“I’m not worried. You know he doesn’t like being left with people he doesn’t know.”
“I don’t think Sasha is someone he doesn’t know. He likes her,” he said. “Anyway, I drove that car up 85 doing 100. I felt the air moving through my fingers on the steering wheel. That car is beautiful.”
I could feel something in Reginald—something settled and just easy. He was happy in a new way.
“I never thought I’d say this”—he paused—“but if that’s Atlanta living, it’s pretty cool. And get this, the house is on Lover’s Lane.”
“Lover’s Lane? Really?” I laughed in a show, hoping he’d jump in. He couldn’t mean what he was saying. Not Reginald. He couldn’t be serious. It almost sounded like he was impressed by all of these things.
“What?” he looked at me. “Why are you laughing?”
“What’s ‘pretty cool’? The hustle? The showboating? The ‘Who’s Who in Black America’ parade?” I listed his common judgments of the city and city folk. “You hate that stuff.”
“I know, but it’s not all bad. Some good things. Hey, I’m not complaining. We actually got to go into the player’s club after the game. Joe is a cool cat.”
“Joe?”
“Joe Johnson. We were going to go out for drinks with some of the players, but we had R. J. with us . . . so . . . Well, Sasha said—”
“Sasha said?”
“Oh God! Here it comes—”
“Here what comes?”
“You’re doing that thing. That jealous thing.”
“I’m not jealous,” I said. “I just think it’s odd that you were referring to you and Sasha as ‘us’ and ‘we’ and you just quoted her. Like twenty-four hours ago, you hated her. And the day before that, you practically begged me to tell her not to come here.”
“You asked me to get along with her. I was just being nice,” he said defensively. “And she’s not so bad. She’s actually really smart.”
I fell back into my place in the bed and folded my arms over my chest.
“Listen, Dawn, I didn’t mean anything by that. She’s just smart is all. She’s talking about helping me expand my business. You know, get some new clients.”
“Expand your business? I’ve been trying to get you to do that for years and you never said I was smart.”
“But she has contacts. And she said that she might be able to hook me up with some folks. One of her friends, this Kerry Jackson, her husband owns a landscaping company that has the lion’s share of business in Atlanta. She could hook me up with him.”
“I’ve told you about Kerry and Jamison before. And they’re divorced.”
“Really?” He looked at me confused. “Anyway, look, I believe her and I think I want to try to do something. Make a move in Atlanta.”
“But you said you wanted to keep the business small and personal. That you have relationships here you want to build on. That’s why we moved here.”
“I know what I said,” Reginald said in a detached way. “But things change. It’s kind of like how Sasha explained it to me in the car—you have to chase bliss relentlessly.”
“Chase bliss?” I flipped through my memory, trying to recall where I’d heard that line before. I sat up again and looked at the television. “Sasha didn’t
say that. That’s some dinky thing some woman said on her show.”
“So?”
“So, it’s not her advice. She got it from someone else.”
Reginald looked annoyed and exhaled.
“What?” I asked after a second. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not jealous. That’s not what this is. It’s not about me being jealous. You’re just—”