~ Twenty-One ~
He didn’t have the stamina or will to avoid anyone so when Colt ran into Drew, entering the Washington Sports Club just as he was doing the same, he nodded a greeting.
“You still here?” he asked.
Drew laughed. “For the duration.”
Colt paused. “Wait, what’s that mean?”
“Signed with the Wizards,” Drew said grinning.
Despite himself, Colt grinned and extended a hand to give Drew some dap. “Word?”
“Yup. Looks like we gon’ meet on the court again, Money Man.”
Colt nodded. “A’ight, a’ight … lookin’ forward to it.” And he was surprised that he actually meant it. “C’mon work out wit’ me. Lemme see what kinda weight you pushin’ these days.”
“Much more than you,” Drew said. “Always much more than you. And you know this.”
“We’ll see,” Colt said as they headed toward the locker rooms.
Once in the weight room, they fell into an easy rhythm, spotting for each other as they moved through different routines, and barely speaking. It was like the friendship equivalent of muscle-memory, with Drew effortlessly reading Colt’s face when he needed a little help, and when he wanted to push on through. By the time they got to the bench-press, they were both sweating, and breathing heavily, their faces flushed and exhilarated.
“You first,” Drew said, indicating the bench.
“Nah. You’re in my house. Guests first.”
“Visitor’s prerogative,” Drew returned. “You first.”
“Lovers’ spat?”
Colt looked over his shoulder. Janelle was standing a few feet behind him, a towel draped over her shoulder, wearing a sport-bra and capri-length tights. She looked dewy with perspiration, and her color was high under her caramel complexion. If he didn’t know what he now knew, Colt would have found her attractive.
Drew on the other hand didn’t know what Colt knew. He looked Janelle over appreciatively and wiping a hand on his sweats, extended it to her.
“I’m Drew,” he said. “And no, this fool ain’t nothin’ to me. Much less a … lover.”
Janelle laughed her ringing, almost musical laugh. “I could probably attest to that,” she said, glancing at Colt. She took Drew’s hand and allowed him to shake hers, and then to release it after a lingering hold.
“Janelle,” she said, introducing herself when Colt looked disinclined to do it for her. “You’re a new face.”
“Yes, and no. I’m from near here originally. Just moved back home.”
“So, I’ll see you around then?” she asked, her head cocking to one side.
“Most definitely.”
“Good,” she said. And then with one last smile, she walked by, heading for the fly machine.
“If you know what’s good for you …” Colt began.
“Since when have I ever known that?” Drew quipped.
“Nah, man. I’m serious. That one’s a little unstable.”
Drew glanced in the direction where Janelle had just gone. “For real? How so?”
“Let’s just say she doesn’t respond well to rejection. It makes her … prone to imagine things as maybe going down differently than they did.”
Drew’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh!” He shook his head. “Definitely don’t want none of that.”
“No, you really don’t,” Colt confirmed. “Just find you a nice, conventional girl.”
At that, Drew pursed his lips in something like a smirk, and nodded. It was only then that Colt realized how that had to have sounded, like a taunt. Drew used to have a nice conventional girl. The same girl that Colt now had.
“Look, man …”
“Nah. It’s cool,” Drew said. “I heard y’all livin’ together now?”
“Yeah. It’s been a little bit.”
Three weeks, two days.
“What’s that like?”
“Different,” Colt said, not wanting to get into it. And especially not wanting to get into it with Drew. “So, you goin’ first, or what?” He waved toward the bench.
“Why not?” Drew said. “That’s what I do, right? Just pave the way for you.”
Colt dropped his keys on the entryway table and listened for sounds of life in the house. There was nothing. There never was, lately. In fact, he was almost certain that he saw Sam less now that they shared the same home. He only knew he would see her earlier than usual today because they were going to New Jersey.
Sam had agreed to come with him for a team event, an informal get-together at coach’s house in Atlantic City, as they all got in the mindset of training camp and preparation for the pre-season. The long separation, especially for teams like theirs, that hadn’t made it too far in the playoffs, required a little more transition time. Everyone needed to ease back into the off-court camaraderie that would help them win games on-court, and dinners like this was one way to do that.
Coach was having everyone bring wives, and children and domestic partners, and there would be a clam and crab-bake, and cookout at his beach house. Most of the player had rented homes, or suites nearby for the occasion, and a couple of guys already owned homes of their own. Colt and Sam would be staying with Eddie and Tiffany Washburn in their five-bedroom house right on the beach.
They were heading down there today, Friday, and coming back to DC on Sunday morning. Sam had pretended not to be antsy about it, though Colt knew she would rather not go. But that was what they were doing lately—each not telling the other what was on their mind. Each not being completely honest about their feelings.
Colt’s feelings were complicated.
He loved living with Sam. All of it.
