“Hmph, well, you keep your grubby little hands off Geren.”
“Sheit, I would never! He’s fine and all, but I want to get jiggy with Dvontè. Besides, we’re grown women now, and I would never do anything to you like that now.” Tempest rolled her eyes and headed to the showers. Janessa called after her, “I mean it, too!”
CHAPTER 5
the bachelorette party
tempest walked into the kitchen at Janessa’s grandmother’s house and attempted to turn around before she was spotted.
“Hey there, Tempest! What’s up with you, gurl?” Janessa’s cousin Chiquita inquired.
Tempest let the swinging door close behind her and walked farther into the old-fashioned, overcrowded kitchen. “How are you doing, Chiquita?”
“Same ole, same ole,” Chiquita replied, turning around from the sink where she was washing greens for her sister’s wedding reception the next day so she could look Tempest up and down. “You’re looking good, Tempest, gurl.”
“So are you. I love what you did with your hair,” Tempest lied, staring at Chiquita’s hairstyle and wondering what was up with it. There were finger waves on the left side, crimps on the right side, and a gigantic fake roll of hair on the back that was two shades darker than her natural hair. Tempest always found Marquita and Chiquita amusing. They were the most hoochified sistahs that she knew. The fact that they were Janessa’s first cousins wasn’t much of a surprise because Janessa was running a close third in the hoochie-of-the-decade contest.
“Thanks.” Chiquita blushed, running wet fingers through the roll on the back with pride. She was convinced she had it going on. “Conchita Dina Alonzo Morales over at Weave Central hooked my ass up.”
“She did a bangin’ job,” Tempest lied again, searching through the lower cabinets for the gallon of potato wine Mrs. Porter had sent her upstairs to fetch. Tempest found the dusty bottle and wondered how many decades it had been crammed down there.
They were all over Mrs. Porter’s Northeast row house for Marquita’s bachelorette party. Tempest had no idea how she’d even ended up there. She’d agreed to go to the wedding rehearsal with Janessa. She’d even agreed to stand in for the bride, which was a trip in itself—half the wedding party had been smoking weed and could barely manage to walk down the aisle without giggling or munching on potato chips. She definitely hadn’t planned on the bachelorette party, though. Janessa claimed she needed a ride from the rehearsal dinner over there, so Tempest complied, even though there were dozens of other women headed that way.
Tempest turned around and became enthralled in Chiquita’s fucked-da-hell-up hairstyle again. “Yeah, she really worked your hair over gurlfriend,” Tempest said, trying to suppress a smile.
“Didn’t she though?” Chiquita grabbed another handful of fresh greens out of the produce bag and ran them under the running faucet. “You ever been there?”
“Naw, I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” Tempest chuckled, knowing there was no way in the world she would share the same stylist with Chiquita, Marquita, or Janessa, for that matter. “I do my own hair most of the time.”
“Well, you should definitely check Conchita out,” Chiquita persisted. “Her shop is at the corner of Extension Avenue and Tracks Lane in Fakehair.”
“Fakehair?” Tempest giggled. Figures!
“Yeah, Fakehair, Maryland. Right off the beltway.” Chiquita turned off the faucet and dried her hands on a dish towel. She went over to the opposite counter and started rummaging through her fake Louis Vuitton handbag. “Hold up. I’ve got a card somewhere.”
Tempest watched her pull out everything from a twelve-pack of condoms to some Monistat 7. “That’s okay, Chiquita. You can just give me her number later.”
Chiquita shoved all of the stuff back into her purse. “Okay, but make sure you try some of the Jamaican bean pies they sell in the back of the salon when you go.”
Tempest couldn’t hold her laughter in any longer. “I’ll be sure to do that,” she cackled. “Listen, I’m going to go back downstairs. Your grandmother’s waiting for me to bring the wine.”
“I’ll grab the cups,” Chiquita offered, getting a package of plastic cups off the top of the fridge and holding the door open for Tempest, who was trying to carry the wine without getting dust all over her black pantsuit.
“Thanks!”
“So how’d you like the wedding rehearsal?” Chiquita asked while they walked through the dining room to the basement steps off the hall.
“It was cool,” Tempest answered, not wanting to give her real opinion. The wedding rehearsal had been a mess. She was just glad she hadn’t gotten a weed contact from the groomsmen who were getting high on the back pew.
“Thanks for standing in for Marquita. My sister’s a nervous freakin’ wreck about the wedding tomorrow.”
“It was no problem, really,” Tempest said, thinking she would be a nervous wreck too if she was getting ready to marry a man who looked like Marquita’s fiancé.
“I can’t wait till tomorrow myself!” Chiquita exclaimed. “The wedding’s going to be the bomb-diggity!”
“Sure seems like it.” Tempest smirked, following Chiquita down the basement steps.
There were about forty sistahs crammed into a ten-by-twelve-foot room without a drop of air circulating. Tempest was trippin’ out—the women in the room ranged from eighteen to eighty. Some were even senile. Hell, Janessa’s grandmother Mrs. Porter was half blind in one eye and couldn’t see a damn thing out of the other one. One thing she could do was bake up some mean sweet potato pie. Tempest quickly downed two slices, even though she’d managed not to get a weed contact.