FYI: the list of 26 things wasn't something that I personally came up with...it's something I noticed on NSMB awhile back. Just thought I'd let y'all know, even though I only wound up using like four of things off the list.
“So did you have fun last night?”
“Did you?” Nate challenged, eyebrow raised.
Rolling my eyes, I said, “I asked you first.”
“Fair enough.” He shrugged. “And to answer your question, I had an amazing time. But I’m sure you’ve already heard that.” He winked with a chuckle, tossing my Cheez-its into his mouth.
“I hate you, boy.” I sighed, snatching my Cheez-its out of his greedy grasp. “And for the last time, the Cheez-its are mine! When you go out and buy some then and only then can you have some.”
There’s a reason why the tag line is ‘get your own box!’
“Smug muthafucka think he’s gonna eat up all my Cheez-its.” I mumbled to myself, munching on the cheesy snack.
Laughing, he started, “You know, if you had gotten some last night maybe you wouldn’t be so touchy over nothing.”
“You don’t know what I got last night! And this,” I said, shaking my box of Cheez-its aggravatedly. “Isn’t nothing.”
“Okay, I know what’s going on, now.” He nodded to himself, another smug grin gracing his face.
Rolling my eyes at him as he slowly walked away, I sneered at him and jerked away as he tried to grab some of my Cheez-its. I was fully prepared to ignore him and continue devouring the Cheez-its, but it wasn’t long before he returned, dangling a Midol bottle in front of my face.
“Take them, please.” He pleaded. And when I opened my mouth to tell him off, he added “Please, Goo Boo, for me.”
I tried not to laugh, but the sincerity in which he’d uttered that completely ridiculous nickname was just too much for me to take. “Shut the fuck up.” I laughed. “And get those outta my face, I won’t be needing those for another couple of weeks or so.”
“Oh, great, so there’s going to be an encore performance. Perfect.” He sighed heavily with a roll of the eyes.
“Shut up.” I smiled, chucking one of the throw pillows at his head. I wonder if that’s what throw pillows were invented for: tossing them at annoying ass boys.
“But seriously, what happened that caused me to be so lucky to be blessed with such cheery company today?” He said, plopping down beside me, his arm casually draping behind me on the couch.
I sighed. “You don’t wanna know.”
“I know I don’t, but I’m asking anyways.”
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” I laughed, shaking my head at him. “But seriously, it’s a long drawn out story involving way too much bitching for it only to be half past eleven in the morning.”
He shrugged. “No matter, you’re still going to have to tell me. Because if you don’t tell me now then that means you’ll just kept it inside for the rest of the day and snap at me randomly. So half past eleven or not, tell me.”
“But it’s really not worth telling, it’ll be boring for you.”
“What story of yours isn’t boring though?” He laughed, poking me in my side when I didn’t.
“Forget you, Nathan Percy Miller.” I retorted, smiling when I noticed the horrified look he had on now.
“See, that’s why I can’t tell you anything! I knew you’d use it against me.”
“What?” I asked, pretending to be hurt by his words. “I agreed that your middle name would never be spoken aloud when other people are around. And since there wasn’t any other people around when I said it, I’ve kept my word.”
“How can you be so sure though? I mean, the landlord could have this place wired with all kinds of hidden cameras for all we know.”
Rolling my eyes at his paranoia, I said, “If that’s true then you have a lot more to worry about than your middle name getting out.”
“There ain’t no shame in my game.” He laughed.
“Well maybe there should be. A little shame never hurt anyone.”
He groaned, rolling his eyes. “Whateva, just tell me what’s going so wrong with your life now?”
“You act like there’s always something going wrong with me.”
“Isn’t there though?”
“No!” I laughed. “But this is partially your fault.”
“How?”
“Last night, your little game of sex tag with Tam, kept me and Justin awake half the night. This then allowed him to find time to bitch about y’all half the night.”
“Well…” He started, before I cut him off.
“And then after your loud little sex-capades around the apartment, I found out this morning that I got three papers due on Friday.”
“What’s today?” He frowned. “Tuesday?”
“Try Wednesday.”
“So you’re screwed.” He brillantly concluded.
