Liana
“I don’t know why I come over and receive this treatment. It’s my night off, and you got me making sangrias and ish.”
“I secured the entertainment; the least you can do is make the drinks,” Noeva said, forcing a smile on my face.
“You came over to watch Princess Tiana find love,” Wren laughed and clapped from her spot on the floor.
Noeva signed exactly bitch to me because Wren wasn’t like other kids. She was a yak back and didn’t even mean to be. Wren was born with Down syndrome.
Noeva learned ASL when Wren was a baby and taught it to everyone who loved her, not because Wren needed it, but because Noeva wanted her daughter to have every language available to her.
It had become our thing, the whole circle, and it came in handy on nights like this when little seven-year-old ears were in the room, and big mouths had things to say.
We learned that the hard way two years ago when Wren walked into her class and announced to everyone that her father was a bald-headed Slip ‘N ‘Slide with no hair on the side.
Word for word. I regret every time I sang that song to her.
We had been spelling things out and signing ever since, and it still only worked about sixty percent of the time because Wren was five steps ahead of everybody in the room on any given day and always had been.
“That’s right , baby,” I said out loud. “But I also come to see you.”
Wren accepted that and turned back to the TV , satisfied with my answer. Noeva looked over her head with the face she had been holding since she walked into The Bloom and watched me watch Jaheim Harrison walk out of it.
“I kept my mouth shut for two weeks. I have questions, well, thoughts. Well, questions, thoughts, and prayers. I’ve been praying to the zick gods for you, sis.”
“Noeva Rainey, gather yourself and stop playing all the time,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. “There’s nothing to tell you. He’s twelve years younger than me. And I’m still off men.”
“Anddd?” Noeva asked with her face twisted up.
“And that’s the whole sentence. It doesn’t need an and.”
“It does, though. That’s not even that big of an age gap for two grown, consenting adults. And girl he’s fine. Like fineeee. So, you can be off men but on him. Can I get an amen?”
“The town will talk, you know it. They had so much to say when I came back home.”
‘Baby, them funky cock hoes already talking,’ she signed, while I snorted. ‘ I once heard I made her, in the backseat of a Chrysler LeBaron. They talk, they lie. We ignore them because who cares. ’
“I care. I have a reputation to uphold around here.”
“Okay, which is what? The old witch who runs that bar that’s drier than the bar on Sundays.”
“Is that what they say about me?”
She shrugged and giggled. I rolled my eyes and tossed popcorn at her.
“No, but let me tell you what I saw. A man who is clearly interested and giving all types of green flags, and you’re running scared for no reason.”
“What part of he was there for a date are y’all missing? I’m never playing second or hell first again. I want to be the only.”
Noeva sighed.
“That’s fair. But Liana, he was stood up. He wasn’t there with somebody else; he was waiting on somebody who didn’t show, and then he met you. Ever since then, that man has been orbiting your ass. He may not have come for you, but he stayed for you.”
“It’s not like that I was kind to a customer.”
“You gripped the edge of the bar because he licked his lips.”
“I was stabilizing myself.”
“From what, Liana? The floor is level.”
Wren giggled at something on the screen and we both glanced over before looking back at each other.
“What about you?”
“What about me? I’m not denying I want a husband one day, or at least someone to love Pooh and me. But don’t bring me up. We are talking about you. I have excuses for my apprehensions.”
I looked at the TV. Tiana was still on the screen, paused right at the part where she finally stops running from the thing she wants.
I was not going to say what I was thinking out loud. That would put another battery in Noe’s back.
The truth was I was healed, mostly, but Odeal had done a number on me and my confidence in ways I still struggled to explain.
It took a long time to get to this version of myself, this woman who finally took up space again, and the idea of handing somebody the power to break that all over again terrified me.
I had read it wrong before. Seen red flags as green ones or at minimum as reasons to pause and then kept moving anyway. I let Odeal wine and dine me. Let him smile in my face while I cooked and cleaned and made myself smaller and smaller until I barely existed in my own marriage.
Instead of closing that distance, Odeal filled it with pussy that wasn’t mine and a child.
