The Next Best Thing (26 page)

“Would you believe that bastard gave me chlamydia?” Simone raged, over chicken fingers and apple martinis at the Epicurean's happy hour.

Yvette, Nadia, and I all inhaled sharply.

Regardless of his flirting ways, Rasheed cheating on Simone and giving her a sex disease is news none of us ever thought we would hear.

“No!” I cried out, sorely disappointed. Aside from Will and Jada, and my parents, Simone and Rasheed were my role models when it comes to long lasting, loving relationships. The epitome of what a strong black couple looks like. Rasheed may have been a tad too touchy-feely at times, but the point is, he and Simone managed to hold it together for nine years. That's rare these days.

“Oh girl, yes!” Simone said. “I had this weird discharge, and was itching like crazy down there. So I went and had it checked out, right? Sure enough, Rasheed's been creeping around behind my back with some disease-infested skank.”

“Ah man,” Yvette said, almost in tears. “Rasheed was my boy! I never thought he would go out like that.”

“Well, the proof is in the panties,” Simone said. “Which is exactly why I kicked his poetry-spouting, no-job-having ass out of my house.”

“Do you know the heifer he's messing around with, or was it just some random chick?” Nadia asked.

“It was that sneaky, snaky bitch, Delilah,” Simone said, turning to me. “You know that heavyset girl who's always at our poetry meetings wearing flowers in her afro?”

“The one who insists on boring everybody with those tired-ass poems?” I asked.

“That's the one!” said Simone. “And Tori, I really should have took you more seriously when you warned me she was trying to push up on Rasheed.”

“See,” I said. “It's always those fake, trying to act like they're your friend, heifers. Smiling in your face and all the while, steadily trying to steal your man right out from under you.”

“Um, hmm,” Yvette said. “And those are the same sluts who need their asses whooped because they
know
damn well that he has a woman at home.”

“Well, it looks like everybody really does play the fool sometime,” Nadia said.

“Church!” Yvette said, raising her martini glass in a toast. “Dirty bastards!”

Today, we all had big news.

Nadia is going ahead with the breast implants so Terrell can finally stop bugging her about it. And not surprisingly, the girls were all supportive and encouraging when I told them about the status of Tori Carter Creations, and that I am an inch closer to being completely in love with Nelson.

I have not seen much of Yvette since the open-mike night debacle, but apparently she's over it, and has since given up her dreams of superstardom.

Instead of fame, Yvette is focusing on her first semester of college, as well as her promising relationship with a white guy named Daniel who she said is a sweetie pie, and has this Robert De Niro thing going on where he genuinely adores black women.

Good for her. Yvette deserves some happiness in the romance department, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Daniel will turn out to be husband number two.

I was right in the middle of cleaning my refrigerator, when Nelson called and asked me to come across the hall to his place. I had no idea what was going on, but I took off those yellow plastic gloves, powdered my face, and reported for duty as requested.

“What in the world is all this?” I asked, walking into Nelson's condo, which was in such disarray it looked like a cyclone had swept through it. Every cabinet and drawer was open. Heaps of clothing, boxes of shoes, and other miscellaneous items were piled high on the pool table and in the middle of the living room floor.

“I just wanted to let you know that I'm doing a little purging,” Nelson said, coming out of the bedroom carrying a black, men's suit. “Stuff like this, I should have gotten rid of a long time ago.”

“Why?” I asked, watching him toss the suit on the top of the heap.

“It's the suit that I wore to Kara's funeral,” Nelson said, and I noticed that he looked drained. His eyes were red, and I couldn't tell if it was from exhaustion or from crying.

“Do you need some help?” I asked, giving him a hug.

“No, the Murphys are on their way over to get what they want of Kara's stuff,” he said. “And the Salvation Army is coming to pick up the rest of it.”

What? This was huge. This was the pivotal moment Fatima assured me would come. Now that it was here, I felt like an intruder into an intensely personal and private matter.

He should be alone at a time like this.

“Look, um, I'm gonna go,” I said.

“Thanks for understanding,” Nelson said, kissing me on the forehead. “It's actually not as hard as I thought it would be, but it's still pretty rough.”

“I'll be at home if you need me, okay?”

