“Uncle P, Uncle P! Look! You gotta watch!”
I peeled my gaze away from my laptop – which I wasn’t supposed to have out anyway, honestly – to watch my nephew as he did a cannonball into my pool.
Impressive.
I hadn’t even been using it. It was actually Logan’s call to have it serviced for the first time in quite a while, once she found out that Nubia and her family were going to be staying in Vegas for the week. Not that there wasn’t a pool available at their luxury hotel, but Logan had suggested that I needed the family time on our day off from shooting. Instead of spending it like I normally would, still obsessing and making ultra-last-minute changes to the script ahead of the table read for the episode.
She was right – I probably did need this.
Everybody was chilling – Steph on the grill with steaks for lunch, Nubia, Elodie, and Mari chatting and playing with the kids. Trey, and Mari’s baby girl Eloise – affectionately called Weezy – who was named for my mother, were both having a blast in the pool.
I was – between peeks at my laptop – just taking it all in.
A little earlier, Steph’s people had called, and as usual I was pleasantly surprised when they asked to speak to me. It felt good though, and of course I took my ass over to the phone to show my grinning face on the video call, all the way from Argentina where they lived. I knew my mother would have been on my ass like a kid who wouldn’t give Grandma a hug if I hadn’t. Not to imply that speaking with them was some undesirable thing, because it definitely wasn’t. Steph’s parents were always full of warmth and wisdom for me; his sister and her husband – plus their adorable kids – always had jokes and laughs.
It was all good vibes, good energy that I needed to keep me from going crazy.
I put my laptop aside, knowing at this point, I was just picking at the script for the sake of doing it, without actually making anything better. There wasn’t much I hated worse than an overworked script, and I didn’t need the stress of that possibility as an additional weight on my mind.
So instead, I subjected myself to the possibility of becoming the new subject of conversation for the three women as I walked past, intending to make a safe journey from where I’d been tucked to myself to where Steph was. But I should have known they weren’t just going to say nothing when I passed.
“P-Three,” Nubia sang. “Why wasn’t Logan invited? I thought I’d see my girl here today!”
I shrugged. “It’s her day off too. She wanted to get some face time in with her people.”
“Sure,” Mari grinned, lifting a fussing Weezy from her unicorn floatie in the water. “I think you just didn’t want us asking her any questions.”
“Yeah, that too,” I chuckled, reaching for the baby. Her chubby cheeks lifted in a toothless grin as she accepted being transferred from her mother to me, and I didn’t hang around.
I kept on with my previous destination of moving on to where Steph was. He’d sat down now and was lounging with a bottle as he played audience to Trey’s current water exploit; a kid-sized ball and basketball hoop that had been another one of Logan’s ideas.
A good one too.
“You seemed to be in pretty deep thought over there with that laptop,” he said, putting his bottle down. The label had been hidden by his hand, but now I saw that it was just a soda and that knowledge was relieving.
Why though?
It had been a long time since I’d been sensitive enough that just the sight of liquor had me on edge.
Pushing that from my mind, I nodded to Steph as I took a seat beside him and reached into the cooler for a bottled water of my own. “Yeah,” I answered, situating Weezy on my leg as she immediately grabbed at the bottle to chew on it. “Down there messing up my script trying to make it perfect.”
Steph chuckled. “Sounds about right. But from everything I’ve heard so far it seems like filming and all of that is going well. Is that true?”
“Yeah,” I assured. “Everything has been a breeze, really. A few hiccups here and there, but nothing outside of the normal shit that any show goes through. Nothing Logan hasn’t been able to swoop in and fix.”
“Damn,” Steph said, snapping his fingers.
I raised my eyebrows. “Huh?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “Me and Nubia had a bet going for how long you could carry on a conversation without bringing Logan up. She thought less than five minutes. I was giving you at least ten. You just won my wife a foot rub.”
Half embarrassed, half amused, I let my head drop back as I laughed. “Damn man, y’all had bets on me? That’s cold.”
“Nah, it’s all love,” Steph grinned. “We were both pretty worried about you coming back out here by yourself. It was part of why Nubia was so insistent on hiring somebody for you in the first place. So at the very least, you’d know you had somebody on your side who was right here in the city with you. I see now that we didn’t have to be too worried about you, man. You’re out here really getting it done, and we see you.”
