Page 2 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover

PRESENT DAY

“What about Teddy?”

Nikki had only just sat down and gave the waiter her drink order, but already they were going there. “What about him?” she asked.

“Is he finally going to come on the couples trip with us this time?”

“I have no idea. All I can do is ask him. Where’s Shanice?”

Deja and Raven looked at each other. Both were longtime friends of Nikki’s, but both had grown closer to each other than they were to Nikki.

Not that they didn’t want to be closer to her: they did.

Especially Deja. She and Nikki were best friends by the time Raven came into their girls’ group.

But Nikki’s crazy work schedule always caused her to miss too many girls-night outs. She barely showed up half the time.

“Shanice can’t make it. She had to work late.”

“Well there ya’ go,” Nikki said.

But even Deja, her closest friend, wasn’t buying that. “What do you mean there ya’ go?”

“Teddy had to work too.”

“But all the time, Nikki? I don’t understand why you don’t get on his case more. And don’t get me wrong. I love Teddy. We all do. When he’s around he’s a lot of fun and he knows how to get down for a white boy. But damn, Nick. He’s never around.”

“And when we say never,” Raven chimed in, “we mean never ever. I can’t remember the last time Teddy came to any of our get-togethers, let alone our couples’ trips. We never see him anymore.”

Nikki wanted to roll her eyes. They had to know how over it she was about them and their where’s Teddy bullshit. “How many times I got to tell y’all that he works a lot and can’t get away? He don’t have no nine-to-five. He works hard.”

“And we don’t?” asked Deja. “Hell we’re both professional black women in a white man’s world.

You don’t think that’s hard work? And our men do even harder work than that.

But we make it our business to show up. So do our men.

They show up. What’s Teddy’s problem? And it can’t be that he works all the time because nobody works all the time.

” Then Deja pointed a finger at Nikki. “You let that man get away with way too much, girl.”

“Way, way, way too much,” echoed Raven.

Nikki took a sip of her drink. She wasn’t trying to hear none of their criticisms about her man when theirs wasn’t shit either.

And Deja, who she used to be really close with, was beginning to sound more and more like Raven, who criticized everything.

She moved on. “What’s the trip this year? ” she asked them. “Y’all decided yet?”

“I want us to go to Australia,” Deja said. “To the Outback you know? Something different. But everybody else is leaning toward Nova Scotia.”

“ Nova Scotia ?” Nikki was surprised.

“It’s mainly the guys,” said Raven. “They want to go fly fishing and stuff like that.”

“I doubt seriously if Teddy will wanna go to Nova Scotia,” Nikki said. “And this is going to be a winter trip too? I doubt if I’m going to a cold-behind place like that.”

“That’s what I said,” said Raven. “But you know men. They gots to have their way.”

“Not if I have something to say about it,” said Deja. “It’ll be Australia when I finish bending them to my will.”

“Now that’s a loaded response,” Nikki said, and they all laughed.

“But seriously girl, what are we gonna do about Teddy?” asked Deja. “You need to put your foot down and tell his ass to save this date or whatever you gots to do because we’re going. And guess what? He’ll save the date and go with us.”

“If he loves you he will,” Raven added. “Men have to show their love for us or they aren’t real men.

Look at Deja and me for example. We’re small, beautiful, dainty ladies.

Other than the fact that we’re black and the ladies Teddy used to prefer were white, it’s the same body type though.

It’s the same look though: small and dainty.

I heard Teddy never fooled around with anybody but those skinny, model types like us.

You’re the first big girl he’s ever been with. The first and only. So who knows?”

Nikki frowned. That’s so Raven! “What are you talking about, Raven? Who knows what?”

“Maybe Teddy never shows up because he’s no longer interested in you. Maybe he decided to go back to his natural type of woman. Women with body types more like mine and Deja’s, and less like yours.”

Although Nikki didn’t dignify Raven’s putdown with a response as the waiter returned with her drink, deep down it hit a nerve. Which she knew was exactly what Raven meant to do.

And Raven kept on pouncing. “You can dismiss it all you want. But I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face: Men who love their women show up for their women. And Teddy? He ain’t been showing up. I’m sorry, Nikki, but he hasn’t.”

“Not even a little bit,” added Deja. “Men have to make sacrifices for their ladies, that’s all we’re saying. You can’t let a man take you for granted.”

“Now look,” Nikki said in that tone they knew meant she’d had it. “What y’all aren’t going to do is sit up here and tell me how to handle my man when I don’t see all this handling you’re doing with your own men.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Raven asked.

