Falling for the Competition
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Darby Baham
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Chapter One
Maybe the one thing my therapist and I have agreed on for the six years we’ve worked together was that I’m good at journaling.
Not necessarily that I liked it, but I was good at it. That’s probably because when I journaled, I was able to tap into my feelings and disclose thoughts within my trusty notebook that I’d likely never dare tell anyone else. Certainly not my family, who pretty consistently considered me someone they didn’t have to worry about because I “had it all figured out.” Definitely not the myriad of men I’d dated or kept around as late-night distractions whenever I needed to feel the warmth of a person’s arms wrapped around me. Perhaps occasionally my best girlfriends, who had been doing this thing called life with me for years, one since high school and the other since college. But even with them, it was sometimes really hard to admit all the ways I silently questioned the very decisions they called me brave for.
In the privacy of my notebook, though? None of those things were a concern. It never pushed me away, no matter what I wrote or admitted to. And unlike the rest of them, I never even questioned that it would.
I guess that’s why, mere hours before my first class at New York University’s Stern School of Business, I found myself sitting by the fountain in Washington Square Park, soaking in the sun, furiously scratching my pen across multiple lined pages within my latest chrome-black, vegan-leather companion. For a little over an hour, I wrote in that notebook, with one leg draped over the other in my wide-width, marigold-yellow dress pants and camel laptop bag barely grazing my thighs.
Simultaneously, I found myself listening to SAULT’s “Son Shine” on repeat, as if it were my own personal soundtrack pushing me toward a truth that I wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge, but somehow knew I needed to. In those pages, I desperately poured out all the fears holding my chest hostage, frantically writing until I could feel my hand start to cramp. But even when that happened, I simply took a beat, stretched out my caramel-brown fingers that were perfectly adorned with my favorite custom press-on nails, and kept going.
What was I so afraid of, that in the midst of the beautiful chaos that was New York City in the summer, I’d elected to be the sad statue perched on the concrete bench of one of the city’s most iconic fountains? Writing through the tears that threatened to stain my cheeks while everyone around me simply enjoyed the sun glistening on their skin?
Oh, not much. Just a little decision I’d made to leave my very lucrative job at a PR firm and become a full-time student again.
In my thirties.
With no husband or safety net to catch me if I failed.
A grown adult choosing to go back to school, not out of necessity, but this incessant desire to start my own business.
Nothing scary about that, right?
I poured every negative thought I had swirling through my head into that notebook, serving as today’s “listening ear” with its simple cover that read only Words. [mine] in gold foil. Despite the occasional gust of wind, it mostly acquiesced to my will and lay flat across my size sixteen thighs, readily receiving my fears without judgment or a need to respond. Just like I needed.
That morning, I’d started my journal entry with a simple question that appeared in a meme I often saw plastered all over my Instagram feed.
What if I fall?
That question, originally taken from Erin Hanson’s “What If I Fall” poem, seemed, on its surface, innocuous enough. It was just four little words, after all, mostly intended to inspire people and encourage them to try the scary thing. And yet, despite its intentions, or maybe because of them, I hated everything about it. Actually, it probably wasn’t even the question itself that bothered me so much, but the response.
Oh, but, my darling, an anonymous person answers in the meme, what if you fly?
That’s a lovely sentiment, I wrote in reply. But what if I also actually do fall? Nothing about the person’s cavalier response ever even addresses that very valid concern. It just presumes that the prospect of flying supersedes the fear of falling, and one thing I can definitively say is that it does not.
It’s easy to think about soaring, I continued. That’s what we all want, to take a leap of faith and have it turn out better than you imagined. And yet, so many people every day really do fall. They take a chance on something they really want and end up flat on their face. What gave me the hubris to think I wouldn’t be just like them, splayed out on the ground, devastated from an attempt that went wrong, angry at Brené Brown and myself for thinking I could dare greatly and come out unscathed?
These were the things I didn’t speak out loud, for fear that I’d seem, I don’t know, ungrateful for all that I had in my life. Maybe even a little selfish. Or worse yet, as someone who couldn’t show up, head held high in excellence at all times, despite that expectation being ingrained in me since I was a kid.
