Just Too Good to Be True

by E. Lynn Harris

  He asked me out a dozen times, and a dozen times I told him I was just too busy. But he was persistent, and Brady was away at school, which left me lonely. So I took Sylvester up on his offer and let him take me out.

  Sylvester took me to P. Diddy’s restaurant Justin’s on Peachtree. I made the mistake of offering to pay half of the check, because I wasn’t sure if he could afford it on what he made at the croissant shop.

  He looked hurt by the gesture, and I knew that he wanted to pay. I just wouldn’t let him get too close to me. It sounded selfish even to me, but considering all that I had struggled to achieve, I didn’t need to be settling for a man who made sandwiches for a living, or who might be embarrassed that I made more than he did.

  I would see Sylvester once a week or so when Brady was away at school. But when my son was home during the summer, Sylvester became the Invisible Man. I told him not to call, and if Brady and I happened to go into the Croissant Corner and see him, I’d give him my order just like he was any one of the crew of employees working there. To keep him interested, every now and again I would text him a question such as Miss me? like I was a silly teenage girl.

  “Why haven’t you called me, or come to see me?” Sylvester asked me now, standing beside my car.

  “Why are you sneaking up on me outside my salon?”

  “Would I have seen you any other way?”

  “I told you, I can’t see you when my son is in town,” I reminded him.

  “But he’s been back at school. He’s at practice. I saw a story on him on television last night. And you still never told me the real reason for not allowing me to meet your son,” Sylvester said as he stepped closer to me. “What’s really going on?”

  “There is nothing really going on,” I said, turning to him. “I’m extremely busy right now, and I haven’t had a chance to call you or come by.” I put my arms around his waist. I didn’t need him putting me through an inquisition right now. Besides, my relationship with my son was mine and mine alone. I hoped Sylvester wasn’t going to make this complicated, because I did enjoy his company. He was the first man I’d dated more than once since Brady was born twenty years ago. If I expected my son to remain celibate, I needed to be a great example not only for him but also for the other girls and boys at our church. But when I met Sylvester, my morals betrayed me. I had to be sure no one, especially Brady, found out.

  Brady was special, and I wanted him to live his life like he knew that. When he first got interested in sports, I knew I would do everything within my power to keep him from turning into a spoiled jock who thought the world revolved around him and owed him something.

  “Are you too busy for me, Carmyn? Because if you are, just tell me, and I’ll leave you alone so you can do what you need to do,” he said in that mellow, masculine voice I loved.

  “No, Sylvester,” I said as I leaned closer and allowed my lips to linger near his. “I will make time for you. I just can’t promise how soon that’ll be. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and squeezed my hands. “And I’m sorry for walking up on you like that. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll call you when we can get together. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Sylvester said. “But I want you to tell me then why you don’t want your son to know about me.”

  “Okay,” I said, not knowing if I was really going to tell him or not.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Brady’s Got a Secret

  Just as I was getting ready for bed, the phone in my apartment rang. I looked at the caller ID and recognized the number. I felt a nervous energy in my stomach and I decided not to answer the phone, but it seemed my hand had a mind of its own and picked up the phone.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Welcome back, Brady. How was your summer?”

  “Fine.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Just chillin’,” I said.

  “Did you work out this summer?”

  “Every day.”

  “I bet your body looks even more amazing than it did the last time I saw it.”

  “It’s alright.”

  “Are you up for a session?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight?”

  I thought about it for a minute and a part of me started to feel excited, but I told myself that what I was about to do was wrong.

  “How about an hour. Do you need me to pick you up?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Good. See you soon. Oh, and Brady.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t wear any underwear.”

  “That’s whassup.”

  I drove my Navigator out of the wash stall, jumped out, lifted the tailgate, and grabbed two towels. We had just finished our first week of brutal two-a-day practices, where we worked out in humidity that felt like steam rising from a hot iron.

  “Hey, nigga, how much money did you get for that movie they made about you?” Delmar asked.

  “What movie?” I asked as I wondered why Delmar always had to use the N-word.

  “The 40 Year-Old Virgin, or in your case, The 20 Year-Old Virgin,” Delmar said, laughing. There was nothing Delmar loved more than teasing me about my alleged celibacy vow.

  “Oh, snaps, fam. I see you got jokes from the summer. Let me see what you can do with this,” I said as I tossed a towel to Delmar.

  “What’s a nigga ’posed to do with this?” Delmar asked.

  “Help me dry my truck. Hurry up. Then I’m gonna give you some paper towels so you can clean the windows,” I said.

  “I’ll help you dry, but I ain’t cleaning no windows. Delmar don’t do nobody’s windows,” he said as he started to wipe away some of the excess water on the truck’s body.

  “Whatever. Just keep moving those guns and be thankful I let you ride in the front seat,” I said.

  “Son, ain’t that the new shawty who was serving that cold-ass attitude at the spirit squad mixer?” Delmar asked.

  “Where?” I asked as I looked around the parking lot of the Super-Suds car wash. Washing my new car had become an almost daily event for me and Delmar—or Three-D, as the team sometimes called him.