Nelson walked me to the door, and I was not at all pleased to see Kara's parents.

“Hello, son,” Mr. Murphy said to Nelson. Once again, he and his wife looked right through me, as if I weren't even standing there.

Their rudeness was not lost on Nelson.

“Frank and Margaret, you've met Tori,” Nelson reminded them.

“Ah, yes,” Margaret said, looking down her nose at me. “The
neighbor
, right?”

“Well, actually she's more than a neighbor,” Nelson said, his voice wavering just a tiny bit. “Tori and I are dating, and it's getting serious.”

Say what?

I was just as surprised as Frank and Margaret to hear Nelson make that declaration.

There was so much tension, I knew the best thing to do was to quickly remove myself from the situation. Before I left though, I felt compelled to give the Murphys a piece of my mind.

“Listen, you two need to give Nelson a break. He loved your daughter dearly, and no one can take away what the two of them shared,” I said. “But at the same time, he deserves another chance to love again. From what I knew of Kara, I think she would have wanted that for him.”

“Don't you
dare
presume to speak for my daughter,” Mrs. Murphy snapped, wagging a manicured finger in my face.

My first instinct was to snatch Margaret baldheaded, but she is a grieving mother, and for that, she deserves a degree of empathy and respect.

“Don't do this, Margaret,” said Mr. Murphy, leading his wife away from me.

“Well, it was nice to see you both again!” I called out to the Murphys, who had walked past me and were looking over Kara's things.

Nelson gave me a grateful smile for maintaining my composure. “I think we should go out on the town to celebrate,” he said. “How about you?”

“Alright,” I smiled. “But take your time. I'm not going anywhere.”

 

“The play was pretty good, don't you think?” I asked Nelson, as we claimed one of the private draped beds up on the rooftop terrace of East, a bar and restaurant popular for its unique fusion of Asian, Indian, and Middle Eastern cultures.

“Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised,” he said. “Who knew that a play with just two men in it could be so interesting and entertaining?”

The two of us had just come from Crown Center, where we watched
Tuesdays with Morrie
at the Heartland Theatre. It was late afternoon when Kara's parents left Nelson's place with a bunch of her things, plus the keys to her BMW.

To celebrate our new couple status, Nelson and I started the evening with dinner at Stix Chinese Restaurant, and had come to East to cap off the night with cocktails and dessert.

A server approached our bed looking like she had come straight out of
I Dream of Jeannie
. She wore a sheer bejeweled sarong, matching midriff-baring top, and gold thong sandals.

“Good evening, my name is Magda,” she said. “Would you folks like hookah service tonight?”

“Yes,” Nelson said. “And we'd also like a Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Martini for the lady, and I'll have a bottle of Budweiser Select.”

I propped myself up on one of the bed's many large, fluffy pillows, and Nelson lay on his back with his head in my lap. I ran my fingers over the deep wave pattern in his hair, and looked up at the clear night sky, dotted with what looked to be a zillion stars.

A server walked by with a platter of Caribbean lobster tails, and the air around us was an intoxicating blend of anise, cinnamon, and sage.

Magda came back and set up the Moroccan hookah for us. After she left, I gently pulled on the mouthpiece, taking in coconut and strawberry flavored tobacco, made smooth by the water bubbling at the bottom of the pipe. Since I am not a smoker, all I needed were a couple of puffs and I was as relaxed and giddy as I needed to be in public.

Nelson took a few pulls, and then moved closer to me on the bed, rubbing his hands over the roundness of my behind.

“You have any big plans for this weekend?” he asked, kissing the base of my throat just the way I like it.

I am not usually the one for such extreme public displays of affection, but I didn't stop Nelson from doing what he was doing because none of the other couples on the terrace seemed to be paying us any mind.

“Nothing concrete yet,” I said. “But wherever you are, that's where I want to be.”

Nelson gave me that smile of his that lets me know that I have made him happy. “I have an assignment coming up and I want you to go with me on a road trip,” he said.

“Okay, where are we going?”

“Not far, just a few hours away to a winery and a nearby bed-and-breakfast.”

“Count me in,” I said, unzipping Nelson's jeans, and sliding my hand into the flap of his Calvin Klein underwear.

