Chapter 7 O’Shynn Royal #2
She laughed harder right before I ended the call and that laugh stayed in my ear a little longer than I wanted it to, but it made me feel a little better.
I set the encrypted phone down and stared at my regular one again.
Still nothing from Malik at all, not even a dry little thumbs up and now that Carmen had said out loud what I had been dancing around in my own head, it was all I could think about.
Maybe I really did care too much. Maybe I had pushed too hard.
Maybe I was being dramatic. Or maybe he was too damn fine and too damn smooth for me to be sitting around here acting like I didn’t have a reason to worry about him slipping through my fingers.
I picked my phone up and called again. It went straight to voicemail.
I ended the call before the message even started and tossed the phone back down on the desk harder than I meant to.
“Cute,” I muttered. “Real cute.”
I tried to go back to work after that. Like I really I did. I even checked to see how many clients I had tonight that wanted me to whip them into submission, but my mind was nowhere near any of that. It kept drifting back to Malik.
I started thinking maybe he had already left Miami.
It was his off season, so he had no reason to still be here unless he wanted to be.
Men like him moved around… Miami one week, Philly the next, New York after that.
Whatever city had the right weather, the right people, the right energy and a training facility.
If he was really done with me, then there was nothing stopping him from getting on a plane and leaving me right where I put myself.
That thought irritated me enough to make me pick the phone up again, but instead of calling this time, I opened social media.
Malik was always somewhere on the blogs.
A sports pages, gossip pages, fan pages, those little fake insider sites that posted athletes coming out restaurants like they were reporting on the president. He stayed in motion too much not to be.
I typed his name in and started scrolling passing workout clips, old interviews, fans posting pictures.
One page was talking about whether he was coming back stronger next season.
Another one reposting old game footage and I kept going and then I saw a picture of him outside a restaurant in Philly. The headline wasn’t even subtle either.
Eagles star Malik “Stone” Jefferson spotted leaving upscale Philly dinner with mystery woman.
I clicked it so fast I almost cracked my damn nail on the screen and there he was wearing a baseball cap sitting real low with a white tee, some black jeans, with his diamond encrusted chain out looking exactly like himself and walking just a little ahead of some girl in heels and a tan trench coat while the caption underneath said it all.
Sources say the two left separately, but arrived within minutes of each other…
I stared at the picture so long my face got hot. My whole chest felt tight with that ugly, stupid little feeling women get when they know they don’t have a right to be mad, but they still are. The girl was pretty too and that made me even madder because of course she was.
I zoomed in like it was gone change something and it didn’t.
He was in Philly, or at least he had been in Philly when that picture got taken and I was sitting in my office acting like some damn fool calling a man who clearly had other shit going on.
I locked my phone and dropped it on the desk again, then picked it back up and called him.
It went straight to voicemail once again.
That’s when I really got pissed. Not because of the girl, not even because he wasn’t answering, but because I knew better than to be this bothered.
I pushed back from the desk and stood up, grabbing my heels and sliding them back on with more attitude than necessary.
My office suddenly felt too small and too hot to be sitting in here.
The music from downstairs kept thumping through the floor.
I walked downstairs because I needed to see the room and remind myself I had bigger shit to worry about than one football player acting funny.
The club had picked up since earlier. VIP was filling in, girls were finally moving doing their jobs, and the DJ had switched the vibe up enough that money was starting to hit the floor.
A couple of my girls straightened up when they saw me walking through.
“Everything good?” one of them asked.
“Do it look like everything not good?” I shot back with a smile. “I’m O’Shynn Royal, it’s always good even when it ain’t.” I winked.
She shut up immediately but smiled as I made a lap around the floor, checked the bar, corrected one of the waitresses for over pouring the liquor, and told security to move two men out of one of the booths because they looked too drunk and too cheap to be arguing with each other over women they couldn’t afford anyway.
It helped for a little while, but then again work always helped for a little while.
Sometimes it just wasn’t enough. By the time I made it back upstairs, my phone still hadn’t lit up with any calls.
I stood in front of the mirror in my office and looked at myself for a second.
My hair was still sleek, my lips were glossed and my outfit was still eating down.
