Chapter 2
JOSIE
I cut my eyes into slits while staring at my sister.
She slapped her hand over her mouth and giggled lowly.
“Yeah,” I continued my phone conversation.
“I have a fever, and I’m still in the contagious phase, so I wouldn’t want to give it to you.
I’m sorry I had to cancel, but I’ll make it up to you,” I lied.
“Okay beautiful. Feel better. Get some rest.”
“I will. Thank you.” Before disconnecting the call, I pushed out a little cough.
“Girl!” Brion kissed her teeth. “Your lying ass is supposed to have strep throat! What are you coughing for?”
Frustrated, I took one of the throw pillows off the couch and threw it at her. “Shut up!”
That made her laugh harder and of course, her pussy whipped man had to intervene. “Don’t be throwing stuff at my baby’s face. If she gets a bruise, I’m gon’ be mad.”
“Nigga, shut up,” I frowned. “How is that soft pillow going to leave a bruise? You two are sickening.” They were annoying when they teamed up on me, but I was joking for sure when I called them sickening.
Ever since my sister met Hymn, he’d been treating her the way she deserved to be treated.
The best thing Corey’s hoe ass ever did for her was cheat on her because I doubt, she would have ever left him otherwise.
And leaving him was the best thing she ever did for herself.
Corey’s absence made room for a real one in her life.
“Josie, why did you agree to go out with him if you didn’t want to?” Brion asked right before Hymn leaned over and whispered in her ear.
She blushed while giggling. “Okay. I’ll be up in a minute.” He pecked her lips, and I rolled my eyes, opened my mouth, and pretended to stick my finger down my throat.
Hymn stood up, and his laugh came out in a rumble. “We love you too, sis. Stop lying to these men. You’ll never find love like that.”
“But I don’t want to,” I whined kicking my feet like an overgrown toddler having a tantrum.
Hymn cut his eye at my sister. “I hope mental illness doesn’t run in the family.”
I snorted out a laugh as he walked out of the room.
Once I was over my fit, I looked at my sister, so I could answer her question.
“I was going to try. I promise I was. Joey looks good on paper. He’s a stockbroker, thirty, and never been married.
He doesn’t have kids, and he’s not a bad guy at all.
Men just have a real bad habit of giving me the ick lately. I just don’t want to be bothered.”
“Well, I’m not going to pretend like I don’t know that feeling.
I wasn’t single long after I left Corey, but I know all about men giving a woman the ick.
If you can’t see yourself going out with him, definitely don’t force it.
There will be plenty of available men at the wedding,” she wiggled her eyebrows making me laugh.
Standing up, I stretched. “Uh uh. Just because you lucked up and got a good one doesn’t mean I’m pro dating athletes or anyone even remotely close to being famous. They are walking ick factors. Anyway, I’m going to get going, so you and your man can be nasty. Bye, I love you.”
“I love you more.” Brion stood, so she could walk me to the door.
Hymn usually lived in Atlanta during the off season but because Brion’s daughters were in school and because his condo wasn’t kid friendly, he rented a house for them while their dream home was being built.
Brion didn’t mind staying at the house in Atlanta during the summer, but she wanted to stay in Diamond Cove as near her family as possible, and Hymn was fine with that.
For seven years, my sister gave her all to a man that didn’t appreciate her or love her to his fullest potential.
The whirlwind love story that she got to experience with Hymn was nothing short of a fairytale.
I wished that could be the reality for every woman that wanted it, but the truth of the matter was, I really believed that it was meant for some of us to be alone.
I had never really had an issue with that.
It was the people around me that acted as if being single was some cardinal sin or a curse.
What I saw most people in relationships go through was enough to make me content with being single, but relationships like the one my parents had, and Brion and Hymn gave me hope. I wasn’t holding my breath, however.
I wasn’t against having fun at all, but it was even getting to a point where I couldn’t find a man worth giving my nookie to.
I hadn’t had sex in five months and at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t be having it anytime soon.
I had just got my dream car, which was a BMW X6.
Life was good. Since I was so busy with my graphic design business and the graphic design classes I’d been teaching, I started baking to relax.
Baking relaxed me so well that I discovered I could make some bomb ass cookies and a pretty damn good apple cobbler.
After making the mistake of posting the cookies on social media, I literally had people begging to be able to order them.
Thinking I would only get five or ten orders, I posted cookies for sale, and my orders went crazy.
I took a fifteen-minute phone call after posting the link and when I checked it, I had seventy-five orders.
I damn near broke my finger switching the cookies to out of stock, so no more orders would come through.
Yes, I made a nice little coin, but I didn’t want baking to become stressful.
It was a hobby. I never intended on making it a business, but I had orders to fulfill, so the next day, I’d be up bright and early baking.
Since I stepped out on faith and started my own business, financially, each year had been better than the previous year.
Being pregnant was something that I wanted to experience at least once but if I never did, I had three beautiful nieces that were like my own kids.
With every ounce of determination I had, I was going to build a great life for myself and if I ended up in a relationship, a man would be an added bonus and not something I had to have.
I knew my worth. Any man would be lucky to have me because I was a go getter, spontaneous, and adventurous.
I was never going to sit still for too long.
My ass might be ziplining in Jamaica today and hiking in Colorado next week.
I refused to let life become mundane, boring, or miserable.
One thing I got tired of was people asking the question what was wrong with a woman if she couldn’t keep a man.
