Both Sasha and Casey shot Paris a puzzled look.
“Girl, will you stop talking in riddles?” Casey said to Paris, then turned back to Sasha. “But she’s right, you know. I think.”
“Oh, I know I’m right,” Paris shot. “She holding out on us, Casey. Trying to keep all the tea to herself while we sit over here thirsty. I see how you are, Sasha. You like to drink up other people’s stuff but then leave us in a drought.”
Sasha laughed. She wholeheartedly loved Paris’s sayings. “You and your comparisons, girl!” She shook her head. Being around Paris did keep her laughing, when they weren’t pulling out each other’s hair that is. When they were good, they were good, but when they were bad . . .
“But she’s right,” Casey said. “And you have no idea how hard it is for me to try to untwist the riddles she’s talking in, make sense out of them, and then admit that I agree with them. So please, just come out and say whatever is going on before everything she says starts making sense out the gate!” Casey threw her hands up, exasperated. “Hell, I need another drink. And not no damn tea.”
“Although it would be nice if you just went on and spilled it,” Paris said, not letting up. She could tell Sasha had something to hide. Paris took a bite of her food.
Sasha thought for a moment, then, not able to keep it in any longer herself, she blurted out, “Terrance bought me this bomb leather furniture set, but then when it all wouldn’t fit into my house, he suggested that I get a house that it all could fit in . . . his house. So I moved in with Terrance. There.” Sasha said it all in one breath and then began eating her food without making eye contact with the ladies. She sucked up that Coke like she’d been dying of thirst. She used the straw to maneuver around the ice cubes to get every last drop.
“You do know they have free refills, don’t you?” Paris said.
“Yeah,” Casey concurred. “Free refills, free furniture, hell, you get all kinds of stuff for free these days.”
Both Paris and Casey chuckled.
“You two stop it,” Sasha said. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything. I knew you two were going to try to clown me. I practically just arrived in Atlanta yesterday and now today I’ve already moved in with someone.” Sasha let out an “Ugh,” and then said, “My mother is going to kill me.”
“For what?” Paris said. “Casey’s momma didn’t kill her and I think she’d met and married Eric within that same time frame as you met and moved in with Terrance.”
Casey picked a crumb of bread off the sandwich she’d been eating and threw it at Paris. “Did not.”
“Go on and lie to yourself while I tell Sasha the truth,” Paris said. “But anyway,” she said to Sasha, “you ain’t got nothing to feel bad about. I’d be shouting it at the rooftop. Bitches would be hating me.” Paris’s tone dampened. “If only I’d played my cards right. That could be—” Paris’s words faded, but Casey had cut them off, anyway.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Casey said, pouting.
“Duh, I didn’t even tell my own mother,” Sasha said. “And I tell her everything.”
“I don’t see why you’re being all secretive about it.” Paris shrugged. “You have nothing to be ashamed about.”
“What would your mother say if after all these years she raised you to be a strong, independent woman, you move out on your own and then shacked up with the first thing smoking?” Sasha said to Paris.
“I wouldn’t know,” Paris said, kind of sadly, “my mother didn’t raise me.” She cast her eyes down.
Sasha, feeling like she’d touched a sore spot, looked to Casey.
Casey did a quick shake of her head, signaling Sasha not to go there with Paris.
Once again Sasha felt like Paris and Casey had so many things between them. They wanted to be all up in Sasha’s business, but seemed to keep the most intimate details about their own lives under lock and key, and they’d made copies only for each other. For the first time ever, a tinge of jealously poked at Sasha. But then she quickly had to reason with herself that Casey and Paris had been friends longer than she’d been friends with either of them. In time she’d no longer feel like an outsider. Perhaps eventually they’d all make copies of their keys for each other.
Paris cleared her throat. “But my grandmother, the woman who did raise me,” she said, brushing off her emotions and putting on her tough act again, “would have said, ‘Granny ain’t raise no fool.’”
Casey laughed. Sasha only laughed in hopes of keeping the spirits up.
