Take Her Man Read online

  “No, girl. Ms. Troy Lovesong over here is just wrong. She’s breaking all of the rules. But she’d better act right before I have to cut her.” Tasha reached for a butter knife that was sitting on the table beside her.

  “Whatever,” I said. I threw my purse on the table and sat back in my seat. I watched as Tamia pulled the bag open like a lion looking for fresh meat. I thought I saw saliva dripping from the sides of her mouth, her fingernails growing longer, vampire-like teeth hanging down like fangs. She snatched the picture of Julian and me out and grinned ghoulishly.

  “Hahahahahaha,” she laughed like an evil witch. “You have the tools?”

  “You know I came prepared, Ms. Lovebird.” Tasha pulled two menacing pairs of scissors from her purse. Tasha took the breakup parties more seriously than any of us—perhaps that was because before she got married, she had the most breakups of any other 3T. Over the years, she’d become the unofficial breakup party organizer. She made sure you got there and had a good time. It made her a pretty annoying person when all you wanted to do was stay at home and cry over the lost lover, but at the end of the day hearing her voice harassing you to get up and out was promising. And she actually made the parties pretty good.

  “Ready?” Tamia asked like we were preparing for a race.

  “Ready,” I replied, afraid of what was coming.

  “Ready!” Tasha said, handing Tamia one of the pairs of scissors.

  “Rock-a-bye, baby,” Tamia said. I rolled my eyes and swallowed the shot of Patrón that was waiting for me on the table. I tried not to watch the massacre, but, well, it was hard with all of the confetti floating in the air in front of me. Tasha, who had more male horror stories tucked away in her skeleton closet than anyone I knew, had a way with scissors. I once saw her cut up an 8x10 of her own ex in 3.2 seconds. She snatched it, saying Tamia and I were moving too slow. That girl was a serial killer in her last life.

  “Mazel tov!” Tasha said, slamming the scissors on the table. I looked down to see the damage. All I could make out was a piece of Julian’s silver tie. It was over. I could feel tears coming to my eyes.

  “It’s because we love you, Ms. Lovesong,” Tamia said, handing me the cutout of my face.

  “Yeah, and we hate that fool!” Tasha added. “Now let’s have a round of City Girls and talk about our dearly departed like the dog he is.” The waiter handed each of us a City Girl—the over-sweetened version of the Sex and the City Cosmopolitan that we drank at most of our get-togethers. The tasty mix had just enough kick to get the tears rolling early on in the night and the feet moving on the dance floor later.

  “Take your time, T. We have all night,” Tamia said, patting me on the back. “Tonight is about you. It’s your party. But you have to talk about it. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

  Along with being the smartest person I know, Tamia is the most rational. She was raised by her father, a judge who retired when Tamia’s mother died so he could spend time with Tamia. Tamia said he was a good man, but his love for the courtroom never left him. He taught Tamia the basics of his favorite cases when she was just in elementary school and convinced her that she would be the first black female Supreme Court justice. This resulted in Tamia being just that…“just.” She followed the law to a T—returned library books on time, never parked in handicapped spots, and at most times in my life, she stood as my voice of justice and reason—when she wasn’t locked in the library until daylight.

  “Thanks,” I said, folding what was left of my relationship with Julian into a napkin. Tasha raised her glass.

  “A toast to my fly-ass friend and the motherfucker who will never know it,” she laughed. “I’m for real. No sense crying over spilled, spoiled milk…especially when you’re the cream still on the counter.”

  “Drama queen,” Tamia said. She lifted her glass, too. “But she’s right. You’re fly and soon you will find someone who sees that.” She looked at my glass. “Soon both of us will find someone who sees our flyness. We deserve it.”

  I picked up my glass and joined the toast.

  “To my girls,” I said. “To my ride-or-die girls.” I drank the City Girl almost as quickly as my shot and shook my head as the liquid danced down my throat. Silence fell over the table. It was time for the dish—time for me to tell my girls what had happened.

