“You’re crazy!” I told her, cracking up.
“I know this,” she admitted, laughing along with me.
We fell into basic dialogue about Kandice and her new friend, Alonzo. I learned a little more about their weekend together and that she was going to be seeing him after dinner. I jokingly predicted that she’d be going on maternity leave in about seven months.
Thirty minutes in, our food arrived looking so good all I wanted to do was eat, and put talking on hold.
“I have the kona stir fry for you,” the host said, as he placed Kandice’s food in front of her. “And I have the kona coffee glazed ribs for you. Which happen to be my favorite,” he added. “I hope you ladies enjoy. Is there something else I can get you?”
“We’re good,” Kandice and I responded in unison.
“This looks so good!”
“It is good. You’ll love it,” Kandice commented, her mouth already filled with food.
“Dang, girl! You’re not gonna bless your food or anything?!” I kidded.
“I blessed it before it got here. You just go ahead and start talking. You stalled long enough. Tell me how you know that beautiful man. The rest can come after that.”
I was trying to wait until she didn’t have food or drink in her mouth because I didn’t want to be the cause of the woman choking on her meal. But with her eyes bearing down on me like a sea hawk, I decided to just blurt it out.
“It was him that I slept with, my bachelorette weekend.”
Kandice started coughing and covered her mouth, her eyes wide as golf balls. When the coughing stopped, she slowly lowered her hand from her mouth and said, “What! Really?! It was him?!”
“I’ll just wait for the shock to wear off and then I’ll finish.”
Kandice shook her head vigorously back and forth. “Oh no, sistah, you need to finish all of this. My appetite is gone now! This all I got to live for. If I pass out, just call the paramedics. I got CIGNA and my medical card is in my wallet.”
“You’re retarded!” I guffawed loudly, and uncontrollably.
She reached across the table after the laughter was all out. “Now, girl please finish because I need this tea to get my life!”
“I can’t even tell you how it happened. I really can’t. I just know that me and my girls went to the show that night.”
“His show? Girl, so you have seen it! It’s every damn thing! The man can put a few black male strippers to damn shame!”
“Don’t I know it! I couldn’t believe what I was watching.”
“Okay, so go ‘head.”
“He pulled me onstage . . .”
“Get the fuck outta here! You were on . . .” She waved her hand in the air. “Never mind. Keep going!”
“So, afterwards you know there’s the whole meet-and-greet. At the end of the night, or rather early morning, come to find out we were staying at the same hotel.”
“Oh my God! This is juicy!”
I thought back to that night and how it all went between me and Marco. Then it made me think about the other night and how it went between me and Marco. Then it made me think that I hadn’t heard from him at all! Not that we’d committed to anything, but still. You pop up at my house, uninvited. I offer you food, I offer you me—and I don’t hear from you! I shook my head as if trying to shake the thoughts off.
“Those memories just hit you, huh?” Kandice asked, a smile as big as our plates.
“Something like that.”
“How did your ex find out about you and sexy-ass? Or was it you that couldn’t live with it and told? I hope it wasn’t one of your girls that was there. That would be foul!”
“I didn’t tell him. My friends didn’t tell either. But they might as well have, the way they turned on me. Well, all but one of them, I should say.”
“What do you mean?”
“I took a real hit as far as my friends went.”
“How?”
“They turned on me. It’s a really long story. But yeah. They pretty much sided with Jamie and . . .” I quieted to gather my thoughts. Because the sting of it still hurt. “It just got awkward. People that I’ve known for years, I didn’t know them anymore. It was strained before I left the Bay Area. But when I moved, it was like they used the fact that I wouldn’t be there to cut me off.”
“Damn. I hate to say it. And you might even get mad that I’m saying it. But those ain’t your friends. Cuttin you off over a man . . . nah. That’s not shit that real friends—real women—do. No ma’am.”
“I agree.”
“Good. And now you got a friend that you’re stuck with. So, gone and sleep with that man again and again and again. I won’t tell a damn person!”
Once again, she and I fell into hearty laughter, and for a few minutes I forgot about the fact that I hadn’t heard from Marco’s ass.
-70-
MARCO
“To what do I owe this pleasure? The great Mr. Graf, showing up to my office.”
“What’s up, Cyn?” I said, with a sigh after plopping down into one of the furry royal blue seats in a corner of her large office. “These furry-ass chairs, man. This shit is girly as fuck.”
“Probably because . . . uhh . . . it’s a girl’s office. Just like I’m sure your office is all-man-everything.”
“Yep,” I admitted laughing.
She smacked her full lips. “Well, then. What you want, anyway?” she asked, straightening some files on her desk. “I thought you were going back to your office today.”
“I did. But I had a question, so now I’m here.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“How long did that bartender chick work here?”
“What bartender chick? There’s a few of them. I’m sure you know that,” she grinned.
“I’m talkin’ about that one that was working with Mink.”
Cyn’s face lit up into a crooked smile. “Speaking of Mink . . .”