“Basically, yeah.” I sighed. “Then on top of that lovely pile of smoldering shit, I finally decided to call my mom who had been complainin’ ...to my friends no less about how I don’t call her enough. What the hell is Nikki doin’ callin’ my momma like that anyways?!...is what I wanna know. So I called her, right? And as usual it went from one thing I’m not doing right or enough of to another. Then after she finished her long and tired list of my faults, she moved onto phase two.”
“What’s phase two?”
Imitating my momma's nagging voice I said, “Why can’t you be more like your sister?! She’s doing something with her life, going places, meeting people. She’s dating this handsome black man…”
“Oh, she got a problem with your relationship with Justin?”
“Well, it’s not so much that she has a problem with him. It’s just that he’s…”
“Not the right color for her daughter.”
“No…well, yeah.” I nodded. “I mean, she wants me to be happy or whatever. She loves Justin, adores him even. But I dunno, she just always envisioned me married to some well-to-do black man and so far that hasn’t happened. And I mean, that’s what I saw for myself to until…”
“Until Justin came along and swooped you off your feet.” Nate finished for me, batting his eyes and clasping his hands together dreamily.
“Boy, hush.” I laughed, swatting at him.
Chuckling to himself, he grinned and said, “So she’s cool with him, but would just prefer you to be with someone of your own flavoring?”
“Yep.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t think so either if she didn’t feel the need to bring up who my sister’s dating in every conversation. I mean, damn. I’m the oldest; so shouldn't I be the one she compares someone to? Shouldn’t I be the one she’s saying ‘Hey, girl you need to be more like your sister, Keisha’? Rather than it always be the other way around? It’s like I can’t do anything right. I’m going to college on a full-ride scholarship, that’s not good enough ‘cause Shaina’s already jumped straight into her career and she’s practically runnin’ thangs too.”
“What does she do?”
“I dunno exactly, something in computers. Her dad, my step dad, is some hotshot at some company and has had her interning there since she was in high school and then when she should have been going into college, she got an entry level position at the company which quickly led from one promotion to another.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, so she’s twenty and already set with her career path. I’m twenty-two and hopin’ that after I get my degree things’ll work out for me. Plus, she’s got some man who’s also doing quite well to hang on her arm now, who’s so sprung up her ass that he’s been droppin’ big ass Hiroshima bombs of hints on her and the rest of family that he has plans of making her his wife. Next thing I’ll know, she’ll have the career, the husband and the kids…and I’ll never hear the end of it. It’ll be ten times worse with the ‘Look at what your sister is doing…your younger sister.’”
“Damn.” He sighed. “All this happened today?”
“Basically. I woke up after hardly getting to sleep any,” I said, staring at him accusingly with a small smile adorning my face.
“What?” He grinned innocently. “I didn’t really get any sleep either.”
“For an entirely different reason though.” I laughed. “So anyways, I woke up, checked my email found out about the change in due dates on those papers, then made the ever-stupid decision to call my momma.”
“So what could I do to help? ...Other than learning to contain my sexiness, of course.”
Pondering his offer for a moment or two, I said, “Well there is one thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m planning on inviting Justin over later day and if you could be nice to him that would be…”
Cutting me off, he asked skeptically, “Be nice? That’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Aren’t I always nice though?” He smiled.
“Well be extra special sauce nice then. I want the two of y’all to get along.”
“We don’t get along?” His forehead rippling into a frown, looking completely perplexed as to how this could have happened.
I laughed at the confusion on his face. “It’s not you, Nate. It’s the situation. Well at least I think it’s not you.” I added with a laugh. “You know, his girlfriend living with another man. A man who doesn’t particularly care for clothing no less.”
“I wear clothes.” He frowned. “Most of the time.” He added with a laugh.
“Yeah, well Justin would prefer that you had them on at all times. So he’s angry about that and just the fact that you’re here at all. So today is a day to redeem yourself. Show him that you’re likeable, even if that means not being yourself for a few hours.” I laughed.
“Shut up, I’m likeable.” He pouted.
“Sure, you are.” I cooed teasingly with a big grin, pinching his cheeks obnoxiously.