  “I don’t know, y’all,” I managed to say before picking up my second drink. “I don’t know where this one went wrong.” I looked down into my glass, searching the pretty liquor for answers. “I don’t know why he dumped me.” I could hear myself crying. I was already drunk. “I just feel fucking pitiful. You know? Like, why am I not good enough?” I looked down at my lap and sighed. “I know that sounds stupid and ridiculous, but that’s how I feel. Like I’ve been loving this man and he could give a rat’s ass about my dumb ass. I feel stupid.”

  “Girl, fuck that feeling-stupid shit. We all go through that shit,” Tasha said, pouring me another shot. “Don’t think it’s just you. That’s just how it feels. It hurts. Just let it out. And let it go.”

  “Exactly,” Tamia said.

  “But I just feel like maybe I missed something or should’ve seen something or done something or maybe even—” I looked up at Tamia. She was looking directly past me toward the front of the restaurant. Her eyes were as wide as they could get and she hadn’t moved her drink from her open mouth.

  I tried to go on with my sad little speech.

  “I thought we’d be together forever. I thought he…” I looked at Tasha sitting on the other side of Tamia and she was looking past me, too. Her eyes also were as wide as soup spoons and I could tell that she was hitting Tamia beneath the table. I decided to turn around to the door to see what they were looking at.

  “No, that negro didn’t,” Tasha said.

  “Don’t turn around,” I heard Tamia say in slow motion as I turned to face the door and see what Tasha was talking about.

  It was Julian. My baby, my future husband, my ex-boyfriend was standing at the maître d’ stand. What the hell?

  “Grab her ass,” Tamia said. Tasha swung around to my side of the table like a superhero, sandwiching me between her and Tamia.

  “What are y’all doing?” I asked, trying to sound more confident than I really was. My heart was beating so fast I thought I was about to faint. “I saw Julian. It’s no big deal. I’ll go say hello. Remember, I have to show the Face of Grace.” I looked over at Tamia. She was looking toward the door. There was fear in her eyes. “Maybe he’s here with his grandmother. He usually hangs with her on Thursday night.” Even I didn’t believe what I was saying. Who takes their grandmother to Justin’s on Thursday night?

  “Is it her?” Tasha said to Tamia. “Is it that bitch?”

  “I can’t remember,” Tamia said.

  “Remember what?” I asked. I tried to stand up to see what Tasha and Tamia were talking about, but they were both holding me down.

  “You can’t see the girl behind him.” I felt like someone had just gutted me like a fish. Tamia looked intently into my eyes. “We think it’s Miata.”

  I turned from Tamia and looked back toward Julian at the door. He smiled at the maître d’ and signaled for a table for two. He put his arm back (the arm that used to hold me at night; the arm that I used to love) and pulled the trick he cheated on me with a month ago from behind him. I couldn’t believe it. He was with fucking Miata, at Justin’s, the night after our breakup! The night he was supposed to be with his sweet old grandma!

  I was about to go postal; rationality was leaving me; prison time was a possibility!

  “I’ll kill him,” I heard myself say just before I stabbed the table with a butter knife and stood up. The people around us looked and Tamia pulled me down so Julian couldn’t see me. I pulled away from her and fought to get up from behind the table. I didn’t know what I was about to do, but I knew where I was going, and I was still holding that butter knife. Clearly, I wasn’t going to kill anyone—that’s just dum
b—but someone had to explain to me just what in the hell was going on. I’d almost escaped the table when Tasha and Tamia tackled me back to the chair.

  “Don’t embarrass yourself,” Tamia said, pulling me under the table with her. “Don’t embarrass yourself over that clown. Face of Grace. Face of Grace. Have the fucking Face of Grace.”

  “Fuck the Face of Grace, Tamia. My man is with another woman,” I cried.

  “No, Tamia’s right,” Tasha said, easing her legs under the table with a drink in her hand. She looked almost as mad as me. “You know I’m always ready to roll crazy with you, but he isn’t worth it. And neither is that hoe standing next to him. I won’t let you go out like that.” She swallowed everything that was left in the glass. “Now we have to get out of here silently so I’ll lead the way.”

  The City Girl Martini: A Must-Have for Any Breakup Party

  Mama said there would be days like this. The good and the bad. You can expect them, and you must accept them. Invite the ladies to join you for a sip and see who can get to the bottom of the glass first.

