Chapter 17 Calvin
calvin
“You sure you don’t have anything better to do? No woman to be laid up with or something? Damn!” I shot at Arthur, sick of hearing his mouth, honestly.
I’d come outside at the asscrack of dawn to shoot around so I could clear my head – I’d even grabbed the overpriced “silent” ball to avoid annoying the neighborhood, or attracting attention.
And yet and still.
There Arthur was, on the stoop, Arthur’s Fine Flooring hat pulled back off his face like Elmer Fudd.
Mouth running.
“You talking about me not having a woman to lay up under like you not out here avoiding yours,” he quipped.
“I’m not avoiding her.”
“So you do have somebody up there – I knew it!” he hooted.
Hollered.
All that shit, like it wasn’t barely six in the morning.
Tuning him out, I went back to what I was doing – which wasn’t avoiding Amelia, who as far as I knew, was still snoozing away in my bed after several rounds of pretending our relationship was something it wasn’t.
Lazy, comfortable, relationship-type fucking, that clearly I’d done very well, since she hadn’t rushed off. I… liked that.
I was looking forward to – or rather, hoping it was what I would find – her still being there when I got back upstairs.
My avoidance was firmly tuned on the impending start of the basketball season.
Was I actually ready?
Enough to be part of the team, of course.
Enough to step back into my place on the starting roster?
That… was a little less certain.
And it was hard to even figure out on my own – I hadn’t been in a team practice, had been avoiding highlights of the games I missed. Two things that were changing very, very soon.
I didn’t want to end up disappointed.
Didn’t want to disappoint anyone, actually, myself included.
So… I kept at exactly what I’d been doing.
Drills.
Conditioning.
Shooting.
“You think you can get me some courtside seats?” Arthur asked, from suddenly way closer than he’d been when I first tuned him out.
Maybe too successfully, since he’d left the stoop to hobble his way on the court, causing me to way overshoot, landing my ball in the trash enclosure.
“Right up next to Sierra Ward’s ol’ pretty chocolate self,” Arthur kept talking. “You think that boy doing right by her? Cause if he not, I—”
“Could you not?!” I asked, shaking my head as I jogged over to the enclosure.
Luckily trash had just been picked up a day or so ago, so it wasn’t too overrun with nastiness. I spotted the ball amongst a pile of boxes somebody had tossed into the area without breaking them down, maybe calling themselves leaving them for someone who needed them.
As I bent to grab the ball, a little flash of orange caught my attention. Curious, I flipped open the top of one of the boxes to see I was right – there was Brawlers’ basketball stuff in the box – a box full, in fact.
Including a jersey.
A Calvin Cross jersey.
“Well damn, what they say fuck me for?!” I asked out loud, chuckling as I flipped the lid back closed. I was still shaking my head as I left the enclosure, ball tucked under my arm, mind running with possibilities for what the hell that was about.
“Ay,” Arthur called as I stepped out of the enclosure. “You’ll never guess what I seen last night!”
I sighed. “What?”
“Guess!”
“No,” I refused, shaking my head as I went back to what I’d been doing before his interruption.
“That weird dude from upstairs—”
“I can think of five people that describes.”
“The one used to deal with that pretty girl from next door to you.”
I lowered the ball, eyes narrowed.
He had my attention now.
“What about him?” I asked.
“I seen him making a haul down to the garbage cans. All kinda mumbling, cussing under his breath. Boy he was madder than a motherfucker,” Arthur cackled. “Big ass box – dropped it halfway across the yard, spilled all his shit out.”
“Eventually you’re going to get to the point, right?”
“It was full of Crossover shit – boy you must’ve really hurt that nigga feelings, I’m telling you!”
“He doesn’t even know me,” I defended, even as my mind drifted back to last night… making a point of kissing on Amelia in the elevator.
Okay.
Fine.
Maybe I was antagonizing him.
But to put all that shit in a box in the trash instead of selling it was…
Damn.
He was really mad.
Oh well.
Sucks for him.
I… should probably stop fucking with him before he crashed out though.
Amelia did say he’d been a fan, and that first interaction in the elevator… he’d mentioned being excited to see me back on the court.
I was guessing that was no longer the case.
Hopefully throwing my shit away was the closure he needed, and there wouldn’t be any more knocking at Amelia’s door, cause I was going to have to beat his ass at that point.
Which was exactly the kinda problem I didn’t need – especially considering the way the last messy ex situation had turned out for me.
Which… damn… it begged the question of… did I need any situation at all, going into training camp? This time needed to be focused, needed to be distraction-free.
Pissed-off exes were known for pulling attention.
On the other hand though… pretending I didn’t like Amelia at this point would just be silly.
She was literally in my bed, afterall.
“Don’t you worry about it,” Arthur said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “You got security money, right?”
I frowned. “Security? What the hell would I need security for? You heard something? Know something I don’t know?”
“Just saying – niggas get crazy.”
“So then, no,” I laughed. “His feelings are just a little hurt, he’ll be aiight.”
