Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (5 page)

“Don’t tell her anything about the cup and me going after the guy.”

“Why not? She was there. She saw the whole thing. She probably has it all on tape.”

“I want to talk to her. Just don’t bring it up.”

What did I have to lose? It wasn’t like we were friends. If she had a poor opinion of me, she could just join the club.

Quinn

What the fuck did he think he was doing?

What was wrong with him?

It wasn’t as if this was his first time; he knew what that sort of behavior could potentially earn him. I nearly had a
stroke
watching him lunge for that kid who had thrown the cup at him. There was just some shit you couldn’t do. The guy who had thrown the cup was a
kid
. He looked what, like, eighteen, nineteen?

Dante had to easily have a foot of height on him and ten years if not more in age. I shuddered thinking about the scandal that would potentially have followed. Did he just want to give away hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to that kid when he pressed charges? Because he would press charges. Even if he didn’t, the Yellow Jackets or Dante himself would have to compensate the guy to “pay for damages.”

I had been watching the game. The kid had thrown the cup first, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was what Dante had decided to do about it, and he had decided to lunge for the guy and basically try and kill him. Dante was so big, what could he do to an average-sized guy in a fight?

Oh, my god.

It made me so
mad
.

Why was he like this?

Did he realize the position he was in? First of all, he was in a position where he couldn’t afford to act like a wild animal whenever anyone made him mad. Didn’t sports help you channel your aggression? At that point, that kind of behavior from him was expected but that didn’t mean he had to go and prove all his detractors right.

He
wasn’t
irreplaceable. If he continued, the Yellow Jackets would not hesitate to get rid of his ass. At some point, he would be on suspension more than he was playing in games and he would just be a liability. Like a gangrenous limb that cost the team more than it rewarded them, they would cut him loose. He was nearly thirty, he needed to get his act together. There was only
so
much
more time before people would stop entertaining his nonsense.

My job was to be impartial, but he made it so hard.
So so hard.

The worst part was this shit… he had done it before.

I could remember it like it was yesterday. I wasn’t at the game myself, but there were so many videos of the event online, and I had seen it from every angle possible. It was big news in sports. Dante Rock, point guard of the Charlotte Yellow Jackets attacked a fan.

The headlines had been out of control. The guy who Dante had actually gone after had never been named, and he had never pressed charges against him or the team, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that Dante or the Yellow Jackets never had to pay this guy off because he had still lost his cool and attacked a fan.

Some people were on Dante’s side, saying he had reacted reasonably because the fan had thrown something at him first. It was so stupid to think about, but the guy, some dude who was upset that the Yellow Jackets were doing well that game, or who just wanted to see if he could hit a moving target, had thrown a bottle at Dante.

It had been a glass bottle according to reports so that was a shitty thing to do right there. Someone could have been hurt.
Dante
wasn’t hurt. It hit him, and it fell onto the ground, smashing. That was the point at which the guy should have ducked or just shut the fuck up, but he didn’t. He jeered and booed in Dante’s direction, and just like that, he was racing through the stands to get him.

It was like those riots that people have out in the streets when their favorite team didn’t win, but this time, it was in a basketball arena. There was no report on the property damages if any, but the guy who had thrown the bottle, luckily for Dante, he didn’t get hurt. They were kept separate for long enough before the security could break up the fight.

From that not so little altercation, Dante had been suspended for eighteen months and made to pay a three-million-dollar fine. There were a lot of people who thought it was way too steep of a price to pay for what he did, and I was one of them.

What he had done was inexcusable. You couldn’t do that to another person. He had been wild but
three million? Eighteen months?

It must have been the outside pressure that made the Charlotte Yellow Jackets’ management decide on that figure and that amount of time. Maybe there was also some behind the scenes stuff that he was being punished for and we just didn’t know about it. I had just started at my outlet at the time and was still an intern so I wasn’t able to report on the story or even copyedit the articles. I just had to hear about it like everyone else.

There were tons of ways in which it could have gone even worse for everyone involved, but the fan whose action had in a way started the whole thing… if the guy had pressed charges, he would have had a huge payout to look forward to from Dante, the team, or both. The team could have continued as if nothing had happened and just made excuses for him, but that would have been disastrous. Pressure from the public, not to mention sponsors, would have forced them to do something about it. Dante could have gotten much worse than what he had, no matter how harsh I—or anyone else—thought the punishment he did get was.

