Hotlanta (4 page)

“Mother, please. It was just a ride home. And besides, he's so not my type.”

“Your type? You don't even know what a type is yet. But I'll say this—I saw the grin on your face when you walked in the door. And you better be careful. I didn't work this hard to get us up outta the ghetto your father left us in for you to backslide over some no ‘count alleged football prodigy from New York!”

Just as Mrs. Duke's tirade was on the verge of a full crescendo, she was interrupted by a familiar voice. “Hey, hey, what's all the fussing and fighting about?” Relieved, Sydney turned to find her stepfather's impressive six-foot three-inch frame filling her doorway. With his flawless chocolate skin, brooding eyes, and close-cut Caesar haircut, Altimus Duke was definitely considered one of ATL's finest. Strangers often mistook him for the actor who played Stringer Bell on
The Wire,
and the twins caught more than their share of fellow students ogling Altimus when he attended school functions. “Babe, I can hear you flapping your jaws all the way down the hall. What's up?”

“Nothing, Altimus. Mom is tripping ‘cause I caught a ride home with a guy before she had a chance to run a complete background check on him
and
his entire family,” Sydney offered with an eye roll.

“Ain't nobody tripping. I'm just making sure that
my
child doesn't find herself right back where her no-good daddy left us,” Keisha corrected with a huff as Altimus sauntered over and enveloped her from behind in a hug.

“Relax, Keish, Syd's a good kid,” he said as he nuzzled her neck. “You don't gotta badmouth her father for her not to end up in the hood.” He looked over Keisha's shoulder at Sydney knowingly.

“Whatever, she'd better not,” Keisha pouted, immediately deferring to Altimus's authoritative tone.

“Uh, yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence. And if the two of you are finished getting all hugged up in my room, I'd like to do some homework before I go to sleep,” she responded sarcastically.

“You know I always got your back, princess,” Altimus laughed as he ushered Keisha out of the room. “Don't stay up too late, babe.”

“And you know, I'm dead-ass serious,” Mrs. Duke added over her retreating shoulder for emphasis.

As the two disappeared down the hall, Sydney reclosed the door with a firm snap. Nothing annoyed her more than when her mother brought up the twins' biological father. Even though—as usual—Altimus had managed to shut her down, Keisha's harsh words still stung. Sure, the convicted gun smuggler was less than Atlanta's most upstanding citizen, but as far as Sydney was concerned, Dice was still a good man. And Sydney worshipped the ground he walked on.

Turning toward the waiting pile of textbooks on her desk, Sydney allowed a smirk to cross her face. She could only imagine what her know-it-all mother would say if she knew Sydney was planning to see the very same biological father she'd just finished bashing…first thing in the morning.

Lauren could hardly see straight through her tears as she programmed 1315 Hope Street into the navigation system—yet another seedy, shady place where she didn't have any business going. Four wrong turns, two near-accidents, one gas station stop later, and she finally parked across from her destination, still unsure just what the hell possessed her to—or why—she was taking Dice up on his offer to visit. She'd sat in the parking lot of a gas station not too far from the video shoot for a half hour, replaying their short conversation in her mind, alternately pissed that he'd called at all and giddy at the fact that her father truly wanted to see her, despite that her mom had insisted to her and her sister all those years their dad was in prison that he didn't want any contact. If that were indeed the case, why would Dice's first call out the pen be to his
daughters, Lauren asked herself. But if he really cared, like he was trying to make himself sound over the phone, why didn't he try to keep in contact with them while he was locked up? Could he have kept in touch?
Do they even let inmates have stamps?
she asked herself. At 8:30
P.M.,
Lauren wanted to confront him—tell him face-to-face that he wasn't shit and that he better stop dialing her number. By 8:32, every inch of her wanted to look into her biological's eyes, feel his embrace—find out for sure why he didn't fight harder to stay out of prison and be with his girls. When the neon orange 8:34 lit up her dashboard, Lauren was so paralyzed by indecision that the hot tears wouldn't stop coming. Just fifty yards away was her father, and all she could think about was what he might look like. Would he be a gray, old, haggard, beat-down version of the handsome, strong man she used to love to hang on? Or would he be muscular and packed, like the buff, crazy psychopaths in that HBO show
Oz
?

God. Her father could be one of those guys.

Too nervous to get out of the car, Lauren called her girl, Dara, to calm her nerves.

“What up? Where you at?” she said, trying to sound cheerful.

“We're in the Commons, watching JV stumble through their routines,” Dara dragged, her disgust evident.

“Dang, it's Friday night—no weekend hiatus for hazing?” Lauren laughed through her tears.

