Chapter 4 #3
As the hostess guided me to the far end of the room, Ivy came into view.
As always, her attention was on her phone, her thumbs moving along the screen at rapid speed.
“I’ll call you when I’m done,” I said into the phone to Vanessa. “Aight?”
She grunted. “Okay, fine.”
Before I could say bye or anything else, she hung up the phone.
All I could do was shake my head.
Ivy lifted her head just in time to see me approaching.
“Thank you,” I said to the hostess.
“You’re very welcome.” Her smile widened as she glanced at Ivy. “Should I send the waitress over now?”
“Give us a couple of minutes,” Ivy answered. “Ten minutes, I think, should be enough. Thank you.”
“No problem,” the hostess replied. “And I hope this is okay to say, but I just love watching you two on Free-Throw Nation whenever you cover the Bronx Ballers games.”
“Aw, thank you.” Ivy peeked over at me, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “I appreciate it.”
“We both do,” I said, getting comfortable in my seat. “Thank you.”
The hostess nodded, pointing behind her with her thumb. “I’ll let your waitress know to check on you guys in ten minutes.”
“Sounds good.” Ivy focused on me, then glanced down at her phone. “You’re on time. That’s new.”
“Well,” I said with a shrug, “a lot of things are new these days. And I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been the only thing on my mind… as seen by the way I’ve been playing.” I dropped my head into my hands and groaned.
“I know,” she replied. “It’s been hard keeping it together with all this stuff happening.”
I pointed at her phone. “I see it hasn’t stopped your workflow, though.”
“Oh, it has.” She turned the phone’s screen to face me, showing a maps app. “I’m testing out routes from Greene Gardens to Manhattan, trying to see how far this place is. It’s a new village in the middle of practically nowhere.”
“Wait.” I sat up straighter in my seat. “You’re looking up routes to Greene Gardens? Why?”
“That’s where the house Kendra and Tyrell bought is. Remember? The one they had us visit all those months ago?”
My eyes widened. “You’re considering doing this, for real, Ivy?”
She set her phone on the table and leaned back in her chair. She parted her lips to say something but closed them again.
“Look, I can’t do this, man.” I shook my head. “I gotta be honest with you.”
Her jaw dropped. “Leo—”
“A baby is work, Ivy,” I continued. “Real fucking work. They’re consuming and exhausting.”
“Leo—”
“Jaleel comes into practice with red eyes every day because of his two-year-old baby girl at home,” I added, speaking over her.
“I see how dudes change when they have babies. The game ain’t played the same, they can’t go out as much.
” I shook my head again. “I’m not looking for my life to change like that.
I got my career that’s just popping off.
I got travel commitments.” My hand was at the top of my head.
“Man, all this shit is too much. The double funerals next week, having to make this decision—fuck!”
“Shh,” Ivy shushed, checking around us. She sighed and nodded.
“I get that Mr. Grant gave us an extra day to decide, but I don’t know, Ivy.” I lifted my shoulders and held them there for a breath before letting them drop. “I feel like I’m about to tell this dude no, then tell his ass to find somebody else to do it, ‘cause I can’t.”
When I finally lifted my gaze to Ivy, her eyes were slowly clouding with tears. Her lips quivered, and her chin trembled before she burst into a quiet sob.
“Damn.” I scooted to the edge of my seat and reached my hand across the table to take hers. “My bad, man. Please don’t cry.”
She shook her head, trying her best to sniff back her tears while patting her eyes dry. “I get it,” she admitted. “I’m all fucked up right now. I haven’t slept since the accident. Haven’t been able to think straight since the meeting with Mr. Grant.”
Her wet eyes met mine, her lashes holding onto tears that hadn’t yet fallen.
“I don’t know the first thing about babies, much less raising them.
I don’t know how to care for them. I literally don’t think I have a maternal bone in my body, but…
” She blinked, and the tears fell as she focused on me again. “They chose us.”
I dropped my head and let it hang there for a few breaths.
“They chose us, Leo,” she reminded. “They chose us. And the decision wasn’t made lightly. You heard Mr. Grant.”
