Flirt (7 page)

“Wassup, divas?”

“Nice bag!” Kim snatched up the pricey clutch as soon as Chloe set it on the bench beside her. “Trey still ain’t tired of spending dough on you, huh? After three months of no ass, I’m surprised he hasn’t given up on you.”

Chloe laughed. “First of all, my mom bought me that bag.”

“But I bet Trey bought the matching shoes,” Dawn said, smirking.

Chloe cut her eyes at her friend, but then chose to ignore her. She sighed. “Second of all, I think I’m finally going to give him some pussy.”

Dawn gasped and clapped her hands. “Finally!”

“Oh my God!” Kim’s mouth hung open in shock. “What brought about the change of heart?”

Chloe shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really like him. He pays attention to me, he spoils me, and he’s very thoughtful and romantic. Plus he’s fine.”

Kim nodded. “He
is
fine!”

Chloe laughed. “I think he might have potential. I like spending time with him, talking on the phone with him, and he was a big hit with my mother. She loves him.”

Chloe knew that was a lie. Both her mother and her sister had reservations about the man in her life. But Chloe liked him. In fact, Rachel and Willow’s hesitation to embrace Trey only made Chloe like him more.

Dawn nodded. “That’s major. When the parents like a guy, it’s a good sign. Usually no guy is good enough for their daughter. So if Miss Rachel likes him, he must be a keeper.”

Chloe smiled. She wished what she’d said was true. It used to matter to her a lot more what her friends and family thought. So far, Trey was scoring high marks with everyone. Well, yes, except for her mother, who Chloe felt was just hating. And Willow, too, was still very suspicious of her sister’s boyfriend. But Chloe told herself she didn’t care what they thought.
She
liked Trey, and that was all that mattered. Plus, it had been weeks since she last heard from Jason, so she figured Trey had won by default.

Kim took a sip of her wine cooler, which was wrapped in a brown paper bag in case the police passed through. “I’m glad you’re gonna give the man some ass. He earned it. Trey seems like a good dude. Even though I’m all for taking advantage of niggas, I would hate to see a good dude get his heart broken.”

Chloe frowned slightly. “I wasn’t taking advantage of Trey.”

Her friends gave her looks that said,
Give me a break!

Chloe laughed. “Well, not intentionally, anyway. I’m just not gonna be pressured into giving up my goodies too soon. No amount of clothes, dinners, or material things can make me see my sex as any less precious than it is. That’s all. It’s just as important for me to get what I want as it is for him to get what he wants. So I got most of the things I want—now he can finally get what he wants.”

Kim nodded. “He’ll be as happy as a faggot in Boystown when he hears that he’s finally gonna get his dick wet.” They
laughed. “Damn,” Kim said. “I really wish I could find a good guy like that.”

Chloe sympathized with her friend because she knew Kim attracted the biggest losers. “I know,” she said. “I wish he had a brother we could hook you up with.”

Kim thought about that. “Does he have any cute friends?”

“I haven’t met any of his friends,” Chloe admitted, realizing once again just how little of Trey’s world she’d explored.

Dawn looked at her. “What? All this time you two have been spending together, and you haven’t met a single friend?”

Chloe shook her head.

“Well, who does he hang out with when he’s not with you?” Dawn asked.

Chloe smiled. “He’s always with me,” she said. “When he’s not at work or doing schoolwork, he’s with me. He seems to like it that way.”

Dawn shook her head. “Maybe he just doesn’t trust you.”

“That’s not true. He trusts me. He just likes spending time with me.”

“Well, he met your mom and Willow. Have you met his family?” Kim asked.

“No. Not yet.” Chloe thought back to the incident at the gas station and the way he’d ignored the phone calls coming from his mother. After Trey’s battle with the woman in the Nissan, Chloe had forgotten to ask him about those calls. But now she wondered what the story was with Trey’s family. He never spoke about them, aside from telling Chloe’s mom that his father still lived in the Bronx. And he’d mentioned that he didn’t have any
siblings. But as she sat in the park with her friends, she realized there was still so much she didn’t know about her man.

“So then how do you know if he’s even serious about you?” Kim asked. “You haven’t met his family or his friends, and it sounds like you don’t know much about him at all. This could just be a fling to him. Who knows?”

