Page 15 of Same Girl
“How is that?”
“Fyve and I reconnected a few months before you and I did.”
“Reconnected?” Chosen and I spoke at the same time.
Slowly, she nodded.
“How is that when my first time meeting you was in my tattoo shop?”
“Yeah, and the first time I met you was on the job.”
Mya shook her head. “You both have known me a lot longer than you realized. We’ve known each other since high school,” she confessed.
“Nah, I would’ve remembered your fine ass if I had known you,” I countered.
“Except if she didn’t look the same as she did back then,” Chosen stated, crossing his arms over his chest.
“What the hell are you talking ’bout?” I wasn’t in the mood for riddles.
“There’s been something familiar about you since we met,” Chosen declared to Mya. “I tried to figure out what it was. I even asked a few times if we’d met before.”
“Let me guess . . . she lied?”
“No, I didn’t lie,” Mya stated in a low tone.
“She changed the subject every time. It was always in her smile, but it wasn’t until I dropped by her shop a month ago that I started thinking about it. I saw this chick, Santerica, who graduated a couple of years ahead of us with my sister, Tara. Santerica looked like Mya to me, but I only recalled Santerica having one little sister. Not another one nor an older one. And Mya didn’t look like the sister I remembered.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“D’Auhn Harrison,” Chosen stated.
I turned my gaze from Mya to Chosen and stared blankly at him, because I had no idea who that was.
“Who?” I asked.
Mya stood from her chair and placed her hands on her hips. “Mya N’Quol Imani D’Auhn Jones, formerly Harrison. The fat girl. The one you wouldn’t take a second look at because my thighs scrubbed. My perms sweated out. My clothes were too tight. The same girl who you and your teammate played a prank on at the senior prom.”
I continued mugging her because I had no idea what she was talking about. Although her stating all those damn names now made sense to me, why both Chosen and I knew her under different names.
“You still don’t know, do you?” Tears brimmed her lower eyelids. “The girl that your teammate, Caden Reese, sent roses to, asking me out to the prom. He told me that he liked me, but he knew I liked you. He claimed that I was Roxane to his Cyrano. I’m that same girl who got all dressed up and waited to be picked up, only to have no one show up. And then I decided to go to the prom by myself, only to see him there with a date. Y’all posted all those pictures of me on my locker when I arrived on Monday morning. The caption was ‘Dateless? Call 1-800-Desper8.’ Everyone laughed at me.”
My jaw clenched because I remembered that bullshit. I was angry with Caden when I learned what he’d done.
“I wasn’t the one who posted those pictures on your locker. Caden’s girlfriend, Amerie, was.”
“Either way, you laughed along with everyone else. You were a part of everything they did to ridicule me.”
“So you thought what? You’d get back at me by playing me for a fucking fool?”
“Initially, yes! I did. I hated you for the longest for what you’d done to me.”
“So you planned to use me for my money? I’m spending all the dollars that I’ve spent on you, and for what? What point were you trying to prove? That the girl that I wouldn’t holler at in high school was the one I fell in love with at the end?”
Tears fell from her eyes, and she gasped. “I did want to hurt you. I wasn’t even sure what I would do beyond proving to you that the woman you didn’t want was the one you ended up chasing. But I fell in love with you too, Fyve. I adored your personality, how hard you went after me, and your silly, goofy side. I enjoyed how you made me laugh and how you protected me. I didn’t plan on catching feelings for you.”
“Then if that’s true, how the hell did you end up with this nigga if you reconnected with him after you were involved with me?”
The Beautiful Ones