  His full name was Delmar Dewitt Dawkins. At 6'1" and 236 pounds, Delmar was among the elite on the team when it came to physical qualities. His toasted-almond skin was as smooth as marble and he looked more like an action hero than a college football player. Coaches and sportswriters called him the perfect fullback. I couldn’t count the number of times he had been approached by photographers wanting to shoot him for posters and books. Sorority girls wanted him to strip at their private parties. His cornrows were always designed into patterns that only a man with his confidence could get away with.

  “Over there,” Delmar pointed.

  That’s when I saw her. She was wearing flannel gray short-shorts and a gold T-shirt with Jaguars Cheerleading stretched across her chest. Her long, auburn hair was pulled into a perfect ponytail, and she was putting coins into the vacuum machine.

  “Yeah, that’s her,” I said. I checked her out while she bent over to vacuum the mats of her expensive, sleek, silver-toned sports car. Both Delmar and I had noticed the new coed when the football team and spirit groups got together for a barbecue after the first week of practice. It was an annual event before the season started where the two groups would be formally introduced. We noticed her because she was so beautiful and it had been a couple of years since the cheerleading squad had had a sistah as a member.

  “How you doin’, shawty?” Delmar yelled out.

  “D, leave that young lady alone,” I said as I slugged Delmar in the shoulder.

  “I need to hit that. I bet that ass is tighter than a parrot’s pussy. You can stay over here and act all shy if you want, but I’m not waiting for the rest of the knuckleheads on the team to try and hit that,” he said.

  “You see she ain’t even trying to hear you,” I said as the girl continued to vacuum her ca
r mats.

  “That’s ’cause she don’t know what she’s missing.” Delmar smiled with that crooked grin that caused me to shake my head. I knew the young beauty could get into deep trouble if she didn’t watch herself.

  Delmar went after the opposite sex like he was competing on the field, and that meant with a vengeance. Three-D and I had been best friends since the ninth grade at West Lake High in Atlanta, even though we were competing for the same position. I won out and Delmar moved to fullback, where he spent most of his time blocking for me. When it came time for me to pick a college, I chose CGU because they offered both Delmar and me scholarships. Some of the other schools I considered were worried about Delmar’s grades and hood-boy mentality. We were very different, but we never allowed those differences to get in the way of our friendship. I was the serious student of both my studies and football, while Delmar, who had been blessed with natural athletic ability, was a jokester who was always in the coach’s doghouse. He was also popular among our teammates for his wicked sense of humor.

  We both came from single-parent homes, but Delmar was raised by his father, Jesse, a bus driver for the city of Atlanta. As long as I’d known him he’d never talked about his mother, and I wasn’t sure if she was even alive. Being raised by a man, Delmar had a confidence when it came to females that I lacked. He was so experienced that by his junior year in high school he wound up with a Delmar Jr. to prove it. But the birth of his son did not slow down his chase of any female who would look at him, and even some who ignored him.

  “Hey, lil’ mama, don’t you know who we are?” Delmar shouted toward her.

  Again, there was no response as she placed the hose in its proper place and reached inside a brown and pink purse and pulled out some keys.

  “Damn, son, who does that bitch think she dissin’ like that? I’m going over there,” Delmar said.

  “D, leave her alone. Get in the truck and let’s ride,” I said, pulling out my keys.

  “Naw, Dawg,” Delmar said, walking toward the beautiful girl. “I’m going to introduce shawty to Three-D up close and personal.”

  I walked around my truck, then leaned against the hood, knowing I was in for a show.

  Delmar stopped in front of the girl just as she was about to lower herself into her convertible silver Mercedes.

  “Can I help you?” I heard her ask Delmar in a very snooty tone.

  “Yeah, shawty. Ain’t you that new cheerleader?”

  “Yes, that would be me.”

  “Don’t you know who I am?” Delmar asked, sucking his teeth, which he thought was sexy.

  “No, I don’t know who you are, and why don’t we leave it that way?”

  “I thought I would do you a favor, introduce myself, and save you the trouble of having to fight with all the other women once the school year starts. I can make room for you on my roster now, but slots are filling fast, so what you wanna do?” Delmar said, casually leaning against her car and crossing his arms over his double-barreled chest.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,” she said.

  “Delmar Dewitt Dawkins. But you can call me Three-D,” he said coolly.

  “Well, Delmar, since slots are filling fast, what I’m going to do first is tell you to remove your sweaty, dirty, baggy, jean-wearin’ ass off of my car. And next, I’ll save you the trouble of saving me trouble by telling you if you ever see me coming your way, you can just turn around and save yourself the embarrassment of knowing that your little bubblegum game don’t work on a grown-ass woman like me. Later,” she said, putting a palm to his face.

  “What!” Delmar said, rising up off the car. “Bitch, do you know who you talking to? I’m Three-D!” he said, waving his arms and looking like he was about to do something crazy.

  That’s when I ran over, threw my arms around Delmar, and pulled him away from the car.

  “Fuck that bitch!” Delmar yelled, fighting me, trying to get away.

  I held on to him tight, dragged him back toward my truck, and pushed him up against it. “Chill,” I yelled. “Remember what Coach said about staying away from trouble.”

