Chapter 1
One
Taylor
The world keeps moving regardless of your broken heart.
I’ve been on autopilot for the past month and trying to avoid anything that’s Cameron-related unless I have to interact with it. Staying busy is good because I can concentrate on the shops and the new restaurant.
Election day is quickly approaching, and Atlanta is on edge. We’ll have someone new who adheres to the same old, same old, or someone old who will keep the bullshit going at a fervent pace.
Jamie has fully taken over the launch of Earth, Wind, and Flour, and I couldn’t be happier. The customers are a mixture of all races and ethnicities, which is what we wanted. Food is meant to be enjoyed by everyone and to bring people together.
Open Mic Thursday has been a smash hit out of the gate, with many poets, rappers, and spoken word artists coming out. So far, we’ve had a few women (both Black and white) talking about how the future is female and that we all should fight the patriarchy that has been installed since slavery.
Then, we’ve had a few no-name rappers who have much money to afford to be tatted up everywhere, talking about how hungry and broke they are. Pick a struggle, babes.
Next, we had some Hoteps (because they seem to be sprouting out of nowhere) tell women that we should bow down, and honestly, I stopped paying attention because it occurred to me that he was in my business and didn’t even tip my servers!
Finally, we’ve had a white liberal feminist who declared we all had the divine feminine within us and shouted that with every word being punctuation. Ouch, my ears.
As all this is happening, Jamie is doing the good ol’ Page charm and interacting with everyone, ensuring they’re comfortable and things are running smoothly. She can claim to hate the family all she wants, but it’s clear they influence her. Heavily.
I finally figured out that thing about Jamie that makes me tick. It almost seems like because their parents are so evident with their racism, Jamie is extra-hard with her anti-racism, to the point where it’s almost perverse.
A quick glance at her Instagram feed will tell one how she’s read several books within the past year, including The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and The Souls of Black Folk. She gladly shows off her Telfar and Brandon Blackwood bag purchases.
Her stories often feature a backdrop of her cooking and prepping to Jill Scott and Erykah Badu with a touch of Cleo Sol and Lucky Daye.
Not to mention, Jamie has friends of every shade and ethnicity one could think of – one of her best friends is an Indian (the dot, not the feather), her college friends are Black, and her high school friends are white.
As a bonus, Jamie is also fluent in Spanish.
She threw a lot of her money (read: Cameron’s money) into opening Earth, Wind, and Flour, and she wanted to ensure it was centered in the heart of East Atlanta. There are a lot of Black customers, expectedly, but the clientele also appeals to the white customers who want to appear woke.
She gets annoyed when she hears white people speak AAVE, and she goes out of her way not to. She says whenever a white person speaks Black slang, chances are they’re saying it wrong or overusing it, and I can’t disagree with that.
Nothing worse than a white Karen saying she’s “outta pocket” implying she won’t be available for communication, when it does not mean anything close to that.
I appreciate Jamie, but I don’t know. It seems like she’s trying so hard not to be like anyone in her family.
I’m not entirely sure if I’m dealing with the most authentic version of her.
She’s a different type of culture vulture: she appreciates everyone and sometimes crosses a line from appreciation and imitation to exotification—she worships us.
We haven’t spoken about Cameron since the shooting, and it’s a subject neither one of us wants to bring up. I know Jamie is silently happy that Cameron and I aren’t together, but I don’t think our separation will do anything to what Cameron plans to do to Ethan.
I get the feeling they believe that because Cameron and I broke up, that’ll stop everything with Ethan, and boy, they couldn’t be dead wrong about that. Literally.
I don’t have to wonder about how Cameron is doing. The news reported that a detective’s daughter was saying some rather racist shit in bed, and when I saw the tape, I knew whose bedroom it was. I didn’t have to figure out why she was naked or in Cameron’s bedroom to connect the dots.
I don’t know if it was his grand plan to take down his opposition one by one, but the sheer fact that he moved on so quickly as he did was like I never existed. I blocked him everywhere, but like that means anything. He has eyes on me at any given time, so he gets his personal livestream from me.
Ugh. I wish I could be like the City Girls and have a dude in rotation, so one doesn’t fuck everything up. Fuck niggas, get money, is what they say. I mean, it’s easy if you’re dating Puff Daddy or whatever the hell he calls himself. It’s a little different when it’s just me.
