Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (11 page)

“Oh yeah? What do you have?”

“Unlimited access for the rest of the season. The arrangements are still being made, and we’ll have to wait for confirmation on a couple things, but Dante Rock is mine for the rest of the season, whenever and wherever I want to talk to him.
They
go on the road,
I
go on the road.
They
play home games,
I
go to them.”

“You got Dante to agree to this?”

“Mm-hmm,” I said sweetly.

“How?” he asked, obviously impressed.

“You heard about the woman, right? Well, Dante is desperate to clear his name, and I offered him a way to do that—on condition that I got to have him available to interview whenever I wanted.”

“What if he really
did
do it?” he asked.

He didn’t, but I wasn’t going to sit there and tell Daniel that because then I would have to tell him how I knew, probably sharing a lot of stuff Dante had told me in confidence.

“If he is, then I am going to run him into the ground.”

“No mercy, huh?”

“None.”

Daniel was like one of the guys from
Mad Men
. He drank a lot, and he called me ‘
doll’
or ‘
sweetie’
sometimes. He was kind of gross sometimes, but he always gave credit where it was due. He probably wouldn’t have been able to swing what I had managed to swing with Dante Rock and he realized that and gave me credit for the fact that I had been able to.

The opportunity
really
had just fallen into my lap and all I had had to do was grab it before it slipped out of my reach. Was it exploitative of a man in need? What news wasn’t? This was going to help him in the long run. If anything, he owed
me
one.

“I’m impressed, Quinn. Good job.”

“I know.” I got up to leave.

“Hey, Quinn, hold on a second,” he said.

“What?”

“Sit down. Just sit for a second,” he said. I sunk back into the seat. What did he want? Was I in trouble? Was he about to take the assignment from me and give it to someone else? I knew I was young and had been working for a shorter time than most, but I wasn’t giving up this opportunity.
No way.

“It’s probably better if you…”

“If I what?”

“You’re young and attractive, Quinn, just be careful.”

“I’m always careful. This isn’t the
Gaza strip
; it’s sit-down interviews with Dante Rock.”

“All I’m saying is that you should keep your distance.”

I smiled tightly.
It was a little too late for that now, wasn’t it?
I mean the last time we had been in a room together alone, we’d had sex. That was a line we had crossed already; we couldn’t go back and reverse that. I wasn’t ashamed or anything, but it wasn’t my best moment.

In addition to that, Daniel asking me to be careful… that was sweet of him, but I could handle myself. I wasn’t as wet behind the ears as he maybe thought. I had gotten an idea of the sort of man that Dante Rock was, and I had experienced his… his what?
Seduction
?

“I know what I’m getting into; you have nothing to worry about.”

“If he harasses you, we can assign someone else to do the series.”

“I don’t want anyone else to do the series.”

I thought about it. The man was just being dramatic. He was protective, and I could sort of see why. He thought I was young and I was going to be put in a potentially dangerous position. There was likely also the thought that I wouldn’t
actually
get any reporting done and I would just,
I don’t know
, spend the entire time fucking Dante Rock only for him to leave me in the end, bereft and storyless.

There was also the chance that he was just trying to cover his ass a little bit. I was a
chick
after all. If something was to happen and I was to accuse Dante of anything, he would be dragged into it and affected whether he wanted to or not and whether he was involved or not.

“Everything is going to be fine. I know how to handle myself.”

“And Dante Rock doesn’t.”

“If he doesn’t, then he's about to learn.”

“I just don’t want you getting into trouble.”

Daniel didn’t want me getting into
trouble
. I didn’t know what that meant. I mean, I
knew
what that meant, but I didn’t know what he had in mind. I hoped he didn’t think I was going to be the girl that fell in love with Dante Rock while I was supposed to be reporting on him and ended up with my heart broken because he was a wild young buck who wasn’t about to let any old girl with a clipboard and a camera tie him down.

He needed to chill. I
would
have sex with Dante again. I knew I shouldn’t and that it was wrong to want to, but if the opportunity arose and my defenses were down, I would say yes if he offered. That was just the truth. I was not, however, dumb enough to
fall
for him. What was there to fall for? I had seen a glimmer of honesty and realness when we had talked, but that was all it had been. A
glimmer
. He was a hoop-shooting Neanderthal the rest of the time, and that
glimmer
was not enough to reflect on his personality as a whole. Did I have to tell Daniel that the man was my literal subject and I was reporting on him? A relationship between us that was more than professional would have been
unseemly
.

