Zora said nothing for a long while, and when she finally spoke, her voice was different. “You thought what?”
“We started talking about the traffic stop,” Deuce said. “Remember? That’s why we started talking. And then when I went to your dorm, we talked some more. The shit that went down later …”
“The shit that went down later …” she prompted. “Go on.”
That’s not why I was there, he wanted to but did not say.
He was there because when he and Zora talked in the bar, their voices slightly raised so they could hear over the din, he’d forgotten that they weren’t alone. Kaleem and her girls Mia and Sophie might as well have not been there. And then when Zora said she had to go back to pack for her drive home the next day for Christmas Break, Deuce hadn’t wanted her to go, so he went with her.
The idea of ending the evening at yet another party with Kaleem and some girls who were pretending they didn’t care who he was, but clearly did, seemed intolerable. He just wanted to hang with Zora, to talk some more, to listen to that warm voice of hers, to smell that unidentified fruity scent in her hair, to have an excuse to examine her dark-as-night skin and stare into her cat-like eyes.
He just wanted to be with her.
And that was something in his entire time at Penn State, Deuce could not recall having happened before—that he wanted to be with a girl just for the pleasure of her company.
Then in her room—her messy-as-hell room—Zora had jumped him.
There was no other way to put it. As soon as the door was shut, she turned and kissed him, and he went with it. How could he not go with it? Her lips were soft, full and tasted like the illegally-consumed beer they’d been drinking all night. Her chest was soft against his, and she grabbed his hands to place them on her ass, pressing her pelvis forward and reaching down to stroke his hardness.
This girl wants me? he recalled thinking. This girl … wants me.
The thought was surprising only because if anyone had asked him before then, he would have said that few were the girls who did not. But Zora wasn’t just any girl. She was the girl Kaleem would have called a queen; she was a warrior. She had consequence and purpose. She was not the kind of girl who generally wanted him.
Except that night, she did. And no lie, that shit was off the chain. He grabbed handfuls of her thick, coarse hair in his fists, and they screwed with the lights on, her eyes locked with his, her powerful, firm thighs gripping his hips, holding him tight against her. This wasn’t some fumbling, grappling half-drunken college dorm encounter. This was grown-ass lovemaking, like a man and woman were meant to have. Deuce was present for every breath, every groan, every kiss, and the ultimate collapse of their damp bodies against each other.
Afterwards, he fell asleep. He slept hard and deep until Zora shook him gently awake and he sat up, dazed and momentarily unsure of his surroundings. Her room was clean and she was almost completely packed. Smiling at him once she saw he was awake, Zora had shoved the sheets aside, lifted the hem of the long t-shirt she was wearing and revealed that there was absolutely nothing underneath.
Deuce left after that, in a daze, exhausted and idly considering whether he might look her up while he was home. Zora had kissed him goodbye at her door, told him to enjoy Winter Break. All the way to his dorm, walking in the cold, he couldn’t stop licking his lips, like some of her just might be there for him to taste.
The very next day, he ran into her girl Sophie, and when he asked her if he could have Zora’s number, she looked confused.
Why d’you need her number? she said. She’s still on campus. Go see her.
Confused, Deuce did exactly that. She was on campus? Whatever happened to driving home for Break? She said she had no finals, just final papers, and so she could leave early. She’d cleaned her room, she’d packed …
As luck would have it, Zora was in her dorm’s common room when Deuce walked in. She was sitting on a sofa with her feet up on a coffee table, and next to her was a brother with shoulder-length locs. Zora had a bright orange scarf tied in her hair, the color accentuating her complexion in a way that was almost breathtaking. She, and her companion were laughing about something, something that was obviously very, very funny.
Mid-laugh, Zora turned and spotted him. A momentary look of surprise crossed her features, her eyebrows lifting for a second. And very casually, she lifted a hand in a wave. Then Zora returned to her conversation, never giving him a second glance.
“Deuce.”
He looked at her. She was chewing on her lower lip and looking away from him, out the window at the nondescript miles of highway.
“What?”
“I have an idea. And I don’t want you to shoot it down. I want you to think about it, okay?”
Deuce mumbled something unintelligible.
“Will you think about it?”
“Yeah.”
“But before I tell you my idea I have a tiny confession.”
At that Deuce looked at her again.
“I knew it was you,” she said. “That was offering the ride. I knew it was you, and I asked Mia to respond because I wasn’t sure you’d want to ride with me.”
Deuce forced himself not to smile. “So that look you gave me back at the Hub …”
“Best acting I’ve done all year,” she admitted.
“It wasn’t all that good,” he lied.
Zora punched him in the arm. “Shut up. You didn’t know.”
“Nah, I didn’t know,” he said. Their eyes met and held for so long that Zora blushed, her gaze dropping to her lap. Good thing too, since he might have run off the road otherwise.
Deuce wanted to ask her why she’d pretended, but he knew. As much as she was outside of his comfort zone, he was probably way out of hers as well.
