Dinner went on like that, with us talking to get to know each other better. More so for Stacey and Malik. I didn’t know what Zeke’s life was like now, but we knew each other’s childhoods to an extent. Although I didn’t want to deal with him, I found myself talking to him more tonight than I had any other time we’d interacted. And it wasn’t just with barbs or snappy comments to things he said.
I was glad Stacey was getting this time with Malik. It was clear they were hitting it off. It seemed he liked her as much as she liked him.
Once dinner was over and the table had been cleared, we moved into the living room. Malik turned on the TV which was already on the channel we wanted to see. The three-point contest was coming up soon. Malik and Zeke left us sitting in the living room.
“It’s going well,” I whispered to Stacey.
“It is,” she said all swoony. “Malik is so damn hot, and he can cook too. How am I supposed to leave tonight with you?”
“Easy. I’ll drag your ass out of here. Tonight is not the night.”
“Don’t be a blocker, Rory.”
“You need to take things slow, Stace. And hook up with him after a one-on-one date.”
She gasped, and I stared at her like she’d lost her mind. “You said ‘one-on-one date.’”
“So?”
“So, you think this is a double date! I knew you still had the hots for Zeke,” she exclaimed.
“Shh,” I said, checking to see if the guys were still gone. “That’s not what I meant at all, Stacey. I don’t still have—or ever had—the hots for Zeke.”
She scoffed, but we heard the guys walking back to the living room. I gave her a look, and she gave me a wry smile. Zeke dropped down beside me, putting his arm on the back of the couch behind my head. Malik sat on the other end. Stacey moved closer to Malik. I ignored the butterflies in my stomach and the increased rate of my heart because of Zeke's closeness. I pulled out my phone to keep from leaning into Zeke the way Stacey was with Malik.
I had a message from Coby.
Coby: How’s tonight going? I hope you haven’t killed Zeke or anything.
Me: Very funny. It hasn’t been that bad. Stace and I are still here. We’re going to watch some basketball with them.
Another message didn’t come through, so I put my phone away.
“Bored?” Zeke’s deep voice made a shiver run down my spine.
“No. I’m just checking my messages, not that it’s any of your business.”
“I was wondering when the snappy Rory would make an appearance.”
I glared at him and flipped him off, again. My civility only went so far.
12
Zeke
Stacey and Mallory stood and so did Malik and me.
“Can I use your bathroom before Ror and I leave?” Stacey asked.
“Of course,” Malik said. “Let me show you where it is.”
I was left alone with Mallory. The silence between us was charged and familiar.
“Maybe you and Stace want to come over for the All-Star Game,” I heard myself saying.
Mallory turned to face me. I guess I was that desperate to spend more time with her. In the past year and a half, I hadn’t watched any pro basketball games because it was too damn hard to watch. It always made me feel like shit. It was a constant reminder that I wasn’t playing. A reminder that I wasn’t close to playing as of right now, since no teams had shown interest and I was still rehabbing my injuries. But if watching the game meant I got to see Mallory again, I’d do that. When we were with others, she wasn’t as prickly with me. She sometimes even talked to me like she’d done tonight.
“I don’t know,” Mallory finally responded.
“Don’t know what?” Stacey asked, coming back into the living room with Malik trailing behind her.
“Zeke invited us over to watch the All-Star Game tomorrow,” Mallory informed her.
“That’s such a good idea!” Stacey exclaimed with way more excitement than necessary.
My cousin looked at me with creased brows but agreed that he was okay with it. He wouldn’t fight me on this since I could see that he wanted to spend more time with Stacey. Those two had hit it off tonight. It came down to Mallory again, as it had earlier.
“Fine,” she muttered. “It’s not like I could have said no.”
“Oh, babe, you could have, but it wouldn’t have mattered,” Stacey quipped.
“Whatever. Let’s get our asses home,” Mallory said.
“Night, guys, and thank you for dinner. It was delicious,” Stacey told me and Malik.
“I agree, and I’m glad Zeke didn’t make it,” Mallory added, mischief dancing in her dark eyes.
I shook my head. “I do love how you take every opportunity you get to take a shot at me.”
She grinned, and the way it made my heart skip a beat told me I was already falling for Mallory again. “You do make it easy, Zeke.”
“Okay, enough flirting,” Stacey said. “Let’s go.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Mallory told her friend. “And I’m not flirting with him.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
Mallory followed Stacey towards the door and their coats. Malik and I did the same to bid them goodnight. Maybe Mallory was softening towards me and I could get another shot with her. My cousin and I stood in the doorway while they climbed into Stacey’s SUV, which Malik had started about fifteen minutes ago to warm it up for them. Once they’d backed out of our driveway and headed down the road, we closed the door.
“So, I guess there’s more to this thing with you and Mallory?” Malik said.
“What’re you talking about?”
“You flip past games when they’re on or go to your room or downstairs when I have one on. Now you want to watch a whole game tomorrow?”
I walked to the kitchen with him trailing behind me. “I guess there is more between us. Since I’ve been here, I think about her a lot, and I want to get to know the person she is now. But as you can see, she can’t stand me.”