The Yellow Jackets were losing their MVP for eighteen months. That was a long time. Though it had been unlikely, the team could have elected never to reinstate him. They had in the end though. For the league, there were apparently meetings about limiting player and fan contact even more during games. It hadn’t been an all-out brawl like the Pacers-Pistons blow up in 2004, but these things looked bad for the league, and they weren’t allowed to pretend that they weren’t happening or make excuses for their players.

Dante had left the bench earlier soon after being sent off the court. I had wanted to go back and talk to him then, but I was stopped by security until the game was officially over. At least he
knew
he had fucked up. He also hadn't been there to see his team eventually win, ninety-seven to eighty-two.

I had hardly noticed anything that had happened after Dante had left the court. I just wanted to go talk to him. What could he possibly have to say to defend himself? I didn’t even know what I wanted to ask him. I just wanted him to explain himself. I sort of wanted to yell at him.

Why now?

Why again?

Hadn't he done any work on himself during that
whole
eighteen months? That would have been a perfect time to get his anger under control, see a professional, and all that other stuff. It had only been six months since he had been back from that suspension. Was he
really
trying to get himself put on another one?

There were people who had just been
waiting
for him to fuck up again. Dante wasn’t beloved by everyone. If he got into trouble again, he might just be traded.

The minute the court had cleared, I went straight for the locker room. The person I wanted to talk to was Dante, but I couldn’t just go to him and pretend like the rest of his team, with or without him, hadn’t just played an amazing game.

None of the guys looked like they were going to talk to me. They all had their heads down like they hadn’t just won. Eventually their center looked at me and grudgingly answered a couple questions about the game. It was just the usual sort of boring answers that you heard all the time about them being proud and satisfied and happy with their teamwork and pointing out the guy who had made the last basket.

“Can I ask you about the fight?” I said to the man.

“You can ask me, but I know I don’t have to answer you,” he said. The way he had said it had sounded resigned and tired, like he just really didn’t want to talk about it. He hadn’t said it like he was mad, or he was resentful or anything like that. I wondered what they had been saying before I had come into the room. I wished so hard that I could have been a fly on the wall to hear that.

Their silence and reluctance to even really look my way was something. There was something going on, and they weren’t going to tell me.
That was fine.
I left the room and stood by the door. They would all need to walk by me to get out of there. He, Dante, the man of the hour, would as well—unless this was the night that he was planning on spending in the locker room. I could wait. I could wait as long as they could wait. Their workday had just ended. Mine was not going to end until I had gotten something out of Dante.

He finally looked at me. His face was drawn, like he was angry but trying to keep his cool. No more of that cocky smirk and sure of himself air. He had fucked up—and he
knew
it. He started towards me, and I waited. What would I ask him? How could I start? Now wasn’t a good time and here wasn’t the best place. I needed to sit down with him when we were away from the other players and the activity and the fans. I needed him to agree to talk to me alone, an
exclusive
.

He had made the offer for one, but he was likely being facetious when he did. I
did
want one, and maybe since he had offered, though saying I would have to go out with him first, he really
was
open to the idea. It would have been good for him, agreeing to talk candidly about what had just happened. Once is maybe forgivable, but more than once and he was going to start developing a reputation. One that might hurt, given his
existing
reputation, the one he was sort of allowed to just skate by with because it wasn’t hurting his performance.

“
Some
game out there today,” I said to him as he faced me.

“Are you just here to scold me?”

“No. You offered an exclusive, I’m here to collect.”

“Oh yeah, TMZ?” he said. “You heard my terms. I take you out and you can ask me whatever the hell you want.”

“I don’t know if that will work,” I said. “
You
are in trouble and you need to explain yourself. I’m offering you a platform to do just that.”

“I’m offering you a platform to all this,” he said, gesturing to his body. I smiled tightly and tried not to roll my eyes. If he was rattled, which he should have been if he knew what was good for him and his precious career, he wasn’t showing it. He was back, the Dante from before whom I had met on the court. All slick talk and confidence. I felt like it was a front, but the thought that maybe the guy was being this way because he really and truly didn’t give a fuck about his actions on the court just now was scaring me a little. I knew he wasn’t like that, but then again, who was I to make that judgement about him? Maybe he was and I was just trying not to assassinate his character in my mind.