“Thanks, man,” I nodded. “It’s definitely been a little journey, figuring shit out, trying to get it right, but… I don’t know. I hope I’m not jumping the gun, but I’m feeling good about it.” I stopped, watching Weezy play happily with the cold, unopened water bottle for a moment before I continued. “I was… lost, you know? Before rehab and after. The only difference was the sobriety. That was why I came out here in the first place. Not that life wasn’t good up there in Blackwood with y’all, but I just didn’t feel like it was where I was supposed to be. And since the show was set in Vegas anyway… I figured why not?”
I still remembered the conversation I’d had with Nubia about it. How grateful I was, because she hadn’t tried to talk me out of it. As soon as I mentioned going to Vegas to write, she was right there with me, offering not just her support, but dangling the carrot in front of me that if I wrote it, she would put everything in place for me to actually make this show.
I was thankful for my family, beyond words.
“So you’re here now,” Steph spoke up. “Is it everything you thought you wanted?”
My eyebrows went up as I thought about it, not wanting to give just a knee jerk answer.
“Honestly? It’s more.”
Steph reached his bottle out for me to bump with mine, which was still in baby girl’s hands, and made her laugh. “That’s exactly the kind of shit I want to hear.”
It was a good way to spend a Sunday morning, into the afternoon.
We talked, we laughed, we ate, I subjected myself to Elodie sticking a camera in my face for social media, and took a picture with Weezy that was so cute Mari insisted I put it up online.
Ugh.
Logan and Nubia had both been in my ear about their whole changing the narrative plan. On its face, it made sense, and I wasn’t even completely opposed.
I just hated it.
After the way celebrity news media had treated me in the wake of my father’s death, I hated the idea of offering up my happiness to them.
“It’s not for them though,” Logan had assured me. And she was naked at the time, which made me a lot more willing to listen. “Are they going to see it, and use it? Yeah, probably. Sure. But it’s for your fans. It’s for the people who want to see you win. And… it’s for you. How is anybody going to know who you really are, the things that really make you happy, the people you really care about, if you don’t show them?”
Fine.
But I still hated that shit though.
We ended up kicking it at my house all day, until it was time for dinner. Then everybody got packed up and dressed to go out together for a meal before they left in the morning. They’d be getting on a plane at the same time me and Elodie were due on set.
I’d been out alone in Vegas several times since I’d been back without anybody bothering me. Even while I was with Elodie, I’d been able to enjoy a certain level of solitude because I wasn’t personally that recognizable. If they knew who she was, they likely wrote me off as her boyfriend or something. When women stared, it was because I looked good, not because they knew who I was.
Tonight, with the combined star power of El, Nubia, and Steph – plus that little bullshit “scandal” because of Sienna – I felt like everywhere I looked, somebody was pointing a camera in my face.
Okay.
Maybe it was just one or two people.
But still, it felt like one or two too many, and the shit was irritating when I was just trying to go out and enjoy a meal with my family. I knew it would be fine once we got inside the actual restaurant, but in the meantime we had to walk through the crowded boulevard with folks staring, and I was annoyed.
Which didn’t make the next thing my gaze fell on any easier to process.
We’d gotten through the doors of the building where the restaurant was housed – this communal type spot with several eateries in one place. The doors we walked through were just the main ones for the building and we could see the front entrances of the others. Steph was giving our name to the hostess waiting out front of the one we’d chosen when I looked up and saw Logan.
Wearing the kind of dress that made me want to peel her out of it.
Which… wasn’t saying much because I wanted to peel Logan out of all her clothes all the time. But it was the accessory on her arm while she was in that dress that really had me going.
Not the bracelet, no.
Who the fuck is this nigga?
With my hands in my pockets, I broke away from my family to approach where Logan was walking arm in arm with some dude who looked like he was fresh off a Sugar&Spice cover. She’d been too busy giggling at whatever the fuck he was talking about to notice me when I noticed her, but as I approached, I must have caught her gaze because her head turned in my direction and her mouth spread into an easy, happy smile.
“Pierre, hey!” she greeted, breaking away from her date to offer me a quick hug. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.
I gestured behind me to where the rest of my family had already gone inside the restaurant, but Steph was hanging near the front door obviously waiting on me. “Just having dinner with the fam before they head out in the morning,” I told her. “I see you’re out here looking good for a date. How you doing, man?” I said, addressing dude that had been just patiently standing there.
“Oh God,” Logan muttered under her breath as he accepted the hand I’d offered for him to shake.
“Can’t complain, bruh.”
Yeah, I bet you can’t.
“Pierre, this is my friend Trei Norwood,” Logan said, giving me the evil eye like I was doing something wrong. “His family owns a local spirit company. Trei, this is Pierre Perry. My… well… you’ve heard a lot about him from me.”
