I chuckled, knowing exactly what the problem was. Avi was a daddy’s girl, and as much as she loved her brother, she was struggling with sharing Omiri with him.
“Come up here with us.” I heard shuffling, then my boy speaking again. “You good now?”
“Yep,” Avi sang and I chuckled, imagining her sitting right up under her father.
“Your ass don’t stand a chance with them,” I said, laughing.
“You’re right.”
“More kisses, Daddy.” I assumed he’d kissed her but that wasn’t good enough and she was demanding more. “Thank you.”
“Ay, you need to stop paying with Van before she drops you for real. But what you need to do more than that is calm your ass down.”
“That’s a bad word, Daddy. You have to give me money,” Avi said.
“Who says?”
“Mommy said when you say bad words you have to give me money.”
“Don’t you have enough money?” he asked with amusement laced in his tone.
“I do but that’s mine and I want yours.”
I chuckled, ’cause again, he was royally fucked. Omiri was doing his best not to curse around the kids but that was a work in progress. Makari was on him hard to clean up his language, so he was trying, and apparently she’d enlisted their daughter too.
“Aight, I got you.”
I heard shuffling again, then Avi. “Is this a lot of money?”
“It’s enough,” he told her.
“Thank you, Daddy. I love you,” her sweet little voice sang.
“How much you give her?” I asked, knowing it was more than required.
“A bill, that’s all I have on me.”
“Bruh, she’s playing you.”
“Yeah she is but she got that. Let me go though, and I’ll see you at the stadium tomorrow.”
“Aight bet. Tell Kari I said what’s up.”
“Done.”
I ended the call and pulled into the parking garage of The Millennium. Today was the Monday after winning our first game in the playoffs. Tuesday was an off day. But with practice for therest of the week, I elected to stay in the city, which meant chilling at my apartment until we secured our fourth ring.
Our team successfully navigated a three-peat by winning the Super Bowl last year and the goal was to keep that trend going for as long as we could. I parked and took the resident elevator up to my floor. As soon as I walked into my apartment, I relaxed. This was my sanctuary.
Most of my teammates, aside from Omiri because he knew the deal, assumed I kept a place in the city to use as a fuck pad. That wasn’t the case. I had sex with a lot of women but typically at hotels because they never came to my crib and I didn’t trust women enough to be caught indisposed at theirs.
Too many people in my position had been caught slipping either by being robbed or worse because they’d pulled up on women they barely knew. I might've behaved recklessly with a lot of things in life but two things I never dropped the ball with were condoms and my safety.
I enjoyed being single too much to end up with the responsibility of becoming a father and I loved the life I worked for too much to let a woman clocking my pockets set me up. Although I had to admit, seeing my boy Omiri with his kids had me considering the option…one day. Not now. When I needed to curb that itch, I would simply chill at his place, spend time with Avi and Orion, and I was cured of the need for my own, at least for now.
In my living room, I dropped down on the sofa, grabbed the remote, and turned on Sports Center Live to catch what I’d missed about the game from Sunday. We won but barely. A last minute touchdown in the fourth quarter put us up by four, which had me revisiting my game play.
Van’s comment about me slinging more dick than protecting our quarterback didn’t fall on deaf ears. I hadn’t played my best Sunday, and the time I’d spent at the club contributed to mypiss poor performance on the field. Coach had gotten on my ass about that and told me one more slip up like that and he was pulling me out of my starting spot.
