Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
leo
The sound of my mother moving pots along a burner grate as she rambled on about how she wasn’t expecting me but was so happy to see me filled my sound-space.
“Thankfully, I stopped at the market earlier,” she said, her eyes searching her counter. “Because I got some stuff here to make your favorite. You’re hungry, right?”
All I did was nod before leaning forward over the island, folding my arms so I could balance my chin on top of them.
My mother turned to glance at me before turning completely to face me, waving her wooden spoon at me.
“Aht, aht,” she said with a grin. “You know the rules. You wanna eat, you better help. Up, up!”
I snorted a laugh, standing from my seat and making my way around it toward the stove.
My visit to my mother’s house was not planned, but I couldn’t take staying in Greene Gardens for another minute. My team and I had a couple of rest days between games, which would’ve been great before all this shit with Ivy—but now it just made my time at Greene Gardens feel like torment.
I bought this house for my mother. It took a lot of convincing for her to move out of our old one, with her fussing that the old house was her forever home.
But eight years ago, when I was drafted by the Ballers and received my sign-on bonus, one of the first things I knew I wanted to do was buy my mother a bigger house.
She worked hard raising me on her own. I didn’t make life as easy as I could’ve growing up.
It was her who put me in sports at a young age.
I did so many sports, and I finally settled on basketball, which became more than a way to keep me out of trouble when school was out.
It became my ticket to college and, eventually, a professional basketball career with the Ballers at twenty-two.
I was eight years strong with my team. And that was all my mama.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, her attention down on the green peppers. “You look… tired.”
I sighed and shook my head at the same time. “It’s a lot of stuff happening right now, Mama,” I confessed. “Too much.”
She stared at me for a moment, her eyes scanning my face.
I snorted to myself. Ivy did the same thing a lot, and it always reminded me of my mother. It was probably why I hated when Ivy did it.
“Get the tomatoes from the fridge so you can cut them up,” she instructed, gesturing that way. “And tell me what’s going on.”
My mother’s house was every bit her style—from the soft pastel blue paint on just about all the walls to the flower baskets that hung on the spacious wrap-around porch, it was all Cheryl Vanguard.
My father, Felix Vanguard, died when I was only a kid, two months after my eighth birthday.
I have memories of him, but none concrete enough.
My mother and he were not on the greatest of terms when she finally got pregnant with me, and once I was born, my arrival seemed to worsen what was already turning sour in their marriage.
She doesn’t speak of it often, even at my big age.
She always says she wants me to maintain a good memory of him because, at the end, that was all that mattered.
She always said I was a lot like him… and not always in a good way.
“Ivy and I,” I started. “We got beef.”
My mother turned her head to look my way. “What did you do?”
I barked a laugh. “Damn. Why I had to have done something?”
“Because Ivy is a sweet woman who don’t look like she causes problems.”
I shook my head as I reached for the knife to begin dicing the tomatoes I’d gotten from the fridge. “That’s foul, Mama.”
“Well…” She turned to look at me. “Is it true?”
I stopped dicing to drop my head and inhale a deep breath.
“Because the last time I spoke with you about this, I told you not to leave everything up to her,” she started. “Raising a baby is difficult. Then you tack on the fact that neither of you were ready for that. She can’t do it alone.”
“And that’s what I’ve been trying to tell her,” I said. “The Simmons have offered to take the baby many times to give us a break. But Ivy’s all, I don’t want to just drop our responsibilities on them. And blah, blah, blah.”
“Why would she say that?”
“Hmm?”
“Hmm?” my mother mocked. “Why would she feel that having the Simmons take the baby would be like dropping responsibilities?”
“Because…” I dragged out. “She feels I go out too much and I’m barely in Greene Gardens helping out.”
My mother pointed her knife at me. “And there it is.”
“Mama, I gotta go out to not only make club appearances but to destress,” I insisted. “I’m trying to get to the championships. I gotta make money. I didn’t plan for any of this. I wasn’t ready.”
“All I'm hearing is ‘I, I, I,’” my mother interjected. “What about her? She wasn’t ready either. And considering how driven that girl is, I’m sure she has her own career goals and plans.”
I looked off.
