Stephanie pressed down on her bottom lip with her teeth to keep from laughing as I looked down at the floor, giggling inside.
“Nice meeting you,” Stephanie and I said in unison.
They nodded, staring us up and down deviously.
“How about a drink?” Wallace asked.
“Oh, no, thank you. I think I’ve had enough to drink for one night,” I replied.
“Yeah—me, too,” Stephanie said.
“Well, let’s dance, then,” Red said as he got up and walked toward me.
“Let’s all dance,” Wallace suggested.
“Well, what about our jackets?” Stephanie asked.
“Just leave them right here—we’ll keep an eye on them,” Wallace replied as he reached for Tangie’s hand.
Green got up and we all walked onto the dance floor. The dee-jay was hot! He played one great song after another as the people filled the dance floor. Those old dudes could dance, too. By now Tangie was feeling good off all those Remy XOs. She had to have been, because Wallace was all over her and not one time did she push him away. In fact, it looked like she was encouraging it. He was occasionally humping her from behind as she bent over, shaking her ass in rhythm. I played it safe by dancing an arm’s length away from Red so he wouldn’t get any ideas. Stephanie was dancing at a safe distance with Green, occasionally backing away before his hands could touch any part of her body.
Finally, after about five songs, my feet began to hurt so I signaled to Red that I was ready to sit down. Seeing this, Tangie and Stephanie both left the dance floor as the guys trailed them. When we got back to the table, I sat down and wiped the small beads of sweat that had formed on my forehead. Green grabbed a napkin, walked over to Stephanie, and began wiping the sides of her face. She smiled and politely took the napkin from him and wiped around her neck, looking over at me to see my reaction.
“I’m thirsty—does anyone need anything?” Wallace asked, then waited on everyone’s response. We all declined.
“C’mon, the night’s still young,” he said.
Stephanie looked at her watch as her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Wow, it’s almost three o’clock. I have to be in church in a few hours.”
“Yeah, it is getting late. But, thank you, guys, for a good time,” Tangie said as she hugged Wallace.
Wallace reached in his pocket and gave Tangie a slip of paper that she folded in her hand.
Stephanie and I grabbed our leather jackets and started toward the door. By now the crowd had thinned out a little. Outside there were groups of people standing around talking in the parking lot as we got in the car, heading toward my town house.
“That was fun,” Tangie said. “Most of the brothers in there were fake, though.”
“It was all right. I was tripping on how some of the brothers just stood there staring a hole in you like they wanted you to sweat them,” Stephanie replied.
“What about you, Mya? Did you meet your Mr. Right?” Tangie joked.
“I met someone nice. We had good conversation and we seem to have a lot in common. I guess you can say we sorta connected visually before he approached me.”
“What?” Stephanie interrupted. “That brother you met came out of the crowd over to your ass and you know it. Don’t make that shit seem like something out of a soap opera. ’Connected visually—’”
“Aw, damn, she had me going for a minute,” Tangie replied, laughing.
“And Tangie, what’s up with you and the old man with the zoot suit throwback?”
We laughed.
“Take’em or shake’em. They kept on buying the drinks and I kept on drinking. Plus, they were cool. Wallace must be out of his mind if he thinks I’m going to call his old ass, though.”
“Yeah, and what’s up with Green trying to wipe the sweat from my face. I almost told his ass something,” Stephanie said.
“He didn’t mean no harm, girl. They were just out trying to hook up with a little young thang, that’s all. In fact, they actually made my night,” Tangie replied.
The ride home began to wear us down as we continued on in silence. My mind drifted to Darryl for a minute. Tangie was joking, but what if he was my Mr. Right? He seemed to have all the characteristics. And damn, was he fine, I smiled to myself. So far so good, I thought, as a smile came over my face.
CHAPTER 5
Stephanie
“So you finally decided to bring your ass home, huh?” a voice sounded in the darkness as I walked through the front door. I paused, startled, before turning the light switch on. Curtis was sitting on the corner of the couch in his boxers and do-rag, frowning.
“You scared the shit out of me, Curtis. What are you doing home so early, anyway?” I said as I walked toward the kitchen.
“I’ve been here all night,” he replied, getting up from the couch.
“Why? The baby-sitter was here when I left.” “As soon as you left I sent her home. We can’t afford a baby-sitter for you to go out drinking with your girls, so I stayed home with Brandon and missed out on making money because of it.”
“Who’s fault is that, Curtis? The baby-sitter was hired for you to do what you needed to do while I went out with my girls.”
“Well, why couldn’t you all just meet over here and have some drinks?” Curtis said, standing in the middle of the kitchen.
“Because, we wanted to go out for drinks.”
“I bet it was that damn Tangie who suggested it. Just because she can’t keep a relationship she wants to fuck up everyone else’s. Besides, what kind of mother are you to be hanging out all times of night like uh, uh—”
“Curtis, you’d better go on to bed with that shit,” I interrupted. “Besides, Tangie had nothing to do with me wanting to go out. It was my decision.”
He twisted his mouth, about to respond, then turned in silence and walked toward the bedroom.
“Are you going to church with me in a few hours?” I asked.
Soon after I finished my statement, Curtis walked through the bedroom door without responding. Well, fuck you, too, I said under my breath before turning off the rest of the lights in the house.
My alarm sounded at around eight o’clock. I pulled myself from Curtis’s hold and went to the bathroom before starting breakfast. Curtis came out of the bedroom a while later dressed in his jeans and sweatshirt. “Can you make me some coffee and put it in my thermos?” he asked as he grabbed a couple pieces of bacon.
“Aren’t you going to church this morning?” I asked.
“I can’t. I’m going down to the shop to see if I can get some work to make up for the money I missed last night.”
The shop is an old, broken-down establishment where body shop repairmen from at least three generations hang out in downtown Atlanta, drinking while working on people’s cars. Most of their clients are drug dealers because they pay in cash. The owner of the shop is Curtis’s friend, Cedric Nichols. Cedric’s father ran the shop for many years until he passed away, leaving it to Cedric. Since then it hadn’t generated a lot of business, so Cedric opened it up to a list of wanna-be ballers, many of whom did time in jail at some point in their lives.
“Curtis, we’re not that hard up for money that you have to work on a Sunday. Can’t you just—”