Chapter 8 Man Overboard
Chapter eight
Man Overboard
I should’ve been sleep. Instead, I was hunched over my dining room table, the low hum of the refrigerator the only thing keeping me company.
My neck was starting to ache, but I snapped another translucent blue piece into place anyway, obsessing over a Lego set like the plastic skyscraper was going to pay my bills in the morning.
Sleep and I hadn’t been on speaking terms lately.
The silence in the house was the kind of heavy that no white noise machine or late-night TV could touch.
My mama used to stay in my ear about it.
She’d tell me my player ways were going to catch up with me one day, that the clubs would stop calling and the bed would stay cold and I’d be left sitting in a quiet house wondering where all that time went.
I used to laugh her off. Thirty had a way of making a man stop laughing.
Looking at my reflection in the dark patio glass I realized later in life had arrived right on schedule.
In my twenties the field was wide open, and I ran it without looking back. Now that I was actually ready to pull the jersey off and settle down, the only woman I wanted couldn’t stand the sight of me.
Thinking about Nique always pulled me back to the beginning.
Fourteen years old at a Kappa League party over in the Bottom. Nique was there with London and Nel like the three of them came as a package deal. Back then Paris was still too little to be out in the mix.
It was Kyson’s idea to go over and show face.
“Y’all live across the street from my cousin Eli, right?” Kyson asked, already leaning in with that grin that usually got him whatever he wanted.
“She does. We’re over in Midtown,” Nique said, stepping right to the front. She didn’t have that hard edge yet, just a sharp tongue and eyes that saw clean through you the second they landed on you.
The conversation took off between the four of them, easy and loud.
They were going back and forth about which high school had the best band and who was going to take the city title that year.
I stayed in the back with my hands in my pockets, leaning against the wall.
I didn’t have a dog in that fight. Going to private school made me an outsider to all that public school pride.
Then Nique’s eyes landed on me. “You go to Davidson too?”
I shook my head.
Kyson barked out a laugh and slapped my shoulder. “Man, this nigga go to UMS-Wright. He too fancy for us.”
I braced for the eye roll. Instead, her eyebrows shot up. “For real? That’s my dream school. Their track team is a beast.” She said it with this quiet admiration that caught me off guard. “My grandma tried to look into the tuition but it was just too expensive.”
I finally found my voice. “I run track.”
“Oh word?” A challenge flickered behind her eyes. “What’s your time?”
That was it. From then on, every time Kyson and I went over to Eli’s house we made sure we were outside when the girls came around. One Saturday when the humidity was so thick you could wear it like a second skin Nique challenged me to a race down the block.
I won. Barely.
I had gone into it thinking outrunning a girl would be easy work.
Nique was a different kind of monster on the asphalt.
Fast and focused and not the least bit shaken by the fact that she almost beat me.
I had been gone for her from the moment we collapsed at the finish line, fighting for air and laughing through the burn in our lungs, neither one of us ready to admit we were impressed.
I just wish I hadn’t been so damn quiet back then. If I had told her how I felt instead of playing it safe we might be in a completely different place right now. I waited too long and by the time we were sixteen Prez had already claimed the spot I was too shy to ask for.
I couldn’t even blame Prez anymore. He had been gone for years. I still thanked God every time I thought about it, that Nique had made it out of that night.
I set the Lego piece down and stared at it for a second. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night going down memory lane, so I pushed back from the table and headed upstairs for my sleeping pills.
I popped two, settled under the sheets, and laid there watching the ceiling fan throw shadows across the wall while I waited for them to kick in.
My phone vibrated.
Unknown Number.
I stared at the screen. I figured it was probably spam. I almost let it roll to voicemail but something in my gut told me to pick up.
“Hello?”
A pause. Then that flat robotic voice. “This is a collect call from—”
“Nique.” Her voice cut over the recording, breathless and uneven. “Dex, it’s me.”
“To accept this call, press 1.”
I was already sitting up. I pulled the phone away just long enough to hit the key and brought it back fast. “What the hell. Where you at?”
“I’m—” she stuttered, words tripping over each other. “I’m in jail. Metro. I was at the hospital first, but they brought me here and I just—”
“In jail?” My heart knocked hard against my ribs. “Nique, what—”
“I didn’t know who else to call,” she cut in fast, like she was burning through her last few minutes.
“I got into it with Nel and London earlier. London has the wedding, so she probably doesn’t have it like that right now, and Nel stays broke.
Paris puts her phone on DND after nine so I didn’t even try her, and I just… ”
She pulled in a shaky breath that sounded like it hurt to take.
“I didn’t have anybody else to call, Dex.”
Silence stretched between us. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, hand pressed over my mouth. The sleeping pills were starting to blur the edges, but the adrenaline was sharper than all of it.
“What happened?” I asked.
“A fight,” she said, her voice dropping.
I had a pretty good guess who it was with, but I didn’t ask.
“You hurt?”
“My head hurts,” she said. “They said I blacked out for a second. I’m good though. I think.”
I was already mentally clocking the drive time to Government Street.
“Aight,” I said. “I’m coming.”
“Dex…” Her voice went soft in a way I hadn’t heard in years.
“I got you,” I said. “Don’t say anything else to anybody. I’m on my way.”
“…okay.”
The line clicked.
I sat there for a second staring at the floor, turning over what little she had told me and trying to fill in the rest. Then I grabbed my keys off the nightstand and headed for the door.
Sleep could wait. Nique couldn’t.