“She’s right, though,” Casey said to Sasha while nodding toward Paris. “You don’t have anything to be ashamed about. You can’t let what other people will think and what other people will say affect or define your relationship with Terrance. I told you about me and Eric hooking up. Just imagine if I’d let the rest of the world and what they thought get to me. I’d still be pumping pom-poms.”
“Or like you so eloquently put it before,” Paris said, “dancing at a strip club.”
Aha, Sasha thought. So way back when Casey had made that comment, Paris had, too, thought it was shady.
Casey acted as if she hadn’t even heard Paris’s comment. She floated right on over it. “I personally am happy for you.” Casey put her hands on top of Sasha’s. “Our dudes are besties,” Casey squealed. “So you know what that means . . . lots of double dates.”
Sasha smiled and then exhaled. “God, it feels good to get that out. I felt like a teenager sneaking over her boyfriend’s house.” Sasha and Casey laughed.
“Well, you just better hurry up and change the title from boyfriend to husband,” Paris said. “Hoes in Atlanta move fast.” She sipped her drink. “Hell, looks like even the hoes from Ohio move fast, too.”
Sasha turned her head sharply toward Paris.
Paris looked up from her straw and saw the look Sasha was giving her. She sucked her teeth and put on a happy face. “Girl, I was just playing.” She started chuckling.
Casey started chuckling, too, a little louder and more exaggerated than she should have. Sasha, just like she had a few moments ago, chuckled as well, just to keep the spirits up. But something told her that this little threesome she was trying so hard to fit into might take its toll on her own spirit.
Chapter 17
The next couple of months went by like a montage for Sasha. Her life was truly like scene after scene of the greatest romance movie there ever was, and she was the leading lady. Her life with Terrance was nonstop excitement. One minute Sasha and Terrance would be on a tropical beach sipping drinks out of pineapples. The next minute they’d be like two crazy teens, adrenaline pumping as they conquered roller coaster rides at Six Flags. Sasha walked around the theme park with stuffed animals Terrance had won her shooting basketball, of course.
What Sasha really enjoyed was attending Terrance’s games. Casey had taken her shopping, of course, to show her how she needed to dress for the games. On game day, Casey made sure Sasha was at her house three hours before tipoff for hair and makeup.
“Honey, now that you are dating a baller, the game has changed,” Casey had told her. “And I don’t want to hear none of that shit about this all being foreign to you. You better learn to speak the language and learn the customs is all I can say.”
“This is just too much,” Sasha had said one day while having her makeup professionally done at Casey’s house. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve attended a seminar, gone to the library to do some research, or even sketched at home.” Spending time with Terrance was taking away from Sasha’s regular schedule, and those three hours of preparation getting ready to attend one of his games didn’t allow her any free time after work. Whether Sasha wanted to admit it or not, the love train had come full speed down the tracks. It had hit her, thrown her several thousand feet in the air, with her landing way off course.
“You think this is too much?” Casey said to Sasha, letting out a harrumph. “Then don’t even think about marrying that man. Dating
a baller is one thing, but being the wife of a baller is a whole other animal. Trust me.”
“How so?” Sasha asked.
Casey looked Sasha up and down. “Ummm, let’s see if you make the team first, then we’ll talk.”
There was no need in Casey wasting her time and breath if Sasha couldn’t even handle hair and makeup. Casey sent her shoe stylist away and said, “You give up a lot of things if you decide on this lifestyle, but you gain a lot of Manolo Blahniks.”
In spite of how much time being with Terrance was taking from Sasha’s schedule, she was loving it. One day she would be at one of Terrance’s games, and the next she’d be in a restaurant he’d had shut down for the night just to entertain her. Then there were the evenings of mad, passionate love, and mornings, and afternoons as well.
And just as Casey had mentioned, there were the double dates. On a Monday Sasha and Casey would be at the mall on a shopping spree to pick out clothes for a weekend get-away with their men. Sasha was surrounded by Valentino and Armani clothes and she couldn’t be happier about it. Her thrift store dress was thrust to the back of her closet so she could make room for her new Balmain pants.
