Read The Cost To Play (Slivers of Love) Online
Authors: Oliva Gaines
The Cost To Play (Slivers of Love)
Olivia Gaines
Davonshire House Publishing
PO Box 9716
Augusta, GA 30916
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events are locales or persons, living or dead, are entirely a coincidence.
© 2013 Olivia Gaines, Cheryl Aaron Corbin
Editor: Kathy Riehl,
http://www.riehlfaithproductions.com/
Cover:
http://koougraphics.net/
Art: Kiara Thomas,
http://kiaramotiondesign.com/
The Vigilantes
,
All Rights Reserved, Kiara Thomas, Kiara Thomas Designs
Olivia Gaines Make Up and Photograph by Latasla Gardner Photography
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever. For information address, Davonshire House Publishing, PO Box 9716, Augusta, GA 30916.
ISBN-13: 978-0615948157 (Davonshire House Publishing)
ISBN-10: 0615948154
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 9 8
First Davonshire House Publishing January 2014
DEDICATION
For Kiara, Katsuo is alive.
Be forever vigilant!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was a concerted team effort. I thank each and every one of you for pulling this one together. I have the best team on the planet!
Write On!
This is Toshi Yamaguchi.
Chapter 1
There are some daybreaks when a body awakens and is ready for the day to commence. It was going to be one of those mornings when a girl felt like she had just stepped into a scene in a Disney movie. The day would begin with that perfect quaint scene in the movie where blue birds fluttered about, flowers bloomed as the pretty girl walked by, and a tune filled the lungs exhibiting how great a girl was feeling. Jayne Wright’s mood was just that good as she parked her Chevy Equinox on the street. Today, nothing could dampen her spirit. She began to sing as she made her way to the office. She bobbed her head to the left, swayed her hips to the right, and moved her shoulders to an imaginary beat as she belted out a few notes to an old R & B song. This day could not be more perfect.
“Yo baby! You lucky you got an ass like that. It almost makes up for your singing and dancing,” said some man rolling by in a wheelchair on the sidewalk. Jayne gulped as if she had just swallowed a very large bug. The old fart didn’t even bother to look back as he continued to roll down the side walk, now singing the same song, but in tune and in key. Even Wheelchair Willie’s snarky comment was not going to ruin her day.
Friends often mocked her for giving every person a funny moniker, but it was her thing. It did not matter to Jayne in the least about whether she met with other’s expectations of her. It was irrelevant. She was her own person, with her own mind, and her own way of doing things. Her Grandma Pearl often chided her mother, “that’s what you get for naming a black Chile Jayne.” She liked her name and the person she had grown up to be. Independent, free thinking, and a very talented artist.
Unfortunately her talent on paper did not translate to her abilities with humans. It was even worse when it came to humans of the opposite sex. Her inability to understand and relate to men who wanted her as an arm piece befuddled her mind. It was almost a rude shock to her existence when a man would take her to dinner and make bumbling attempts to have her for dessert. Jayne LaQueeda Wright was not that type of woman. Most days, she wasn’t sure what type of woman she was exactly, but it wasn’t one that was easy.
Simplicity, however, was how she lived her life. Cawley Public Relations had been her first real job out of college and five years later she was still there. Serving as the lead designer and project manager, her work was on billboards all over Augusta, Georgia. Grandma Pearl even swore she saw an ad in Atlanta as well. It was humorous to her, even though she tried several times to explain it to her Grammy, only a handful of their clients were local. When she returned home one evening with her Clio award, Grandma Pearl whipped out
the bottle
of champagne. Jayne had a hell of a time stopping her Grammy from opening it, considering she had purchased the $3 bottle of Champale when Jayne was still in elementary school. There was no way on God’s green earth that she would even partake of that sour bottle of pink vinegar. Instead, Jayne had shown up with an unopened bottle of Dom Perignon. Knowing the frugality of her Grammy, she also brought along a $13 bottle of Freixenet as her back up. Much as she had suspected, Grammy opted for the Freixenet. The bottle of Dom was still in the back of her fridge.
Soon, she promised herself, there would be something to celebrate and someone special to celebrate with. She just had to be patient. Grammy had taught her years ago not to ask God for something and then sit around like a fool worrying about it. “Let go and let God,” Grandma Pearl always said, and she learned.
In high school, when the captain of the math club wanted to go all the way and she was not ready, she heeded her Grammy’s words and let Ralph go. The adage still buzzed in her head in college, when the chair of the art department said he would give her a “D” in the class if she would not stay for some extracurricular activities. His activities included helping him relieve the tension in his pants. Jayne took it to God in prayer and left it there. After her professor awarded her the “D” for the course, Jayne took her cellphone and classwork to the Dean and played back the professor’s request. At the end of the conference between the three of them, the Dean and her professor both agreed she deserved that “A”.
She loved her Grammy and her wisdom, but Jayne firmly believed that the good Lord helps those who help themselves. Currently, her vision in self-help included a comic book with a kick ass female superhero and matching costume that would be available in local retail stores. Outside of Bling and Storm, there were very few black female heroines in comic books and she wanted to change that. Change would come after she figured out how to make it all happen. She had the talent, but the confidence to do it was another hairy animal.
In the office, she arrived right on time to her desk, with coffee in hand and still a song in her heart. Today, she was leaving for Columbia, South Carolina to attend an anime conference called Banzaicon. This would be her first conference, or con for short, where she would dress in costume for role play. Jayne had two costumes in her car; one for tonight’s ball and one for judging. The one for judging she had made herself and was rather proud of it. Nothing could ruin her morning.
Or at least, so she thought. The second hairy animal she had to contend with weekly, was her pod mate and fellow project leader, Frankie Vale, who was a very flatulent man. It did not matter what he ate, or how much or how little he put away. The man was a walking gas giant of methane. It was not just any gas, but the kind of farts that made your eyes water. One day it was so horrendous, she could have sworn his last rip of odiferous death had removed her eyebrows. It made their work relationship contentious. At one point, Jayne had created an online comic strip of Franc the Farter, who was a crime fighter that used noxious fumes to eradicate his enemy. The strip had become very popular, but Jayne forgot to use a pseudonym. Frankie threatened to sue her if she did not take it down. She threatened to sue him for attempted murder with his fumes. He stopped talking to her, relegating their communications to necessity only.
It did not matter much anymore. She brought a face mask for when they had to work together and often after lunch. She opted to work in the conference room when it was not in use. It was easier for them both and definitely easier on her nose.
She kept her eye on the clock as she closed out her daily work At 11:58. She yelled into the bullpen, “Have a great weekend!” Jayne had sent in her monies for the cost of admission into the con. It was time to play dress up and Jayne was ready to make her mark.