“Yeah, I know.” He sighed, running his hand over his close shaved head. “I know, I know. But it’s just a demo, Johnny. I’m not even sure I’m going to do anything with it. Much less go solo off of it. I mean this is how I wrote songs for the last *NSYNC record.” He groaned. “I’m not going solo. No, I’m not sure…I mean, yeah, I’m…What? I’m not lying!” He laughed, hearing Johnny’s sarcastic remark. “Okay so I’m thinking about it. But I’m still not sure yet. I haven’t told the guys.” He pulled the phone away from his ear then hearing Johnny’s tirade escalate severely. Hearing the beeping of his call waiting, Justin spoke up again. “Hey, Johnny I’m getting another call.” Clicking over without another word to his manager, he said, “House of pain. Bringing you and yours pain is the name of the game. We torture and tease, but when you crawl out you'll be sure to be pleased. How may I help you?”
Laughing, K said, “What if that had of been your mother instead of me?”
“Then I would have simply blamed your bad influence on me.” He chuckled, a smile having already taken over his face at the first sound of her voice on the other end. “So wassup, girl? To what do I owe the pleasure of you calling me?”
“I’m calling because I want you to come over today.”
“Come over for what?”
“Like you need a reason.”
“Well, normally I would say I don’t. But today is Bitch Out Justin day for Johnny so who knows what I might wind up being held up with.”
“I just want you to come over for a little while. You think you can swing that?”
“When?”
“I dunno. Whenever is fine for you, busy man.”
He laughed. “Never too busy for my baby.”
She smiled at that. “Nate and Tamela will be here.”
“Oh, great.” He groaned.
“Don’t be like that. It’ll be fine. You know you love flirting with Tamela’s stankin’ ass anyways.”
“We don’t flirt, we merely engage in teasing conversation.”
“Alright, then I’m merely going to have to engage my foot up one of y’all’s asses the next time it happens.” She retorted. “Which probably means it’s your ass, considering how Tamela scares me.”
Laughing, he nodded in agreement. “Yeah, she can be pretty scary when she wants to be.”
“So are you coming?” She persisted.
“Yeah, I guess.” He relented with a sigh. “Just tell Nate to keep his clothes on. I know that’ll be a struggle for him.”
“Boy, hush. Nate’s a good guy. You should hang out with him sometime. You know do guy stuff, get to know each other.”
“Nah, I got a better idea. How about you move…”
“Justin…” She whined, not wanting to get into this again.
“Keisha…” He whined right back.
“It’s not gonna happen, so let it go already.”
“I would if I could, but I can’t. You’re living with another man, K. A man who doesn’t feel the need to stay covered up around you. How would you like it if I got a female roommate?”
There was a brief pause, which was filled with a series of small sighs and K muttering under her breath, before she spoke up again. “You wouldn’t ‘cause you don’t need one.”
“Yeah, but what if I did?” He persisted.
“Then I’d have to deal with it.” She exhaled loudly. “What do you think I’d do? Complain everyday until you kicked the bitch out?”
Laughing, he nodded, “Well…yeah.”
“Whatever.”
“What if she walked around nude sometimes?”
“Okay, I get it, Justin. Alright? I get it. I already talked to Nate about that though.” She said, annoyance vibrating in her voice. “You are still coming over, right?” She asked, not sounding completely sure if that’s what she wanted anymore.
“I’ll think about it.” He teased.
“If that doesn’t mean ‘yes’ then you’re not getting off this phone.”
He laughed. “Okay, yes. I’ll be there later day. I’ll call before I come. How come you always get your way but I can’t ever get mine?”
“You get your way sometimes, but mostly I get mine ‘cause I’m the woman and you’re the man and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Whateva,” He smiled. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye baby.”
“Bye K.”
“I wuv you.” She added, sweetly.
Chuckling, he replied, “I wuv you too.” Clicking back over to his manager who’d he’d nearly forgotten about, he sighed. “Hey, Johnny you still there?”
Nathan and Justin were slouched over on the couch, both of their eyes glued to screen directly in front of them. Beer and food had been in a steady supply courtesy of Tamela and me, who had been playing the “good” girlfriend role by being seen and not heard while the game was on. We’d even managed to bring the food and drinks when asked with only a slight roll of the eyes and under the breath mutterings.
