Where He Wanna Be by Shantel Davis

Author:Shantel Davis [Davis, Shantel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-15T22:00:00+00:00

On the day it all fell apart, I was sitting with her and her friends, feeling comfortable when I should have been uncomfortable. But I had chosen an HBCU for that very reason. I wanted out of my echo chamber. Back home, I felt stunted. People lied to me and smiled in my face because they wanted to use me. They knew I'd make it out and hoped I'd drag a few of them with me. I wanted to be surrounded by something different. I wanted to thrive with people who didn't need me. Her friends were that and more – the 'bound to be great, make it on the Sunday news because against all odds we got perfect scores on the SAT' types.

That night, they had been talking about politics and systemic racism. In the middle of her friend Sherry telling me why most white people were racist, Ivy had walked off. My eyes followed her out of the room, but I didn't go after her. I knew she needed space because if she didn't, she would have asked me to come with her. I sat with her friends long enough for one to switch subjects, so it didn't seem as if I was running away from a hard conversation, then I excused myself to go in search of her. I knew she would be in one of the rooms lying down. Ivy wasn't the social butterfly she pretended to be. She was a thinker. She liked quiet moments, so she could get lost in her own head.

I had been thinking all night that it was time to tell her how I felt. I was going to put all my cards on the table and see how receptive she was to us being together – despite the fact that her father had just hinted that I shouldn't on our last Sunday visit. He hadn't come right out and said he didn't want me involved with his daughter when he caught me staring at her across the room. He managed to find a reason to say he didn't want his daughter being another Black woman marrying down. I couldn't exactly blame him. Struggle Love was hard. I wanted a soft life for Ivy. But I knew I could provide that. My future was bright. I was an NFL prospect. And though I was at Howard on a football scholarship, I'd also been offered an academic one. I looked like a big brainless jock and sounded country dumb, but I had a head for numbers. I was a year and some months away from graduating and already had offers from more than a few of the top accounting firms around the country.

My phone rang as soon as I stood. From the ringtone, I knew it was Mister Earl. If my best friend's grandaddy was calling me well after midnight, something was wrong. Wrong was an understatement. My momma had finally got fed up with daddy and shot him dead before swallowing a bottle of pills.

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