“What happened between you two?”
Being around Mallory had me thinking about what happened between us all those years ago. It was a weird and confusing time for me. My mother had been so disappointed in how I was treating Mallory. She didn’t understand how I could throw away years of friendship. One of the last times she brought it up, she had tears in her whiskey-brown eyes.
“I don’t get how you could mess up a good friendship like the one you have with Rory.”
“Basketball just has me busy, Mom,” I said as I grabbed a sports drink from the fridge.
“That’s not an excuse, Ezekiel. For as long as you’ve known Rory, basketball has been a part of your life. What’s changed now?”
She was dorky and only wanted to make up lovey-dovey stories that I wasn’t interested in. She didn’t fit in with my new friends.
“Basketball is more intense now. I want to be good, and I want to get drafted one day. I have to focus, Mom.”
A single tear ran down her cheek, and I didn’t understand why she was so upset. Mallory wasn’t her friend. Or even her daughter.
“Rory has been looking forward to this day since she found out that her favorite author was coming to town. She’s had it circled on her calendar for the past year and made her mom and dad put it in their digital planners. Heck, she asked your father and me to do the same. All calendars were circled so we all knew what today was.”
A pit grew in my stomach. Mom continued talking.
“At ten this morning, she was up and waiting on her front porch even though you all weren’t supposed to leave until two. She waited, but as it got closer to the time for you all to leave, she started coming over every ten minutes as if you’d be able to sneak past her. She waited even when her mom suggested they leave. She waited even as the time of the event slowly crept by. She waited until almost two hours ago when she finally went into the house. Rory refused to leave without you.”
And that
feeling became lead in my stomach. I’d forgotten. Mallory’s favorite author had been in town today for a book signing. She was the reason Mallory was into writing in the first place.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I have to say, I’m not liking the young man you’re becoming.”
A hand on my shoulder snapped me back to the present. Malik came around so that he was standing in front of me.
“We don’t have to talk about it tonight if you don’t want to,” he said.
“I don’t mind, but these dishes need to be washed.”
“Save them for in the morning,” he suggested, and since I didn’t feel like doing them anyway, I decided that was the best thing to do.
We walked back into the living room. I sat in one of the chairs around the table and Malik took his seat in the middle of the couch. He turned down the volume of the TV as I decided how to start.
“You know that Rory and I were friends from the time we were three until junior high,” I started, and Malik nodded. “Well, we were close for years. Always hanging out and willing to do what the other wanted to do. But I was never into what Rory liked to do and vice versa. Once we started junior high, being on the same basketball team wasn’t an option, so Rory hung up her sneakers so to speak. She only liked playing with me even though she was a decent shooter and dribbler. As you can guess, I started getting more serious about basketball then.”
“More serious?” Malik asked, interrupting. “You’ve been serious about basketball since you were one year old according to your parents. I think you mean to say that it got more intense, and your focus couldn’t be divided. It started mattering more in terms of a career.”
“Thanks for interpreting what I meant to say, cuz,” I said in a droll voice.
“Hey, I’m just trying to help.”
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not? Because I’d be fine with never telling it.”
“Nope. You started this, so you’re going to finish it. I want to know why Mallory can’t stand you.”
That was one way of putting it.
“As I got more involved with my team, I started spending less time with Rory. It wasn’t easy to find time outside of basketball, my friends, and my parents. Even though we lived right across the street from each other, we couldn’t have been further apart. I would hang out with her sometimes on the weekends when I had the time or invite her to sit with us at lunch. Rory had her cousins. She was always close to them as if they were siblings, so I didn’t worry about her too much. But as I got busier, I started blowing her off more. We’d make plans to go somewhere, and I would either cancel or show up the next day with an apology. And she forgave me each time until her thirteenth birthday.”
I stood to grab something to drink and take a little break from telling this story. It brought up all kinds of feelings if I was being honest. I regretted letting things get so fucked up between us and never trying to reconcile with her. I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of apple juice. I poured some in a glass before going back to the living room. Malik was waiting patiently. He wouldn’t rush me, which was good because I needed to do this at my own pace.
“After I screwed up a few weeks before that, you’d think I’d learn my lesson. You know my birthday is in the summer. Well, Ror’s birthday is in December. I was already thirteen when her birthday rolled around. She had a party. I promised many times that I’d make it. And I intended to do just that. But I was hanging out with Daniel, his brother, and a couple of other guys from our team with some girls there.”
“I can guess where this is headed,” Malik said.
“I missed her birthday party. By the time I made it, everyone had left. Her mom surprisingly let me in, and I found Rory lying on her bed. I gave her the present I’d gotten her. She told me she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. I clearly didn’t value our relationship, and she didn’t want to be waiting around for me for the rest of her life. Nothing I said made her reconsider. When Rory makes up her mind about something, it’s hard to get her to change it.”
“It sounds like you deserved it, Zeke.”
“I’m not saying I didn’t. I was a shitty friend to her when she was always there for me.”
