Sweet Bye-Bye Read Free Page A

day.”
    “Huh? It wasn’t that long, only maybe fifteen or twenty minutes,” I said.
    “Sure it was. I had to wait, and wait, and wait.” Eric fixed me with a stare, and continued sarcastically, “The line ahead of us was so long, I just knew that the ticket sales were going to just suddenly get
cut off.
”
    I eyed Eric and he beamed with this ridiculous smile. “It was okay,” I said. “We finally got to see it.” I looked at Eric and bit the side of my lip.
    “Yeah, I guess,” said Eric. “I just think it’s wrong to make somebody wait, then cut them off.” He looked across the table and added, “Ron, man, I bet Tia never cut you off—”
    “Stop it, Eric. We saw the freakin’
movie
! Okay?”
    Eric’s lips went into a bit of a smirk but his eyes looked so serious.
    Tia tried to save our lunchtime bonding session before it turned sour. “Chantell, gurl, did I tell you? I am lovin’ that dress on you!”
    She was such a peacemaker. I smiled. “Why thank you, darling,” I teased with a deep, sexy tone. “You too look quite lovely, as usual.”
    “So true. So true,” she teased back.
    We laughed like schoolgirls.
    The guys just shook their heads at our silliness.
    “So, let me tell you how my father woke up,” I said.
    Ron and Tia sat next to each other and shared one cup of water while I talked.
    “So then I was crying and I was calling out to God and asking Him to help. It was strange because in some kind of way, while I was crying, I knew Daddy was going to wake up.”
    “Wow.” Tia nodded.
    “God does do things like that,” Ron said.
    “Yep, and maybe God woke him up because He needed to stop you from disturbing the other patients,” said Eric with a smirk.
    “Wrong. Whatever, Eric, you’re not funny.”
    I looked at Ron and Tia, who sat close together comfortably. I was always amazed because I didn’t think that they even consciously decided to share the cup of water. They just automatically sipped from one glass. I was still trying to figure out what “it” was that Ron and Tia had in common when the waitress came over and took our order.
    When the lady asked what we would like, it was Ron’s turn to get silly. “Um, yes, I’ll have the avocado and shrimp sushi roll, and the salmon lunch special . . . And my wife here will have the eel—the
unagi.
”
    Tia, who was taking a sip of hot tea, suddenly put her hand up and tried to swallow her drink quickly. “Um, no, stop! Please excuse my husband. He knows I don’t eat eel.”
    Ron laughed. “Aw, baby, I thought you were going to live dangerously today.”
    “Stop it, Ronnie. I’m not foolin’ with no eels and you know it,” she said while leaning over and pecking him on the lips. Then she looked at the waitress and said, “May I please have the chicken teriyaki lunch instead?”
    Ron just smiled. He was so funny. I teased her often about Ron being her sugah daddy, but they had something great. I scooted over and got a little closer to Eric. We had been together for over two years and were headed into the village of soul mates ourselves. He always made sure he looked nice, as did I, so we shopped a lot, and traveled a lot, and had lots of fun together.
    We ate our food and chatted as tiny fishing boats rode past the front counter, circling the kitchen and chefs’ area in a tiny metal pond displaying varieties of sushi. Orange ones, yellow ones, sushi with crab legs sticking out, sushi wrapped in seaweed, and sushi covered with rice.
    Yep, I’d adapted my recipe for happiness a couple times over the last five or ten years. The latest version was a lot simpler, and it didn’t really involve a soul mate per se. It basically said, there were three things that you should always keep. Keep your man by your side, keep your game face on, and if at all possible, keep a Coach bag in your hand. If you were a person who could manage all three of those things, then I’d bet that you were somewhere having a nice life.
    Yeah, Eric