The Next Best Thing Read online

  Okay, double-ugh!

  Colin came towards me, and I avoided his touch at all costs. I was ducking and dodging, bobbing and weaving like I was in the ring with Holyfield.

  “Colin, you really need to go,” I said, leading him into the kitchen where I dumped his serving platters and chafing dishes right into his arms.

  “Man,” he said, totally bummed out. “I didn’t expect the night to end like this.”

  “Neither did I,” I said, opening the door for him and shooing him out like an annoying fly.

  Meanwhile, Colin was trying to set up a second rendezvous where he could hopefully close the deal at that point.

  “Do you think we can get together some other time?” he asked with so much hope that I almost felt sorry for him.

  “I’ll call you,” I said, waving good-bye. “You be safe now, you hear?” I quickly closed the door in his face and breathed a sigh of relief.

  And to think of all the food I have eaten that he’s prepared. Yuck!

  Colin may be good at what he does, but I definitely have to find a new go-to caterer, ASAP.

  Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.

  —Sarah Ban Breathnach

  SATURDAY

  I stopped by Costco early this morning to stock up on Red Bull and energy bars. As I was leaving, I ran into Tammy Hopkins, someone I had to put up with during my years at Jack & Jill, which is a social club for young adults.

  Tammy and I lost contact years ago, so I wasn’t able to send her an invitation to the “wedding,” but evidently she had heard through the grapevine about what had taken place.

  “Tori, it’s so good to see you out and about,” she said in that annoying, condescending way of hers. “If what happened to you had happened to me, it would be years before I’d show my face in public again.”

  Bitch. As if anybody asked you.

  If Tammy weren’t eight months pregnant, I would have dotted her eye for her real good. Mainly because I never could stand her ass. She was a snarky bitch then, and she clearly hasn’t changed one bit.

  “Jason is just the best husband in the world, and I know for a fact that he would never cheat, or humiliate me like that,” Tammy said, all self-righteous and sanctimonious.

  I had heard through the same grapevine that Tammy was married to a white man, so I said sweetly, “No, Jason would never cheat on you, Tammy. White men would just as soon kill you as divorce you. I don’t know…if I had my choice, I’d rather be cheated on than smothered in my sleep, then dumped in the Missouri River!”

  While Tammy was looking like she was choking on a chicken bone, I continued pushing my shopping cart in the direction of my truck. You know? Don’t start none, won’t be none.

  But in all seriousness, it could just be the loneliness talking, but I miss Roland. I wish he would just call me, because there is a serious talk that we need to have in order to bring some type of closure to this whole situation.

  Then again, maybe it is a good thing that there’s been no communication between us, because the way I feel right now, if Roland answered all my questions in the right way, I just might take him back. Even after all that has happened.

  And by the way, what does it say about me that I would even entertain the thought of taking him back after everything he put me through and all that he’s cost me?

  If that’s wrong or stupid, then I’m sorry. I just cannot turn my emotions on and off like a faucet, and pretend I don’t love Roland anymore, because I do. I never stopped.

  7

  I don’t even know why I bother going all out for Father’s Day. Daddy hasn’t appreciated anything I’ve bought him since 1998, when I bought him a set of perfectly weighted, titanium golf clubs that set me back a couple of grand.

  This year was no exception.

  My father turned his nose up at three silk ties from Hermes, luxury box tickets to the Royals and Yankees series, and a fifth of expensive Scotch.

  “You coulda kept this mess and just wrote me a check for ten thousand dollars,” he barked at me.

  Here we go again.

  Ten thousand dollars is the amount of money that my father reluctantly gave me towards the wedding. It is a tiny fraction of the money I’m out of, but I can see where he’s coming from; ten thousand dollars is a small fortune for a General Motors assembly-line worker.

  “Daddy, do you recall saying: ‘I know it’s not much, baby girl, but this money is my weddin’ gift to you.’?” I asked.

