Fly on the Wall (5 page)

He broke the silence and a chunk of my fragile ego by saying, “I was wondering how long it would take you to ask me out.”

“What?” My mouth flew open. “No, I'm not asking—”

“I'm just kidding. Relax,” he said. “You're absolutely right. I haven't mingled much since I've been here. Sure, I'll go.”

“Great.” I took a breath of relief. “I'll give you more details next week.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Then he added, “What else are we doing?”

“Huh?”

“Let's go dancing or something afterward. Let's maximize the evening.” He paused. “I was already trying to figure out a way to turn our
workout
routine into more of a friendship, so maybe this will be the start.”

“Maybe.” I blushed.

“I mean, it's hard for me to watch you sweatin' on that treadmill day in and day out without—” He stopped and chuckled.

No he didn't
. “Without what?” Call me George, because I was curious.

He finished in laughter. “Without knowing your middle name or your favorite drink.”

He couldn't be serious. “My middle name is Danae, and for the moment, I like a glass of red wine. Now tell me what you were really about to say.”

Doran asked, “Are you sure you wanna know?”

“Yeah.” What the heck? “Why not?”

He hesitated. “It's just hard to watch you sweat up a storm the way you do and not wonder how much you sweat in bed.” My mouth and eyes were wide open, and although what Doran had said was absolutely tasteless, I was very turned on.

Silence fell on us once more. I couldn't speak, breathe, think, or anything else, for that matter. “Are you still there?” he asked.

“Yes.” I tried not playing into his game. “I'm here. A car almost hit me. I can't believe the way people drive these days.”

He didn't buy it. “Did I scare you or something?”

“Scare me?” I repeated. “No. No, not at all.”

“Good. I'm sure you've seen the way I look at you.”

I brushed it off. “Well, you stare at every woman that walks by.”

“I look at everybody,” he said. “But you're the one that I want to touch.”

“Touch?” I needed clarification.

“Would you allow me?”

If I said no, I'd be a frigid bitch. If I said yes, I'd be a slut. “Damn, I have another call coming in, Doran. I'll call you back.”

“No problem. Drive safely, and I'll talk to you later.”

In the matter of minutes that I allowed Doran to usher me into a very uncomfortable and miserable, desperate place, I suddenly wished I hadn't called. He wanted sex, nothing more, and he wasn't ashamed to ask for it.

H
aving a locker in high school is equivalent to having an apartment. People you don't want to see might just stop by, move in next door, or some retard could just drive by with her lights off just to see if you're home,
or
to peep out if you have company.

Trese waited in front of my locker between four consecutive class periods. However, unlike an apartment, I couldn't pretend not to be home, tell the neighbors to say that I moved, or call the cops to report a stalker. I just didn't get the books that I needed for my classes.

To say that I regretted getting involved with Trese over the summer was an understatement. Why? Because it had been confirmed that she had the impression that since we were having sex, she was going places in my life. She told one of my boys that she and I were going to the same college. How? I didn't even know if I was headed to college, and with grades like hers, she was headed back to middle school.

Ever since the bathroom incident more than a week before I'd been playing hard to find, ducking and dodging like I owed her money. However, Trese got smart. The chick staked out my locker until she got what she wanted: a crowd, a damn scene, and me.

I couldn't go to Ms. Patrick's class without my book, so I took a deep breath and made a beeline to my locker. When Trese saw me, she didn't smile like she used to. Instead, she squinted her eyes and put her hands akimbo.

“How come you ain't tell me you were driving to school?” she asked loudly. I was still fifteen feet away.

What the—? Who in the hell? I looked behind me 'cause she couldn't be talking to me, not the kid, and not like that.

“Whom are you talking to?”

“You.” She had the nerve to put her acrylic fingernails all in my face. “When were you gonna tell me?”

“Hold up, shorty.” I politely moved her hand out of my face and reached for my lock.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Trese got loud. “What, you drivin' some bitch to school?”

“Whoa.” I smirked through my embarrassment; there were people all around. “Let's talk about this after school.”

“No.” She knocked my hand away from the lock as I tried to enter the combination. “I wanna know now.”

I took a deep breath and looked at her. There was nothing sexy, appealing, or tantalizing about her anymore. She was played out and very close to getting her feelings hurt. “Trese, stop bullshitting. I have to go to class.”

She was really upset. “Answer my question first.”

“I don't have to answer a damn thing.” I grabbed her hand and moved it out of my way. “So get the hell out of my face.” That sure wasn't the way to talk to a lady, but I had nothing to worry about. There was nothing ladylike about Trese.

