Jaded (9 page)

It had been three months after their mother had been eaten away by bone cancer. Maybe her father had been feeling sentimental. There hadn’t been many more pictures after that one. Her mother’s picture wasn’t on the shelf, but instead hung high on the wall. Her fine, dark brown hair was loosely curled and grazed her shoulders. Syeesha had searched those hazel eyes
—
identical to her own
—
more than once and could never figure out how a woman so full of life could have married her father. Once, when Syeesha had been angry at her father for the strict curfew he’d imposed, she’d thundered, “At least Ma found a way to escape!” The words had been like an ax chopping through the hard shell of his body. He hadn’t responded. Just turned at the head of the stairs and locked himself in his bedroom. Later, Syeesha had apologized. Her father had accepted. But the wound had marked each of them forever.

The picture of Barry Green was a formal one. He wore his air force uniform with his rank insignia visible. The four stripes he’d earned during his twenty-year service was a reminder of his perceived failure. The unsmiling yet dignified face with the upturned chin and focused eyes captured the essence of him. He hated that picture, despite looking like a man who could’ve ranked high on a Most Eligible Bachelor list; he valued nothing about himself except his ability to raise successful daughters. The day after Syeesha graduated from high school she’d awakened to find him sitting in the den, in his favorite brown recliner, a picture of her mother on his lap. The doctor had said his heart had simply stopped, strange for a man so young. Not so strange to Syeesha and Trina.

Syeesha refocused her attention to the present. It wasn’t so hard to do. She heard spirited cries from down the hall so she closed her laptop. It would be fruitless to try and compete with the noise. Kiki had company in her bedroom. From the sounds of it, they were either performing an overly dramatic séance to awaken Elvis from the dead or they were having the loudest sex Syeesha had ever heard. She ignored the theatrics and headed to the fridge for a late-night celebratory drink.

E-mailed Tanya first completed blog article.

Have hope for a new job.

Cute guy at school likes me.

Yep, definitely a reason for a little celebration.

She rummaged past the expired milk, leftover spaghetti, and half-eaten package of Chips Ahoy! for the bottle of wine she kept stashed in the back of the fridge.

No wine.

Maybe I put it on top of the fridge.

She stepped on a stool and rooted behind boxes of cereal and pancake mix.

Nothing.

House music, with its thunderous bass drum and shrill synthesizer repeating the same three notes, became louder. As did Kiki’s operatic theatrics.

“Stay focused,” Syeesha mumbled.

Then it occurred to her. She didn’t know why, maybe it had something to do with the way the beat vibrated through the floor and moved through her body. But she knew that once again Kiki had taken advantage of her. The more she thought about it, the stronger her heart pulsed in unison with the music.

Syeesha’s bare feet stomped toward Kiki’s bedroom, and her fist pounded on the door. But she couldn’t be heard above the music. She pounded again. More noises that sounded like a gorilla attacking a soprano echoed from the room. Syeesha went into the living room to look for something to bang against the door. Monster strutted across the back of the couch as though it were lined with a red carpet laid specifically for her. Syeesha looked at the cat and a devilish thought blossomed. Monster, proving that cats really did have mystical powers, looked at Syeesha, arched her back then glided through the air in a jump to the floor, disappearing into the kitchen.

That wouldn’t have worked anyway.

Syeesha found a man’s brown leather shoe on the floor by the couch. Holding it firmly by the toe, she repeatedly slammed the heel of the shoe against Kiki’s bedroom door. When Kiki and her lover finally re-entered the earth’s atmosphere, the animalistic sounds tapered off. The music stopped abruptly. Kiki whipped the door open.

“What!” Kiki stood before her in all of her naked glory, boldly displaying her barely-there breasts.

The triple assault of sex, sweat, and alcohol smacked Syeesha in the face.

“You got my bottle of Zinfandel in there with you?”

“Yeah. So? I’ll buy you another one. Think I can spare the five bucks.”

“You have the nerve to be late with your rent every month and now you’re making a habit of taking my shit? You think I didn’t notice my white Levi’s on your ass the other day?”

“Syeesha.” Kiki glanced back over her shoulder toward her bed. “I’m kinda in the middle of something here.”

“I heard. Should I call an ambulance or animal control?”

“Don’t be jealous just ’cause you’re not getting any.”

“The point, Kiki, is that you took something of mine that doesn’t belong to you. If you can’t be a little more respectful around here I’m gonna ask you to leave.”

“Ask me to leave?” Kiki batted her lashes, clumpy from too much smudged mascara. She tilted her head as if she were trying to decipher the meaning of a foreign language. “I don’t think you recall the reason why I’m here in the first place.”

“Babe,” a deep voice called from inside the bedroom. “Come back to bed.”

“In a sec!” Kiki yelled over her shoulder. “I’m here, Syeesha, because you need me to help you pay the rent for this dump. Y’know, living with you is no picnic for me, either. But when you’re broke, your options are limited and you take what you can get and deal with the bullshit that comes with it. So deal with it.”

Kiki slammed the door in Syeesha’s face.

***

Chapter 11

The café, located just two blocks from school, was surprisingly empty. Usually a gaggle of students would assemble there to study or just hang out. Just a few customers sat at the small tables in hard, butt-numbing chairs, reading magazines and sipping lattes that cost roughly the same as a monthly car note. Syeesha tried to push the smell of the sugary decadence from her mind. She found an unoccupied table and positioned herself so that her back was toward the bakery. She waited for her beloved MacBook to boot up and figured it’d be another seven months before she was done paying it off. That would lighten up her expenses, but she needed to be free of Kiki well before then.

