Chapter 9
9
Jade hated sitting at the bar. The stools were uncomfortable and hard to sink into, and she always felt like she was being watched like a hawk perched up on one. It was a Friday evening, though, and everybody and their mama had decided to have their supper at the diner. Because Miri was the only one who she’d been able to rope out of the house, they’d been peer pressured into giving up a chance at a real table to a young family only to find themselves stuck at two of the open stools left at the bar.
The bar at Minnie’s Diner wasn’t actually a bar. It had the same high, rounded tabletop as one, accompanied by glossy blue vinyl backless stools. There was no alcohol to be found, though. No towering bottles of vodka and whiskey. There wasn’t even a beer tap. Just vintage refrigerators filled with glass soda bottles and a ridiculously large stash of salt and pepper holders.
She knew she was ornery tonight, but Jade had seriously considered saying, “Fuck it,” and just going home instead. But Miriam, being the absolute menace that she was, had taken her by the wrist and forced her into her seat.
“Mommy will buy you a milkshake after your supper if you quit pouting,” her best friend said, snorting around a sip of peach tea.
Jade picked at the paper that had come off her straw. “Don’t call yourself Mommy . It’s weird.”
“It’s only weird because it makes your repressed ass horny.”
Jade gasped. “I am not repressed! And I’m not horny either. I’m… I’m very satisfied.”
Miri pressed her lips together and made a very unimpressed face. “When was the last time you even touched yourself?”
“I’m a grown-ass woman, Miriam; I think I have a genuine understanding of how to give myself pleasure.”
“I’d agree with that. It also wouldn’t matter if you never did it, if I didn’t know that you’re good for just straight up pretending like you don’t want it.”
Jade sighed and pressed her head against the tabletop. Her best friend wasn’t wrong but… she didn’t see it as repression. She saw it as compartmentalization. And, well, she supposed she was in a bit of a dry spell.
“I hit up Marley the other night, and she completely blew me off.” Jade’s words were muffled by the furniture under her face, but Miri still heard.
“Jade… Marley told you she loved you a year ago, and you were basically like ‘Appreciate it. Deuces, babe.’ You think she’s lining up to bump pussies after that?”
Jade opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the clearing of a throat. Her head was off the table so fast it almost spun. Behind the bar in front of them was a young white boy with wide eyes and a face as red as a tomato.
“Um.” His voice cracked. “I’m here to—to take your orders.”
Miri grinned and ordered a crispy chicken salad as if she hadn’t just completely embarrassed all three of them.
“I’ll have the patty melt,” Jade said, trying to convey an apology in her smile. “And a strawberry milkshake on her check.”
The kid walked away with barely another word.
“I think he goes to Greenbelt,” Jade groaned. “I’d be surprised if every high schooler in this town doesn’t hear about that shit within the next ten minutes.”
Miri rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You should hear the stuff these kids say. You thought we were bad? My eight-year-old nephew used the word bussy the other day, and my sister-in-law almost had a stroke behind it. Trust me, that’s nothing to what that kid sees every day on Snapchat.”
Jade supposed that was fair. She wasn’t the type of teacher who sat around talking about how much worse the kids these days were than kids in her day. It simply wasn’t true. Almost everything her freshman kids did was a direct copy of the types of shit she’d gotten up to at their age. Sometimes, though, she found herself speechless at their antics. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d had to look up terms they used, only to find herself rubbing her temples as she pleaded with them to at least keep that language out of her classroom.
“Either way,” she grumbled, completely unwilling to lose the little spat. “Keep your damn voice down. I don’t need everybody in here knowing that I get no ass.”
“You could get as much ass as you want to. Stop playing.” Miri’s eyes cut to somewhere behind Jade for a split second before she smirked. “I think you just want one particular ass right now, and it’s blinding all the others.”
Jade didn’t have any prospects at present. She was a bisexual with a roster as dry as the Sahara. It was a sad thing to be, but it was the truth. She’d been trying to big herself up by remembering that she was just too focused on her goals to give anything of herself to anyone else, even if the anything in question was just a bit of no-strings fun.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Miri’s eyes cut away again. This time, Jade was forced to swivel her head to see what had gotten her friend’s attention.