  “I sure did,” said Daddy. “But, no wedding, no gift. Everybody else got their little toasters and blenders back. Why should I be any different?”

  I reached in my Michael Kors bag, grabbed my checkbook, and wrote my father a check for eleven thousand dollars.

  “With interest,” I said, handing Daddy the check. “Are you happy now?”

  “Just as long as it doesn’t bounce,” he said, holding the check up to the light.

  Daddy can be so ornery sometimes; he gets on my last nerve.

  In addition to the Father’s Day gifts I had given him, we were at Benton’s having a one-hundred-dollar-per-person jazz brunch that I also paid for. It obviously wasn’t much to Daddy, but it was more than his son bothered to do for him.

  When I asked Junior to come along and pitch in today, he did what he always does, which is to pull the broke card. Not really all that surprising, since jobs are easier for my brother to get, than to keep.

  It has been two years now, since NBA draft day came and went without Junior’s name being announced. Since then, he has been drifting through life like he’s waiting on some special announcement giving explicit instructions on what he should do with his life.

  Unfortunately, my brother’s chronic brokeness causes me, as the oldest child and only daughter, to have to pick up all the slack when it comes to doing things for our parents. Birthdays, anniversaries, errands, favors—everything falls on me. I don’t mind, really, but the slap in the face is that my parents rarely seem to appreciate my efforts.

  For instance, we were on the twenty-third floor of the Westin Crown Center Hotel, surrounded by over-the-top elegance, our own personal wait staff, and all the gourmet food you could eat, but my father still managed to find something to complain about. First of all, the restaurant was too bourgeois for Daddy’s taste. He was not appreciative of the fact that there were servers standing over his shoulder, watching him eat, and anticipating his every need. As soon as any of us took a sip of raspberry iced tea, our glasses were promptly refilled back to the brim—something he loudly complained was pretentious and unnecessary.

  And he hated the food. Being from the South, Daddy’s taste buds are only accustomed to fried foods, collard greens, and pork fat. Oh, and barbeque. Daddy has never met a piece of smoked meat that he didn’t like.

  Mama, on the other hand, has a taste for the finer things in life, so she was enjoying every minute of it. Hell, caviar, lobster tails, and mimosas are the least of what the reigning vice-president of the local Ladies League deserves.

  “So daughter,” Mama said, daintily cutting a piece of beef Wellington, “are you seeing anybody right now?”

  My so-called date with Sean was a joke, and Colin wasn’t worth mentioning, so I said, “This soon after what I’ve been through?”

  “Baby girl,” Daddy said, “you’ve got to dust yourself off and get back out there. Haven’t I always told you that one monkey ain’t never stopped no show?”

  “And I know that’s right!” Mama said. “Now baby, what you need is a good man like Ethel Johnson’s son, Lamar.”

  “Mama, please…” I sighed, looking out the window and suddenly becoming very interested in the goings-on over at the Liberty Memorial.

  Ever since I turned eighteen, my mother has been trying to marry me off to one of the sons of the women in her social club. Which one doesn’t seem to matter to her, just as long as his parents are Masons.

  That’s what happens in these clubs. There is a lot
of intermingling of the families going on, with the parents of single daughters trying to marry them off to their friends’ single sons.

  Regrettably, I have learned the hard way that there is always something drastically wrong with any guy my mother tries to set me up with—usually a socially inept geek who still lives in his parents’ basement.

  Norman Harper was the son of Mama’s bridge partner, Ida Mae.

  I was lonely and in between boyfriends at the time, so in a moment of weakness, I agreed to go out with Norman.

  When we met at Houston’s Restaurant, I was impressed with how impeccably well-dressed Norman was. Then I found out he was a mortician down at Thatcher’s Funeral Home, and that one of his corpses probably had more personality than he did. He was thirty-one, but looked fifty. His skin had this gray, waxy look to it, which made me wonder if he was doing a little something extra with the embalming fluid.

