Friends and Lovers Read Free Page B

radio or something?”
    “Nope. The one we had broke. I was reading
Essence
, and I guess I nodded off.”
    “Be careful.”
    Sister waved, looked embarrassed, yawned, rubbed her right eye, sat back on her bar-stool. I hopped in my Z, bounced over a couple of speed bumps, headed down into the garage. You know what? I love the way my tires
screech
when I make a sharp turn. Loved it so much, I backed up and
screeched
again.
    Bryce’s Toyota truck was parked in our double space, but he hadn’t pulled his truck all the way to the wall. We parked bumper to bumper facing the storage bins on the cinder block walls. That meant I had to get out of my car in the musty and dusty garage, and move hiscar up about three feet so nobody would clip the end of my car when they passed by. I’ve told him about parking like that over and over. Another one of life’s inconveniences brought on by the inconsiderate.
    I touched his truck’s hood before I took out the extra keys and started it up. It was cold. He’d been home for a while.
    Bryce is about five-nine and works at Northwest, loading planes, and part-time at the gym. LAX Family Fitness. He’s a trainer-in-training, has an exciting body, but is boring as hell. I’ve given this living together thing three months—which was three months too long. It’s almost like we don’t live together because I’m flying city to city to city most of the time. So we only see each other a couple of times a week, less if I can help it. The bottom line? He ain’t the one, the two, the three, the four, or the five.
    When I walked in, Bryce was sitting up in his plaid boxer shorts, scratching his genitals, with the television on ESPN. His ass would probably be up half the night with the TV blasting. I was gonna say something to him about his car, but he always made me feel like I was making a big deal out of nothing.
    I said, “You been home all evening?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Anybody call?”
    He was in the front room sitting in the leather lounge chair with his size-twelve feet stretched out on the ottoman. I didn’t get a decent hello. He didn’t bother to get up to give a sister a hug. I know he saw me struggling and didn’t help me with my luggage. Guess that would be too much like right.
    I repeated myself, “Anybody call?”
    Bryce said, “Didn’t you call and check the messages a few minutes ago?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Then you know who called.”
    I heard one of my nerves
snap.
But like I always did when I was upset, I ran my fingers through my hair, twisted the mane on my neck by the roots like I wastrying to pull tension out of my body, and counted backward from ten.
    I said, “Bryce?”
    He stood and strutted over to me. “Yeah?”
    “I think it’s time for me to move.”
    “When you leaving? You still have to pay for next month.”
    “Damn. That wasn’t exactly the response I was expecting. Not at all. I thought you might at least ask how I was doing.”
    “You’re the one who keeps saying that this isn’t working.”
    “It isn’t.”
    “Then when you leaving?”
    “Bryce. Can I ask you something?”
    “You’re gonna anyway. Why you always ask if you can ask me a question?”
    “Because when I do, you get that what-the-hell-does-she-want-now? look on your face. Like the one you have now.”
    “It’s how you say it. Ask the stupid question.”
    I cringed when he said the s-word. That subtle insult had become part of his abusive vocabulary a bit too often. I have a degree in secondary education from USC, and this community-college-going bastard called me
stupid
? It took me two seconds to swallow my attitude and not go off. Part of my face smiled, but most of it didn’t when I said a nasty, but not loud, “Why do my questions have to be stupid?”
    “If you would think before you asked, then they wouldn’t be.”
    “Never mind.”
    I went into the bathroom, took a quick shower, washed my face with Noxema, put on some Ambi, tied my hair back. Felt pressure in my