“I swear, these scrubs will never make it onto varsity with those sorry-ass moves.” To the junior varsity girls, she yelled, “Pick up your feet! Pop it! Damn—what are y'all doing, auditioning for
Elmo's World
? This is ridiculous! It's step, step, hop, hop, pop, half turn, kick, pop!”

“Damn, D, is it that bad?” Lauren asked, fishing a tissue out from her glove compartment.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Um, not really. How long you gotta lounge with the lames? Because I could really use a shoulder to lean on right now.”

“What happened? You didn't get picked for the lead in the video? Relegated to background dancer?” she asked.

Lauren cursed herself again for having bragged earlier about how she'd be
the
flyest chick strolling the hallways of Brookhaven Prep once everybody saw her getting her Melissa Ford on in the latest video from the A's most famous rapper. But she'd recover. She always did. “Long story,” Lauren said. “Anyhow, I got my stepfather's platinum AmEx, and I'm ready to do damage. Wanna meet me at my house? I kinda need to be getting back anyway before my parents realize I wasn't really with Donald.”

“True. I'll call my mom and tell her I'm stopping by your place on my way home,” Dara said, and hung up.

That right there was why Lauren loved her some Dara, regardless of all the drama that had gone down. Not too long
ago, Lauren had caught Dara with Marcus's tongue dangling between her lips during a fund-raiser at the High Museum of Art while Sydney was working the room for donations.

Dara and Marcus had been all booed up in an obscure corner just off the entrance of the second-level bathroom, twisted in a furiously passionate tangle. They'd been going at it so heavy that it took a few beats longer than it should have for them to respond to Lauren's “What the hell are you two doing?”

“Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Ohmigod!” Dara had exclaimed, pushing Marcus off of her and tugging her dress down, broken lengths of beading falling at her feet like hail. Marcus had tried to turn his back to Lauren at first, but, realizing there was nowhere to go, he finally faced her. He'd absentmindedly run his hands over his locks; his eyes were cast downward, no doubt in embarrassment.

Lauren grabbed her BFF by the arm and yanked her off to the bathroom. She could smell Marcus's dreadlock hair cream on Dara as she pushed past her—a scent Lauren despised. Whenever Marcus was at their house for longer than a few minutes, Lauren would have the housekeeper, Edwina, run through all the common areas with the deodorizer to get rid of his stench.

“You're not going to tell Sydney, are you?” Dara had pleaded. “I know how this looks, but you gotta trust me. There's nothing going on between Marcus and me. And if you tell your sister, it's going to turn into a big mess.”

Dara was right. Sydney would manage to turn what her dog of a boyfriend did into yet another issue to blame on Lauren. It would be just like her to think that Lauren had had something to do with hooking up her self-righteous, power-to-the-people, fake-ass backpacker boyfriend with precisely the kind of girl he and Sydney railed against: a light-skinned, green-eyed, half-white girl who looked the exact opposite of what Sydney was and what Marcus claimed to love.

“Fine,” Lauren had quietly conceded. And then she moved in closer to Dara's face to make her next point. “But that is my sister's boyfriend. Whatever was going on between you two ends tonight. I'm not trying to have this come back on my ass, got it?”

Lauren snapped out of her haze and used the back of her hand to wipe her tears when she realized she had company on her aunt's street. A crowd of what could only be described as Men of Unclear Purpose wandered by, looking like they were about to stir up some trouble. Someone whistled and ran his hand along the passenger side. “Yo, peep this ride!”

Lauren, beyond unnerved by the menacing crowd, put her car in gear and tried to make a speedy getaway, but in her haste, she didn't realize Baby was in reverse, and she smashed into the car parked behind her.

“Yo! What the hell are you doing?” one of the boys in the crowd cried, while the others pointed and sent up a chorus of “Oh, snap!” She pushed down the automatic-lock button
and said a silent “screw me” for being in front of Aunt Lorraine's busted-up house in the first place.

“My ride's all dented up!” the boy yelled.

Lauren met his eyes in her rearview mirror. He had the flat of his hand raised like a traffic cop. He did not look happy, but he did look cute. His eyes were big and brown with heavy lids, making him look almost Asian. Lips, thick. Teeth, sparkling. High cheekbones. Cropped haircut. Chocolate. Fine. Under normal circumstances, Lauren would have pimped this moment, but Cute Boy's friends made her want to call 911.

“Yo, shorty jacked you up, son,” one yelled.

“Must be lost or somethin', stylin' in the fly ride in these parts,” another said.

Lauren wasn't getting out of the car for nothing. But then Cutie got a closer look at her and started shooing his friends away. “Let me handle this—I'll catch y'all later.”

