Jazz, let me know what you think about the addendum to the financial literacy piece. My mom and stepdad were the ones who taught me, but I realized in college that everyone didn’t get the same lessons. This one time…
Lamar, splitting the classes up so credit, investments, and taxes are not quick financial footnotes, but actual separate courses is smart. I learned the hard way about taxes when I had my first job at the library and that little check wasn’t what I thought it was going to be…
Jazz, I think you’re right. The addition of a professional development course is necessary. The better you are as an athlete, the more you’re given and the less work you have to do. Everything becomes about the sport and that’s it. My mom wasn’t playing that, so I had to make a plan for life after football. Back in high school…
Lamar, when I was in high school, I spent so much time lost in a book or in boxing classes, one of the librarians worried I didn’t know how to talk to people. She came out to the gazebo and suggested a communications class…
Jazz, another by-product of being a star athlete is that sometimes they get away with talking to people any kind of way. My homeboy got sucker punched one night…
I felt closer to him than ever, but I hadn’t heard his voice in weeks.
“What’s going on with you and that boy?” Aunt Addy asked as we headed back to her house. “I can’t think of his name.”
“Lamar,” Monica answered.
With wide eyes, I looked between the backs of their heads.Was it that obvious I was thinking about him?
“Nothing’s going on,” I replied with a shrug. “We’re friends.”
“The way he was on my voicemail begging for you to call him and the way you ran to your room to make the call sounds like more than friendship to me,” Aunt Addy teased before giggling.
I stared out the window. “It’s not like that. We’re still friends though.”
They let the subject go.
But once we were in the house and Monica had gone home for the night, Aunt Addy called me into her room.
“What’s really going on with you and Lamar?” she asked me from underneath her covers.
The question was unexpected.
“Nothing,” I replied, lifting my shoulders. “He’s busy. I’m busy. But we’re friends. I’m helping him with his business plan.”
“But you want to be more.”
I shifted from one foot to the other. “Actually, I want to go to sleep.”
She let out a light laugh. “Good night.”
“Good night, Aunt Addy.”
I thought about that conversation as I pulled out my laptop and looked over the shared document and the changes Lamar had made. I laughed to myself as I read the note he’d added to one of my suggestions.
He’s so funny, I thought with a grin.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of my aunt’s comments or the jokes he’d made in the document, but when I saw Lamar’s mom at the jazz festival the following weekend, I got nervous.
I hadn’t been nervous when I met her.
I hadn’t been nervous when I saw her at Hot Comb.
But when Gwen and her husband, Bill, approached our section at the festival, all I could think about was her asking me about her son. There were twenty of us in the section, and I didn’t want to be put on the spot in front of Aunt Addy’s friends and their dates.
Gwen immediately came over and gave me a hug. When she stepped back, she gestured to her husband. “Bill, this is Jazmyn,” Gwen introduced. “She’s the one Lamar brought home last month.”
“Oh yeah! Hey, nice to meet you,” Bill said, shaking my hand. “I’ve heard nothing but good things.”
And that was the last mention of Lamar.
