We need to just go back.
I pressed down my white shorts, straightening myself out after the hours in the air. D didn’t watch me this time, and I was glad. He just stared out the door, his gaze wondering. He pushed off, and I lost him to the day, my frustrations looming. He was making this difficult. I swiped my purse off the seat and chased him out, chased him down the stairwell.
That’s when a sight met me down at the bottom. It was a car, a beautiful shiny one like the car he drove in DC. It sparkled in the bright sun, and behind it was an airport, vast and wide. I had never seen it before in person, but I’d heard of it. It was hard not to know what airport it was, considering the landscape behind it.
Many buildings towered in different levels, and even from here, one of the tallest buildings in the world could be seen - it’s steeple off in the distance and high in the sun.
I approached a man then, one standing in front of a bright red convertible. He had his hand on the door, waiting patiently for me to take it all in. The city landscape laid behind him.
I pushed my hands in my pockets, tipping my chin to the vast city.
“Chicago?” I asked. I knew it well, though I’d never been. I booked my brother flights out here all the time. That’s how I was familiar with the airport.
D’s buzzed head lowered a little, and that smile returned faint on his lips. He rubbed his mouth.
“Yeah. Marigold’s is here. My hometown.”
His hometown. He took me home.
“I play for Indiana, but I commute from here,” he went on. “I guess I couldn’t really leave.”
The door of the car cracked, creaking when he opened it, and I slid in. I went with him.
His hand on the wheel, D left the jet behind, as well as his security. We had a couple on the flight, though they remained scarce. I wanted to ask why. Usually these men, men like D, felt they needed to have security ready at all times. It made them feel secure I think, important.
He really was surprising me.
I popped my sunglasses on. The sun was so bright there, high and lovely. The breeze passed over my trim level of hair, and I caught D looking at me again.
Though this time, he pretended not to.
Clearing his throat, he moved his hand on the wheel.
“You ever been?” he asked, glancing at me. “To the city?”
I shook my head, my arm resting on the door.
I popped my chin on my fingers. “Can’t say that I have, but I feel like I know it. I plan all my brother’s trips when he comes.”
The interstate met us at our entry into the city, and D nodded, taking us there with quick acceleration. He weaved in and out of traffic seamlessly. He knew these roads. These were his roads.
He glanced my way again. “Mind if I ask you a question, Andie?”
Andie.
He made my name sound different for some reason, or maybe it was just my ears.
I shifted in my seat. “Depends. Will I want to smack you after?”
That had him chuckling again, deep and thick. He pushed a hand over his head. “Possibly. But I’m willing to chance it if you’re willing to answer.”
Brave, this one, wasn’t he?
I folded my arms over my chest, my attention his. When he noticed that, he went on.
“Your brother,” he said, surprising me, and also making my heart race. He eyed me. “What’s his deal?”
“Deal?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it just… it seems like he has one. One with you in particular for some reason.”
He picked up on something he had no business inquiring about, but had to have noticed in all he’d seen recently. My drama with my brother was like a freight train, slow to take off, but deadly in the end with its speed.
I said nothing, turning away.
“Ask me anything else,” I said, pushing my glasses up.
“Anything?”
Anything was better than where we were.
“How did you become owner of the club? Security?”
I smiled, why was this easier to answer? Maybe because that background felt more cosmetic to me, safe.
“I used to be a stripper.” And when his eyes bugged out, I continued, laughing. “Not at the club, but in a past life. And there, I met friends. Together we started the club.”
Club Prestige’s beginnings had been a whirlwind, but the fallout had only been a successful business and lifelong friends. I met a couple of the owners through dancing, and at that time, that money put Tuck through all his training for basketball. He went to the best camps money could buy. His potential in his game was spotted early. It was actually his coach at the YMCA that discovered him, and suggested further training. Tuck said he wanted to, that he loved the game, so I made it happen any way I could.
Things had been rough for a while when I danced, no luxuries for me, but it had all been worth it. I wanted Tuck to have everything he could possibly have. I felt I owed him that.
I touched my necklace, fingering the pendant. In the end, it all worked out. My time at the club dancing found me colleagues, fellow dancers who hated the system as much as I had - the abuse of a male-centric management. Those men let all kinds of things happen to girls, horrible things, and in a more than dangerous environment. So, when some of my friends said we had a means out, I took it. We had a silent benefactor, another friend who had her own reasons for wanting to start the business, and well, Club Prestige was born.
“That’s a hell of a come up,” D said, taking me out of my thoughts.
I turned.
“From me being a stripper?” I asked, because that’s how it sounded.
“In a sense,” he said, “but I mostly meant you hustling, not backing down until you got what you wanted. That had to take some drive, right? Starting a business?”
He meant me being an entrepreneur.
I chewed my lip. “Yeah… yes.”
He smiled a little, going back to the road.
“Same goes…” I paused, unsure if I wanted to get personal, but in the end, I pushed it down. I went on. “You got a similar thing going too though, right? You said you weren’t always rich.”
His eyes found mine, crinkling a little at the sides.