“I’m young, Daniel, but not that young. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I just don’t want you falling in love with Dante Rock and leaving us. Then we’d have to replace you,” he joked.

I wasn’t going anywhere. I was coming back, with a story series on Dante Rock so good, Daniel would wonder why he had even doubted me in the first place.

Dante

And
there
was another victory.

We won our next game.
Of course,
we did. I saw Quinn watching from the sidelines. She’d be coming back into the locker room for another interview most likely. I
hoped
she would. I had
liked
the last one. It was… different.

I didn’t usually have sex with the people who interviewed me, but I also didn’t really talk about the shit that she had managed to get out of me. I didn’t like talking about mom that much. I mean, I
did
, that was my mom and I loved her, but I wanted to respect her privacy. She didn’t choose this life. I did. I didn’t want people writing shit about her on the internet and disturbing her at home.

I had told Quinn, basically
everything
. She had stopped me right before I got into the other shit, but we had gotten pretty far. Much farther than I had with anybody else. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I never spoke about that shit with anyone, and it felt good to be able to say it. She made me
want
to say it.

The locker room was emptying out. Quinn was taking a little while to show up. Maybe she wanted to interview me when there were fewer people in the locker room, so it could be like the last time we interviewed together.

With any luck, it would be
exactly
the way it was when we first interviewed together.

I still had that pair of panties that she had worn that day.

It had happened right in this room, right where I was sitting. I still had a hard time really believing it. I got lucky regularly and often, but I hadn’t expected her to bite
that
fast.

I was sort of looking forward to the interview. The first one, besides the sex, had been… different. What was Quinn going to do with everything that I had told her? It was all taped, and she was interviewing me so she could write about it. So… that was it, right? The story of my mother’s abuse was going to become public knowledge. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Did it even matter how I felt? It was my
mom’s
story after all. Or mine…
ours
… Quinn had said that I had been abused too, but I rejected that. I didn’t want to be a victim. I had to tell my mom that I had talked about our past with someone. I hoped she wouldn’t be mad.

If Quinn did tell the story, like the whole thing uncut and uncensored, then there was a chance that my mom would become a target. Total anonymity for my mother was going to be hard, if not totally out of the question, depending on what Quinn got published.  Even just off the strength of being my mother, anonymity was something she just didn’t have the luxury to enjoy. There was no way I would have left her back in Ohio, and her being anonymous here in LA meant
I
would have to avoid her.

Even on the best days, there was someone on my tail, and if I was with her, that meant they were on
her
tail, too. I had paid for the most expensive security system for her house in Calabasas, and if she really needed it, there were numbers she could call to get her security if she ever felt unsafe.

That was my
mother
. There was no way I wasn’t going to spend every cent I had to make sure she had what she needed. She used to work herself to death to provide for us, and now, she wasn’t going to lift a finger if she didn’t want to. Her being hurt by the story, or embarrassed, or upset was what I was most nervous about. People slandered and talked shit about me daily; I could take anything that came my way. My mom, even if she could take it, just shouldn’t have to deal with that shit.

Maybe I would bring it up with Quinn, who still wasn’t here yet. I had already changed clothes and was just hanging out as the other interviews other people were having wrapped and they started leaving to go the fuck home, where I wanted to go. The room was more or less completely empty when I heard the click-clacking sound of high heels walking across the floor. It was her.

“Hey, hotshot,” she said, walking into the locker room. I smiled seeing her.

“TMZ, always late,” I accused.

“I wanted a little privacy for our second session,” she said. “The first one went so well.”

I had been thinking about that first interview for days.
The sex
. The sex had been incredible. Her pussy felt like heaven, and the way she looked and sounded when she came made me hard. She had opened up the floodgates, and there was no reason for me to back down now. It didn’t matter what she said. If she started trying to talk about how she didn’t or doesn't want it, I’ll point her to the events to confirm or deny whether that was
really
how she felt.

I guess that was my problem solved then. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t getting any because
she
would be giving it to me.

“Mm, it did. Back for more?” I said. She sat in the chair next to mine, my teammate’s, and turned to face me. I leaned over and tried to kiss her. She turned her head and put a hand on my chest to stop me, smiling.

“Uh-uh, not today. We’re
working
,” she said. She said it in that way that was super sweet, the way you talked when you were flirting with someone, being playful.

“You can't hold out on me
now
; we've already had sex.” I leaned forward again and that time I got her lips before she pushed me away again.

