Friends and Lovers Read Free Page A

get in her own bought-and-paid-for bed.
    The last leg of my flight was delayed big-time because of thunderstorms back east. It was about two in the morning in L.A.
    So when the L1011 screeched and bounced on the runway, I gave all the passengers one generic bye-bye and kicked them out before the plane came to a complete stop. I grabbed my luggage-on-wheels, sprinted through the airport with my low heels
click-clopping
with each of my impatient strides. All I wanted to do was yank off this blue monkey suit they called a uniform, let my hair down, and kick my heels into a corner. Couldn’t wait to get into my four-year-old 300ZX with the T-top, zoom home, crawl into
my
bed and crash on
my
brand-new mattress.
    But like I said, there was a man sleeping in my bed. A man I wasn’t too fond of. I could tell Bryce the same thing thrice and he wouldn’t remember when I had told him the first time. A few months back we started off as platonic roommates, but we slipped and crossed the line known as physical attraction.
    Trust me, physical attraction and a couple of wine coolers at midnight is the perfect formula for regret. Once he was privileged with a sample of the juicy, it was obvious that was all he wanted. Juicy had him crazy. I never thought I was in love with him, but he told me he was falling in love with me. I know the only thing he was in love with was the act.
    I should’ve cruised over to Debra’s crib, but it was late and she went to sleep around eleven and woke up at five to do whatever people do that damn early in the morning. She was one of those people who woke up happy for no damn reason, reading the Bible, reading
Don’t Block the Blessings
, music on, listening to social issues on
Front Page
on KJLH, bouncing around all chipper and sipping on hazelnut coffee. That’s why I stopped rooming with her. Eight years of living with Ms. Happy-Go-Lucky had worked my nerves.
    So the home I had for the moment was the only place I had to go. Back to Bryce’s apartment on the other side of Fox Hills, right off the 405 and La Tijera. It’s a nice gated damn-near-all African-American community of about five hundred about ten minutes from LAX with built-ins, high walls, a couple of eight-foot-deep swimming pools, Jacuzzi, beaucoup stuff that made the place cost an arm and a leg.
    When I passed by the guard shack, the security sister in the booth was knocked out, sitting up, her peanut-shaped head tilted to the side, deep-deep-deep in her twelfth dream. I could have used my passcard and been through the automatic gate without her knowing it, but I stopped, tooted my horn, let my window down, belted out “Hey, girlfriend” a time or two. She didn’t wake up.
    I sighed, cussed to myself, and went over and tapped on the window. She still didn’t move. So I grabbed thedoor handle and shook it as hard as I could. Kicked the base of the wooden door so hard the metal ID REQUIRED FOR ALL RESIDENTS: ALL VISITORS MUST SIGN IN AND OUT sign on the glass fell off and danced a jig on the floor. That scared her ass good. Sister-girl screamed so hard her braids went side to side and upside her head. Her eyes popped wide open, and she slipped off the stool and staggered left and right, like she’d woke up in the middle of an earthquake.
    I said, “All right now.”
    She caught her breath. Held her jacket where her heart was. Talk about a drama queen in training.
    Sister had to be all of twenty. She was under five feet, brown-skinned, with a thin nose that turned up. She adjusted her blue security jacket and looked around. Her petite size made me wonder what the hell her frail butt could do in case of emergency.
    She said, “You scared me.”
    “Better me than somebody else. You know people are complaining about you guys falling asleep.”
    “I don’t know when I nodded off.”
    “Most people don’t. That’s why it’s called nodding off.”
    She let out a few nervous laughs. “It’s boring down here.”
    “Don’t you have a