“What do you say, hotshot? You have some explaining to do and I want to help you do it.”

He was about to say something, make some slick comment most likely, but he was stopped when there was some commotion from down the hall. There was a woman, walking very purposefully up to us. She was in casual clothes, so she wasn’t a reporter. She didn’t seem to be a cheerleader either, and there was no discernable reason why she should be back here. I looked at her face. She looked mad. My heart dropped when I noticed the black and blue bruising around her eye.

Dante

What the hell was going on?

There was yelling, and a woman’s voice was heading our way. A lady rounded the corner heading for Quinn and I. Was she a fan? What was she doing back here? How
did
she get back here? Where was security? Were they just letting anyone back here who wanted to come? She was walking right for us, and she looked pissed.

Her hands were fists at her sides, and she was walking as if she was on a mission. She was short, or average height, and her face was fucked up. She had a
bitch
of a shiner on her eye. I wanted to ask her who she was, but she spoke first.

“Dante Rock!” she shouted.

I just looked at her, a little scared honestly.

“That’s me,” I said.

“You did this to me! What do you have to say to yourself?”

I felt like I had just been punched in the gut. I had done
what
? She kept pointing at her black eye, but there were more important questions to ask. First of all, who the fuck was she? I knew I did not know her. How had she gotten back here and why was she going on and on about her fucking eye. I didn’t do it.

“You might have me confused with someone else, lady,” I said to her.

“
Dante Rock
? I had no idea there were two of you. You did this to me.”

“That’s impossible, lady. Listen—”

“No,
you
listen. You did this to me. He did this to me!” she screamed.

It was one thing that she was yelling like that, but the shit she was actually saying?
Nope
.
No way.
She had the wrong one. I didn’t know whom she was talking about, how many other Dante Rocks were out there, but she was not referring to me. Not a chance in
hell
. I tried to get a good look at her. She had blonde hair that was dark at the roots, and she was dressed, just normal, jeans and a t-shirt. I couldn’t see any sort of markings that would have identified her to me, like a tattoo or whatever. I had no idea who she was.

“Lady, I don’t even know who you are,” I said. She had drawn the attention of a few people now. I knew some of the guys were watching, and I knew that Quinn was watching. Oh shit
. Quinn was watching
. She was going to see this whole clusterfuck explode. Nobody was going near the woman because she looked a little unstable.
I
sure as shit wasn’t going near her. She was accusing me of having hit her. I wasn’t going to get close and have her scream
rape
or whatever.

I looked at Quinn’s face. She was white like she had just seen a ghost. She looked at me like she didn’t know who I was. It was like a look of disgust and
shock
. She looked
so
shocked. And mad. She turned and started walking away in the direction that the woman had been taken.

I panicked.

Was she following her to get her to make a statement? Was
this
the story she was going to write about me? I couldn’t let her do that. It wasn’t even true. She wouldn’t do something like that, would she?
Would she?

I couldn’t wait to find out. I went after her. She was just walking so she hadn’t gotten very far. I caught up with her, calling her name. She wouldn’t turn around. I grabbed her arm to stop her then dropped it. A woman had just accused me of assaulting her; it wasn’t the best idea to grab this one. She stopped and turned around to face me.

“What?” she asked simply.

“Listen, that woman, I don’t know who she is. I haven’t seen her a day in my life.”

She looked at me silently and crossed her arms.

“I can give you an interview, a story, whatever you want. I don’t know who that was and I didn’t do that to her.”

“She seemed
pretty
sure
that you were the guy she was looking for,” she said.

“I’m not. I don’t know her. I didn’t touch her. I swear to you. You
have
to believe me.”

“I don’t
have
to do anything, Dante.”

“Please do this. I didn’t touch her, and if it gets out that she thinks I did, I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.”

“More than a lot. You might not be able to come back from something like this.”

“So listen to me. Believe me, please.” I wanted to touch her, but I thought better of it. She looked at me, quiet. Was she really just
not
going to say anything? I needed to get something from her. Confirmation that she had heard me, or a slap in the face, or something. Anything.

Instead, she turned on her heel and walked away.