“TAYLOR!”
I blink a few times and turn toward the direction of my name being called. It was Hayley with a smirk on her face and folded arms. “Oh hey, what’s up?”
“What’s up is you are staring into the distance like Bambi is about to get hit by a four-by-four,” Hayley sucks her teeth. “You okay?”
Hardly. “Yeah.” My body lets out a deep sigh before I can stop it. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Oh, okay,” Hayley nods, “I just thought you were about to act a fool when you saw Cam with the new boo-thang he just brought in?”
“And WHAT?” My body and eyes knew where to go, and my feet became cinder blocks.
Right in front of me, Cameron and whoever-the-fuck-that-is are snuggled in a corner, enjoying another performance. She looks like she came from money and probably didn’t know what struggle means.
They’re....rather perfect for each other.
Last week, Cameron fucked me as if his life depended on it. Now he’s here with a Becky with the Good Hair. I don’t know why I’m surprised Cameron would show up with another Heather. I also don’t know why I’m even butthurt. Women mourn, and men replace.
It makes me angry. Like, I’m somewhere between Beyonce-dropping-an-entire-diss-album-towards-Blue’s-dad-and-Summer-Walker-choosing-the-wrong-man-yet-again-but-making-a-fly-album, angry.
All those promises and shit before he decided to eat me out and fuck me beyond recognition? I guess I was Boo-Boo, the mayor of Foolville. At least rent and bills are paid.
I don’t know what I should do next. Should I be cordial and serve them? Should I walk by and roll my eyes and suck my teeth? Should I send Hayley over there with a beatdown? No, I shouldn’t do the last one because she would do it. Hayley ain’t afraid of a charge.
“And what the fuck?” Jamie hardly ever curses, other than a ‘shit’ and ‘holy hell’ sprinkled here and there. So, for Scarlet Witch to drop an F-bomb means yikes.
I watch her as she stares at the back of Cameron’s head as he wraps his arms around his date.
I don’t know if I should let Jamie go ahead and kill Cameron, so I don’t have to.
At least Ethan has nothing to worry about now.
“I didn’t know Cam would be here, I swear!
” I cover my ass before Cameron sells me out.
“No, it’s not Cameron; it’s who he’s with,” Jamie starts a cappuccino and keeps her gaze on the woman. Hayley and I flank her as Jamie sucks her teeth and utters a few more obscenities. Oh, she’s white-Karen-about-to-call-the-cops-on-a-Black-child mad. “It’s Ethan’s sister!”
“Oh snap!” Hayley’s eyes danced with delight, and she took out her iPhone to snap a picture.
While Thelma and Louise have two different reactions, I’m stewing. Cameron planned to get back at everyone who’d done him wrong, but getting with Ethan’s sister feels too fucked up for my taste. It’s one thing to go after Ethan; it’s an entirely different game to go after his family.
“Is that cappuccino for Cameron?” I ask Jamie, who nods. “Let me serve it to him.”
Hayley’s eyes widen. “Are you going to spill the shit on him? Oh, please please please please....” She puts her hands in prayer.
“I’m going to talk to him. Calmly.” Because killing Cameron is not what I want to do, despite how tempted I am to do just that.
Jamie hands me the cappuccino and has a look on her face that she should put a bit of arsenic in it. This is a woman who truly hates her brother. “Here you go.”
My hands grab the cappuccino and saucer, and they’re shaking. Why am I so nervous about this? We’re not together, and who knows how long it will be until we get back together if we do? I take a deep breath, and the shaking stops, but now the nerves are racing throughout my veins.
Another woman is on stage talking about how to unlock your fullest potential and some other mumbo-jumbo about a guttural cleanse.
“Are you willing to do what other people won’t?
” She screams to the crowd. “Are you willing to let the haters claim, ‘you’re crazy’?
Do the thing that scares you! Do the thing that makes you lose some friends and make some enemies!
Do the thing that unlocks your fullest potential! ”
I’m feeling emboldened now. That Indian girl on stage is spitting hot fire, and I’m about to show Cameron IDGAF about him, his bitch, and the clique he claims. I’m the Female Tupac!