A child.
“I don’t want to be wrong again,” I said quietly, refusing to let my thoughts go that far.
The problem with Jaheim wasn’t that I liked him. It was how easy it was to like him. I didn’t trust myself enough to know if I was seeing him clearly or just getting caught up in the attention and consistency of it all.
It didn’t help that he smelled good as hell and Esme had already decided he belonged to us.
The whole two weeks since meeting him, I’d thought about him.
His dark brown eyes, deep cocoa complexion, and those plush lips that somehow looked soft despite the rest of him feeling so controlled.
Jaheim was a pleasant surprise, and pleasant surprises scared me more than bad ones because at least with bad ones, I knew what was coming.
“I know,” she said. “But baby, not doing anything is also a choice. A choice I don’t think is a good one. Have a truth moment with me. I know you’re holding back. Think about that while I put Wrennie Pooh down.”
“Fairy, you should kiss him like Princess Tiana did,” Wren said, beginning to twirl with open arms. The Tiana dress she wore to bed every night twirled right along with her.
“See, this why your butt be in bed early. You be in grown folk business.”
“Well-grown folks should whisper during the movie, Mommy Fairy.”
“Goodnight, Fairy Jr. I’ll think about kissing… yuck,” I said with my nose turned up and smiling as she did the same.
“A girl gotta do what a girl gotta do.” Wren shrugged.
“Okay, that’s enough, take your grown butt to bed.”
Noeva pointed at her and then at the hallway.
Wren went but kept the drama going down the hall because that was Wren.
I listened to their voices settle into the soft back and forth of a mother putting her child to bed, Noeva low and steady, Wren asking one more question, because for some reason kids never valued sleep.
I sat curled into the couch, eyes on the TV, Tiana still frozen mid-twirl on the screen. I looked at her for a second and then looked away because I was thirty-nine years old and absolutely not taking relationship advice from a cartoon frog, no matter how accurate it was.
That was pathetic, and I wasn’t pathetic.
I had gone three years by myself and was perfectly fine with it.
Men and all the noise that came with them were reason enough to keep my distance.
I had loved one with everything I had, and he had taken that love and built a whole second life with it.
If a man had two eyes, he was seeing other women; that was girl math.
My phone buzzed on the table as I freshened my sangria.
95874: Girl, I know you’re bored at home, and you need a little night on the town. Come to Stilettos for the grand reopening. Shots are free all night for ladies.
“Hell, the fuck no,” I muttered with a snicker.
Noeva came back down the hall with her phone already in her hand, which meant she had gotten the same text and had already made up her mind before she sat down.
“Club Stilettos is reopening tonight,” she said, dropping onto the couch and turning the screen toward me. “It’s under new management. Shanoa redid the whole place.”
“I just got that text, and it’s going to be a no. I’m almost forty.”
“I am sick of this, Liana. For real.” She set her phone down giving me a look with a mix of frustration and hurt in it.
“I’ve been patient for three years. Three years.
And I want my fun friend back. The friend who twerked in the Waffle House parking lot.
We don’t have to be serious all the time. And forty ain’t stopped nothing.”
“Maybe not, but the club on a Friday night at our age? We gon pay for it in the morning.”
“I never get that anymore, and you got it and ain’t doing a damn thing with it,” She stopped herself. “I’m not bringing Wren into it, I’m just saying. I miss you. The real you.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m not doing anything. I’m telling you the truth because that’s what I do.”
She was right, and I hated it. The sangria wasn’t strong enough for this conversation.
“And plus,” she said, “you need to stop letting Odeal have Coupeville. It was fuck him then, and it’s fuck him now. He does not get the whole city. Who the hell he think he is?”
“Noeva, I don’t want to run into him. I want to forget he existed and that time.”
“I’ll twist his dick off.”
“Please stop,” I said, laughing despite myself.
“I’m saying. He’s had enough real estate in your head. And even when you claim you’re over it, you still won’t set foot back there, and that tells me everything.” She tilted her head. “Doesn’t it tell you something, too?”
