Hotlanta (8 page)

“Uh-huh.” Rhea replied between sips of her Vitamin Water.

“Hmm, well, in that case, you all will have to excuse me. I was way too stressed out this weekend to get any studying
done. I'm gonna go grab my notebook and try to squeeze in a last-minute review ‘fore the bell rings,” Sydney announced as she rose from the table with her bag and turned to walk away.

“Did you hear me, Syd?” Marcus countered, obviously frustrated as he stood up and grabbed her arm.

Sydney turned and shrugged him off with her fakest smile. “My bad. I didn't realize that I had to inform you of everyone I hang out with.” Marcus paused with his mouth slightly agape. “Hmm…sound familiar, Marcus?” Sydney asked.

And with that, she walked away.

Lauren had checked the time on her Sidekick no less than a half dozen times by the time Jermaine rounded the corner into the Lenox Mall Food Court. It was 8:45
P.M.
He was fifteen minutes late. And despite the boy had clearly kicked up his wardrobe a notch—his pants were still sagging a little too low for Lauren's comfort, but his argyle sweater and crisp white vintage Jordans were a welcome respite from the standard white T-and-Tims thug uniform he'd rocked the two other times she'd seen him—she was hardly impressed that he kept her waiting on the wooden bench like she was some common mall rat with nowhere else to be. His pearly white smile was met with a MAC Hug Me lipstick scowl. “Um, so is there something wrong with your watch?” Lauren sneered.

Jermaine looked casually at his bare wrist and, still smiling, gave Lauren a simple: “Don't have a watch. How you doing?”

“I was fine fifteen minutes ago. You're late,” Lauren said, grabbing her gold clutch and folding her arms.

“Yup, I figured as much,” Jermaine said just as nonchalantly, his eyebrows raised. “I let my man borrow my car, so I took MARTA over, but you know how those trains be running.”

“Actually, I don't,” Lauren snapped.

“Well, the way you drive, maybe you should take a ride every now and again,” he said, acknowledging Lauren's attitude by mockingly wiggling his neck. Really, Jermaine wanted to get off the subject of his car. More specifically he needed to take his mind off the events leading up to his handing over the keys to his ride. To Rodney. Who wasn't a friend but his brother. His recently-released-from-prison brother. Let's just say that it wasn't a happy homecoming; not more than ten minutes after Jermaine got to work at the MLK Community Center at West End, Rodney came strolling in, yelling over the rowdy scrimmage basketball game Jermaine was refereeing.

“Baby brotha!” Rodney called out, strolling onto the court, seemingly unaware of the rush of ten-year-olds pushing the basketball across the worn-out wooden floor. “What up, man?”

Jermaine's shoulders slumped, if only for a second, and then squared themselves as Rodney took his place in front of him. Jermaine blew his whistle. “Take five, young'uns—get you some water,” he said to his team, without taking his eyes off Rodney. He let his eyes roll from the top of Rodney's lint-buzzed cornrows to the bottoms of his worn-out sneakers and then back up to his eyes. They looked tired, like those of a guy who'd led a hard-knock life. For sure, Rodney fit the bill, but it was his own doing. “Ain't no babies here, brotha,” Jermaine said.

“My bad, shorty, my bad,” Rodney said with a chuckle. “You right. You damn sho ain't no baby. You look good, man. It's good to see you.”

Nothing from Jermaine.

“I stopped by to see Mama,” Rodney continued, ignoring his little brother's shade. “See you took real good care of her.”

“Somebody had to,” Jermaine said, fire in his eyes.

Rodney smirked and sucked his teeth. “Yeah, little man—enough of the chitchat. Look here, Mama said you had a car. I need to ride for a minute—where the keys at?”

“Nah, man, I need my car. I got things to do tonight. Besides, don't you felons got curfews or something?” Jermaine asked coldly.

“Felons, huh?” Rodney asked as he fixed his mouth to lay into his brother. But he was cut off by Little Mike, the star of the MLK Thunderbirds, who sidled up to the two
brothers midcourt, unaware of the tension that had enveloped them.

“Hey, Mr. Jermaine, I brought you some water,” Little Mike said to his coach, thrusting a bottle of Crystal Springs in his face. Jermaine took the water and thanked his young charge.

“Good looking out. Why don't you go get the guys to run some drills? I'll be over in a second,” Jermaine told Little Mike, who looked at Jermaine and then over to Rodney and then back at Jermaine again. Something was wrong—Little Mike could feel it.

