Over in her master bath, Consuela wiped sweat from her forehead as she scrubbed the toilet. All day long she’d been sweeping, mopping, and dusting while Dylan lay in bed, weeping and barking orders. All day long it had been “Consuela, get me more champagne! Consuela, turn up the heat! Consuela, turn down the heat! Consuela, come rub my feet!” Beyond fed up, Consuela slammed down the toilet scrubber and took off her gloves. She cared for Dylan, but she wasn’t about to continue to work for her for free anymore.
“I not doing thees! I’m outta here!” Consuela announced, coming out of the bathroom. “Ju no pay me in weeks!”
“What?” Dylan peeked her face from under the cover.
“Ju heard me.” Consuela wagged her finger. “I done!”
“No no no no no!” Dylan yelled, hopping out of bed. With the speed of lightning, she raced across the room, stood in the doorway, and blocked Consuela’s path.“You can’t leave me now. I need you. You’re all I have left!”
“Ju can’t pay me! Broke ass!” Consuela snapped like an around the way girl.
Dylan narrowed her eyes and said, “And since when did you become so money hungry? You once wrestled a pit bull for twenty-five cents!”
“Cash rules everything around me. Cream get the money. Dolla dolla bills, y’all.”
Consuela sang Wu Tang Clan’s “Cream” while waving a wad of dough.
“Where did you get that from?” Dylan’s eyes grew wide. “I haven’t given you a raise in years!” She tried to snatch the money from Consuela’s hands, but she was too slow.
“I save.” Consuela placed her hand behind her back. “Something ju know nothing about.”
“Save? I don’t even know what that means,” Dylan said.
“I have to go.” Consuela tried her best to get past.
“Nooooo.” Dylan pushed her back. “Look, I can pay you.” She ran across the room to her closet.
“Now we can talk.” Consuela nodded her head.
“See.” Dylan pulled out a tweed jacket. “This is vintage Chanel. This should cover a whole month’s pay.”
Consuela took the jacket from Dylan’s hand and checked the label. “It’s a size ten. I’m a size twenty.” She threw it back at her.
“Okay . . . well . . . that will only motivate you to lose those few extra pounds you’ve been complaining about.”
“Forget it.” Consuela rolled her eyes. “I have to catch my bus.”
“Consuela, please,” Dylan whined with tears in her eyes. “I need you.”
Consuela saw the sincerity in her eyes and sighed. In a weird way, Dylan did need her. Over the past couple of years, they’d become somewhat of a dysfunctional family. Consuela saw firsthand what a lonely life Dylan led. Yeah, she had Billie and Tee-Tee, but at night, all she had was herself. She didn’t have a mother she could count on, and her father was dead. All Dylan had was a bunch of materialistic shit to keep her satisfied. It was sad, but it was her reality.
“Dylan,” Consuela said genuinely, taking her hands, “ju don’t need me. All ju need is jurself. Ju stronger than ju think ju are. If ju need to talk, call me.” She smiled then turned and walked out the door.
“What I gotta say? What I gotta do?”
—Jazmine Sullivan, “Need U Bad” Remix
Chapter 21
Dylan’s life had crumbled into pieces. She’d lost her best friend, her man, her maid, and her apartment. With Angel being gone, she no longer had someone to help her out on rent. The building manager had done all he could to help Dylan out, but after waiting two months on her promise to pay and getting no payment, he had to put her out. Dylan wanted desperately to keep her place, but she had no one she could borrow the money from.
Billie was absolutely out of the question, and Tee-Tee wouldn’t give it to her if he had it, due to his theory on dishing out tough love. She thought about asking State, but quickly nixed the idea. Dealing with him was part of the reason why she was in the position she was in. This time Dylan was stuck, so with the little bit of money she had left, she packed up her things and put it all in storage—except her clothes, shoes, and accessories, of course. Dylan had lost enough. She wasn’t about to lose the one thing she had left in her life that made her happy.
With her things in tow, Dylan sadly rang Tee-Tee’s doorbell. Seconds later, he opened the door dressed in a pink bathrobe with hot curlers in his head.
“Oh, hell to the naw,” he said, eyeing all of her suitcases.
“I love you.” She poked out her bottom lip.
“I love you too, but not enough to let you in here.”
“But why?” Dylan stomped her foot.
“’Cause you lazy. You don’t like to clean up behind yo”self. Uh-uh, honey, no-no. You and that mutt ain’t gettin’ up in here fuckin’ up my nice stuff, and plus, you ain’t gon’ be booty-blockin’ me.”
“Please, Tee-Tee, we have no other place to go,” Dylan pleaded, holding Fuck ’em Gurl in her arms.
“And whose fault is that, material girl? We all told you to stop spending so much goddamn money, but nooooo, Dylan wanna be the flyest chick in the club wit’ no money in her pocket. You better take some of them shoeboxes you got and go build you a house. It’s time for you to suffer. Toodaloo, bitch!” He slammed the door in her face dramatically.
