Love Delayed (19 page)

My eyes dart over to her.
Zoey never uses profanity. Have I brought her to this point?

Shit! This isn’t going to be easy
.

Her phone goes off again. And she sighs even harder as she looks down at it.

“Look, Stenton, I have to get to church. We can talk another time. A time when you’re in a better state. I’ll call your assistant to make sure you get some hangover food.” She then comes over and kisses me on the forehead. “Take care of yourself. Okay?”

Zoey
issues a long and somber regard. There’s a pregnant pause because I don’t know how many other ways to tell her we need to sort some shit out. Then she steps into her heels and walks out of the room, leaving me in a stupor, carrying the same fucking load of guilt that I have had for too many years.

Fuck me!

Then

February 2007                                                                                   

~
Stenton
~

The morning
after I dropped Zoey off at school after our Alpine excursion, just after practice, my phone did ping with a text. It was Erika Erceg. She still wanted to go out. And when she told me she was in Philly and wanted to see me before leaving, it added to my list of irritations. With what Zoey put on me in the past few days, I didn’t have room for more bullshit of the female persuasion. But I agreed to it.

We met at
Estia’s
on Locust. By the time I’d arrived with Paul, my assistant, in tow, she was there with her male friend, Mehan. Although Mehan likes to straighten up around me, I know he was just as excited and as atwitter as Paul seated next to me, but just not on the surface.

Paul had been my personal assistant for almost two years. He came highly recommended by a Gabonese model I used to fuck. When I decided to get my shit together and clean my image, I did a whole makeover
, even in staff. Prior to him, I had three female personal assistants, all of which I’d fucked, making me a not-so-stellar employer. Paul was an aspiring clothing designer, who needed money while getting his business in order.

He had
an impeccable eye for detail, could interface well with women, which helped with my sex life. When things went awry with a woman and I needed to separate, Paul would be there with his planner clutched to his chest in one hand, and STOP sign in the other, tapping his foot. He also wasn’t afraid to flex his authority over a man professionally on my behalf. The only irony was he seemed to have gotten along with everyone but me. I got ragged on a lot in the beginning by my teammates for having a five foot one inch, vanilla, effeminate man bossing me around off the court. Being criticized for odd tendencies was old hat for me. I never
fit in
in life. I took it all in stride and simply considered how much my life had improved and became much more systematized with his service.  

The threesome chatted
to their heart’s delight at the table throughout the meal. I couldn’t figure out why I was there; this seemed to have been a gathering for Paul and friends versus Erika and me. Paul led the conversation, asking about Erika’s reality show, the type of makeup her artists used and all other types of shit that had me in my phone rather than in their conversation. Erika would try to rope me in at different points of their talk, like mentioning me cameo-ing her show.

“You know you want to do it, Stent,” her tongue
laid between her top and bottom teeth when she finished pronouncing my name. “It’ll be great! C’mon.” She batted her long dark eyelashes.

“Oh, and I know your mom would so love the cameo. Stent would make her year!”
Mehan cheered very heartily.

Paul lifted his shoulders
in a heavy shrug as he sipped his tea through a straw. He knew that reality show bullshit was not my style at all. He was bold, but not stupid enough to add to their futile goading. I had built a solid reputation on being a private man over the past few years. It had been easy for me to remain so “elusive,” as the media termed me, because I didn’t have a large circle. I didn’t have close relatives other than my uncle and mother. My cousins that I did keep in touch with weren’t all without long sentences, preventing us from bonding and the others I’d never had a close relationship with. So, it had been pretty easy for me to lay low.

“Well,” Erika sang in her baby voice. “We still have p
lenty of time to convince you;
E!
isn’t letting go of the show any time soon.”

I snorted. If she wanted more of a response, it wasn’t coming. I waved for the waiter to bring the check. When he
did, of course Mehan didn’t break his neck to cover it. And even though Erika could more than cover it, she wouldn’t dare because in her mind this two hour mind-numbing meeting was a date.

