“I’m not gonna cry. I’m not gonna cry,” Tamia cried, waving her hands. But it was too late. Happy tears were spilling out of our eyes.
“I have a toast,” I said, raising my half-full mimosa. “To my girl and the flyest baby NYC will ever see! To Baby Prada!”
“Baby Prada.”
“Baby Prada.”
We toasted, and Tasha finished her drink.
“I guess that was my last one for a while,” she joked.
“Hey, why don’t y’all come to L.A. with me next month so we can really celebrate all of this?” Tamia said.
“L.A.?” I asked.
“Yeah. We could use a trip together. And since I’ll be in L.A. working on my case, you guys can just come visit.”
“I don’t know,” Tasha said. She rarely traveled to L.A. or anywhere on the West Coast unless Lionel had a game. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“Come on, guys. Hot beaches, fine men, great clubs, and shopping—what’s not to love about L.A.?” Tamia said. “And don’t act like both of you couldn’t use a vacation.”
I frowned. I hadn’t been away since my trip to Jamaica with Julian after New Year’s.
“I’m down,” I said. I really didn’t have much planned for the summer. So far, I was interning at Manhattan Juvenile Court and helping the girls in my dance class at the settlement prepare for their fall pageant.
“Hmm…” Tasha exhaled, pushing the last bit of food around on her plate. “I guess so. I guess I’ll go if you guys are down.”
“Yeah!” Tamia gushed. “So it’s set. I’ll arrange everything and let y’all know. This is great.” Tamia could be so geeky at times. She looked like we were about to go to Disneyland. She’d probably try to fit that into the trip.
“Well, I have to get going,” Tasha said abruptly. She put three twenties on the table. “That should cover my portion.”
“What’s wrong?” Tamia asked, looking at me oddly.
“Nothing,” Tasha said, sounding even more distant. Her eyes looked like she was about to cry. “I just have a meeting.” She got up quickly and kissed both of us on the cheek. “Congrats again, girls,” she said and walked out.
“What the hell was that?” Tamia said, taking the check from our waitress.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “You know this baby stuff has her a bit sensitive.”
“But she isn’t even pregnant yet.”
“I know, but I think it’s something else. Something about her own mother. It must be hard to think about having a baby and your mother not being there to see it,” I said. “And when you brought up Los Angeles, she probably got a little upset thinking about Porsche being there.”
“But she hates her mother. She says it herself.” Tamia shrugged her shoulders.
“Mia, something tells me Porsche affects Tasha a bit more than she lets on,” I said, remembering the look on Tasha’s face when my mother had brought up Porsche.
“So what are we going to do about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“We have to do something. We can’t let our friend be unhappy and do nothing about it. She’s about to get pregnant. She can’t carry a baby and have all of this anger built up inside of her. Then she’ll have an ugly baby. You don’t want an ugly niece, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, laughing. “We can’t exactly make Tasha forgive her mother.”
“Well, maybe if they spoke to each other, they could begin to sort things out.”
Tamia had a point. Tasha refused to even speak to the woman. Porsche had called Tasha on her wedding day and Tasha just hung up the phone.