“Record this song for Mom while I go chop it up with Blake.” She doesn’t smile until I do and that fucks my head up so bad that I almost grab her arm to take her with me.
* * *
Janet’s voicevibrates across the hotel and slithers underneath the doors of the ballroom while me and Blake stroll side by side outside of them.
“Smart move.” He nods with a grin.
“What you getting at, man?”
He chuckles, bringing the champagne flute he took from the table to his lips as we stop in front of a pair of floor to ceiling windows. “Yourdate.”
My palms get moist like Phat’s lurking around to hear the word she’ll equate with Bryson when she gets older because this was far from a date. This was everyday life shit that was expected of me as Ason Williams’ son and would be expected of her if God let me keep her.
“What about her?”
“She’s a black girl.”
“And?”
“Did you watch the last draft, man?”
I swallow. “Kind of.”
It played in the background while I was curled around a toilet back in my condo in LA. Adam Silver didn’t even finish droning out Javier’s last name before that 1942 came bubbling up my throat.
“Well, according to the 2022 draft, the future’s… mixed.” He laughs. “Black giants with ambiguous and lily white girls on their arms clapping it up from the audience as Adam Silver secures their new ambiguous families for generations to come.”
I roll my eyes.
This is what my life is now. A constant loop of Twitter trigger words and hot topics.
“You’re doing a great job. Superb.” He curls his thumb and index finger together. “First the HBCU, now the black girl. You’re so good at this shit that I’m convinced you two are actually athing.”
“A thing?” I scoff.
Like the world could handle me being in a thing with a girl after what some reporter told them I did with the last one.That girlwasn’t even mine. She was just another fucking taker. She was like kryptonite to a black man—a blonde hair, blue-eyed devil. That’s what Pops’ lawyer, Quame, told me in his office when it was just me and him.That girlhad more power than a boy who had the world.
“If you want to talk basketball, then talk it,” I reply. “Leave Lourdes out of it. She don’t understand any of this.”
She was too young and sheltered to understand takers.
He nods his head, looking out toward the city.
Lights twinkle off the skyline and I wish I would’ve grabbed Phat’s arm like I wanted so I could see her seeing this view for the first time.
“Yeah, you don’t understand it either.” He snorts. “Maybe your Pops does though. Maybe that’s why he took the job at Lockwood and had you bring her here with you tonight. Maybe that’s why he took my call? I mean, it’s a great PR move for a boy without PR.”
I shake my head. “You got this shit all wrong. What fucking PR? A publicist wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole right now.”
Somehow that makes him laugh.
As if what happened is laughable. As if I’d use Phat to chase clout when her and her family were the only people that acknowledged the person I was before. As if Pops didn’t have my life carefully planned and was damn near convulsing at the curveballs I kept throwing his way.
“Do I really have it all wrong?”
“Fuck you,” I croak out. “I need a drink.”
That really fucks him up and makes him topple over with the glass dangling from his fingers. “Damn, you had me going for a second there. Maybe youdon’thave PR. I guess that’s why your Pops keeps you under his thumb. You’re just as unpolished as the world thinks, but shit, you might as well say Harvey and Lee Sports specializes in you unpolished boys. Look what I did for Josiah Joseph.”
