Page 5 of The Best Man: Unfinished Business

Chapter Three

Harper

Damn. In the living room, Harper stood still in disbelief as Bailey walked toward the bathroom and even after she’d closed the door behind her.

At the sound of shower water, a deep sigh left his body.

And that sigh, filled with the weight of confusion, was his first moment of any release.

What the fuck? He’d been living out the fantasies of his youth, the recompense for all the times he’d been too studious or not suave enough or was left out of contributing a salacious story to entertain his boys.

He could relive his fantasy as many times as his memory would recall it, but in no version of what he imagined would he…

pretend to come? Something was off. Way off.

Maybe it was Bailey, but she’d given her all.

A rousing performance. No, it was something else.

With his trousers pooled around his ankles, Harper duckwalked his way to the kitchen where he dropped the dry jim hat in the trash.

As the highlight reel of his tryst danced through his mind, he shook his head at his fortune.

Empty condom or not, that shit was still hot, a bachelor’s dream.

You a nasty nigga, Harp. He imagined Quentin’s voice in his head as he reached down to pull his unbuckled pants up from the floor and across his knees.

He hadn’t even fully removed his shirt. He’d shower later—as soon as he was alone again.

It’d be a perfect way to refocus and dive back into work.

Thoughts were already swirling—an overflow of ideas for the script, storylines for Kendall and Jackson, memories really, and a growing sense of general unease he acutely felt as the seconds ticked away from him for the day.

Beyond ready to get started, Harper walked over to a nearby end table and pulled out a journal, one of the various replicas of the same leather-bound notebook all around his place.

His morning “brain dump” journal was in the bedroom nightstand, but he wasn’t about to retrieve that one and be caught by Bailey anywhere near his bed.

The journal he had in his hand, for various chicken scratch ideas, would do just fine.

His brain dumps weren’t ever supposed to be read, understood, or even make sense.

Writing everything down allowed Harper to clear the decks and empty his head of his plethora of distracting thoughts.

Get it all out, meditate, then ideate on this fucking screenplay.

He counted down—ten…nine…eight—in deep breaths with his eyes closed until he reached one, then he opened his journal’s leather cover and wrote the first thing that came to mind.

Bailey in the shower…she wanted to apologize…With a hummer…Mmm-mmph…

Interview went well…Nate and Gayle were very cool…

That false alarm charge will be $$…Fuck it. whatever

Stan and Cassidy said it was a good hit…studio meeting still happening…

I need more time…can I do this…? Unfinished Business indeed…

So many cooks in the kitchen. Never needed that when writing a novel. Just my ideas on the page. No wonder the kitchen caught fire this morning…while I was on national television. Stop it…she’s leaving soon…then you can dive in with the “BIG IDEA” sigh…WTF???

Why did I insist on writing it? This form of writing is so restrictive. The studio executives, the producers, the director, and the actors all have a say too?? ? I just wanna write…

Sigh. Why? Because I can’t let this next movie—based on my closest friends—get out of my control…not this time…

Harper stopped writing and looked around his living room.

He didn’t really see the trappings of a life well-earned anymore.

All he saw in his mind’s eye was Murch lighting into him: “ Every time you have the opportunity to choose yourself over doing the right thing, you always choose yourself , ” he’d said. Or, better yet, yelled.

Harper never forgot Murch’s words. Ones that were said when the tumult of his divorce from Robyn was at its highest. Even through the pain of ending a twenty-one-year marriage, he felt the sting of Murch’s words then and still did.

He’d hurt one of his best friends, a dude who loved him unconditionally.

Harper readjusted his pen and recommenced writing.

No not this time. I can’t let my peeps down. This project is going to be different…it doesn’t have to hurt anyone. I have control this time.

“Are you writing state secrets?”

Harper snapped the journal shut and whipped his head around.

Bailey was standing at his elbow. He hadn’t heard the shower stop, or even her footsteps as she approached for that matter.

He shifted to look at her. Still beautiful, wearing a matching bra and thong set.

Still sexy AF. And still, he was ready for her togo.

“Yeah. State secrets…something like that…” Harper made the effort toward a good-natured chuckle.