“Aww shit.” I shook my head. “What now, Cyn?”
“You know that she has a major crush on you. That girl was so heartbroken the night of your party. She wanted your attention bad! What do you do to these women?”
“Not shit. Never even fucked her. Never even looked at her too hard because I know how women take shit outta context. I’m deliberate with all my actions where you guys are concerned.”
“You guys?”
“Yep. Women.”
Cyn laughed out loud. “Well, I ain’t them,” Cyn said, smacking her lips. “And let’s be clear; men do that shit too.” She pinched her thumb and her forefinger together to demonstrate. “Give y’all a little bit of attention and you think that’s the invitation to a life together.”
“Okay. Can we get back on the subject, please?”
“Okay, back to Mink. She’s sweet—”
“How did we end up on her? I asked you about the other chick.”
“Oh, you’d rather talk to her huh? I was trying to get you off that topic. But anyway, she quit. Haven’t talked to her and as far as I know she didn’t even call to quit. Just stopped showing the fuck up. And now it’s making sense. What’d you do? Fuck her and forget to get her number and now you want an encore? I mean, she was a pretty girl.”
“It’s nothing like you think, Cyn. I need a favor, though.”
“Favor? You mean, like the favor I needed when I wanted you to drop a dime on my behalf?”
I leaned my head back and looked up at the ceiling. “Are you ever gonna let that bullshit die? You wanted me to endorse you being second choice. That’s ridiculous.” I stood up agitated at the direction of the conversation. “I’m out,” I told her, then proceeded to walk toward the door.
“Don’t leave. I’m just playin’. Clearly, I didn’t need your help,” she bragged. “Come back, Marc. What you need?”
I stayed near the middle of the room, debating with myself. I was conflicted. I already knew that Cyn was going to take what I had to say and run with it. But she could run all she wanted to beca
use with what I was dealing with, I just wanted answers that would help me decide my next move.
“Alright. But I’m not tryin’ to hear a bunch of mess when I tell you what it is.”
“You got it,” Cyn assured me.
-71-
MARCO
When I sat down I had mixed emotions. So much was going through my mind and it was honestly fucking with me. In the moment that it was all happening, I realized just how alone I was. Just how much of my life was spent, filling up my life. All in an effort for me not to feel alone. Not lonely—alone. It was fucked up to finally realize that it was the whole, ‘lack of family’, part of my life that dictated my movements with life. I think subconsciously, I blocked it out so that I wouldn’t have to recognize it as a void. Growing up, it had only ever been me and my mother. That is, up until I was old enough to fend for myself, and she was able to go live her life with the next rich bastard.
If what Adonis Anastas told me was true, then my mother had fucked a married man, had a kid by that man, and never thought to do any kind of connecting, for the kid. I never knew my father, and had heard nothing about him. At thirty years old, I would’ve liked to say that I didn’t give a fuck, but would that even be true? Would I have been sitting in the security room of Cyn City looking through footage if I was unaffected? Whatever the answer, there I was waiting for Ken to load what I needed to see onto a disk that I could watch on a separate computer.
I remembered the Kaia girl. I remembered her also not really giving me eye contact. I figured she was just one of those stuck-up chicks wanting to try sending the message that she wasn’t interested. Not that I gave a fuck, because I had always made it a point to not fuck any of the chicks I worked with. Not a good look. At least, not for me.
I had just finished typing an email response about one of my corporate accounts, when Ken called out to me. “You ready?” he asked, handing me a CD. “Got a few hours on here, man.”
I accessed the CD Rom drive and inserted the disk. “Thanks, dude. I got it from here.”
After Ken walked back across the room to do his job, I focused on the large screen in front of me. It was almost immediate that her face came across the screen.
“If you need to zoom, just roll that ball on top of the mouse!” Ken yelled from where he was.
“Alright. Thanks!”
The whole time I was watching her, I kept having to let it sink in that she was the one that put a fucking knife in my back. She didn’t even look crazy. Not at all. She looked like she might even have dudes going crazy, over her. She was kinda racially ambiguous to me. Her skin was olive, her eyes light brown. Her hair dark, really long—wavy. Her nose . . . was like mine. Not pointy, but not pug either. Her lips . . . favored mine. Not thin, but not super full either. I sat back in the chair, not realizing how closely I had my face to the screen. Why did we look alike? Why when I looked deeper into her face, her eyes, did I see myself? Had she seen that? Was that why she wanted me dead? What the fuck?!
I pushed the chair away from the desk and got up from the seat to pace.
“Hey, you good over there, man?” Ken asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” I told him before going back to sit down.
But the truth is that I wasn’t fine. Now, more than ever, I needed the rest of the story and there was only one way that I was going to get it.
-72-
KASSIDI
It was almost nine o’clock when I burst through my front door. I quickly activated my house alarm and then made a mad dash for the bathroom to release my extremely full bladder. I had definitely gotten my full intake of H20 for the day. By the time it was all said and done, I had drank six glasses of water. I’d stopped the alcohol consumption early in Kandice’s and my conversation, as a way of maintaining control of what I spilled. Not even realizing that there was really nothing left to divulge.