We were now lounging in the kitchen pretending to be civil to one another. We’d been reading some women’s magazine that was more about men than women (most importantly how to find a good man, how to capture said good man and finally how to keep that good man trapped in your clutches for the long haul) when Tamela suddenly started to stare at my fingers.
“What?” I frowned; self-consciously glancing at my slender fingers myself now.
“I never noticed how long your nails were.”
“Thanks.” I started with a small smile, figuring that was first compliment I’d ever received from her.
“Long and plain.” When my smile had officially settled into a frown again, she grinned and added, “But I can fix that for you.”
After she admitted how she’d always wanted to work and own her own beauty salon one day, I reluctantly allowed her to do my nails. As I waited for her to return with the minimal amount of nail polish I had available for use, I continued to skim through the magazine pausing to read an article entitled “26 Things A Perfect Guy Would Do.”
“Perfect guy.” I laughed to myself. “If that’s not an oxymoron I don’t know what is.”
“What are you talking about?” Tamela asked, re-entering the room clad with nail polish that I’d never bothered to use.
“This article.” I said, turning the magazine around until it was facing her too.
“26 Things A Perfect Guy Would Do.” She read aloud with a smile. “1. Know how to make you smile when you are down.”
“Justin does that.” I said, a smile unconsciously overtaking my features as I glanced over at him, where he was sitting engrossed in the game. “2. Try to secretly smell your hair, but you always notice.”
“Nate does that sometimes, but I find it to be more weird than endearing.”
Laughing, I nodded. “Yeah, I know, right. Who wants someone’s nose in their hair? Every time Justin does that to me it’s feels like he might try to blow his nose on my hair or something. One time he did actually.”
“He blew his nose on your hair? Was he drunk?” She laughed, her eyebrow raised but her eyes remained focused on the nail that she was painting.
“Sadly, no.”
She giggled a little at that, before reading the next thing on the list. “3. Sticks up for you but still respects your independence.” She glanced at me as if expecting me to say something, when I didn’t she said, “Justin doesn’t do that for you?”
“I’m sure there was one time or another when he did, but recently all I can think of his damn near constant pestering for me to move in with him.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I don’t see a reason to. Maybe I…” Exhaling loudly, I said, “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
Surprisingly enough she simply nodded, before moving onto the next question. “4. Give you the remote control during the game.” Glancing over at Nate, she looked back at me and said, “I know you didn’t ask for my opinion but I’m sure Justin’s not trying to disrespect your independence or whatever. I mean, he was okay with your other roommate wasn’t he?” She asked, without waiting for an answer. “So it’s probably just the fact that your new roommate is a guy and he probably feels like you’re choosing a stranger over him.” She paused again, her eyes wandering over to Nate. “Which essentially you are.”
As soon as I opened my mouth to protest, she smirked to herself and turned her eyes back to me again. “Ask Justin if he’ll give you the remote.” After a few seconds passed between us in silence, me staring at her, her staring at me, me saying nothing, she added more firmly this time. “Go on, ask him.”
Figuring she was giving me an out to the roommate discussion which quite frankly I was sick and tired of having anyways, I sighed as I rose to my feet; ambling over to where the guys were intently watching the game, I said, “Justin, you’d give me the remote during the game, right?”
Not looking at me, he said, “Yeah, yeah sure, baby, whatever you want.”
“Nate you’d give it to me too, right?” Tamela asked a second later, now standing beside me.
“Uh-huh, yeah.” Nate grunted; his eyes completely transfixed on the screen ahead.
Testing him, Tamela said, “Okay. Then give it to me now.” When she didn’t get a response, she called to him. “Nate.”
“What?” He asked, clearly irritated but not irritated enough to take his eyes off that TV screen.
“The remote.”
“Huh?”
We rolled our eyes at Nate’s response, before Tamela nudged me indicating that it was my turn to test my man.
“Justin, give me the remote.”
“Why?” was his immediate answer.
“Cause you said you would.”
“When?” He asked, able to give me eye contact now that the game was on commercial.
Intimating his voice, I said, “Yeah, yeah sure, baby, whatever you want…sound familiar?”