“Nah, I wasn’t,” he said, facing the road. “We both got something in common then, huh?”
I let the world surround me after that. I let his world of urban buildings and concrete fences take me in. We went right to the heart of the city, the environment, the air; completely different from DC. Both cities had their unique elements of people and places. It wasn’t until we cruised for a bit and turned into a park that I realized we were staying right down here. A park - a wide abyss of leafy green sectioned off from the grey towers of city.
“A park?” I asked him, and D nodded, moving the wheel.
“Marigold’s,” he simply said, and I wondered.
“How so?” I figured Marigold’s would be some kind of shop, a flower store maybe? So when we turned up in a vacant parking lot, I was more than confused. It was completely baron, and connected was a small blue enclosure, a wide box of glass with greenery inside.
D shut off the car, pausing only to flash his eyebrows up at me, before coming around and opening my door. I could have beat him to that, opening my door. But I chose not to.
He stood by, idle and waiting for me to take his side. And when he shut my door, I eyed him, feeling a bit out of sorts. Where were we?
I pushed my bag up my arm. “I thought you said we were going to—”
“Marigold’s,” he said again, and he gestured this time, tilting his head for me to follow him, follow him to the box. I did though I felt a little leery. He told me something, and it didn’t seem like he was delivering here.
We approached the box, and I couldn’t really see too much inside. So much greenery covered the windows. Near the door handle was a plaque, the name “Fairfield Nursery” on the side of the building, and below that there were hours of operation, the time now
more than a few hours after close. Pushing my arms over my chest, I simply got another one of those eyebrow dances. When D followed my gaze up from the plaque, he grinned.
“Fairfield Nursery,” he said, pushing his keys around. From the abyss, he found a long key, a round one with a metal flower embedded into the handle. He lifted it.
“Or ‘Marigold’s’ as known by the locals.”
The key he had let us in, and that whoosh of greenery filled the air around us. D guided his hand behind me, leading me in, and I stepped, making my way. My heels sunk a bit into the sod, but his hands went around me, onto my shoulders.
“Careful,” D said, that grip subtle yet firm to my body. His hands moved down my arms, assisting me onto a cobblestone walk, and a slow, burning sensation made its way, traveling deep into my limbs.
I moved my arms around my purse, and he released me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem.” His hands pushed into his pockets, and he tipped his chin up. “What do you think?”
In all his handling, all his touching, I hadn’t taken the place in, and I wondered rather quickly how that had been possible. This place…
Flowers were planted into that same sod I sunk into. The area was surrounded in it. The little cobblestone paths looped and weaved through what were feet upon feet of colorful plants, and even more vibrant flowers. They hung from the walls, vines growing up them, and in the middle was a shallow pond, tadpoles playing at the sides of their dirt enclosure.
That made me smile, how in a way, they were kind of cute. That brought that smile to D’s face, too.
He waved. “C’mon. I promised you flowers.”
I didn’t understand as there were literally flowers everywhere, but I understood rather quickly upon where he brought me. These flowers made the others look like insignificant weeds.
He brought me to sunflowers, massive in their size. The heads were quite literally as big as miniature umbrellas, and the petals as bright as sun kissed oranges. I’d never seen sunflowers so big, and I was sure D picked up on that pretty quickly.
He draped his arm over a shovel lodged in the dirt.
“Sweet, right?”
“Right.” I reached out, touching one. The petals moved between my fingertips, deep in their gold coloring.
“They’re my mom’s,” he said, then laughed a little when I blinked. He put his hands on the shovel handle. “Actually all of these are. She planted everything.”
All of this? She planted all of this. But there was so many, flowers, plants in nearly endless rows.
“She did it all? Everything?”
“Yeah. Well, the start of it. Before it all grew.” He gazed up, vision surrounded like mine. “The park left this place to run down, and wanted to get rid of it, but my mom wasn’t having it. She took care of it, and the city ended up making it a nature preserve. People come from miles just to see the flowers.”
I could see why. They were so beautiful. Especially, the sunflowers. It was hard not to get drawn in by them, by everything.
Leaning in, I smelled them. That’s something my necklace didn’t have, that wonderful smell that woke up the senses. When I rose, I caught D looking at me again. But this time, it wasn’t at my body. He was looking at me, that enthralling, all-encompassing gaze.
“Don’t let him fool you, girl.”
The both of us turned, breaking whatever connection was had over the pretty flower bursts. What broke it brought the widest smile out on D’s full lips. A woman came around, a black woman, older, and holding a watering can. She had the handle over the area just above where an aged wrist might be. I say might, because her arm stopped right there, an area of taught, scarred skin that rounded, and smoothed out at the tip.
She eyed D under busy grey eyebrows. “This boy planted just as many of these flowers with his mama and sisters. He’s just lying on ya.”
The words had a sour expression forming over D’s lips, but the way they went tight before relaxing let me know he was fighting it. In the end, he gave up entirely, bringing his entire wingspan around a woman who barely came up to his waist.
“Thanks for that, Ms. Gracie,” he said, squeezing her. He simply gobbled her up in his size, his arm resting across the tops of her shoulders when he rose to full height. He gazed down at her.
