What He's Been Missing

I angrily flipped my legs off of his lap and placed them on the floor. We’d been sitting on the couch and he’d volunteered to give me a foot massage.

“What?” Ian asked.

“What fracking point? There’s no point. It was just an excuse.”

“Come on, Rach. You know that guy wasn’t for you. You should be happy he didn’t just sleep with you and dip out.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because no guy wants to be that guy with the girl who’s obviously settling—maybe to sleep with her, but not long term. All of her friends and family hate you. She always knows she can do better. And worse, someone who is better might come along and snatch her,” he said. “The point is, he just wasn’t your type and he knows it.”

“Blah. Blah. Blah,” I grumbled. “My type? What’s the sense in having a type if no one fits that type? And what is my type?”

“Someone who’s equally yoked with you. A man like the one in your favorite India.Arie song, ‘Ready for Love.’ ”

That song described everything I ever dreamed of in a man. Anytime and every time someone asked me what I was looking for in a future husband, I quoted the song, because if I could have just those things in a mate, I figured everything else Ian had listed would fall into place. I’d hazed Ian a million times, making him listen to the song with me as I cried over some man who’d broken my heart. He kind of knew the words by default.

“And he’ll be someone who can teach you new things. Sweep you off your feet. Treat you like the queen you are,” Ian added. “Because you deserve it.”

“I’m thinking that those men don’t exist anymore, E,” I said. “Everyone knows it. They say I need to ‘date down,’ date white, or be a polygamist—did I tell you Keisha from undergrad shares her husband with three other women? One in Africa?”

“No, you didn’t tell me that,” he replied. “And yes, they do exist.” He pulled me over from my side of the couch and tucked me under his right arm like a kid he was about to read a book to. “And one will come along. And he will find you. And he will love you. And you won’t have to settle. And he’ll have to deal with big daddy.”

I played right into my part. “Do you think I’m too picky?” I asked.

“No, I think you’re just right.”

I slid Ian’s half-empty tea mug of brandy from his hands and took a sip.

“What about you—do you think Scarlet is settling on you?” I asked.

“Hell no. I follow Parakeet on that tip. I’m no one’s settlement.”

“So you two are equally yoked?”

Ian paused. “I wouldn’t say that. Scarlet is younger. Still trying to figure herself out.”

“So you’re the one settling?”

“No such thing for a man. A man can marry a woman who works at Burger King if he wants to and he can support her at his level,” Ian sai

d.

“But a woman can’t?”

“Hell no,” Ian said. “Not if she doesn’t want problems. And that mix would definitely lead to problems.”

“What’s in it for the man who’s settling, then?”

“Well, first, I am not settling,” he said. “I am marrying the woman I love. And second, I am fine with the fact that I know where Scarlet is going. How she thinks. She may not be on my level right now, but she’ll get there once she figures it out. Or we’ll figure it out together.” Ian snatched the brandy back from me. “Nosy ass.”

3

“Scarlet Don’t Know Nothing ’Bout Planning No Wedding!”

#Ihateoverachievers. I have always aimed to be the best at whatever I get myself involved in and I encourage that kind of commitment from the people around me, but after my disaster of a date with the last single and nonhomosexual male in all of Atlanta, who seemed to be attracted to me before I announced that I was attracted to him, I was in no mood to listen to another speech about how Scarlet was set to save the world, one little black girl at a time. The bad luck that had chased me into the new year could give a tiny lab rat’s ass about my mood, though, so there she was sitting beside Ian in the booth at the back of Fado, the Irish pub where Ian and I had lunch once a week. Most Wednesdays Ian and I debated politics and black power. He was a conservative liberal and I was a conscious conservative. We both wanted to do away with welfare, but we couldn’t agree on what to do with all those poor people who’d been failed by weak school systems, predatory financial institutions, and broken communities that offered little in the way of proper food options and services. One day, Shane, our standing waiter for three years, said he was sure we could run the country if we ran for president and vice president—then we argued over who’d take the top role. None of that would happen with Scarlet there, though. She was sitting so close to Ian it looked like they were fused at the hip. And, like any betrothed woman, all she wanted to talk about was one thing: her wedding....

“Well, Ian and I were talking about the wedding, and while I was seriously thinking he would want you to be his best man—with you two being best friends”—Scarlet laughed and took a sip of the lemon water she’d ordered for lunch; apparently the diet was already in effect—“we decided to do a barter system and my cousin Steve is going to be one of the groomsmen and I want you to be one of the bridesmen—I mean, maids.”