They should have been asking men why the hell they couldn’t keep a woman.
The last time a male played in my face was my freshman year of high school.
I knew Brion didn’t regret her kids or the lessons she learned with Corey, but I would be damned if it took me seven years with a slime ball to realize what I deserved.
I was grown and established. A man didn’t have one too many times to prove to me that he was worth my time. His ass was gon’ get right or get left.
Two nights later, I walked into a VIP section of the club with Brion, Hymn, his teammate, Ken, his sister, Divine, her fiancée Mark, and my sister’s best friend, Alisa.
The triplets were spending the weekend with their salty ass father, and Ken talked Hymn into going out.
He was trying to get all his fun in before the season started back up, and his life would only consist of games and home.
Despite having worked my ass off for the past two days, I wasn’t turning down an opportunity to have fun.
I had baked more than two hundred cookies, designed a website, created two logos, formatted a five-hundred-page book, and taught an online graphic design class with thirty students in it.
A chick was tired, but I wasn’t turning down any money.
I wasn’t turning down fun either. Life had to be a healthy balance.
I was in my soft life era but hell, I needed money for that.
That’s where balance came in. I spent three to six weeks going hard, then I would take one to two weeks off to just live and enjoy life.
That had been my thing for the past two years, and I loved it.
As the bottle girls were fixing our drinks, a sexy ass, chocolate man ambled into the section with a slight mean mug on his face.
He didn’t look menacing, but he simply wasn’t smiling.
He favored Hymn, and I wondered if it was his brother, Huncho.
The sexy man looked grown as hell, but I knew Huncho was kind of young, and that made me divert my gaze elsewhere.
I was thirty-one, so if he was under twenty-five, I couldn’t do a thing with him. I remembered Brion telling me he got expelled from college back when she first met Hymn, so he definitely wasn’t over twenty-five. Interest dissipated. Mr. Sexy went over to Hymn and gave him dap.
“That’s Hymn’s brother?” I whispered to Brion for clarification.
“Yeah, that’s Huncho. He’s cute right?” she gave me a devilish grin while nudging my arm with hers.
“Um,” I frowned. “Cute in a babyish kind of way. How old is he?”
“I think twenty-four.”
“Oh, hell nah. Nope,” I shook my head adamantly. “He’s a kid.”
“Welllllll,” Brion sang. “He’s not on your level as far as having his own place and stuff like that, but he works for Hymn, and he’s stacking his money while he lives in Hymn’s condo. He also has a car, and he’s mature. He just had a lil’ run with getting into trouble. You can have fun with him.”
“I’ll pass.”
I wasn’t dating with the intention of finding a husband per se, but even the men I had fun with had to have something going on.
Lil’ Huncho wasn’t getting no pussy up off me just because his brother was in the NFL.
I didn’t even care if he had a lil’ money.
It ran deeper than that with me. Winding my hips to the beat and raising my cup in the air, I pushed all thoughts to the back of my mind and zoned out.
I had been working super hard lately so when London told me at her gender reveal that I should start a YouTube channel, I became overwhelmed and intrigued at the same time.
I didn’t need anything else added to my plate but until I was making six-figures a month, I still had goals to reach. Big ones.
After three songs straight, my feet were hurting, so I refreshed my drink and sat down on the plush couch in the section. A few seconds later, Huncho walked over with a cup in hand. “Mind if I sit here?”
My brows hiked slightly. “Not at all. I didn’t pay for this section, so I can’t tell anyone where to sit. You don’t bite do you?”
Huncho chuckled lightly as he sat down. “It depends but generally, no.”
His statement made heat radiate through my body, and I wasn’t sure why because he was a fuckin’ kid. I started scrolling through my phone, but I could feel Huncho staring at me. Looking over at him, I pursed my lips as if I was asking him what he was looking at.
“You Brion’s sister?”
“Yeah. Josie. Huncho, right?”
He smirked a bit showing off his diamond encrusted grills. “You been checking for a nigga?”
His question made a slight frown grace my face. “Um no.”
Huncho licked his lips with a chuckle. “I was just fucking with you.”
“Ummhmm.”
I went back to my phone, but I couldn’t really concentrate. Huncho was sexy for sure, and he was an adult but…nah. He was grown but that was different from being a grown man in my opinion.
“Wait, you said your name is Josie, right? The Josie that baked those strawberry crunch cookies for the gender reveal?”
I looked back over at him. “Yeah.”
“Man,” he groaned. “Those joints were so good and moist. Yo’ when a nigga got the munchies, they hit so hard. How much will you charge to make me like two dozen of those joints?”
I knew if I continued to bake for money that I would begin to hate baking.
It was supposed to be relaxing. Worrying about fulfilling orders and whether or not the cookies came out good was the exact opposite of relaxing.
I had to admit, however that knowing my cookies were that big of a hit was a little flattering.
“Um, you’re almost family, so I probably wouldn’t charge you.”
“I need that. I swear to God, and I have to throw you something. I don’t expect you to go in the kitchen and bake me twenty-four cookies from scratch just because your sister is going to marry my brother.”
“I like the way you think.”
Huncho chuckled. “Put my number in your phone, and you can text me whenever they’re ready. I’ll come pick them up.”
“Okay.”
I did as he asked, and Huncho stood up to walk over to the table with the drinks. Brion and Hymn were in the corner being lovey dovey. I wanted a refill myself. One thing about me, I was going to always find a reason to celebrate something. Life was too short to be any other way.