Chapter 12
amelia
“Now, you know I don’t believe that shit for a second, right?”
My mouth dropped in a fake gasp – wait, not fake, just not like…
Okay.
Fake.
It was fake.
I was nowhere near surprised Claire wasn’t buying my “it’s nothing, really” insistence where Calvin was concerned when I barely believed it myself.
As much as I could though, I was enjoying the view from my riverfront home on Denial.
I shook my head, bumping her shoulder with mine as I leaned into her in our booth at Hideaway. “It has barely been a month since the breakup with Hunter. What kind of classy woman of high moral standard would I be if I was already moving on to someone else?” I asked, picking up my lemon drop.
“Okay, first of all, since when were you trying to be that? Second… I thought you fucked him on your kitchen counter a few weeks ago?”
I choked on the lemon drop.
“Well, yes,” I admitted, since she already knew all the details anyway. “But like… I’m trying to tighten up.”
“For what?”
“Life,” I laughed. “I don’t know… I just… I feel like, okay… it’s been a month… I’ve gone a week without crying about the breakup… okay, let’s put things back on track.”
Claire nodded. “Including this thing with you and the basketball player.”
“There’s no thing. Why are you and Kae trying so hard to make it a thing?”
Claire’s lips pressed together, eyes narrowed before she scoffed, suppressing a laugh. “Okay Amelia. Define it however you’d like. I’m listening.”
“We’re friends!”
“Me and you? For sure. For life,” Claire insisted, grabbing and squeezing my hand before I snatched it away from her.
“Me and Calvin, you knew what I meant!” I laughed as she covered her face, trying to hide her clear teasing.
“I’m just saying… your definition of friends is a lil’ different than what happens in my head when I think of that word. I mean… you and I are friends, and I’ve never been knee-deep in your p—”
“Sinclaire!” I squealed, eyes wide. “Why are you—hold on,” I muttered as my phone buzzed in my lap, and I picked it up to look at the screen.
Specifically… to read a text.
From… Calvin.
“See?” Sinclaire drawled, leaning into me to peek at the phone. “You’ve been showing every tooth in your mouth every time that phone goes off, all night.”
I shrugged. “I can’t help it, he’s funny!”
“And if you keep laughing, his stand up-routine is going take residence in your panties.”
I sucked my teeth. “I’ll have you know, he has not made a single attempt at sex since we exchanged numbers.”
To prove my point, I held up the screen, showing her the thread of messages between us from the past week.
It was quite random, actually.
… charmingly so.
Jokes about Arthur’s antics, complaints about what Fresh was out of, roasting each other’s food choices, complimenting design choices, music recommendations, basketball explanations...
Like friends.
Just friends.
It was refreshing.
And endearing.
“Wow,” Claire mused, nodding as she looked away from the phone, back to me. “That is not at all what I expected. That looks like our thread. And it’s way less problematic than our group chat with Kae.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” I laughed. “You thought I was lying?”
“Lying sounds so harsh,” she replied. “I would have said… deluding yourself?”
“Wooow.”
“Wait,” she said, grabbing my hand. “Not like in a bad way, just… we do that sometimes – convince ourselves that what we’re feeling isn’t what we’re feeling because we’re not “supposed” to be feeling it. You know what I mean?”
I scoffed. “All too well – I was very delusional with Hunter, self-imposed.”
Claire sighed. “How are you feeling about that now? We started talking about it and then took a left.”
“I’m okay – like I said – no tears for a whole week. I don’t miss him. I’m not really even angry about it – not on a day to day kind of thing at least. I’m good. Really.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “For real really, or your toxic positivity, fake-it-til-you-make-it really?”
“Real really,” I laughed. “Besides – I think I give up on toxic positivity – that shit doesn’t work when your life is actually in shambles.”
“No shit,” she quipped. “Why do you think I was ready to wring your neck when you were on that kumbaya shit after ol’ girl was copying my videos bar-for-bar and making more money off them than I was?”
“Uh, in my defense, you developed a stress ulcer and had the scariest panic attack I’ve ever seen before in my life – I thought you were going to die, friend.”
“Fair enough,” Claire admitted. “But can you see how that was not it now?”
I nodded. “Grudgingly, I do. And I’m sorry.”
“No worries – we’re all just muddling through the best we can,” she said, then glanced at her own phone as a notification came in. “Oh, my Proxy ride is here – are you sure you won’t just share the ride with me?”
I sucked my teeth. “It’s the complete opposite direction, and besides – it’s only like a ten minute walk from here.”
“Yeah, at night, in Old Heights.”
“Old Heights,” I mimicked, wrinkling my nose. “Okay snobbery.”
“It is not snobbery, thank you, it is simply common sense,” Claire argued. “Babe, there’s parts of Blackwood I don’t go without that thang on me either.”
I smirked. “Not gentrified enough for the big city girl?”
“Okay can you stop, with the bougie edit on me? Like I don’t literally make my living building and repairing stuff on camera? I’ll actually have you know, I’m looking at a rowhome… in Old Heights.”
My eyes went wide. “Reallllly?! We’re gonna be neighbors?!”
“I don’t know… it’s in really bad shape, but it would make great content,” she mused.
“Worse than the building I’m in?”
“Ames!” she laughed. “You’re in the Foundry – it’s a perfectly fine building, just old. It’s in good shape mostly. Just a little bit down Timberline though… those.”
“The rowhomes the teenagers around here claim are haunted?!”