“Your men ain’t shit either,” said Nikki.

Deja laughed, but Raven was offended. “Yeah our men aren’t perfect.

We didn’t say they were. But when my man messes up, guess what?

He get down on those knees and promise me he’ll do better.

And he does. What knees Teddy ever got down on for you?

And I’m not talking about when he gets down on his knees for those hoes he be fooling around with all over town.

And don’t take my head off. I’m just saying what I heard he be doing in them streets. ”

Nikki gave Raven a hard look. She knew how she loved to push her buttons and get a rise out of her. But not this time. Nikki sipped from her drink and ignored her little comments. But Raven wouldn’t let it go, even when Deja tried to move on.

“We’ll table this discussion for another time,” Deja said. “Let’s talk about our next girls’ night out. I may be able to wrangle us some tickets to see Usher. He’s back, y’all.”

“You can call our men trifling or whatever, but they show up for us though.” Raven continued her diatribe. “They show up for us every single time we put together a trip. They make it their business to be there. But Teddy T? Forget where them fans at. Where Teddy at?”

“Where that baby at?” Nikki dropped a hard dime on Raven.

Since she wanted to get down and dirty, Nikki was her girl.

“Hun, Raven? Where that baby at? Since your man shows up for you so much and woo woo woo, where’s his baby?

Talking about my man and some hoes. Your husband just had a whole baby with another woman while he’s married to you, and your ass stayed with him.

And you have the nerve to sit up here and tell me my man is missing in action because he can’t get away from work to go on some damn trip with y’all? Girl get out of my face!”

“You should have known better, Rave,” Deja said, shaking her head. “You took it too far with Nikki. You know she don’t play that. Now let’s move on.”

But Raven wouldn’t let it go. “For your information,” she said to Nikki, “that’s not even his baby.”

Even Deja looked hard at Raven. Even she knew that was a lie.

“He took a DNA test and everything,” Raven claimed. “It’s not his kid!”

“Bitch bye,” said Nikki. “You know good n’ well that’s Kyle’s baby. You already told us what that DNA test showed. So don’t even try that.”

“Yeah, Raven,” said Deja. “Don’t even go there. That’s Kyle’s baby. You know it and we know it too.”

“What about Javaugh?” Raven asked Deja. “Your man ain’t pure as the driven snow either.”

“First of all, I didn’t say he was,” said Deja. “Second of all, I’m not trying to marry that man. Third of all, he hasn’t had nobody’s baby while he’s been with me.”

“That you know of,” said Raven. “Kyle had one affair out of wedlock. Just one. But Javaugh has had what? Fifty? Sixty? Don’t get me started,” Raven said. “I know your secrets too.”

And now Deja and Raven were mixing it up about their respective men.

And that was why Nikki had been staying away as much as she could from the girl groups. She was tired of the drama. Her job gave her too much drama as it was.

Although her girlfriends had their suspicions given Mick Sinatra’s reputation around Philly, as far as they knew, Nikki was just a dock supervisor for Teddy’s lucrative import/export business.

But that was only her cover. She was second-in-command of the Sinatra crime syndicate, the most powerful syndicate in the world, and was the only woman, not to mention the only black woman, to have ever held such a position.

That job gave her drama up the gazoo. Meeting up with her girls used to be relaxing and loads of fun.

Now their get-togethers were accusatory and envy-laden and just plain burdensome.

She was slowly pulling away from both of them and they didn’t seem to realize it.

As the two ladies continued to argue over which one of their men was less a bastard than the other one, Nikki was about to take another sip of her drink. But that was when she noticed man seated at a table in a corner of the bar, staring unblinkingly at her.

When she saw him, she froze with her glass to her lips as she stared at him.

It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. It was a lookalike.

Those doppelg?ngers they talked about. It had to be!

But when he waved at her and smiled that reptilian smile she knew so well, her heart dropped to her shoe.

She knew it was him. It was him, it was him, it was him!

And panic set in. She immediately jumped up from the table.

“Nikki, what’s wrong?” Deja asked her even as Raven continued to argue.

“I’ve got to go,” Nikki said as she grabbed up her keys and phone and began leaving without paying for her drink. She practically ran out of that bar.

Even Raven stopped arguing. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked.

But Deja had no idea. And both of them were looking so hard at Nikki as she hurried out of the bar that they didn’t notice that the same man that had spooked her in the first place was hurrying out of that bar right behind her.