“Well, I…”
“Well you…what? Weren’t listening to me?” I questioned, eyeing him with a frown, arms akimbo.
“I was listening; of course I was listening to you.”
Rolling me eyes at him, I said, “Then you remember saying that then. So give it to me.”
“Do what?” Justin said, his attention back on the game.
“Give it to me.”
“Okay, baby, in a minute.”
“Give it to me now.”
“I’ll do it after the game.”
“After the game it won’t matter.” I said, watching as both of them jumped up yelling. When Justin started doing his victory dance as Nate began to roll his eyes with several grumbled “Man, shut the hell up. The game ain’t over yet” I sighed, giving up and going back to where Tamela was sitting now.
“Well I think we can cross that off the list.”
It wasn’t until we’d finished going over the list and were in the process of adding up the scores, during half-time in the game when the guys finally noticed what we’d been doing.
“I thought we were here to watch a game and get to know each other. Not to take a relationship test.” Nate frowned, moving up close behind Tamela now to get a peek at his score.
“You get tested all the time without noticing.” She replied with a grin, before flipping the paper over.
“And how do I do, baby? Straight A’s right?” Justin asked, after sidling up behind me, wrapping me in his arms and holding me against his chest.
Rolling my eyes, I laughed. “Straight A’s….ah, not so much. But you do aight. Good enough to keep me.”
With a grin plastered haphazardly across his face, he placed a trail of gentle kisses from my forehead to my cheek, jumping to my nose before landing on my lips. “Well, since I’m doing so well. How ‘bout you make me another sandwich?”
“The 13th amendment says I ain’t a slave no mo’ Massa. I’s free at last, free at last.” I replied, before Tamela joined in. “Thank God, Almighty, I’s free at last!” Laughing and slapping hands together, I’m sure we looked like the best of buds, but that definitely wasn’t the case. I mean sure, Tamela knew how to reign in her crazy ways every now and then, but there was still a long way to go before someone could honestly call her a nice person.
“I told ya it was too good to be true.” Justin grumbled to Nate as he straightened up to serve himself
“So what did you think of Justin today?” I asked, glancing up at Nate as we strolled along toward the Student Center in order to see what was going down on campus that we might want to get into later on that night.
I know, I know…it was already Wednesday I had a massive amount of work to do for those three papers that were due on Friday, but…
But that was a whole forty-eight hours away. Right now I needed to relax, to get myself into a calm, cool, and collected head space before dutifully plopping myself down in front of that damned daunting white screen of my computer, trying to dredge up three papers worth of bullshit that somehow will be good enough in my professors’ eyes to be deemed as brilliance.
Shrugging, he replied, “I dunno, he’s cool, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Yeah, he’s aight. I mean, he’s nothin’ special. He ain’t no me after all.” He chuckled heartily at that, the dimple in his left cheek peeking out before retreating again.
“You have dimples?” I asked, ignoring his blatant ego trip.
“Yep,” He nodded with a grin, showing off the other small one he had in his right cheek. “That’s another thing we have in common.”
“Another thing? What’s the others?” I smiled, briefly flashing him my own dimples.
“Oh girl, you know that animalistic magnetism we share for each other…” He trailed off, his arm casually draping across my shoulders. And before I could question him on whether that was supposed to be a joke or not, or shrug his heavy arm up off me, a slew of ‘Waddup ‘Nati P?’s distracted me.
Glancing at the group of smooth looking caramel dipped to perfection toned brothas who had been calling to Nate, I couldn’t help but grin as I said, “‘Nati P?”
“Yeah, I’m from Cincinnati.” He said, before continuing on his series of head nods and ‘wassup man’s to the group as they strolled past us.
“But still....” I said; my face still twisted up into a frown.
“Oh girl, shut up,” He said, my frown now successfully transferred to his face as his arm fell casually back over my shoulder. “You better not start calling me that, either.” He warned.
“Calling you what, ‘Nati P?”
He grimaced, his eyes narrowing down on me as he easily pulled me into a headlock. “Don’t forget I know where you live.”
“I know where you live too, dummy.” I laughed, squirming out of his playful grasp. “So why do you let them call you that, but I can’t?”
