hey y’all. been gone for a minute now i’m back with the jumpoff…or yanno a sample sunday! my fave & i are back in n&t-ville! coming when? soonish. for now, meet mic & vic.
lightly edited. subject to change.
**
“Well damn, look at us. The whole lot of us single as a dollar bill,” Victoria observed.
Something about the way she’d said it and nudged her brother had me on edge, but I shook it off. I was sure that she was just making conversation, but I didn’t necessarily want to continue this conversation so I sharply veered the subject onto something else.
“Victor, was that adorable little girl with you earlier yours?” I asked, turning the conversation from me onto him.
“Yeah, that’s my baby,” he replied with a proud, broad grin. “Navijah Victoria, my pride and joy.”
“How old is she?”
“Eight going on thirty-eight it seems some days,” he replied, that grin still stretching his face.
“She wasn’t not happy with whatever was going on earlier, which was why I hightailed it out of there,” I cracked.
She’d streaked up to us running .38 hot and all I’d heard was “I do not like her” and that told me everything I’d needed to know.
“Girl, that nurse bitch got a little too familiar with niecy pooh. But you know how the girls have always lost their minds over Vic,” Victoria chimed in with an eye roll.
Unfortunately I’d known just how much the girls lost their minds over Victor Covington since I’d gotten into it with one of the most popular girls in fifth grade when she tried to get me to stop being friends with the twins because she wanted Victor to be her boyfriend. It was so silly because one – we were children, but two – and most importantly – I didn’t know who’d raised her to harbor an insecurity behind the guy she’d set her sights on having female friends, but I wasn’t the girl to try about that. The Covington Twins and I had gone way back and I wasn’t ending my friendship because she couldn’t handle a little competition. Not that I was really competition for her since I had carried a crush on Victor from the first time I realized what a crush even was, but he never gave any indication that he saw me as anything but a friend. I wasn’t too pressed over it, but Jenice Franklin was steam pressed. So much so to the point of setting up a fight with me on the playground. I wasn’t really the fighting type as a kid, but I definitely didn’t back down from somebody trying to punk me, though. Only one of us regretted that fight after school. Let’s just say the cute little pink bows that held Jenice’s ponytails together ended up a casualty that day as they were scattered all over the playground before the aftercare ladies were alerting that we were fighting and broke us up. The only people who’d known that fight was about Victor were Victoria – because she was my bestie at the time, and another girl named Carmen Jenkins who was Jenise’s bestie.
“Maaaan, get outta here with all of that,” Victor said, throwing a hand in the air brushing off his sister’s teasing. “I ain’t down here for any of that. I’m here to work, dassit.”
“Okay Ebony,” I cracked up at his impersonation from The Players Club, “but speaking of…how in the hell did you end up working in the W as a trainer? I thought for sure you’d be in the league, too.”
“So did I,” Victor replied sheepishly, “but a crazy ass landing from trying to do too much on a dunk completely shattered my patella and I was never the same on the court after that, so I hung it up. While I was rehabbing my knee though, my PT was cool as fuck and I ended up bonding with him and we’d kept in touch after I was healed. After getting my first degree in accounting and being bored out of my mind working as an entry level accountant at an oversized firm, I went back to school and got a second degree in physiology.”
“Oh wow,” I breathed, “it’s dope that you found a backup plan to your backup plan, though.”
“Oh, see the league was actually my backup plan. Unlike you and Lisa Leslie over here, I wasn’t ‘the man’ on the court. I just happened to be big with nice hands,” he laughed.
“Well, it coulda been different. You coulda been ‘tall for no reason’ like Mikey’s clumsy ass,” I quipped and we all burst into laughter at my brother’s expense.
Micah was the only Kennedy who wasn’t athletically inclined in the least. Jojo had played soccer and could have done so professionally, but it wasn’t his passion. Zebby and I were the basketballers, following in our father’s footsteps, and Jahel was into gymnastics and dance.
“Oh my god, your twin was legit the worst. The only reason why he was in the rec league was because your pops was coaching,” Vicki laughed, “How has he been though? Hell, all of your siblings? Well, not Zeb because I know exactly how that fool is doing, but Jonah, Micah, Jahel…they all good?”
