Promise Kept (Perry Skky Jr.) (10 page)

“You’re looking pretty good too. My sister doesn’t run me, that’s not the problem.”

She kissed my lips. “What is? I don’t want to know. Let’s just enjoy each other. This is spring break—I know you’re supposed to have flings. I know you’re big man on campus—shoot, the boys at Morehouse even know who you are. I’ll get mad points when they know we went to school together. They wager if you’re going to make it to the pros one day, but I know the true Perry Skky, the little guy who worked overtime to reach his dream. You didn’t just arrive, and you had a dad that was on you. And you used to fall down on your knees and pray for God to make you better.”

“You saw that?” I said, shocked to remember those days of riding the bench in the seventh grade. I was real frustrated that my body was developing slowly, unlike the other boys in my class.

“Yeah, I watched you a lot. Your sister would get on me all the time, but the guys in my grade were so fast. Of course I thought you were adorable and then the time you saw me bare in the bathroom.” I couldn’t even continue to look at her, I just turned away. “Wait, wait. Don’t be bashful now I’ve really got something for you to see.”

She took my hand and placed it on her chest. I closed my eyes, not needing to see a thing because what I was feeling was feeling real good, and then I felt my ears getting wet one at a time. People said this part of Florida was paradise and the way I was feeling was solidifying that fact. Yeah, I had a girl. Yeah, I was trying to honor God, but I had so much stress on me. Would it be all bad getting my groove on? I needed something settling or soothing for calming my heart.

“I
’m on the pill,” Rain said to me, looking deep into my eyes. “Let’s go all the way Perry, make me feel good.”

Our bodies had been grinding for the last few minutes even with lightning in the sky and darkness surrounding us. It just felt too good to pull away, but after that statement the thunder roared loud. It was like God was saying, “Boy don’t be crazy, don’t lose your mind. Get the heck up and tell her no.”

It certainly wasn’t like my loins wanted to hear all of that, but the spirit inside of me won the battle.

It wasn’t about another pregnancy scare—she said we were covered. And it wasn’t about me wanting to be true to my girl. I had already crossed the cheating line kissing on somebody else. It probably should have been some concern about the fear of a disease, but Rain was so ready to give it up to me it wasn’t no telling who else she had laid up with. It was about God pulling at the strings of my soul. I just didn’t want to hit it, I mean I did want to hit it, but it needed to be more. Not a physical attraction but a commitment, one that was holy, and that was something I certainly didn’t have with Rain. Yeah, she was fly and certainly a turn-on with her body all gritty from the sand. As I tried hard to run from the love that mattered most, He just stood out and with the touch of nature He got me pretty good. The lightning bolt hit twenty feet away from us and that was too close.

“Alright, I hear ya,” I said out loud.

“It’ll be okay, we don’t have to stop,” she said, not getting it.

So I had to tell her, “Girl, it’s not about the rain, it’s about what that symbol of lightning means to me. It’s a warning. I’m trying to do this thing with God and I’m trying to please Him and it is hard. It’s real hard, but I can do it.”

“Wow. I’m kind of impressed,” she said. “I stopped walking that path when I first walked on my college campus. I had waited and waited to give myself to one guy and one guy only, only to find out that he had been messing around on me for years. I couldn’t understand how a guy that was supposed to love me let me be so blind and let me fall when things didn’t work out. Now, who cares about love? Who cares about promises, we’re young, we’re supposed to have fun. Everybody can’t have what your sister has with that boy up there at Georgia.”

“Yeah, you’re right. She and Tad do have something special and it’s not about anything else. A person’s walk with God is special.”

I was standing and reached down and pulled her up, and we started shaking off the sand.

And I said, “I better walk you back to your villa.”

“You got class, Perry Skky Jr.” She reached over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll cross paths again when the time is right. Your girl sure is lucky.”

The rest of the way we walked back briskly in silence, while the thunder and lightning kept doing its dance and I thought about Savoy and how I let her down. She trusted me to come on a vacation and just be a chaperone for her brother but yet I couldn’t even go a couple of days without yielding to temptation. I didn’t think I could sleep without talking to her. I really didn’t know if I needed her to forgive me because I didn’t know if I could forgive myself, but I had to come clean. You know just like when you have to go to the john your stomach just won’t sit still until it releases the waste.