“Aww fuck,” she moaned.
Francesca Lim was standing in the packed line in front of the hostess booth. She was wearing a pair of tiny running shorts and a tank top, and Jade had to drag her gaze away from the stretch of her long legs.
“That’s her, right?” Miri asked. “The art teacher? The one you supposedly hate?”
“I don’t hate her.”
Miri laughed. “Of course you don’t hate her. You like her.”
“Are you out of your damn mind?” Jade’s voice came out much louder than she’d intended, and a couple a few seats down from them turned to look at them with questioning eyes.
“I mean, she’s cute.”
Jade took another peek at Lim, who luckily hadn’t noticed their gazes on her. It was clear that she’d just come back from the gym or a run or something. Her long, dark hair was in a messy knot at the nape of her neck. Her skin was glowing, and even from feet away, Jade could see the blood pumping under her skin, making her cheeks pink.
“She’s all right.” Jade turned back to the bar, finger idly playing with the sweat on the outside of her cup.
Miri made a noise at the back of her throat, and Jade knew that she’d been about as convincing as a Piggly Wiggly cake at a church bake sale.
“Aaaaaand she’s definitely coming over here,” Miri practically singsonged.
“Fuck,” Jade said, running her fingers through her week-old silk press. “I was not prepared for this today. What the hell am I supposed to even say to her?”
“You could try being nice.”
Jade shot Miri a withering look that her best friend returned with a grin just before Lim came to stand by them.
“Um… hey.”
“Hi,” Jade said with what she hoped was blatant disinterest.
“Do y’all mind if I sit here?” She pointed to the stool to the left of Jade. “There’s no way I’m getting a table to myself tonight.”
Jade went silent, decidedly not answering. Miri sent a kick to her shin under the bar that almost made her eyes water.
“Of course you can sit,” Miri answered with a smile. “I’m Miri, by the way.”
Lim smiled as she took her seat. Jade could instantly smell the coconut scent of her hair, and it made her mouth wet.
“I’m Franny,” she said. “I hope I’m not interrupting a date or anything…”
“She fucking wishes.” Miri snorted. “We’re just friends.”
Jade couldn’t pass up the chance to get her licks back, even if it meant having to give up her little show of ignoring Lim.
“She’s the most insufferable person I’ve ever met in my life, and she won’t leave me alone.”
Lim’s eyes seemed to light up with opportunity, one of those signature smirks appearing across her lips. “That’s relatable.”
Jade narrowed her eyes.
Their little red-faced waiter reappeared with Jade’s and Miri’s food, taking Lim’s order before running off again. Jade took a knife to her patty melt, cutting it down the middle. Steam rose up from between the two sides, and because she didn’t feel like completely sloughing off the skin on the roof of her mouth, she bit into a fry while she waited for it to cool down.
“What are you doing here anyway?” she asked Lim.
“Same thing as you,” Lim said, raising an eyebrow. “Trying to have a meal.”
“No, I mean… I didn’t know out-of-towners even knew about Minnie’s.”
“I’ve been here two years, and my ex brought me here basically the second we crossed into the city limits.”
She shouldn’t have been, but Jade was nosy by nature, and the mere mention of an ex made her perk up. Luckily, her best friend was just as nosy as she was but had way fewer qualms about hiding the quality.
“Ohhh, an ex,” Miri said with a wiggle of her eyebrows. “Anyone we’d know?”
Lim’s mouth turned down, and she shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, she grew up here, so you must, right? Greenbelt is definitely an everybody-knows-everybody type of place.”
Jade had to chuckle genuinely at that. “Not necessarily everybody. A lot of people, for sure. I’d say we know of more people than we actually know. The wealthy families of Greenbelt don’t concern themselves much with the rest of us unless they need us to scrub their floors or check out their groceries.”