I looked too good to be this aggravated over a man.
And yet, I grabbed my bag because I was over it.
I was truly over my own feelings. I locked the office behind me and headed downstairs with one of the girls trailing behind me talking about some issue with a payout, but I barely heard her.
By the time I made it outside, the night air kissed my skin and cooled me down just enough to make me stop cussing in my head.
The driver had already pulled around front by the curb. I opened the back door, slid in, and was just getting settled when my phone rang and of course it was my twin. I answered Dique with an attitude already in my voice. “What?”
“What the hell you mean what?” he shot back, and I could hear the smirk in his voice before he even finished the sentence. “Damn, who pissed in yo’ fuckin’ cereal?”
“You called me for something?” I asked.
“Yeah, to see if you still alive. That okay with you, Princess?”
I rolled my eyes and leaned back against the seat. “I’m alive Dique.”
“You don’t sound alive. You sound like you about to key somebody’s car. The fuck wrong with you?”
“That’s because you’re calling getting on my nerves.” I cheesed.
He laughed. “Nah, this ain’t me. This sound personal.” He read me. I didn’t say anything. That only made him laugh harder. “Ohhh,” he continued. “You mad about that football nigga huh. I saw that blog, let me find out O’ really like that nigga.”
“Shut up.” I mumbled.
“I’m serious,” he said, still laughing. “What he do? You finally let him hit and now he acting different?”
“Dique!”
“What? I’m just asking. I’m a nigga, I know how it go.”
I was two seconds away from hanging up on him when another call came across the screen and it was finally Malik. Every muscle in my body tightened at one time. Dique was still talking, still clowning, still in my ear and I was no longer listening to him.
“I gotta call you back,” I cut in.
“Yeah, aight, go answer your man—”
I hung up before he could finish and immediately switched over.
“Hello?”
There was a pause first. Then Malik’s voice came through but not warm at all. “So now you answer.” He said.
I sat back slowly in the seat and looked out the window. “You weren’t answering me.”
“Because I ain’t want to.” He shot back.
That stung more than it should’ve. I didn’t speak for a second, and he didn’t rush to talk either. That alone told me exactly what type of time he was on.
“So that’s what we doing?” I finally asked.
“That’s what you been doing,” he replied. “You been treating me like I’m some pussy you can just push off to the side every time your life gets crazy.”
I closed my eyes. “That’s not what this is.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” he said, and there was something in his voice in his tone I never heard before.
He sounded like he was just done. “You act like you can call me when you feel like it, hang up when you feel like it, throw me out a car in the middle of some serious shit, then call me again when you decide you want to hear my voice.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is how you been treating me.”
I swallowed hard. The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror but knew better than to say anything. “You don’t understand…”
“Nah,” he cut me off. “You right, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why every time I try to stand solid with you, you decide for me that I can’t handle it. I don’t understand why you keep acting like I’m weak just because I don’t move like the men in yo’ life move.”
“That’s not what I think Malik.”
“Then what you think, O’Shynn?”
He said my full name because he was serious-serious now. I looked down at my hand in my lap. “I think this life is dangerous.”
“No shit.”
“And I think being close to me makes you a target.”
He let that linger for a second. Then he said, “That was my choice to make.”
I didn’t say anything to that because it was true and because hearing it from him made me feel worse than I already did.
He continued on. “You don’t get to keep deciding what I can handle just because you scared,” he spat.
“And I’m not finna keep chasing a woman that only wants me around when it’s easy.
I got real feelings for you, but I’m not no fucking dummy. ”
That right there took the rest of the air right out of me because I didn’t know what to say but I liked it.
It wasn’t easy for men to handle me because I never wanted love but with Malik it was different.
Outside the window the city lights were flashing past, as people walked along the sidewalks, with the cars passing, all while I sat there in the backseat feeling like my whole chest had been caved in over a nigga.
Make it so bad, the worst part of this was, he was right.
“I tell you what O’, don’t fucking call me until you ready. You know exactly what I mean. I gotta go.” He hung up. It was at that very moment I decided I was going to get my man. I couldn’t allow past heartbreak and the trauma of this life stop me from being happy.