Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (26 page)

Quinn

The last time I had been this nervous was when… I had never been this nervous.

I had gone to school for journalism but had ended up focusing on print. I wasn’t a documentary maker, but I knew how to cut clips together. It was only about half an hour’s worth. That wasn’t hard. It wasn’t a
Scorsese
or
Coppola
job, but it wasn’t
meant
to be. It just had to look presentable. The video editing software had been crashing my computer the entire time I was trying to put the shit together, it better look presentable. It would be like the
Blair Witch Project
, but about Dante.

I couldn’t stand hearing the sound of my narration. I should have gotten someone else to do it. That was a thing, though. Wasn’t it? The sound of your own voice was always annoying to you? I tried to keep my eyes on the screen, or on the ground. Anywhere but on Dante. I watched the Dante on the screen.

He had been all I had been able to think about. The documentary had been all I had been able to think about—and since the doc was about
him
, he had remained close, too. Surprisingly, it was not until just now, as the documentary was beginning, that I really thought about what it was he would feel watching it. I wasn’t going to chance watching him. I had seen it beginning to end so many times, but it was different seeing it again now.

Now I was finally going to show it to other people. It wasn’t going to be a piece that belonged to me anymore. Now it was for whoever was watching. It was for Dante.

There was tons of footage of Dante all over the Internet. I didn’t have to look far to get shots of him on the court, showing us all why he had been MVP for his team so many times. Everyone had seen
that
before. It wasn’t anything to see Dante play because everyone had seen Dante play.

Pamela Rock, Dante’s mother was the one with the real juice. Juice, in this case, being home videos. She might have lived in a million dollar house in Calabasas, but she still had a VCR—and she had given me boxes and boxes of home videos and told me to knock myself out. She said I could use any of the footage that I wanted, as long as I didn’t damage the original tapes. When I told her I was doing a documentary tribute for her son, she was all for it.

David, the guy in IT who I had asked to help me digitize some of the footage had laughed at me for about an hour before he finally did it. Dante, as it turned out was adorable as a kid. He was very small until puberty when he had shot up like two feet. I had the footage of him as a kid spliced in with footage of him now as a professional basketball player. I used some of the audio from our recorded interviews in with it. I even used the footage of him that I had taken, the footage where he was on the courts, or in the locker room, and the clip that had gotten me into trouble with him in the first place. The short clip of barely twenty seconds of him asleep in his bed in his home.

I wanted the whole story.

That meant going to the scene of the crime.

Dante hadn’t been kidding when he had said that the place he had grown up, Cavett, was in the middle of nowhere. I’d had to drive there using a rental from one of the larger surrounding towns and nearly missed it. You would if you blinked too long. Pamela had given me their old address. The house, there didn’t seem to be anyone living there anymore, was still standing.

There were a few people who remembered him from when he was a boy and who had agreed to interviews, including a woman who claimed to be his ex-girlfriend from middle school. They talked about him like they were proud just to have known who he was before he got famous.

All that, the travel and interviews in Ohio, had been the easy part. Showing the Dante Rock timeline became tricky because of what had been happening recently. The things I found out were even surprising to me. I had managed, after nearly begging to get the heads of various women's shelters around LA, to reveal Dante’s donation history. I had thought the million on the spot during the
Inside the League
interview had been a lot.

Nope.

The amounts that he had been donating since the beginning of his career came to close to two and a half million. He regularly funded drives to purchase women’s sanitary and health products for the shelters because homeless women and women in transitional housing had different needs than men. The thing was he had never ever done it in his own name. He had done it in his mother’s name every time.

I wanted to end with the thing that was most controversial. That, of course, was all the shit that had happened with Grace Whitley. Getting an interview with her had been exceedingly hard. I inserted audio from the phone conversation I’d had with her and then revealing the truth about her. You learned a lot when you did the right digging. Her real name wasn’t even Grace Whitley. It changed depending on where she went and who she was talking to.

As it turned out, she was a con woman. She used the fallacious claims that men in high places, athletes mostly, had assaulted her in order to secure large payouts from them. Dante had been a hard egg to crack and had basically given her a run for her money. She was intending on most likely coming after him again.

She wouldn’t be now.

It ended and the credits rolled.

I exhaled. It was over. I had watched the finished program over and over so many times while I was editing it down, but this was the first time that someone else besides Pamela had seen it. I spotted at least ten things that I wished I had changed for the final cut, but it was too late now. I didn’t want to look over at Dante, but right then I couldn’t resist. I looked. He was still watching the screen. His face was hard, but it was completely still. His eyes didn’t give away anything about what he was feeling.

He looked over at me, and it took everything I had not to look away. I had been wishing that he would look at me with something other than frigid indifference, and well, he was. He was looking at me with
something
. I didn’t know what. I didn’t know what to do because he wasn’t doing anything. Did he like it?

If he didn’t, that didn’t matter because he hated me already. He wasn’t really the person I was trying to impress, but his approval would have meant the world. I never wanted to misrepresent him, and a lot of what was in the film were things that nobody knew about him but himself, his mother, and me.

