by Nicole Falls
“Get off the boy’s back, Ran. Would you rather him have baby mama drama?” Pops said.
Mama huffed, but quieted down. We continued the rest of the meal with Sophie taking over the show, regaling us with stories about the kids at school, her teacher, and dance class. After dinner, Mama ran off with Sophie to practice some moves for yet another performance that was coming up soon. My pops, Everett and I retired to Pops’ man cave to watch the game. I’d been jetting right after every family dinner since Bee and I had officially hooked up. This week since Bee had her girls over, I had no reason to book it home immediately. There was nothing waiting on me at home but piles of work anyway.
“So what’s her name, son?” my father asked, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Whose name, pops?”
“The one that’s got you running outta here barely after you finish the last bite of ya meal every week? Don’t give me that bullshit excuse you’re giving your mother, either.”
Everett laughed, looking at me.
“Pops, I really did get put in charge of a new project at work,” I said, not answering the question.
“I don’t doubt you did, Ellis. But I know my son. You’re too anxious when you’re tryna get up outta here. You don’t have that crazy ass expression that you normally do when the job got you hemmed up. So it’s gotta be a lil filly.”
I remained silent, neither confirming nor denying. Everett continued laughing.
“What’s so funny, Ev? You met her yet? Why isn’t he bringing her ‘round here to meet ya mama and me yet? She got a cockeye? One leg shorter than the other? Hump in the back?”
“N-n-nah pops. I don’t know n-nothing about any girl. I think it really is some w-work shit,” Everett said, unconvincingly.
“And you’re obviously lying, Porky.”
I laughed loudly at that. Pops hadn’t called him that in at least twenty years. Everett was less than amused, however. Growing up, Ev was a lil portly through his preteen years. Combine that with his penchant for stuttering when he wasn’t telling the truth and the nickname was born. That goddamn stammer had given me away though. We sat in silence until Pops broke the stalemate.
“Fine. I’ll leave it for now. But I’m warning you; your flimsy work excuse won’t last much longer. You know how Miranda is. She’s about to start parading eligible bachelorettes in front of you at these dinners. So whatever you got going on with your love life, you better get it together fast.”
“You gotta hold her off, Pops.”
“Now you know good and damn well I can’t stop that woman when she’s on a roll.”
“Dad. For real. I need you to run interference for me. I’m not confirming or denying anything, but I will say that I don’t need Miranda Taylor finding me a woman. Not right now. Not in the future.”
My dad paused a beat, looking at me curiously for a few minutes.
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?”
“Yep,” he replied, taking a sip of his beer and turning his attention back to the game.
After the game went off, Pops went for his post-dinner nap and Everett and I remained in the man cave.
“So you obviously know,” I said.
“Mmmmmmmhmmmmm. You know my wife can’t hold water. Told me she saw you at Bee’s last week.”
“I had no idea Cass even knew, bruh.”
“Y’all dating or just fuckin’? Cass ain’t know that for sure.”
“Everett, chill.”
“Man, since when are you a debutante? Don’t act like we haven’t had worse conversations. Well?”
“I’m not answering that.”
Everett just nodded and made an indistinct noise.
“What?”
“Nothin’. Nothing at all, my brother. So what’s with the secret squirrel shit?”
“What! There’s something your wife didn’t tell you? Because I’m sure she knows better than me at this point. Bee doesn’t want the fam to know. She thinks Mama and Auntie Im would lose their shit. I told her she was trippin’.”
Everett said nothing, looking away to pick up his beer and take a long draw.
“What?”
“She has a point.”
“The fuck she does? Why because y’all dated on some kiddie shit back in the day?”
“That and the fact that you aren’t exactly known for being Mr. Forever. So when you eventually end whatever this is that y’all are doing, it’s going to be mad awkward for the entire family, man. Who wants to deal with that shit?”
“And what if I told you that this won’t be over any time soon?”
“Then I’d say you might wanna let Bee know because she doesn’t have a clue.”
“Noted.”
“Robert Parker is on the line for you, Ellis. Do you want me to transfer him through?” Pauline said.
“Senior or Junior?”
“Junior.”
Here we go again. Robert Parker, Jr. was a pain in my ass. I don’t know what it was that caused them to leave Jamieson & Weil, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t wish that they would take their business back. Sighing, I told Pauline to patch him through.
“Ellis, Robert Parker here. Just wanted to touch base and see where you guys were with that logo update I asked for.”