“What’s your idea?” he asked instead.
“I was thinking that maybe …” Zora sighed deeply. “That we could pretend that night didn’t happen. And just … begin again.”
“I don’t want to pretend that night never happened,” Deuce said right away. “But, I do want to …”
“Begin again?” she said, that warm husky voice of hers lowering even more.
Damn, she was sexy as hell.
“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s do that.”
Zora turned in her seat and extended a hand. Deuce took it. It was small and warm. He didn’t want to let it go.
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Zora Diallo.”
Chapter 3
Deuce woke up to a stiff neck and back, and the blaring, aggressive cheerfulness of a Disney movie theme song. Opening his eyes, he realized he’d fallen asleep in the home theater, and now it was morning. On the carpeted floor, a few feet away, his baby brother Landyn was walking around in circles, wearing only a diaper and t-shirt, babbling nonsensically, and shaking his bottle like a pint-sized dictator.
A few feet away, his sister Jasmin was drawing something, her brows furrowed in concentration. And Kaden, his other brother was watching the movie, sitting so close to the screen, he had to let his head fall all the way back to look up at it.
Staggering to his feet, Deuce walked over to Kaden and smacked him on the side of the head.
“Too close, man,” he said. “Move on back to the seats.”
Kaden, eyes still glued to the screen, got up and backed himself into the front row, collapsing into one of the extra-wide, plush seats that had been Deuce’s bed for the evening.
Still circling and trying to loosen his neck, Deuce wandered out of the theater and down the hallway toward the foyer. He hadn’t made it to his actual bed the night before, but planned to do so right now. First, he would have to call his mother. He hadn’t given her the heads-up that he was planning to stay at his father’s place, and had no doubt she was going to give him the business.
But he’d had a change of plans once Zora came over. After Christmas dinner with his mom, aunts and grandmother, he’d driven more than an hour to Jersey and visited w
ith the rest of his family for a while. He gave the kids their gifts and spent some time playing with his siblings, then finally admitted to himself why he’d come in the first place. Zora lived only about fifteen miles from his father’s house.
What you up to? he’d asked when he called her.
Not much. Hanging out.
Come hang out here.
Come get me, she said.
And so, he had.
Now, on his way up to his bedroom suite, Deuce bumped into his stepmother, heading downstairs, a bounce in her step.
“Your Dad called your mother last night,” Robyn said. “Let her know you were with us, and that you’re okay. But you should probably call her yourself once you’ve had a chance to eat something.”
“Yup.”
Robyn ran a hand over his head as he passed her. “And maybe get a haircut while you’re here? Your father’s going in a little while. You can tag along with him.”
“Yeah. I will.”
Deuce made his way to the bedroom suite that was his whenever he stayed at his father’s place. It used to be the master, but when Robyn and his dad got married, she moved them down to the other end of the hall to what used to be one of the guest suites, because it was closer to the kids’ rooms and on the sunnier side of the house overlooking the pool. That cleared the way for Deuce to luck up and get a space that was equivalent in size to a small apartment.
After he laid it on thick with Robyn about the need for someplace quiet and private to study, and to just get away from the hectic noise of the household, she had convinced his father to let him get it decorated. Now it was laid out like an apartment, with a distinct bedroom, separated from the living room where he had even managed to get the decorators to include a mini-bar, cleverly concealed in a credenza.
Once he saw the completed renovations, his father had looked at Deuce and smirked.
You need peace and quiet to study, huh?
And the very next day, someone had come to remove the lock on the main door to the suite, and even the one separating the living from the bedroom. His father had never explicitly prevented him from having female guests, and so Deuce often had. But the only people he was guaranteed to keep out were his younger siblings, because they hadn’t yet figured out that his authority didn’t carry the same weight as that of their parents. His father and Robyn on the other hand, were live threats to him getting too carried away with anyone he might invite upstairs.
Last night, he hadn’t invited Zora up, but when the kids went to bed he led her to the home theater. The house was quiet and secure; the dinner guests were gone and the houseguests in their rooms. Though it was only about ten-thirty, everyone was bushed from the long day. Christmas “dinner” at his father’s house usually started as brunch and continued until eight–thirty or so when there were drinks and dessert; and then another hour of socializing on the patio.
It’s hard for a man to be sexy and funny at the same time, Zora said, while she watched Jaime Foxx onscreen. But he pulls it off sometimes.
He watched the movie with her only half-heartedly at first, because he was dying to touch her, dying to kiss her. But she wasn’t giving out those signals and about an hour in, he gave up and watched the movie, pulling Zora’s legs to rest across his lap.
Around eleven-fifty, Zora caught sight of the time, let loose a curse, and told him she had to get home. So, Deuce drove her, a tight, dull ache at his groin that didn’t ease up until he had dropped her off and was on his way back to the house. When he got there, he grabbed a couple of beers from the patio bar, some leftovers from the kitchen, started another movie and watched it until he fell asleep.