I spent the next couple minutes updating them on my siblings and we just sat there talking until the staff was tryna usher us out of the café so they could clean up for the night. I hadn’t expected to run into these two, but spending the night reminiscing about the old days with the Covington Twins was much better than sitting in my room sulking about the earlier events of the day.
“Aight y’all, I gotta try and catch a shuttle back over to the villas. I’ll see y’all,” Victoria said as we were walking out.
“Oh, you’re not staying here?”
She shook her head. “I’m the den mother in a house full of rookies,” she cracked with a grin. As we were walking out we saw one of the trams pulling up. “Actually, let me try to convince them to give me a ride.”
“Hey, I thought you were gonna take Navi’s bag over to CP’s for me.”
“Sorry, bro. You shoulda brought it with, I gotta blast,” Victoria called over her shoulder.
Shaking his head, Victor angrily mumbled under his breath.
“I’ll see ya,” I said, heading toward the elevators.
Victor strolled after me. “Yeah, in the elevator. I’m staying here.”
“Oh,” I said, dumbly, pushing the call button and then staring up at the LED screens above the three elevators in the bank waiting for one to reach us.
All during dinner and our shit talk afterward, I’d had to stop myself from damn near drooling over Victor. Like, he was cute as hell when we were younger and that, along with how kind he always was, made up a major part of why I’d liked him so much back then. But that cute had morphed into grown man fine and it had me feelings things with a capital T. Victor’s skin was the color of manuka honey, a warm, light brown tone that was stretched across broad shoulders, a taut chest that tapered into a narrow waist, powerful ass thighs, calves that were so well developed that whatever injury had occurred in his past clearly hadn’t gotten him down for too long. His facial features were the perfect mix of both parts of his heritage, the slight slant of his eyes belied his maternal Filipino lineage paired with his dad’s snub nose and sensually full lips. And of course there were the curls. I should have been turned off by the man bun, but at some point during dinner he’d taken it out and shaken his curls free and I’d had to swallow back an audible groan. I’d never been into long hair on men, but he made the shit look appealing. I’d wanted to do nothing more than run my fingers through the long ringlets as his lips placed lingering kisses all over my body.
I blinked and shuddered, shaking off that thought as we stood side by side in silence in the elevator bank until the ding let us know that one had arrived at the lobby level. We stood aside to let folks walk off before Victor braced a forearm against one side of the doors and gestured for me to enter before him. I walked onto the elevator and headed straight for a back corner, standing there looking silly before Victor turned to me and asked, “What floor?”
“Oh…my bad, I just got on like you knew where I was going. Seventeen, please.”
Victor turned to me with a grin after he pressed the button. “Oh, me too, actually. When did you say you got here? I’m surprised we haven’t seen each other at all and we been right here in the same place…on the same floor.”
“First day out, remember?” I squeaked.
He gave a slow nod as he trailed his gaze over me. “Right.”
Once again silence descended on the elevator as we rode up to seventeen. My eyes were darting all over the elevator before finally focusing on the climbing numbers on the LED screen inside of the car. I could feel the heat of Victor’s gaze on me and I finally stopped being nervous long enough to meet his gaze head on. If I thought that would intimidate him in any way, I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Instead I got lost in the clear desire that was apparent in his gaze as his eyes traced every inch of my form from head to toe before biting his lip and shaking his head.
“What?” I asked, unnerved by his silent perusal.
“Just…enjoying the view,” he crooned in a low rumble.
That simple statement sent a zap of arousal straight to my core and in a flash, he was no longer standing on the other side of the elevator, but right in front of me as he lowered a hand toward my face, cupping my chin to reestablish our eye contact.
“Still the prettiest girl,” he said in a hushed, almost hallowed tone.
Before I could gather a response, the doors to the elevator opened at our floor and he stepped back, letting me go ahead of him.
“See you around,” I said, scurrying off the elevator and heading in the direction of my room. Victor was right behind me, his room apparently in the same direction. Luckily I reached my door before I made an even bigger fool of myself. I swiped my keycard in front of the sensor and damn near rocketed into the room. I could hear Victor’s chuckle as he called out for me to have a good night.
“Real smooth, Mic. Reaaaaaaaaal smooth,” I said aloud to myself as I began peeling off my clothes to head directly into the shower.
