Chapter 5
Kalliope
He called me later that night, but I didn’t take his call. He called again and texted several times the next day. It took six days before I finally accepted his call, because my entire world was shaken with his reappearance. The text that moved me read:
MY LOVE: I won’t let up. I’m ’bout to apply that pressure, because I won’t lose you again.
ME: You didn’t lose me. You gave me up.
MY LOVE: That’s my girl.
I genuinely had given up hope on him returning, but he kept his word and returned ten years later to the day. It didn’t make things better, and I was still hurt that he hadn’t kept in touch. He acted as if I was just supposed to be excited that he returned and fuck the ten years he was absent.
Fortunately for him, I had so many questions, and I had missed him desperately. All I wanted was to be in his presence and up under him like old times. Not a night had gone by since his reappearance that I hadn’t dreamed about him, and not an hour of my day that I hadn’t thought of him.
When I finally returned his call, he invited me to have dinner at his hotel room.
He was staying at Ridgeland, an upscale, swanky, five-star hotel, that had me wondering what he did for a living.
I worked as a personal shopper for some executives who paid me very well, but I could scarcely afford to stay one night at the Ridgeland, let alone an extended stay like him.
I couldn’t have afforded to spend one night in this place before my layoff at NI Briggs.
“Glad you decided to come,” he greeted when he opened his hotel door.
He peered at me with a knowing smirk from those hooded, russet-brown eyes and lifted one thick, arched eyebrow.
They were so thick and long, he almost had a unibrow, something he hated as a kid, but had grown to ignore in high school.
I stepped inside and couldn’t help but check out his body.
A loose pair of basketball shorts hung low on his waist, and a fitted navy-blue T-shirt with the words Gen U emblazoned across his chest that matched his basketball shorts with the same words and logo on the side, clung to muscles that had only grown more defined over the years.
He wore a pair of Gen U slides on his feet, but no socks.
At six-two, he towered over me by nine inches. His beautiful bronze-brown skin had taken on more of a golden tone in that California sun, and his sun-kissed skin highlighted the golden hairs on his arms.
“Look at you. The hardest street dude I ever knew with pretty feet. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear that you get pedicures,” I teased.
Truthfully, I was trying to ease my nerves and find that flow that we had all those years ago.
I felt like I was going on a blind date, but this wasn’t that.
“Get in here and give me a hug, li’l bit,” he remarked, pulling his fingers through the soft hairs of his beard with one hand and wiggling his fingers at me with the other hand. I noticed that his beard, mustache, and goatee were nicely lined up and had grown in somewhat thicker through the years.
When I stood still, he grabbed me and pulled me close.
Andrès wrapped me in his arms and squeezed me to him.
It took a moment before I hugged him back, and it felt wonderful.
He smelled so damn good, and all I could think about was the last time I saw him before he relocated.
The memory of the kiss we had shared seared my mind, and I felt my belly clenching and my thighs squeezing together.
I wanted that kiss again, despite my nonchalant attitude toward him.
Andrès released me, and the way that he stared into my eyes and then at my lips, I knew he had to be thinking the same thing.
He slowly pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, and his gaze grew heavy and dark.
There was too much we needed to wade through before we jumped into kissing each other again.
Reluctantly, I pulled back from his embrace, and to break the sexual tension between us, I laughed and asked, “Where is the food? I don’t smell anything. Did you forget that I was coming?”
“I asked the kitchen to hold our food a little longer. I wanted to make sure that it was hot when you arrived. You didn’t used to be a fan of having to microwave your food.”
I smiled. “You remembered.”
“Everything about you,” he remarked as he led me into the suite and pointed at the couch. “Have a seat. I’m about to call them now.”
I sat down as he called down to the hotel restaurant.
“You want anything to drink?” he asked when he ended the call.
“Just juice.”
He removed a bottle of juice from the refrigerator and handed it to me as he sat beside me on the couch. My stomach clenched at his nearness, and I secretly inhaled the scent of his freshly showered fragrance.
I couldn’t help but giggle when I recalled how I used to love sitting next to him and inhaling him after he showered.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking about when I used to sniff you after you got out of the shower.”
