Losing to Win

by Michele Grant

  “What’s wrong, babe?” Mal asked.

  “Blue.”

  The one-word answer had him tightening his lips and stepping on the gas. “We’ll be there in five.”

  “Hey, Princess! Look at you looking better than new money!” Stacy “Blue” Wayne called out from the front porch of my house as I jumped out of Mal’s truck with my purse on my arm. One undeniable fact about Stacy: he was attractive and he was charming... on the surface. Stacy was a pretty man the exact color of roasted cocoa beans with thick kinky hair; a reed-thin, tall rangy body; and scoundrel’s smile. If you didn’t know him very well, he was a hell of a guy to hang out with. He earned the nickname “Blue” not from the color of his skin or his love of the music genre but because his mother had stated (on many occasions), “This boy right here was born to give me the blues.” The main problem with Stacy Wayne was that he was a spoiled little kid in a grown man’s body who never took responsibility. The one thing you could count on Blue to do was let you down. Sooner or later, he always did.

  My mother and Aunt Elaine stood off to the side looking as if they’d already gone forty rounds in the ring with the devil himself. Ruby and Renard stood in front of my door clearly blocking entrance. Cameras were set up to the side of the driveway capturing every tense expression and moment.

  I knew, I just KNEW that the minute it looked like this show was bringing some shine to Belle Haven, he would show up as if his presence was requested, hat in hand, trying to get a piece of whatever action there was to be had. And here he was—literally, with a straw fedora in his hand and slick grin on his face—walking toward me with his arms outstretched as if he’d been any kind of a father to me. I stiffened. I did not want to snub him in front of the cameras, but neither was I going to pretend like we were all some big happy family. I kept myself from taking a step back.

  Before he could embrace me, Mal stepped in front of him and grabbed his hand and shook it. “Blue. What brings you back into Belle Haven? Last I heard you were lighting up the Vegas strip.”

  Blue looked annoyed at the interception. “Last I heard you had broken my baby girl’s heart and were nowhere to be found.”

  Okay, that was enough fodder for the cameras. “I guess we all have some things to catch up on. Let’s go inside,” I prompted, skirting around my father and marching up onto the porch. I motioned to Renard. “Make sure they don’t film us inside the house, will you?”

  “I got you, sis.” He nodded as we filed past him.

  Herding everyone into the kitchen, I swiveled and put my hands on my hips. “What do you want, Dad?”

  “Ah no, come on now. Can’t a man want to see—”

  “Cut it,” I interrupted. “Nobody here is buying it and the cameras and microphones are all outside. What do you want?”

  “Eloise, you just gonna let her talk to me like that?”

  “She’s a grown woman, Blue. She has been for a long time now. I guess you’d know that if you stuck around without wreaking havoc for more than a minute,” my mom said tiredly as she dropped into a chair at the dining table.

  Remembering my manners, I walked to the fridge. “Anybody want something to drink?” Just because we were dysfunctional as hell, didn’t mean we couldn’t follow basic Southern hospitality rules. I spent the next few minutes handing out water and tea. Blue asked for a beer. Ruby snatched it from my hand and slammed it down in front of him.

  “Just tell us what it’s going to cost us to get you outta here so we can write the check and you can be onto the next,” Ruby snarled.

  “Write the check?” I asked in confusion. “Who has been writing him checks?”

  The entire room fell silent. I looked around with mounting dismay.

  “Wait a damn minute; you all have been paying him to stay away?” I was appalled. Not that I wanted him to stick around, but I wanted him gone without any of our money lining his lazy-assed pockets. No one would meet my eyes. “Why?”

  Eloise shrugged. “That’s all he wants anyway, and he makes such a pain in the ass, baby. It’s easier to just cut a little check and be done with it.”

  Ruby nodded.

  I noticed Mal was mighty quiet. “Mal? Not you too?”

  “You don’t want to go stirring up old history,” my father said too quickly for my liking.

  “Malachi Henry Knight, did you give my father money?”

  He shrugged. “It was less drama.”