After a quick shower, Deuce headed back downstairs to the patio where his stepmother and the kids had assembled for breakfast. The other houseguests, Robyn’s brother and his woman, and her mother with her gentleman friend had not yet made an appearance. Just as he was about to sit, his father came in, grabbed a waffle from the table, and said he was heading out to get his hair cut.
“You comin’?” he asked Deuce.
Nodding, he shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth and followed his father out to the front. When they were standing in front of the car, Deuce was surprised to have the keys tossed his way.
“You drive. I feel like riding today.”
They pulled out of the driveway, Deuce aware of his father’s eyes on him as he maneuvered the Maybach through the wrought iron gates.
“How’s school?”
He shrugged. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know,” his father said. “Unless you tell me.”
“It’s cool. Nothing to report.”
“Nothing to report, huh? You know I only ask because …”
“I know.” Deuce said. “Because of last time.”
‘Last time’ was his nightmarish first semester of freshman year at Notre Dame where apparently, even before he arrived, a few people had been nursing a fair amount of resentment that someone like him—from a family that was more than well-off—had scored a full scholarship to play football. It was the first time Deuce could remember his father’s name being a drawback instead of a considerable benefit.
At his first day at practice—which was late in the summer, even before classes started—his welcome gift was a literal pile of shit in his locker. And it went on from there. His gear was mysteriously misplaced, his cleats damaged, the numbers ripped from his jersey … and that was only in addition to the almost constant barrage of daily slights and insults.
But he was willing to ride it out, because if you played the game, you knew football culture was different. You didn’t whine to the coach because someone was delivering hard knocks, whether on or off the field. Deuce knew that if he manned up, handled it, and never complained, he would eventually earn the respect of his teammates, most of whom weren’t participating in the hazing, but just watching it from the sidelines to see how he coped.
Then in a moment of frustration, he mentioned an incident—that one involving two dead mice hanging by their necks in his locker—to his mother. And in a way that was completely unlike her, she had gradually and gently teased out the full story of the harassment that had been going on since he arrived on campus. She listened, and said very little.
The next thing Deuce knew, his father was calling him to ask how he was, and what he wanted to do. Together, they agreed he would ride it out, but that if it should ever get to a point where he wanted to quit, he’d be the one to call it.
That wasn’t good enough for his mother.
Not even two days after the call with his father, his mother was on a plane headed to South Bend, Indiana. And one day after that, she had withdrawn Deuce from the university, making a huge stink in the process.
I shouldna never trusted your ass to take care of this! she screamed at his father on the phone when they were back in New York. You think I’ma let my kid go to college to be abused by folks?
Once her tirade was over, Deuce had a separate conversation with his father. But if he thought he was about to be comforted for his ordeal, he had another think coming.
What did we decide?
That I would stick it out, and …
So why are you back home? Did you change your mind?
Nah! But Ma …
You’re not her little boy anymore, Deuce, his father said. You decide. And stand up for yourself! Be respectful to her, always. But you decide as a man. You hear me? Don’t let that shit happen again.
It was a lesson he never forgot, and hell he was only eighteen at the time. But after a lifetime of placating his mother to avoid her flying off the handle, the decision to leave Notre Dame hadn’t been a hard one. And once he walked away, and because of the way he walked away, going back hadn’t been an option.
So, with only two weeks before the start of the second semester of freshman year, strings had been pulled to get him into Penn State. If he wanted to play ball, he would have to be a walk-on, but it was implied that he would be v
ery welcome on the team. The program had lost a lot of talent in recent years and the school wasn’t the football player magnet that it used to be, so Deuce could have played. But he didn’t want to.
Though he had always liked playing ball, he had never loved playing ball.
“School is a’ight,” he said now, a little more forcefully. “It’s all good.”
“All good?”
“Yeah, man. It’s good. Although …”
“Although …?”
He looked away from the road for a moment to glance at his father who was staring him down in that way he had. Chris Scaife Sr. was the only person whose stares made him feel like he was about to be found out, and called out. Even when he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I think I might leave the Range Rover home and take the Beemer.”
At this, his father turned around in his seat, his scrutiny even more intense. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s … you know, too much.”
“You damn near begged for that car …”
“I know.”
“… and I didn’t even want to get it …”
“I know.”
“And now you want to what? Park it under a tree in my driveway and take the old whip?”
“It’s not that old,” Deuce mumbled.
“That’s bullshit. What happened?”
Sighing, Deuce allowed the whole story to come spilling out. “I don’t want to be attracting that kind of negative attention,” he concluded. “It ain’t even worth it. I mean, I like the car, but …”
“Wait. Don’t tell me you’re that soft.”
“I ain’t hardly soft,” Deuce said, bristling at the suggestion. “I just don’t need to set myself up to be a target.”
His father laughed. “I hate to break it to you, man. But life already did that. When you were born Black and a male, that’s what set you up. That’s something you ain’t gon’ be able to shed, no matter what car you drive.”
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