  Do’s:

  1. Drink out of a fancy glass.

  2. Flirt shamelessly as you sip.

  3. Have cool company to drink with.

  Don’ts:

  1. Think about anything other than having a good time.

  2. Have just one.

  3. Drive drunk, because that’s just dumb.

  Warning: Sipping these drinks might cause you to have a good time. Don’t serve to lame asses and people you don’t like.

  The City Girl Martini

  Ingredients:

  1 part cranberry vodka

  1 part orange liqueur

  1 part sloe gin

  1 splash sour mix

  1 splash apple-cranberry juice

  1 splash of orange juice

  Directions: Mix equal parts of liquors and a splash of each juice.

  The Plan

  “I can’t believe that motherfucker’s with that bitch,” Tasha said angrily. It was exactly what I was thinking, but at that point I was too upset to say a word. We were all sitting in Tamia’s car in front of Justin’s. Tasha had convinced the manager to open the kitchen exit so we could get out without walking past Miata and Julian. Though I wanted so badly to approach them, Tamia and Tasha convinced me that it would be a bad idea to confront them in the restaurant. After climbing out from under the table, I moonwalked the entire way to the kitchen, watching their every move. Julian slid his arms around her shoulders and pulled her head into his chest. He kissed her on the cheek and whispered something in her ear. It looked like he said, “Mrs. James.”

  With every moment that passed, as I maneuvered my way around each table, my heart broke a little bit more. I wanted to scream, jump on top of the bar, and demand that Julian come home with me. Not her. Not the girl named after a car.

  “Tasha, calm down. You’re only making things worse saying things like that,” Tamia said, looking at Tasha behind me in the backseat. “I knew it was a bad idea to come here. Are you okay, Troy?”

  “I can’t believe this. Why her? Why here?” I looked out of the passenger-side window and shook my head. “I don’t understand. One minute everything’s perfect, then he just dumps me. Now he’s here with her? This shit is crazy.”

  “I know it doesn’t make sense. But you’ve got to move on. That’s what breaking up is all about.” Tamia put her hand on my shoulder. I could hear some old Luther Vandross song playing in a car passing by. I wanted to jump out of the car and roll around in the street, screaming Julian’s name out loud. It was dramatic and it wouldn’t make me feel better, but at least then people could see my pain. I got played by a man I thought was going to marry me. “You have to move on,” Tamia went on over Luther. “And I know it’s kind of harsh, but clearly Julian has.”

  “Bullshit,” Tasha said from the backseat. I could tell she was a little intoxicated from the excess of sass in her voice.

  “What?” Tamia turned to her.

  “That’s bullshit, what you said, Tamia. Something else is going on.” I could see Tasha’s hands moving around in my side mirror. She was getting riled up and ready to fight. While Tamia was always trying to see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the good in mankind, Tasha was the drama queen of controversy. If you needed to find out if your man was cheating, if your boss was stealing money from the company, if you were lying to your damn self, Tasha was on the job. She trusted no one and she could smell a dubious dilemma like doo-doo on a shoe. When we first met, Tamia and I wondered where Tasha got all of her street savvy. The girl could curse better than a sailor and I once saw her jimmy a lock faster than anything I’d ever seen on MacGyver. Apparently, her 90210 existence wasn’t as “totally awesome” as her mother’s career choice promised. When Tasha grew tired of sitting in hotel rooms and playing cards with her nanny, she slipped out to the streets to play gangster girl to get even with Porsche. From stealing clothes she easily could afford, to hanging out with boys that might have been featured on America’s Most Wanted, Tasha said it felt good to be out in the street doing things that could get her killed or at least force Porsche to have to come to the police precinct to bail her out.

  “What do you think’s going on?” I begged, desperate to find out what Tasha was talking about.

  “Oh, don’t listen to her ass, Troy. She’s going to turn this into some craziness.” Tamia tried to turn on the engine.

  “No, girl.” I put my hand on Tamia’s to stop her from turning the ignition. “I want to know what she thinks.”

  “Did you love that man?” Tasha pushed her head into the front of the car like a bobblehead. “Like really love him?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And did he love you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?” Tasha stressed the last word. “I mean, we all thought Julian loved you, Troy. We really did and you could not have told us any different.”