Right then, one of my teammates made eye contact with me as he walked by. I reached out to him. “What's up, son?” We knocked knuckles, and for a second, I ignored Trese like she was a useless piece of hallway junk. “Practice is gonna be a killa today, but I got something for you, boy.” He mumbled something then laughed, and I joined him. “See you later, man.”

“You ignoring me now?” she asked.

I was pissed. “What do you want?”

She spoke more calmly. “I'm sorry about getting mad, but I just feel like you've been pushing me away over the past week.” It looked like she wanted to cry, but like most actresses, she just couldn't get the tears to come on cue. I wasn't a director, so I wasn't going to yell “cut!” She only had one shot.

“When I heard that you were driving and didn't even offer me a ride, I felt a little hurt.” She continued with dry eyes. “All I want to know is why you didn't tell me that you were driving to school all this time.”

I wasn't moved by her antics, and didn't feel that I owed her an explanation. “Did you ask me?” I opened my locker.

“Just answer the question.” She kicked back into ghetto gear. “If you bringin' somebody, just say that.” She was acting like I had stolen one of the two cars that she and her fifteen family members shared.

“Did you ever ask me?”

“No.” Then along came the neck movement. “So, what you sayin'?”

“I'm saying that since you didn't ask me, there was nothing to tell.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I don't report to you.”

She looked absolutely stunned. “I see that.”

I grabbed my English book and closed the locker. “I can't be late to Ms. Patrick's class.” I looked at my watch. “I have to get going.”

She grabbed my hand. “Don't you need to go to the bathroom first?” She was the queen of manipulation.

“Maybe another day.” I knew that there would be no more days between us.

“Come on.” She pulled herself into me. “Let's have a little fun.” She laughed. “You know you want to.” She licked those luscious soup coolers then whispered, “I'll give you head.”

Damn! Trese knew what to say, what to do, and how to do it. But those were the things that were turning me off because that's all she knew how to do. “Naw, I have to go.”

“Okay.” She squeezed my hand. “So, what time are you picking me up in the morning?”

The drama was only just beginning. “What?” I asked.

“I'm not riding the bus if you have a ride.” She looked at me like I should've already known that. “Just tell me what time to be ready.”

“No.” I had had enough. The halls were getting clearer by the second. “Trese, I'm not picking you up in the morning or taking you home after school.”

“How come?” She looked dazed.

“I can't take this.” I pointed at her then back at myself. “This is over.”

“What do you mean
this
?”

“You know exactly what I'm saying.”

“No, I don't.” The tears she was hoping for finally ran out to the stage. “What are you trying to say?”

“I'm sick of you acting like you're my damn girl.”

“You saying that I'm not?” she asked.

I shook my head from side to side. “Did I ever tell you or ask you to be my girl?”

“Not in so many words, but we . . .” She looked down.

“Did I ever ask you to be my girl?” I didn't want there to be any misunderstanding when we walked away from locker number 507.

“No, but—”

I interrupted. “Then that might mean that you're not.”

“Wait a minute.” Then out came the girl that the hood would be proud of. “Wait a fuckin' minute.” Trese rolled her eyes and her neck all at once, proving once again that she was the president of Hoochie Phi Coochie. “Are you breakin' up with me?”

“I can't break up with you if we were never a couple.” I couldn't hold my tongue. Trese had put me through hell for the last week. She sent fake passes to get me out of classes, asked girls to hand me love letters from her, staked out my locker, and would call and hang up when my mom answered the phone.

The bell rang, and I was still up to my eyebrows with Trese.

“So, what the hell have we been doing?” Her inquiring mind wanted to know.

“Ah—” I tried to think of a better word, but since I was pressed for time, I just used the first word that came to mind. “Fuckin'.” Right away, I felt something cold yet hot touch my cheek. “You didn't just do that.”

“Yes, the hell I did,” she said.

Though my anger had reached never before seen heights, I didn't have the reactionary thought of hitting her back. She didn't look scared, nervous, remorseful, or surprised at what she had done, and that bothered me more than anything else.

I sucked my lips inward to keep from calling her a few names I knew I shouldn't ever call a woman. I was still too shocked to leave. “You better never say another damn word to me.”

“I won't,” she sneered. “You weren't even man enough to tell me that all you wanted was to sleep with me.”

“And you weren't woman enough to not sleep with me. That's just plain nasty.”

Now that the halls were just about empty, her voice was echoing, but she didn't care. “Nothing was nasty about it when
you
were all up in it, though.”