“Lying on her, huh?”
“Mmmhmm, straight lyin’.” A poke to his chest went with each word, her watering can sloshing on her arm.
She faced me. “Boy was here nearly every day with his mama, knee down in the dirt just as she was.”
D’s eyes lifted to the heavens.
“Needed something to do after basketball practice,” he mused, but that smile on his lips told of that lie, too. This woman knew this man too well, clearly.
He gestured toward me. “Ms. Gracie, this is—”
“Andie.” My error called upon me immediately. Not only were my hands left empty of one to shake, as Ms. Gracie’s single hand was busy helping her hold the watering can, but my face was also hot with both her eyes and D’s on me.
I closed my fingers. “I’m sorry I…”
Ms. Gracie batted a hand at me, then used it to help tip her can - the handle still over her amputated arm. From the spout, a fresh stream of water came down on calla lilies, and a grin sprang to this woman’s face.
“Dear, don’t you be awkward around it,” she said, referring to her hand as she moved to water more flowers. “Haven’t had this thing for years. Don’t bother me none, so don’t let it bother you.”
I could respect that.
“Anyway, nice to meet you,” she went on, then frowned at D. “And what you doing around these parts? Ain’t calling no one, and then creeping up in my business unannounced. You probably was going to sneak through here wasn’t you? And not say a dang word before you left?”
By the look on D’s face, that theory rang true, his guilt placing a crooked smile on his lips.
He squeezed Gracie’s shoulder. “Didn’t mean anything by it, Ms. Gracie.”
“Mmmhmm,” she said, her lips turning down. But she couldn’t stop that smile. “It’s a good thing I wanted to get a few more things done after close, otherwise I would have missed you.”
“Ms. Gracie is the groundskeeper here now. It’s why the place looks the best it ever has.”
D’s words only widened that pleasant expression on Ms. Gracie’s lips. She rose up after taking particular care of some sun kissed daffodils, dotting them with H20.
“I do what I can to keep it up, but your mama was the true artist. This place thrives whenever she comes through, though I understand her being busy. She’s real active in the school board now, and the old neighborhood appreciates her for that.”
The words Ms. Gracie passed over her shoulder, the pair of us following her while she did her last minute rounds. How those words played out on D’s expression had me feeling some kind of way, the words about his mama. I rubbed my arm, trying not to think about them, be affected by them, but that was hard. It was so easy to place D in a box. He was a man, all visceral of his wants over his actual needs. He took what he wanted, and gave in to whatever he saw fit because he could, and I had seen that firsthand. That’s how I met him. It was hard to think about Diondre the man, the human, who had a history and a family, one he clearly cared about deeply.
Ms. Gracie threw D a grin. “This place missed you, too, you know?”
He smoothed a hand down her small shoulder. “Been a little busy, I guess.”
The statement bubbled light laughter; that grin ever strong on Ms. Gracie’s mouth.
“Well, you stay busy. You stay makin’ us proud.” That got D modestly shaking his head, and Ms. Gracie reached back, squeezing his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll let you get back to your date. This old lady’s got a little more busying to do as well before I take off for the night.”
The word “date” immediately drove me to correct, but this Ms. Gracie was swift. She left
us standing there with her words before flittering away and doing her busying, just like she said.
I rubbed my hands restlessly on the back of my shorts, and D did something similar. His long body rested back on a planted tree, arms crossing and uncrossing a few times. Moving near him, I reached out for some vinery, the silky leaves curling on the tree he rested on.
I smiled. “So you helped your mama after school, huh?”
That deep, throaty laugh came, making that massive chest rise and fall. And he watched me, my fingers, as they went down the vine.
“I liked to say I enjoyed it for what it was, but I got to see my mom. She worked a lot, so I popped in here for a reason to see her. When she wasn’t at work, she spent a lot of time here. I think it meant something to her. My grandma used to work a lot in here too with her when she was younger.”
He said “used to” in regards to his grandma. Thinking I understood that for what it was, I moved to another vine, and those brown eyes followed as well.
“Your mama still around here?”
His head bobbed once in acknowledgement. “Mmmhmm. And my house isn’t far from theirs, she and my younger sisters. The girls are in high school now.”
“Will we get to see them?” I asked surprising I think both him and myself. His brow twitched up, curious, and I corrected quickly, pushing a hand behind my neck. “I mean, Ms. Gracie was furious you almost rolled through here without seeing her. I could imagine doing the same to your mama would be World War III.”
The response made me grateful for the correction, D passing my words off with another chuckle.
“You’re right, but nah,” he said. “They’re in the Cayman’s now.”
“The Cayman’s? As in, the Cayman Islands?”
“Yep,” he went on, pushing off the tree. “Finally got my mama to go on vacation. I sent her and my sisters there for a few weeks.”
Of course he did. Because that’s something someone would do when they cared about people they loved. I reached for another vine, and again, D watched me do it. But the leaves fell when he took a step forward, getting closer to me. He got so close, a hair’s breath from my body, and just a touch from even more.
Enthrall: A Found by You Novella Page 6