I didn’t answer that because the answer was yes, and she already knew it.
“Roya has the bar,” she said, softer now. “Tati can sit with Wren. I’ll drive.” She picked up her phone. “Come out with me. One night. Let’s go take Coupeville back.”
I sat with it for a moment longer than I needed to because Noeva wasn’t wrong. It had been a long time since I let my hair down.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not staying past midnight.”
“Absolutely not,” she agreed too fast, which meant she had no intention of honoring that. “I’ll be to get you in an hour. That’ll get us there around nine, nine thirty. Plenty of time to find mama a treat for surviving such a long week.”
“Goodbye, Noeva.”
She was already texting Tati before I got to the door.
I drove the four blocks home to my two-bedroom house, parked, and sat in the driveway for a second.
It wasn’t a lot of house, but it was mine.
I had it exactly how I liked it. Clean, warm, smelling like the wax melts on the kitchen counter.
I looked at the front door and thought about my Kindle and Crucible by B.B Reid sitting unfinished on it and waiting patiently for me to come back.
I almost talked myself out of the whole thing right there in the driveway thinking about the Men of the Wilds.
I went inside and got in the shower instead. Noeva would cuss me out if I backed out on her.
After showering, I moisturized with my Slather body butter and took my time getting ready. Tonight carried a kind of anticipation I hadn’t felt in a while.
I stood in front of the closet until I found the denim dress that I had been saving for exactly this kind of occasion.
One thigh stayed exposed every time I moved.
The halter ties wrapped around my neck and the back dipped low enough to make me second guess myself for half a second before I tied it anyway.
It was doing exactly what it needed to do.
Gold jewelry. Cleavage. Thigh. Strappy heels that laced up my calves and added three inches I didn’t need but wanted anyway.
I straightened my hair and pulled it into a sleek ponytail that sat high.
By the time I was spritzing on my Prada perfume, Noeva was already outside beeping the horn like she hadn’t told me an hour.
I swiped my lips with gloss, dusted my cheeks, hit the highlighter, grabbed my bag, and walked out.
Noeva was behind the wheel of a drop-top Camaro with the top already down.
“Whose car?”
“A friend’s. We couldn’t be caught on some hot girl shit in the mom van.”
I shook my head and got in. She already had Yung Miami going from the speakers before I could buckle my seatbelt. By the time we hit the main road, I was already moving in my seat, my mood shifting the further we drove.
“See,” Noeva said, watching me from the corner of her eye. “There she is.”
“Drive the car, Noe. You’re too happy to get me out of the house. It’s suspicious.”
She turned the volume up and drove.
Noeva talked the whole drive to Coupeville, jumping from subject to subject. I let the warm April air hit my face through the cracked window and tried not to think too hard about the fact that the last few memories I had in this city weren’t good ones.
I couldn’t think of one. Because I simply hadn’t gone back. If I wanted big town vibes I went the opposite way to Chancellor.
Club Stilettos had been redone, and it showed.
The line wrapped around the corner, but Noeva had called ahead and got us a booth.
We walked past it with our tickets and our heads up.
Bloomington fell away the moment we stepped inside.
The bass hit first, then the lights, then the crowd moving like one thing in the dark.
Somewhere between the music and the movement, I remembered there had been a version of me before caution took over everything.
Noeva grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the bar.
We got our drinks and found our booth letting the night and music take over. For a while, I stopped thinking about anything. I moved. The DJ was mixing and had the crowd bopping right along with him.
The drinks and shots flowed. My sis was in her element, laughing loudly, dancing with strangers, and being exactly who she was without apology, and I loved her for it. I joined in giving her what she wanted.
The twerking friend. The friend with the good knees. Trouble coursing through her veins.
An hour in, maybe more, I was at the bar waiting on a refill when movement near the dance floor caught my attention.
Jaheim.
My skin flushed instantly, and the smile that pulled at my mouth irritated me bad enough to make me want to go argue with myself in the bathroom mirror.
Was he headed to the bar or to me?
I got my answer when he stopped directly in front of me.
“Trini, Trini, Trini.”