Over. (This. Is. Not. Over. #2) (37 page)

             
“Matt received a call from an investor and he had to go work off Wall Street the next day. Actually, he had to leave that very night. So I told him to stop by
Laid Down and Dyed
and before my cut and color we partied in the Range. Hey!” She snapped her fingers and started moving her head from side to side.

             
“Rena, you and Matt are financial investors at Brooks Financial, Matt was just featured on the Forbes Finest Financiers list, he’s getting calls to work off Wall Street, why the fuck are you still going to a salon called Laid Down and Dyed?”

             
“Oh shut the hell up Danielle, you know that’s my spot.”

             
So, yeah, they’re doing well. As mentioned before, Rena is part of the Danielle-Rena-Winnie-Jacob’s Sisters group that formed at my wedding and has been going strong for the past four years. We have so many damn stories, it’s unbelievable. Don’t get me wrong, I’m beyond sad that Jasmine and I aren’t as close as we were. I’m even bothered that she refuses to engage in conversation during her, Rena and my weekly shitty bar nights, if Malcolm is the subject of it. I really wish that Jasmine and I could be as close as we were growing up. It’s not like I’m not trying. But she’s becoming a woman who’s intolerable of people making their own decisions. I won’t ruin our friendship and call it quits between us but I won’t kiss her ass. She has her man and, hell, I have mine.

             
Jasmine and Marlon
. Speaking of Jasmine, she and Marlon have two daughters. Of course, when Jasmine gets pregnant, no one else knows how rough it really is. That is except for Dena. Jasmine mysteriously develops every condition that Dena has ever had during pregnancy. I really hate Dena, have I mentioned that already?

             
Marlon’s real estate business is booming and the fact that he’s Jon’s best friend makes him a household name. Both are entrepreneurs, both are black, both are successful, both are driving Boston’s economy and both are humble. It’s sad that he has to deal with Jasmine’s ass every day. She’s become outright nasty these days:

             
“Too bad you couldn’t meet a March.” Jasmine said to me after Jacob and Winnie’s divorce. “Better a March than a Blair, I mean look at the quality of Dena’s life over Winnie’s. A divorce before you’re even thirty, how embarrassing.”

             
“Now Jasmine,” Rena said before I cussed her ass out, “leave Winnie out of this.”

             
“Thanks Jasmine.” I said.

             
“Oh, I’m not talking about
you
being embarrassed because you were divorced before thirty.” She said to me. “Even though you’d still be a married woman if it wasn’t for a Blair.”

             
“I
am
a married woman, Jasmine.”

             
“Oh I mean to your first husband.”

             
Malcolm secretly told me the entire love story of Jacob and Jasmine. I say that to usher in my next subject. Guess what Jasmine named her daughters. Tiffany and Pearl. Think about that shit. There’s a little part in me, buried deep down inside, that wants Laura to publish that damn picture of her.

             
“I thought you were trying to be a better person.” Malcolm said to me when I told him that.

             
“Oh I stopped doing that a long time ago.” I informed him.

             
Jon and Marla
. They both still live in Boston, still in the same condo building as ‘the crew’ and all of our kids. Imagine our lives in this living arrangement.

             
Poor Marla. Jon has yet to marry this woman and as he tells me, he never will.

             
“Been there, done that.” Jon said to me one day when we happened to lunch at the same restaurant one day. We shared a table and a bottle of wine. That’s when he made the big reveal. “She’s accepted that I won’t get married again but she’s asking for a baby.”

             
“So give her one.” I shrugged.

             
“I’ve had a vasectomy.”

             
“Oh that’s hilarious!” I began laughing hysterically at Marla’s expense.

             
“Yeah,” Jon smiled, “a few months after Nicky was born.”

             
I laid into his ass. I laid into him so good that I started bringing up every issue that we ever had, including the resolved ones. I didn’t talk to him for a month after that. How dare he! I went home that night after I left the office and told Malcolm what happened:

             
“I had lunch with Jon today and guess what!”

             
“What?”

             
“He had the nerve to get a vasectomy!”

             
“Oh wow. What does Marla say about that?”

             
“The hell with Marla! What made him think that he and I were done having kids? Huh!”

             
“Baby, I’m lost.”

             
“No kidding.” I mumbled as I went to Skype Cadence. It was Thursday; book-club day.             

             
Jon and I made up a month later. He had flowers sent by a delivery guy to Malcolm and my condo, which is two floors above his and Marla’s. They were long-stemmed yellow roses.

             
“Flowers, Red.” Malcolm said as he signed the delivery slip and then closed the door.

             
“From who?” I asked.

             
“Let’s see … Jon.” He said, reading the card.

             
“Puh. What did he say?”

             
“
Sorry about that
.”

             
Eventually I began talking to Jon again but I’m still perturbed by his gall.             

             
Now on to the couple you’re probably wondering about.

             
Winnie and Jacob
. After months of pretending to be okay, talking my damn head off, and hanging out in shitty dives with Rena and me, Winnie divorced Jacob. She was simply insulted that he would have
any
nostalgic feelings whatsoever for Jasmine’s conceited ass. (Her words not mine.) She was also offended that Jacob not only fooled around on her but he seemed to love another woman. Fooling around was one thing, but love, that was another. No matter what Jacob said, no matter what I said, no matter what Malcolm said, no matter what Jacob’s sisters said, no matter what Nat said, no matter what Jacob’s parents said, no matter what Queen Angie said, Winnie was convinced that Jacob was the scum of the earth. Queen Angie even flew in from London to assist Jacob’s mother, Pat (her arch enemy), with talking some sense into Winnie.:

             
“He said he thought he loved another woman, Aunt Angie! How am I supposed to take that?” Winnie said.