  No. Norman was definitely not normal. In fact, I’m convinced that he was one chromosome away from being retarded, because he acted like he was on a thirty-second delay, or something. Seriously, I would ask him a question and it would take him around thirty seconds to formulate an answer; and even then, it wasn’t always a coherent one.

  After dinner, Norman and I went to listen to some live jazz. The music was good, but the company was unbelievably boring. So much so, that I fell asleep on his tired ass.

  At the end of the night I told Norman I would talk to him soon, which loosely translated into Have a nice life!

  I have heard it said that looking for love is the best way not to find it, which stands to reason since not one setup has ever worked out for me. I know, because I did a careful analysis of my dating history last night, and concluded that every meaningful relationship in my past came about serendipitously. It was not a fix-up, a blind date, the Internet, a nightclub, or a dating service. It was always a chance encounter that occurred during the course of taking care of my usual, everyday business: scouting venue locations, getting my morning caramel macchiato at Starbucks, or while standing in line at the bank or the grocery store.

  In light of this concrete evidence, I’m going to send out an e-mail to Yvette, Cookie, Nadia, Mama, and about a hundred other people who all have someone that they’re just dying for me to meet.

  Please cease and desist all efforts to hook me up. I’m sure the guy you have in mind for me is as great as you say he is, but from here on out, I’ll find my own man.

  Or, hopefully, he will find me.

  8

  I finally decided to start doing something about the excessive pounds that have been rapidly piling up on my ass and thighs, the clear result of late dinners, midnight munching, and all those wine and cheese parties my neighbors like to throw every other week.

  As soon as I got home from work this evening, I went and jogged for an hour at the fountain park near my building.

  Afterwards, I walked over to Barnes & Noble to get myself an ice-cold lemonade, and to find something educational for my nephew’s upcoming third birthday.

  Junior’s son, Trey, has tons of DVDs and video games, but not one book, which is a damn shame.

  So there I was, sitting at one of those wooden tables, leafing through a stack of children’s books. I have heard that bookstores are the new nightclub, but since I was dressed way down in workout gear, a sun visor, and no makeup, purposely attracting men was clearly not why I was there.

  Yet, there he was, staring down at me with soulful brown eyes set in an attractive chestnut-brown face.

  “Oh, Bother! Someone Didn’t Say Thank You,” he said, reading the title of the Winnie the Pooh book sitting on the table. “Wow! Not only is she beautiful, but she’s an intellectual too.”

  Okay, who is this fool, and what is his angle? I thought, as this complete stranger took it upon himself to move my lemonade aside and sit his ass down in the chair right beside me.

  “Ha, funny!” I said. “Actually, these aren’t for me. I’m trying to find something for my nephew.”

  “Okay, cool,” he said, trying to sound suave and sexy. “So what is your nephew’s auntie’s name?”

  “No, no. Not so fast, slick,” I said. “You came over here and made yourself comfortable, so I think it’s only right that you tell me who you are, first.”

  “Oh, I like that!” he said with excitement. “Pretty, sassy and bold. Now I know I’m gonna fall in love with you!”

  “Love? Ha! No way that’s gonna happen,” I said.

  “And why not?” he asked, as if I had seriously broken his heart.

  “Because you still haven’t told me your name.”

  He flashed a wide smile, and chuckled. “You’re a handful. I can see that already.”

  “So what’s your name?”

  “Anthony Matthews,” he said, offering a handshake. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  Looking him over, I surmised that his style is shabby bohemian chic. He was sporting a plaid, thrift-store jacket over a green Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, baggy jeans, black-and-white converses, and the hair was an interesting combination of dreadlocks and a short Afro. Definitely a free spirit.

  See? There’s that serendipity I was talking about.

  Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.—Horace

  WEDNESDAY

  It has been a little over a week since I met Anthony, or Ant, as I call him, and surprisingly, we have really hit it off. He is a cool, neo-soul type brother who seems like he has a good head on his shoulders.

