Big Juicy Lips Read Free Page B

because you and that ignoramus, Brick, don’t know how to do anything except spend money and get high. Let me remind you, Misty, I could lose my home and all possessions because I tried to help your unemployed behind out. Now that you have transportation, do you mean to tell me that you’re too selfish to take some time out for your own mother?” Thomasina closed her mouth. She closed her eyes tight and shook her head, as if she were too pained and too overwrought to speak another word.
    Misty let out a frustrated sigh. As usual, her mother was being overly dramatic. Thomasina Bernard was gainfully employed with good credit. Misty had promised to provide her with transportation if her mother agreed to put the truck in her name. But Misty had never dreamed her mother’s signature on the dotted line would go to her head and make her start acting like she was the primary owner of the luxury SUV.
    “This ain’t working out, Mom.”
    Her mother put her heavy shopping bags down on the concrete pavement. Taking in deep breaths, she folded her arms tight. “I guess you want me to call that car dealership and tell that salesman that I changed my mind…you want me to tell them to bring a tow truck and come get this gas-guzzler?”
    Misty sucked her teeth. “That’s not what I meant. Look, I don’t like getting up in the morning. I’m not a morning person and you know it.” Misty’s shoulders heaved in frustration. She leaned toward the passenger window. “Here, Mom. Take this.”
    Thomasina stuck her hand in the window. Misty pressed three folded ten-dollar bills into her mother’s palm. “Call Mr. Johnnie; he’ll give you a ride to the hair salon. For ten bucks, he’ll take you there and pick you up when you’re ready.” Mr. Johnnie was the neighborhood hack.
    Thomasina appraised the folded money and then begrudgingly stuffed it inside her handbag. “I don’t see why I have to ride to the hair salon in Johnnie’s dusty clunker after I took a whole day off from work and sat up in that car dealership, signing one stack of papers after another. You and that no-good Brick are riding around in style and y’all expect me to get around the best way I can. If it came down to me having to stick my thumb out and hitchhike my way here and there, you two selfish asses wouldn’t give two shits.” Breathing hard, Thomasina rolled her eyes at her daughter.
    Hoping to put an end to her mother’s tirade, but not wanting to be so rude as to pull off while her mother was still lecturing, Misty turned the volume up a notch, preferring to hear TI rant in his sexy Southern drawl. But Thomasina wasn’t having it. She got back inside the X5, reached over and politely adjusted the volume so she could be heard, loud and clear. “Don’t get all biggity with me. I’m talking and you’re gonna listen.”
    Misty jerked her shoulders in disgust, but remained in the parking spot. Her mom had missed her calling; she should have been a travel agent and earned some dough from all the guilt trips she loved sending her daughter on.
    “You’re sweet as honey when you want something, but you’re mean as a snake after you get it. That’s a very unattractive trait, Misty. When you get down to it, I’m the only person in this world that’s going to stick by your side, come hell or high water.”
    “I know you love me, Mom, but I don’t have time to listen right now. I have a lot on my agenda.”
    “I guess your agenda includes rushing down to that block where Brick sells drugs?”
    Misty sighed deeply. “Brick does not sell drugs.”
    Thomasina snorted. “Well, the way you two are throwing money around, he’s got to be hustling something. How the hell did two unemployed, trifling people come up with all that cash money to put down on a truck that costs more than my little row home? Neither one of y’all could come up with one single pay stub to show that car salesman. So, how are you planning on keeping up on the payments that cost