Chapter 24 Maverick
CHAPTER 24
MAVERICK
W agwan.”
I deliver the greeting with a smile at Hendrix’s front door.
“Wagwan,” she replies, her mouth curving as she steps back so I can enter her apartment.
“Just gimme a sec to grab my bag.” She turns away, but I gently clasp her wrist to stop her. She looks at me over her shoulder, a question in her eyes.
“Hold on,” I say, pulling her into a hug. “I’m glad to see you.”
I keep it loose, fighting the urge to crush her softness against me. She smells so damn good, I briefly tighten my arm around her waist and dip my head to catch the scent at her neck. It’s something fresh and clean, with top notes of fuck me against a wall . I’m instantly hard, and keep my arm at her waist, not willing to let her go yet, but insert a few inches between us so she doesn’t feel the effect she has on me from jump.
It’s my first time seeing her since the trip to Colorado. Despite her objections on the phone, she looks beautiful. I drink her in, noting that her hair is still damp from the fresh wash and tamed into two braids, the tips of which brush her shoulders. Her skin is flawless and a deep, luminous shade of chestnut brown. She must only be wearing lip balm or something simple because the natural chocolate-rose color of her lips is in evidence. I think of A Different World reruns when she smiles. She has a Kim Reese grin; wide and blindingly white and infectious. How could anyone not smile back at this woman?
She licks her lips and pulls out of our hug.
“Um, it’s good to see you again, too.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder toward the floating stairs that lead up to a loft. “Like I said, need to grab my bag.”
“I’ll be right here,” I tell her, taking a seat and spreading my arms across the back of the couch.
Her apartment is exactly what I would expect, but also different from what I envisioned. A cream-colored couch dominates the front room, its overstuffed cushions punctuated with pops of fluffy pillows in shades of cool green, muted violet, and pink. Dark hardwood floors are splashed with area rugs along the same color palette. A brass-toned bar sits against one wall, fully stocked with bottles of liquor and glasses.
The loft above is walled and I can’t make out much detail, but I’m certain that’s where she sleeps. I’d love to be invited up there someday. To be invited into her bed. Into her life. It will never happen if she doesn’t know I want it to. That’s what tonight is for. I know giving me a shot involves risk for her, but I want to convince her it could be worth it. Risk is coded into my DNA. I’m completely comfortable with it like a boa constrictor you keep as a house pet. I fool myself into thinking I’m safe long enough to do what needs to be done.
And this needs to be done.
When she comes back, she’s topped her two braids with a dark blue Braves baseball cap. Her denim romper shorts fit loosely everywhere but the ass. The material clings to the alluring curvature of rounded hips and butt, hitting midway down her smooth, thick, firm thighs. Oversized hoops brush her cheeks, and a gold ankle bracelet rests just above her Samba Adidas.
“Ready?” She tightens the strap on a Prada cross-body bag. Fiddles with gold bangles stacked at her wrists. Tugs at the end of one braid on her shoulder. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was fidgeting. I’d think she was nervous.
“Yeah, ready.” I nod toward the door. “Lead the way to this culinary institution.”
She exits the apartment, locking up before we start down the hallway. I let my hand rest at the small of her back. She’s warm and soft beneath my palm. I want to turn back around and say fuck wherever we’re going . I’d rather hole up in her apartment all night while we get acquainted with each other’s bodies. Trade memories, fears, dreams in a cocoon of privacy. She tenses beneath my hand before she steps away from my touch.
We got a ways to go before we get there, but that’s okay. Hendrix will be worth it.
Once in the car, she leans forward and whispers the address to the driver. They laugh quietly for a second before she sits back and raises the privacy partition.
“What’s so funny?” I ask. “Where we going?”
“You’ll see.” She smiles, eyes lit with mischief. “It’s not that big of a deal. This place is nothing fancy. Believe me. The opposite. I’m just guessing you’ve never been to one.”
“To one? So it’s a chain?”
She zips a finger across her lips. “Talk about something else.”
So I do. While the city’s lights blur past the windows, I focus all my attention on Hendrix. The deal she’s been working on for her client Imani. An update on her mother’s condition, which seems to be holding steady as of now. When she tells me Aspire decided to take on the cannabis founder, I’m proud that I had at least a little to do with that move. We even debrief about the last episode of Top Boy we watched. We’re now into episodes I hadn’t seen yet, and the storytelling is fantastic.
I’m distracted as the car comes to a stop. I peer through the car window at the restaurant’s iconic bright yellow and black sign.
“Waffle House?” I ask, turning a smile on her.
“You said you didn’t need it to be fancy.” She shrugs and grins. “And I did promise I’d take you to an Atlanta institution. Have you ever eaten at one?”
“No, but I’m starving so let’s do it.”
She is the perfect blend of highbrow and hood-brow. At ease socializing and negotiating deals in rarefied air with the world’s wealthiest, but then completely comfortable in a Waffle House dressed down on a Saturday night. She moves between wildly different spaces, never pretending to be anyone but herself. Her level of authenticity is rare and compelling. She’s as at home in her own skin as anyone I’ve ever met.