“That makes sense. I think it’s like that in a lot of places, just on a bigger scale.”
“The ex,” Miri butted in to remind them.
“Oh, right.” Lim rubbed a hand on the back of her neck, and Jade spotted a small half-broken heart tattoo on her inner arm; the inside of it had been filled in with black ink. “Caroline Bailey.”
Jade’s head shot around to look at Miri, their eyes widening.
“You were in a relationship with Caroline Bailey?” Miri asked incredulously.
“For two years.”
“We’re talking about the same Caroline Bailey who had her superintendent mother fire our English teacher sophomore year for having us read The Crucible even though it was literally in the curriculum?” Miri asked.
“Uhhhh…” Lim trailed off, looking like a deer caught in headlights.
“It can’t be the same Caroline Bailey who sent around a petition to declare cheerleading a civil rights offense?” Jade asked.
“Yeah, that actually does sound like her.”
Jade scarfed down another fry. “How in the hell did that happen?”
“We met at a queer burlesque show my friend was performing at in Houston. Caroline was hosting, and we ended up talking backstage. Within like two months, I was convinced that she was the love of my life, and I moved here with her thinking we were going to… I don’t know… get married or something. It didn’t last long. A few months after that, she ran off with some girl she met during a pottery-making seminar in Charleston. I haven’t heard from her since.”
“Fuuuuck,” Miri breathed out.
“She just left you here?” Jade asked, her heart sinking into her stomach at the mere thought of that type of callousness. She might have been a bitch, but she at least had morals.
“I literally came home to her packing her shit up into one suitcase and hopping into the other girl’s car like it was nothing.”
“That’s so… fucked-up,” Jade said, trying her hardest not to sound pitying.
“Why did you stay?” Miri asked. “Why not just go home after all that?”
Lim was silent for a few moments, a small wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows as she contemplated. Then she flashed a look at Jade, and it nearly knocked her out of her seat. It wasn’t the sad, defeated look she’d expected from someone who’d been stepped all over. There was fire there, the kind that came from someone who was ready for a fight.
“I saw an opportunity here,” Lim answered. “I still do. I’m trying to show myself that I didn’t just upend my life for some girl who didn’t give a shit about me. I want something good to come out of all this. Something great, actually.”
“I hear that,” Miri said, and she raised her peach tea in solidarity.
Lim laughed, not smug or condescending. A genuine, tinkling sound that felt in direct contrast to the smokiness that was normally in her voice. It made Jade’s throat feel thick.
“That search for something great has you encroaching on dangerous territory, girlie,” Jade remarked.
The condescension rolled from Lim like water off a duck’s back. “I told you before, Jade, you don’t scare me. I’ve dealt with bigger and badder than you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Next to her, Miri snorted but otherwise kept quiet. Lim crossed her arms, her posture immediately more defensive than Jade had ever seen it.
“I’ll admit that I’ve never had a town hall meeting called over me, but this one time, one of the dads on my AAU team literally picked me up and carried me off the field against my will.”
Jade’s spine straightened in an instant. “What?”
“Excuse me?” Miri was incredulous.
“One of the kids on my team did AAU and played for his school at the same time. He had one of those dads who never made it pro himself and was pushing his kid way too hard to make it happen for him. You know the type.”
Jade nodded, mouth hanging open slightly.
“He’d had problems with me all season, questioning every decision I made, complaining about me to the head coach, that sort of thing. Anyway, we were in a playoff game, down by eight points, and I pull his kid because he’s clearly tired and he’s moving slow. And the second I get him off the field, his dad rushes me and starts screaming in my face and shit. He starts getting progressively more furious, and I just stand there straight-faced, trying not to sock him in his big, nasty mouth. I guess he got enough of that because all of a sudden the dude just picks me up under my arms, carries me off to the side of the bleachers, and tells me I belong there and not on the field.”
Now Jade’s jaw dropped open so wide she was surprised her tongue didn’t touch her shoes.
“What did you do?” Miri asked, her tone colored with all the shock Jade felt.