“It’s simple, really. They’re all bigger and stronger than I am, therefore allowing them to call me whatever the hell they want.”
“I’m bigger and stronger than you too.” I retorted, flexing my scrawny arms for effect as if doing so would actually prove something. “Check out them guns.”
I’d never heard someone laugh as hard or as long as Nate did that day. It was kind of insulting after the first five minutes.
“Shut the hell up with all that giggling.” I finally snapped.
“Oh, oh, I’m sorry.” He said, trying to catch his breath. “But…” He looked at my arms again and immediately burst out with laughter again.
Being the ultra-mature person that I am, I naturally responded to that by storming off ahead of him.
“I’m sorry.” He said, struggling to catch up with me. Somehow despite how much longer his legs are than mine he was still having trouble keeping up with my rapid pace. “Slow up, Speedy Gonzalez. What’s the rush?” And before I could even bother to answer, he added, “Rushing back to gym to work on those guns?” And here we go again with the hyena chuckling.
“I hate you, you know that, right?” I said, trying to resist the smile that came at the sight of him thoroughly enjoying himself. But at the same time, I was ready to pick up the pace again, when something caused me to halt in my tracks completely. My sudden stop nearly made Nate run me over.
“What’s wrong with you? You can’t even walk now?” He laughed, before turning and seeing the scene I’d been staring at.
“Hey, let’s just go.” I said, watching his body tense up. When he didn’t say anything, I grabbed the closest hand of his I could find and started to try to pull him in the opposite direction. “C’mon, Nate. Let’s go.”
He wasn’t moving, not budging so much as a millimeter from his original stance. “Ay yo, ‘Nati P, I said, let’s go!” I tried again, hoping that he’d find his nickname annoying enough to pay me more attention than the scene he was still blankly staring at.
“Nah, fuck that.” He hissed back, his eyes never moving from the scene.
I sighed, realizing that the confrontation I was trying to avoid was about to happen anyways. I felt like I was on a bad episode of ‘Cheaters.’ Actually, there are really no ‘good’ episodes on a show like that.
“Just don’t do anything stupid then.” I pleaded, staring up at him, while he continued to stare at the two other people who were so absorbed into themselves that they had no idea we’d been watching them this entire time.
He glanced down at me, for a moment. Blinking for several seconds, but never saying a word. He frowned then as if just registering my words. “C’mon.” He said, pulling me in the one direction that I had most definitely not intended to go.
“Um, Nate, I was just wondering if you noticed that you happened to be dragging me in the wrong direction.”
No answer.
“The Student Center is the other way.” I tried again.
No answer again.
“And really now that I think about it, I’m not in the mood to go there anyways.”
Stopping as abruptly as I had earlier, his milk chocolate eyes zeroed in on me. “Do you want to come or not?”
“So now I’m getting a choice?”
He sighed. “Look, I’m going other there, with or without you. So are you coming or not?”
“I would love to say ‘not’ but I get the feeling that you’re going to need a referee.”
Glancing over my 5’2” frame in comparison to his 6’ build, I couldn’t even be mad if I wanted to upon hearing him hyena chuckling again. “You’re so…” He sighed, shaking his head.
Laughing, I nodded in agreement. “Beautiful? Wonderfully amazing? Yeah, I know, I get that a lot.”
“I was going more along the lines of ‘weird,’ but sure whatever you say.” He was smiling again, which caused me to smile. He just had one of those contagious smiles, like Taye Diggs. But just as quickly and easily as the smile had took hold of his face, it faded into the background. The foreground now masked with a mixture of hurt and anger. “You comin’ wit’ me?” He asked.
I sighed, because I knew despite the fact that he was asking me now that still didn’t mean he was necessarily giving me a choice. Sure, I could have said ‘no’ and just walked away. But the guy that Tamela was hugging and kissing on wasn’t exactly a lightweight and even though I knew if a fight did break loose I wouldn’t be much help, I also knew that if I could find a brick or at least a trash can lid, I was going to handle mine.
Glancing back over to where Tamela still stood, obliviously grinning up at the other man, I bit my lip, feeling like I was going to regret saying this before I had even gotten it out of my mouth. Nodding, I exhaled loudly, “Yeah, I’m comin’.”
