Commitment (9 page)

It had been Brendan’s idea for Shawn to have
a
personal assistant on the West Coast
and even though most
of the time it was an annoyance
trying to think of things for the kid to do,
on this occasion, Shawn
actually
found him useful. A couple days ago, he’d given
Dylan
the task of finding every article Riley had ever written, including any she wrote before she started at
Power to the People
and damned if he didn’t come back with about ninety Xeroxed articles in a binder, organized by date, indexed and separated by color-
coded tabs.

“This is tight, Dylan,” Shawn said, flipping through the first few pages. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem. I put a sticky on the one about you that she wrote last year,” Dylan pointed out. “I read some of it. She’s pretty good. But I guess it runs in the family or something.”

Shawn looked up from the binder. “What
do
you
mean?”

“Lorna
Terry’s
her mother.”
And when Shawn looked back at him blankly. “She’s one of the foremost radical feminist writers in the country. Maybe even the world. She’s a professor at Gilchrist College
,
in New York
?
”

Radical feminist professor
? Once in awhile Riley made references to her mother teaching but the picture Shawn had called to mind was of someone standing in front of a roomful of sixth graders, not this. Definitely not this.

Suddenly, so much about Riley
came into focus
; like the way she never seemed to want to take anything from him, no matter how small. She wouldn’t even let him order a car to wait for her since she insisted on skulking out of his hotel rooms at four-thirty in the morning. When he suggested it,
it was
the
closest he’d ever seen
her
to annoyed
.

I don’t need any perks, thank you very much
, she’d said.

What perks?
I’m thinking about keeping you from getting mugged on the subway platform
at five in the fucking morning
, he’d retorted.

Shawn
, she said, in a tone that made it clear her answer was final
.
I think
I’ve
got this
.

She would never take anything material, but treated every one of his phone calls like a gift as though she never knew whether he would come back
to her
and was a little surprised
when
he did. It used to be that he was surprised too
.
He
had
access
to some
the most
beautiful
women out there and yet he was drawn over and over again
to
this cute, annoy
ingly independent hippie chick.
He’d asked for
Riley’s articles
because he wanted to know
more about her
but information about her
mother would probably tell him more than every single thing she wrote combined.     

“I need a computer,” he said, almost to himself.

“Do you know what kind you want? We could run over and get one,” Dylan suggested.

Shawn considered for a moment. The chances that he could make his way unmolested through an electronics store, especially on the day of his show were slim to none. “If you went on your own how long will it take
you to pick me out a high-end laptop?”

“All the bells and whistles?”

“Everything,” Shawn confirmed. “High-speed, lots of memory. The whole nine.”

“Mac or PC?”

“Whatever you think is best,
man
.”

“I can head over to a place about four miles from here. Take me about an hour and a-half tops to bring you something back.”

“Cool. And Dylan?”

“Yes sir?”

“I keep telling you, c
all me Shawn.”

Dylan smiled, flipping his long, blonde
hair out of his eyes. “Yes sir.
I mean, Shawn.”

“Pick yourself up something as well.”

Dylan looked incredulous. “You mean . . .”

“A computer. Yeah. In college you can always use a new computer, right?”

“Yeah! Thank you
so much
.”

“Don’t get happy. Just get back here before I have to leave for the show,” Shawn said reaching for his phone. “I’ll get B to hook you up with enough cash.
And don’t count it till you’re at the register. Wouldn’t want you getting robbed.”

Kicking back and emptying his mind before the show at the Staples Center was about all he was supposed to be doing right now, but the binder full of Riley’s work lay open next to him. So
he’d
reached for it and began reading. It was just as he’d suspected. She wrote about politics and politicians, but her favorite theme
was hypocrisy in all its forms.
People who claimed to be one thing and were exposed as another. People who gained trust and then threw it away.

Riley
had written all this. He knew she was smart and had imagined that she came from the kind of family that valued that kind of thing, but a mother who was known internationally as a thinker and writer was way more than he would have guessed at.

And now, the confirmation was in his hands that Riley herself pondered the world a lot more than he ever had. This pretty much sealed it. She
was from the
other
Black America; the one he had glimpsed when he was growing up in DC but had never been a part of. The one that was populated
by what seemed like mythical creatures straight out of the
Cosby Show
.

Shawn set the binder aside and lay back on the bed, strangely anxious
and jumpy.
It made sense now that there was someone else in her life.

Without ever having seen the dude, Shawn was sure he could describe him right down to the shoes on his feet. He would be a professional of some kind – a doctor, stockbroker or lawyer
.
Around the end of the year, he would show
his commitment
by
taking Riley home with him for Thanksgiving to meet the family. He was the kind of brother who had a five-year plan for his life, because
there had
never
been a time when he
had to consider that he might not live that long. 

