Chapter 18 #2
“Oh wow. You got it bad.” I pulled my eyes from the screen to look at her. “He’s amazing, and you two are the cutest.” My vision darted to the screen to make sure the game wasn’t back from timeout before returning to her. “I love this for you, Aaliyah.”
“Thank you.” She swooned. “And you know what I love for you?”
“My team could still come away with a win?”
“Yes, and you meeting someone who looks at you like you hung the moon and the stars.”
I rolled my eyes. “Liyah, please.”
“I’m serious! Like I’ve said at least three times since my birthday, Lamar is your future husband.”
“Husband?!” The commentators announced that the timeout was over, but I was still staring at my best friend in shock. “You saw us together once!”
“And that’s all I needed to see.”
Trying not to smile, I rolled my eyes. “You know you’re projecting, right?”
Lowering her voice as her boyfriend approached the table, she said, “And you know you’re in denial!”
“You see that play?” Ahmad asked as he took his seat, slipping his arm around Aaliyah. “I can’t believe that shit worked.”
“I know!” I exclaimed. “I really thought Martin was going to kick it!”
“Same, same,” Aaliyah added, her lips pursed thoughtfully.
Amused, I shook my head. She’d missed the whole play, but I opted not to call her out. Three minutes later, the entire sports bar erupted into a mix of cheers and boos as the Wasps won the game.
The waitress stopped at our table. “Do you need any to-go cups or anything?”
“Just the check for me, please,” I requested.
She pointed at Ahmad. “He’s already taken care of the bill.”
I turned to him. “Thank you! You don’t have to pay for mine though. What do I owe you?”
He shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m not going to pay for ours and not pay for yours, too.”
I was going to argue to reimburse him, but the kindness in his smile forced me to relent. “Well, thank you.”
After a round of hugs, they insisted on walking me to my car. We said goodbye for a final time, and I went home to mentally prepare for the work week.
“Hello?” I answered the phone a couple of hours later when I saw Lamar’s name flashing on the screen.
“What’s up, Jazz?”
“Not much,” I replied, putting the last of the graded papers in a folder. “Just finished uploading the grades in the system. What are you up to?”
“Just got home from Vinnie’s place—well, his girlfriend’s place. We watched the game over there.”
“He’s on the practice squad, too?”
“No, not anymore. He didn’t make it out of camp. Got cut last week.”
“Oh wow, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, it’s part of the game. He’s trying to figure out what he’s going to do next. He’s waiting to hear back from Florida.”
“I hope it works out for him.”
“Yeah, me, too. But I want to know if you watched the game.”
“I did.”
“What were your thoughts?”
I launched into my analysis of the game while he listened, agreeing periodically. “What do you think?” I asked in conclusion.
“I think you’re smart as hell and you know your stuff,” he responded softly.
“I do.”
“That was the second thing I noticed about you.”
“What was the first?”
“Your beauty. It was the locs, the eyes, the smile. Not to mention you’re thick as fuck. So I noticed you before I even sat down good.”
I grinned. “Ahhh, so that’s why you sat next to me.”
“That’s not why I sat down, but it’s definitely why I stayed.”
“I’m glad you like what you saw.”
“I like what I saw, heard, smelled, felt, tasted. You were hitting all my senses. And you do it every single time I see you.”
Butterflies swirled in my belly, and the words were flying out of my mouth before I could overthink it. “Well, I hope I get the chance to do it again soon.”
That was the best I was going to do. I wasn’t going to ask him out. I wasn’t going to beg him to see me.
If it’s going to happen, he’ll have to—
“What about Saturday?” he suggested, interrupting my internal dialogue.
“Saturday sounds great,” I answered, trying to temper my excitement.
“I would get to you by four at the latest. Or if you want to come up here, I could be at my place by two, two thirty.”
“I don’t mind coming up there.”
“Okay, here it is. I’ll put a plan together for Saturday. And you can let me know what you want to do, and we can do that on Sunday.”
There was only one thing I could think about doing while in Baltimore.
Lamar Anderson.
I cleared my throat. “Whatever you want to do with me in Baltimore works for me.”
He groaned. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Don’t say it like what?” I asked innocently.
“I know your sexy ass is doing this on purpose.”
“All I said was that whatever you want to do with me this weekend, I’d be open to doing.” I paused. “Wide open.”
He groaned again. “Jazz, I think you’re trying to get my dick hard.”
“What?” Trying not to laugh, I feigned confusion. “I’m just trying to confirm our weekend plans.”
“Two can play that game,” he said in a sexy, warning tone.
My lower body clenched.
We talked for about fifteen more minutes, and then we said good night because we both had early mornings.
The life of a high school teacher is not for the weak.
I was physically tired when I woke up in the morning. But every time the conversation with Lamar crossed my mind, I got a little burst of energy.
Ben Riker, the government and history teacher, knocked on my open door a few hours later. “Ms. Payne?”
“Come in, Mr. Riker,” I called out from the chair in the corner of the room.
“I see you’re hiding in the blind spot,” he said, laughing as he walked in.
“It’s my free period, and I decided I wanted to take a break.”
“Is it because of that fight?”
My eyes bulged. “Yes! It hasn’t even been a full week of school yet. How is there an issue already?”
He crossed his arms. “Apparently it’s something that rolled over from camp.”
“If they were beefin’ at a camp, then they should’ve been beefin’ at that camp. Why would they bring this to my classroom? That’s sad.”
“Was it upsetting you and your fellow educators?”
“Yes because it’s like damn, if you can’t go to school, where the hell can you go?” He started laughing, which caused me to laugh.
