Lust and Lies (The Jamie Reynolds Chronicles #1) (3 page)

Home Sweet Home…

“Hey, Jonathan, thanks again for helping me drive to New York,” I said to him as I opened the front door of my mother’s house in Brooklyn.

“Anytime, my dear, anytime.”

“Hey, Prince.” I bent over to play with my little sister’s crazy dog. I hated that name Prince, but she had been calling that dog Prince ever since she got it, despite what anyone else called him.

“Jamie.” My little sister ran up to me and gave me a hug. “Ma said you wasn’t coming until Thursday.”

“I know, but we decided to leave early. What’s good?”

“Nothing,” she said, turning and smiling at Jonathan.

“Jayla, this is Jonathan. Jonathan, this is my little sister Jayla.” She was only thirteen and her ass and breasts were bigger than mine. My mother even told me she was wearing a C cup now. Which made me a little depressed, as I was only a B cup myself. I figured I should lose the little part because she wasn’t little anymore.

Jayla just kept on staring at Jonathan, so I quickly showed Jonathan the way to the bathroom and gave him a towel so he could freshen up. After driving for thirteen and a half hours, I figured he could use a nice hot shower.

“Stop looking at him like that,” I turned and snapped at Jayla.

“What are you talking ’bout? I wasn’t staring at anyone.”

I gave her this look: like I was once thirteen and I know.

“What?” she said. “It’s not like he’s your boyfriend or anything.”

“Sorry,” was all she could say after seeing my eyes get big from her smart-ass comment. I didn’t know if they got big from the embarrassment or the fact that my little sister just got smart with me. How did she know Jonathan and I weren’t dating; we could be dating. Was the thought of me having a boyfriend so farfetched? I guess not having a boyfriend in almost three years would cause even a five-year-old to make the same comment. Oh goodness, I hoped I didn’t end up like those crazy workaholic ladies that have a successful career with no man to share her success with. That would suck.

“Jayla, what time does your mother get home?” I quickly changed the subject. Ever since my older sister and I were young we spoke about our parents in the third person like we had two different sets of parents. Bad habits are hard to break, and it was too late anyway, we had already passed it on to my little sister.

“She gets home around six.”

“Did you eat?” I asked right as Jonathan came out of the bathroom, fully dressed. He was looking kind of good, but my sister was wrong, he had a girlfriend back in Georgia. Been there, done that; I would not mess around with another woman’s man again. Karma is a bitch.

“No, but I am kind of hungry,” Jonathan answered, poking my sister to agree with him.

“I wasn’t even talking to you and you call me greedy.”

My sister just started to giggle. “I just finished my homework and was about to make something to eat,” she said while walking into the kitchen.

“Okay, get dressed, and I’ll take you guys out to eat, my treat.”

She ran into the bedroom to get dressed. I turned to Jonathan and informed him that his Sidekick went off a couple of times while he was in the shower.

I picked up the Sidekick and began to give it to him, but I snatched it back and said, “I started to reply for you, but I didn’t want your tricks to get mad and cut you off if I replied.”

I said this because most of his and his longtime girlfriend’s drama stems from the fact he can’t keep his eyes, hands and penis to himself. He stepped out on his girl too many times, yet she gets mad and he promises never to do it again and then they’re back together. She was better than me; again, been there, done that. Now I had to shake my head at myself for dealing with my past life.

“Ha, ha, very funny.” He snatched the phone from my hands.

“There is only one trick… I-I mean, one woman for me, you know that.”

My feelings were actions speak louder than words, but how could I forget, remembering every chance he got, he spoke about Tawana on our thirteen-and-a-half-hour drive. It was kind of hard not to speak about her when she would call him like every thirty minutes on the drive up to New York. She even used to call when he was working. I would often get mad because she would call or text him like twenty times. I even spoke to the other managers, and they said she never called when he was working with them. At first I thought maybe she was jealous because I was one of the few women event managers in Atlanta and she didn’t like the fact that I was spending too much time with her man on a daily basis. But work was work, and I tried not to mix business with pleasure… been there, done that, not a good combination.

“Toni has nothing to do. He has been texting me since yesterday.”

