Zaire held her tighter. “Then I won’t.”
“But I know you need to.” Her whole body trembled. “I can’t let my fear keep you from your dreams.”
He stayed right there, holding her together while her world finally stopped shaking under her feet.
“Cooks…my man, what’s been going on?” Ertan puffed through the line, breathing hard like he’d just sprinted across the world to answer.
Zaire sat on the back porch of the guest house with his elbows on his knees. He made up his mind hours ago that it was time to face the music, and once his mind was made up, that was it.
Because truth was, he’d been feeling this switch coming for months.
Everything Ertan touched made Zaire feel smaller, less like himself and more like a project they could mold into something quiet, safe, and palatable. Every meeting was somebody telling him how to talk…how not to walk…how to adjust his energy so sponsors wouldn’t clam up.
Every photoshoot felt staged…every post felt forced…every room he walked into, he could tell they’d been warned about him beforehand.
The Black kid with tattoos who grew up Crip-affiliated.
The temper problem.
The image issue.
The fucking risk.
Zaire knew he was none of that, but no matter how much of himself he tried to hold back…who he truly was always broke through.
He could hear it in how they addressed him…how they didn’t shake his hand right away…how they spoke to Ertan more thanthey spoke to him…how they kept telling him they were honored to help refine his brand, like he asked them to.
Ertan did nothing to protect him from any of it. He fed into it, signed off on it…put Zaire in rooms that were never built for men who talked and moved like him.
Zaire wanted people around him who saw value in where he came from, not bitch ass niggas who treated his upbringing like a stain they had to scrub off before they could make money off him.
He needed a team that worked with him, not over him. A team that listened instead of handled. A team that didn’t look at him like a liability they needed to babysit.
Talking to True really ignited the fire in him again. That and these sacred lands Ray bragged on. Or maybe it was the sweetness that lay between Meadow’s legs…or the way she liked to challenge him? Smirking to himself, Zaire knew it was everything about Meadow that had him ready to show the world how they counted him out too soon.
“I ain’t your man,” he told Ertan., “and I ain’t been goin’ through nothin’ you need to know about.”
Ertan laughed under his breath. It was a fake, nervous industry laugh that always made Zaire want to punch him in his shit. “Cooks…come on, talk to me. You’ve been ghost. Press is calling. Sponsors are asking?—”
“Good,” Zaire cut in, leaning back in the chair. “Tell ’em I’m busy. Tell ’em I’m takin’ care of my life instead of everybody else’s pockets.”
Ertan’s breathing slowed. “What are you talking about Cooks?”
“Aye cuh, my name is Zaire…I know that shit too Black for y’all little dick muthafuckas but call me by my Black ass name.” His blood boiled every time they refused to address him by his name. Yea, it could’ve been chalked up to being professional, buthe’d heard how they talked to the other players only using their first names.
“Come, on, Zaire…you know it’s all love. But talk to me…I knew that place wouldn’t help you.”
“I’m done,” Zaire said. “I’m firing the whole team. You, the PR folks, the social media people and all them consultants you keep shoving at me like I asked for ’em? I’m done.”
Silence ate the line up.
“You’re making a mistake,” Ertan sighed. Zaire could hear the anger pinching through. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Zaire scoffed. “Yeah I do. I’m cutting off everybody that ain’t been moving forme. I been paying for shit I never agreed to. Y’all book meetings I don’t want, y’all put me in rooms I hate, y’all push narratives that don’t come from me. I ain’t no PR puppet. I’m a golfer…a man. I ain’t finna be out here cleanin’ up no mess y’all created.”
“Zaire—”
“I told you from jump I don’t do all that softening up shit. I ain’t changing who I am cause y’all scared of how I look on a golf course.”
