Celia took her time answering. She looked at Raven with a burning intensity in her eyes. She wiped her mouth with her napkin, took a drink of water. Not once did she break eye contact with Raven.
“I’m picking up an extra shift that night. Won’t be home until late,” Celia said.
“Oh, I thought you were off,” Raven muttered, trying not to sound too pleased. “That’s okay. Maybe I can go some other time.”
Celia took a long, mournful look at her granddaughter. Her face softened a little.
“How did you plan on getting there?” she asked.
Raven perked up, but not too much.
“Tia’s sister is dropping us…I mean her…off. I could catch a ride with them.”
Celia cracked a tentative smile—as if she worried it might become a habit detrimental to her perpetually rigid demeanor.
“Alright. You can go, but I want you home as soon as the game is over. Understand?” Celia said.
Raven jumped out of her seat. She rushed around the table and stood behind her grandmother’s chair, giving her a big hug.
“Love you, Granny.”
Celia patted Raven’s hand.
“Love you, too, baby.”
Raven gave her another squeeze.
Before she got ready for bed, Raven tried on a pair of skinny jeans. She struggled with the zipper. When she sucked in a big breath, the jeans finally cooperated. Raven turned to the side. She examined her stomach in the mirror. The stiff denim helped force it flat.
Satisfied with the results, Raven peeled the jeans off. She placed them on a chair, along with a colorful t-shirt. Walking back to the mirror, she inspected herself one more time just in her underwear. What she saw in her reflection was simply an average teen-aged girl. Not a mother-to-be.
In her head Raven knew that would be her reality in a matter of months, but in her heart she longed to stop time or better yet, reverse it. Sure it was a crazy idea—an impossible one, but that’s what she clung to when she slipped into bed and fell asleep dreaming about her date with Sage.
Chapter 14
On the surface, Sage appeared fully prepared for his evening with Raven. He’d taken his usual painstaking time choosing his attire and getting dressed. The truck was clean and all gassed up. He had money in his wallet and plans for what they’d do after the game.
But contrary to all that well-intentioned prepping was the way Sage felt in his head. Lately he’d been pushing back so hard against Serenity’s death grip on his life that he was mentally exhausted.
Concocting one lie after the other; suppressing the load of guilt that wrapped itself around his conscience and squeezed it tight; turning a deaf ear to Serenity’s voice in his head. His life had become one big balancing act. All the energy and effort he exerted just to keep from becoming a complete casualty to his past was slowly draining his spirit. He could feel the essence of who he was slipping away.
Sometimes that scared him more than Serenity’s meddling did.
Lately there were far too many days when he felt like checking out completely. It would be so easy to just give Serenity what she wanted. Let her possess him for all eternity if that’s what it took to grab hold of a little peace.
Sage squeezed the steering wheel tight as those thoughts ran through his head. He could hardly wait for Peyton to slide into the seat beside him. He knew he was in for a shit load of smack talk from his best friend, but at least he’d be forced to focus on the here and now—-not the past he was always running from.
Peyton was going to the game stag that night. Not by choice. He wasted no time in sharing all the dirty details with Sage.
“Man, I can’t believe Tia was messing around on me,” Peyton said.
“Right, like you guys were really a couple or something,” Sage reminded him.
“Hey, I don’t try to hide my game from the ladies. I may not be the most faithful guy, but I at least expected a little more loyalty from somebody as new to the game as she was. You know how many freshmen would kill to get a piece of this?”
“I know you need to get over yourself,” Sage snorted.
Peyton ignored the insult. Instead, he used the mirror on the passenger side visor to take inventory of the goodies he was referring to. He smoothed his shadow of a mustache with a couple of fingers. He ran his hands over his fresh haircut, then he raked them across the chiseled chest that strained against the shirt he’d purposely bought in a size smaller than what he usually wore.
“Guess Tia was a little more hip to the game than she let on, huh?” Sage couldn’t help but tease him.
Peyton sucked his teeth, “Yeah...whatever. That’s why she and her new man got popped by her moms while they were getting busy. Ha! Karma’s a bitch, baby. You can’t play with a master like me and get away with it.” Peyton grinned to himself as he checked out his reflection again. “I’m so glad he got hemmed up and not me.”
“Uh, huh. Thought you didn’t worry about stuff like that? You know you dodged a bullet this time. Don’t expect it to always be like that,” Sage said.
“Oh, I don’t worry about it. Trust me. But I also don’t like unnecessary drama. Matter of fact…you could take a tip from me on that one,” said Peyton, lighting jabbing Sage in the arm.
Sage creased his brow. Focused on his driving.
Okay, here we go, might as well get this over with, he thought.
“What do you mean?” Sage asked.
At first Peyton leveled him with one raised eyebrow. Then he aimed and fired a straight shot.
“You know exactly what I mean. What’s the deal with you asking Raven to go to the game? Thought you said she was a psycho, such a big pain in your ass.”
Sage measured his words carefully before he answered.
“Yeah, I know. She was a pain in the beginning, but we’ve been talking. She’s really not so bad. People just get the wrong impression because she’s a little rough around the edges.”