Seeing her bras lying on the floor of the dressing room, smelling her sweet-coconutty hair and body potions and lotions in the bathroom, and even opening his dresser drawer to find that it had been rifled through and his best t-shirts enlisted as nighties.
And he loved that they had a leisurely, easy, and rhythmic sex life, no longer dictated by the time at which one or the other of them had to go ‘home’. Because now ‘home’ was where they lived together.
What made things—and Colt’s feelings—complicated was the change in how they were with each other. They had never fully recovered from that Sunday dinner at Ma Maxine’s house, when he had mentioned marriage and she had recoiled from the idea; when he had come to terms for the first time with the fact that Sam had deep, and maybe even justified doubts about him, and about whether they could go the distance.
She spent a lot of time working late, and was gaining some notice from her bosses, especially Jason who Colt finally met at a company party. Jason, who he had always pictured as an almost-fifty-year-old White dude, was neither that old, nor White. He was a dapper brother with a manicured goatee and sharp, well-tailored suits. And Colt learned one more thing at that company mixer: since they had been working so much more closely and much longer hours together, Jason no longer called Sam “Samantha.”
That development was ironic, since Sam now looked more like a Samantha. She wore blue suits to work more days than not, and on Saturdays while he got his haircut, she had her hair steam-straightened at a sketchy Dominican salon that used hair appliances that looked like they carried enough heat to burn the skin off a person.
His and Sam’s routine now was for Colt to swing by to get her when he was done, and a few times he had been witness to the cringeworthy process that changed her full, beautiful mass of natural hair into silky waves that seemed to alter not only the hair, but her entire appearance. ‘Cute’ didn’t really apply now. Sam had acquired a kind of brittle sophistication that settled over her when she twisted that straight hair into a chignon, and slipped on yet another dark dress or suit each morning for work.
“Colt?”
He opened his eyes at the sound of her voice, and found Sam leaning over him. He was dressed in his jeans and a t-shirt, his weekend bags packed and sitting at the foot of the bed, waiting for her when he decided to take a nap.
“Sorry I’m late,” Sam said, whispering as though she hadn’t already woken him. “But I’m ready now.”
Colt sat up and looked her over, realizing that Sam had changed out of her work clothes and into a pair of shorts and a polo shirt with tennis shoes. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had washed off all the work makeup, or maybe even showered. He hadn’t even heard her come in.
“How long you been here?” he asked. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You looked like you could use the rest,” she said, but she averted her eyes a little. She hadn’t woken him because she didn’t want to.
Colt sighed and ran a hand over the top of his head, yawning and then stretching.
“You mind driving part of the way?” he asked. “I’m still a little fuzzy-headed.”
“From what?” Sam asked, teasingly. “I wish I had your life.”
“Had a hard workout today.”
He didn’t mention Drew.
“Sure, I’ll drive some. Maybe we should …”
Colt held her wrist, and pulled her down to him, kissing her. Sam reciprocated immediately, and leaned into it, bending at her waist, and not protesting when Colt slid his hands into the back of her shorts, managing to find enough room so he could cup her ass.
Sam pulled back a little and smiled.
“What time did you tell the Washburns we’d get there?” she asked.
“Who cares?” he said, sliding one hand around to the front, without releasing the button at the shorts’ waistband.
“Not me.” Sam gasped when he touched her. She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip, softening her stance so he could reach her more easily. Colt watched her face and felt his own body’s response to the slick smoothness that his fingers encountered between her legs.
“C’mere,” he said.
Sam loosened the button-fly and Colt slid her shorts, and the underwear beneath, down and over her hips. Once she stepped free of them, he leaned in, dipped his head, and tasted her. Each stroke of his tongue was slow, and soft, and when he felt Sam’s grip on his head tightening, her fingers digging into his scalp, Colt knew she was close. Lifting his head, gently releasing her grip from his head, he looked up at her, smirking when he saw the fire and frustration in her eyes.
“Why you lookin’ so mad?” he teased. “You think I’ma leave you hangin’?”
Sam’s nostrils flared, and she looked for a moment like she wanted to slap him.
Grinning, Colt dragged her toward him, flipped her onto her back on the bed. Loosening his jeans, he only got them down to his knees before Sam pulled him toward her, at the same time arching her hips upward. He sank deep inside her, closed his eyes and gave in.
Today, she was frantic in her pursuit of an orgasm, throwing her hips upward to his downward thrusts, digging her fingers into him as she pulled him toward her, and thrashing her head from side to side. She slowed only long enough to kiss him, and to let him kiss her. But even that was wild and uncontrolled. She had something weighing on her mind. Colt knew this because the sex she seemed to want right now was something that would render her mindless.
Bracing himself on his extended arms, he flexed deep and hard, and fast inside her, looking down at Sam as her eyes rolled back in her head. The harder his thrusts, the stiller, but louder she became. This was what she had been reaching for. When she came, her entire body stiffened like someone touched with an electrified prod, and then she went completely limp.