“It’s not,” Chloe said, waving her hand as if to dismiss the absurdity of her friend’s remark.

Kim shrugged. “All I’m saying is that Trey is older than you, and he’s probably been in more than a few relationships and maybe this just isn’t as serious to him as you think it is.”

Chloe was pissed now. “What, are you jealous, Kim?”

“What? Jealous of who? You?” Kim looked offended.

“Yeah. I mean, what’s with all the twenty questions?” Chloe sat back and folded her arms across her chest.

“You’re crazy,” Kim said, though she
was
slightly envious. She laughed weakly. “I’m happy you found a good guy. You deserve it. Shit, we all do. I’m just asking things that I would want to know if it was me getting ready to have sex with someone.”

Chloe waved her hand at her friend. “Well, it’s not you. It’s me. And everything is fine. I have forever to find out the things I don’t know yet. I’m not gonna interrogate the guy.”

Kim could see her friend getting emotional about this, and that’s not what she wanted. She figured that if the lack of information was all right with Chloe, it would be all right with her, too. “Here comes your sister,” Kim said, nodding in Willow’s direction as she made her way over to their bench.

Willow sat with the girls. They all greeted her and then listened
as she filled them in on some “he say, she say” drama she was dealing with at school.

Chloe and her pals offered advice, and Chloe was grateful for the change in topic. But the rest of the afternoon, in the back of her mind she was thinking about Trey and all the mystery surrounding him. Soon, she shrugged it off, figuring that her envious friend was simply planting seeds of doubt in her mind. She wasn’t going to let Kim, Willow, or her mother cast a shadow on her good thing, no matter how hard they tried.

C
hloe couldn’t stop crying. Willow wrapped her arms around her sister and tried to comfort her as best she could.

“It’s okay,” she said, rocking her in her arms. “It’s okay, Chloe.”

“I don’t understand!” Chloe wailed, tears and snot running down her face. Rachel rushed into the room with a glass of water and some tissues and sat down at her daughter’s side.

“Chloe, calm down. You’re gonna have a heart attack if you don’t relax. You can’t keep getting all worked up like this. I know it’s messed up what happened to Jason, but falling apart isn’t gonna bring him back.”

Chloe couldn’t calm down, no matter how hard she tried. Jason’s body had been found in a wooded area of his Grymes Hill neighborhood. He’d been gunned down with three bullets in his back. The
Staten Island Advance
had reported that Jason was shot in broad daylight by an unknown assailant, and yet there were no suspects in the crime. “Who would want to kill him?” she asked her mother. “He never bothered nobody. He didn’t do shit to deserve that, Ma.” Chloe cried, hating herself for being mad that Jason hadn’t returned her phone calls, when all the while he’d been rotting away in a swamp!

As Willow cradled her sister in her arms, Rachel read the newspaper article again.

Todt Hills resident Jason Meadows, 20, was found dead last night as a result of multiple gunshot wounds he received the week of May 11. His decomposing body was found in a wooded area off Wescott Avenue in the Todt Hill section of Staten Island. No witnesses have been identified, and there are no suspects at this time. Law enforcement officials have appealed to the public for any information relevant to the case. The investigation is ongoing.

The Meadows family had become increasingly worried about the youth after not hearing from him for close to three weeks. “It just wasn’t like him to up and disappear like that,” explained Linda Meadows, 52, the young man’s mother.

Meadows was a former local basketball star who graduated from Curtis High School in 2006. At the time of his death, he was pursuing a degree in education at the College of Staten Island.

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t understand it either, Chloe.” Chloe and Jason had gone to school together since elementary school, so he had practically grown up alongside the Webster girls. Rachel had never known him to be the kind of kid who got in any trouble or made any enemies. His murder seemed like a senseless tragedy. “You have to be strong,” she told her daughter gently. “You can’t fall apart, baby.”

Chloe’s cell phone rang, and Rachel reached for it. She glanced at the caller ID and then looked at her daughter. “It’s Trey,” she said. “You want me to answer it?”

Willow rolled her eyes, wishing Trey would fucking disappear. The guy gave her the damn creeps!

Chloe shook her head. “I can’t talk to him right now.”

Rachel stroked her daughter’s hair. “You need to relax, Chloe. Turn your phone off. Get some sleep.”