Dylan was stunned. She didn’t know what to do or where to go.
Am I going to have to stay in a public restroom tonight like Will Smith did in the
Pursuit of Happyness? she thought. Just as Dylan had come to the conclusion that she was homeless, Tee-Tee reopened the door.
“Get yo’ ass in here, coon, but if I have to remind you one time to clean up behind yourself, yo’ ass is out!”
Billie, Angel, and the kids looked on with other St. Louis natives as the Christmas tree in Keiner Plaza went up. It was a yearly tradition for the family, and even though this year the kids’ father was M.I.A., Billie was dead set on making sure that not too much in their lives changed. Kenzie and Kaylee were already having a difficult enough time dealing with the fact that their father had run off and married a woman who had a lower I.Q. than they did.
Cain was so caught up in his new lifestyle that he didn’t even bother inviting the kids to the wedding, which was filmed for VH1. Billie herself didn’t learn of the nuptials until she saw a news update on the E! channel. She simply chalked Cain’s erratic, idiotic behavior up to a midlife crisis. He would be the one that had to answer to the kids for leaving them behind for a chick he’d known five minutes. And he would be the one to learn that his and Becky’s relationship was destined to fail because it was built on a lie.
Angel stood beside his sister with his hands inside his pockets. He couldn’t take his eyes off the mesmerizing lights. They were magical. The only thing missing was Dylan. They were supposed to experience the holidays together, but Thanksgiving had come and gone, and they hadn’t spoken once. She’d called him repeatedly, but he couldn’t stand to hear the sound of her voice. What hurt the most was when he looked over his shoulder the night of the fight. The space where she should’ve been sitting was empty.
After his victory, she was supposed to hold him close and kiss away any pain he felt, but life had other plans for them. She’d done the one thing any man would fail to forgive. Angel still couldn’t wrap his head around how blatantly disrespectful she was to their relationship. He’d put it all on the line for her. He’d even gone as far as to cut his playa card up and throw it in the trash. No other chick would’ve been able to come in between them. All he saw was her, but she’d made her bed, and now she would have to lie in it.
“Niggah, is you cryin’?” Billie joked, interrupting his thoughts.
“What?” He snapped back into reality.
“I said are you cryin’?”
“Really, Billie?” He looked at her like she was retarded.
“I’m just sayin’. You eyes all watery and shit.” She laughed.
“That’s ’cause it’s cold, niggah.” He laughed too.
“Well, what’s on yo’ mind then?”
“None of yo’ business, li’l nosey-ass girl.”
“Oh, so you gon’ try and play me. Angel, I know you like I know the back of my hand. You over there thinkin’ about Dylan, aren’t you?”
“If I am?” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
“You miss her, don’t you?” Billie said sympathetically.
“Yeah, but me and shorty is a wrap. What she did was foul, man.”
“I still can’t believe that she would be dumb enough to fuck back wit’ State after how bad he dogged her. Like, what the fuck was she thinkin’?”
“Evidently not too much,” Angel joked.
“You got that right.” Billie laughed. “I just hate that it all had to play out like this. Like, once I found out y’all was seeing each other, something told me it wasn’t a good idea, but I kept it to myself. You two looked good together, and believe me, I wanted y’all to work, but on paper, y’all asses got an F.”
“Damn, well, tell me how you really feel.”
“I’m just sayin’.” She giggled. “One of y’all were bound to hurt the other sooner or later.”
“If she wouldn’t have fucked ol’ boy, I coulda seen us workin’,” Angel confessed.
“If you say so.” Billie shrugged.
A million and one thoughts ran through Dylan’s mind while she lay curled up on the couch. She wondered how her life had become so fucked up, how she was going to get it back on track, and what Angel was doing at that very moment. Was he thinking about her? Did he miss her? Would he ever forgive her?
For more than a month, she’d waited for him to return her calls, but each day passed and the phone never rang. Dylan was resilient, though. She refused to give up or believe that he didn’t long for her the way she longed for him. And yeah, she hadn’t appreciated him when she had him, but Angel was the best thing that ever happened to her. He was better than Fashion Week in Paris, Versace in the ’90s, and the perfect little black dress wrapped in one. Angel was the man other men strived to be. He was strong and thoughtful—just like his sister.
Dylan missed Billie terribly. She’d tried calling her, too, but like her brother, she wanted nothing to do with Dylan. The notion that their friendship was over tore Dylan up inside. Normally they spoke at least once a day. To go from that to not speaking at all was like outlawing red lipstick: preposterous. Dylan just wanted her life back, but really, what kind of life did she have?
