The Baller: A Down and Dirty Football Novel(52)

“I’d have to be dead to fall asleep with you looking like that.” His voice dropped lower. “Turn back around.”

“You just want to look at your own name,” I teased, but I turned around anyway. The bed creaked as he got up.

“I’d brand my name across that ass if I could.”

Crude, but the sentiment made me swoon a bit nonetheless.

His footsteps vibrated on the floor as he walked to me. Warm breath tickled my neck when he leaned down and spoke into my ear. “Bend over. I want to use you.” He rubbed my shoulders. “I’m a little drunk and want to forget anything else exists for a while. Except me, inside you. Where everything feels right. You good with that, babe?”

I swallowed and nodded. It was exactly what I wanted. No room for anything except the two of us. At least for tonight.





Chapter 26


Willow

Sunday afternoon, I had just turned off the game when there was a knock on my door so light I wasn’t even sure that it was a knock until the second rap came.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me. Abby Little from across the hall.”

As I unbolted the double set of locks, it struck me as funny that she felt compelled to use her last name. As if “Abby from across the hall” wouldn’t be enough to identify her. Or even just “Abby.”

“Hey there.”

“Can I come in?”

I glanced over her head to the shut apartment door behind her. “Sure. Does your mom know you’re here?”

“She’s got company. She told me to come see if you were home.”

That didn’t sound good. “Is one of your aunts or uncles over?” I didn’t even know if she had any.

“No. It’s the tired guy.”

“What tired guy?”

“The one who makes Mommy tired.”

Coming down off a high would do that to you. My apartment was pretty lame—other than the TV, there wasn’t much for a five-year-old to do. I honestly wasn’t even sure what a five-year-old did do. “Do you have homework?”

“No.”

I didn’t have a kitchen table, only a single lonely stool that was counter height. I lifted Abby up and sat her on it. “Want a snack?”

She licked her lips and nodded. God, this kid was so easy to please. I supposed we appreciated the simple things in life when we were deprived of basics. Having an addict for a mother, those basic things often included food, medical care, and attention of any kind. I pulled a box of Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs from my cabinet and showed Abby. “Cereal okay?”

She nodded fast and gave me a big smile. Every time my mother dumped me at Grams’ house, Grams always cooked up a feast. Up until that moment, I hadn’t thought anything of it. I guess I just figured that she was my grandma—grandmas cook. But seeing Abby walk in made me realize for the first time that Marlene had probably known I was hungry, too. There was so much about my grandmother I’d taken for granted.

After Abby’s belly was full, I washed her bowl and considered the situation. What would Marlene do? She would have asked me what I wanted to do.

“What do you want to do this afternoon, Abby?”

“Can we go to the park?”

“Sure. But we better go tell your mom and get your coat first.”

The familiar smell of burnt plastic hit me when I opened the door to their apartment. “Lena?”

She didn’t answer. But the smell of crack told me what she was doing. “Stay here a minute, okay, Abby?”

I left Abby in the kitchen and walked to the bedroom. “Lena?” I called again.

Nothing.

I knocked on the door, not realizing it wasn’t fully closed. “Lena?” The impact inched it open. Enough so that I got a look at what was inside. Lena was on her knees, her head bobbing up and down while the loser crackhead who had been coming around held a fistful of her hair in one hand and a crack pipe to his lips with the other.

I froze. And not because seeing a woman giving a blowjob was shocking. Privacy and humility hadn’t exactly been rampant in the abandoned houses I’d spent time living in with other junkies. No, I froze because of the crack pipe. I wanted a hit almost as much as I hated the shit.

The loser caught me staring and sneered. My watching was doing it for him. He took another long hit from the pipe, fisted Lena’s hair harder and thrust his hips, so she had no choice but to take him deep into her throat as he came.

I wanted to vomit.

I wanted a hit of that pipe.

I needed to get the hell out of there.

I grabbed the first small jacket I could find in the closet and rushed Abby toward the door. It could have been her watching that.

“We can go?”

I was already opening the door to get the hell out of that apartment. “Mommy said it’s fine.”

Abby and I took the subway downtown. There was no way I was taking her to a park in our drug-infested neighborhood. That experience wouldn’t be good for either of us. I also needed to get far away from temptation. So I took her to a small park I walked by every day, not far from where Grams lived.

We spent an hour in the park. I sat on a bench and watched Abby play with a little girl about her age. At one point, she ran over to me and asked if she could take a juice box from the little girl’s mother. At least she was smart enough to ask permission before taking things from strangers—even moms in the park. That was a good sign, since God knew who she might be around with her mother falling back into drugs.