“Well, good peoples, I have to hop on a plane first thing in the morning and still haven’t packed,” I
initiated my departure as I signed the bill.

“I can come over to help,” Erika offered with, I
was sure, as much lewd intentions as her voice led on.

“Nah, I’m good. I have errands to run before I can do that anyway.” I stood and offered my hand to
Mehan. “It was good seeing you, M-Easy.” His neck heated up a shade of crimson. Then I walked over to Erika, who was still sitting and kissed her on the forehead, catching a scent of her flowery perfume and berry hair.

On a good day, I’d fuck Erika sideways. She was not only fucking beautiful, but she was bad. Her body was molded to perfection. There were rumors of cosmetic enhancements, but if that was true, she certain
ly got that shit off because her entire package was the truth. What she felt like beneath me would remain to be seen. Now with where things stood with that fiery Zoey—wherever the hell they stood—there was no way that I could go there with Erika, no matter how tempting her butter pecan skin was.

As I was walking off, I heard, “Are you going to All-
Star weekend this year? I was thinking of going with my sisters.” She didn’t even look at me when addressing the reverse invitation.

That was a dumb question. It was like asking
if I was going to a mandatory work function. These were the types of games I was accustomed to engaging in with women for my attention.

“Yeah,” I snorted as I walked away. “I’ll be there.”

“Me, too!” I heard her yell eagerly from behind.

“Maybe I’ll see you then.”

I had a bit of running around to do before I went back to my apartment to pack. I attended a training session that evening before taking it down for the night. When I turned down for bed, it had dawned on me; no call or text from Zoey. Again, I felt annoyed as fuck. I could’ve just called her, but the hell I was. I’d already let her get underneath my skin, I’d already been making a number of concessions regarding her. I was not about to be a pussy and call her.
Fuck that
. Plus, I needed Zoey to show her hand. I was still confused as to what her game was, or if she had one at all.

Two weeks after we left Alpine, I still hadn’t heard from
Zoey. Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t the bug-a-boo type like Erika, but she also didn’t have the demanding social life Erika had either. All of my fucking spidey senses told me she was the type that would have called by now—no matter what her game was.

It was
the first Thursday in February and I’d just left a photo shoot for
Nike
, and was in the back of a limo with Paul, who was tapping away at his iPad. My team played the Wizards that night and we were headed for the bus.

“Here,” I hit
Send
on a text message to him. “Call that number and ask for Zoey. Tell her to give me a call,” I called over to Paul who sat across from me.

His phone went off and he immediately got
to tapping away on there. Seconds later he returned, “Either you’re now afraid to call your women on your own or you think I don’t have better things to do than to be played mindless games on,” he spoke over his glasses. “The number is disconnected.

Huhn? What the fuck is that?

“Disconnected?” I repeated much to myself.

“
Mmmm-hmmm,” Paul breathed as he went back to his iPad. “That’s what I said, giant.”

What the fuck
type of game is she playing?
She fucks me and then changes her number?
I hadn’t done that move in years. I couldn’t believe when I realized my heart started racing. Something didn’t feel right. As much as the word
GAME
had been chanting in my fucking head, a small—very minuscule—piece within my chest was whispering trouble. Why would bubbly and witty Zoey not call me all this time and then change her number? Shit didn’t make sense.

As my teammates and I were preparing to board the bus for D.C., I
pulled Paul to the side. “I have something I need you to do while I’m away.” I rattled off a few things to him before getting on the bus and taking off.

The night before
we left for D.C., I’d gone out to a private party in Moorestown, NJ.
Al and the other dudes were all there drunk off their asses, and while I was just a few drinks behind them, I couldn’t exactly relax. I had Zoey running through my mind. She still hadn’t reached out and I still hadn’t been able to figure out why.