By the Friday after their latest shopping spree, they were in another country altogether. Just when Sasha thought things couldn’t get any better, she and Terrance now found themselves on a private jet to Europe, compliments of Eric and Casey. Sasha thought Terrance did things big; well, Eric did them bigger. Not only had Eric flipped the tab for their transportation to France, but he’d paid for their hotel stay as well.
Terrance and Sasha arrived to a beautiful room that was twice the size of her old apartment. Sasha was certain it was one of the best rooms in Le Royal Monceau until the next evening when Eric and Casey invited them to their suite for evening cocktails.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sasha said when she entered the two-story suite. This would be their second night in Paris, but their first time seeing Casey’s and Eric’s living quarters. “Your hotel room has a spiral staircase leading to a second floor? This is sick.” Sasha, without being offered a tour, took it upon herself to take a few steps and enter the living area of the suite.
Casey followed on her heels, ready to take on the role as tour guide . . . in more ways than one. Sasha had never seen Casey in anything so slinky and low cut. Although the girl was always happy to show off her assets, Sasha was sure that her underwear had more fabric than the jumpsuit that Casey was rocking.
Eric had a proud look on his face when he said, “Only the best for my lady.” He finished up the alcoholic beverage he had in his hand. “They had another one available that I tried to get your boy to stay in,” Eric said to Sasha as he and Terrance followed behind Casey. “But he wouldn’t accept.”
“What?” Sasha said and spun around. “You mean to tell me we could have been staying in a room like this?” She raised her arms and allowed them to drop to her sides. Although Sasha still had frugal streaks, suddenly being around so much money made her realize exactly what money could buy. And she wasn’t about to ignore the finer things.
Terrance sucked his teeth. “Man, I’m not going to ask anybody to spend money on something I wouldn’t spend it on,” Terrance said. “It’s nice and all, but I’m not giving them people, or having someone else do it on my behalf, that much damn money to lay my head somewhere for a night. It’s robbery, and I won’t be an accomplice.”
“It’s not robbery,” Eric said. “It’s living, so stop being frugal and live a little.”
“I do live,” Terrance countered, “and quite well. But I ain’t one to just throw my money away.”
“But it was Eric’s money you would have been throwing away,” Sasha said, just as serious as ever.
Eric laughed. “Yeah, but your boy was being all humble and shit.”
Eric and Terrance might have been best friends, they both played for the NBA on the same team and enjoyed some of the same things, but when it came to money, they were very different. Eric was a bit more—okay, a lot more—flashy than Terrance. He wanted the world to know he had money at his disposal, even if it meant he was on some Floyd Mayweather ish and simply burned it just to show that he literally had money to burn. Sasha noticed that Casey would be right there smiling beside him whenever she saw things on the Internet about the couple on one of their extravagant evenings out. Eric and Casey always seemed to have an entourage, mainly women, trailing them. Eric was an attention getter. What better way to get attention than not only to be in the company of his beautiful trophy wife, but in addition to that, have five to eight more beautiful women surrounding him? Why he didn’t want folks to know he was a partner in that sex circus was beyond Sasha, especially when he walked around looking like a pimp anyway.
At first Sasha did find the fact that his entourage was female instead of male just a tad unusual. But leave it to this couple to switch things up. And it worked for them. Definitely kept them in the limelight enough to make them local celebrities. Casey always looked completely fine with her gaggle of scantily clad followers. She was always smiling for the cameras.
Sasha was glad that Terrance didn’t feel the need to roll like that. Having a bunch of men always around them period would aggravate her, but having beautiful women around would make her feel a certain type of way. But Casey’s concept was always the more, the merrier. To Sasha it appeared as if, for Casey, having just a couple good friends in her life wouldn’t suffice. She wanted to be surrounded by lots of people who, at least to the world, looked like they were friends even if they really weren’t. After all, Sasha had never met any of Casey and Eric’s party groupies. So it didn’t seem like Casey was all that close to them. It was always about what things looked like from the outside looking in with Eric and Casey. But in a few moments, Sasha would get a clear vision of the view from the inside looking in.