Syeesha reread the last few pages she’d written of her manuscript. Her stupid little romance read more like the pinings of a wistful teenager than an actual experience a grown woman would have, albeit a fictional grown woman.

What the hell. Might as well keep going since I’ve invested this much time into it.

She pecked away at the story, typing, cutting, pasting, and typing again for a solid hour. Afterward, she picked up her textbook on employment law. It only took fifteen minutes before her eyes began to glaze over and yawns became impossible to muffle.

A quarrelsome child in a stroller across the café saved her from a full-on nap. If cherubs really existed, surely the crying child would have been the exact replica of one. His clear blue eyes were filled with tears as he looked around the bookstore, not in embarrassment, but for a witness to his suffering. His mother wiped the tears from his fat, cherry-red cheeks and ran her hands through his drooping golden curls. She kissed his wet lips and stuffed a piece of chocolate cake inside his mouth. The sated child had won.

“That kid’s antics are far more exciting than chapter twenty-three, isn’t it?”

Syeesha turned to see Christian standing beside her.

“What’re you doing here?”

He nodded toward a few students huddled around two tables pushed together in the corner.

“Study group. I see why you don’t want to join us.” He leaned in a bit and whispered, “That chapter kinda sucks.”

“You don’t have to pretend that you’re bored about our homework assignment,” Syeesha responded. “You’re downright giddy in class.”

“Giddy?” Christian smiled. Small, even teeth, probably the product of years of braces, shimmered behind his lopsided grin. “I don’t think I’d call myself giddy.”

She rested her elbow on the back of her chair and looked up at him.

“No? Well, what do you call this?” She raised a hand and said, “’Oh, oh, Professor. I know. I know.’ You pant and practically salivate.”

The deep, throaty sound of his chuckle would have caused her to swoon had he been Professor Asher. But he wasn’t. So she made a conscious effort to ignore what could have been perceived as sexiness coming from a guy whose idea of a good time was probably playing PS3 all night.

Without invitation, he tossed his book bag to the floor, pulled out the chair across from her, and took a seat. He hooked his coat on the backrest, making himself comfortable.

“Passion,” he said, “can’t always be bridled like a truckled horse. I don’t expect you to understand how one can be so passionate.”

“Why not?” She feigned taking offense. “I know about passion, thank you very much. I get up every morning and I write. Every day. Without fail.”

“What do you write?”

“Fiction.”

“Every day?” His eyes narrowed. “
Without
fail?”

“Well, I mean, sometimes I can’t.”

“Ah, so you’re not getting in those ten thousand hours.”

“What ten thousand hours?”

He had the perfect view to sneak a glance at her bust. But his eyes stayed locked on hers.

“Let me buy you a coffee and we can discuss the true meaning of passion.”

“No, I–“

Don’t be jealous just ’cause you’re not getting any.

“Sure.” She smiled. “Grande soy chai.”

When he pulled himself up to his full height, she noticed for the first time how broad his shoulders were beneath the form-fitting sweater. Syeesha wanted to peep his physique from behind. A second passed, then two. Just enough time for her to wait before turning around to catch a peek of Christian when he was unaware. To her surprise, he had stopped only a foot away from her as though waiting for her eyes to follow him.

“Are you checking me out?”

She whipped around in her chair; her face scorched with heat. In an attempt to look preoccupied, she pushed away her law book, pressed Command-S to save her work, and closed the lid of her laptop. She could smell the lingering scent he’d left behind. It wasn’t cologne, but a natural aroma that reminded her of being on the beach, light waves lapping on the softened sand and the intoxicating essence of salty water and fresh air. 

Syeesha peeled her purse from the back of her chair. She set it on her lap, opened her compressed powder, and pretended to rummage through her purse while discreetly touching up her face. Her fingers hesitated for just a moment over the lip gloss but she decided against it. She was sure his sharp eyes would notice the difference. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was getting dolled up for him.

He returned just as she was putting her bag away.

“The ten-thousand-hour rule,” Christian continued as he set their drinks on the table with a few napkins, “is a concept Malcolm Gladwell spoke about in one of his books. That’s the magical number that highly successful people put into their crafts on an annual basis. Works out to roughly three hours a day, every single day, for years on end.”

A quick roll of her eyes elicited a low, long chuckle from him.

“What’s with the floating eyes?”

She took a sip of her tea. “Who has that kind of time? I mean, three hours a day? People have to work, go to school, exercise.”

He tilted his head in interest. “You work out?”

“No.” She smiled. “But I would if I had the time.” 

Another chuckle. This time he dropped his head and shook it as though happily defeated.

Syeesha wanted to stop the heat from rising up her neck and warming her face. She had made him laugh. And he was making the palms of her hand moist from nervousness. She removed her hands from the warm cup.

“You don’t pretend to be passionate about the law,” he said. “Which is good, I guess, because we both know that would be a crock. On the other hand, passion for a certain professor of ours . . .”

“Hold on. I’m passionate about the law. Maybe not as much as you are, but still.”

“Passion,” he said, “is the energy that gets us up in the morning and keeps us going when others quit. For me–” He shrugged. “I’m not crazy about all my classes. But I accept that the end goal is that I can someday be a lawyer, and then eventually an FBI agent so that I can put the really smart bad guys away. I am seriously passionate about that. You, on the other hand, obviously don’t derive your passion from school because that wasn’t the first thing out of your mouth just now. Writing was.”

Syeesha squirmed a little in her seat. “You seem awfully young for such big goals. Law school, FBI.”

“I’m twenty-six. And you?”

Only two years younger than me. Thank you, God, for making him so totally legal. Wait. Why am I thanking God, exactly? He’s so not my type.

She cleared her throat. “I admit I don’t enjoy every class. I have my favorites—”