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Malik stated. “I’ve always wondered what happened between you two. So now you want to date her?”
“If she ever forgave me, yeah, I’d like to try.”
“And you’re willing to do the whole watching a game tomorrow just to spend time with her?” I nodded. “I take it you liked her before now.”
“I started to when we were sophomores, and it lasted through high school. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over her.”
“So, you like Rory, and you always have,” Malik said. He paused for a moment. “But what does this mean for what you have going on with Tasha.”
Obviously, I hadn’t told my cousin that Tasha was actually Mallory. I guess now was as good a time as any.
“Mallory is Tasha,” I admitted. “When I went to meet Tasha at the coffee shop, I found Mallory there waiting for me instead. Because she had a purple beanie on, I knew she was the person I was meeting. Since I knew she hated me and wouldn’t have been receptive to me showing up for our date, I stood her up and kept our online relationship intact.”
“Why?”
“Because she tells Coby things she would never tell me. She’s softening to the idea of me but she’s still wary, and I don’t know if I will get her to open up to me.”
Malik didn’t say anything for a moment. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Zeke. And you need to be careful. This will ruin everything if she finds out, and you will lose any trust you gain with her.”
He had a point, but I needed more time, and posing as “Coby” gave me insight that I wouldn’t have otherwise. It was underhanded, and I was risking so much doing it, but I didn’t know a better way to do things right now. Mallory was the one I wanted, and if I was being honest, I’d wanted her for years. I had a shot, and I was going to take it any way I could.
“Well, I hope she gives you a second chance and this doesn’t blow up in your face, cuz.”
I hoped so too.
Mallory
As I drove us home, I thought about Zeke's invitation for tomorrow to watch the All-Star game with them. I hadn’t agreed because of Zeke, but Stacey agreed because of Malik. It was always more fun to watch the game with a group of people. And spending more time with Zeke wasn’t as much of a hardship as I thought it’d be. Within minutes of leaving the guys’ place, I was pulling into the driveway. Stacey huddled up against me as we walked inside. She was such a baby about the cold.
Once we’d changed into our pajamas, we made cups of cocoa piled with marshmallows, and we sat on the couch together.
“I noticed you weren’t as snappy with Zeke as you normally are. Could it be you’re warming up to him?” Stacey jumped right in with no preamble.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t want to, but sometimes those old feelings of familiarity pop up and it’s so tempting to fall back into old habits. But we haven’t been friends since we were thirteen.”
She nodded. “I understand why you don’t want to go there with Zeke. He hurt you over and over.”
“As much as my dad and Adam did. Maybe more because he never apologized; he never tried to make amends. I don’t think he ever would.”
“You could clear the air with him. Tell him how you feel about him throwing your friendship away like he did.”
I sipped my cocoa, eating some of the marshmallows off the top. “But is it even worth it? I doubt he’ll be here longer than he needs to be, and then he’ll be out of my life again. He’ll forget all about me again, and I’ll be the one with a broken heart and trust.”
She squeezed my arm. “I know he hurt you before, Ror, but don’t feel guilty if you have feelings for him. And remember that he’s older now. You both are. You don’t know this version of him, and if you want to
give him a second chance, I support that.”
“What about Coby?”
One of her perfectly manicured brows rose. “What about him? Are you catching feelings for him too?”
“No. We’re only friends.”
She studied me for a long, uncomfortable moment. I used it to drink more of my hot chocolate.
“You’re going to have to learn how to forgive people, Rory. It’s telling that the two men you’re interested in are men who have let you down before and are clearly asking for second chances. Until you figure out how to do that, you’ll keep having to deal with people who will need to be forgiven.”
I pursed my lips, pushing them to the side as I considered what she’d said. I thought I’d been doing okay with that since I let Adam back into my life after he’d pushed me so completely out of his for seven years. I wasn’t as close to my dad as I was with my mom, but I’ve forgiven him for being absent for parts of my childhood. It was easier to forgive my family since I wanted them in my life. But other people? It was harder. I didn’t want to be so rigid, but I also didn’t want to deal with pain and heartache again. I was always on edge waiting for people to fuck up and disappoint me. I guarded my heart because I had to. Maybe Stacey had a point, and I was going to have to try to figure this all out.
“Do you think Malik will get his head out of his ass now?”
She gave me a small smile, not calling me out on the obvious conversation shift. “Hopefully. You know, I get the feeling that he likes me too. But he’s careful not to let it show when we’re in the office. The way he was tonight gives me hope, though.”
“He was very much into you tonight. All his focus was on you, Stace.”
“Right?” she said, getting excited.
We spent the next few hours analyzing everything that happened tonight and what to expect tomorrow. Even though I was nervous about these newfound feelings for Zeke, I could admit to myself that I was a little excited to go back over to his place tomorrow. I just had to be careful and not fall for his charm. I would guard my heart as hard as I could. Because letting Zeke Armstrong in again was only inviting trouble and possible pain into my life, which wasn’t something I needed right now or ever again.
Doubletalk (The Busy Bean) Page 8