It was the Dante behind closed doors. It was the man who he didn’t let everyone see—and I had just shown
everybody
. The crowd was applauding.

I panicked when I saw him start walking. He started moving towards me, slowly, his eyes locked onto mine. My breathing slowed, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say when he got to me.

He stopped in front of me. I licked my lips and looked up at him.

“Dante—”

“Was it your idea?” he asked.

“I wanted something visual to accompany the stories,” I said meekly. God. That sounded so
bad
. It sounded like I just made the doc for my own career.

“Is that why you wanted that footage of me?”

“I had wanted it for me. I thought you looked peaceful. Putting it together… I wanted everyone to see it. Just a little bit of the man I know you are,” I said. He smiled down at me, leaning down to kiss me. He held me to him, pressing my body into his. The applause from the crowd was deafening. I mean, it must have been because I barely heard it. All I could feel was Dante. I felt the warmth and affection I had lacked from him for so long. He broke the kiss and pressed another to my forehead.

“Dante, did you know what was happening? Did you see this before we did?” a man asked. I didn’t even know who he was, a reporter or something. Dante ignored his question and wrapped his arms around me.

I heard shouts of “Who is she? Who is she?” from various people. Dante released me and took one of the mics that was being held out to him.

“She’s my girlfriend,” he said. “I love her.”

Dante

I asked her to move in with me right after the championship win.

I should have known she would be difficult about it.

She tried making all these excuses, like it hadn’t been long enough, or that she didn’t like the location. The second excuse was an absolute lie. I knew she
loved
the house. The first one that we hadn’t been together long enough was just that. An excuse.

Our relationship, if you could even call it that, had been the furthest thing from traditional. We were supposed to be working together, but the lines blurred and I fell in love with her. I didn’t get it. She loved me, too. I knew she did. What was the big deal? She wanted a normal relationship? She could have it now. I hadn’t had many girlfriends, but I knew that when you were in a relationship with someone, you asked them to live with you.

I wanted her around. Was that what she didn’t seem to realize?

I wanted to share a bed with her, and I wanted her to be there when I woke up in the morning. The house was huge; it wasn’t as if she was going to be getting in my way. It was way too much space for one person anyway. It was too much space for two people but that, if she wanted, could change.

My mom had cried when I had told her that Quinn and I were moving in together. I knew she was proud of me, but I also knew that she didn’t really agree with the sort of lifestyle that I lived. She was probably waiting for me to turn thirty and realize that I couldn’t keep partying as hard as I was anymore.

Lucky for her I was doing it two years earlier.

The first thing I did with Quinn was take her away. It was just a week, but I just wanted to give her a grace period before we were back in LA and were out as a couple. She wouldn’t be Quinn Blaze, reporter, anymore. She would be Dante Rock’s girlfriend. I knew that life already, but I wanted to give her a little time to adjust and enjoy her relative anonymity before the media shitstorm that was coming.

I chose Jamaica. Montego Bay. We spent the first part of the week at the Hilton and the rest of it in a private villa, fully staffed. We both dropped off for that whole week. There was no television and neither of us used our phones. I knew we wouldn't be able to get away from the drama when we got home, so we were going to make the most of the silence while we still had it. It was what we both needed.

I had been a complete dick to her since the thing with the camera. I knew,
rationally,
that whatever she was doing with it, she wasn’t going to try and use it against me. She said to me so many times that she didn’t mean to hurt me, which she wasn’t trying and I believed her. I believed her every time, but I didn’t want to take a chance.

I knew I was falling in love with her and I wanted any excuse to spare myself the possibility of getting hurt. I had been a jerk and it just wasn’t fair to Quinn. I was scared and I took the opportunity I saw to push her away. I didn’t want to think about what would have happened if she hadn’t wanted me back. She
had
taken me back, but there was always the chance that she wouldn’t. That she was done and took that rejection for what it was and just left.

I hated to think of it.

It was like before I met Quinn, I didn’t want anything. I wanted some things, but they were all related to my career. I had wanted to win MVP again, I had wanted a championship win. I wanted record-breaking career stats. I never wanted the other stuff you are supposed to want, like a stable relationship with someone you love, or kids and a family.

I just never thought about that stuff. I never had any reason to. Quinn…
she
was a reason to.

None of those things ever made sense to think about before. They were things that were permanent and meaningful, and I had never had a relationship with a woman outside of the women in my family.

Once I had Quinn back, all I wanted was to keep her with me.

Mom had been so happy she had cried when I told her that Quinn and I were moving in together. She was the perfect person to ask for help picking out an engagement ring for her. She had never been that proud of me, even when I had graduated or made it into the league.

She wanted grandkids. She talked about grandkids with Gabbie all the time because I guess she thought if there was a possibility for one of her kids to give her grandchildren, it was Gabbie. She and Quinn had gotten pretty close since they were working on the film together. I knew she loved her. I knew Quinn loved my mom, as well. Mom probably saw the grandkids she thought she’d never get from me when I told her Quinn was moving in. That was the first step, right? First, you moved in. then you got married, then you got kids.

I didn’t know whether Quinn
wanted
kids, but she was just twenty-four.