Page after page, I wrote about this fear, about how scared I was to be doing something so completely illogical and separate from the life I’d been building for eleven years in New York. About how I wasn’t actually ready to try something new, how I had no clue what I was doing, and how I felt like such a fraud convincing others of anything different. How, in my quietest of moments, as with almost every hard decision I’d been making for years, I questioned what made me think I was special enough to take on this kind of risk and not have it backfire on me. After all, it wasn’t as if this was a small pivot. I’d moved to the city a few years after graduating from the University of Southern California, bright-eyed and eager to take the PR world by storm, and I had been on that path for more than a decade now. A path I was good at. A path that had stability and had led me to the role of operations manager. Most sane, rational people wouldn’t be looking to just upend that out of nowhere.
Not me, though.
I was, instead, the woman who’d filled out an application for business school just twenty-four hours after getting my latest promotion, then ultimately decided to completely deviate from the path I’d chosen for myself to take a chance on a dream I couldn’t shake. That wasn’t the norm for a Black woman who grew up in the South with parents who never let her forget that she had a responsibility to show up brilliantly in everything she did. I owed that to my family, my community and my ancestors. And that kind of upbringing didn’t leave room for following dreams on a whim. It most certainly didn’t allow for taking on new opportunities while feeling completely unprepared for what was before me.
After about the twelfth page of my free-flowing thoughts, I took in a deep breath, capped my nude-pink felt-tip pen and stared at what I’d let pour out of my body. Under the bright gaze of the sun, it was striking, maybe even a little alarming, to face all the fears I’d been carrying inside me in black and white. But in a weird way, it was also cathartic. In an instant, I felt my shoulders get a little looser, my jaw unclench ever so slightly, and best of all, it no longer felt like I had an anvil pressing on my chest.
Clearly, this was what Tayler knew would happen when she’d insisted that I journal on my first day of school, despite how much I pouted about it in our last therapy session.
“I think you need to write out all these feelings running through your head,” she’d said to me on a gloomy Tuesday morning after I’d spent about fifteen minutes going down a particularly nasty anxiety spiral in front of her.
Flanked by probably the most luscious bird-of-paradise plant I’d ever witnessed, she slowly ramped up her comments as I eyed her in horror and shame and also tried to distract myself with the long green leaves that seemed to have no problem wildly and freely taking up as much space as they wanted to.
“And then,” Tayler continued, “you have to face those feelings and do the hard work to remind yourself that while they are valid, Keisha, they’re not always factual.”
She paused, like she normally did in our sessions, to see if I wanted to rebut her before proceeding forward. Sometimes I did, ready to pounce and explain how she hadn’t considered whatever next thought I’d been overfocusing on for days. But this time, I had no fight left to give; I’d been too busy beating myself down with my own words to counter hers. I’m assuming she recognized that, because while still stern, her next comments were delivered with more compassion—almost like a massage therapist who knows they’ve been kneading a tough knot for a while and realizes their client needs a soft touch to make sure they don’t go home sore at the end of the night.
“Keisha, listen. Don’t get me wrong, I hear you when you say you don’t think you know what you’re doing, and I believe that you truly feel that way. But I’ve known you for six years now, and guess what? That’s simply not true. You’re not a person who jumps into things blindly. If anything, you’re more prepared than ever to take this leap of faith. You just have to believe that you are.”
You just have to believe that you are.
Those words rang in my ear, somehow filling in the spaces between SAULT’s verses, floating over the combination of horns and staccato beats that made their songs so intoxicating. As I started to repeat them, first with no sound, but then gradually transitioning into a whisper, everything around me suddenly started coming into focus, too. Like the group of young adults playing Frisbee to my left who looked like they could spend hours together laughing and not grow tired. Or the person strumming his guitar to my right who seemed so incredibly at peace and in his own world. There were also the scores of joyful people dipping their feet into the very fountain I was sitting next to, or the giggles echoing from friends as they looked for places to sit in the park. All those people were living in the present, and at least for the moment, not letting the idea of what could happen later on affect their joy.
Oh, to have that privilege, I thought. I wanted it so badly; I just needed to give myself the permission to take it.
With a renewed resolve, I sat up straight, unfolding my legs so that my metallic gold slides lay flat on the ground. Then, rolling my shoulders back, I adjusted the straps on my hunter-green bodysuit, and took in one last deep breath. Inhaling in all the courage I needed to press forward on a dream I had to build a company that would encourage young girls to read and tap into their fashion sensibilities while learning how to tell their own stories. Then exhaling out all the doubts that made me question whether I could truly do it. What was left, after facing my fears head-on, was a belief that I really did have good ideas to contribute to the world and a fierce determination to make it happen, no matter how often and how loud my lizard brain tried to convince me otherwise.