“Shit!” Alton barked. “I can’t have a fucking life!” he cringed. “It’s always a text complaining about what I didn’t do or an order telling me what the fuck I should do.
You’s a lucky ass fuck,” he noted before taking a sip of his Corona.

“How do you mean?
” I asked, following suit.

There were women all over the house, some partially clothed, and few even naked. These were the only parties some of
us could do during the season, or a few like me, ninety-nine percent of the time to guarantee privacy. The host, Jeremy Booker, was a defensive linebacker for the Eagles and a native of Atlanta where the strippers are bred differently. So, many of us were appreciative of his hosting to protect our privacy.

“You
ain’t got no lady, no wife, no fucking fiancée, and no goddamn baby-mother keeping track of all your offenses,” Al counted off on his fingers. “You ain’t got no fucking leash, Stent. Be happy for that shit, bro.”   

I chuckled. No matter how many years I’ve known him, his usage of bro versus mine of
bruh was a stark contrast. We’re from the same tiny ass state and still have different lingo. With as much of my vocabulary that has worn off on him, bruh wasn’t one of them.

“I hear you, Al,” I clinked my glass with
his without warning. “I feel you, bruh.”

That was bullshit. At that very second, I wanted someone texting
me something—about calculus, literature…fucking psychosexual development—anything!

Oh, fuck.
I missed my Niña.

“
Yo, what’s up with Zoey? You hit I see. Y’all still going strong?” Alton asked out of pure innocence. He probably thought since a couple of weeks had past, it was safe to, but to the contrary, it was still a private topic, and as of late, a sensitive topic.

“She good. I’m good,” I
replied succinctly before taking a swig.

“Here you go with that secretive bullshit. W
as she a virgin or what, man?” He pushed on. “I don’t believe shit her cousin, Angela, has to say. I know you hit, so spit it.”

I looked at him f
rom the corner of my eye. He knew I didn’t run my mouth about sex, and I damn sure wasn’t about to start with Zoey. If I was honest, I’d admit to it being difficult not being able to have someone to talk this shit out with. It was too fucking complicated. She was so young. I knew the best thing to do with her was let her go. That, however, was easier said than done at this point.

“Okay, well what about Erika
Erceg?” Al wasn’t giving up. “Man, she been running your ass down for almost a year now. If you don’t want that ass, please pass your dick over here so I can use it to handle her. God knows if and when my dick touches any pussy, Tynisha can detect that shit,” he snorted almost painfully.

I didn’t respond to that. In fact, I didn’t utter another word for the remainder of the forty-five minutes we stayed there. We all had an early morning the following day and needed to get the hell
out of dodge.

We beat the Wizards; laid them on their asses at their home. While everyone was wild
and boisterous in the locker room, I was preoccupied. I pulled my phone from the locker and found there was still no word from Zoey, but as I searched my phone, I saw there was something in there from Paul. He left a voice memo. Not a voice message, but a memo using an app. He drove me fucking crazy with these and typically used it when he had quite a few things to share. He said I didn’t comprehend long written messages well, but responded to this better. I thought it irritated the fuck out of me to hear his elongated pronunciations, but rode with it.

I plugged
my earbuds in and hit play. Paul started with updating me on scheduling and upcoming meetings. It wasn’t until he was almost done that he got me to stop in my tracks.

“So, as far as your little mission: I was able to find out where Miss
Zoey stays on campus. I called her dorm, but got her roommate, Rebecca, who informed me that Zoey’s phone has been out of service for a few weeks and that she doesn’t have a new one. I didn’t say much from there because you only asked that I try to get a new number for her. So, that’s that.”

Hearing
Zoey’s name brought me back to that empty feeling in the pit of my gut. How do you have sex with someone for the first time and not follow up with even a call. I would wonder if she enjoyed herself those few short days, but every time I thought about how tightly she wrapped those legs around me and how violently her body rocked when I sucked between her legs, I knew we’d connected. I just wasn’t expecting the sudden disconnect.