I could tell that behind it all, she was hurting. Trese expected me to change her life. She wanted to go with me, but she couldn't.
I
couldn't. Truth was she expected me to treat her differently than other guys did, and I tried, but she didn't let me. She threw herself on my dick before I could learn anything about her. She had no one to blame for her pain but her.

“Why did you have sex with me?” she wanted to know.

Why did she have to ask that question? I wasn't about to start lying now. “I did it because you gave it up.” I didn't know how not to tell the truth right now. “You were cool, Trese, but I don't like you . . . not in a girlfriend kinda way.”

She looked at me like I had just doused her with hot cooking oil. “Not in a girlfriend kinda way, huh?” She wiped her tears. “Well, you better decide in which damn way you want me, because I'm pregnant.” She dropped her nuclear weapon and vacated the grounds.

In absolute shock, I heard myself whisper, “What?” as she walked away. I didn't call her back or run behind her because I couldn't stand for her to repeat those words. I was fine with believing that I needed a hearing aid.

In slow motion and much denial, I strolled to class. “Whatever.” She couldn't be pregnant. We used condoms each and every time. I scratched my head. “She's lying,” I said to pacify my growing desire to punch the wall. “Naw.” With each step, I tortured myself with maybes and maybe nots. “She can't be.” A step later, I switched. “But what if she is?” I hated to be the type of man to say this, but I had to. “If she's pregnant that doesn't mean that it's mine.” I couldn't stand to hear guys lay blame on another man when push came to shove, but let's be real . . . Trese was far from the Virgin Mary, and with air pollution the way it is, the angel Gabriel wouldn't dare commute from Jerusalem to Miami.

When I made it to my English class, I stood outside for five minutes before I opened the door. I felt her eyes on me, but couldn't care less about what Ms. Patrick had to say. I didn't even look at her as I took my seat.

“Theodore, I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about during our hour together after school today.” My peers all laughed.

“Whateva,” I said under my breath, knowing that now I'd have to explain to Coach J. why I was an hour late to practice.

Ms. Patrick started talking about the parts of speech, and for the next forty-five minutes, she sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher to me. “Mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa.” I just opened my textbook to the page everyone else was on and flew two thousand miles per hour into my nightmarish future.

Trese would probably be calling the local news and the papers tonight to tell them that Boy Wonder wasn't so wonderful after all. Boy Wonder was now wondering what the future had in store for him. How could I deal with having a child with
her
? I thought about being connected to her for eighteen years, and nothing had ever made me feel so sick. It was upsetting to think that a child of mine might grow up in the household where Trese did.

The bell rang, and I watched the other students walk by me and out the door. I couldn't leave, but I somehow appeased myself with the thought of Trese waiting at my locker to apologize for the cruel joke.

The classroom went from being alive with whispers, coughs, and the noise of crumpling paper to just two people breathing. Forty seconds into my detention, I already felt that running down a flight of stairs blindfolded would be better. I rested my head on the desk.

Ms. Patrick said, “Theodore, this is not the time to catch up on your rest.”

“I don't see why not,” I mumbled.

“I'll tell you why.” She paused. “You're keeping me from helping a friend of mine prepare for her party tonight. Therefore, I intend to make your life just as miserable as she will make mine.” She giggled a bit. “So, heads up.”

“I'm not feeling well.”

“You're a big, strong basketball player,” she said. “Please sit up.”

I picked up my head and saw Ms. Patrick standing behind her desk, removing her navy blue jacket. She revealed a tight white blouse. The shirt was so close-fitting that her hard nipples were protruding through the material. Damn, she was moving her mouth, but I couldn't comprehend.

“Huh?” Here I was in the middle of my crisis with Trese, wishing that whatever insect Ms. Patrick was afraid of would land on her arm so that I could kill it and then intentionally rake my hand against her breasts. “I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“You said that you were sick, so I asked if that was the reason you were late.” She stepped out of her shoes and started straightening her desk.

“Oh, yes.” Damn, I was in shock. I had never seen anything like that on a teacher. Now I could see exactly why Coach J. fell for her, but she was mean as hell, so I also saw why he had to step, too.

Back when I first came to West Dade four years ago, Ms. Patrick didn't look half as good. Now she was the teacher that all of the others were jealous of. Had she been fifteen years younger, she would be the embodiment of my dream girl. Or if I was fifteen years older, she'd be in danger of . . . Damn, she was facing me again. Her nipples were staring at me.

She opened her mouth. “Mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa.” I sized her up, 36-28-40 . . . I was never wrong. “Are you listening to me?” she asked while staring at me weirdly.