There were no boundaries, consequences, morals, or truth in her world. Everything around her was a facade. The designer clothes and shoes masked how insecure she felt on the inside. It covered up not having a mother who cared, a deceased father she never really got to know, the loneliness of being an only child, and the fact that she felt she had no place in the world. Going from one man to the next wasn’t because she liked the single life; it was because it was all she knew. Unknowingly, she’d become an updated version of her mother.
Morty was right. Dylan did live in a make-believe world, and now that she was forced to stop viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, she was afraid, very afraid. Dylan didn’t know if she could survive the jungle we called civilization without falling into life’s traps. She didn’t have the strength to fail again, so day after day she lay curled up inside the house, hiding from the scary world that lay on the other side of Tee-Tee’s door.
“Look, honey!” He entered the house and flicked on the light. “I rented us a video.” Tee-Tee held up a bottle of champagne.
Once he saw Dylan and Fuck ’em Gurl lying in the same spot she was in when he left for work that morning, he flipped.
“Uh-uh!” He placed down the bottle of champagne, having had enough.
“Come on, Tee-Tee. Turn that light off.” She shielded her eyes with a pillow.
“Bitch, it’s almost nine o’clock! And why are you still moping around? You’ve been here almost a month.”
“Leave me alone, Tee-Tee,” she warned.
“And what you gon’ do if I don’t? Whoop me? I thinks not! Especially not when you living underneath my roof. Now, get ya bitch ass up!” He snatched the comforter from her. “Got my damn house smelling like pig feet and pork rinds! Have you even eaten anything?”
“No.”
“That’s a damn shame.” He pursed his lips. “Bitch, you need to eat something. Anorexia is so 1998.”
“I’m not hungry.” She took the pillow from off her face and looked at Tee-Tee for the first time. If she had the energy to laugh, she probably would have, but she didn’t. Tee-Tee had on the worst outfit she had ever seen. He wore a white cowl neck sweater, fur drawstring pants, and leopard print Christian Louboutin platform booties.
“Well, it’s time for you to stop trippin’ off shit you can’t change and pull what’s left of ya li’l sad life together!”
“How?”
“Shit, I don’t know.” He popped open the bottle. “Think of something you’re good at and make a career out of it—and I don’t mean shoppin’. That’s my job.”
“Maybe some of us aren’t good at anything.” Dylan continued to stew in her pity party.
“Save it, adulterer. Everybody’s good at something. Look at Superhead.”
“I may have cheated on my man, but I’m not a whore, Tee-Tee.” Dylan rolled her eyes.
“Chile, please. Everybody got a li’l freak in ’em.” He whined his hips. “And stop taking everything I say so literally. I’m not sayin’ go perfect suckin’ dick and write a book about it. I’m sayin’ think about what you do best, something you love, and make that the thing you do for a living.”
“All I’m qualified to be is a trophy wife, and you see how I fucked that up,” she sulked.
“It got to be something else.”
“The only thing I’m naturally good at is baking.”
“Okay.” Tee-Tee snapped his fingers then pointed. “There you go. Start a baking company.”
“Nobody’s gonna buy my stuff.” Dylan dismissed the idea.
“Girl, please. You better stop short-changing yourself. Your pastries are just as good as Paula Deen and the rest of them Food Network bitches.”
“You did not just call Paula Deen a bitch.” Dylan chuckled.
“Heffa, please. You act like she Jesus. Now, c’mon and get yo’ stank ass up. You finna go put some warm water on that pussy.” He pointed her in the direction of the bathroom.
“Shut up. I don’t stink that bad.” Dylan got up.
“Shiiiiiiiit, you need to stick a hole up yo’ ass and let it come through yo’ mouth. You smell like Jerrod musty balls.”
“I know you ain’t talkin’ with them country-ass fur pants you got on,” she joked.
“Girl, I’m so goddamn hot I don’t know what to do wit’ myself. My nuts been on fire all day. It’s like chestnuts roasting over an open flame.” He fanned his crotch.
“I am officially done.”
Since her divorce, Billie had decided to not only change her appearance and the way she ran her household, but herself. There were a list of things that she’d never done before, and with all the free time she had on her hands, now was the time to start doing it. Billie had no room for the fear of the loneliness in her life anymore. She would no longer allow it to knock on her door. Every day that went by, she kicked loneliness in the ass.
So far, she’d gone to the movies by herself, had dinner alone at a crowded restaurant, and taken a tropical getaway. Her next goal was to hit a nightclub by herself, and that Friday night she was going to do just that. Billie even decided to step out of her comfort zone and dress a little sexier. She was wearing the hell out of a hot pink strapless Michael Kors dress that stopped just above her knees. A Fallon multi-strand necklace with crystal, pearl, metallic chain, braided leather, and faux barbed wire and cross charm details highlighted her angelic face and toned shoulders. Billie also rocked a mean pair of aqua-colored python heels. She felt better than she had in over a year, but on her way to Red Kitchen and Bar, a new swanky hideout, she started to second guess herself.