“Our graphics team is currently working to implement the changes, Rob. Like I said in the email, I’ll get it back to you as soon as possible. I know they have a few things that are high priority and some of the team is out on vacation, so it may be a few days before we’re able to get those changes implemented. The timetable isn’t changing, right? We’re still aiming for the new site to be launched in six weeks, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. Six weeks. I just don’t want you all to fall too far behind. Jamieson & Weil never had these issues. I had that fine ass graphic designer over there at my beck and call. Tell her to jump and she asked how high. Damn. Sure hate that Father and Jake decided we needed to work with Urban Current going forward.”
I steeled my tongue, seeing as how that “fine ass graphic designer” was my girlfriend and hearing this nigga go on and on about her like this made me wanna punch his entire face in. I hated that I was even put on this damn project, honestly. Carl insisted that it go to me since I was heading up our local business efforts. Roger, my counterpart, could have taken this shit though. I’d rather have dealt with national brands over interactions with this prick.
“Like I said, Rob, we’ll get you sorted out in the next few days. Was there anything else you needed? I’m headed to a meeting shortly.”
“Robert.”
Was this nigga talking to himself?
“Pardon?”
“My name is Robert. You called me Rob.”
You gotta be shitting me.
“Right. Anything else you need?”
“That’ll be all for now. If I need anything else, I’ll call back,” Robert said, hanging up.
Rude ass bastard. I pressed the intercom to alert Pauline.
“Yes?”
“If that idiot calls back again today, don’t put him through.”
I could hear the suppressed laughter in Pauline’s voice as she agreed to my demand. I checked with the lead graphic designer via email to get a more precise idea of when they’d have deliverables ready for this chump so I could avoid further interaction. As soon as I heard back from them, I’d email Rob...oh excuse me, Robert back so he’d stop calling me.
“How did you deal with that motherfucker, babe?”
We were in the middle of eating lunch when I asked Bee that question. I’d gotten a few curious looks when I showed up looking for Devorah. I wasn’t sure if that was because I worked for The Competition or because no other man has come into the Jamieson & Weil offices for her prior to me. The petty side of me wanted it to be the latter. Bee seemed pleasantly surprised by my pop up. I’d come over to take her out to lunch, but was summarily turned down. Instead we’d ordered in some Cluck and commandeered a conference room to chow down.
>
“Which motherfucker is that, El?”
“Rob Parker, Jr. That guy is a head case.”
“Oh that guy,” she replied, rolling her eyes, “Not having to deal with him anymore is the only upside to us no longer having the Parker account. He used to call me at least six times a day with design suggestions.”
“Oh, so I should feel special because he’s only calling me three times daily?”
“Low key, I think he had a thing for me and assumed since my girl was dating his brother that he had a shot, but…” she trailed off, shuddering.
“Yeah, he definitely had a thing for you. He manages to bring you up in nearly every damn conversation. He’s lucky I haven’t cracked his head yet.”
Devorah threw her head back laughing loudly. “Jealous much?”
“Woman, please. You know I got you sprung.”
Devorah stopped laughing and sat back in her seat. Eyes narrowed, lips pursed and ready to fire off venom I’m sure, she remained silent just ice grilling me. Here we go. We sat there in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before Devorah let out a low chuckle.
“You think you got me on lock, huh?”
A cocky smirk spread over my face before I answered.
“Don’t think; know.”
“And you’re sure of that, huh?”
Something in her tone let me know that I should probably be a little less cocky with this answer. She was giving me a chance to amend. The truth was I didn’t know how she felt about me. We’d been dating...or whatever the hell you could call alternating spending time at either of our houses for the past couple months. She took that silly ass pledge I made up, but that meant nothing. She was adequately demonstrative or whatever, but the fact that we were rarely around anyone else but each other gave me no clue about how she really felt about me. I’d already put my balls in her purse by agreeing to this no outside dates within a twenty mile radius shit, so I was not about to ask her to talk about her feelings.
“I mean…” I trailed off, shrugging, “You’re a hard nut to crack, but you ain’t put me out yet, so I gotta chalk this one up to the sprung column.”
Devorah laughed, “I’m fucking with you, El.”
I nodded, “Yep, that’s what I thought. Sprung.”
Devorah laughed as we finished up our meal and departed ways. We initially had plans to meet up after work, but part of the reason I had surprised her for lunch was because I needed to break our evening plans. Trey called me earlier, throwing up the SOS. He didn’t want to get into it over the phone, but something told me there was trouble in paradise. Bee and I weren’t going to be doing much besides being laid up and catching a flick, so rescheduling wasn’t a huge deal.
“So you just gonna sit here, drinking my beer and taking up space in my house, or are you gonna tell me what was so important that I cancelled on my girl tonight?”
