“I will,” I promised, even though there was no way of that ever happening.
The doorbell buzzed again as I dropped my phone back in my tote bag.
Wow, the pizza delivery guy was kind of impatient. I rushed to answer the bell, a little surprised that the guy got all the way to the front door. Usually, Wayne intercepted all deliveries and dropped them outside the kitchen with a sharp rap on one of the windows.
But it wasn’t the pizza delivery guy at the front door; it was someone I recognized. Someone I hadn’t seen in a really long time. And he had a small army of guys behind him.
“Phantom?” I asked, barely able to believe my eyes. But it was definitely him. He hadn’t changed much in the ten years since I last saw him. If anything, he looked way more intimidating than I remembered. He wore a black suit and red open collar shirt, with even more tattoos peeking out.
“Coming through,” he said without any greeting whatsoever.
That was all the warning I got before I had to scramble to get out of the way as he barged right on into the house.
“Clap-clap, assholes,” he called over his shoulder to the guys that were with him. “We don’t have all day.”
“What’s this all about?” I asked Phantom as men filed through the door with platters of food, silver serving ware, and tons of party decorations, including balloons.
“A gift, courtesy of Victor, for your soft presentation or whatever,” Phantom answered. What would’ve sounded like good news from anyone else came out a grumble in his rough tone.
I jolted. “Seriously? Victor arranged all of this?”
“Yeah,” Phantom answered with an annoyed shake of his head. “Who else do you think cares anything about your school shit?”
I wouldn’t have put Victor on that super short list of people either. Not in a million years.
My eyes widened as I watched a bunch of set-up guys went to work. By the time they were done, the living room looked like a Pinterest board entitled, Best Showcase Grad Party Ever.
Phantom handed me a small white envelope after they left. “Victor told me to give this to you.”
I pulled the note out and read, If you think this is nice, wait until our date after your real thesis presentation.
I’d spent the last twenty-four hours trying to harden my heart against the man who dropped me off without a word and disappeared. But it melted the moment I read that note.
“I can’t believe he did all of this for me.”
“Yeah, you and me both,” Phantom grumbled. “He’s done a lot of things for you that I can’t believe.”
Phantom scowled down at me as he said this. But I couldn’t tell if it was his usual “I don’t like you” glower or in reference to something specific. Like, having to oversee the set-up for my Group B presentation party.
Either way, I asked, “May I borrow your phone? I want to thank Victor for doing all of this.”
“You don’t have to thank him,” Phantom answered, his scowl deepening.
“But I want to, and I’m not going to stop pestering you until you let me do it,” I let him know with a bright smile.
Phantom folded his arms and glared at me in a way that made him look even meaner and more dangerous than usual.
But I stood my ground, folding my arms right on back at him. To be truthful, I wasn’t quite sure how much power I had to make demands here. Phantom could just walk away.
But in the end, he pulled out his phone and typed a quick message. “There I sent it. See you later.”
“No, no, no, I’ll wait until he answers,” I replied, rushing to get in front of him before he could leave.
“He’s a very busy guy. It might take him a while to—”
I knew Victor had sent back a message when the phone in Phantom’s hand lit up, and he cut off with another scowl.
Phantom rolled his eyes after glancing at the text. “This shit is ridiculous. I’m not reading it out loud.”
To my surprise, Phantom handed over his phone. And there I found the “ridiculous” message from Victor: Tell her she’s worth it.
Okay, did I say I was all the way over Victor?
I guess I was wrong about that. Nearly a whole day of anti-Victor reframing dissipated into the ether as I floated back into my now Pinterest-worthy living room.
And that only left the truth, glaring and bright.
Despite the last ten years…despite my get-out-of-prison date being so close….I was falling for him. Again
30
“Whoa, look at this spread!” Wallis, the only other black person in the grad animation program, exclaimed. He grabbed a plate as soon as he entered the living room and saw my Pinterest board-worthy thesis rehearsal party.
“Dawn, you really shouldn’t have gone through all of this trouble!” Asher said, grinning as he, too, grabbed a plate.
Rebecca, one of the character animators from Group A, nodded in agreement. “I mean, you even put out sushi! Most of these parties are just pizza and a couple of Costco fruit and vegetable trays.”
“There’s pizza down here!” one of the other grad students called to her from the far end of the buffet table that Phantom’s guys had set up underneath the living room’s bay window.
“Don’t expect this when you come to my place next Sunday for the Group C presentations,” Harlow, a hard-edged stop-animation genius, groused at all of us.
Wallis pretty much spoke for all of us when he answered, “Girl, if we get out of your place without you feeding us spiders, Imma consider that a win.”
Nobody expected Harlow, with her love of all things dark and creepy, to be a perfect host. Or even a decent one.
Everybody except Elizabeth Ann Margaret laughed at Wallis’s joke.
“Is your husband still here?” she asked, eyeing the stairs just beyond the living room. “We haven’t seen him since he showed up out of the blue that one time. You should have invited him to help us eat all of this.”
“I’ll bring him a plate later,” I answered noncommittally. I was deeply aware of Asher openly staring at us, now that the subject of my husband had come up.
“Is he the one who arranged all of this?” Elizabeth Ann Margaret asked. “The last time we came to your house for a group project, it was just chips and dip.”
Wow. Nosy much? “Yes, actually. It was a surprise. I would’ve just ordered pizza and two Costco trays, like Rebecca said. But he likes to go all out.”
“How generous, if a bit wasteful,” Elizabeth Ann Margaret said with a little moue of concern. “I hope you have plans to deliver whatever we don’t eat to the homeless after we’re done here.”
Before I could answer, her eyes went back to the stairs. “You really should tell him to come down here so that we can thank him. I value gratitude above everything, and this just feels really impolite.”
“I’ll let him know you appreciated it,” I answered before turning my back on her to ask Harlow about how her stop-motion cannibal bunny rabbits piece was coming along.
The first few Group B presentations went well. Everyone asked all the hard questions, which was a generous thing to do at a soft presentation.
We’d all seen thesis showcases where someone got hammered with a hard question and completely fell apart. It was better to have something like that happen here with your fellow grad students than when you were presenting in front of the entire animation school, undergrads included.