“What are you up to today?” Bailey casually inquired while rubbing shea butter into a glow along her thigh. I’m doing it, Harper thought, trying to stay focused.

“Couple projects that need moving forward,” he replied. In an attempt to channel genuine interest into his voice, he volleyed, “So, um, how about you? What are your plans today?”

“Well, my morning meeting just canceled. I’m actually free! You hungry? Wanna do brunch?”

“Um…” Just then Harper’s stomach growled, loudly. Fuck.

With the menu in his hands, Harper examined the food selections at JAMZ in Brooklyn Heights.

A Black-owned old-school diner bumping old-school hip-hop, with black-and-white photos of the Source Awards and vinyl albums with their colorful labels decorating exposed redbrick walls.

Plants sat in pots on shelves and hung down from celling beams in macramé holders.

It was the coolest living room you’d never get invited to and supposedly the hottest seat in the borough.

But, worth a forty-five-minute wait in the middle of the week?

Harper was dubious. This was just supposed to be a momentary detour to get him home by noon.

Don’t all these people have someplace to be?

Evidently not. Already it was 11:45 a.m. and they hadn’t even placed an order.

At least Jay-Z’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” was providing a meal for the ears.

“What’re you thinking, babe?” Bailey looked up at him from the other side of the table.

Babe? Again. Really? Harper squirmed. Bailey smiled.

She’d put herself together well, assembling a choice selection of his clothes—a vintage Vibe magazine T-shirt with a faded cover image on the front.

And the leather jacket draped around her shoulders that, incidentally, his ex-wife Robyn gave him for his forty-fifth birthday.

Not waiting for Harper’s reply, she continued with palpable enthusiasm.

“The Country Breakfast has my name all over it. What about you?” Bailey had good taste in fashion. In food, perhaps not so much.

Did we just wait fifty minutes for some scrambled eggs and bacon?

Harper had been having a hard time finding something that met his tastes on the menu.

He’d lived with a gourmet chef for a wife for over a decade.

So Country Breakfast was far too basic now; he’d learned to expect more.

Maybe the specials would have something to offer.

“I don’t know yet,” he said finally. “Let’s see when the server comes around. ”

“Take your time, babe. I already told my assistant to block out my morning. I didn’t want us to be rushed.”

“Babe” again and the threat of leisure time prompted Harper to speak. “Babe” was like saying “I love you” prematurely, when you should be saying “I miss you” still, or how about just “goodbye”? “I have—” Harper started to just tell her he had a deadline.

“I just have to tell you guys—” A random Gen Zer stopped by the table, cutting him off. “You guys are the cutest, most stylish couple in here.”

“Awwww.” Bailey smiled big. Her perfectly contoured red lips stretched open to reveal her gleaming white teeth. “That’s so sweet! Thank you! Harper, you hear that?”

“Yeah, that’s nice,” he muttered, and then tried to recover. “Thank you. That’s…that’s very nice.” Harper willed his mouth to smile again. The young Gen Zer formed a heart with her fingers and held the display like a camera pose.

“Hashtag couple goals. Enjoy, you guys.” And just like that she left the restaurant with her multicultural crew of similarly clad girlfriends. Harper turned back to Bailey, who seemed to be basking in the compliment.

The girl probably wasn’t wrong about how they appeared together—Harper still looked good for his age and Bailey was a confident and accomplished woman.

On paper and Instagram, they couldn’t be beat.

But something wasn’t right, and he knew it.

It was more than wondering what his friends would think, although he did wonder.

His reputation was the serial monogamist, all the way back to college, to high school even.

He was a one-woman man, but did that translate to a dependence on always being with someone?

He liked the stability, but did he like it too much?

And why? Harper had analyzed these questions through thousands of dollars of post-divorce counseling and purposeful meditation—another Robyn influence.

But he stopped having reasons to go. A never-ending stream of companions would make you think that all your problems were solved.

At least, for a while. Plus, he’d been consistent with his own journal writing—something he’d done since undergrad.

Yet, he still couldn’t quite answer the question that came up so often no matter who he’d been with since Robyn. Why don’t I want to be here?

True, on paper this thing with Bailey should work, but life was much more trees than paper, growing and evolving still, a forest of complication. And it all made Harper uneasy.