I was saying it to get Arthur off my back about it, but I also fully believed it to be the case. I certainly wasn’t about to be walking around the building looking over my shoulder… for the few days I had left before I would be relocating to Blackwood for training.
Hm.
I… felt like me and Amelia needed to have a little conversation.
Or… shit… was I overthinking last night?
It was kinda hard not to, with a shift from us becoming actual, honest friends to… whatever last night made us.
If it made us anything other than what we were already were.
I thrived on clarity, though.
I scooped up my ball, tucked it under my arm, and headed back up to my apartment, halfway wondering if she would even still be there.
She was.
Although, she’d clearly been up for a bit – fresh clothes, hair brushed, drinking coffee from a mug I’d never seen before in my life, all which led me to believe she’d probably gone home at some point to pull herself together.
“Damn, so you just left my shit wide open, huh?” I asked, prompting wide eyes from her.
“Not wide open,” she defended. “But yes… unlocked. Only for like ten minutes though.”
“Tell me anything,” I grumbled, ambling over to where she was sitting at my kitchen counter. I walked right up to her… waited… she tipped her head back… looked at me.
Smiled.
And the crowd went wild.
In my head, at least.
Externally, I leaned down, planting a quick kiss against her lips… that immediately sent a look of confusion over her face.
“What was that for?!” she asked, clearly alarmed, clutching her coffee to her chest. “We ain’t never did that before!”
Well damn.
Her pulling back like that was… damn.
“I could draw your vulva from memory at this point Amelia, what do you mean?” I challenged, not understanding why she was still putting distance between us.
She scowled at me. “I mean, that kiss was like… that wasn’t… that felt different. Why did you do that?”
“Is that not what you wanted me to do?!”
“What would make you think that?!”
“You tipped your head back!”
“You’re tall!”
“I…” I shook my head, chuckling as I let the ball roll into the corner where I usually left it. “Clearly this was a miscommunication… but it answers a lot of questions I had.”
“No, no, no,” Amelia denied, putting her cup down. “You haven’t asked anything, so let’s not do that. If we have questions, we should ask them straight out, not make assumptions.”
“That only works if we’re gonna be honest.”
“Okay,” she shrugged. “So let’s be honest.”
“Do you have a problem with me kissing you?” I asked, and her eyes went wide like she was surprised I’d just gotten straight to the point.
“No,” she answered. “It just caught me off guard, because I associate a kiss like that with… a certain level of intimacy.”
“More intimate than we’ve been?”
“Different intimate than we’ve been,” she replied. “Or… maybe not so much, actually. Considering… everything.”
“What does that mean?”
She sighed. “It means… I think we have taken this friendship to the boundary of something else.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s… I don’t know that it’s a healthy thing for me. But it feels too natural to be bad. I think.”
“Natural?”
“As in…coming very easily,” she explained. “Surely you’ve noticed the same?”
“You mean, how we vibe with each other? Yeah. Of course.”
“Okay. So… I guess… what does this mean? Does it mean something?”
“Are you asking me what we are?”
She sucked her teeth. “Uh-uh – do not lay the burden of that on my feet,” she said.
“I told you already – I’m not far enough removed from the breakup with Hunter for…
any of this, actually. And yet, here we are.
I don’t have to pretend to not have feelings for you, but I’m not going to be the one pushing for us to define something. ”
“I don’t think we have to define anything – I don’t know that we should, actually.
I’m just… I know there’s something here, and I know I’m getting ready to spend time in Blackwood, so I’m not going to be around.
So… I didn’t know if it was going to be weird – if you were going to feel… shit, I don’t know.”
This was… not the type of conversation I found myself in, not really.
I’d had a couple of serious relationships as an adult, but they had all followed a more clear path – attraction, intimacy, conversation, couple.
Until one of those conversations revealed the inevitable deal breaker.
Then, trying to make it work anyway, until it just has to be called what it is – over.
Never… whatever this was.
Never this… natural.
“Calvin,” Amelia smiled. “Were you wondering if I was going to miss you?”
I shrugged. “I’on know. I mean… yeah, maybe a little.”
“Of course I’m going to miss you.”
Straight like that.
Soft, and certain, hitting me right under the ribs.
Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I suppressed my grin – tried to, at least.
“I can’t get a same or something?!” Amelia huffed, eyebrow raised, making me laugh.
“Come on now,” I said, closing the distance I’d put between us after she reacted like she did to the kiss. “That’s not really a question, is it?”
“That is not a yes.”
“Yes, Amelia, damn. I will miss you. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Nigga. You are not Martin, and I’m not Gina, do not play with me right now.”
“You not feeling the reference right now?”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not – we’re having a very serious, very awkward conversation right now. I need you to lock in.”
“Bet. So… what’s the verdict?” I asked. “What’s our conclusion here?”
Amelia shrugged. “I… don’t know. I don’t want to not call a thing a thing, but… I’m not ready to call it a thing.”
“So we won’t then,” I said. “We’ll just… vibe.”
She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. We’ll vibe.”