Chapter 4
“Hello? Hello? You still there? I can’t see you. Is that a ceiling I’m looking at?”
Her voice sounded distant as I stumbled from the living room to my bedroom and back. Why did I go to my bedroom in the first place? Hell if I know, but now I was back in the living room staring down at the phone, at…her.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“I can see you. You going to talk to me or…” she said.
I dropped to the floor, picking up my phone and taking a seat between the sofa and the coffee table. “My bad. I…uh, hi?”
She smiled. Bianca Bambina smiled at me, glossed lips, white teeth, a dimple in her right cheek, damn! “Hi.”
I cleared my throat. “So…what’s up?” As soon as I spoke those words, I wanted to snatch them back.
What’s up?
Really, nigga?
“Not much. You still wanna know how I got your number?”
I shrugged. Who gave a fuck about that? Yet, I said, “You own the team. I’m sure it wasn’t hard.”
Another smile from her and my dick jumped to attention. “It wasn’t, and I only own a small percentage of the team. The bulk belongs to South,” she advised me.
South, as in Big South. She, like, really knew him. “You still own more than I do, which is zero percent.”
“You’re interested in being a team owner?” She sounded impressed.
“Sure. I’m interested in a lot of things.”
“I see. Can I ask you a question?”
Yes, I absolutely will eat your pussy,I thought, but simply said, “Yes.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
“Oh, uhhhhhh…probably The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”
“Hmm, good choice,” she replied. I could hear voices in the background and watched as she turned and held up a finger. When her attention was on the phone again, she gave me yet another smile and said, “Gotta go. Talk to you later,” before ending the call.
I spent an hour or so sitting on the floor staring at nothing before finally going to bed.
What the fuck was that?
That thought played and replayed in my mind as I worked out in the little gym I’d set up in the spare bedroom of my apartment.
What the fuck was that?
Did it really happen?
Was it a hallucination?
Nah, it was real. I saw her. We had an actual conversation, but…why? Why’d she call me?
I needed to tell someone.
Jones?
Ford?
Nigga, ain’t nobody gon’ believe you.
Facts.
Shit, I was seriously losing it, so I dropped the dumbbell and grabbed my phone from the bench beside me, scrolling to what I assumed was her number and letting my finger hover over it. Before I could talk myself out of it, I made the call, put it on speaker, and waited.
“Miss Bambina’s phone,” a woman’s voice sang.
“Uh-I’m-may I speak to her—Miss Bambina, I mean?” I stammered.
“One moment.” Silence, and then the voice returned with, “Mr. Rapp? Miss Bambina says she will call you back. She’s unavailable right now.”
“Uh, a’ight. Thanks,” I said, wondering how she knew it was me. Had she saved my number under my name, and why did the mere possibility have my goofy ass grinning?