” I folded my arms over my chest. No way!” Ashton’s face fell into his hands and he laughed. At me. “What’s so funny?”