Peyton turned to face Sage. He cupped a hand over his mouth. His eyes lit up as he read between the lines of Sage’s admission.
“Damn, man! How many times you hit that? She got you caught up like this already?” Peyton gushed.
Sage tried to temper his friend’s excitement with a nonchalant flap of his wrist.
“Naww. It’s not like that. I’m just saying there’s more to her than what you see,” Sage explained.
Peyton hit him with a smug smile.
“Right,” Peyton drawled. “She’s got that deep shit going on, huh? And that’s what attracted you to her? Okay, I feel you.”
Sage sighed, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You being such a player and all.”
“Oooo…ouch,” Peyton actually looked hurt. “So you’re saying I’m not capable of real feelings, man? That what you think of me. Like I don’t have a heart or something?”
Sage took his eyes off the road for a second. Glanced at Peyton to see if he was really serious.
He was.
Sage immediately felt bad. He softened a little.
“No, man. I’m not saying that at all. But you’re the one who’s always preaching about keeping things loose…not getting too serious. Wanting to be casual about your dealings with the ladies. Am I lying?” said Sage.
“Nope. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand you falling for her, Sage. Believe it or not, I do know what it’s like to long for somebody.”
Peyton’s voice almost cracked. He faced forward and crossed his arms over his chest.
Now Sage melted.
“Hey…I’m sorry. Okay? That’s not how I meant it,” Sage said. “We cool?”
Peyton wouldn’t look at him. He didn’t want to risk having Sage see the sadness in his eyes.
“Yeah. We’re cool,” he said softly.
The gym vibrated with noise from true fans of the game of basketball. It also crackled with the electricity from true fans of the game of hooking up, and no one repped that time honored tradition better than Peyton.
Still showing signs that he felt the sting from their earlier conversation, Peyton turned down Sage’s offer of conciliatory refreshments. Instead, he went off to try his luck with not one, but a pair of cuties from the opposing team’s side. The girls had caught his eye, and ear, when he overheard them complaining about the lack of “nice asses” on their school’s basketball roster.
While Peyton was off fulfilling his duty to lonely-hearted teen girls of America, Sage sat next to Raven and squirmed on the bleachers. He couldn’t keep his leg from bouncing, and his neck might as well have been on a swivel the way he kept swinging it around to check out if they were being checked out.
“Would you be still? You’re making me dizzy. What’s your problem?” said Raven. She shot Sage an elbow after he bumped her for about the tenth time.
“Owww. Dang, girl. Watch that.” Sage massaged his ribs and gave her a wary look from the corner of his eye. “Sorry. Just can’t get comfortable on these hard-assed seats.”
But the bleachers weren’t really his problem. His problem was being there with Raven. This was the first time they’d attended a school function together. Sage was sweating the very real possibility of being ambushed by a round of Serenity’s supernatural sabotage.
The last thing he wanted to do was freak out. He pictured himself acting like a big nut-job in front of Raven and his peers from school. That was bad enough, but something else weighed on him too. What if Jasmin was somewhere in the stands? How would she react to seeing him with Raven? Especially after he’d tried so hard to convince her they weren’t a couple.
Sure, she’d cut off all contact with him, looked through him like he was invisible in the single class they shared, had demanded he not even think about her. Like that was going to happen. Yeah, he was definitely at the top of her shit list, but in spite of all that, he wasn’t giving up on her.
Deep in his bones he knew they’d shared some kind of spark that first day they met, and just like the line in that ancient R&B song his dad loved said, sparks turn into flames. So Sage wasn’t giving up. He would let Jasmin have all the time and space she needed, and he would keep holding on to the possibility of them being a couple someday.
He didn’t care if he had to go through the specter of Serenity or the eye of Hurricane Raven to make it happen.
A small crowd of students milled around the gym after the basketball game. Sage leaned against the wall outside the ladies’ room, waiting for Raven to exit. He snapped to attention when he heard a familiar voice.
Jasmin and her friend, Neva, were headed in his direction. The girls were yakking so much they didn’t even notice him. Sage glanced toward the restroom door, saw the coast was clear, and stepped directly into their path.
“Hey, Jasmin,” he said.
Startled, both girls stopped abruptly. Jasmin looked like she would rather have been anywhere else but there. Neva rolled her eyes and slapped her hands on her hips. She placed herself squarely between Jasmin and Sage. Jasmin shook her head. She stepped from behind her friend.
“Hey, Sage. How’s it going,” Jasmin said.
“I’m cool. You?” he answered.
“I’m good. Excuse us.”
She and Neva walked around Sage and proceeded in the direction of the ladies’ room. Sage touched Jasmin’s arm.
“Could we talk for a minute?” he asked. Neva made a move like she was prepared to rip off the arm Sage held Jasmin with.
Jasmin shook her head as if to say I’m okay, really. Neva rolled her eyes and backed off.
“Sage, I don’t think there’s anything to talk—-“
“Please, just for a minute?” he begged.
“Uh-uh. Come on, Jas. You don’t have to do this,” said Neva. She tried to lead Jasmin away. Jasmin gently removed Neva’s hand from her arm.