No matter how many ways
Shawn
turned it over and over in his mind, the fact that she was
in this little arrangement
with him for this long didn’t make sense. Even though most women found him at least somewhat attractive,
for
the ones who were lawyers, bankers and professionals
, he was
their
personal little
adventure, like going on ghetto safari.

They got a thrill from visiting his world but most of them didn’t want to live there – they were always very clear about that unless they were gold-diggers. And Riley was no gold-digger. So maybe all he was to her was a nine-month
adventure
before she settled into the life she was meant to have.

A
series of rhythmic knocks on the door to the suite startled him into a sitting position. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, annoyed. One of these days, he would have to tell B that he wasn’t a seventeen-year-old knucklehead anymore, and didn’t need someone to sit around and watch him, just to make sure he made it to his own concert.

The door swung open and it
took him a few seconds to process the fact that it wasn’t Brendan but Riley standing there. There was no time to compose his features or pretend he was anything other than
overjoyed
to see her. She stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Surprise,” she said, so quietly it was practically a whisper. “We got
an earlier flight
.”

Shawn lifted her off her feet and she wrapped her legs about his hips as he backed into the room. He was about to kick the door shut when he noticed someone standing a few feet away in the corridor, surveying them with open curiosity and a hint of something resembling disapproval. Her
burnt
sienna hair was almost shoulder-length and she had large liquid eyes, full lips and legs for days swathed in close-fitting dark jeans. Her
hazel
eyes met Shawn’s and she gave him a thin smile.
Riley unwrapped herself from
him and turned.

“Shawn, this is Tracy,” she said.

“Hey Tracy,” he held out a hand which she stepped forward to take
it
, barely holding his fingers before dropping them again.

“Thanks for the upgrade,” she said.

“Oh. Yeah. No problem.” 

Shawn had instructed the hotel to automatically bump their booking to a suite on the same floor as his when they checked in.

“That was sweet, thank you,” Riley echoed.

“Just want you to be comfortable,” he said, turning his attention to her again.

Riley was wearing black tights and a gray turtleneck, both garments more snug
on her
frame than he was accustomed to
seeing
. Shawn suspected that Tracy had had a hand in choosing the outfit. The only thing Riley would be concerned about on a six-hour plane ride was comfort but if Tracy’s meticulously
composed
exterior was any indication, she would be preoccupied with looking good and not having a traveling partner who might cramp her style.

“So I’m not staying in here with you?” she asked, her voice low.

Shawn looked at her. “You better.”

Almost involuntarily, his eyes scanned Riley from head to toe once again. As always the pull toward her was overwhelming and this time all the more surprising since he’d just looked at Tracy and felt nothing like that, despite her obvious assets. Riley took one step closer to him so that they were less than a hair apart and her chest almost pressed against his.

“So, I just wanted to meet you and say thank you in person,” Tracy said from the hallway. “But I’ll leave you guys to it and go get rested up for later. If I don’t see you, Shawn, have a great show.” 

She had a very slight Southern accent that he recognized as Buckhead bourgeois. She gave Riley a small wave before turning to head down the corridor. 

This time Shawn did kick the door shut, and turned his full attention to his girl.

“Go ahead and say it,” she coaxed. “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s perfectly fine.”

“What?”

“Tracy.
I know she’s beautiful. Lord knows, I’ve heard it from a million
guys.”

Shawn made a scoffing noise. “I didn’t notice.”

“You’re a lousy liar, Shawn Gardner,” she said.

“Okay, so I noticed. But I didn’t care.”

“Hey,” she said her voice suddenly more alert as she pulled away. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?” Shawn said, pulling her back toward him.

“This.” Riley twisted out of his arms once again and reached down to the bed.

When Shawn looked around she was holding the binder Dylan had put together for him. Busted. It was open, and she must have caught sight of her own photo and byline.

“That’s . . . something I had my intern put together,” he admitted.

Riley sat on the bed and flipped through the pages as Shawn watched her, tensely awaiting her reaction. She stopped after a moment, her head down, and was so still that Shawn crouched next to her.

“I was just trying to . . .” He tipped her chin up and completely lost his train of
thought when he saw her face.

“God, I’d forgotten about some of these,” she said almost to herself.

He expected suspicion, or if she misinterpreted what he was trying to do, maybe even anger. Instead, she drew in her lower lip and for a second he thought there might actually be tears pooled in her eyes.

“You wanted to read all my stuff?” she said. 

“Yeah,” he said slowly.
“I just thought that . . .”

But he didn’t get to finish, because she shut him up with a kiss.

g

Riley was still sleeping when he had to drag himself out of bed to head over to the arena. Lying on her side, head tilted back, she was snoring softly. Shawn forced himself to walk away from her and hit the shower. This was the first time he could remember leaving her in bed rather than the other way around. He wouldn’t mind this arrangement if he could be sure she would always be there when he got back.