I swallowed hard.
“They thought about it and still went to his office to not only say they wanted us to be guardians but to put that in their last will and testament. Us.”
“Shit,” I whispered to myself.
“Someone they made on purpose,” she added. “They want to give that little person to us.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I know.”
“Now, I don’t know why the fuck Kendra would want me to raise her child if something happened to her and Tyrell,” she continued.
“A part of me wants to believe she just never thought it could happen and went with me thinking I’d never have to raise her baby.
I don’t know. Maybe she saw something in me that I don’t see? ”
I sat back in my seat, running my hands down my face. “Yeah, I don’t know why Tyrell would even agree to something like this. I don’t know if it was Kendra’s idea or Tyrell’s. I just… I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.” Ivy shrugged. “But it was her last wish. Their last wish. So…” Ivy sniffed back her tears, lifting the restaurant’s table napkin to dab her eyes.
“If she wants me to raise this baby as my own…” She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled deeply, stifling another cry. “Fuck it. I’m gonna do it.”
I locked eyes with her across the table.
“I’m calling Mr. Grant tomorrow and telling him to move forward on the paperwork for guardianship.” She forced a nod. “And if I have to do it alone, that will be fine—”
“Nah, Ivy,” I said. “I can’t let you do that.” I shook my head. “I won’t.”
We stared at each other for a few beats before the weight of my words set in.
My elbows rested on the table, my head in my hand as I tried as hard as I could but failed to hold back the loud growl of frustration that echoed around us.
“Shh,” Ivy shushed again, her eyes darting around the restaurant. “Keep it down.”
This had all been so fucking much. I felt it every damn day in my chest and my stomach, from the moment I opened my eyes after the little sleep I could manage. It had become a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. But I couldn’t let Ivy do this shit alone.
She had just as much going for her as I did.
I’d seen how hard she worked to get where she was in sports journalism—watched her make sacrifices, burn the midnight oil, and break through in a male-dominated field while still being unapologetically herself.
She’d put in the work, and she was still willing to do this… to raise a baby.
Oh my God, we’re about to raise a baby.
“I don’t want you to do this alone,” I said, lifting my head out of my hands. “Tyrell would kick my ass if I did.”
Ivy scoffed a laugh.
We sat in silence for a few moments before Ivy spoke again. “Do you know what this reminds me of?”
“What?”
“Our first date,” she replied. “Do you remember it? The one they talked us into going on and abandoned us—”
“To go hook up in the damn car,” I finished for her. “My fucking car.”
Ivy laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh too.
“I could not stand you that night,” she said, shaking her head. “You were so obnoxious with your Ivy League this and Ivy League that.”
“You were mad uptight,” I reminded her. “At the restaurant, asking them to make the water the right amount of hot to sanitize your damn utensils.”
“They kept bringing tepid ass water, which wouldn’t have done shit,” she argued. “Do you know how many people eat with these things on any given day?” She peeked down at her utensils and hiked a lip at it in disgust.
I snorted. “I knew then we weren’t fit for each other but that you were cool enough to hang with.”
She smiled. “Same.”
I never stopped thinking she was beautiful, though.
Even as she sat there, not her usual made-up self, with her hair in the messiest bun I’d ever seen her wear and her barest skin showing in public.
Even wearing grief, the sadness evident in her face and the slump of her shoulders, Ivy was so damn gorgeous.
Too bad we were so incompatible.
“That night, they were ridiculously drunk, flaunting their fake IDs and underage-drinking bravado,” Ivy recalled, her smile growing wider. “I swear she drank more that night than any other night since she and I became friends.”
“I knew Tyrell before freshman year in college, and I can say he never drank that much either.”
Ivy snickered. “But we worked so well together getting them back to the dorms.”
I nodded. “We did.”
“Couldn’t stand each other the whole time, but…” She tilted her head in my direction. “We did good.”
“We did great,” I added.
“Then there was that time we went hiking,” Ivy said, “and Kendra sprained her ankle. You and I figured out how to administer first aid, and then you went searching and found park rangers to help out.”