She hops out of the SUV before I can help her down.
Of course she does.
“We’ll be maybe an hour or so,” I tell the driver Bolt arranged for me while I’m in the city.
“Yes, sir,” the driver says. “I’ll wait here.”
Here is a parking lot with cracks in the asphalt. It looks like it could use a facelift, contrasting with the black Bentley Bentayga and its tinted windows and costly rims.
“You’re not coming in?” Hendrix asks the driver. “Matthew, was it?”
Surprise flickers over the driver’s face momentarily before he schools it into the professional mask. “Um, yes. It’s Matthew.”
“You’re not hungry?” Hendrix persists.
“I’ll be fine,” Matthew says. “Thanks for checking. Unless you need me, Mr. Bell.”
“No, you can wait here,” I tell him. “Thanks, though.”
As soon as we enter, the smell of fried… everything slaps me across the face. It’s past eleven o’clock, and the place is packed. There’s one empty booth at the very back, which the hostess, a woman I put maybe in her early sixties, shows us to.
“Come on, babies,” she coos at us, shuffling past the packed booths. But then she tramples the “somebody’s grandma” image by hurling a stream of cuss words at the cook behind the grill.
“Motherfucker get on my damn nerves,” Ms. Pearl, according to her nametag, mutters as we sit. “Slow ass. Y’all know what you want?”
“No, ma’am,” Hendrix replies, lifting her menu. “Well, I do, but it’s his first time. So I’ll let him look.”
“Can’t go wrong with the hash browns,” she tells me. “Try ’em all the way at least once before you die.”
“What’s ‘all the way’?” I ask.
“You get ’em with hickory-smoked ham, melted cheese, and jalapeno peppers,” Ms. Pearl says. “And some grilled mushrooms and diced tomatoes.”
I frown. “Oh, that sounds—”
“Sausage gravy,” she continues, “grilled onions, and then top it with chili.”
“And have a paramedic on standby,” Hendrix jokes. “I think we should ease him in. Give us a sec.”
Pearl shuffles back to the kitchen, yelling at the cook and leaving a trail of obscenities in her wake.
“So what do you recommend?” I ask, scouring the menu for some item my chef wouldn’t judge me for. No such luck.
“Well, you do have to have the hash browns,” Hendrix says, her expression absolutely serious. “I think a good initiation for you is the All-Star. You can’t go wrong with that.”
“What’s the All-Star?”
“You get eggs and toast, a side of grits. You can choose between hash browns and a tomato, which… duh. You getting the hashbrowns. I suggest scattered. It comes with a waffle. Try pecan.”
“Is that what you’re having?”
“No, I’m getting a waffle sandwich. You take your eggs and bacon and smush them between two waffles. I’ve had just about everything on this menu at least once. Been coming here since college. We used to hit it after the club all the time. Absorb some of the alcohol,” she says with a wink.
A sound at the front of the store distracts me from the menu. Someone turns on music. A group of teenagers or maybe they’re in their early twenties. Two of the girls stand up in the booth and start dancing. Their friends stay seated, but sing along with a Tyler, The Creator song.
The dingy dining room is like something out of a movie. Every area of the restaurant seems to have its own tableau. The dancing music corner. A fight breaking out behind the counter between two employees. A spades tournament spread across three tables, plates of food interspersed with stacks of cards. It’s colorful and animated and electric.
“It’s like this all the time?” I ask.
“The later, the better. ’Bout two a.m. is the best.” She rests her elbows on the battered tabletop. “You know Atlanta has the highest concentration of Waffle Houses in the country. Can’t throw a stick without hitting a Waffle House around here. Their headquarters are in Norcross. This one is my fave. We’d drive past three to get to this one.”
“College Park?” I ask, remembering a sign on the way in.
“It’s Collipark,” she says, her grin mischievous. “If you’re really ATL.”
“You weren’t even born here,” I tease.
“Most people aren’t, but this feels as much like home as anywhere in the world.” Her smile melts away. “It’s hard to imagine living back in my small town in North Carolina, but I will while my aunt recovers. I’d move my mom here if she’d let me.”
Ms. Pearl returns to the table to take our orders, and I note Hendrix gets an extra All-Star meal. I guess she is hungry, but I know better than to comment on the food a woman orders. None of my business.
“Thank you for taking time from your self-care night to come out with me,” I say.
“What was I supposed to do? Let you end up in some bougie restaurant with perfectly prepared steaks and a Michelin star when all this”—she sweeps an arm to encompass the grease-splattered chaos of the Waffle House—“could be yours?”
“You saved me.”
She dips her head graciously. “You’re welcome. What would you do without me?”
I actually hadn’t planned to accept the invitation from Ezra Stern for tonight’s fundraiser, but then I saw the Black Business post yesterday, capturing Zere on what is, as far as I know, her first date since our breakup. Bolt sent me a link to the post. No comment, of course. A man of few words except when I want his ass to be quiet. Then he’s always got shit to say.
