in their generation.”
Yup. Brick’s and my plight…
“So where are we?” Jones asked.
“Spencer needs to submit the required essay on it by December fifteenth.” Lenny’s regard brushed across me. “It’s pretty much a semester-long timetable for the paper. The research and all the mandatory meetings with the advisor, a professor in the Sociology department, have been met.”
He was right. I needed to finish the paper that, at this point, seemed to be twenty or more pages. But I’d had plenty of material, using my family as the subjects of my proposed theory. The project was inspired by Brick’s reputation and dynamic with our family versus mine. As tight as we were, we were labeled differently. He was the black sheep while I was the golden promise, even to my paternal grandmother, unrelated to him. This was a topic I was passionate about at the start, but had lost inspiration for when he was arrested in the spring. It was just a matter of buckling down over the next two weeks and getting it done. The project was in the bag.
“Okay,” Jones exhaled. “I don’t foresee there being an issue with a simple paper, given your academic ethic.” His tone was short of dismissive. My team understood I handled my business on the field and off. I was no jock, but a young Black man with drive. “What’s next?” Jones flipped over the printed meeting agenda.
My attention went to my Blackberry, where I was typing up instructions to Rashid Coleman, my AOPsi Vice President. It was one of several menial details in my day to prepare for my weekend.
“I would like to know how you’re feeling, Spencer,” Marilyn, the Panthers’ house psychologist, posed. “The undertaking of your schedule: academics, games, practices, independent conditioning, press-relations…just a whole gamut of things on top of your personal affairs with Aivery. How are you feeling about this last academic point in your life?”
“Yeah,” Stephanie, our public relations point person I’d grown fond of over the years, asked with pinched brows. “are you two still together? There have been talks to the contrary.”
At first, my lips pushed out and I exhaled deeply. I was pretty much over yesterday’s fiasco in Aivery’s dorm. She called me last night, but I’d turned my ringer off after stripping down to my boxers and tank to get in bed with Tori. We fell out well before eleven, both exhausted from the day. When I made it to my apartment before the sun came up this morning, I checked my voicemail and heard Aivery’s brief message of call her, and ignored it. At this point, I still wasn’t worried about Pettiford reporting what happened. If he did, this meeting would have gone very differently.
So, yeah, I was mostly over finding another dude waiting in Aivery’s bedroom on her birthday. Right now, I was anxious about something entirely different. Once this meeting was over, I’d be heading to my apartment to pack, shower, dress, and head out to Springdale for the Tyler Thomas’ Black Arms event. The silhouette of a tomboy with a big wooly ponytail sprouted from the crown of her head came to mind in a flash.
An unbridled smile split my fucking face. “Life’s perfect.”
A sheet of laughter fell in the room.
When I stepped off the elevator in my apartment building, I saw one long heeled leg stretched out while the other was arched with the foot on the carpeted floor. She lay against the wall next to my door with her eyes closed and duffle bag next to her.
I jogged to her sitting frame, dropping to my haunches when I reached her. “You could have BBM’d me to arrange for my key.”
She smelled like apples. Maybe a body spray? I didn’t know, but I liked it.
Her eyes opened and she smiled, lips tinted from a nude gloss and teeth bright and pretty. This tomboy was so fucking pretty. “Maybe I needed a moment of quiet before a certain bossy human showed up.”
My face fell. “Am I really that bad?”
“The worst,” she grunted, standing to her feet.
“That is all for Mr. Thomas, folks,” a small Chinese-looking guy announced to the crowd through a microphone as Tyler Thomas left the stage. “He’ll be just outside the auditorium where we’re set up for him to do the book signing portion of the event. Thanks for coming out.”
I sat motionless, trying to collect my thoughts. Why did Ashton bring me here—although I was hella glad he did. Honored, really. I’d never heard of Tyler