Chapter 20 What’s Love Got to Do with It?
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Eve
Jamie Gallagher: If that’s what you need, of course. How long do you think this pause is gonna be?
Jamie Gallagher: Hello?
Wed, Aug 20 12:56PM
Jamie Gallagher: Are you seriously ignoring me?
Fri, Aug 22 10:10PM
Jamie Gallagher: I guess no answer is an answer, but I was thinking about driving out tomorrow. If you don’t want me to, I won’t, of course. But I would like to see you.
Sun, Aug 24 11:13AM
Jamie Gallagher: Ok, I guess this is what we’re doing. You take care of yourself too, Eve.
“I think I might’ve done something stupid.”
“Okay,” Maya said, looking utterly unfazed by the news. “Well, that’s a step up from you not doing anything at all, so what’s up?”
“Wait, where are you?” Eve asked. She was squinting at her phone, trying to discern the background of Maya’s side of the call, a seemingly endless scape of green behind her.
“Girl, Siobhan got us out here golfing again.” She tilted her camera so that Eve could see her ensemble, a pair of cropped plaid pants, teal and navy blue, with a white top.
She also had a dark blue ivy cap perched on top of her 3C curls, which should’ve been a dead giveaway to her whereabouts.
Maya then showed Eve the view of her girlfriend putting, in her pink skort, top, and green visor, looking like a Black Barbie—AKA Edition.
“Are y’all in the city?” Eve asked, as the place looked too sprawling to be anywhere near Brooklyn.
“Oh, so you went to Tennessee and just forgot all about everything, huh?”
Eve frowned, unsure what that meant until she recalled the date—August was the time of year their friend group congregated in Martha’s Vineyard for a few weeks.
Eve used to think The Inkwell was just a Jada Pinkett movie, but as it turned out, it was a real destination spot for the Black elite and middle class alike.
Maya’s girlfriend secured a cute little cottage near the beach back in grad school—her family wasn’t wealthy, but close enough—and so it had become tradition.
They didn’t go every year—mainly because Maya was usually playing basketball—but they’d made tentative plans for this summer, as their friend Adebimbola had a documentary premiering at the film festival there.
But Maya was right—it had completely slipped Eve’s mind.
She was going to blame that on Jamie, along with everything else she’d forsaken because she’d started liking him a little too much.
“Damn, I really did forget,” Eve said, feeling even worse now. “Why didn’t you remind me?”
Maya gave her a knowing look. “You said you needed to get away. I didn’t think Martha’s Vineyard was gon’ stop you.”
“Well, how’s it going?”
“It’s hot and I don’t know how to play golf,” Maya deadpanned. “Oh, but guess who we saw out here this morning.”
“An Obama?” Eve predicted. She wasn’t sure whether to guess Barack or Michelle, Malia or Sasha, but at least one of them was spotted in Oak Bluffs every single year.
“Girl, don’t nobody care about them no more. Stacey Abrams.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Just hanging out at breakfast, being all effervescent and shit.”
“Did you meet her?”
“I just waved. You know I don’t like to bother nobody.”
Eve narrowed her eyes at what could only be deemed a lie.
Granted, Maya’s job involved being around notable people often, and she was generally chill about it.
But when it came to someone she really wanted to meet—namely, Rihanna—she lost her goddamn mind.
“Listen, both of us can’t be delusional right now. Not when I need your help.”
“Hold on, lemme take my shot,” Maya said before handing off the phone to Siobhan.
“Eve Antoinette Ambroise!” Siobhan greeted her cheerfully. “I miss your face, girl.”
“I miss yours, too,” Eve said, waving at her friend.
It was a bit ironic they were saying as much, since most people said they looked alike.
Though Siobhan had picked up a bit of a tan out there on the beach, her dark skin rich and glowing like gold under mahogany.
“The category is melanin,” Eve exclaimed, snapping her fingers.
“Listen.” Siobhan giggled, proudly flipping her long straight hair. “Seriously, though, how are you?”
Eve sighed. “I don’t know. Better in some ways, worse in others.”
“Maya says you got a new boo down there. Must be the reason you are positively glowing, sis.”
Eve tried not to smile as she tried not to think about Jamie, but neither her mouth nor her mind cooperated. “I wouldn’t call him that. Maybe boo-adjacent. I don’t even know what to call what we’ve been doing, but it feels like it only just got started last night.”
“Okay, but it’s good, I take it?”