“You were out awfully late,” Deuce said as I came into the condo to get my cell phone. “Watch it now, you got lipstick on your cheek.”

I just looked at him and he knew I was frustrated.

“Perry, it’s hard for a brother. It’s just hard.”

“Yeah, well we got to do better.”

“All of us gon’ fit the stereotype all the time?”

“Naw, I know it’s some men out there, real men that let God lead the way always. I just got to tap in too, it’s already there I just got to do better. At least I care. Right?”

“Yeah man, at least you care. Your phone’s been ringing. I think your girl’s been calling.”

“Yeah, I’ma call her up. Where’s her brother?”

“Out with your cousin. He came back in here looking for some condoms, so umm…”

“Are you serious man? Where’d they go?”

Deuce threw his hands up in the air.

“Aw, seriously man. Where’d they go?”

“I don’t know, but you can’t make her cut him off.”

“I know I can’t make her, but he knows where I stand on all of that. But they just met.”

“He told me he was in love!”

“And you believed that?”

“I don’t know man, he ain’t never told me that he was in love.”

He had a point. I took my phone and headed back outside. I was shocked to see Saxon coming up the condo stairs.

“Where’s my cousin, man?”

“I just want you to see that I haven’t used these. I know Deuce opened his big mouth, but she’s something special. I’ma see her tomorrow.”

“Yeah she’s something real special.”

Since that was over, I called my girl.

“Hey, baby. I’ve been trying to get you,” she said in the sweetest voice. I couldn’t even respond. “So I guess that confirms what I’ve been thinking. You’ve been having a beach fling, huh?”

Still I couldn’t say a word.

“I know God stopped you and I know you love me and I tried to tell you that girls would be coming after you left and right, but now maybe you’ll see. You aren’t untargetable.”

“So how can I be a good boyfriend to you when I’ve got issues?”

“You think my eyes don’t watch other guys?”

“Yeah, but you don’t kiss all of them.”

“Well, I don’t want to know the details and I don’t want to be with someone who is not satisfied with just me. But I don’t think you’re battling us. I think you’re just battling the devil and you have to conquer him. Let him know that he can’t be victorious. Think about it babe.” And she hung up.

“Dang man, your girl is going to mess up the track meet, ain’t she?” Marquez Jackson hit me in the arm at the track meet and said.

Savoy fell in the hurdles. I knew the girl had my heart because when she did it was like I was a parent or something, feeling really bad that she had made a major mistake for the team. The Tech girls were fighting to win the ACC, but their competition was the Miami Hurricane girls. And just when it seemed we have a chance to win, Savoy made a big mistake.

“Get up. Get up,” I said in a small voice I hoped she could feel. Just as the trainer was headed her way she got up from the pavement and finished the race. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Whatever, man. Her time is going to be whack.”

“Man, hush.”

“Whatever, I got us to the National Championship game.”

“It wasn’t you alone,” I said back to Marquez, letting him know that I didn’t appreciate him talking about my girl.

“Don’t get sensitive, you know how sports goes. Unless they have a heck of a time in the four-by-four relay she pretty much lost the meet for them.”

They were getting ready to go into the last race and I saw Charlie and Jailyn stretching. Deuce and Jailyn had really been holding their relationship down. We hadn’t talked about it a lot but she was working with a brother. She had him studying all the time. They trained together when they didn’t have to train with their respective teams. She seemed like a cool girl and Charlie was still hot and crazy, leaving me messages here and there that I would erase without listening to. There was one other girl out there that I didn’t know. She was faster than a bullet.

Then Marquez said, “That’s my girl right there, DJ Wright.”

“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”

“Whatever man, you know how we do, but that’s her. She’s gon’ run in the Olympics. She’s been saying how inconsistent that girlfriend of yours is, man. I know she don’t want her to run the relay now.”

Instantly I got up from the bleachers, jogged down the stairs, jumped over the fence and inconspicuously walked out onto the track.

DJ, with her hands on her hips, got up in Savoy’s face and said, “You don’t even need to be out here with us. Your piss-poor performance is bringing us down. The only place you need to run is away from us.”

Jailyn and Savoy were still cool I thought, but when Jailyn stood back with her arms crossed, not even defending her friend, I wondered what was up with that.