“Tell me about your relationship with your mother,” she said. I almost laughed. If her goal was to kill my boner,
that
had done it.

“What about it?” I asked, leaning back in the seat.

She took the recorder out and held it between us.

“You spoke very highly of her in the last interview. Are the two of you close?”

“We are. You
could
say that.”

“You said the abuse happened until you were twelve, what happened then?”

“Then my dad left,” I said, shrugging. “I wasn’t that invested in what old Larry was up to, as long as he stayed the fuck away from me, my mom, and Gabbie.”

“Larry, was that his name?”

“Lawrence Rock. I got his first name as my middle name.
Lucky me
, huh?”

“Do you know where he went at the time?”

“Beats me. Probably to terrorize
another
woman and her young children? The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether I don’t have this network of half-siblings that I have never even met.”

“Did you see him again after he left?”

“It was a pretty clean break, but he started popping his head out of the woodwork when the league money started coming in. He came back to collect residuals on the basketball player that he wanted to claim he had a part in creating. We weren’t good enough when we were
just
his family. I became his son once there was a multimillion-dollar contract from the National Basketball Association that he had a chance to benefit from.”

“Did your father have an alcohol or drug problem?”

“I don’t know if he did then, and I don’t care if he does now. All I know is what that man did to us and the fact that anyone who does that sort of shit shouldn’t be able to call themselves a man.”

“Him leaving must have had an effect on your family finances.”

“Yeah, they took a
hit
,” I said bitterly.

“What did your mom do when he left? Did you ever have your father replaced with another male figure?”

“Nope. If she dated, she never brought whoever the guy or guys were back to the house. I don’t know whether she got a lot of dating done.”

“Why?”

“She was pretty…”

I trialed off because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about it. Hell, was I even supposed to be talking about it? I felt suddenly that maybe, this was something that I wasn’t supposed to be sharing. Maybe this wasn’t my story to tell. If it wasn’t my story to tell, was it mom’s? Whose was it? I had told the other shit, about dad beating on her, but I had mainly talked about how Gab and I had used to run and hide when it happened. There was that thing I had said… the
game
that sick fuck used to play where he would pull her hair, but that had sort of just slipped out. This was about my mom, like
really
about her.

“She was pretty
what
?”

“I don’t know if I should be telling you all this,” I told her.

“Why not?”

“When I tell you all this, what happens to my mom?”

“Nothing happens to her. The interview isn’t with her, it is with you.”

“I don’t want her being harassed or anything,” I said. It was bad enough that she had me as a son.

“You really love your mom, don’t you?”

“After my dad left, it was just the three of us. Me, my mom, and Gabbie. I was twelve, so I knew more about what was happening than Gabbie at the time. I think because all the abuse was going on, we couldn’t really tell what was happening to Mom.”

“What do you mean?”

“When dad left, there was this big hole where he used to be. It was like…he was gone, but that didn’t change any of the things he had done to us while he was still there. I still felt him and his aftermath every day.”

“How?”

“I mean…my mom. That was when she got into drugs.”

She shifted in her seat, not saying anything.

“I can't tell whether it was when he left or before, but Mom, when he did leave, became very depressed. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t jumping for joy because the man who had physically battered her for years was finally out of her life. She progressed on this downwards spiral, and then she started using.”

“Can I ask what she used?”

“I think it was prescription pain meds. Some sort of opiate like that.”

“That sounds ugly.”

“It was. The shit used to just, take her
out
. She would be passed out on the couch or in her room many times when we found her. We were close with our neighbors at the time, and they were the ones who eventually gave me the idea to start calling our grandparents because she was beginning to miss work. We were both in school, and it wasn’t like I could get a full-time job at age twelve that would support us.”

“That would
support
you?” she said.

“I had to step up. Gabbie was like, seven or eight. She was still a kid. I had to make sure that she was getting home from school alright and
eating
and doing her homework. Shit like that.”

“Dante…” She looked at me, and she looked really sad like she was about to cry. I didn’t like it. “You had to
raise
your baby sister?”

“Who was going to do it if not me?” I asked.

“Dante, no child should be put in the position where they have to be the adult because their parents aren’t in the picture.”

“Some kids do. Some kids are.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s right, or that it’s good.”

“You say that, but that was the truth. We’re lucky the neighbors didn’t tell on her because we would have likely ended up with child protective services. We would have been separated and put in foster care or group homes or something.”