At that point, Maya had come running back to the conversation, both of their pretty faces squeezed into the frame like they were taking a selfie.
“Obviously it was good,” Maya said. “Look at her.”
“So why is he boo-adjacent?” Siobhan asked.
“Because she did something stupid,” Maya said. When Eve started to protest, Maya stopped her. “Your words.”
“Well, he started it,” Eve said, sounding like someone too immature to be having sex with anyone.
“Watch this,” Maya said to Siobhan, then redirected to Eve. “What he do?”
“He asked me to come with him to Memphis.”
Both Maya and Siobhan stared blankly at the screen, leaving Eve to wonder whether the call had frozen.
“What’s wrong with that?” Siobhan said.
“Was it for a Black Lives Matter protest or something?” Maya asked.
“That would be weird,” Siobhan said. “Unless he already planned to go before he met you, I guess.”
Maya made a face. “Even then.”
Siobhan nodded. “Performative. Yeah.”
“Can we focus,” Eve said. “He’s from Memphis. His dad had some kind of accident, and he was going to visit him.”
“And he asked you to come with him,” Siobhan said. “And that’s a problem.”
“It was a few hours after we had sex for the first time. So yes.”
The two of them continued to stare at Eve like she was stupid. “This is giving straight people problems,” Siobhan said.
And Eve realized then that she probably did sound ridiculous to two queer Black women who would’ve given anything for the privilege to meet each other’s parents.
But Siobhan’s conservative upbringing and Maya’s issues with her dad—ones that weren’t related to homophobia, at least—meant that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
“Maybe we should call Nikole,” Siobhan suggested.
“I’m not bothering her at the beach with this,” Maya said. “Eve, why are you playing on my phone?”
“I’m not playing! I recognize that I maybe overreacted. Especially when I texted to tell him I needed a break.”
Both Maya and Siobhan shouted variations of “Oh my god!” at the screen while Eve covered her face in embarrassment.
While she had certainly allowed that she was being irrational—which was why she called Maya in the first place—she didn’t think she was being so obtuse that her friends would literally be screaming at her about it.
“I hate y’all,” Eve said, pretending to pout.
Maya took control of the phone while Siobhan, Eve presumed, went off to take her next shot.
“A few nights ago, you were all ‘my man, my man, my man.’ To the point where you hung up on me,” Maya recounted.
“Don’t think I forgot about that. And now you say it’s over… because he asked you to go to Memphis.”
“You’re oversimplifying it to make me sound moronic. No, bitch, it’s over because I have shit to do. It’s season two, I’m Carmy, Jamie is Claire, and my play is the Bear.”
“Eve, you know damn well I don’t know what you talking ’bout.”
“I told you to watch The Bear like a year ago.”
“It’s too many shows. I can’t keep up,” Maya said. It was the same answer she gave a year ago when everyone was watching The Bear and she felt left out. “How ’bout you give me the gist?”
“The gist is that I told Stella I’d have a new play for her in December. This is after I told her I’d have it in October. So clearly, Jamie is just a big-ass distraction. And I don’t need him to be.”
“That’s exactly what you said you wanted him to be.” Maya peered at Eve. “Don’t be rolling your eyes at me. That’s what you said.”
“I know what the fuck I said. And now I’m taking it back.”
“All because he wanted you to go over by his daddy’s house. Like I said . Girl, get off my phone.”
“Maya.”
“Eve, what do you want me to do with this information?”
“I want you to tell me what to do!”
“Sistren. You got this far without any input from me. Try just trusting your instincts.”
Eve huffed at the useless advice. If her instincts were working, she wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place. “Those haven’t done what they’re supposed to do since I met Jamie.”
Maya was giving that blank stare again. “You want me to come down there? We can fight for real if that’s what you want. You know I got your address.”
“I absolutely do not want that,” Eve said. Maya was five feet ten inches of mostly muscle. That battle would end worse than Kendrick v. Drake. “Stay right there in Oak Bluffs.”
“Matter fact, your birthday is coming up. Let me see what these flights talkin’ about.”
“Maya, do not do it,” Eve was practically yelling at her phone.
“Then stop crashing out over this,” Maya said, turning halfway serious. “Let that man fuck you the way you deserve to be fucked. And then bring your ass home.”
But therein lay the problem. If Eve continued down this path with Jamie, and not just in terms of sex, but in spending any marked time with him at all, she wasn’t going to want to come home. She already didn’t. And she had no clue what she was going to do about it.