             
“Oh come now dear, Jacob’s a good boy, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”

             
Winnie was a mess in Italy. Boston’s news broadcasted the divorce for a month straight. I called Malcolm from Italy and he told me Jacob could barely get to work because of the paparazzi blocking his truck in. Apparently this was the biggest divorce to hit Boston’s elite since Boston’s founding. It was unreal to the city that Winnie and Jacob, the notorious bad girl-bad boy heavy hitters, both from Old Boston Money, would divorce. They were stunned that Winnie pulled an Anna Mae Bullock on Jacob: she didn’t want alimony, any of their properties or vehicles they owned or his shit load of money. All she wanted was out. I think that’s what hit Jacob the hardest. There was nothing he had, nothing he could give her to entice her to stay.

             
Let’s just say the Fourth of July vacation in Hilton Head, the week after Italy, was one of the most memorable times of my life. Winnie, Rena, Jacob’s sisters and I went to Charleston to party and act trashy in peace. So we went to the loudest most obnoxious club we could find. Now, everyone was married and Winnie was going through a divorce but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to have some fun. We showed our ass that night, I won’t even lie. There were fine ass black men all over the place and bottles of champagne scattered to and fro. The DJ had put on Winnie’s song (Drunk In Love by Beyoncé) and we were screaming
We be all night!
at the top of our lungs.
Ooooh! Ooooh!
The music was pumping and our asses were
jamming
. Winnie, in particular, was popping her ass to the beat with Demetrius Westlake, a thirty-one year old Charleston lawyer and member of the South Carolina Senate. (Oh and did I mention that he’s black and fine as hell?)  But of course, out of all the smoky clubs in Charleston, Jacob had to walk into Spread ‘Em Wide. Malcolm, Matt and Jacob walked in and Jacob acted a Got. Damn. Fool. He was a man possessed:

             
“Fuck you Jacob, get out of here, I’m jamming with D. West!” Winnie kept screaming.

             
“Winnie, I’ll kill every muthafucka in here!” Jacob kept screaming back. “Don’t get a muthafucka killed Winnie! I swear to god! I have nothing to lose Winnie! Nothing!”

             
“What’s going on Blair?” Demetrius said to him with a devil-may-care grin.

             
“I will take your fucking life if you touch my wife.” Jacob gritted out.

             
And then you had my tipsy ass:

             
“Malcolm! Get Jacob out of here right now! The girls are together and we’re having fun. I am
so
not playing with you Malcolm! I’m gonna be, like,
so
mad at you tomorrow!
We be all night
!”

             
Malcolm and Matt were pushing on Jacob’s chest, trying to get him out of the club:

             
“Alright Jake, let’s go … let’s go … no, I get it, hell, my woman’s in here shaking her ass too and she had the nerve to tell my ass to leave … let’s handle this back at Hilton Head … the cameras Jake, relax … come on.”

             
“Jacob, come on.” Matt said. “Don’t start trouble, not tonight.”

             
Oh it was a mess. Just sad and messy.

             
We had so much fun.

             
Jacob came to me the next morning to apologize for his behavior. We hugged and made up, I called him a good guy, he said thanks … and then he received a call on his cell from one of his brother-in-laws. Winnie had stayed her ass in Charleston with Demetrius. After he hung up the phone, Jacob and my conversation went kind of like this:

             
“Where the fuck is she Danielle?”

             
“Who?”

             
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that the entire trip was simply AMAZING.

             
Dena invited Jasmine and Marlon that year and for some reason Jasmine has hated Winnie’s guts ever since. Rena, Winnie or I can’t figure out why. (Winnie told Rena about the picture and swore her to secrecy. You can only imagine Rena’s reaction.)

             
Anyways, I really do think that awesome summer in Hilton Head, filled with tears, confessions, begging, pleading and of course Demetrius, laid the groundwork for the next year.

             
Jacob and Winnie remarried.

             
Presently, they have three children and one on the way. Winnie is still the same: saucy, happy, slightly gangster-ish. Jacob is still the same: charming, foolhardy, slightly gangster-ish. Jacob isn’t kissing her ass, trying to make up for Jasmine. But then again, Winnie isn’t asking him too. One of Winnie’s greatest qualities is the ability to move on with life and one of Jacob’s greatest qualities is that he lives and learns. Malcolm, Winnie, Jacob and I spend night after night on one of our balconies, laughing our asses off, drinking scotch, eating crab legs, crab cakes, chips and dip and then plying ourselves with chocolate mousse. (Occasionally we smoke a joint but Malcolm strongly discourages this.)

             
Now on to Malcolm and me.

             
Right now we’re in DC at the Four Seasons eating dinner. Let’s run down the list of people in attendance: Winnie, Jacob (their son Ralphie and their daughters Harper and Beckett … and remember Winnie’s pregnant again), Nat, Nat’s parents, Dena and their kids, Rena, Matt, and their sons, Lola, Cadence, Angie, Wynston, Jacob’s parents, all three of Jacob’s sisters and their husbands and children, my mom, dad and baby brother (who’s currently trying to break away from me because I keep grabbing him at random times and kissing him), Malcolm, Nicky, Roman and me. It’s a circus in here. Oh and Roman is Malcolm and my son.