“Yessss,” she replied. “Tell me that series wouldn’t go crazy!”
“Yeah, I see it now – you in your pink hard hat and belt… getting carted off to hell by Casper. That shit will instantly go viral.”
“Bye!” Claire laughed, standing from her seat. “Let me get out here before my ride leaves – also… bring your ass. We had one too many drinks for me to feel comfortable with you walking. And I’m not arguing with you, just come on.”
I rolled my eyes about it, but stood too, taking her up on the offer to share the Proxy ride. When I was already stepping through the door of the building five minutes later instead of just being halfway through my walk, I was very glad i had.
Maybe even more so when I rounded the corner for the elevator just as Calvin was stepping on.
He saw me as he turned to put his back to the elevator wall, grinned, and immediately reached out to press the button.
To close the elevator.
“Seriously?!” I yelled as he cackled loud enough for me to hear him through the metal doors. It didn’t take long at all for the elevator to come back since it was just one floor up, but it was still annoying.
Especially since I’d been lowkey happy to run into him.
Especially when his grinning face was the first thing I saw when the elevator opened on our floor.
“Boy get the fuck on somewhere,” I told him, pushing past his open arms as I silently warred with myself over the smile threatening to break free.
“Wait, don’t be mad,” he laughed as he followed me. “What’s the matter, you not in a playing mood?”
I huffed. “I was in a great mood, actually, until you pulled that shit.”
“Daaamn, I killed the vibe? My bad,” he told me as we reached our adjacent doors. “How can I make it up to you?”
“Hmmm,” I said with an exaggerated sigh, and a finger on my chin like I was actually thinking about it. “You could… go in your house and leave me alone?”
His grin faltered, and then his eyebrows furrowed as he fixed me with a worried gaze. “Hold up… you’re actually mad?”
I sucked my teeth. “No,” I admitted, chuckling as I fumbled with my keys. “That shit was annoying though.”
“My bad. Where you coming from this late, looking this good?”
“Drinks with a friend,” I answered, giving him a little up-and-down before I said, “same question for you.”
“Dinner meeting in Blackwood with my agents.”
“Agents… plural?”
“Yeah, kinda. Well – it’s an agency, and they handle their athletes like a group project… kinda. I don’t fully understand the business model, but it’s been working for them, and working for me, so… no complaints.”
I nodded. “Dinner is a good thing though, right?”
“Not getting dropped for misconduct is the good thing.”
I leaned against my –now open – doorframe, crossing my arms. “Misconduct… the big secret you can’t reveal?”
“What?” he chuckled. “I… I wouldn’t call it a big secret.”
“You treat it like one.”
His eyebrows went up. “Do I?”
I nodded.
“Oh. Damn. I just don’t really like talking about it, but I wouldn’t call it a secret – I told you I punched the coach. That shit was on live TV. I got memed.”
“Yeah, but you never said why… and the internet speculated, but I mean… it’s the internet.”
He smirked. “And what did the internet say?”
“A wild array of things that felt increasingly inaccurate the more I get to know you.”
“Okay… what about the one that your gut told you was might really be it?” he asked, and my eyebrows went up.
There had been one of those.
I sighed, wetting my lips with my tongue before I answered. “It was about your dad. Something mean. Something I would’ve busted him in his shit for too. Something anybody would’ve.”
Calvin chuckled. “Yeah. Probably why I’m being asked back.”
“So… is it true?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I still don’t know exactly what you heard, and you’re obviously trying not to cross the line into nosy, so you’re not outright saying it, so…
I don’t know. But, if the internet is saying I socked ol’ boy for telling me he “would’ve let my ass with my momma to fend for ourselves just like my crackhead daddy did”… then yeah, it’s true.”
I… snapped my mouth shut.
I didn’t even know it was open.
I was… baffled.
“You’re serious?” I asked. “A coach said that to you? Unprompted?”
Calvin squinted. “I wouldn’t say unprompted,” he chuckled. “I might’ve called him a bitch or something before that, we were going back and forth. But he took it to hell and I caught a ride.”
“Rightfully,” I nodded.
“So… was that it? Is that what the streets are saying?”
“Not that I saw,” I told him. “What I saw was about your dad maybe having the substance abuse issue, which was bad enough, really. I would never imagine someone from your team throwing such a thing in your face like that.”
Calvin smirked. “There… may also have been a woman involved. Pussy brings out the worst in niggas.”
“Oh is that right?” I laughed. “Who snatched whose woman?”
“I don’t know about snatched,” he answered. “But his ex-wife was one of the physical therapists on the team. He wasn’t feeling the special sessions she was giving me, so he was picking with me.”
“Now how did y’all keep that part off the internet?!” I asked, shocked.
“That was nobody but RSM,” he chuckled.
“RSM?”
“Richardson Sports Management,” he explained.
“Ahhh,” I nodded. “Understood. So all of that, and it still ended up that you got painted as a hothead and he’s moved on to another team.”
He shrugged. “People love the headlines more than they love the truth… and sometimes it’s best to just let it be.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Well… thank you for sharing the truth with me, at least.”
Calvin grinned, then reached out and… booped me on the fucking nose. “That’s what friends are for, right? G’night, Li-Li.”
And then before I could really react to any of that, he was inside his apartment.
Clearly running away from the conversation.
All I could do was go inside and close my door too.
And reflect.
Did he really just boop me on my fucking nose?