Seeing Zere dating freed something up inside me. It further settled that I’m ready to move on with the woman seated across from me. I don’t care that I’m probably the last man she should date if she wants to work with Zere. I don’t care that it might require us both to sacrifice and make compromises. If she’s willing, so am I. And I won’t know if she’s willing if I don’t try.
“What’re you thinking about so hard?” Hendrix asks, slanting a look at me from under long lashes.
“How pretty you look without makeup,” I say. Her face turns as close to bashful as a women this bold can be. “I mean, you look pretty with it, too, of course, but you have such a natural glow.”
“It’s melanin,” she laughs, lowering her head and running a finger along the raggedy edge of the aged booth table. “And my glass-skin care routine. That doesn’t hurt.”
“Well, it’s working. You look about nineteen.”
“Now you lying.” She rolls her eyes and grins.
“Since we’re talking about age…” I venture. “Did Zere invite you to her fortieth birthday party next week in New York?”
The sweet curve of her lips levels, the openness of moments before replaced by a guarded expression.
“She did,” Hendrix says, still not looking up at me.
“You going?”
The silence gathering between us is weighted by all the words and sentiments we haven’t spoken; things I’d like to say tonight, if she’ll listen. If she’ll let me.
“Um, I’m still deciding,” Hendrix answers, finally glancing up from the table and finding my eyes with hers. “You?”
I sense that my answer will impact hers. If I’m attending, I can bet my Bugatti that she won’t.
“I don’t think so.” I shrug. “Not that it would be awkward. She and I are on good terms.”
It’s technically true. Things are still a little tense between Zere and me, but damn. She invited me to her party.
“Just busy?” Hendrix asks.
“I think I’m on the West Coast that weekend,” I lie.
“Oh, gotcha.” I can’t interpret her look as relief or disappointment.
“You joined the four-oh club yet?” I ask.
“Yup. You?”
“Last year. Zere invited maybe two hundred of my ‘closest’ friends for a party at the house in Miami.” I flash a wry grin. “How ’bout you? You do anything special?”
There’s reminiscence in her extended sigh. “My fortieth birthday was amazing. I flew me and my besties Soledad and Yasmen to Dubai. It was spectacular. Spared no expense, drank like a fish.”
Defiance enters her eyes. “Hooked up with anything breathing.”
“Good for you,” I reply neutrally. Is she saying that to put me off? I don’t care who she fucked before. Once I have her, all other pussies and dicks will be laid to rest. “It was just the three of you?”
“That’s all I needed. I’m closer to them than anyone. My other friends in Atlanta threw me a huge party, but forty was big for me. I wanted to turn up, yes, but I also wanted to reflect. Yas and Sol are the full range of friendship.”
“You guys grew up together?”
“You’d think, but no. We’ve only known each other a few years. We met in a yoga class and just clicked. I knew very soon after we met that these were my people, and we’ve only gotten closer year after year.”
“You said they have kids.” I raise my voice a little to be heard over the group singing Keyshia Cole’s “Love” at the other end of the dining room.
“Yes, I’m always on rich auntie duty,” she laughs. “Yas has two kids with her ex-ex-husband.”
“Ex-ex?”
“They divorced and remarried.”
“People do that in real life?”
“They did. They belonged together. It was obvious to everyone that they needed to reconcile, so we were all relieved when they got their shit together. And Sol has three daughters.”
“She’s married?”
“Divorced.” She screws up her face with disgust. “Her husband was a trash ass… Hmm, hmm, hmmm. He wasn’t good to her. And not your standard-issue trash. We talking embezzled money from work, cheated with his secretary, got a baby on his side piece, went to jail—”
“Wait. That’s some soap opera shit.”
“Oh, believe me. It was OTT drama, but it all happened to Sol,” Hendrix says, a rueful twist to her mouth. “It was hard as hell for her and the girls.”
“You and Yasmen were there for her,” I guess.
“Of course we were. They’re the sisters I never had. We ride for each other always.”
Ms. Pearl approaches the table, balancing loaded white Styrofoam plates on her arms.
“Here we go,” she says, laying out all the plates. A young man comes up behind her and puts the last of the items Hendrix ordered on the table.
“This looks delicious.” I grab the syrup and douse my pecan waffle. “Hungry as hell.”
“Me too,” Hendrix says. “Hold up. Be right back.”
She stands, grabs the second All-Star meal she ordered, and speed-walks up the aisle and out the door to the parking lot. When she reaches the Bentley, Matthew rolls down the window, grinning and looking half lovestruck when he accepts the plate of food. He watches her when she walks back to the diner, appreciation in his gaze. I can’t blame him. Even dressed down, she manages to look sophisticated. Fucking forty and looking that young and pretty and fly.
No, I can’t blame Matthew for looking at Hendrix that way, but if he keeps it up, dude will be out of a job. That’s my girl.
She just doesn’t know it yet.