“Damn, your hands are so soft…” he whispered, hooking his index finger around the crotch of my thong and skillfully pulling it off in one fell swoop.

I pulled the curtains closed around the bed, and laid back wondering just how many other bare asses had been on these very same cushions. Not a pleasant thought, but I went with the flow anyway because the mood was just too sexually charged not too.

St. Louis is a great city, but I haven't been there since my fifth grade class took a field trip to the arch. So I was beyond excited about going on a road trip with Nelson the next day.

The first thing I did when I got home from East, was to start packing.

As I selected the five or so outfits I planned to take, Junior showed up at my front door.

“Can you watch Trey for me tonight?” Junior asked when I opened my front door for him.

“
Hell no
!” flew out of my mouth before I could stop it. If there were such a thing as a demon child, I would definitely nominate Trey to be the poster boy.

Trey is three, going on thirty-three. He can rap, dance, and cuss like nobody's business, yet he still can't manage to get that whole potty training thing together. The last time I was graced with Trey's presence, he pulled down his pants, tore his diaper off, and took a shit right in the middle of my kitchen floor. On top of that, I still have some of his artwork on my walls, which he created with my brand new tube of M. A. C. lipstick.

“You still haven't repaid me for having to get my carpet cleaned after his last visit,” I reminded Junior.

“Don't even worry about that, Tori. You know I got you.”

“No, I don't know that,” I said.

“Look, I'ma pay you back as soon as I get my income tax check,” he said, hitting me with his usual delay tactic.

I sighed. It would have been much easier to stick to my guns if Trey weren't asleep on Junior's shoulder, looking so sweet and angelic.

Besides, it was not as if I had much else to do, anyway.

Nelson was working to meet a deadline before we leave tomorrow morning on our road trip, and the only plans I had were doing laundry, packing a suitcase, and reorganizing the shoes in my closet.

“Well, I am impressed with how hard you've been working for me lately, so I guess I can help you out,” I said. “Has Trey eaten already?”

“Yeah, he just had some Burger King,” Junior said.

“Just make sure you're back by seven tomorrow morning, Junior, because Nelson and I are leaving for St. Louis at eight o'clock.”

“I'll be back way before that,” Junior said, laying Trey on the couch and handing me his Transformers backpack.

Trey woke up the second Junior walked out the door.

I was sitting next to him on the couch, and my heart melted when he curled up in my lap, and gave me a big kiss.

“Tay sank you,” he said, looking up at me with those big brown eyes.

Trey currently has his C's and S's mixed up with his T's so what he actually meant was “Say thank you.”

“Sank me Auntie Cori. Sank me!”

“Thank you for the kiss, Trey.”

“You welcome,” he smiled, and then wiped his snotty nose with the back of his hand.

It was a beautiful Hallmark moment, and I was so thrilled that Trey had obviously learned something from one of the books I had bought him for his birthday.

However, the memory of that moment was shattered fifteen minutes later when Trey suddenly frowned at me and shouted:

“Gimme a tookie!”

Now, as I have said before, Tori loves the kids. But that precocious smart-mouth stuff that everybody thinks is so cute nowadays does not work with Tori. I don't mind kids, so long as they mind me.

“Gimme a tookie!” Trey demanded again, this time with the attitude of a grown-ass man.

I'm old school when it comes to dealing with kids, but I don't subscribe to the Bernie Mac philosophy of hitting kids in the stomach or the throat, so I tried a little tenderness instead.

“Gimme” is not a nice way to ask someone for what you want,” I said sternly. “Say, ‘May I have a cookie,
please
?'”

“Nay I hab a tookie,
peas
?” he repeated, barely above a whisper.

The diction was still far from perfect, but I could not help but smile at his sincere effort. I set Trey up at the kitchen table with a glass of chocolate milk and two Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies.

“Sank you,” he said, and then accidentally spilled his glass of chocolate milk on my freshly waxed hardwood floor.

 

No good deed goes unpunished. The next morning, seven o'clock came and went with no word from Junior, forcing Nelson to have to leave for St. Louis without me.

Livid is not even a strong enough word for the way I felt about being taken advantage of by my brother yet again—just when I thought he was on the road to getting his shit together.

