Prologue
T hen
Cameron
Yawning, I stretched my body. My back arched while I practically went up on my tiptoes to get it all out. I was tired as hell. Not sleepy… tired. Tired, tired.
Exhausted.
Spent.
Done.
“It’s the day after. How’re you feeling, son?” My mom took me in from where she stood, bathed in sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling windows in my kitchen. She watched me carefully.
She, my dad, and my twin sister had come up from South Carolina to watch me play in the NBA championships, as they had for the last six seasons.
It was less than twelve hours since my team, The Chicago Bison, won our fifth championship in six years. And if I was being honest, which I was known to do, I would have to admit that winning this last one was more of a relief than anything. This time around, I was just glad that we won and wouldn’t have to play a game seven.
Winning the first, second, third and fourth championships had left me with feelings of euphoria and excitement. The time around… not so much.
My body ached after having been put through the paces. My brain was fried. My mental strength had been tested and tested some more. My emotions had fluctuated between extreme highs and more extreme lows. I couldn’t remember when I’d been happier to see a basketball season come to an end.
“I’m tired, Mom. I’m tired as hell.”
“Language, Cameron.” She eyed me sternly.
Ignoring her admonishment, I continued. “Winning the championship after losing it last season ain’t no punk. Every team we played came gunning for us like we owed them money.”
She chuckled. “I guess that’s to be expected. The winning team always has the most targets on their backs.”
Even though I knew she didn’t mean it that way, just her mentioning the term “targets on their backs” made me think of the other situation that had me stressed.
Not only had the team spent the season fighting off opponents, we’d also spent it fighting off speculation that some of us… almost all of us… were going to be on the chopping block.
The Bison’s GM made it clear on more than one occasion that nobody was irreplaceable… except maybe Christian Upton. The rest of us… we could be traded at any time. He’d made good on his promise by the trade deadline too. And we knew for certain that some of the guys who’d helped us win five championship rings wouldn’t be back to see if we could repeat Bison history by winning a sixth.
The thought of that messed me up. I’d been with The Bison since I’d come into the league six years prior. I considered those guys my family. It would be hard to walk into the Unity Center for team meetings and practices and not see those familiar faces.
But our GM was an asshole with a short dude’s complex. What could we do about it? We’d given him four back-to-back championships and another… just for the hell of it. All we wanted in return was loyalty. Instead, he’d given us his ass to kiss.
“When are you leaving for Jackson Island, Cameron?” My mother’s query interrupted my thoughts.
It was customary for professional ballers to take a well-deserved vacation when the season ended—to go somewhere and chill out. Recalibrate. Rest. Restore and renew.
Rather than doing that, as a Bison player, I had opted to skip vacationing and instead headed to the gym.
For five consecutive summers, every member of the team had chosen to spend the majority of the off-season in Chicago, working out and training to maintain our dominance. It paid off. We were the world champions. We deserved a vacation. And this summer, with the uncertainty of a season of rebuilding, we had all decided to take one.
Truthfully, I couldn’t blame taking a vacation on just really needing one. If the team had opted to skip vacation again this year, I would’ve had my ass in that gym, whether I was dog tired or not. Luckily for me, everybody on the team needed a break during the same summer that my sister was planning her wedding.
I was headed down to my waterfront property on Jackson Island, the town where I’d grown up.
“The day after the parade.” I finally answered my mother.
After every championship win, the city of Chicago threw us a huge celebratory parade. There was no way I was missing that. I’d worked too hard for the privilege of attending. Plus, it would be my last opportunity to hang out with some guys that I considered brothers, before they headed off to their new teams, in new cities—people like LaMeris Fullerton and Tyrin Thompson.
My mother practically vibrated with excitement before she gushed her thoughts. “Oooh, you’ll be home just in time for Garden Party season and the debutante ball.”
I withheld my sigh, because there was no way in hell that I was interested in participating in any of that. The Garden society was for women like my mother—middle-aged and generally married. Debutantes were typically preparing to leave high school. What did a teenage girl or a middle-aged wife have to do with me?
“Ma, come on. Me around those young girls? That’s a blog scandal just waiting to happen. Or me at one of your garden parties? The way women your age like to flirt with and grope younger dudes? Nah.”
“Cameron, it’s your hometown. You grew up in these circles. If you’re home and don’t at least make an appearance, people are going to think that you’re putting on airs.”
Appearances. It was always about appearances with my mother.
My father was the most successful optometrist in the county. Ninety-five percent of the glasses or contact lenses that adorned the eyes of my classmates, and even strangers in our area, were prescribed by my father. He was considered an industry leader in eye care and vision health. He was well-known for being one of a few extremely successful black eye doctors and for his advanced knowledge and résumé.
