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“Talk, sis. I’m up now.”
“Well, I really thought you needed a wellness check with the way he was watching you last night.”
“Not about Bruiser,” I said sternly.
“I’m just saying, he could have followed you home and did very bad things to you. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t check on you?”
“That’s your dirty mind, Jayne. Only you. But you know what, since you seem to lust after him so much, why don’t you—”
“Whatever, Alise. You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Talk yourself out of being with someone who’s interested in you. I wish I had that problem, actually.”
She had me stumped with the direction this conversation was going.
“Where is all of this coming from, Jayne?”
“The way he looks at you like you belong to him. Both of y’all do it. You need to stop playing with his emotions and just add another ebony and ivory couple to the group. If I get me a white guy, we’re going to all be considered the swirling ebonies and ivories.”
“Huh? What in the actual hell are you talking about?” I laughed. “I don’t mess with Bruiser’s emotions. We barely speak to each other.”
Jayne had teased me about Bruiser before, but I never considered seriously getting with him. I may have imagined how his lips tasted, and I’d bet money the taste was like Irish crème and liquor mixed with honey. Once or twice, I may have thought about how it would feel to run my hands along the contours of his muscular back while I was lying in my bed, and he was on top of me. But—
“Well, we already have Channing and Kemara, Jeb and Tameka, and now it will be you and Bruiser,” Jayne’s fantasies brought me out of mine.
“Let’s just say I entertain your foolish idea that it’s too early in the morning to be entertaining. Who are you going to bring into this ebony and ivory couples group?” I asked.
“See, don’t worry about that part. I’m doing the best I can when it comes to finding someone to be with. It’s been hard to trust anyone, you know?” Her playful tone turned sullen, and finally, it clicked.
Ned.
“What did Ned do?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t try to play dumb. Whenever you sound the way you just did, it’s Ned. You call talking about my love life when really you want to talk about whatever it is that Ned has done, so Jayne, tell me what he did this time?”
“Just give Bruiser a chance. You deserve to have someone that looks at you the way he does. The last guy you were dealing with was an ass.”
“Like Ned,” I brought her back to who was about to be the hot topic of the morning. That much, I was sure of.
“Yeah, like Ned’s disloyal ass. Don’t ignore the chemistry you and Bruiser have because men like Ned are out there waiting. I did my homework on Bruiser, and he doesn’t have a secret woman out there anywhere, and I doubt that he’s a loser like Lamont, who just wanted some of your iTunes money without showing the support.”
I paused to look at my phone. I indeed had it in my hand, and Jayne had indeed called me before 10:00 a.m. to talk smack about men who I wasn’t involved with. The furthest thing from my mind was hooking up with Bruiser or Lamont.
“Okay, Jayne, I’m going to ask you one more time. Tell me what happened. Did Ned do you bad?”
When her ex did her bad, she called me up to talk about my past loves, potential loves, and my love life in general, anything except her men problems. That’s precisely what she was doing at the moment.
“Who said someone did me bad?” she asked defensively. The reflectiveness in her tone let me know I was on the right track.
“Was it Ned?” I asked.
I crossed my fingers and held them in the air, hoping she hadn’t given him another chance to hurt her. He was a guy she met when she was right out of college, and he was most definitely a chronic abuser of her heart. Every time she got him out of her system, he stepped back into her life and gave her just enough rope to reel her in so that she would be hooked on him again. Then, like the snake he was, he would wiggle away back to another woman’s garden.
Jayne’s long, exasperated sigh, meant to ward off her tears, let me know one thing.