I asked her when we were getting ready to go out.

Her little movie, the one she made about me behind my back with mom’s help, had been circulated all over the place and had been submitted for a journalism award. This was the real deal too because the people holding the event didn’t tell her beforehand whether or not she had won. It was like that sometimes with some award ceremonies. Not this one.

We were in the bedroom together. She was in a chair having her hair and makeup done, and I was rolling the lint off the tux that I was going to wear.

“Hey, babe?” I said.

“Hm?”

She didn’t look over at me. She had to hold still because the hair stylist was curling her hair. There wasn’t really a smooth way to ask this so I just spat it out.

“Has mom been asking you about kids?” I asked her.

“A little, I guess, she hadn’t asked if we were trying or anything, but she has sort of dropped hints that she was excited about us starting a family.”

“Do you
want
to? Start a family?”

Quinn paused. It was probably a little awkward for her to have that discussion with me while there were two other people in the room. I didn’t really care. Those people, wardrobe and style people, probably had some of the best-kept secrets of the rich and famous.

“Do you want to?” she asked, not answering my question.

“I don’t think I would mind that much,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know mom wants grandkids. I wouldn’t mind having a bunch of little kids running around who looked like you,” I said.

“A
bunch
? How many is a bunch?”

“I don’t know. How many are you willing to have?”

“Dante… I don’t know, we’ve never talked about this before.”

“But you have thought about it, right? Come on, tell me.”

“One would be enough.”

“What? No way. Only children are spoiled.”

“
I’m
an only child, what are you trying to say?” she accused.

“I’m just saying since you never had siblings, you don’t know what it’s like. They can look out for each other. That’s an instant best friend, right there.”

“Okay, how about two, like you and Gabbie?”

“
More
,” I said.

“How could you want more than two?” she asked.

I didn’t know, but I did. This house was so big, I wanted to fill it up. If the number of kids you had was somehow equal to how much you loved the person you were with, then I wanted as many kids as possible.

“How about four?” I asked.

“I hope you're saying that because you're ready to actually
raise
four children.”

“Why does that sound like a threat?” I asked her. Her hair wasn't done yet, but I asked the stylist and makeup artist if they could just leave for a second so we could talk privately together.

“Are you upset?” I asked her. There was about half of her hair that still needed to be curled but her makeup looked like it was done already. I thought she looked beautiful but the makeup artist was probably going to come back in and touch her face some more.

“I’m not upset. I’m just surprised. Why do you want to discuss this now?” she asked.

“I’ve been thinking about the future.”

“We just moved in together. It has only been a few months.”

“You haven’t been thinking about us being together?”

“I have, but kids? Already? I just… I just think it's sort of soon.”

“How long do you want to wait?”

“I’m just twenty-four. I want to work some more and become more established. I want us to spend more time together getting to know one another. I want to spend time with you alone before we have a kid who needs constant attention and tears me away from you.”

I walked up to her and leaned down to kiss her gently on the lips so I didn’t get any of her makeup on me.

“I haven’t ever wanted a future with anyone before you, Quinn. I haven’t ever wanted a woman to move in with me before.”

“This is big for you. I know. That’s why you should slow down and enjoy it. I’m not going anywhere.”

I kissed her again. She had a point.

She and I… well,
I
was new at this. She had probably had men in her life before. She had probably even lived with some of them. Maybe even gotten engaged and talked about having kids. It didn’t matter what she had done in the past because we were together
now
. I wanted her and I wanted all of her. I would respect her wishes if she wanted to wait, but she would have to compromise and do something for me.

I didn’t want to think about not having her again.

I didn’t want to think about other women I’d had in the past or the ones I could have had if she and I weren’t together.

I hadn’t been looking in the first place, but I was done looking now. I had found her. I didn’t want anyone else. I had kept the ring that mom and I had picked out for her in the bedside table of one of the guest bedrooms. I didn’t want her finding it by accident.

My mind was made up—and she was it.

It was just a matter of finding out when a good time to propose would be. I took the ring everywhere with me when we left the house together. It was always on me besides when we were asleep.

I had been really scared about the media attention when we got back from Jamaica and settled into my house, our house together back in Los Angeles would be like. The thing I had forgotten was that Quinn was a reporter herself. She wasn’t a public figure, but she wrote about them all the time. She knew how the media was. She knew they didn’t give a fuck and could be reckless. She also knew how to handle herself.

What did it feel like to have nothing to hide?

Literally, the
only
thing she had ever done wrong was love me.

Not every publication took fact-checking seriously. The headlines and stories that we came home to after Jamaica were scandalous. They ranged from a little bit true and plausible to outright lies.

There were already rumors that the reason she and I was together was because I had made her pregnant. There were some calling her my
secret wife
. There were others saying who she was, Quinn Blaze, journalist, but then everything else was ugly rumors. Some said she was blackmailing me. Some said she was a social-climbing gold digger.

If only they knew how embarrassed Quinn was by my money.

There had even been these huge offers from various outlets to give an expose on our relationship. The same hungry publications that were after me before were after me again, and now they had more ways to get to me than before. Quinn wouldn’t break though.