After I peed a river from my body, I sat in place for a minute breathing a sigh of relief and laughing at myself. I counted to sixty and welcomed another rush of urine. After that, I finally felt emptied out. For now, anyway. Drinking all that water so late at night was bound to have me back in the damn bathroom a few times before I went to bed. I would probably have to get up a few times during the night as well. I wasn’t looking forward to that at all.
When I was done with the deed, I stripped where I was and performed my ritual of a long, hot shower. That stream felt like heaven hitting against my body.
Dressed for bed sometime later, I made my way back to the foyer for my purse and my doggy bag. I took the food and put it into the refrigerator and closed all of the blinds in front of the house. I then made my way to my bedroom, put the purse inside of my ensuite and turned on the television. Not that I was about to watch anything on the screen, but it served as my background noise while I dozed off. After setting the timer for the full four hours, I climbed into serenity.
I had just reached the part of the journey-to-sleep, where the background noise faded away and drowsiness took all the way over, when my phone rang. Damn. I didn’t need to look at the clock to know that it was almost twelve—a whole hour past the time I normally went to bed. I reached over to the nightstand and disconnected my cell from its charger, then turned onto my back and took the call.
“Hello,” I answered, my voice low, tired.
“Hey girl! You sleep?!” It was Kandice on the other end of the line sounding as though it was noon instead of midnight. “You sound sleep!”
“Probably because it’s uhhh . . . mid…night.”
“Well, I was calling to make sure you made it in the house.”
“Okay, and I did . . .” I was trying my best to get this girl to get off my line so I could be whole in the morning. “Glad that you did too. I shoulda called. I was so busy trying to get in the shower and into bed . . .”
“Oh, it’s cool. Alonzo was here when I got home so I was going to be okay, regardless.”
I could hear the smile in her voice when she said the man’s name. She was already at the point of, ‘All-in’, full speed ahead, with no brakes.
“Anyway, girl, I’m gonna let you go. Just wanted to make sure you got in okay. Meant to call as soon as I got home and it slipped my mind.”
“No worries. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Night.”
“Night.”
I looked at the display before plugging my phone back to the charger and was met with 12:17AM. “Lord”, I said aloud as I turned back on my side. I was already dreading going into the office on less than six hours of sleep. The struggle was about to be really, real. But, I didn’t even get to settle onto my pillow before the damn phone rang again.
Unbelievable. This cannot be happening!
I thought about not answering Kandice’s call a second time, but it could be anything. Her new friend could’ve turned crazy, in just a few minutes. She had only known him for a short time and he was already showing up to her house late night—on a weeknight. I grabbed the phone and just came to terms that I would probably need more coffee than usual for work. Being a friend was more important right now than rest; so that’s what I needed to be.
I threw my covers off, got out of bed and pressed the answer button. “What’s wrong, girl?”
“Girl?” the deep voice said. “Last time I checked . . .”
-73-
KASSIDI
12:24AM was the time on my phone’s display when I pulled it away from my ear to look at the phone number. For a split second I thought it was Jamie. But that went out the door when he spoke again.
“Only ever heard my voice in person, huh?”
“Mr. Graffiti Effect?” I said, a mile-wide smile forming across my face.
He laughed a little. “Marco is fine.”
“Yeah, I know. I like messing with you. How are you doing?”
I couldn’t even help how excited I was to hear from him and I was pissed at myself for it. Probably sounded desperate as hell, but I hoped not.
> “You’re not mad that I called so late?”
It took you long enough to call at all!
“No. Not at all. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is cool. Just thought I’d call instead of just showing up to your house. Had to access my company records to get your contact information. You don’t mind, do you?”
Hell no! I’m happy as hell that you called. That’s what I wanted to say, but never would. I had to play it cool.
“No, I don’t mind at all.”
“So, you’re up? As late as it is? You have work in the morning?”
I hesitated for a second because if I told him yeah, he might feel the need to get off the phone and I honestly didn’t want that. I liked the man. What could I say? He was interesting to me. And he had other qualities that I found appealing as well.
“Yeah, I’m up. Went to dinner with my friend that you met. The one that’s with your friend as we speak.”
“Ohh, I hurt!” he groaned. “So, you guys went to dinner and couldn’t call us for a double date? I’m crushed.”
I was blushing so hard my damn jaws started to throb! At damn near one in the morning, I was cheesing like a damn fool! What the hell?! I knew damn well I should’ve been dead to the world, getting rest for work in a few hours, but there I was giggling, blushing and conversing like I didn’t have somewhere to be!
“Like you would’ve come. Not to mention, I only have your company’s phone number.”
“Well, my number came up on your caller ID when I called, right?”
“That, it did.”
“Well, then start using it . . . whenever you need to.”
“I’ll . . . umm . . . for sure do that.”
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