“No, but seriously, it is sad,” I continued. “They could’ve gotten hurt. They could’ve hurt someone else.” I shook my head. “I just need it to not happen again.”
“I’m glad it was just hair pulling and name-calling.”
“Fights these days get scary real quick.”
“Yeah, because people want to bring guns and knives and bags of rocks. No one wants to use hands. And it’s not a real fight if it’s not hand-to-hand.”
“Bags of rocks?” My brows furrowed and I made a face. “What did you have going on in school that ‘bags of rocks’ came to mind?”
“You’re focused on the wrong thing! But for your information, when I was coming up, we did what we had to do.” He chuckled. “I know you don’t know anything about fighting.”
Olivia Chapman and her crew popped in my mind.
I got up from the chair and crossed the room to my desk since the bell was going to ring any minute. “I just hope they work things out because when something like that happens, no one wins.”
He nodded. “Speaking of wins”—his grin widened—“I just came in here to let you know the Wasps won.” He rubbed his hands together. “So I believe you owe me a dollar.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled a dollar out of my wallet to hand to him. “The Monarchs will come back from this. By the end of the season, they’ll have a better record than the Wasps.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He held the dollar up toward the light, pretending to check to see if it was counterfeit. “We’ll see,” he said.
“Yes, we will.”
He was almost out of the classroom when the other English teacher, Alexa Rae, popped her head in the doorway. “I see Mr. Riker came to collect his dollar from you, too,” she stated.
“The Wasps get one win, and here he comes,” I replied as he ignored us.
She lifted a fist in the air. “Go Monarchs!”
“Go Monarchs!” I returned.
By the time I got home from work, it was after six. I was hungry, tired, and ready to go to sleep. I ate quickly, showered, and was climbing into bed when I got a phone call from Lamar.
I wiggled my toes under the covers. “Well, hello,” I answered cheerfully.
“Well, hello to you,” he returned, sounding just as cheerful. “What are you up to?”
“I just got in bed.”
He laughed. “I knew I needed to try to catch you before eight! Something told me to call now instead of waiting to get home.”
“Well, I’m glad you did because I was just about to text you.”
“How was your day?” he asked.
“It was eventful. I mean, mostly it was a regular day. But two kids were fighting in my classroom, so it was hectic.”
“Are you okay?”
“Oh yeah, it wasn’t anything too wild … it was open-hand slaps and hair pulling. But it was startling to me because it hasn’t even been a full week of school! So now I’m having to write incident reports and converse with the parents about the suspension.” I shook my head. “Just extra work.”
“Extra work at the school leaves less time for you to write your book.”
“I know.”
“You gotta find a way to make time for it,” he stated. “You should always make time for what’s important to you.”
“You’re right.”
“And selfishly, I want to know if the private investigator finds what she’s looking for.”
My heart thumped in my chest. He remembered.
I hadn’t realized how silent I’d become until he said, “That is what it’s still about, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered softly. Warmth washed over me. “I just … You remembered?”
“Of course. I can’t wait to read it. And according to Aunt Addy, you have less than four months to get it done.”
I put my hand to my chest and closed my eyes. “I’ll get it done.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “How are you? What are you up to? How was practice?”
“Practice was really good. They put me to work. My body is tired.”
“You have tomorrow off, so you can actually get some rest.”
“Oh yeah…”
We talked for twenty more minutes before we said good night.
I plugged my phone into the charger and just stared at the ceiling for a few minutes.
I didn’t know why him remembering what my story was about had hit me the way that it did.
But the way it made me feel momentarily short-circuited my brain.
I can’t wait to see him this weekend, I thought as I drifted to sleep with a smile.
Lamar Anderson: I have some news. Give me a call as soon as you can.
I saw his text as I was leaving school after an ordinary Tuesday. It was almost three o’clock, and the text had come in around lunchtime. It was his off day, but he’d never texted me during the school day before. I made the call as soon as I backed out of my parking spot.
He answered on the first ring. “Jazz!”
Just hearing his voice put a smile on my face. “Hey! What’s going on? Everything okay?”
“I’m good. I’m real good.” He let out an enthusiastic laugh. “How are you?”
His excitement was infectious. “I’m ready to hear your news!”
There was a dramatic pause. “I’m being elevated to the main roster for Sunday’s game!”
I gasped and started banging the steering wheel. “What? Oh my God, Lamar! That’s amazing! Congratulations!”
“Thank you! I mean, I’m hype. I didn’t think it was going to happen, to be honest. This is just some wild shit. I’ll be the backup’s backup now that they’ve activated me.”
He was talking so fast, I giggled.
“This is amazing!” I exclaimed. “You put in that work, so it makes sense that they would call you up and activate you. You should be so excited and so proud of yourself. I know I am, and I know your family is!”
“Oh, they don’t know. Nobody knows.”
I scrunched my face in confusion. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait … what?”
“It’s taken everything in me not to call everybody I fucking know and tell them.
I don’t even be on social media like that, and I wanted to post something.
But it’s Tuesday. Sunday is a long way away.
Things change all the time. I’ve been activated, but I don’t know if I’m second or third on the depth chart.
It’s unlikely I’ll get any time on the field, so I’ll let them know at the end of the week.
I wanna keep this thing to myself for a minute. ”
“But you told me?”
“I know I can trust you.”
Feeling all fluttery inside, I bit my lip. “Yeah.”
“That’s why I told you. That, and since I’ll be traveling with the team Saturday, I have to cancel our date,” he continued.
My flutters dissipated. Damn.