Fly on the Wall (13 page)

“Oh, Toni.
She
is my best friend.”

I felt dumb for assuming. “Okay.” We had been on the phone for two hours, and I was still fighting to find the right words to form my question. “I have a question.” I wanted an answer badly, so I just asked with the best words I could put together. “Do you and Coach J. ever still get together?”

“Get together how?”

“Intimately.” I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for the desired response or for her to not say that the question was too personal.

“Well,” she paused, “what exactly do you mean by intimately?”

Damn, did I have to spell it out? “Sexually.”

“No,” she said quickly.

“When was your last experience?”

“With him?” She sounded slightly agitated. “Or someone else?”

I changed my angle. “Someone other than him.”

“Whoa.” She laughed. “It's been a very, very, very, very long time.”

“Are we talking more than a year?” I asked.

“We're talking more than seven years.”

“Wow.” I smiled with contentment.

She never talked much about her marriage to Coach J., but it didn't matter because I knew enough about him to not like him much anymore myself. I was now extremely uncomfortable around him. I tried to separate my personal life from my existence on the court, but with him as my coach, he brought her to the court each and every time. I felt like Judas, like I sold him out, betrayed him by almost kissing her and fantasizing about more happening someday. I avoided him. I couldn't look him in the face, and when I had to talk to him, I used the shortest words I could find then hurried off in the opposite direction.

“What about you?” she asked.

“What?”

She was shy to continue. “When was your last time?”

Should I count Friday night with Trese? Naw, nothing really happened. “A few weeks ago.”

“A few weeks ago?” she repeated, as though I had said I was screwing someone right there while talking to her. “Who?”

“Huh?” Damn.

“I'm sorry.” She continued. “It was a reactionary question. You don't have to answer that.”

“It's cool.”

“I didn't realize that you were seeing someone just a few weeks ago.”

“I wasn't.” I added, “It was just a thing.”

“Just a thing? Interesting.”

“No, it wasn't like that. We were friends at the time.”

She laughed to mask her displeasure. “It was just a few weeks ago.”

“I know, but we're not friends now.” I dug the hole deeper. “She's just not my type.”

“You should've known that before sleeping with her.”

She couldn't be mad. “He without sin cast the first stone,” I said.

“Oh, Lord.” I laughed. “I guess you saw
The Passion of the Christ.
”

“Have it on DVD.” I was glad to change the topic. “That's a serious flick.”

“Yeah, it was,” she said.

Paige was an amazing woman. She was funny, smart, caring, and most importantly didn't handle me with kid gloves as I thought most older women did when their “friends” were younger. Paige didn't act like she knew more than I did. She never talked about seeing more of the world than me, or having more experience in most things than I did. She was a woman, and I was hoping that she'd consider me not just a man, but
the
man.

Come on, it was Friday night. Honestly, I could be anywhere, Trese's or Angie's bed, or sweet-talking my way up under somebody's daughter's sheets. However, chatting with Paige somehow satisfied me. Had she invited me over, my car wouldn't have gotten me there fast enough. There were a few times in our conversation where I thought about asking her if she wanted company, but I didn't want to be the one to initiate anything else between us. Everything to come was up to her.

“Hey, what's up?” I said to Angie as she opened her door.

“Hi, Theo,” she said in a less than enthusiastic tone.

Right away the door opened wider. “Theodore Lakewood.” Her father reached for my hand. “How are you?”

“I'm fine, sir. You?”

“Oh, I just can't wait to see you in that opening game next week, man.”

“Thank you.” I shook his hand.

“Man,” he smiled, “you are on fire. Have you decided what college or NBA team it's going to be yet?”

That was the question everybody wanted an answer to. “No, sir, not yet. I'm still weighing my options.”

“If you decide on college, the smart thing to do would be to stay right here.” He patted me on the back. “U.M. is the place for a guy like you.”

“We'll see.” People, total strangers at the grocery store, movie theatre, and restaurants always seemed to think that I needed their advice to make an informed decision. I hated discussing my future plans with people who knew nothing about me.

I looked at Angie. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” She stepped toward me.

I shook Mr. Porter's hand again. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

“Don't let this be the only time you stop by.” He was eager. “Take care of my girl.”

“I will.” I waved him off.

“Oh, and Angie,” he remembered, “I'll be picking you up.”

“Why?” She had an attitude. “Theo can bring me home.”

He said, “I know, but I'll be in that area later, so keep your cell phone on.”

She turned her head away from him. “Yeah, all right.”

“What's wrong with
you
today?” I asked as we got in the car.

“He got back earlier than he was supposed to this morning and is already getting on my nerves.” She threw her purse in the backseat. “I'm mad at you too.”

“About what?”

“What happened to you calling me? I was hoping you'd come over while he was gone.”

“Sorry. I got tied up.”

