“I still have to put on my dress and makeup,” she said. Ever the good girl, she tried to pull back into the dressing room. But I just dragged her with me on into Nicky’s office.
“Nicky,” I said, coming through the door with her. “Do you think Chloe’s nice?”
Nicky looked up from the meeting he was having with his alcohol vendor, a long gray-haired guy with tattoo sleeves on both arms. “Yeah, she nice,” Nicky answered like he didn’t have company. “Too fucking nice. That’s why she always crying over some man. I got business here. Do you mind?”
“One more question. Have you ever wished that Chloe would find a guy who was as nice to her as she is to him?”
For once Nicky didn’t have anything mean to say. He just answered, “Yes, I have,” so emphatically that Chloe was struck silent for a good minute.
“What’s going on?” Nicky asked me.
“I’m trying to convince Chloe to stop letting these little boys walk all over her.”
“Oh, I’ll cosign that check,” Nicky said. “Chloe, start acting like you got some sense when it comes to these dudes. That’s an order.”
Chloe had never been one to go in the face of a direct order. And maybe she was a little touched that somebody as gruff as Nicky would actually care enough to weigh in on her love life.
“Okay,” she said to me. “Okay, this time I’ll be different.”
. . .
And that was that. I called Corey back with Chloe’s number and they started dating. And it was all sweetness.
Though something did happen a few months later.
We were in her dressing room, both admiring her new haircut in the mirror.
It was that modern twist on the bob, which was called the Posh or the Victoria Beckham if you were white, and the Rihanna if you were black.
Chloe, who had been wearing her hair in simple shoulder-length curls ever since I met her, had gotten it done in homage to her new perspective on life.
Trying to find a reason to dump Corey had taken so much going against nature on Chloe’s part that she hadn’t had the energy to smother him with love. And that had resulted in the first healthy relationship she had ever been in.
“Things are going so well with Corey,” she said. “I was like, I should try something new with my hair, too. Do you like it?”
“I love it,” I said. “What did Nicky say?”
“He wasn’t happy about the little blond streak in the front,” she admitted. “But he said at least it was a lot more authentic than an Afro.”
Chloe wasn’t as good of a singer as I was. She had a little too much training, and it always felt like she was holding something back from the audience. Apart from that, Nicky was over the moon at having a docile singer who also looked the part.
“Firing you was the best decision I ever made,” he often said straight to my face. I would have been hurt, but it was Nicky, so I just ignored him.
“Have you shown it to Corey yet? What’d he say?”
“I just got it done a few hours ago, but we’ve got our big two-month-anniversary date after the show, so he’ll see it then.”
“Two-month-anniversary date?” I asked, suspicious that she was doing her ridiculous Chloe thing again.
“It was his idea, not mine,” she said, reading my tone. “Corey is really, really sweet. And so romantic.”
Since I had forbidden Chloe to tell Corey how much she liked him to his face, she often ended up gushing about him to me behind his back. It was not fun, but I considered sitting through her syrupy accolades part of my atonement.
The chirping crickets of her ringtone interrupted her before she could really get started, though. She pulled her pink RAZR out of her bag and checked the caller ID. “It’s Corey,” she said, and a smile split her face. “When am I allowed to give him his own ringtone again?”