  The two of us have talked on the phone every day since we met, and what I have learned is that he is a thirty-six-year-old aspiring comic. Ant was living down in Atlanta where he was just starting to make a name for himself, when his mom became gravely ill. Being an only child with no one else to care for his mom, Ant put his comedy career on hold and came back home to care for his sick mother.

  I like him, I think. And I say, “I think” because Ant is always “on,” which isn’t a bad thing because he keeps me cracking up with his zany sense of humor. But at the same time, it is hard to tell if I am getting doses of his real personality or if what he’s putting out there is all just an act.

  Whatever the case, we have been getting along great, and I am really looking forward to our first date tonight.

  Anthony said his Jaguar was in the shop getting new shocks and brake pads, so I agreed to pick him up at his mother’s house, which turned out to be nestled in a quiet middle-class neighborhood not far from Swope Park.

  Anthony came out of the house within a few seconds of me pulling into the driveway, and I breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t try to drag me inside to meet his mama.

  “Damn, you look good!” he said, settling in on the passenger’s side of my truck.

  My look for the night was sexy-casual, with a black Zac Posen minidress and four-inch Gucci stilettos.

  “You look pretty spiffy yourself,” I said, noting that Ant was dressed in a slightly different variation of the bohemian chic ensemble he had worn when I first met him at Barnes & Noble. This time it was a tweed, thrift-store jacket over an orange Bob Marley T-shirt, baggy jeans, and orange Converse high-top sneakers.

  Our date consisted of checking out Sheryl Underwood’s standup routine at Stanford & Sons Comedy Club in Westport.

  The comedy show was hilarious! Seeing Sheryl do her thing seemed to energize Anthony to the point where he could hardly wait to get home to write some jokes, and fine-tune his act.

  After watching Sheryl act a fool, Anthony suggested we drop in on some friends of his who were having a little get-together.

  “But I thought we were going to get something to eat,” I reminded him, hoping he couldn’t hear my stomach growling.

  “We are,” he said, playfully kissing me on the cheek. “Just as soon as we leave the spot.”

  Instead of giving me the address to where the party was, Ant just said, “Make a right here,” and “Turn left up at
the light.”

  That went on until we were East of Troost Avenue, and right in the heart of one of the most dangerous hoods in the city.

  “This doesn’t look like much of a party,” I said, as Anthony instructed me to stop in front of a dilapidated house that looked like it would collapse if the wind blew too hard.

  “Trust me, it’s on and poppin’!” he said excitedly, then jumped out of the truck and ran around to open my door for me.

  As I stepped out of my vehicle, it felt as if we had been thrust into Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, with all these scary, zombie-looking folks coming out of nowhere.

  I reluctantly followed Anthony inside, where the condition of the house was just as raggedy as the outside.

  My first thought when we walked in that house was that I hoped nobody actually lived there because it was funky with a capital FUNK. The smell of ass, feet, mildew, and stale cigarette smoke was so powerful, it almost knocked me to my knees.

  And there wasn’t much of a party going on, either.

  No music, food, or even a sip of Chardonnay to be found anywhere. Just six mean-looking cats playing Madden football on a big-screen television.

  “Tori, this is everybody,” Anthony said. “Everybody, meet Tori, my new woman.”

  His new woman? This was definitely news to me.

  The fellas threw their chins up at me, and said “whassup?” through halos of ganja smoke.

  “Have a seat,” Anthony said to me before disappearing into a back bedroom, leaving me to fend for myself.

  I looked around the small, shabby house, and the only place to sit was a worn-out recliner that smelled as if somebody had peed on it. No thanks.

  Loud, animated voices were coming from the kitchen, so I wandered in, and was amazed at what I saw.

  It was like a workshop. Several guys were sitting at the kitchen table using little digital scales to weigh, then bag up their product.

  No. He. Didn’t.

  I could not believe that my date with Anthony had segued into a drug run, which at any given moment could turn into a drug raid.