“Too tied up for me?” She ran her hand up my thigh.

“Well, you have a boyfriend,” I said.

“Yeah, but—”

“But I'm not into causing problems.” I shook my head. “If you were my girl, I'd want dudes to respect me, so I'm giving my man Johnny the same treatment.”

She blushed. “So, what if I was single?”

“I'd be all over you.” I checked out her legs with a smile.

Angie spent the entire ride trying to convince me that Johnny would never know about us messing around. Truth was, my interest in Paige was occupying every inch of me, and this was new to me. I was turning down a beautiful girl in the hopes that a woman I hadn't even kissed would take me seriously. This was a first . . . and the last. I wanted to see where we would go, and until I proved that it couldn't be done, I was willing to try.

I was incredibly impressed when I pulled up to her pale yellow, two-car garage house, complete with ivory French doors and a wooden round-top mullion directly above them. “Nice,” Angie said.

While I walked to the door, I found myself curious about who cut her grass because I wanted to do it. I rang the bell and anticipated her inviting me in, but the door cracked open and two identical bighead li'l boys fought one another to push the door toward me.

“Who is it?” the little guy in the red shirt asked.

“You were supposed to ask that before you opened the door, shorty.”

“You here for the party?” he asked as I walked past him.

“Yeah,” I said. “Who are you guys?”

“My name is Devin Edwards.”

“My name is Kevin Edwards.” The second boy strained his neck to look up at me. “You're tall.”

I giggled and bent down to them. “My name is Theo.” Since they were in the last name business, I added, “Lakewood.”

“Do you play wideo games, Theo?”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I play wideo games. What you got?”

His eyes lit up. “Over here at Auntie Paige's house we got Dragon Ball Z and Crazy Taxi.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” they answered together. “You wanna play?”

“Yeah, but show me where your auntie is first.” I followed them out to the patio where I saw Paige and a tall, light-skinned lady, who I assumed was Kev and Dev's mom, working the grill. I slid the glass door to the right. “Good afternoon.”

Paige spun around in shock. “Hi.” She looked at her watch. “Oh my God, I didn't realize that it was so late.” She approached me. “You're the first one here.” Because she had company, I handled her cautiously. I wanted to hold her around the waist, but elected to drape my hands over her shoulder instead.

“Mmmm, you smell nice,” she whispered in my ear.

“Thanks.” I stepped back after the brief hug.

“How did you get in?” she asked, puzzled.

I pointed to the boys with their mouths pressed against the glass door. “The twins.”

“They opened the door?” the light-skinned lady asked.

“Yep.” I laughed. “They opened it then asked, who is it?” We were all laughing when Angie walked into the patio.

“Hi, Ms. Patrick, you have a very nice home.”

“Thank you, Angela,” Paige said as she hugged Angie.

“Toni, these are two of my students.” She pointed at us. “Theo Lakewood and Angela Porter.”

Toni walked over and shook our hands. “Nice to meet you two.”

Paige smiled. “Toni is my best friend.”

“Do you two need help with anything? Because I promised the twins we could play video games.”

Paige laughed. “No, go ahead. Just see that they don't open up the door again.”

“I will.” I rushed back into the house.

“You're really, really, really tall.” Kevin stared at me.

“I bet you're nine hundred years old,” Devin said.

“Nope, I'm a thousand years old,” I said.

“Wow,” they said in perfect harmony.

“Let's play.” I was just as excited as they were.

We played PS2 for over an hour before I realized that music was playing and there was a lot of talking and screaming streaming in from outside. It didn't take me long to smell something I knew had to taste good. I made my way to the patio, and it was alive with my classmates.

“Let's get this party started,” I yelled after kicking off my shoes, removing my shirt, and diving into the pool.

I had a blast playing water volleyball, Marco Polo, and racing. Paige never once mentioned class, homework, or West Dade at all. She was almost as goofy as we were, and when she and Toni put on their swimsuits and joined us in the pool, I wasn't the only guy saying “Holy shit.” The two older ladies had the remedy for everything that could be wrong with an eighteen-year-old guy.

Angie stayed within a foot of me the entire time we were in the pool. When the sun went down, she was bold enough to nonchalantly grab my willie and lug it toward her. It shocked the hell out of me, and something told me that Paige might have noticed it. Whenever Angie was too damn close to me, Paige called her off to help with a chore, flip hamburgers, get a pan, or help with something . . . just not me.

Though I saw jealousy in her eyes, Paige kept a smile the entire day, all the way up until 10
P.M.
When most of the students were gone and Angie's father showed up, the green-eyed monster made a move toward me.

“So, how did things go?” Mr. Porter asked Paige. I was talking to Angie, but my audio was tuned into her father's voice, not hers.

“Things went well.” Paige smiled. “Better than expected.”

“You look terrific. I bet you turned a few of these young heads.”