And the worst part of it was, I was literally stuck with Trey. I couldn't get in touch with his mother, Ashley, and my parents were on day four of the ten-day Caribbean cruise I had given Daddy for his birthday. Cookie, Aunt Vera, and everyone else I attempted to drop Trey off with, just flat out said “No!” which is what I should have done in the first place.

I was so upset with Junior that I was in tears when Nelson had come over to get me so that we could head out on the road trip.

“Oh Tori, don't cry,” Nelson said, pulling me into a comforting hug. “This is not a big deal, okay?”

“But I was looking forward to spending that time with you,” I sobbed.

“I know, but listen, this is what we're going to do,” he said. “As soon as I get back, we are going to sit down and plan a trip to New York. We'll take an eating tour of the city, check out
The Color Purple
on Broadway—the whole nine. All right?”

I nodded and blew my nose, because a trip to New York is one helluva consolation prize.

It wasn't until way late in the evening that Junior finally came to pick up his child.

“Ah Tori, I'm sorry. My cell phone went dead—”

“Stop! I don't even want to hear it,” I said.

I handed Trey's Transformers backpack to Junior, gave my nephew hugs and kisses, and had not one word for Junior as I closed the door behind his unreliable ass.

I had been cooped up in the house with a three-year-old for a full twenty-four hours, and I definitely needed to get out and socialize with some grown folks.

It was just going to be me and the newly single Simone hitting the town tonight, because Yvette was all caught up in her new relationship with Daniel, and Nadia flew to Miami last Tuesday to get her boobs done at a steep discount rate.

I had just gotten out of the shower, still dripping wet, when I heard knocking at my front door. I threw on my terry cloth bathrobe and ran to answer the door for who I assumed was Simone. Instead, I was face-to-face with Roland.

“Daddy's home!” he said, his breath reeking of alcohol. “And it looks like I'm just in time.”

I suddenly felt dirty and in need of another shower, as his eyes roamed lustfully all over my body.

“Just what the hell are you doing here?” I asked, tying the belt to my robe even tighter.

Roland stooped down in my face and said, “We need to talk,” then walked in without being invited.

“Okay, first of all, your breath
stinks
,” I said. “And second, you left me at the altar in favor of your baby mama, who you were masquerading as your “friend” for all these years. What else do we need to discuss?”

“I fucked up,” he belched. “I want you back, Tori.”

I burst out laughing, because that was like the funniest shit I had heard in a long time. “You want me back?”

“Yes! I must have been temporarily insane when I made the decision to leave you for that ho-ass Veronica,” Roland slurred. “I want you back, baby. So bad that it hurts.”

“And you know what, Roland? People in hell want air conditioning, but it ain't happening, baby. So bounce!”

“Naw, this is my home, too,” he said, making himself comfortable on the couch. “This is where my heart really is. I can't leave here. Not again.”

“Oh, the hell you say! You're getting your ass up out of here, right now!”

“Nope, can't do it…” he said in a low, sleepy voice.

There was another knock at the door. This time it was Simone. “You ain't hardly ready,” she said, looking me up and down.

“I know, I got interrupted,” I said. “Girl, you have to come see what the cat done drug back up in here.”

“Oh no, this Negro didn't!” Simone said when she saw Roland, who was now passed out on the couch, snoring.

“Girl, that's what I said. He showed up here a few minutes ago, drunk out of his mind.”

“Phew!” Simone said, covering her nose. “What the hell has he been drinking? Gasoline?”

“He must have been drinking some liquid crack if he thinks I'm getting back together with him.”

“Un-unh!” said Simone.

“Ain't that one helluva nerve?” I asked. “Now please help me get his stanking ass up, and out of my house.”

I slapped Roland hard across the face a few times, and even tried to rouse him by throwing cold water in his face. None of it worked. That fool was passed out so cold, it was almost like he was dead.

“Call Junior,” Simone suggested. “He's big and strong enough to get him out of here.”

“No, they can't be within fifty feet of each other because of the restraining order,” I said.

“Well, go on and get dressed,” Simone said. “You can spend the night at my place, and with any luck, Roland's ass will be sober and gone in the morning when you get back.”