“You sure you can handle that?” one of the Men of Unclear Purpose questioned.

“Fall back,” he said. “I got this, man.”

Cute Boy let his friends get far enough away before he turned his full attention to her. “I need to see your driver's license, registration, and your phone so I can call po-po over here to get a report. ‘Cause you fixing my ride.”

Lauren opened the door and slowly stuck out one leg, then two so he could get the full effect of her shoes and the
muscles on her calves and thighs. By the time she stood up, shook out her hair, and smoothed down her jacket, she, not the damaged car, had his full attention.

“Where's your phone?” Lauren asked, shaking her hair for emphasis.

“Relax, sweetie, I left it at home.”

“Let's take a look, shall we?” Lauren said sweetly, smiling.

She whipped past him and put enough swing in her hips to make her hair bounce as she made her way to his car. “Damn,” she cursed silently. His fender was practically crunched up to the grill of his car, and her back bumper was dented and scratched enough for Altimus to have a small cow over the damage. He'd confiscate Baby for sure, but that was neither here nor there. Lauren needed to figure out a way to defuse the situation at hand so she could get the hell on back to Buckhead. The Altimus situation she would figure out later.

“Oh! It's just a small dent and some readjusting. You can take that to Paintless Dent Removal in downtown Atlanta—they can hook that right on up.”

“I think you mean
you
can take it there,” he said, softening his tone a little bit.

“I know the guys there—they'll fix it for you and send me the bill.”

“Oh, I see, you pushin' the new Saab and got fly connects, huh, shorty?”

Ugh.
Lauren turned up her nose.

He'd been doing so good until he opened his mouth with all that ruffneck talk. Fine or not, the macho-boy thing wasn't working for her. Lauren walked over to stare up in his face. “My name isn't Shorty. It's Lauren.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Lauren,” Cute Boy said. “You can tell your hookup that I'll be there tomorrow afternoon, so have your credit card handy. And how exactly do you know a bunch of guys at a body shop? You crash into people often?”

Lauren moved in a little closer to him and said, “Only ones I want to meet.”

“Ah-ight. I see Ms. Lauren got game to go with the fancy car and clothes, huh?”

“No game, sweetie—um, what did you say your name was?”

“Jermaine,” he said, tossing his chin in her direction and extending his hand. “Jermaine Watson. It's nice to meet you, even under such unfortunate circumstances.”

“‘Unfortunate' is a bit harsh, don't you think?” Lauren said with a sly smile. “After all, we did meet.”

She walked back to her car, reached for her Sidekick, and speed-dialed Hal at Paintless, leaving a message for him to
expect Jermaine Watson. “Oh, and um, no need to tell Daddy about this—I'll take care of the charges, same as usual.”

Lauren clicked off, tossed her phone back into her car, and curtly explained to Jermaine, “Hal and my dad go back—he does a lot of work for him, so it's no biggie.”

“Uh-huh, I see.” He laughed. “Definitely not the first time this has happened, huh?” This time, she laughed. Then she looked down at his sneakers. Bright white Air Force Ones. Nice.

“So if I have problems with Hal, how do I get in touch with you?”

“Oh, don't worry, Hal will hook you up, no questions asked.”

“Then how does a brother get in touch with you if he wants to see you again?”

“A true gentleman would politely ask for my number.”

“Well, I'm a gentleman, and I'd like you to consider this an official request for your number,” he said, licking those juicy lips for emphasis.

Lauren didn't say a word. Cute or not, she really didn't know if she wanted a thug calling her phone and trying to come see her. Lauren's mother wouldn't take too kindly to the bottoms of that boy's sagging jeans scraping their front doorstep. And he was crying over a little dent in his raggedy car, like he couldn't afford to pay the couple hundred bucks it would take to pay for the touch-up. No, Lauren
quickly decided, Cute Boy couldn't have her number. But she wasn't about to tell him that.

“If you've got skills, you'll find out what my number is and get at me,” she said coyly. “In the meantime, I've got to get home. It was nice chatting with you.”

“That's it?”

“That's it,” she said.

Then Lauren noticed a light go on in the front of Aunt Lorraine's house, which meant that whoever was there—quite possibly Dice—could look out the window at any moment and see her there. And just that moment, she realized that she did not want that. As fun as this flirting was, she needed to get outta there before she was spotted.

“But there is one more thing,” she said quickly, with another sly smile, slinking around the backside of her ride.

“What's that, Ms. Lauren?” Jermaine said, punctuating his smug words with an even slicker grin.

“Can you tell me how to get back to Buckhead?”