“Yeah, like a little puppy dog or something. Man, that used to drive me crazy,” he remarked, tugging at one of the silver hoops in his ears.
“And the more it did, the more I did it.”
“Until I started sniffing your hair and armpits.”
“That was so embarrassing, because you would wait until we were around other people to do that mess.”
“Those were good times, Kalli.”
“They were. What happened to us, Drè? I’ve missed you so much.”
He sighed and pulled his fingers through his beard.
“I never meant to stay gone for as long as I did. In the beginning, I did it because I was in my feelings about everything. It was hard to stay away at first, but after a while, it just got easier. I knew that you deserved better than where I was in life, but as the years passed, it became harder to return.”
“What were you in your feelings about?”
“My family. You.”
“I know it wasn’t over Remy’s ass.”
“What if I said it was?”
“I would say that I’m sorry, maybe we should have had a conversation. Because the kiss that happened, . . . I wasn’t expecting that.”
He reached out and touched my shoulder before he dragged his finger down my arm. “You should have.”
I rolled my eyes. “If I was so important to you, then why did you stop calling me not long after you got there?”
“I was locked up.”
My eyes widened, and I leaned forward. “What? Drè, why didn’t you tell me, and for what?”
“I was embarrassed, and I didn’t want you to think bad of me.”
“But why? What happened?”
“I got caught with a quarter of a pound of weed, and they locked my black ass up right away for a year.”
“Well, obviously, you turned things around.”
“I did, thanks to my boy Silas. He pushed me to enroll in school again, we both graduated and got our PMP certification, and then we started our business based on that.”
“Your business must be doing damn good to be able to afford this place,” I stated, looking around.
He chuckled. “The PMP business is doing good, but it’s the other business that has put me over the top.”
“What business?” I asked, wearing a frown.
“Gen U.”
I paused, and the blood rushed to my ears. “Wait. What? You invested in that business?”
“I founded it, Kalli. I’m the CEO, and Silas is the COO.”
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. The largest urban wear line in the country was created by you?”
“Damn, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
I shook my head and squinted my eyes. “No, no, it’s not that. It’s just that I knew you were always a sneakerhead, but I never saw you developing a clothing line. Growing up, you wanted to be an engineer.”
“Life changes, and you change with it. I could have allowed the trouble in my life to steamroll over me or turn it around and make some money moves. I chose the latter. It allowed me to become a motivational speaker, a mentor to teenaged boys, and give back to the communities I’m attached to.”
“Like Rosemont High.”
“Like Rosemont High,” he conceded with a nod.
The doorbell rang, and he got up to answer it. It was the restaurant, and he had the server come in and serve us. Once the server left, we prayed over our food, ate, and resumed conversation, but not the same one.
“What have you been up to?” he asked.
“Working mostly. I buried myself in a career in HR until I lost it. They laid me off just over a year ago, and now I’m a personal shopper.” I turned my lips down in disappointment.
“Are you happy with what you do?”
“It’s fun, and I earn a nice living, but I’m not going to be doing it long term. Anyway, losing my job made me realize that I had to become more intentional about the relationships in my life.”
“Relationships? I thought you said you weren’t in one?”
“I meant family and friends. What made you come home?”
“You.”
“Seriously.”
“I’ve always upheld my word, Kalli.”
I choked on my wine, and he patted my back. I looked into his eyes and asked, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
He grabbed my hand and rubbed his thumb against my palm. I squirmed in my seat at the heat that shot through my core.
“Kalli, I said it already on that field. I told you that shit wasn’t for publicity. You’re not married, and neither am I. We made a vow, and in the twenty years you’ve known me, you’ve never known me to go back on my word—not with you.”
We were next door neighbors who casually knew each other, and we spoke whenever we saw each other.
It wasn’t until middle school, when I was just nine, that we developed a friendship.
I had skipped a couple of grades, and I was terrified of being at that level with the other kids who were eleven and older.
Kelsey was a year older than me but a grade behind me because I skipped two grades. She wasn’t there to protect me or take up for me, and I felt all alone. Someone was picking on me one day, and Andrès took up for me, and we had been best friends ever since.
“We were kids, Drè.”