“I shrugged it off because that’s what you have to do. My coach got him ejected from the game and his kid was basically banned from competing in that league, but nothing like that would have ever happened if he hadn’t felt like he had a right to literally command my body because I’m a woman.”
“No, it wouldn’t have,” Jade agreed. “His cowardly ass probably would have been too scared to get in your face at all.”
“Exactly.” Lim had fists tucked underneath where her arms were crossed.
Whatever her feelings were for the other woman, Jade felt horrible for Lim in that moment. She was absolutely disgusted to hear what she’d been through. This career they’d chosen for themselves could be brutal on anyone, but when it was compounded with misogyny and racism, it could become downright violent.
“I-I’m sorry, Lim,” Jade said. And no matter how much she wanted to right then, she didn’t reach out and touch her. “You didn’t deserve that. You deserved for that guy to be taken care of the second he started singling you out.”
Lim caught Jade’s eyes, the look in them warm and appreciative. The palms of Jade’s hands ran as slick as her mouth. She swallowed.
“You’re right,” Lim said, her eyes following the line of Jade’s throat before flicking back to her face. “That’s why I believe in solidarity now. The more of us there are, the easier it’ll be to fight them.”
Jade looked away from the other woman’s gaze as a thing that felt suspiciously close to shame flooded her. It made its way slowly through her entire body until she was left with a chilly feeling all over. She didn’t know what to say in response. The humanity in her wanted to acknowledge Lim’s statement as correct, but the rest of her knew that all that hand-holding peace-and-love shit didn’t work. The stakes were too high to let her guard down over one sad story.
Weren’t they?
As a coach, she taught her players that good sportsmanship was imperative to being a good player. That didn’t mean they couldn’t get a little trash talk off from time to time or consider themselves the best in the game. It just meant that she was always there to remind them that they were only as good as their biggest loss. And those losses were inevitable.
This was different, though. Neither she nor Lim were on the field, fighting for the right to call themselves MVP. They were going after something that had the potential to change their lives. As women. As women of color. Trying to make names for themselves in this arena took an immense amount of drive and focus. It took a hell of a lot of grit and willingness to take it on the chin too. They were using kitchen knives to carve their names into institutions older and more solid than either of them could ever probably imagine. But the same stubbornness Jade saw in herself, she saw in Lim. That single-minded unwillingness to fold or give up, it was right there in the other woman’s eyes. And she’d be a fool not to recognize and respect it.
That didn’t mean she could fall into that well of respect, though. Not if she wanted to stay her course. Not if she wanted to win.
She hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to manufacture animosity for someone, though. Not for longer than the course of a game. Not while she saw and interacted with them so much. It made her shoulders tight and her abs ache. It was taxing.
But Jade figured that she could put their rivalry on hold for an hour or so while they finished their dinner. Then she could get right back to it.
“You should come out with us sometime,” she heard Miri tell Lim.
Lim flashed a look at Jade that she couldn’t quite decipher before offering Miri a small smile and a noncommittal maybe. Jade figured she wouldn’t be joining the girls for drinks and dancing anytime soon. She convinced herself that this was a good thing. Ignoring the thought of Lim in a pair of well-tailored dress pants, grinding against her beneath strobing club lights.
She took a bite of her patty melt to distract herself. Three bites in, she looked over at Lim, who hadn’t even gotten her drink order yet. Sighing with all the reluctance left in her body, she pushed her plate toward Lim.
“You can have some fries if you want,” Jade offered. “Until your food gets here.”
Next to her, she heard Miri suck in a breath. Normally, it went against every single one of Jade’s instincts to share food, even with her friends. She’d sooner give someone the clothes off her back than a bite of her sandwich. And here she was, acting completely out of character, for reasons she couldn’t even narrow down herself.
It was her turn to send a kick into Miri’s shin.
“Thank you,” Lim said, smiling at her as she ate a crispy golden fry, then licked the salt from her thumb before going back in for more.
Jade didn’t find it the least bit disgusting. Not even a little bit.