The good doctor’s wife—my mother—loved to busy herself with entertaining. She chaired charity events, ran a successful charm and etiquette business, and was famous (or infamous) for hosting fundraisers that she disguised as garden parties.
Ever since my basketball skills propelled me into the spotlight, Madeline Field loved to trot me out at her events and show me off in an effort to get donors to shell out more bread for the opportunity to rub elbows with me.
I hated it with a passion, because the truth was that before my name started to ring bells around the state, my mother took every opportunity she could get to downplay or outright dismiss basketball as a worthwhile endeavor or hobby. She was always preaching that I was wasting time on basketball that could’ve been spent volunteering or building a résumé that would help me get into the ivy league university of her choice. Once my high school team won the state championship in my sophomore year of high school, her entire narrative switched.
I loved my mother to pieces, but I couldn’t overlook the way she’d acted. Nor could I pretend that her acceptance of basketball as my livelihood wasn’t predicated on the success I’d experienced.
Walking over to my refrigerator, I pulled out a carton of orange juice. “Ma, I’m trying to get in and get out. I wanna do my basketball camp, lay low, and be only as present and available for Carrington’s wedding stuff as she needs and/or wants me to be. I’m not trying to spend my summer campaigning for donations to whatever the hell charity you’re working on right now.”
“Language, Cameron,” Madeline Field chastised, again. “That’s the second time you’ve let a cuss word slip. Let another one slip, and my hand’s gonna slip… right across your lips.”
“I’m grown…” I began with a chuckle, because I truly enjoyed messing with my mother. She was easy as hell to rile up.
“I am too. And as a grown woman, I refuse to be disrespected by somebody that I made it possible to even exist.” Her hand came up, finding her understated hip, while both her neck and eyes rolled.
I laughed out loud. It was always my mission in life to get my mother to act like the chick from Pittsburgh, PA, as opposed to the socialite of Jackson Island, SC.
“So, you think it’s cool to slap me in the mouth like a bad-tempered pimp or something?”
“You apparently think it’s cool to cuss in front of me like a low-priced ho.”
“Dang!” my sister, Carrington, said entering the kitchen just in time to hear our mother speak those words to me. “I think Mom just said you’re a ho, or she said that you’re treating her like a ho. I’m not sure.”
I wasn’t sure, either. That didn’t stop me from laughing. It didn’t stop my mother, either.
“Now,” my mother said, turning into the Jackson Island socialite that I knew, “what were you saying about my garden parties?”
“I was saying…” I poured orange juice into my glass, proceeded to drink every drop, then filled the glass again. “I was saying that I’m not trying to have you parading me around your garden parties or in front of your debs. I’m not up to being forced to make nice with a whole bunch of people I don’t know or like.”
“Yet, you’ll allow Coach Allerton, the mayor, and the citizens of Chicago to parade you through the streets?”
“Ma, that parade is in my honor. It honors the team. It honors our accomplishments. Come on. Don’t pretend like you can’t see the difference in the championship parade and your garden parties.”
“Cameron, my events are about raising money for—”
“Ma.” I cut her off.
My mother was an attorney by trade. Arguing you down and forcing you to not only concede, but to bend to her will was what charged up her battery. It had taken me years to figure that out and govern myself accordingly.
“I’m not coming.” I took a beat. “But if I choose to show up… to support you, I don’t want you running me here and there, introducing me to donors. I want to come as a guest to support my mother.”
While I was talking, Carrington caught my eye and gave me a full-on smirk. She understood that Madeline Field had to be finessed. I had twenty-eight years of experience dealing with Madeline; I knew what to say.
“Besides, Cameron already agreed to facilitate my bridal boot camp. We’ll be working out almost every day for eight weeks leading up to my nuptials.”
In undergrad, I chose to major in Exercise Physiology, because I was a lazy eighteen-year-old kid who didn’t want to be tied down with difficult coursework. What I found once I was in the major was that I really liked it. I developed a passion for the effects of exercise on the human body, the human brain, and the human condition.
Because of my love for the movement, health, and function of the body, I was considering opening up a small facility that focused on offering one-on-one training for student athletes when I retired from the NBA. Carrington’s “wedding boot camp” was going to operate as a sort of… focus group. I was going to gather and analyze the data from her situation and see what came from it.
“Okay.” My mom sighed reluctantly. “I want you to come to a few of my parties, son. I promise that I won’t force you to meet every guest, just the important ones.” She made eyes at me. “Okay?”
That was why she had to be finessed. She was always too invested in getting her own way.
“Three people, Ma. I’ll let you introduce me to three people.” I took a beat, then teased, “So, choose wisely.”
Carrington giggled.