Trey came over and had been acting strange since he arrived. He kept one hand in his pocket and got up intermittently to pace my living room. In the ten minutes since he’d been here, he hadn’t said a word. I was being patient, letting him cook, but now I was annoyed. I sat back, sipping my beer waiting for him to finally say something. He stopped pacing, took that damn hand out his pocket and sat a small blue box on the end table in front of me.
“Is that…”
“Yep.”
“Are you…”
“Yep.”
“So can I say it?”
Trey cut his eyes over to me, a look of exasperation on his face. “You think that’s what I wanna hear right now?”
“You think I give a fuck about what you wanna hear when I’m right?”
“Man, whatever. So get this shit though, I went to ask her dad for his permission and do you know this motherfucker said no.”
“Wait. I thought you and Walt were on good terms?”
“Me too. But when you’ve kept his daughter on hold for damn near fifteen years, those good terms lose some of their luster. I mean he’s never been rude, but man, I didn’t think he’d straight up tell me no.”
“So what you gonna do?”
“I’m going to ask her anyway,” Trey responded and then ran down his plan to me.
“That’s pretty ballsy, bruh. But wait...you tryna do all this shit by when?”
“I got three days. Which is why I need your help. I’ve talked to her sister Tracee and managed to get them on a flight. Putting them up at the Omni for the night, but I need you to bring them to Pembroke for the engagement surprise.”
“You got it, man. So how you feel?”
“Nervous as fuck.”
“So what made you break down?”
“Pregnancy.”
“Wait...Demi is…”
“Nah, man, but we thought she might be. That shit had me shook. She told me that if she was pregnant the baby wasn’t going to have my name despite us being together. Because why is it important that the baby have my name when its mother didn’t? Said it would be coming from her body, she’d be the primary caregiver, so why shouldn’t it have her name, too?”
“Yikes.”
“Yep. Fucked me right on up. So I thought about the reason I was so opposed to marrying Demi and honestly, I couldn’t even remember why the fuck I started this no marriage BS.”
“It was because--”
“Nigga, I don’t need your reminder. Moral of the story is that’s dead.”
“So you really are going all in, huh?”
A grin broke out over Trey’s face.
“For broke.”
“Aw shit! Congrats, bruh. You think she’s going to say yes?”
“You think she ain’t?!”
We both laughed at that. I couldn’t believe my boy had finally come to his senses. I mean damn, the brother was damn near married already since he and Demi had been inseparable since college. His parents’ marriage imploding during our senior year really did a number on him though. Before all of that went down, he talked nonstop about marrying Demi and keeping her pregnant with a gang of kids. Glad to see he’d worked through whatever shit was lingering and was concentrating on making his girl happy.
“I saw Sophie the other day. That baby is so adorable. She’d be cuter if she were made of half of you though. You just had to give Everett away to that lil red girl. Now look at you, lonely as you wanna be,” my mother laughed.
We had been on the phone for the past twenty minutes and I wondered how long it would take her to work in a reference to the fact that I was still single. This was part of the reason that despite us living only a few minutes apart, I refused to visit her in person more often. We did dinner once a week if she was lucky and that’s it. She still, however, insisted on calling me daily much to my chagrin. And in every damn conversation, she found some kind of way to bring up the fact that I was, as she calls it “alone and lonely”.
“Takes one to know one, Lonely Linda,” I joked.
“Watch your mouth lil girl. Been there; done that. I’ve had the husband. Got the baby. You, on the other hand, can barely manage to hold onto a boyfriend for more than six months.”
“By choice…”
“Mmmhmmm, so you say. You sure there isn’t anything you want to tell me. I may not understand it, but Mama is always here for you no matter what.”
“Ma, what are you talking about?”
“Maybe you got a lil girlfriend instead of a boyfriend? I’m not judging you…”
“Oh God, Ma! I’m not a lesbian. I’d tell you if I were.”
It’d certainly make my life a helluva lot easier right now.
“You sure, baby? I mean it has been a while since you brought a young man around. I’d love you regardless, you know that, right? Retha’s girl came out the cupboard recently and nobody looks at her any differently.”
“Out the closet, mama. And Jenice wasn’t ever in a closet to begin with.”
“Cupboard, closet…wherever. It’s a storage space. And I just want you to know that I won’t mind if you’re a
secret lesbian. Just make sure she makes enough that we can buy me some grandbabies.”
“Ma! I’m not a secret lesbian. I’m actually seeing someone. A male someone.”
“Mmmhmmm, sure baby.”
“I am!”
“When you bringing him by to meet your mama?”
“No time soon and you know why…”