“Does he work? He’s always texting you,” I said, pretending to try to read his Sidekick.

“He is at work, but he’s a little distracted,” Jonathan said with a crazy look on his face.

“Well, tell him I said hi.”

My sister finally came out of her room, wearing a tight-ass jean skirt and a T-shirt that was barely long enough to cover her ass. I didn’t even say anything.

“Alright, now everyone is looking cute and I am not going to go out looking like this.” I was still wearing my sweats, black T-shirt and flip-flops. “Give me about twenty minutes and I’ll get dressed. Jayla, call your mother while I get dressed and ask her where there is a good restaurant we can go get something.”

“Hey, before you go get dressed.” Jonathan walked over to me.

“What’s up?”

“I don’t know what you did to Toni, but he’s been asking me a lot of questions about you.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, man… he’s been texting me since he met you, asking about you. At first he was mad at me for not hooking you guys up.”

I just stood there, I was so shocked.

“Anyway.” Jonathan stopped himself from telling me what he and Toni had been talking ’bout. “He just wants to know if he can get your number and call you sometime.”

“Are you serious?” I said as I started laughing.

“Hey, he is serious. I don’t know what you did to him yesterday when I was getting dressed, but—”

I interrupted him, “I didn’t do anything. I was looking in the refrigerator and complaining to myself that you guys had no food, and he offered to make me breakfast. That was it.” I really don’t know why I was so defensive about the day I met Toni, but I was.

“I can’t believe he actually made you breakfast. He normally don’t give a damn ’bout anyone, especially a chick. No offense, JR.”

“No, you good.”

“Anyway, I guess that is a NO to him calling you, right?”

“Naw,” I said without hesitating, “give it to him. I can use a new friend.” I looked over Jonathan’s shoulder and noticed Jayla looking over at us, laughing.

“Hey, lil girl, stay out of grown folks’ business… I’m getting dressed now,” I said as I ran off to go shower.

Within twenty minutes we were on the road.

“This is my jam… I love Mary J. Blige, you know, she’s my soul sister,” I said to Jonathan as I was bopping my head to the radio.

“You crazy, JR,” Jonathan said as Jayla just laughed. No one in my family called me JR. I was first called JR back in high school when I used to work at Footaction and hated to wear a name tag. I was told I had to wear one regardless of the name. That was how JR came to life, and since I worked at Footaction my junior and senior year in high school and all through college in Atlanta, it kind of just stuck with me.

“Okay, Jayla.” I began talking as I lowered the radio’s volume. “What restaurant your mother say we can check out?”

“Mommy said there’s a bunch of restaurants down Atlantic Avenue.”

“Cool, we can head down there, and whichever restaurant has the shortest waiting period, that’s where we’re going to eat.”

That plan didn’t work out; every restaurant was about a thirty- to forty-five-minute wait. We decided to wait at Olive Gardens. I just loved Italian food, even though Olive Garden wasn’t real Italian food, but it was close enough.

“Here.” Jonathan passed me his Sidekick while we waited for our names to be called. “You text him; he’s asking me too many questions and giving me a headache.”

“Wait, is Toni still texting you?” I said, trying not to sound flattered.

“Yeah, you text him back,” Jonathan said as he let go of the Sidekick.

“What’s good, why are you asking Jonathan so many questions about me? What do you want to know?” I replied back.

“I only asked him a couple of questions ’bout you, I’m not trying to gas your head.”

How did he know my head was getting big? “I am not gassed… you still didn’t ask me what you wanted to know.”

“I just wanted to know a little about you.”

Before I could even respond back to his text, he texted me again.

“Jonathan used to speak a lot about you when you guys worked together. He used to always say JR is so cool and how much he liked working for you.”

I just turned to Jonathan and began to smile at him.

“What?” Jonathan said as I began to walk outside to get some privacy.

“Jonathan is a good worker. Well, I hope Jonathan was able to answer all of your questions about me.”

“Pretty much.”

