Charisse and Porsche are already there, having drinks and eating some appetizers. I thought I was early, but I guess I wasn’t early enough.
They light up when they see me, and each of them hops up to give me a hug.
“Hey, girl!”
“How was today?”
“Busy/.”
“Didn’t you have a pop-up today? We really gotta get you a man so you don’t have to work anymore,” Porsche says.
I keep my eyes on her. “I don’t need a man for that.”
I don’t necessarily like my job, but I love my pop-ups, and I wouldn’t want a man to make me feel like I couldn’t do those anymore because he’s providing for me. I don’t do them for the money. It’s a passion project that I happen to make money off of.
“Um, no, thank you,” I say.
Now that I’m here, the food automatically arrives at the table. We never switch it up. We have our favorites, and the staff knows exactly what to bring us.
I’m not going to lie and say that having a rich man doesn’t have its perks, because obviously it does, a little bit. Charisse and Porsche have rich men who love them completely, who listen to them and hold their hearts like something precious. That’s what I’m looking for, rich or not.
And I’m not going to just settle for someone because he’s got money.
“You were at the Cartile Museum today, weren’t you?” Charisse asks.
“I was,” I tell her. “We did a beautiful landscape. Everyone left happy. It was a lot of fun the whole time. No perfectionists in the group either.”
Porsche laughs, and we all look at her because she’s the main perfectionist. When it comes to painting, she gets pissed if she messes up anything, as she calls it, even though there’s no messing up. There’s just an alteration, a remix. It’s personalized when you add something that wasn’t in my picture, and I love seeing how people interpret it, how they incorporate what they think is a mistake into the original design and make it something that’s just theirs.
“Javonte showed up again,” I say.
“Again?” Porsche says, screwing her face up.
I try not to make a big deal out of it. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a fact.
“He came to paint?” Charisse asks.
“I thought so, but he was there early, before I got there, and he helped me unload the car and set up the room. He carried every table and every chair and helped me arrange everything.”
Charisse bites her lip, trying to hide her smile. Porsche frowns.
“He’s trying to get back with you, girl,” Porsche says.
I nod. “I know.”
“But you’re not going to let him back in, right? Because he’s a childish jerk. Let’s not forget.”
I exhale, not wanting to make a big deal out of this. I shouldn’t have brought it up, but it just came out.
“So he showed up before you and helped you load everything up and set up the whole room?” Charisse asks.
“Well... as he left, before everyone came in, he said he’d be back to help me break everything down.”
Charisse sucks in her breath like this is the craziest thing she’s heard all day.
“And did he?” Porsche asks.
“Yeah, he did. He came back and started folding up the chairs and breaking down the tables, and he took everything to my car.”