  Delmar calmed down a little, but he was still looking back at the young lady with total disdain.

  “Get in the truck, D!” I shouted at him as I walked toward her car.

  “Where you goin’?” Delmar said.

  “I’m going to make sure she’s all right. Just get in the car.”

  When I reached the car, she was rubbing a smudge from the driver’s door. When she turned to me, she looked like she hadn’t been the slightest bit affected by Delmar’s antics.

  “What do you want?” she asked. I was startled by how beautiful she was. She looked like Ciara, my favorite female singer. A part of me couldn’t look away and my mouth suddenly didn’t want to work. There was an awkward silence, and then I heard Delmar yelling, “Come on, B. Let’s ride.” I noticed her beautiful hazel-green eyes and her perfume that smelled like fresh flowers.

  “Can you talk?” she asked.

  “I wanted…I mean to apologize for my friend,” I finally stuttered. “Sometimes he’s just a little less than a gentleman. Please accept his and my sincerest apologies.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” she said. She got in her car, slammed the door, and drove off.

  I stood in the parking lot dumbfounded, not knowing if I had just met the meanest or the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

  Maybe she was a little bit of both.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Barrett Is a Bad Muther . . . Shut Your Mouth

  Hey, beauty, I’m going to need to see some ID,” the overweight bartender with an unruly beard said as she walked into the dimly lit bar.

  “Will this do?” she asked as she handed him a piece of identification.

  “Barrett Elizabeth Manning, twenty-two years old,” he said as he studied the ID, then looked her up and down to make sure they matched.

  “Are you finished staring at my tits so I can get to my business?” Barrett quizzed.

  “You sure got a smart mouth on you.”

  “Fuck you and give me back my ID,” Barrett said as she snatched the driver’s license from the stunned bartender.

  She turned, quickly spotted someone in a corner booth, and walked over. Nico Benson was well dressed and wearing dark shades. He was a peanut butter brown man with a smooth face, who measured over 6'6" and looked like he could still fit into his Duke University basketball uniform. He smiled at Barrett and nodded toward the empty seat next to him. Barrett smiled back as she slid onto the cool wooden bench and placed her hands on top of the table. He placed his large hands over hers, and Barrett’s eyes met his penetrating gaze.

  “How you doing, Barrett?”

  “I’m okay, but I miss you,” Barrett said.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I’m glad.” Barrett smiled.

  “So you met him? That was quick.”

  “Yes, and it was easier than I thought,” Barrett said.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I overheard him telling some of his teammates how he washed his new car every day after practice. So I had to spend a couple of hours at that filthy car wash pretending to do something my man should be doing for me,” Barrett said.

  “Do you think he’s interested in you?”

  “Are you kidding? This is going to be easier than getting a Bengal tiger to eat raw meat,” Barrett said, and laughed.

  “You’re so confident, Barrett. That’s what I like about you. But I got a white girl and a dude on reserve, just in case that’s what he’s into.”

  “I know there are a lot of things you like about me, and you know very well that you won’t need anyone but me to close this deal and get what we want.” Barrett smiled as she increased her grip on his hands. They held hands for a few minutes in silence, smiling at each other like they were teenagers on a first date.

  “Not only are you beautiful, but you’re clever as well.”


  “And that’s why you’ll never be able to do without me,” Barrett said confidently.

  “You think so, huh?”

  “I know so. So tell me, have you decided how we’re going to get him to sign with your agency? What about the technique we used on the guy from USC when we drugged him, put him in bed with the gay dude, and took pictures. Black guys always do what you want after that. They don’t mind being called thugs, but no one wants to be called a fag.”

  “That’s not going to work this time. You read the information on this kid. He doesn’t drink and probably has never been naked in front of a camera. The dude is so lame he probably takes a shower in his underwear,” said Nico in his deep voice.

  “Then why do you want him so bad?”

  “Because if Brady Bledsoe has a season like he had last year, he’ll get a Reggie Bush–type signing bonus and we’ll get paid. Besides, that bitch of a mother of his turned me in to the NCAA last year.”

  “But nothing happened,” Barrett said.

  “I got a slap on the hand, but she doesn’t know who she’s fucking with. I guess she’s so uppity that she doesn’t realize that the governing board for college sports doesn’t give a damn about some black woman and her superstar son.”

  “Then I think we need to come up with a more elaborate plan.”

  “All you need to do is get him in your bed and he will be all ours,” he said.

  “Then consider him your first new client of the season,” Barrett said with a smile.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Carmyn’s Past Makes a Comeback

  I walked from the laundry room back into the salon, when a woman sitting in Zander’s chair looked up at me and measured me with her eyes. Her lap was filled with pink plastic rollers that she was handing to Zander as he rolled her hair.

  Zander was my most popular stylist. His customers affectionately called him the “Hair Nazi,” because he was known for turning down customers for a myriad of reasons if he didn’t like them or thought they didn’t take care of their hair. If they said things he didn’t like, he would tell them, “Don’t ever try to get on my book again in this lifetime.” I put up with him because he was so good and a percentage of his clientele helped pay off the salon. Besides, he never said anything nasty to me or my clients.