  All of a sudden, the answer came to me. “Was he blackmailing you? With what?”

  “Ris, he threatened to make up all sorts of bullshit. Go to the press with anything he could come up with to make trouble for us. He just wanted a little piece of the pie, said it was his due as your father. Like your mama said, it was easier to just give him the money. I could afford it, it’s not that big of a deal.”

  “It’s a huge damn deal, Mal.”

  “Baby, I took care of it.”

  “How much over the years?” I snapped and noticed my father shuffling uncomfortably. “How. MUCH?”

  “Probably around fifty grand total,” Malachi announced and everyone except Blue gasped.

  Tears sprang to my eyes, not just because my father was basically a con artist, but because Mal had shouldered this alone. “Mal, you didn’t have to do that. You could have told me!”

  “I wanted to protect you from this. You didn’t need Blue drama on top of everything else. Besides, it would’ve just made you unhappier than you already were,” he said sadly as tears ran down my face.

  I could not believe that my father had basically been holding this family hostage for years. I could not believe the lengths that Mal went to in order to protect me from him. All of that ended today. Right the hell now. I snatched the beer out of my father’s hand. “You will never see another red cent from this family or anyone affiliated with us. You do your worst. You cannot touch us anymore. Do you hear me?”

  “Carissa Melody, I don’t want no trouble. But it ain’t right for the fam to be doing so good and not share with your daddy. I mean, you’re here because of me. You got this fine house and this rich man, but you came from me. I’m your father....”

  “In name only. I’m here in spite of you, not because of you.” I pulled Malachi over to me and brushed a kiss across his lips. “Thank you.” He brushed a tear off my face with his thumb. I stepped back, wiped the remaining tears from my face and opened my purse. Taking out my makeup kit with shaking hands, I reapplied lipstick and mascara before fluffing my hair. I brushed nonexistent wrinkles from the bodice and skirt of my spaghetti-strapped navy blue maxidress. “How do I look?” I turned to Ruby.

  She hopped up to stand beside me. “Ready to do battle. What are we doing?”

  I tilted my chin up and stormed out to the front porch. I motioned for the cameras to come closer. “As you may know, my father has come to Belle Haven for a visit. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen this man over the course of the past ten years. Blue Wayne is a selfish man. He is a deadbeat dad who has two good things about him: He’s a brilliant guitarist and he had the good sense to pick a hell of a woman to birth his two children. Well, two that I’m aware of and acknowledge. I just found out that he has been extorting money from people I care about so that he won’t make trouble for me. I’m not going to allow that to happen anymore. If anyone in this town or on this show gives my father money, I’m done. You can feel free to shut down Losing to Win, sue me for breach of contract, and pack up your cameras and go. He is not a part of my life. Are we clear?”

  Marcy, who had shown up at some point, nodded with her eyes wide as saucers. No doubt she was already figuring out how to edit the latest Carissa Wayne melodrama into next week’s trailer.

  I poked my head back in the house. “Blue? You can go now.”

  “We need to talk about this, little girl!”

  “We actually don’t . . . Dad,” I snapped out as Renard and Malachi ushered him out the front door.

  Marcy piped up quickly as we
were shutting the door. “When will you and Mal be back on campus?”

  “Half an hour,” I replied. Mal cleared his throat. I looked over at him. He gave me a look hot enough to burn through metal. We were going to need a little adult alone time. “Um . . . two hours?” He nodded.

  “Okay, we’ll be waiting for you two in the confessional.”

  “I’ll just bet you will,” I murmured and slammed the door shut.

  25

  Boys’ night out

  Malachi—Saturday, August 8—9:52 p.m.

  Here’s one thing I’ve learned on this show: The problem with reality television is that very often, reality is completely staged. Take tonight, for instance. At no point in time in my reality would I have invited Jordan or XJ out for drinks. Nothing against either of them, but we weren’t that tight. I’d barely known XJ when he lived in Belle Haven all those years ago and I wouldn’t have known Jordan at all were it not for this television show. Add in the fact that Jordan made no secret of the fact that he was just waiting in the wings for me to mess up with Carissa so he could step in? Yeah, not my first choice of drinking compadres.