Trei chuckled. “Indeed. Good to finally meet the man behind the mystery,” he added, and… I didn’t know what that shit was supposed to mean, so I didn’t like it. So I was about to ask about it when another woman walked up and Trei slipped an arm around her.
Immediately, I caught that their vibe was much more intimate than anything that had been going on with him and Logan when I spotted them.
“Pierre, this is Zoraya Whitfield, Trei’s girlfriend. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to catch up with both of them, and since this was my night off from work, they asked if I wanted to get dressed up and join them for dinner.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Yeah,” Logan murmured under her breath, and I found my manners to properly greet a very amused-looking Zoraya as well.
“It was lovely seeing you guys tonight,” Logan told them, as they prepared to part ways. “Pierre will see me to my car. Won’t you?” she asked me, with a very pointed glare.
“Yeah. Not a problem.”
She came with me to say hello to Steph, so that I could send him on to be with the rest of the family while I got chewed out.
I mean, while I saw Logan safely to her car.
“You want to tell me what that was about?” Logan asked, thankfully grinning, which let me know she wasn’t too pissed about it.
“My bad. It looked like you on a date,” I explained, opting to just tell the damn truth. “You’re out in public with this dude, out in public with Anthony’s corny ass, with no problem. But me and you gotta damn near pretend we don’t even know each other.”
“That is an exaggeration and you know it,” Logan laughed. “Before shooting started, you and I grabbed dinner together plenty of times. I’ve never said anything about having a problem being seen with you!”
“Yeah, on a professional level. I’m talking about romantically. You can be out looking like this for date night with other niggas, but not me?”
Logan huffed. “Have you asked?”
“If I did, what would the answer be, Logan? What are we even doing?”
Stopping at her car, Logan pushed out a sigh and turned to face me. “As much as I understand why some certainty and clarity would be really important for you… I am in no way ready for a what are we? conversation,” she told me earnestly, holding my gaze. “What we did in your office, me staying overnight with you, your family knowing about us… all of it is already way out of my comfort zone. And even if it wasn’t, I’m just… I don’t know what we’re doing. It’s been like a week, barely, and I’m lost as fuck, and I’m confused too,” she admitted. “But at the same time, I’m also very… certain. Whatever it is that we’re doing, this dynamic we’ve created… It feels good. And I’m hoping that it’s okay with you for us to just kind of take our time with this, and let it be what it is, until it’s something else. And then we can let that be what it is until it’s something else too.”
“Absolutely,” I reassured her. “I get all that, shorty, and I’m not trying to rush you into something. It’s new for me too. I don’t know,” I chuckled. “I probably seem crazy jealous right now, huh?”
Logan laughed. “I wouldn’t say crazy jealous. Definitely a little bit though. But I get it. Things changed between us, without like… a full-blown conversation, we were just going with the flow. So everything looks different. But there’s only one person I’m interested in like that right now. And I’ve got way too much going on to be able to juggle men, so if you see me with someone else, I promise you, you have no reason to be jealous. You’re the only person who has my attention.”
“Oh damn,” I grinned. “It’s like that?”
“Yeah it’s like that, and it better be like that for you too.”
“Absolutely,” I guaranteed her. “Unquestionably.”
Logan bit down on her lip, trying to keep from smiling as hard as I know she wanted to. “So… I should probably let you get to your family,” she said. “I saw that completely adorable picture of you and Mari’s baby. Thank you for actually giving the social media thing a try – that was an excellent addition to your feed. Has getting this time with them been as restorative as I hoped it would be?”
“Yeah, it really has. Good call.”
She nodded, then stepped away from her car door, giggling when I opened it for her before she could do it for herself.
“I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”
“Yeah, you will.”
She surprised me a bit by glancing around to see if anybody was looking in our direction before she leaned in to give me a quick kiss. She didn’t even say anything else after that, just climbed in her car and pulled off, leaving me to make my way back to the restaurant feeling good as fuck about the clarity just that quick conversation had given me.
It must have been all over my face when I got back to my people, because as soon as they saw me, they laughed.
“Steph says I’m wrong for not telling you who it was when you saw Logan with Trei,” Nubia said, as I took the seat she’d saved for me beside her. “The look on your face was just so crazy I couldn’t pull myself together to tell you before we had to go ahead and go in. And you were already walking off like you were on a mission, and I was trying to see what was gonna happen, and –
“It’s cool, Nubia,” I laughed. “I got my little feelings hurt for a second, but that’s the price I paid for jumping to conclusions. We’re good though.”
“Me and you, or you and her?” she asked.
I grinned. “Both.”