Chloe shot an evil look at her mother. “How, Ma? Huh? You think I can just relax and fall asleep when I just found out my friend was killed?” Jason was more than a friend to Chloe, but that was her business. She was devastated for reasons her family couldn’t understand.

Rachel didn’t get upset at the way her daughter was speaking to her. She understood that Chloe had to grieve for her friend. “No, Chloe,” she said. “But you’re not doing anything but laying around and crying.” She took a deep breath. “Jason was a good young man. He was robbed of his life, and I can fully understand you being upset about that. But you can’t keep going like this. It’s been two days, and you’re not answering your phone, you’re not eating anything. All you do is sit in here and
cry. It’s dark in here, and it feels gloomy and sad, Chloe. We’re worried about you.”

Chloe ignored her mother and continued to cry, distraught that Jason had been slain so viciously. An hour later, Trey was at her front door.

Willow answered it and looked Trey up and down. Neither of them spoke at first. Willow refused to acknowledge him after he had so coldly ignored her the last time they saw each other.

Trey cleared his throat. “I just came to see if Chloe is all right. I been calling her, and she’s not answering—so I got worried.”

Willow smirked. For someone who was going to college he sure didn’t speak proper English.
I been calling her. . . .
She looked Trey square in the eye. “Why didn’t you speak to me that day on the ferry?” she asked him.

Trey didn’t blink. He looked at her dead-on and said, “I don’t remember seeing you on the ferry. Chloe mentioned something about that to me, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. Pardon me, though, ma, if I didn’t see you.”

Willow stood her ground. “You saw me.”

Rachel appeared in the doorway behind Willow, and her face bore a forced smile. “Hi, Trey.”

Trey looked at Chloe’s mother. “I’m sorry to come by unannounced, Ms. Webster. I just wanted to check on Chloe since I haven’t heard from her in a while.”

Rachel nodded slowly. “Everyone is just really upset right now, Trey. One of Chloe’s friends was murdered, and she’s taking it really hard.”

“What happened?” Trey asked, concern etched on his face.

Rachel showed him the newspaper article, and Trey read it, shaking his head in disbelief. He could see why Chloe was so upset. “Can I see her?” he asked.

“Well, she’s just trying to get some rest right now, Trey. I’m sure she’ll call you when she’s feeling up to it.”

“I just hate knowing that she’s upset. . . .” He had hoped to see her and offer his condolences. But Willow clearly had an attitude, and Rachel wasn’t budging. So Trey shrugged and turned to leave.

Chloe came out and called after him. “Trey, come in.” She stood there with eyes puffy from crying, her hair swept off her face in a messy ponytail. Her nose was red, and her Juicy Couture sweatsuit looked like loose loungewear on her.

Rachel touched her daughter gently on the shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to try and lay down for a little while?”

Chloe looked at her mother sharply out of the corner of her eye. “I’m sure.”

Rachel nodded, and Chloe led Trey down the hall to her room. He stepped inside, and Chloe shut the door behind them. He didn’t know what to say, since Chloe’s sadness was written all over her face. “I’m real sorry to hear about your friend.”

Chloe didn’t respond. Instead she stared silently at the floor.

“I was worried about you when you didn’t answer my calls. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have come over. . . .”

Silence.

Trey sat down on the foot of her bed. “Your mother told me what happened. I guess you and him were close or whatever. So
I just want you to know that I’m sorry about what happened to him. I’m here for you if you need me.”

Chloe nodded. “Thanks.”

Trey took a deep breath. It really pained him to see her this way. “I don’t mean to push you or nothing. I just want you to know that you can talk to me if you feel like talking. I know how it feels to lose somebody you love.”

Chloe turned and looked directly at Trey for the first time. She could see the genuine love and concern in his eyes, and she began to cry. “He was such a nice guy,” she said, feeling sadness for the loss of her friend, mixed with guilt over having cheated on Trey, another good man. He went closer to her and pulled her into his arms. Chloe cried on his shoulder and vowed to herself that from that moment forward Trey would be the only man in her life. She knew she didn’t deserve him. Here he was being so supportive of her, and all along she’d been fucking Jason behind Trey’s back. Now with Jason gone, all she wanted was to feel the strength and warmth of Trey’s arms as she grieved for her deceased lover.