“What up, little man,” Rodney said to the boy, raising his chin in greeting.

“Hey,” he said.

“Playing a little ball, huh?”

“Yeah,” Little Mike said.

“Look man, go on over and run some drills like I said,” Jermaine said, growing uncomfortable. He watched as Little Mike trotted off, then turned his attention back to his brother. “Listen, I need my car, man. Wherever you got to go, you need to figure out another way to get there.”

“Well, I can definitely find another way to get there—you know that,” Rodney said, a grin spreading across his face. “I figured I'd start out on my first week out the pen doing the right thing.”

“The right thing, huh?”

“Yup, the right thing. So you gonna help your big brother out, or I need to find an alternate means of transportation?”

That, Jermaine didn't want to have any part of, considering the last time Rodney found an alternate means of transportation, it led to a multicount indictment involving a car-theft ring that spanned three states, with Rodney all up in the middle of it. Desperate to prove her son's innocence, Eugenia Watson put her house up for his bail; that fool skipped out on his first court date and left Eugenia and Jermaine holding the bag.

Jermaine looked Rodney up and down again. This, right here? He. Did. Not. Need. He reached into his gym shorts and pulled the thick ring of keys out of his pocket. He fingered them for a moment as he stared intensely into Rodney's eyes.

“Don't worry, baby brother, I'll take good care of your ride,” Rodney said, slowly pulling the keys from Jermaine's grasp. He tossed them in the air and winked at his little brother, then trotted off the court, Jermaine gritting his teeth enough to make the veins in his forehead dance a jig.

Yeah, the last thing Jermaine wanted to think about was his car.

“So you gonna spend the rest of the night being mad about a few minutes you can't call back, or can a brother get a bite to eat and see a flick? Get a little conversation going? Chop it up? What?” Jermaine folded his arms; a smile smoothed easily across his face, his lips creating the perfect
frame for his perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. Lauren definitely didn't want to push the car issue anymore—no need to include Jermaine in her tragic family saga, and definitely no need to dredge up ugly memories of the verbal smackdown and stunningly harsh punishment Altimus Duke administered that she was still suffering under. Besides, she just could not resist the dimples.

“Whatever. Come on here, boy,” she said, smiling slowly and standing to reveal her cuffed jean shorts, fitted red leather jacket, and beige silk Bebe camisole, an ensemble she sweated over for a good forty-five minutes before she decided it had just enough flash to make his eyes bubble. It worked.

“I ain't hardly a boy, but I'll definitely follow if you're leading,” Jermaine said, slipping his hands around Lauren's waist and pulling her close to him. He planted a soft kiss on her cheek. “Hello, Ms. Duke. How are you today?”

Lauren practically melted into the patchwork of tile beneath their feet, so taken was she by this man. “Ms. Duke is just fine, thank you,” Lauren said, savoring his kiss. She was about to kiss him back, but then remembered where she was: in the middle of a busy mall with hundreds of people making their way to the restaurants and movie theaters just beyond them. Though the risk was low that she'd run into somebody she knew (her friends and her mother's friends, too, tended to frequent the more upscale Phipps Plaza just down the road), didn't nobody, especially those who knew
the Dukes, need to see her all booed up with Thug Passion, no matter how nice his sweater was, Lauren quickly decided as she pulled back from his embrace. “Let's walk and talk, shall we? I don't think we have time enough to sit and eat; you can buy me some popcorn after you get my movie ticket.”

“So much for women's equality, huh,” Jermaine teased as he took her hand into his and followed along. “I thought you independent women liked to pay your own way.”

“Oh, I'm independent,” Lauren insisted, smiling sweetly. “But I'm also a lady—don't you forget it.”

Now Jermaine was having his whatever moment. “Okay, Ms. Lady. So, what are we going to do to kill forty minutes if you're not going to let me take you out to eat?”

Just then, Lauren's eyes zoned in on a pair of hot-pink-and-burgundy BCBG heels; her instantaneous love affair with the glorious creations made her go temporarily deaf but miraculously improved the speed of her limbs, which wasted no time dragging her, Jermaine in tow, to the window for a closer look.

“Um, okay—I guess this is your way of telling me you want to window-shop, huh?”

Window-shop? Not quite. Lauren, who treated the purchase of shoes, clothes, purses, and jewelry like it was a stealth Marine mission to liberate prisoners of war, had no intention of leaving those pumps behind. “My God, I have to have those
shoes,” Lauren said, her nose pressed against the window so hard that a small cloud of breath fog formed on the glass. “Just look at them. The most perfect…hot…pink…suede…shoes…ever. I can't breathe,” she said, patting her hand on her chest.