Just what Tayler knew would happen.
I looked at my notebook once more and finally closed it, dabbed at the tears that had formed in the corners of my eyes and stood up with all the confidence of the little girl who would freely splash around in her parents’ backyard pool when the New Orleans heat made doing anything outside sans water unbearable. I owed it to that girl to be the kind of person that appreciated and stayed in the present, I realized. The kind of person willing to put one foot in front of the other into the unknown and just be happy about the human experience she was having. I owed it to thirty-two-year-old me, too.
With about an hour to spare before the start of class, I slid my felt-tip pen into my beige Saint Laurent cross-body bag and stood up, silently reminding myself of what I could and couldn’t control. And finally, after pouring my heart into my notebook, being okay with both. Then, with what probably looked like the most ridiculous smile on my face, I spread my legs wide and put my hands on my hips in my best superhero power pose, when bam! Some random guy in crisp white Air Maxes walked right into me, knocking me back onto the concrete bench and sending my beloved notebook flying straight into the air.
“Oh my God!” I screamed, probably much louder than I needed to as I jumped up and watched in fear as the notebook flipped open and spun in the air.
Almost like I was watching a cartoon play out in real life, I saw its pages flap around wildly, participating in a kind of elegant yet horrific dance with the wind. Meanwhile I was hysterical, frantically praying it didn’t land smack-dab in the fountain that had previously been my refreshing counter to the blazing August sun.
After what felt like hours, but was likely just a couple of seconds, the same stranger who’d been the source of my panic thankfully caught my chrome companion in midair and brought it back down to his chest, safe from harm.
“Oh my God,” I screamed out again, letting out the largest sigh of relief.
“I’m so sorry,” the man replied, closing the notebook and presenting it back to me as delicately as possible. “I don’t know how I didn’t see you standing there. I guess I must have been a little distracted.”
“Clearly,” I said, annoyed but also caught off guard by the velvety tone in his voice and what sounded like just a tinge of Southern twang.
I held out my hand and accepted the notebook from him, first clutching it to my chest like I’d been reunited with a lost child and then flipping through a few of the pages to ensure it was unharmed. Once satisfied with its condition, I grabbed my laptop bag off the ground and carefully slipped the notebook inside before it could find itself in danger again.
“You really should watch where you’re going,” I added. “I know sometimes men are used to being the center of attention, but the world doesn’t just simply move out of your way as you’re walking.”
He chuckled in response, drawing my attention back to his face just in time for me to see his lips crinkle up slightly into a sarcastic and mischievous smile. I let my eyes linger for a bit and couldn’t help but notice how attractive he was, with brown eyes that almost looked hazel in the brightness of the sun—a fact that in probably any other circumstance would have been quite intriguing. But in this instance, it only furthered my belief that this guy was likely very used to getting his way.
“That’s a long way of saying ‘thank you for rescuing my precious notebook,’” he retorted.
“Well, you wouldn’t have had to rescue it if you’d just noticed the person in front of you in the first place, right?”
“Okay. That’s fair,” he said, nodding his head in agreement. “And again, I’m really not sure how I missed you. Specifically.”
Specifically was doing a lot of work in his reply, but it also maybe did its job, because it tempered my annoyance just long enough for me to really look at the man standing before me. I watched him, now finally letting myself be captivated by his essence, as he—a Tyler Lepley look-alike—stepped a few paces back and lifted his right hand to his perfectly manicured beard, revealing quite possibly the most beautiful smile I’d seen all year.
There was no denying it; this was a very handsome man, what with his completely unblemished, medium-brown skin tone that seemed to glow under the sun. But as I looked him over, trying to read his intentions—hopefully in a very subtle way—I noticed he was doing the exact opposite, very obviously and very lustfully dragging his eyes over every inch of my body, starting from my short, wavy hair that I wore slicked to the right, past my signature leopard-print eyeglasses, down my pouty Fenty-red-covered lips, then to my shoulders, and over my beesting chest. He lingered just a little bit when he got to the folds in my waistline and the love handles that ultimately led to my thick thighs and beyond, his smile growing wider as he continued. Finally, having fully assessed me, he lifted his eyes back up to meet mine and chuckled under his breath again.