Charlie let her beef be known. “You quit on us in the last race. Why would we want you to run the relay knowing that something has got you upset and that you’re not going to give your all.”

Savoy put her hand over her lips and put her head down and when she looked up tears were flowing lightly like a stream. She just turned away from them and dashed toward the locker room.

I heard the coach call out, “Savoy, where are you going? The race is in a second. Come on back, Savoy.”

But she didn’t respond, she just headed to pack it in. Instead of jogging, I did a sprint. The guys were running their race and then it would be the girls; she didn’t have a lot of time to be jiving around. I tried to catch up with her before she went into the locker room but I was unsuccessful, so I threw my hands in the air and said bump it. Sometimes you just had to do what you had to do and it was a good thing I went in to the locker room. The light tears I saw on the field paled compared to the sobbing she was doing as she pounded her fists on the lockers.

“Hey, hey,” I said, putting my body in between the locker and her fists.

“Perry, please move. Please. I’m not in the mood, just leave me alone. I told you not to come to this meet anyway.”

“Well, I had some time on my hands and I wanted to be out there for you.”

“Well, you saw that I choked. Everything that coach told me about lifting up my leg, stay in my lane and concentrate, I couldn’t even do. I messed up the meet and my teammates don’t even want me to run with them, okay. And if I got out there I don’t even know if my little old heart would be into it.”

“I know girls can be ruthless at times with the things that they say. What you think, I don’t have to deal with the same crap from the guys on the field, talking trash trying to psyche me out mentally. And remember you are talking to the guy who basically lost the season opener due to my piss-poor performance. Look at me girl, I understand.”

She fell into my arms. “I was supposed to be so good, but ever since I ran into DJ, I don’t know, I just haven’t been able to step up my game.”

“Competition is supposed to challenge you, being around the best is only supposed to make you better.”

“Yeah, but…”

“No, no buts. You got a God that gave you mad skills, but that doesn’t mean you’re always going to be perfect. When I messed up in that first game I committed to the rest of the season that I would make up for it for my team. If track and field is what you care about then know that you know that you got it. Shake off the fear and do your thing.”

“You really think I can?”

“The question is do you believe that you can?”

She nodded, headed out on the field, ran as lead anchor in the next race, and they won.

“We won, we won!” Savoy said as she came up to me. “Are we going to celebrate tonight, let’s do something. Because of you, I turned it around and we won.”

I appreciated that she was all excited; I was happy that I could step in and recharge her. But I wasn’t feeling the whole get-together thing; I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t know where that was coming from. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t have no major test to study for or nothing like that.

I just said, “Naw, let’s just take a rain check.”

Her whole demeanor just deflated, her arms dropped, her smile vanished; she sighed.

“I don’t know, I’m just not trying to go out and stuff,” I said.

“Well, I can come over. We can watch a movie or something like that.”

But there was no way that I could be like,
you know what, I just don’t want to be around you tonight.
“Well, can we just get a bite to eat right now?” I said.

“No, Coach wants to talk to us and stuff. You want to wait forty-five minutes or an hour to eat?”

“Naw, I’m starving.”

“What’s going on Perry? I mean, is there something you’re not saying? You got back last week and told me you had your lips on another girl.”

“Naw, I don’t know if I said
that
.”

“What, are you denying it? she asked. I don’t even know why I asked you to spend a Saturday night with me. You know what? Have it your way.”

She turned around and stormed off. I wanted to call her back and say alright, let’s do something, but there wasn’t a need to fake the funk. I went home and just passed out on the couch. Both of my roommates were excited about the females in their lives. Things were working out between Lance and Anna, and Deuce had gotten with Jailyn since he didn’t make it to the track meet. There was no reason why I couldn’t have Savoy over with me, besides that us being in an apartment all by ourselves with a bed nearby might have provoked temptation, but I knew deep down that wasn’t it. What was I distancing myself from? The Bible was on the coffee table in front of me. I had no desire to pick it up and read anything, but then Psalms 23 came to my memory. I said the last part out loud, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” So where the heck are goodness and mercy at now? And when I laid my head back on the back of the couch, it felt like two angels sat on either side of me. I don’t know if I was dreaming, tripping or thinking about some of the TV shows I had been watching about angels paying a visit to folks, but whatever it was that moment was real enough for me to see Goodness as a beautiful movie star type lady, and Mercy as some crazy comedian.