“Look at how I have you at the door. Excuse my manners. Come on in. Let me take your coat.”
I handed over my coat and watched as she hung it up in her hall closet. Then I followed her toward the kitchen, taking in the aroma of tomatoes and garlic.
Wyndi lived on a quiet and safe residential block in a small one-bedroom apartment. It was obvious to anybody familiar with the city that she’d chosen location over square footage.
She gestured toward her kitchen island. “Have a seat.”
“It smells good in here, girl.”
“Yeah. I’m not the best cook, but I do have my signature dishes. Besides, I love pasta. I can definitely do my thing with some spaghetti.”
I rubbed my hands together in anticipation. “I’m hungry. Feed me, lil mama.”
Wyndi brought a medium-sized glass bowl filled with green salad, a small basket of garlic bread, and a platter of aromatic spaghetti to the table. Before she took her seat, she set an ice bucket with a bottle inside on the table.
She caught my glance toward the ice bucket and grinned. “It’s sparkling cranberry-grape juice.”
Since she cooked, I fixed her plate. Once I handed it to her, I fixed my own plate. “Let’s pray.” She extended her hands to me, and I took them.
“You mind if I pray?”
Her eyes found mine. “Nah, not at all.”
“Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of today and for the opportunities it brought. Thank You for Your goodness and that Your mercies are new each day. We need them. Bless this food and the hands that prepared it. May it nourish our bodies while You nourish and renew our strength and our souls. Amen.”
“Amen.”
I twirled meat sauce coated noodles around my fork and took a bite. I figured the food would be good based on the way it smelled. It didn’t disappoint. The seasonings, the sauce, and the noodles were delicious. I told her so. “This is good as hell, Wyndi.”
Her eyelashes batted. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We ate in silence for a little while. She broke it. “Kaynaan, do you really wanna date me?”
I put my fork down and gave her my undivided attention. “Why is that so hard for you to believe? And don’t tell menothing about you being pregnant by Wilcox. You were acting suspicious of me before you found out you were pregnant.”
“Okay, I was a little . . . I won’t say suspicious, because I wasn’t suspicious of you. I was unsure. Are players really okay dating women who they know have messed around with their teammates? I don’t know. That just seems so . . . I don’t want to slut-shame myself, because I’m not a slut?—”
I cut her off. “Yeah, so there’s no reason to slut-shame. Tell me what the real issue is.”
She sighed heavily. “Sleeping with two people from the same team feels kinda . . . unseemly.”
“Your attitude about casual sex feels kinda puritanical. Why’d you agree to have a casual situation with Wilcox in the first place, especially if it made you question yourself?”
“That’s a really long story.”
“You got someplace to be?”
“You sure you wanna hear about all the unpleasantness of my past?”
This girl, I thought to myself. Out loud, I said, “I’m sure.”
“Growing up, I had a very stereotypical life. My mother and her best friend got pregnant one after another. Her best friend had a son, and of course, my mother had me, . . . a daughter. They used to think it was so cute to say that their kids were gonna grow up and get married. As we grew up, we did start dating.” She took a deep breath. “We did the whole thing. Dating. Fell in love as teenagers. Took each other’s virginity, . . . the whole thing. After college, he proposed. I got pregnant. Everything was going to the plan our mothers had imagined for us. They were going to be co-grandmothers. The whole thing.”
“You keep saying the whole thing,” I told her.
“I know. Because in retrospect, it feels very, I don’t know, unrealistic. It was almost like everything was working out toogood. I feel like one of us, or some of us should’ve been worried, but we weren’t. At least not until I lost the pregnancy.”