My back straightens, and I quickly walk through the crowd, careful not to spill a single drop. I’m moving with the precision of a cat burglar, twisting my body in the tightest of spaces. I’m careful not to bump into anyone because my ‘fuck you’ eye is on the prize.
I see the back of Cameron’s head, who has a front-row seat to all of the performances. The typical lithe, manic pixie dream girl is snuggling against his chest, and I feel like Zack de la Rocha in a fully-packed Rage concert. Fuck the system. Fuck men. And motherfuck him!
I practiced an opening line in my head. I was going to tell Cameron how I felt about him, his little enterprise, and how he ruined my life.
I hoped to hell I would never see him ever again.
And no, I wouldn’t give him the benefit of replying to me.
Fuck that! I will serve and be on my way before he can say shit to me!
I sneak up behind Cameron, calmly place the saucer on the small table in front of him, and turn to leave when he suddenly grabs my wrist. Every single emotion I ever felt for that man just bitch-slapped me in the face.
All that ‘I hate men’ and ‘fuck them all’ just dissipated, and I folded like a picnic lawn chair.
Don’t turn back. Don’t turn back. Keep moving. Yank your arm back. Yank your arm back, bitch! My mind is on overload, yet my heart is yearning. Ugh, I still love that man. I love everything about him. Well, not everything. But the things I do love about him outweigh everything else.
It’s been seconds since I served Cameron his coffee, and he hasn’t let go of my wrist. My mind jumps back into gear, and I remember he’s here at my place of business with another woman. Oh, that’s right—I need to go back to fuck you mode.
I gently pull my arm away, and Cameron does the unthinkable: his grip is tighter on my wrist. Now my body remembers how he used to grab my wrists when he was on top of me, looking down at me as his chain dangled, and smiling with every thrust he gave me.
“Does my angel like that?”
“Yes, baby...”
“Mm...I want you to scream it,” he licks my neck, “scream my name....”
“Angel...” I hear his low voice over the poet, and my body vibrates with his baritone.
I look back, and boy, that was a wrong decision. Cameron’s eyes are locked with mine, and my body is weaker than J.Lo’s vocals. Cameron looks like sex with his loose hair, Alexander McQueen sweater vest, and jeans. His full lips are pursed into a kissable pout.
And he’s demanding my attention. “We have absolutely nothing to say to each other,” I wrestle my arm away and make my way back behind the bar.
I felt like Kamala when she said, ‘We did it, Joe!’ and I’m on top of the world.
I officially told Cameron, the drug lord white boy, to fuck off, and life is great.
Hayley and Jamie are staring at me with wide eyes and shocked faces. “How did it go?” Hayley asks.
“I told him to fuck off, but not in those words.” My smile is the biggest smile ever to smile. “And it feels good. It feels good to tell him to get out of my life.”
Jamie and Hayley look at each other. They both know me too well to know I would never say such a thing to Cameron, no matter how much faux feminism I think I have. “Did you say that?” Jamie asks.
“Well, no,” I clear my throat, “but I wanted to! And I think he gets the message!” I nod. In my mind, I told Cameron to fuck off. He got the message. I said that even though it never came out of my mouth. My body language said it, and that’s all that matters.
“You sure he got the message?” Hayley nods behind me. “Because it looks like he surely didn’t.”
I turn around and see Cameron talking to the cashier. He’s smiling, and she’s eating up everything he’s saying. He’s laying it on thicker than a jar of peanut butter—those goddamn Pages.
That man could charm a nun out of her cloak. He always knows what to say, when, and most importantly – how to say it. Cameron can pretend he loathes his father, but it’s clear as day he learned it from the best.
I walk up to the front and interrupt the banter. “May you be helped, Cam?”
“Why yes,” he turns his attention towards me, “I told Keisha here that I will gladly make sure everyone gets a huge tip tonight if she lets me talk to you privately for a few minutes.” Cameron pulls out a massive wad of cash and slides it over to me.
“This is ten thousand dollars, and you have eight employees here tonight. Ten thousand divided by eight means an excellent night for everyone.” He locks eyes with me again.
“You don’t want to disappoint your employees, do you, Taylor? ”