30
Don't Play
RomanâSunday, March 5, 4:39 p.m.
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W
e were chilling at Jewel's crib with Stacie and Trick. This was a kinda test both of us set up. Yesterday, we hung out with Moms, Chase, and Jaquenetta. We passed that one. I thought Miss Jewel finally understood what's left between me and Jaquenetta. Chase. Period. Now I needed to understand whassup with Tricky Rick here. Trick and I were in the kitchen doing the dinner thing. Hey, these girls don't play. Women of the new millennium and all that. In other words, if we wanted to eat today, we were gonna have to pitch in with the cooking. Now, I could bake the hell out of some chicken, and Trick looked pretty good on that salad thing. I figured we'd add some baked potatoes and BOOM! Dinner. Funny thing was, we'd been in here for about fifteen minutes and neither one of us had much to say. When we got the food to a stage where all it had to do was cook, we went and joined the girls in the den. They were talking about Renee and her new devotion to Jesus. I jumped right in.
“Think she means it, or you think she's full of shit?” I asked Miss Jewel as I sat down by her on the sofa.
“I think she wants to mean it,” Jewel waffled. “But as for Brother Beau ...”
I laughed. “Oh, I know he's full of shit; you ain't even got to start there. He always means well, but somehow, between wanting to do right and actually walking that line, he strays from the path of righteousness. No doubt there's a woman out there who can get him to settle down and do the right thing. That woman is not Renee. Partners in crime if ever I saw them.”
“Either way, it was still a smooth move on her part. I mean, this way she's left the door open for Greg to come back. She's asked for forgiveness from everyone and basically given herself a clean slate,” Stacie added.
I nodded. “Yeah, but I still don't buy it.”
Jewel shrugged. “People change.”
Tricky Rick piped up. “People do change.”
The room went still. Talk about subtle. Nice of him to tack on his two cents right there. So, just to be contrary, I said, “Some do, some don't.”
“Roman,” Jewel said softly.
“No,” Stace said, “let's just get this whole thing out in the open.”
“Let's not. I hate shit like this,” Jewel said.
Stacie raised a brow. “Like what, like saying to me, âStacie, I can't believe you're seeing my ex-boyfriendâsorry, ex-fiancé.' Shit like that?”
I hopped in. “We don't have to go all there.” Now
I
was back-pedaling.
“Besides,” Patrick said, “Jewel doesn't care who I date anymore.”
“How do you know what I care about? As if it ever concerned you much!” Jewel snapped out. She was getting that crease between her brows that meant she was about to go
off
. She stood up and started pacing the room back and forth. Aw, damn, pacing meant bad things were coming. I tried to calm her down before the eruption.
“Now, babyâ” I started in.
Tricky Rick cut me off, “So you
do
care?”
Stace jumped back in it. “Why do
you
care if she cares?”
She had a point. I had to ask, “Exactly who still cares about what here?” This I wanted to hear.
“Everybody shut up!” Jewel said in what I've come to think of as her lethally calm voice. Wisely, we all remained silent while baby got it together enough to talk. “Number one, you, Stacie, can just kiss my ass on this whole thing.”
We all had our mouths hanging open, and Stace said, “Jewellen Rose!”
“Jewellen Rose, my assâyou knew, you've always known, how I felt about the passing-around-the-boyfriend thing. What, there was no other black man in the whole damn world who caught your attention? It just had to be Patrick?”
“Well, Iâ” she tried to explain.
“Save it.” Jewel shook her head. “This was the man I had planned to
marry
, Stacie, not some one-night pickup I'd never think about again. Did it at all occur to you that I maybe didn't want my philandering ex-fiancé around all the time? Truth be told, your ass was wrong from the get-go. And all you had to do was say, âJewel, I'm sorry. I know I'm wrong, but Patrick and I are tight and this is how it is; hope you don't mind.' Personally, I'm still waiting to hear it.” She pointed at Patrick. “And you! All I can say is that you sure have your nerve. How do you really think this is going to turn out? What's going on in your fickle little brain? You thinking it's gonna be you and me one week and you and Stace the next? You think I'd give up a good thing just 'cause you came waltzing back into town? Or did you just think I'd wait around and see if the thing with Stace fell through? Have you changed at all? Do you really acknowledge that the shit you pulled with me was
foul,
or are you too busy doing one of my best friends?”
“Now, darlin'â”
“Don't call me darlin'!”
“Don't call her darlin'!” Jewellen and I spoke at the same time. She sent me a look, and I shut up. Besides, I was feeling pretty cool behind that “good thing” statement she made. I leaned back and propped my feet up. Finally, this conversation was going the way I liked it.
She put her hands on her hips and faced Stace and Trick squarely. “I hate to disturb y'all's groove like this, but I'm doing it for your own good. Tell me, Patrick, suppose I was to tell you that as of tomorrow, Roman and I are through?”
I jackknifed up and came to instant attention. “Say what?”
“Stay outta this, Romeo,” Jewellen said. “Well, Patrick?”
Stacie looked at him. “Well, Patrick?”
Now I was feeling a little antsy up in here, but my consolation was that Patrick was four times more uncomfortable than I was. Besides, I was hanging on to that new trust thang Miss Jewel and I had talked about since the party. At the very least, I had to trust that she would tell me to my face and alone that we were through and not all out here in front of folks. Couldn't say I was enjoying her tactics for getting her point across, though.
Patrick shrugged. “Now, I can't answer that; you know that.”