Jermaine laughed, thinking she was being theatrical for kicks. “Must-have's, huh?” he asked, just as a saleswoman slammed down the store's gate.

“Oh, no, excuse me—can I get in real quick? I just need those shoes in size seven,” Lauren said, rushing over to the entrance and knocking on the glass door.

“Sorry, we're closed,” the saleswoman said, shrugging. “We're open at ten
A.M.
tomorrow.”

“I won't be here tomorrow,” Lauren fumed.

“Well, I'm sorry, but the register is shut down so you can't buy them tonight, and the store's closed,” the saleswoman said as she walked away.

“Damn,” Lauren said, pouting.

“Uh, you gonna be all right?” Jermaine asked, only half joking.

Lauren sucked her teeth. “I wanted those shoes. She could have just got them for me right quick.”

“But the store is closed, Lauren.”

“Whatever. That's why she sells shoes for a living, evil ass,” Lauren huffed at the woman, but not loud enough for her to hear it, of course.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Jermaine asked, reeling back.

Lauren, lost in the moment, didn't catch on right away that she'd offended Jermaine; she was too busy mumbling under her breath about how she was going to find time in the next few days to get back to Lenox, seeing as she had dance-squad practice for Homecoming, a Homecoming Dance decorations committee meeting, and, of course, no dibs on her sister's ride.

“You know my moms used to sell shoes,” Jermaine snapped.

Now
that
she heard. “Damn, my bad, Jermaine, I didn't mean anything by that.”

“Of course, the shoes my moms was selling were much more practical than a pair of overpriced pink shoes that probably look a lot like all the other pink shoes you got in your closet,” Jermaine continued, still fuming.

Hold up,
Lauren thought—
is he dissing me? Oh, hell to the no.
“Practical? What you know about practical, with your pair of hundred-dollar tennis shoes? That look a lot like all the other tennis shoes you got in
your
closet?”

“There's a big difference between my sneakers and your shoes, trust me,” Jermaine said, readjusting his tone.

“How you figure? You wear yours to get attention, and I do the same with mine,” Lauren said, still upset.

“Now that's where you wrong, shawty.” Jermaine
laughed. “I wear my expensive sneakers to keep attention off of me. Ain't no way I could hit the block with the cheap shit and not catch crap from the dough boys, you feel me? But you, you could be in a hoodie and jeans and ten-dollar shoes from Payless, and I'd still think you fly.”

Lauren wanted to giggle, but she felt like she still needed to give him some grief for talking about her shoe game. “Boy, what you know about Payless? That's the kinda chicks you roll with?”

“Nah,” Jermaine laughed nervously. “My moms shops that way—got to. ‘Cause selling shoes don't exactly pay all the bills.”

Lauren closed her mouth. She gave herself an imaginary kick in the ass and said a silent “damn” for good measure. Thing is, Jermaine wasn't embarrassed about this.

“I help her out a little—you know, I got this job down at the community center helping with the neighborhood kids over there. That's until I get some bigger stuff bubblin'.”

Just as Lauren was trying to figure out something to say to pull them out of this extremely awkward conversation, someone shouted an “oo-oooh” call as a group of teens sidled up to them. Instinctively, Jermaine looked up and threw a hand signal at them—a gesture that made Lauren just a little nervous. She'd never, after all, dated someone who threw up what might be considered gang signs.

“Yo, what up, gangsta,” one of the guys said to Jermaine, leaning in for a pound and round-the-way man hug.

“It's all good, you know,” Jermaine said, massaging his chin between his forefinger and thumb. “Getting ready to go check out a flick.”

“Aight then,” the guy said as his friends crowded Jermaine and Lauren. One of them, a girl dressed in an ill-fitting jean jacket and stretchy jeans that looked like they'd been painted on, looked Lauren up and down like she was two seconds off of skinning her alive. “Yo, I seen your brother out on the block,” the guy continued. “Glad to see he home. Lookin' all beefy and shit.”

“Yeah,” Jermaine said, wanting desperately to change the subject. He had no intention of explaining to Lauren where Rodney had just come from, at least not that night. “Listen, this is my girl, Lauren. Lauren, this is everybody.” Lauren gave a quick wave; Jermaine's friends' response was tepid, at best. “We gotta get going—our movie's about to start.”