A Hot Cup Of Coffee . . . #2
I smiled at the sight of my best friend. She entered the room with all her fabulousness. I loved her so much. She hadn’t left my side for one moment during this journey. The day that I was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease caused by lupus nephritis, I was completely devastated.
My life had already been altered in ways that I couldn’t imagine.
The end-stage was just a fucked-up cherry on a fucked-up cake.
My new reality after I was discharged from the hospital was outpatient hemodialysis three days a week.
That would be my life until I received a new kidney.
It took another month before my AV fistula was ready and they were able to take out my temporary chest catheter.
“The queen is here!” Lula Ann’s arms lifted over her head as she struck a pose. The people here loved her dramatics. She walked around the room and spoke to everyone. There was no such thing as a stranger to her.
After she finally got to me and plopped down in the recliner next to me, I greeted her. “Good morning, Lula. How has your morning been?”
“My morning was amazing. Booked a wedding party of twenty for Greece. Daddy Warbucks paid the two hundred eighty thousand dollars outright. It was the fastest and easiest thirty-three thousand, four-hundred-dollar commission I’ve made this quarter.
” Her tongue stuck out of her mouth, then she used her finger to swoop some of her hair behind her ear.
I sat up a little, and we both did a jig in our seats. “Yes! I know that’s right. We need to celebrate this weekend.”
“Oh, what are we celebrating?” My spine tingled at the sound of my newest favorite voice. “I want to celebrate too.”
Lula Ann’s head snapped so hard in Falcon’s direction that I thought it would snap off.
Her eyes started at his feet and worked their way up to his head.
He was casually dressed in Nike sweatpants, a white T-shirt, and sneakers that matched.
This man was fine as fuck with his dark skin.
The richness of his skin didn’t take away from the tattoos that decorated his skin.
Lula Ann’s head tilted to the side. Her eyebrow did the arch and twitch thing. “Hi, and who are you?”
I cleared my throat. “Um, Lula Ann, this is Falcon. He’s Mrs. Lauren’s son. Falcon, this is my best friend, Lula Ann.”
Lula’s head slowly turned to me, then back to Falcon. When her smirk presented itself, I knew that this conversation would take a turn. “You mean Falcon as in the son that Mrs. Lauren said would be perfect for you?”
My eyes closed because I forgot that she was here when Mrs. Lauren voiced that opinion.
I wasn’t sure if she said anything to him about it, though.
When my eyes opened, I had two sets of eyes looking back at me.
Did they really want me to answer that question?
It felt like the air was frozen. “Yes, this is him.”
Lula’s back straightened up. “Oh, well, hello.” She extended her hand to him. “As she said, my name is Lula Ann. We are celebrating the closing of a deal that I made at work. We plan to celebrate this weekend. You should come.”
My eyes bucked, but I recovered quickly. I was scared to make eye contact with Falcon, but my pussy said fuck that fear. She sent the message to my eyes, then boom! The smile on his face told me that he liked that idea.
Falcon crossed his tatted arms over himself. He peered between me and Lula Ann. “Yeah, I think I can do that. Me and my homeboy, Rome, might fall through.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped the screen, then reached out to me. “Mazikeen, call yourself from my phone. Once y’all know what y’all want to do, let me know.”
A Little While Later
It's a Celebration . . .
Falcon:
You didn’t have to hang up on me though, Kee.
Falcon’s text had me in stitches. We texted and talked on the phone since the day I called myself from his phone. I shook my head at his antics.
Me:
Fal, your ass fell asleep. What was I supposed to do?
It was finally the weekend that Lula Ann, him, and his friend, Rome, and I planned to go out and celebrate Lula.
It was supposed to be the weekend after I met him.
I wasn’t at my best, so we rescheduled. That really didn’t matter, because since then, Falcon and I talked, texted, and he even came and sat with me the next Wednesday. Mrs. Lauren ate that up.
Instead of a text response, Falcon called me. I picked up on the second ring. “You were supposed to hold the line and sleep with me, woman. How are we gonna be together if I can’t trust you to not abandon me?”
My laughter was boisterous. This man was too much, but I loved every bit of it. “Really, Fal! You fall asleep on the phone at three in the morning and because I hung up, now you think I’ll abandon you if we get together? Both of us should have been sleeping at that point.”
“First, it’s not if we get together . . . It’s when we get together. We’re already halfway there, and you don’t even know it,” he pointed out. “Secondly, I guess next time, I’ll just have to be laying next to you.”
His words caught me off guard. We had been extremely flirtatious, but this felt more intentional.
A part of me thought that all the flirting was just to appease his mother.
Like an all fun and games thing. It didn’t feel like games anymore.
Change the subject, Mazikeen. “I’m excited about going out tonight? ”
He snickered. “I’ll let you have that. How are you feeling today, Kee?”
“I feel good today, Fal. I can’t wait to go out with everyone tonight. It’s been a while since I’ve been out,” I told him.