I pointed at her. “That shit was crazy, but we came through, for real.”
“And we do a great job on the air too,” she added. “Whenever I’m interviewing you?”
I nodded. “The fans love us. Love it even more when we annoy each other.”
“And we did the damn thing with the baby shower,” she said, pointing at me. “Because what the hell did we know about throwing a baby shower?”
“Not a damn thing,” I replied with a chuckle. “And that shit was an event to remember.”
“She absolutely loved it.” Ivy’s smile widened. “She thought we did so good.”
“Tyrell, too.”
“So, you know… maybe…” She folded her bottom lip into her mouth. “Maybe we could do this too.”
“It’s a baby, though, Ivy,” I said, my eyes locking on hers. “A real baby that breathes, cries, shits, and does all the other shit that makes me thank God every day that I never got a woman pregnant and pray that I never will.”
Ivy hollered a laugh. “I know.” Her smile softened as she met my gaze with her beautiful brown eyes. “I just feel like doing this, somehow, is going to make me feel better about all this.”
I blinked in response.
“Taking care of this baby is going to make me feel like I don’t have a hole in my heart where Kendra used to be, you know?”
This whole thing was scaring the shit out of me. As I sat there, visualizing what this would look like, I couldn’t see myself in the role of caring for someone so small and vulnerable.
I wasn’t the most responsible person—I’d never admit that, but it was true. I liked to party, travel on a whim, and have casual sex with women in random ass places for the thrill. I was not father material in the least.
But I couldn’t let Ivy do this alone.
Now her? She would be great at this. She didn’t think so, but that was an Ivy thing—worrying about everything because she was a perfectionist to the bone. She would excel at this, no question about it. And I would simply let her lead.
The least I could do was support her and help out wherever I could—which I knew wouldn’t be all that much.
“Aight, look,” I said, moving to the edge of my seat. “We both know I’m about to suck at this shit. Let’s just keep it real.”
“Leo—”
“But I want to do this with you because I know you won’t suck at it.”
She tilted her head to one side.
“You’re smart,” I started. “A fucking genius. The way your mind works fast, it amazes me sometimes—shit, a lot of the time.”
She blushed, dropping her head to hide it.
“So I’m confident we’ll be fine.”
“We?” she asked. “Does that mean you’ll do it with me?”
I smirked. “We still talking about the baby, right?”
She kissed her teeth. “Really? Yuck!”
I tossed my head back, laughing, and she giggled.
Leveling my gaze, I said, “Yeah, let’s do this guardianship thing. We’ll figure it out.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled a deep breath, pressing her prayer hands to her lips. “Okay.”
We spent the rest of the time exchanging ideas and hopes about what this new journey would entail. During the quiet moments as we ate dinner, my mind raced with all the things I would need to do.
Was I giving up my loft?
How far was Greene Gardens from the city?
Were there other people living there already, or would we be the only ones moving into the village?
“He doesn’t have a name,” Ivy said, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“What?”
“Their baby.” Ivy lifted her napkin to pat her lips clean. “I just remembered that he doesn’t have a name. When I asked Kendra what they came up with, she said we’d have to find out when he’s born and they tell us, but…”
I squeezed my eyes closed and dropped my head back between my shoulders.
“I don’t want to name him just anything—”
“We’ll ask Kendra and Tyrell’s parents,” I said with a nod. “We’ll ask their parents if either of them knows. Kendra and Tyrell had to at least have told their parents, right?”
“Right.” Ivy nodded, her expression softening. “Yeah, they had to have.”
“For now, though,” I started, “let’s just take it one step at a time.”
Ivy grinned. “Look at you being the voice of reason.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Just tryna get my head right here.”
She snickered.
I lifted my glass of scotch and held it in the air. Ivy, needing no instruction, lifted her glass of red wine and tapped her glass gently against mine.
“To Kendra and Tyrell,” I said as our glasses clinked.
“And to us,” Ivy added, bringing the rim of her glass to her lips.
“Yeah,” I whispered to myself. “To us.”