  Tamia nodded her head in agreement.

  “But the important thing is,” Tasha went on, “do you think he loved you?”

  I turned to face the huge glass window that separated the people inside of Justin’s from the rest of the world. I squinted to see if I could see Julian standing by the bar. He wasn’t there.

  “Yes,” I answered Tasha, searching the rest of the restaurant. I remembered the first time I met Julian there for dinner. It was raining outside and he’d just completed some residency requirement. “I need to celebrate, baby,” Julian had said to me on the phone. By the time I walked into Justin’s, he was already there, sitting in the waiting area. “I did it. I did it,” Julian said. He jumped up from the white leather sofa and opened his arms. My baby was looking fine, like a young Billy Dee putting the moves on Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues. I ran to him and jumped into his arms like I was Billie Holiday getting out of rehab. He held me close and kissed me on the forehead. “And I have you to thank,” he whispered into my ear. “Now everything’s going to be perfect for us.” I believed him then. I still believe him now.

  “Tasha, get to your damn point,” Tamia said.

  “I will, if you calm down.” Tasha put two fingers in front of me. “So that’s two points: You love him and he loves you. Now, let’s see if we can get to three.”

  “Yeah, let’s see if three makes any sense,” Tamia jumped in again. Tasha and I looked at her. “Okay, okay. I’ll shut up. Go on.”

  “One: You love Julian. Two: Julian loves you. Question three: Does he love that bitch?” Tasha pointed toward the restaurant.

  “Wait, I’m not having that,” Tamia said. “This is not about that girl. We’re all black women and she’s not a bitch. Her name is Miata.” Tasha sucked her teeth and waved her hand at Tamia. “No, I’m sorry, ladies. I will not let you all make this about that girl. Julian broke up with Troy. Julian brought someone else to the restaurant. Not Miata. She’s innocent in this. We have no clue what kind of person she is.”

 
“We don’t need to know what kind of person she is. What we know is that she’s the kind of person who’s in the freaking restaurant with our friend’s man—”

  “Ex man,” Tamia said.

  “What-the-hell-ever you want to call him,” Tasha said. “All I want to know is, is that bitch—I mean Miata/bitch or whoever or whatever you want to call her—really innocent in this, Tamia? Is she innocent or smart?” Tasha sounded like a lawyer cracking a witness. “Now, answer the third question, Troy. Does he love her?”

  “You don’t have to answer that, Troy.” I could feel Tamia’s hand on my leg. “I know it’s hard for you right now.”

  “Leave her alone, you corny ass,” Tasha said to Tamia.

  “I love you anyway,” Tamia teased.

  I leaned my head on the headrest and closed my eyes.

  It was just before we were about to leave for a three-day vacation in Key West that I found out about Miata. It was innocent, really. Julian had left both the two-way pager he used for work and his cell phone on the bed that morning when he’d left for the hospital. I picked the up two-way, trying to find a message from the hospital so I could give him a buzz there to see if he wanted me to drop off his stuff. I checked the messages, figuring he had to have at least one text message from the hospital within the past ten hours. He had been on call the night before.

  “Miata” was the first name I read. “What kind of name is that?” I thought, scrolling past the name. But I didn’t stop. After realizing that there were no messages from or to the hospital, I took a mental note that the last seven messages were from Miata and tossed the phone and pager back on the bed.

  “He’ll come back,” I thought, slipping off my nightgown and heading to the shower. Along the way, I kept saying to myself: I’m confident. I didn’t have to worry about my man, whom he was seeing and why in the heck she’d sent him so many text messages.

  I wasn’t the type to go through a man’s pager. That was child’s play. That was for insecure little girls who had nothing else to do with their time. Drama queens. Chickenheads. Baby mamas. Those were the kinds of women who went through pagers. Not me. I was different. I had things to do. In fact, I had a class that afternoon and I needed to get to the library to study. No time for little games. But, as I said, that’s what I kept saying to myself. What I was thinking was, Who in the hell is this woman, paging my man? I was trying to be mature but something in the atmosphere clearly was working on me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned thus far in my short life, is that when there’s something working on you—when your old inner phone is ringing—you’d better answer.