CHAPTER ONE
The last place she wanted to do somebody’s hair was in her living room. Or anywhere else in her tiny apartment for that matter. But Byron had a gig later that night and all he needed was a quick trim.
At least that was what he told her when he called and asked if he could roll up. She hadn’t seen him in nearly three years, not since they both stopped waiting tables parttime at that soul food joint not far from her Brooklyn apartment. And now he needed a trim, which she had no intentions of giving to anybody on her day off. But it was Sunday evening. She had nothing else to do. So she told him to roll up. She could do a quick trim in her sleep.
But when he got there, and she saw the state of that head, she knew she had a full-blown cut on her hands. “And you got a gig tonight? Looking like that?” she asked him.
“Ah Ricki, why you always got to complain? All it needs is a trim. It’ll be slammin’. It’ll look aw’ight.”
“You look like Buckwheat, Byron. Do you not realize that? Ain’t no trim in this world gonna fix that.” She was frustrated with him, but not enough to turn him away. “Just sit down!”
Byron smiled that high wattage smile all the girls loved. She loved it too, if she were to be honest. But she also knew he was slick as oil. He had to know all along she wouldn’t let him leave her apartment looking like that. And he proved he knew it with his very next comment.
“That’s why I love you so much, Ricki. You know how to hook a brother up.”
Rasheda Richardson, called Ricki to everybody who knew her, wasn’t trying to hook up any more brothers. She gave her heart and soul doing all she could for all those brothers out there that knew every woman in the world wanted them. Or at least wanted what they had between those thick thighs. And those same brothers had no problem whatsoever obliging each and every one of those ladies. She’d been giving her heart to that cause ever since she was a teenager, and all she got in return were heartaches and heartbreaks. She was done hooking up brothers.
“Damn, Byron,” she said when she tried to put a comb through his hair. “When was the last time you combed this head?”
He laughed. “Why you trippin’? Don’t you know nothing about style?”
Ricki looked down at him. “Not combing your hair is a style now?”
“Hell yeah it’s a style.” He said it as if everybody knew that. Then he looked back at her. He could see the bags under her eyes. The strain all over what used to be just an adorable face. He remembered she was older than him, by a couple of years, which would make her around twenty-eight years old. But damn. She was still considered young. She still wasn’t so old and decrepit that she should have been looking haggard already. She wasn’t even thirty yet! “What happened to you?” he asked her.
Ricki was thrown by his question, and by the way he was looking at her as if she was a crackhead or something equally disturbing. What happened to her, he asked. What did he think happened to her? Life happened to her. And all those brothers like him who knew how to manipulate the hell out of sisters likeher. That’s what happened. And that didn’t mean she was a pushover either. She was nobody’s pushover. But they could be so smooth. And so smart. They’d already picked her pocket before she even realized they had a hand on her. And by the time she realized it, she was already in too deep. That’s what happened. Over and over again it happened. Until she gave up.
But she wasn’t about to share her truth with someMister Right Nowlike Byron. “Just shut up and let me see what I can do with this head,” she said.
Byron smiled. “Yes ma’am,” he said and pulled out his phone. And as he responded to text messages, she began doing what she always ended up doing: hooking a brother up.
Not that she was completely sour on all men. She’d never be that short-sighted. She knew one day she’d meet a righteous brother with a good job who treated her like a queen. And she had a type too: Tall. Chocolate-mocha skin. Big and strong and with a heart to match his outward appearance. But all she got were the bad boys who wouldn’t know how to do right if their lives depended on it.
But that was what she did. She settled against type time and time again as if she knew that all those righteous brothers with good jobs wanted righteous sisters with good jobs too, which pretty much eliminated her. The Bryons of the world were all she had left.
But ten minutes of just trying to put a comb through that head, he was already antsy. “Damn, Ricki,” he said in that gripe-voice of his, “what’s taking you so long?”
“You want this shit good, or you want this shit fast?”
“Both.Damn!”
Ricki ignored his butt and continued to do her best work. She was no barber, she was a beautician, but she knew how to style anybody’s hair. And she never rushed a haircut. AndByron knew it. She’d done his hair more than a few times back in the day.
But he was still frowning. “What you doing now?”
“If you don’t be still I’m gonna send you out of this apartment with a monked-up head. That’s what you want?”
“But I’m running late though. I gots to go!”
“You told me your set wasn’t until ten tonight. It’s not even eight yet. Why you all of a sudden so late?”
“Girl you don’t know nothing about a jazzman’s life. I can’t just roll up. I have to get my mind together first. You can’t just show up at somebody’s club and start blowing your horn. It don’t work that way. I have to be in the right frame of mind before I turn any tune anywhere.”
Ricki kept working. She had a reputation for excellence and she wasn’t about to let him walk out of her apartment looking any kind of way and start telling people she was the one responsible. No ma’am, no sir. Not on her watch!
And then, just thirty-five minutes later, she brushed him off, brushed off all the hair she had to cut to get to a style, and then she removed the towel from around his shoulder. And it was an excellent, smooth-looking temple fade that made him look a hundred times better than when he first walked through her door. If she had to say so herself.
When she handed him the mirror, and he saw her handiwork, he was impressed too. “Damn girl,” he said with that winning smile. “You still got it. You still know what you’re doing.” Then he stood up and pulled her into his arms. “Let me give you some love.”