  The producers of Losing to Win thought it would be “fun” for us to do a Boys’ Night Out and a Girls’ Night In, so instead of spending the evening dazzling Carissa with what a sparkling and enlightened man I was, I was sitting on the back deck of the Idlewild nursing a beer. I didn’t really want a beer and I didn’t really want to hang out with the guys, but “reality” waits for no one, so here I was. I hadn’t seen any cameras, but I assumed that some footage of this evening would turn up somewhere. With these folks, it always did.

  Meshach, Burke, Mac, Lee, and Corey had come out so it wouldn’t be obvious that I was out on what was basically a grown man playdate with guys I didn’t really know. We’d been here since around eight o’clock shooting the breeze about a number of topics. Having exhausted sports, weather, and what was new in the reality weight-loss world, the conversation took a turn to the personal.

  “So XJ, what’s your story?” Corey asked. “How did your wife feel about you spending the summer doing a weight-loss show in Belle Haven, Louisiana?”

  XJ barked out a laugh. “Truthfully, I think she was happy to get rid of me for the summer, pleased about the extra money coming in, and willing to do anything to get a few pounds off my ass. As far as she was concerned, this was all win, bruh.”

  “Has she been out to visit?” Mac asked.

  “She came out over the Fourth of July and said she’d see me in September,” XJ offered as an explanation. “What about you fellas? How is it I’m the only one with a ball and chain at this table? Well, not you, Mal; we know your story.”

  I snorted. “I doubt it, but yeah, I’ll let you guys answer that one.”

  Corey said, “I’m married. Wifey gave me a get-out-of-jail pass for a few weeks so I could come play with Mal, but I’m headed home after the weekend. Lee?”

  “Oh, I’m single,” Lee supplied.

  “Not that single,” Burke piped up. “I’ve been seeing you hanging around the lovely Ms. Sugar.”

  Lee grinned. “She is something, isn’t she?”

  Mac slid him a look. “That she is, but she’s also a hometown girl, so if you were planning on hitting and quitting, you may want to slide out on that same plane with Corey.”

  Lee put his hands up. “Hey, I’m not that guy. Understood. I’m supposed to be playing a preseason game tomorrow in Denver. I’ve asked Sugar to come along. And then we’ll see where she wants to go from there. I’m willing to see where it goes if she’s interested.”

  I had to tease. “Well, is it something in the water in Belle Haven? Meshach is all up in his feelings over Niecy, you and Sugar getting sweet . . . Anything you want to share with the group, Mac?”

  Mac raised his brows, looking both surprised and ambushed. “Not unless you know something I don’t?”

  Burke elbowed his brother in the ribs. “Seriously, bro? How long are you and Taylor going to do this dance?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, so you can move on to the next and ask Jordan about his love life,” Mac snapped and picked up his beer for a long draw.

  “Jordan doesn’t have a love life...yet,” Jordan said with a glance my direction.

  I really was going to let it go. But then I just couldn’t. “Well, I wouldn’t expect that to change anytime soon if you’re looking where I think you’re looking,” I shot out.

  “Oh, I’m planning on doing more than looking,” he said with a smirk.

  I slapped my beer bottle down in the wooden tabletop and made to get up. Meshach grabbed my arm and held me in place. “Not this close to the tryout. Not worth it. You’ve got too much to lose. Especially not when she’ll be in your bed tonight. All you gotta do is keep her there.”

  Shach had a point. All Jordan could do was talk about it and dream about it. Carissa would be calling out my name before the sun came up. Of that I was sure.

  “Keeping her? Good luck with that,” Jordan added. This guy was begging to catch a Belle Haven butt-kicking.

  “Bruh,” Mac snapped at Jordan. “Mal may be the only one who’s not allowed to kick your ass, but he’s not the only one who can, hear? Carissa and I go way back and I don’t like hearing her talked about like a damn piece of ass.”

  “I don’t think of her that way,” Jordan said. “She’s not a trophy, no matter how others have treated her. She’s the best person I’ve ever met.”

