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Briyana
Being back home was…different.
Even with all of my success on the track, I’d pretty much been able to fly under the radar during my years as an Oregon duck. And after graduation, it wasn’t like I ran into any of my former classmates or teammates all that often around the city since most of them had either taken their talents back to their hometowns or elsewhere. But during my first week spent in Houston, it had been a constant thing of running into my parents' friends, running into old teammates from my club track days as a youth, running into people from high school at the grocery store who wanted to catch up…
Simply put, for it to be deemed a “big city”, it hadn’t taken long for it to start feeling small as hell. And that was exactly how I’d ended up at a bar with one of the girls I used to sneak off school property to eat lunch with, her insistence for us to hang out and my desperate need for a drink something like the perfect match that had the two of us hitting up one of the kick it spots we used to dream about going to when we were teenagers.
Well…Iused to dream about going when I was a teenager. My girl Nala, on the other hand, had made that dream come true for herself thanks to a good fake ID that she’d gotten from her older sister. And now, a solid decade later, she was still hanging out at the same place, her loyalty understandable since the drinks were strong and cheap, and the ambiance was a nice chill vibe.
Teenage me would’ve been highly disappointed. But latter half of her twenties me was completely in her element, grateful for the temporary escape that the liquor and music was providing since it was much better than being at my father’s house listening to him and his girl while I overthought the hell out of my run-in with Lance.
Lance.
A few days had passed since I’d seen him, but I still couldn’t get the look on his face out of my head. Partially because he’d seemed so upset, and partially because,well, that nigga had gottendisgustinglyfine over the years.
Thick facial hair where there used to be barely noticeable stubble.
A fresh Caesar fade with waves instead of the boyish curly top he used to rock.
Additional muscle where there used to be just skin and bones.
And then there were things like his honey brown skin tone, full lips, and slightly pointed nose that hadn’t exactly changed over time but somehow looked especially good with everything else considered, all of those factors making it difficult for me to act like I didn’t want him all up in my business.
I swear I didn’t though.
I mean, it was all just too complicated, too messy, too…embarrassing.
Yeah, that shit was embarrassing; especially in comparison to all the wonderful things Lance had going for himself. And where I couldn’t compete, I didn’t participate, instead choosing to drink it all away like my good hometown sis Solange had sang about in “Cranes in the Sky”.
It hadn’t worked for her, but I was still willing to see for myself, sipping on something dark and chilled as I swayed to the music in my seat until Nala leaned in near my ear to whisper, “Fine and unfamiliar at three o’clock.”
I looked to my right and saw no one who was paying me any attention. Then I looked to my left and realized Nala’s ass shouldn’t have been skipping school so much back in the day, giggling to myself about it as the man approached me and asked, “Why you making that drink look so damn good?”
“Because it is,” I answered, taking another long sip that made him smirk.
“Aight, so how about you tell me the name of it so I can enjoy one too?”
Since Nala had been the one on drink duty all night, I honestly didn’t know -or care- what it was called, glancing her way so that she could supply an answer to the man I was still trying to get a read on.
He was incredibly handsome with his deep brown skin, long, neat locs, perfect white teeth, and well-groomed facial hair. But the excessive designer print he was draped in and the gaudy jewelry pieces donning his neck and wrist were very much giving scammer or wannabe rapper, neither of which I had any business entertaining…beyond a night.
A little “pick me up by dicking me down” wouldn’t hurt anybody.
“Just go to the bartender with the lavender buzzcut and tell her you want the Nala,” she finally answered, the man giving a short nod before looking my way to ask, “After I get myNala, can I come back and chill with you?”
“Yeah, I’m okay with that,” I answered, the little grin he responded with making me tingle a bit -just a bit- as he headed to the bar.
“Okayyyy, Bri Bri. I see you, sis. That man isfine,” Nala commented, her enthusiasm making me giggle as I agreed, “He definitely is. But he also looks like the type who’d have a girlfriend that can fight.”
“Well good thing you can run,” Nala responded, only making me laugh harder until I saw the troubled look on her face as she looked down at her phone and mumbled, “Should’ve never gotten this girl a cell phone.”
“Everything okay?”
With a nod, she answered, “Yeah, it’s just my six-year-old begging me to come and pick her up from my mother’s house.”
My first thought was,“Six-year-olds get cell phones now?”But my second, more important one was, “I didn’t know you had a kid.”
Like a proud mother, Nala started grinning hard as she scrolled through her phone and said, “You remember Freddie Patrick? He was two years older than us and on the wrestling team.”
