Love Lost

I spent almost four hours in the spa getting massages and a facial. An older woman there also applied therapeutic medicine to my foot with leaves, sand, steam, and other organic ingredients. When I left, she gave me crutches to use to keep pressure off my foot.

On my way back to my room I saw Chanell. She’d heard what happened and asked if I was okay. She followed me back to my suite where we ordered room service and talked. She appraised the suite and couldn’t believe we didn’t exactly share a room. She went into another chatter binge and I let her. In the middle of her talking, there was a knock at the door. Chanell got up to answer it and came back with a bouquet of roses some shade of pink. The card read, I was told peach represented sorrow and sympathy.

I hope this is true because it is what I feel.

A.D. Jacobs.

I smiled.

“Yo’, Divine really feeling you, Yo’!”

“Really?!” I said sarcastically.

“You kinda like his ex. Prim and proper, but not bourgeois. I heard they really over. I ain’t like her ass anyway. She was mad stuck up and didn’t want to be around nobody from the streets.”

“Oh, yeah? But what was up with your peoples?” I asked because I couldn’t dignify her comment about Azmir ‘really being over’ with his ex with a response. Did she think I was some jumpoff? If he had a girl that I knew of, did she really think I’d be here? Besides, I wanted her to continue talking—freely.

“Who Syn? Man, Syn just stupid like that. She my girl and the whole nine but she like to fuck wit’ people all the time. She ain’t think you was gonna try her chin. She was a little shook. I know Kid is riding her ass right now. She know not to fuck with Divine’s girls. She was wilding with that one, man.”

“That made me wonder, was I being tested or something? You would think she was his play-sister or former lover or something…” I was trying to get more information out of her at the risk of not making sense.

“Divine was one of them dudes, Yo! Every chick wanted him before he blew up the way he is now so you can imagine how much of a magnet he is now. You don’t know him, do you?” she suddenly realized.

“Not well at all, Chanell. That’s what I was trying to tell y’all yesterday!” I exclaimed.

“Well, I can’t get all into Divine’s business like that but he’s a cool dude. He came from the streets. Now he owns businesses out the ass and got everybody after him—celebrities, round-the-way politicians, even gang members wanting to do something fun and positive in their communities. He’s like a little fucking celebrity. He’s young black, and rich. Plus, Divine is fine. Every woman in and out of the hood got their eyes glued to his milk chocolate skin. He definitely a puzzle that women can’t put together, and in the process he lose interest and lose them at the same time. He mad focused! I really think Divine ready to settle down, though. Like, he ain’t never really cheat on his ex, he could if he wanted to, but he’s more calm now. He don’t club like he used to or come on the block like he used to. Kim said he be home a lot now and not running the streets like he used to,” Chanell said with such conviction as I tried to decipher her broken idiom.

We talked a little more after that and then I told her I was tired so she left. I took a nap and the sound of the telephone ringing woke me up. It was Kim with Chanell in the background. They invited me to the club in the resort. It was supposed to be hip-hop and reggae night starting at ten p.m. I told them that I’d meet them down there. It was a quarter after nine p.m. already so I got up to shower and threw on a free flowing tank dress.

Love Belvin's books