“And I’m sure she likes to have a little fun of her own too and wouldn’t want to be cooped up in a house raising a baby she wasn’t ready to raise either.”
I mumbled, “Ivy boring as hell, so I highly doubt the fun part.”
My mother was quick to pop me up the side of my head as soon as all the words came out of my mouth.
“Ow, damn!” I shouted, grabbing my head. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because you’re being selfish,” she said. “That’s why.”
I kissed my teeth.
“So is that why y’all are beefing?” she probed. “Because you keep leaving the house to party?”
“Umm, yes and no.”
She stared at me for a moment.
I squeezed my eyes closed and kept them shut when I confessed, “We slept together.”
My mother’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God.”
“Mama, please.”
“Leo,” she said, her voice heavy with disappointment—which was exactly why I didn’t want to tell her anything.
My mother has been on me for the longest about my sleeping around with different women.
She was proud of me for sticking with Vanessa this long, but she kept asking when I was going to take the relationship to the next level.
I never revealed that I had no plans to, because we didn’t even have a real relationship, and I was content with that.
But now, me telling her I had sex with Ivy?
Yeah, she wasn’t going to go easy on me.
“I skipped a date for her,” I confessed. “I had plans to go out the last time Ivy and I had an argument, and I skipped my date for her.”
“Why?”
I stared at her for a moment and then said, “You can’t get mad.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Leo, what did you do?”
“I… I made her cry.”
My mother gasped, lifting her hand again to hit me upside the head, but I stepped back.
“Now you about to piss me off!” she shouted.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” I said. “I just…” I dropped my head and inhaled a breath, pinching the inner corners of my eyes.
“You just what?”
“I don’t want to hurt her or break her heart because of my own hangups over commitment. And Ivy’s the type to want shit— I mean, stuff like that—and I just, I’m not for that.”
“But you're fine with sleeping with that girl and then, from what it sounds like, acting like a damn jerk afterward,” she snapped, sucking her teeth. “Dammit, Leo, I didn't raise you to behave like this.”
“I know.”
“You have to fix it.”
“I am.” I nodded. “That’s why I told her I would move out.”
“You told her what?!”
I’d knocked on Ivy’s door, waiting for a response. I hadn’t seen her since the night before when she left my room and entered hers, locking her door.
I felt terrible after seeing those tears slide from her eyes.
Terrible enough to call Vanessa and let her know I couldn’t make it out to Manhattan. I’d tried at least five times that night to get Ivy to open her door. Knocking, then resorting to sitting outside of it with my back to the door. But she never opened the door.
After sitting outside her door for an hour, I returned to my room, changed out of my clothes and into something comfortable, and spent the rest of the night in Baby Love’s nursery, watching him sleep.
I never thought it would be possible to find comfort around him, but there was something about him that made me feel right. Good.
I cared for the baby and wanted the best for him. He deserved to grow up in an environment his parents would have created for him—calm, serene, healthy. This shit with Ivy and me was simply not heading in that direction. Not after our back and forth.
“Come in,” Ivy said when I knocked again.
I turned the knob and stepped in, finding her at her work desk, setting up her tripod.
Since becoming a guardian, she hadn’t gone into the city for work.
They’d offered her a column, and she’d been uploading sports commentary to her YouTube channel, which had been growing.
She was finding her way in this situation we didn’t expect to find ourselves in with Baby Love, and it was really inspiring.
I didn’t want to be the person to ruin the new life she was building.
“How are you?” I asked, closing her room door.
She peeked over at me before turning her attention back to what she was doing. “What do you want, Leo?”
She was dressed down, a look she’s become accustomed to since moving to Greene Gardens.
Before moving here and having to care for a baby, Ivy used to be glammed up 24 hours a day.
Hair smoothed to the top of her head, face covered in the most expensive foundation and lipstick money could buy.
Clothing always perfect. But lately, her hair had been up in messy buns, her attire simple tees over leggings that, even though covered her up, showed off the beautiful shape of her legs.
That was the thing—to me, Ivy had been her most beautiful since living out here. She was perfect before moving out here, but these days, she was absolutely ethereal to me. And I didn’t want the stress between us to change her any further, or for the worse.
“I’m gonna move out.”
Her hand stopped twisting the bottom piece of the tripod for a beat before she was back at it.