“Man, I paid two thousand a month for Sasha’s rent at her apartment,” Terrance declared, “I wish the hell I would spend that kind of money per night for one hotel room. I’d rather spend that money shopping for my girl where I can see my money.”
“Four thousand a night,” Eric bragged.
“And you weren’t spending it,” Sasha said. “He was.” She nodded to Eric. “And aren’t you the one who said something about not blocking blessings, not accepting them, or something like that?”
“Yeah, but this is different,” Terrance said. He looked around at the huge open living area with snow-white furniture and a killer view over Paris. “This is just overboard. And besides,”—he took Sasha into his arms—“if my lady ever stays in a place like this, it will be on my dime and not another man’s.” He gave Eric the side-eye. “’Cause I know how this nigga rolls.”
“If I pay, you gotta play.” Eric winked, then grabbed Casey and pulled her into his arms. Her back was against his chest while she nestled in his arms. He kissed her on the back of the head.
Sasha looked to see if Casey was maybe feeling some kind of way about Terrance’s comment and Eric’s reaction to it. How did Eric roll? Pay to play? What was that comment supposed to mean? Did Eric expect something from Terrance for paying for the trip? Did he expect something from Sasha?
When Sasha saw that Casey was all smiles, looking quite secure in her man’s arms, she figured if Casey wasn’t bothered, then why should she be? It was probably just another case of Sasha, once again, looking more into things than she needed to. There was no reason for Sasha to have taken Terrance’s comment as anything other than silly guy talk. After all, that was the motto of Eric’s strip club: pay to play.
“Come on, let’s head into the den.” Casey pointed, exiting her husband’s arms.
“Den? This joint has a living area and a den?” Sasha said, stomping off to where Casey had pointed.
“Don’t be mad at us,” Casey said as she followed behind Sasha. “Be mad at ya man, because y’all could have been right next door.”
“Yep, adjoining rooms,” Eric added with a hint of seduction
behind his tone as the women entered the den area without him and Terrance.
“Which is another reason why I ain’t want this cat putting us up in no pimped-out penthouse suite like this,” Terrance said. “Might think I owe his ass something.” He headed toward the den.
“Oh, there wouldn’t have been no might about it,” Eric joked. “You know I’m into barter and trade.” He laughed as he, too, headed into the den.
“Will you two stop being silly?” Casey turned to face her husband. “And nasty, and just come on.” Casey, who was leading the way, disappeared into the den area. Soon after, the men entered behind her.
Sasha had long ago entered the den, missing out on the little conversation that was taking place between the other three. She stood in the den area trying her best to maintain her composure. She figured she’d drooled enough over the adjoining couple’s vacation space. She didn’t want to make it seem like she and Terrance were bumming it. Their room was lovely, too, but Casey and Eric’s room was like comparing Sasha’s apartment to Terrance’s house.
The couples sat down to a spread of appetizers and fancy hors d’oeuvres Casey had ordered up to the suite from room service. There was a fully stocked bar in which Eric played bartender until everyone was settled in with their favorite cocktail. The couples were having a lovely time joking and talking when Eric cleared his throat and looked to Casey.
Casey straightened up and then grabbed her drink. “I have an idea,” Casey said. “Let’s play Truth or Dare.”
“Truth or Dare?” Sasha snickered. “How old are we?” She laughed and then took a drink of her wine.
“Oh, come on, don’t be a ruddy poo,” Eric said. He looked to Terrance. “You’re game, aren’t you, man?”
“Uhhh, I don’t know.” Terrance shook his head. He’d just taken a sip from his drink. “I’ve heard grown-up games have ruined many a relationship, especially the game of Truth or Dare.” He sat his drink down on the glass table that separated one couple from the other.
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