Colt continued moving, but slower, patient for his own release, because with Sam, getting a nut was never the point. The point was this … looking down at her, her soft eyes, her dewy skin, and the barest hint of a smile that hovered about her lips whenever they neared completion of the act of love.
With Sam, most days, there was at least one thing that reminded Colt of other days, of earlier days when they were just kids. A look she gave him across the table in the morning, something she said before leaving for work, or a certain way she might touch him gently on the arm, could summon a long-buried memory from when they were nine, or twelve, or eighteen-years-old.
But the love they made had no precedent.
“Wow. You look different.”
Tiffany Washburn welcomed Sam and Colt at the front door of her beachfront bungalow, holding a glass of white wine, and wearing a bathing suit and sarong.
Sam self-consciously tugged at her ponytail, resting on her shoulder, fighting the urge to explain that she hadn’t straightened her hair for aesthetic reasons, but because it made it easier for her to get out of the house before eight in the morning.
No one cared, she reminded herself. Hair wasn’t political for everyone. Although, it had been Jason who first mentioned it when one morning she met him in front of the Capitol Visitor Center where they were hosting a briefing.
Sam had been up late and overslept, so hadn’t the time to do much more than pull her hair out Buckwheat-style before rushing out of the house.
Jason had looked her over and smiled, though behind it Sam could tell he was unsure about her hair’s … appropriateness to the occasion.
‘That hair of yours is pretty … irrepressible, isn’t it?’ he’d said.
And then he smiled again.
Later, in her office, Sam pulled up ‘irrepressible’ on Thesaurus.com. She knew what it meant, of course, but suspected that if taken literally, it would not be quite the compliment that Jason’s smile suggested it was.
Uncontrollable.
Uncontained.
And the worst one yet—unruly.
She was right. Jason had been diplomatically sending her a message.
But she didn’t want to use chemicals. All she needed was something that could be reversed with a ‘just add water’ recipe. Leah told her about the Dominican salon.
‘Girl, they will fry all the Motherland out of your hair,’ she said.
The first time she went and sat on that chair, tears had welled up in her eyes at the scent and sizzle as the Motherland got fried. Now, she was used to it, though it did make her hair shafts weaker and more prone to snapping off when dry.
“We’re having drinks out back,” Tiffany said as she led Sam and Colt toward far end of the house. “But let me show you your suite first.”
The guest suite was on the opposite side of the house from the family quarters, flanking the other side of the living room and entryway. It was large and open, and even had a veranda facing the ocean. When Tiffany flung the doors open, Sam smelled the briny ocean, and heard the laconic squawk of seagulls.
“This is beautiful,” Sam said, turning to smile at her host. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, thanks Tiff,” Colt said. “This is cool.”
“Come join us when you’re ready,” she said. “Eddie and I are out back with Carter and Marnie. And if you’re hungry, there’s burgers and other silly food.” She shrugged. “Kids, y’know. They have to eat too.”
When Tiffany left them alone, Sam sat on the edge of the elevated, California king-sized bed, swinging her legs.
“Carter and Marnie …?” she asked Colt.
“She’s the skinny one with the chicken-legs and strawberry-blonde weave, got three kids and been engaged to Carter since the beginning of time.”
“Oh,” Sam drawled. “I remember them now. The forever-engaged couple.”
Colt looked at her from across the room and opened his mouth to say something. Then, thinking better of it, he hoisted their bags up and onto the twin luggage racks that had been conveniently placed near the closet. Sam let herself fall back onto the bed, her arms above her. The back of her hand smacked something, so she turned onto her stomach and noticed for the first time that there was a small gift-basket nestled among the pillows.
She pulled the basket toward her and began unearthing its contents. There was a box of nuts, a bar of high-end chocolate, a medium-sized bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, and tea, in little burlap satchels.
“I don’t want us to become one of those,” Colt said.
“One of what?” Sam asked, digging deeper into the basket, in case there was something like a diamond tennis bracelet hidden in there.
She had once heard a rumor of a New York socialite who had included half-carat diamond-stud earrings and gold cufflinks in her gift baskets for houseguests. With any luck, Tiffany had heard the rumor too, and wanted to duplicate the practice.
“Forever-engaged,” Colt said.
Sam looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. “What?” She seemed to have lost the narrative thread of their conversation.
“I don’t want us to become one of those forever-engaged couples,” he said.
“I wasn’t aware we were an engaged couple at all,” she said slowly.
“We’re not, but …”
“Colt,” she pleaded.
“What?” he asked, impatient. “I’m just sayin’ …”
“Don’t …” Sam’s heart sped up a little. “Just …”
Running a hand over his head Colt expelled a deep breath. “Y’know what?” he said. “I’ll just … I’ll see you out there.”
He left the room, and Sam, sitting alone surrounded by the contents of Tiffany Washburn’s gift basket, now strewn around on the bed.
There were no diamond-stud earrings.