“Should I pass J back his Sidekick?” I said, trying not to sound too eager. I’ve been around guys long enough and learned how to play the game from some of the world’s best experts.
“Females are too anxious; they need to learn how to play it cool,”
my best friend (play-brother) Terry used to always say. This was why I hated the whole dating game. Guess that’s why it’s called the “GAME.”

“Well, I’m not really doing anything, if you don’t mind talking, or should I say texting.”

“That’s cool… man, I need your kind of life.”

“LOL, how was the drive to New York?”

“It was cool.”

And off we went, texting back and forth for over thirty minutes or so. I was so into our conversation, I didn’t even hear our name being called for our table.

“Hey, they just called our name to eat. I got to go, call me when you get a chance.”

“Okay, enjoy your dinner, have a GD.”

“GD, what does that mean????”

“My bad, I was saying have a good day.”

“Oh, okay then, you also have a GD.”

He must do this a lot, talk to girls over his Sidekick or on the Internet, because he kept on typing back with abbreviations and I kept asking what it meant.

“Jamie, I’m glad you can join us now,” Jonathan said as I walked back into the restaurant.

“Very cute.”

“We thought for a second we were going to have to switch our table for two instead of three.”

“Very funny, J, when have you ever heard of me missing Italian food?”

As we began to order, all I could think of was getting back to my conversation with Toni. He was pretty cool, despite the horror stories Jonathan had told me about him. I had to get my head together, I thought to myself, you know how guys talk. I didn’t want Jonathan running back to Toni and telling him how silly I was acting after I gave him back the Sidekick. I had to play it cool, of course.

“Did you see the waiter, Jayla? He was kind of cute, right?”

Jayla just smiled. I was once thirteen, and I knew she was thinking about boys and stuff like that. You should see her room, she had pictures of all kinds of male singers on her wall, and she even had a huge poster of Usher with no shirt on.

“I don’t want to hear that, Jamie.”

“Don’t start. You’re always pointing out cute girls and their big asses and breasts when I’m around,” I snapped back at Jonathan.

“Yeah, but that’s different, Jamie.”

“I don’t even want to hear your twisted explanation ’bout the difference between male and female.”

The food finally came; we said grace and dug right in.

***

I was so glad the day was over. After dinner we went back to my mom’s house to grab Jonathan’s stuff. He was trying to catch the last flight back to Atlanta; it was leaving at 10:10 p.m.

“Man, JR, I hope I make this flight.”

“I know Tawana hopes you make it too,” I joked.

He rolled his eyes and said, “Not that I didn’t enjoy my time with you, but I just have a lot of stuff to do back home.”

“I understand, good riddance,” I said with a smile on my face. “Naw, I’m just kidding. I really do appreciate it.”

“No problem, besides, whenever I need to get away from Tawana, I can fly up to visit, right?”

I really hate visitors
, I thought. “Of course, man… my casa is ell yo cassia.”

“Man, JR, stick to English,” he said after I just butchered the expression.

***

We finally made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. “I’m going to find a place to park while you check in.”

“No, I’ll be fine. I have no luggage to check in and I have a little over an hour and a half before the flight. You can head home and get some sleep; I know you must be tired.”

He was so right; I was tired as hell. “You sure…”

He just shook his head and waved me off. I hoped my family history didn’t scare him off. I wondered if he was going to run back and tell Toni everything I told him on the drive up. That would ruin any chance I had with him.

“Hold on, did I just say ruin any chance?” I said to myself out loud as I drove off. “Don’t think this way.” I had to calm myself down from my crazy thought.

My biggest critic was myself, and I was often so hard on myself about everything. I calculated my every move, my every thought and my every action. So naturally, dropping my preplanned life in Atlanta to move back to NY was not a calculated move, but it was a move I felt I had to do. Maybe not everything in life had to be so well thought out. So let’s see how this whole NY thing played out. I find it ironic to finally meet Toni on the day I was moving out of state, but oh well, I needed to start focusing on my new life in New York now.

Speak of the devil, I guess Toni must have either felt Jonathan and me going our separate ways or maybe he sensed me thinking about him, because he was calling. I wondered if Jonathan texted him and told him to call now. I always got myself overworked when it came to guys; I didn’t know why my guard was up all the time. Well, I guess with my track record, I could see why.