We collided hard, knocking over the chair behind us. I hit the floor, but she came down with me, swinging and I swung back.
All the hurt, the embarrassment, the betrayal came out through my fists. We rolled across the floor, grabbing, pulling, hitting anything we could reach.
“Y’all stop!” Trisha screamed.
I heard drawers slamming, her voice rising. “I’m calling the police!”
We didn’t stop. Kel swung, catching my cheek, but I came back harder, tackling her down, my fist connecting again.
Then something cracked across the back of my head.
Everything went black and for the first time since London told me Stella was coming to the wedding…my thoughts finally went quiet.
Chapter eight
Man Overboard
I should’ve been sleep. Instead, I was hunched over my dining room table, the low hum of the refrigerator the only thing keeping me company. My neck was starting to ache, but I snapped another translucent blue piece into place anyway, obsessing over a Lego set like the plastic skyscraper was going to pay my bills in the morning.
Sleep and I hadn’t been on speaking terms lately.
The silence in the house was the kind of heavy that no white noise machine or late-night TV could touch. My mama used to stay in my ear about it. She’d tell me my player ways were goingto catch up with me one day, that the clubs would stop calling and the bed would stay cold and I’d be left sitting in a quiet house wondering where all that time went. I used to laugh her off. Thirty had a way of making a man stop laughing.
Looking at my reflection in the dark patio glass I realized later in life had arrived right on schedule.
In my twenties the field was wide open, and I ran it without looking back. Now that I was actually ready to pull the jersey off and settle down, the only woman I wanted couldn’t stand the sight of me.
Thinking about Nique always pulled me back to the beginning.
Fourteen years old at a Kappa League party over in the Bottom. Nique was there with London and Nel like the three of them came as a package deal. Back then Paris was still too little to be out in the mix.
It was Kyson’s idea to go over and show face.
“Y’all live across the street from my cousin Eli, right?”Kyson asked, already leaning in with that grin that usually got him whatever he wanted.
“She does. We’re over in Midtown,”Nique said, stepping right to the front. She didn’t have that hard edge yet, just a sharp tongue and eyes that saw clean through you the second they landed on you.
The conversation took off between the four of them, easy and loud. They were going back and forth about which high school had the best band and who was going to take the city title that year. I stayed in the back with my hands in my pockets, leaning against the wall. I didn’t have a dog in that fight. Going to private school made me an outsider to all that public school pride.
Then Nique’s eyes landed on me. “You go to Davidson too?”
I shook my head.
Kyson barked out a laugh and slapped my shoulder. “Man, this nigga go to UMS-Wright. He too fancy for us.”
I braced for the eye roll. Instead, her eyebrows shot up. “For real? That’s my dream school. Their track team is a beast.”She said it with this quiet admiration that caught me off guard. “My grandma tried to look into the tuition but it was just too expensive.”
I finally found my voice.“I run track.”
“Oh word?”A challenge flickered behind her eyes. “What’s your time?”
That was it. From then on, every time Kyson and I went over to Eli’s house we made sure we were outside when the girls came around. One Saturday when the humidity was so thick you could wear it like a second skin Nique challenged me to a race down the block.
I won.Barely.
I had gone into it thinking outrunning a girl would be easy work. Nique was a different kind of monster on the asphalt. Fast and focused and not the least bit shaken by the fact that she almost beat me. I had been gone for her from the moment we collapsed at the finish line, fighting for air and laughing through the burn in our lungs, neither one of us ready to admit we were impressed.
I just wish I hadn’t been so damn quiet back then. If I had told her how I felt instead of playing it safe we might be in a completely different place right now. I waited too long and by the time we were sixteen Prez had already claimed the spot I was too shy to ask for.