CHAPTER ONE
“You can do so much better than her.”
“You think I don’t know that? I know it better than you do. Why you always bringing that shit up?”
“Because you need to tell her, Kenny. I’m tired of all this ducking and dodging. That ain’t my style. Hell, look at me. What I look like ducking and dodging? I can do way better than that.”
“Then do it dammit. Who’s stopping you?”
Makela Fortier looked long and hard at Kenny Jenkins. Fine as wine that brother was, and all those bitches out there knew it too. But that never stopped Makela. Since high school she’d been after him. Always made sure to be in his face. Always made sure to be there for him when he needed a warm body to cuddle up against. Turned down other guys, who wanted her desperately, to be with him. But he always had his eyes on some other bitch. It never failed.
But she was tired of accepting his sloppy seconds. All of her other girlfriends were already married and having kids like nobody’s business, while she was still out here chasing Kenny. But no more. She was done with that. It was her turn now.
She placed her small, light-brown hand onto his large, dark-brown hand. He looked at her hand, and then into her face. She was a pretty girl, he’d give her that. And unlike Jayda, who was small, Makela had the kind of exaggerated, big-girl curves men like him craved. But she just didn’t do it for him in bed the way Jayda did. She just didn’t turn him on the sameway. But that didn’t mean Jayda wasn’t a dead-end street too. She wasn’t good enough for him either.
They were seated at an outdoor table at a Manhattan bar waiting for Jayda to get there. Thursday evening drinks together, it was supposed to be, but as he glanced at his watch he knew he couldn’t wait much longer. He had stuff to do.
He worked for a small marketing firm right now, and was just a junior executive even there, but he still believed he was on an upward trajectory with no limits. He still believed his dreams hadn’t failed him yet. And he was still on the hunt for just the right rich girl who could propel himoverthe top. He knew he had the great looks to pull it off. And the body. He also knew he wasn’t pulling off shit with two broke bitches like Jayda and ‘Kela.
Although he knew Makela wasn’t entirely broke. She was a hair stylist who owned a small beauty salon that kept her in Gucci and pearls without him having to lift a finger, but she wasn’t rolling in the dough the way he needed. She even bartended part-time to help get herself over the hump. And even though she was doing far better than Jayda, she was financially nowhere near the kind of sister he was after.
But the main gripe he had with Makela was that she nagged too much. She was always on his ass about making her his number one, as if that was ever gonna happen. But Jayda never pressured him that way. She never asked him to put a ring on it or to make a decision about their future or any of that whiny, clinging shit.
Although sometimes, if he were to be honest, he found himself watching her and wondering why she never went there. Sometimes he wondered if Jayda even liked him and was just using him because they split the rent. Sometimes he wondered if he was the one being played.
“Tell her tonight,” Makela said. “When y’all get home just tell her ass. I mean it, Kenny. No more delays. I’m tired of all of this pretending.”
“You’re tired of it? I’m the one that has to deal with her high expectations day in and day out. That’s the thing with Jay. She expect me to be my best self and live my best life and speak my truth and all that Oprah Winfrey bullshit, when you don’t have any such expectations of me. But that girl?” He shook his head and tapped his cigarette ash into the tray. “I don’t know why I even bother with her.”
But Makela was offended. She sat back in her seat.
He noticed the sudden shift in her mood. “What did I do now?”
“Why you had to say it like that?”
Kenny frowned. “Say what like what?”
“That Jayda expects so much from you and I don’t expect anything. That’s not true.”
“You know what I mean! She thinks I can be this great dude. She thinks that if I can just get my act together and do what she wants then I can conquer the world.” He smiled a smile of regret, because even he knew he didn’t have that kind of goodness in him Jayda sometimes saw. Although he wished to God he did. And then he shook his head. “She’s just crazy like that. That’s what I mean.”
But Makela knew what he meant. She’d been competing with Jayda Robinson since she met her, even though she doubted if Jayda ever knew there was anything to compete about. Makela knew exactly what he meant.
And then, a few minutes later, the very bane of her existence showed up. “She’s here,” Makela said, and Kenny looked where she was looking too.
Jayda Catrice Robinson had rode up and was parking her e-bike in the bike section just off to the side from where they sat.Makela shook her head as they watched her. “Pushing thirty and still can’t afford a car.”
“Will you stop with the pushing thirty?” Kenny was annoyed. “She’s twenty-eight, same as you and me. Twenty-nine is when you’re pushing thirty because it’s literally the year before thirty. She’s not there yet.”
“You know what I’m saying. She’s old enough to have it together by now. We’ve got it together, why can’t she do the same? But you have to help her over and over again just to meet her rent.”
“That’s because I live there and we split the rent,” Kenny reminded her.
“But is that what you want when you can stay with me for free? And get all this for free,” she added with a smile as she looked down at her voluptuous body.
But it was no laughing matter to Kenny. Being with a broke-ass sister like Jayda was becoming a source of shame for him. Jayda was a good person with a good heart, and she was smart as smart could be. But she was nowhere near on his level, and he doubted if she ever would be. Even the guys he hung out with were beginning to tell him so. Even Jayda’s supposedly best friend Makela, although she was no true friend to anybody, was telling him so too. Makela, he knew, had her own motives. But his boys had his back.
But Kenny also knew it was more complicated than that. His boys and even Makela seemed to have forgotten that before Jayda got laid off she was bringing in almost as much money as he was bringing in. And that nice apartment they live in was in her name only because her credit was great while his credit was so screwed up he couldn’t rent a dog. She elevated him too. But nobody seemed to remember that part. All they saw was that he kept moving on up, and she kept getting good jobs and losing them: She kept falling back down.