“Do I know that? Why don't you just tell me?” Jewellen had dropped her voice to that seductive level and had taken a step toward him. Well, hell, what to do? Do I get up and start clocking somebody or stay chill? Trust, I remembered, trust. I decided to wait and see. But somebody was gonna pay hell for this little piece of drama.
Tricky Rick reacted to the tone. “I never thought it was really over between us,” he drawled, before catching a glimpse of Stacie's face, “but I accepted that some things are a part of the past. I had to move forward.” His shit was weak and we all knew it.
“We were good together once,” Jewel murmured, and I about lost it. Trust or no, the last thing I needed to hear was how she and Trick used to burn up the sheets. That trust thang was hanging by a slim thread. Mighty slim. And if this was some sort of game she was playing, I wasn't amused. Not by a long shot.
Trick's ass looked mesmerized. “Yeah, that's true. That's true.” He looked over at me. I had my hands balled into fists and was about half a second from pouncing on that ass. “I mean, we had good times and bad times.”
“Good and bad.” Jewel nodded. She hadn't looked at me once since she started this.
“'Course, when they were good, they were good.” He just couldn't keep himself from adding it.
“I'll be damned. You'd go back to her in a heartbeat, wouldn't you?” Stacie asked. When it took him longer than a breath span to answer, she jumped up and ran outside. He rose and followed.
“Um, guess I'll check on that chicken,” I said slowly, then got up and went to the kitchen.
I heard her come in and slide onto the barstool. “Babyâ”
“Baby, my ass,” I answered, and leaned down to open the oven.
“You know what I was doing in there, don't you?”
“Yeah, losing your mind.” I pulled the rack out and peeled back the aluminum foil.
“Ah hell, you're pissed!” She had the damn nerve to sound surprised.
“You de high-class smart one, Miss Jewel. I just de ignant stud from de hood.”
“Dammit, don't start that again!”
I had to put her ass in check. “Hold up. You trying to get a case of the ass with me now? With
me
? I just sat in there and watched you offer yourself to Tricky Rick and go on and on about how great it was between y'all, and
you
getting the ass? Ain't that a bitch?” I spooned some more melted butter over the meat and shoved it back in. Turning, I kicked the oven door up with my foot.
She went absolutely still. “Did you just call me a bitch?”
I sighed. “I said, âAin't
that
a bitch.' That's what
I
said; what did
you
hear?”
Her head was going in that black woman's way. “I heard you call me a bitch.”
“Then you can't hear.”
“I ain't gonna be no bitch up in here!”
I laughed. “Now who sounds like they're from the hood?”
“Kiss my ass.”
“Right after ya kiss mine, baby!” We stood across the kitchen glaring at each other for a long time. Finally she huffed and turned her head.
“I can't believe you don't see that I was trying to get Stacie to see the light about Patrick!”
“Why, so you can have him for yourself?”
“Damn, you didn't catch shit of that trust conversation, did you?”
“Same way you weren't paying attention during my don't-play-games speech.”
“What games?”
“What was that whole scene out there? A prelude to Pictionary?”
“Now we gonna be smart-alecky?”
“Now we gonna answer a question?” Another glare-off. Dammit, I was in the right here. You don't pull no bullshit stunts like that. Ever. Trust or no, you don't bring up old dick in front of me. Ever. Especially not when the dick in question was sitting in the room.
“I'm only gonna say this one more timeâI don't want Patrick. I don't miss Patrick. I wouldn't take him on a platter wrapped in thousand-dollar bills. Okay?”
Like she was getting off that easy? “No, it's not okay, Jewellen. Look at it this wayâsuppose it was Jaquenetta out there, telling me how great we used to be and if I could just ditch yo' ass, we could be that way again? How you gonna feel?”
“Like kicking her ass and then yours.” I wanted to laugh then. Jewellen Rose Capwell ain't never kicked nobody's ass in her life. A little something told me it wasn't the best time to break into a hearty chuckle, you know? Besides, I still had a point of my own to make.
“Uh-huh. Why couldn't you just be understanding? After all, you trust me, doncha?”
“Understanding? Trust? Hell, you don't bring that kind of shit up in front of me and expect me not to ... oh. I get it.” The lightbulb went on over her head.
“You took it too far. Wrong place, wrong time.”
She thought about it for a minute, then admitted, “I took it too far; you're right.”
I couldn't resist the smug little grin. It snuck out before I could stop it.
“Okay, okay! No need to gloat. I was wrong and I'm sorry.”
My poor baby, she hated to apologize for shit. Could be wrong as two left shoes and just hated to force the words past her lips. I was about to take pity on her and go round and give her a hug when she started back up again.
“But how many damn times you gonna bring that ghetto shit up?”
“What ghetto shit?”
“We get into a major fight and next thing I know, you gotta bring up the fact that you came up hard and I didn't. Sue me. I've never said a thing about where you come from.”
“Never said anything, huh?”
“No, Roman, I never have.”
“And this is, like, a favor you're doing me? Shit, I know where I'm from. I know who I am and where I came fromâdo you?”
“Oh, so I'm a sellout now. Here we go. I'm light-skinned, live north, and don't talk black enough, so now I'm a sellout, an Oreo. Not real enough for you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ya ass is sensitive; I never said none of that shit.”
“And I never said shit about the freaking hood!”
“Except that you hate going over there, don't trust the people there, don't wanna live there, and don't do business with people from there,” I reminded her.