  My jaw clenched with the fervent unquenched desire to punch Jordan Little squarely in his pretty-boy face. Part of me knew he was speaking his truth; the other part of me knew that he was baiting me to see how far he could push. There may have been a time where I thought of Carissa as an attractive trophy, but all of that changed in the years without her. I definitely didn’t need him telling me Carissa’s worth. So with a self-satisfied smirk of my own I raised my bottle. “There’s none better, son. None. You can believe that.” I sat back with the satisfaction of knowing that I had first-hand knowledge of just how awesome Carissa Melody Wayne was in a thousand different ways that Jordan never would. Not while I had any say in the matter.

  Meshach sent me an amused glance before turning back to Mac. “Really, Mac, you’re going to act like you and Taylor aren’t doing the dance of denial around each other? And before you say you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me speak plain. You want to bone her and she wants you to . . . repeatedly. What’s the holdup already?”

  Mac motioned for a refill. “Taylor and I know each other too well. Well enough to know that once we scratched the itch, it would never work.”

  “You lost me,” XJ said. “If she’s your best friend and you have hot sex, don’t you get to have hot sex with your best friend?”

  Burke put his hands up and clapped them together in a “that’s what I’ve been saying” gesture. “Speak it plain!”

  Mac shrugged. “Just wouldn’t work.”

  “You know what that sounds like? Sounds like the words of a chicken to me,” Corey said.

  “Does sound borderline poultrylike,” Burke agreed, making a clucking sound under his breath.

  Mac took a quick sip of his drink. “This is a small town. We have a fairly tight circle of friends and acquaintances. If we do this and it doesn’t work out, the fallout would be epic.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Lee interjected. “Are you sitting there telling us that you’re not huddling up with that fine sister because shit may go wrong down the road and that would be awkward? More awkward than watching the two of you pretending that you don’t want to jump each other every time you come within staring distance? I ain’t even been in town that long and I see this shit. Dude, rediscover some balls.”

  I cracked up. “And this is why we keep Lee around. Straight, no chaser; damn the niceties; serves it up cold.”

  “How did we get on me anyway?” Mac complained. “What about Meshach sneaking all over town to do unspeakable things t
o the lovely Niecy?”

  A slow smile spread across Meshach’s face. “Who says the acts are unspeakable? They’re pretty damn shout-worthy if I do say so myself. Though I don’t, because I’m a Southern gentleman. We don’t kiss and tell.”

  Jordan spoke up. “Please don’t; that’s my roommate. She’s like a sister to me.”

  “Well, your play sister and I are speaking all sorts of truth to power. We are enjoying the hell out of each other. There’s something there. Not sure what yet. Time will tell,” Meshach admitted.

  “You’ve definitely spent more time in Belle Haven this summer than you have in a while and I don’t even pretend it has that much to do with me,” I noted.

  “You’re finding the scenery in Belle Haven to your liking as well,” Burke said.

  “Oh, I’ve always liked that particular scenery,” I drawled.

  “You have stayed away and the scenery has always been this lovely,” Mac said, sending me a look.

  “I guess I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t know what he misses until it’s gone.”

  “Sounds risky. What if things aren’t the same when you come back around?” Jordy asked.

  “It was a risk I was willing to take before. But not now. I’m not that guy. When I see what I want, I grab it and hold on.”

  The mood turned tense while everyone waited to see what move Jordan and I would take next. He sat back and I turned back to Burke. “But what about you, Burke Bisset? Surely there’s some lovely diversions lined up outside your door lately?”

  Burke just gave a secretive grin. “If you all weren’t so wrapped up in your own melodramas, you would know I’ve been seeing somebody this summer as well.”

  My eyes narrowed in thought. I thought about the times I’d seen Burke over the course of the past few months and whom he had interacted with. Suddenly my eyes popped open. “You’re dating Darcy? The perky-ass personal trainer from hell?”

  “I refer to her as my current boo thang, but you guess correctly, sir.”

  Mac’s mouth dropped open. “How did that get past me?”