“Don’t you have a real car instead of this match-box toy car? I’m a grown-ass man. I can’t fit in this little go-cart.”
Jazz rolled her eyes.
“C’dear, you and yuh won’ts and can’ts. Yuh won’t fly coach. Yuh cain’t ride in a little car. I startin’ to think yuh even more high-maintenance dan dose Black Barbie dolls yuh date. Come nuh, get in de car and let we left dis cold place!” Jazz opened the door, got in the driver’s side, popped the locks and waited for Troy to follow suit.
He glared at her and bent down to get in the car. He had to move the seat as far back as it could go and he still had to sit with his legs bent uncomfortably.
“How do you even get around in this little thing in the winter in Boston? I’m surprised it doesn’t get buried in the snowdrifts. I hope you plan on getting a real car when you move to Detroit. This little thing isn’t going to cut it.”
Jazz rubbed her dashboard. “Oh, don’t listen to the mean old man, Stud Buggie, you’re a great car and you get mommy around just fine in any kind of weather, yes you do.”
Troy winced. “Your car is named Stud Buggie?”
Her eyes widened when she realized that she had essentially named her car after Troy, since she had been calling him some version of Stud from the day she met him.
That’s odd… she thought as she shook it off.
She laughed. “Don’t worry, Stud. You will always be the original Stud, at least until you start calling me Jazz.” She winked at him and he glared.
“Buckle up, Studman. Time to go home.” She pulled off and drove to her condo in what was now called the Mission Hill neighborhood.
Mission Hill had been a part of Roxbury when she was growing up. It was close enough to where she grew up to still feel like home. Her building was on Tremont Street and had a heated parking lot underneath. The neighborhood had a diverse mix of people and a vibrant business district as well. She realized that she would miss a lot about Beantown when she moved. But living there now that her mom was gone wasn’t even an option. There were just too many memories.
Once they reached her condo she started to have second thoughts about offering up her spare bedroom/office to Troy. He couldn’t get another ticket out of Boston back to Detroit until the next morning. And he insisted on staying a day or so to make sure she was okay. Since he was being so nice and everything, she didn’t think it would be right to make him stay in a hotel.
So, him staying at her place was the deal.
Heaven help her!
She glanced around her sparsely decorated condo. Her mother always teased her that her lack of decorations highlighted her intense commitment phobia. She couldn’t even commit to a picture. She had managed to find some pieces she could live with long term. She loved her big plush rust sofa. So what if she had changed coffee tables five times in five years and was thinking about getting rid of the current studio-style glass-top mahogany coffee table and matching end tables before she moved?
“Luckily my new gig is springing for movers and they’ll be coming to pack me up next weekend, or you would be navigating your way around boxes right now. If I had to pack, I would have started last month, because it would have taken me that long with all the moaning and groaning I would be doing. I can’t stand packing. We moved around from one apartment to the next entirely too much when I was a kid.”
“Really?” Troy took off his jacket and took a seat on her sofa. “I lived in the same house from the time I was born until I went away to boarding school and then college.”
“Across the street from Alicia’s folks, right. Your mom still lives there?” She kicked off her Uggs and sat down next to him.
“No, Mom sold the house a year or two after the divorce. She is hardly ever in Detroit any more. She’s a woman of the world, traveling abroad, taking cruises, lounging in Europe, Africa, everywhere. It’s like she became the person she always wanted to be when she divorced my father and that person can’t sit still. I still can’t believe they stayed married all those years only to divorce after Sonya and I finished college. That still trips me out.” His eyes got a faraway look in them and she wondered where he went when he thought about his parents’ relationship.
Jazz nibbled her lips in contemplation. “Hey, at least they managed to stay together until you guys were adults. Better that than a deadbeat for a father that you’ve never even met. Because my father opted out, my mother had to work all the time. So I felt like I never really had enough time with her.”
Whoa, what made me share that?
She stood up. “Are you hungry, Studchickawaawaa? I could order out. I’m afraid I don’t have much in the fridge. Cooking is highly overrated.”
“We’ll have to order out, because I’m not getting back in that soup can you call a car.” He shuddered.
“Oh, stop complaining. Stud Buggie got us from point A to point B. And my car is really, really cute.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, baby carriages are cute, too, but you don’t see grown-ass people riding in them.”
“Ha, ha, ha, you’re like as funny as Chris Rock. Not!” She walked into the kitchen for her folder of take-out menus. She picked up the cordless phone and noticed the flashing red light that signaled lots of messages on her answering machine. Paying extra money a month for voice mail when her phone came with a perfectly good answering machine was not her style because it took away from her Coach bag fund.
She pressed the button and took the folder to Troy. “Here, these are some of my favorite places that deliver.”
“Jazz, baby girl. What’s up? Why can’t you call a brother every now and then? It’s like that now?” The voice on the answering machine sounded familiar but she couldn’t tell and she wasn’t interested. By the time it reached the point of a guy calling to ask her why she hadn’t called him, he was already so far off her radar, nothing could warrant the time or energy to care.
She walked back over to the answering machine and pressed delete.
“Jazzy, baby, you’re breaking my heart—” Delete. She didn’t recognize that voice, either, and didn’t care.
“What’s the matter with you, girl? You can’t call nobody?” This guy affected the voice of Martin Lawrence’s infamous “Jerome, the original playa from the Himalayas” and at least got a chuckle out of her before she deleted the message.
“Jazz, why is it I had to hear from someone else that you’re moving? I mean we went out a few times, and don’t I even warrant a—” Delete.
She sighed as she half listened to the rest of the calls, making quick work of deleting them.
“Seriously, guys think just because you let them take you out a few times they have the right to blow up your phone and tie up your answering machine. I swear, when I move to Detroit, I’m going to stop being cheap and get an unlisted number. And I won’t be giving out my main number. I need a cell phone just for this.” She turned to Troy. The way he ran through the female species, he could probably understand her pain.
He was frowning.
“What’s with that look? Don’t tell me you don’t have women blowing up your phone? And I’m sure they’re calling because they gave you a little more than these guys have given me.”
“And just what have those guys given you, Jasmine?”
“Ooo, that would be none of your business, Stud Bud.” She laughed. “Seriously, if they’re calling the phone