Playing Hard To Get

“Mia,” Tasha said, “that’s just the Afro-disiac kicking in on you. It’s like heroin. It’s made you think your new cracky life is wonderful and that you don’t need the old fab you left behind, but I am here to tell you that you had a life before Nat Turner came into your life and you will when he packs up his little ginger beer and vegan brownies in his knapsack and leaves your apartment in the middle of the night.”

Tamia and Troy looked at Tasha inquisitively.

“What?” she said. “I had an Afro-disiac once.”

“So what should she do?” Troy asked.

“She has to try it out.”

“She doesn’t have to do anything,” Tamia said. “Because he is my client and…he doesn’t like me. He likes Ayo…Ayodele. Queen of the Nile or the gypsies or whatever.”

“Is she cute?” Troy asked.

“Remarkable.”

“Dang!” Tasha and Troy said, ducking as if Tamia was being knocked out.

“She’s not his girlfriend…just some girl he looks at like she’s a pan of peach cobbler.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Tasha said. “You can still have him. Just turn the tables.”

“What?”

“You need to stop being all goo-goo ga-ga over him and play a little harder to get,” Tasha said.

“I’m not goo-goo ga-ga,” Tamia said.

“You didn’t look at the picture,” Troy said, handing Tamia the phone.

“Oh, my Lord,” Tamia said, looking at her eyes practically undressing the man she was supposed to be sending to jail.

“Exactly,” Tamia confirmed. “You have it bad. And the only way you’re going to give it away is to get that man. You need the Dude Diet.”

“The Dude Diet!” Troy said. “You mean the one I used with old Desmond Bessemer in college.”

“Desmond?” Tamia quizzed.

“The sexy Kappa with the…” Troy stopped herself, remembering the nights she’d spent with Desmond.

“Big cane!”26 Tasha laughed.

“Yes.” Troy blushed.

“Oh, I remember him,” Tamia said. “He practically moved into your dorm room and went to all of your classes with you, but when you asked him to be your boyfriend, he insisted you two were just having fun.”

“He was crazy. But I really liked him.”

“You liked his cane.” Tasha laughed.

“I was young and full of Satan,” Troy insisted. “Anyway, I did the Dude Diet—I shut him down and gave him limitations. It took him less than a week to ask me if I wanted a commitment. The boy was starving…wrote me a love letter and everything. It seems that living without me showed him that he wanted to be with me.”

?

An hour later, after Troy and Tamia had cleaned the messy bedroom and ordered delivery so Tasha could have a decent home-cooked meal, they were outside the apartment, walking toward Troy’s car.

“So, who’s going to say something first?” Troy asked, looking straight ahead.

“I’m not saying anything to her. I’ve butted into her business before and ended up in the hospital,” Tamia said. “Never again. If she wants to do this craziness, it’s her business. She’s a grown woman.”