“Are you done?” I asked, irritated once again, this time by the fact that he’d turned what should have been a groveling apology into a chance for him to ogle me and my figure.
“I hope not,” he replied.
Just that quick, he’d flipped the switch and turned me off again. It was just as well, honestly. I didn’t have time for man-made distractions when I was about to embark on one of the most important transitions in my life.
“Ugh, please spare me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Just try not to knock anyone else over today, okay?”
I pivoted in my sandals so that I could gracefully make my exit from this guy and whatever smooth-talking conversation he was attempting to have. In my head, I pictured myself making a similar exit as Maya in Girlfriends, when she repeatedly says “Good day” while walking away from her ex-boyfriend. But as I started making a move to the side of him, I realized that he wasn’t quite taking the hint and walking off as well. No, instead, he was now the statue in the park, standing perfectly still as the little bit of wind caught the tail end of the denim shirt that he’d paired on top of a white undershirt that somehow perfectly clung to his chest.
“Was there something else you wanted?” I asked, sensing his eyes still on me.
“Nah. I just thought you might feel more comfortable if I let you walk by first. You know, so I don’t knock you off your feet again.”
The way he responded, with a sort of sly arrogance in his tone, it was almost as if he had turned the idea of him almost bumping me into the fountain into a metaphor for him charming me, nay sweeping me off my feet. I’m sure Donell Jones or Stevie Wonder would have been proud, but it irked me to no end, especially at the implication I couldn’t handle it if he had.
This guy clearly has no shame.
“Nice try, smooth guy,” I replied, catching his eyes again before tapping my hand on his chest. “But I think we’ll both be okay as long as you abide by the simple rule that I’m sure your mama taught you when you were a kid—look both ways when you’re walking.”
He laughed, this time full and out loud, then fidgeted a bit in his dark green slim-fit pants, rubbing his right hand across his beard again.
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“Good. I’m sure everyone here at the park will be much happier as a result.”
“You know what would make me happy?”
His question came just as I was getting ready to walk away again.
“Should I care?” I asked, swinging the straps of my laptop bag onto my shoulder.
“You don’t have to, I suppose. But I would think a nice person would. And you consider yourself a nice person, right?”
He stared me down, waiting to see how I would respond, almost daring me to take the bait and engage him in some sort of sparring match that I was sure he wanted to end with one of us in the other’s bed. I wasn’t going to give him that, of course. But I had time for the first part.
“Okay, then,” I laughed and nodded in his direction to let him know it was on. “By all means, please, do regale me with whatever it might be that would make you happy.”
My very obviously sarcastic reply elicited yet another laugh from him, this time combined with a slow, intentional lick of his lips. He was enjoying this...a lot.
“Nothing too crazy, I promise,” he said. “Just your name. Maybe also your number.”
For some strange reason, I immediately pictured myself as the Little Mermaid when Ursula was trying to convince her that she could have everything she wanted for the low, low price of “just her voice.” Ariel should have disengaged at that very moment, too, but like me, she’d found herself too sucked in to walk away.
I took my time and scoped out this dude in front of me again, fascinated that after the interaction we’d just had, he would even dare try to holla at me. That was the kind of cocky self-assurance I expected from the guys back home who I’d long left in the dust, so used to being rewarded for their Southern charm and charisma that they rarely, if ever, made an effort to be vulnerable or try to build something real with another human being. At least that had been my experience all the times I’d tried dating any of them. This guy was no pretty boy, New Orleans charmer, but I could tell he was used to getting what he wanted all the same, especially with the way his full lips, perfectly outlined by his beard, could probably convince a woman to spend hours licking, biting and sucking on them with no other reward in mind.
Keep it together, Keisha, I scolded myself, shaking off the thought of how he might taste on my lips. The reality was this: this guy’s physical attractiveness came with the very personality traits I had absolutely no interest in dealing with anymore, not after all the heartbreak I’d experienced from men just like him over the years.
Still, I hadn’t moved my feet.
“I’m Keisha,” I replied, intentionally not raising my hand to shake his as my one form of rebellion to let him know that he had not successfully wooed me.
“Just Keisha?” he asked, tilting his head slightly and cracking a smile that made it clear he noticed I was purposely avoiding his touch. “Like you’re an R & B singer who only goes by one name?”
“We give out last names to strangers now?” I asked.
“Well, I’m not trying to be a stranger, so...”
His voice drifted off before finishing his thought, but his eyes never left mine, daring me once again to give in to his every desire. I didn’t want to. In fact, everything about this guy annoyed me, and yet...before I could stop myself, I heard my own lips betraying me and giving him what he’d asked.
“Edwards,” I said, returning his gaze.
“Hmm.”
He nodded his head in response as if he was contemplating something very deep, then slowly dragged his eyes from mine to my lips and back up again.
“Nice to meet you, Keisha Edwards. I’m Julian.”
“No last name from you either?”
“Well, you’re the one who said we shouldn’t give them out to strangers, right?”
“Right.”
I bit my lip and rolled my eyes. Once again, he’d brought me back to reality with one little sly remark. I’d called it earlier that this guy was all about silly games, and he’d proven me right in ways he probably didn’t even realize.
“Well, look, it’s been...okayyy meeting you, Julian,” I continued. “But as for my number, I think that’s going to be a firm ‘no’ for me.”
“Wait, really?” he asked, for once giving me a glimmer of a real person who wasn’t always a smooth-talking playboy.
“Yeah, really.”
I had to stop myself from bursting into laughter as I watched Julian’s expression turn from that of a playful kid to one who looked as if he’d just been told no for the first time ever in his life. It was obvious he was not used to being turned down in any capacity, and actually, more than anything, that made me want to stick to my “no” even more.
Welcome to real life, Julian, I thought.
“What about anything that’s happened between us in the park today would make you think I’d want to hear from you again?”
I tried not to sound like a jerk, but I really was genuinely curious how his brain had gotten him to the point where he thought I might even be slightly interested. It was almost like a scientific question, really. Part of me wanted to know how any of these so-called charmers just so naturally expected women to fall at their feet. And what better chance to find out than by asking a perfect stranger I’d never see again?
“Eh, that’s not really how I think,” he admitted. “I’d counter your question with the fact that you and I are still standing here, talking to each other, despite our little, mmm, let’s call it a mishap, earlier. Besides, we’re both obviously attracted to each other, so the better question is why wouldn’t you want to see me again? I want to see you.”
“Well...I...don’t.”
I spoke my words slowly with a slight tenderness, almost harkening back to my therapist’s signature stern but compassionate voice, trying once again not to come off like a grade A jerk but also wanting my position to be very clear.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
Julian nodded his head once more, this time presumably taking in my last “no” as confirmation that he really wasn’t going to be able to change my mind, despite whatever magnetism he’d accurately assessed had kept us standing at the fountain for several minutes.
“Okay,” he said, throwing up his hands in defeat and licking his plump bottom lip one more time for good measure. “Then, you know what? I’ll let you be on your way, Keisha. Maybe I’ll get lucky and see you around, and you’ll give me another chance at a better first impression.”
“Maybe,” I replied, raising my left eyebrow and tilting my head ever so slightly while I eyed the man before me again. “Though it is New York, so I wouldn’t necessarily count on that.”
“You could try not to kill a man’s dreams right before you leave, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, letting a small chuckle escape from my lips.
If he’d started our interaction off more like this guy in front of me now, one who seemed interested but not entitled, maybe Julian would have gotten a different answer. As it was now, though, it was all too little, too late.
I nodded toward him once more, this time as an actual goodbye, and made my exit, walking toward the arch at the entrance to the park. I stared at that arch like it was my guiding light as my feet propelled me away from him, resisting the urge to turn around to see if he still had his eyes on me or if he’d already forgotten I existed. A part of me hoped he was still watching me, longing for the girl he couldn’t have, but as I walked farther away, I knew that was just my ego, not an actual desire for the stranger who’d kept me intrigued for ten minutes longer than he should have. Besides, what I really needed to do was focus on what was before me—my next two years as a full-time business school student and then the chance to truly make a difference in the world soon after that.
As I got closer to the arch, I could see the inscription on the top of it, long presumed to be said by George Washington himself, though there were some skeptics. In my head, I read it over and over again, letting it fuel me as my motivation for the day. “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair,” it read. “The event is in the hands of God.”
That it was, I thought to myself. And now, I was ready to let God and the universe—or as Christine, my best friend from high school, called them, “capital M management”—show me whatever was coming next. I just hoped it involved me kicking ass at NYU. And no more lame boys with devastatingly cute smiles.
