Sage
“Do you know how unlucky you have to be for your little sister, of all people, be the one to steal your man?” my best friend, Mia, screeches into my ear in disbelief. Rolling my eyes at her melodrama, I hold the phone further from my ear and flop back onto the fluffy comforter of my messy bed. Mia goes silent on the other end of the phone line, and I just know she’s waiting for an answer from me.
“Alex is not my man,” I state with a defeated sigh, my heart giving a painful thud in my chest as if it disagreed wholeheartedly. I rub the area soothingly and roll over onto my side, pulling my legs up to my chest to complete my fetal position. Heartbreak sucks.
“Well, whose fault is that?” she grunts and continues without waiting for me to answer. “He’s not your man because you didn’t do what I said when you met him five years ago. All you had to do was go talk to the man and tell him you like him. Now look at you. On the phone with me and hiding in your childhood bedroom in your parents’ house instead of going downstairs and telling Nadine to get her damn hands off your man … But tell her that nicely cuz I love me some Nadine and I don’t want to come out looking bald when she redoes my braids next month. Lord knows you gonna tell her I told you to say that and get me in trouble too.” Mia finishes her rant with a kiss of her teeth. I groan into my comforter while laying my cellphone beside me and tapping the speaker button on the screen.
Mia was never the type to beat around the bush and spare feelings from the truth, but I wish she would ease up on me a little. Not everyone was built to handle a verbal bitch-slap of truth.
“I refuse to go back downstairs. It hurts to be in the same room as them and see them so happy and all over each other,” I say sadly, my heart giving another painful lurch as I pull my old stuffed bear, Mr. Sunshine, to my chest with a tight squeeze.
Well, if I were truly being honest, Alex and Nadine weren’t really all over each other when I last saw them together, but it still hurt nonetheless to see her touch and hug someone who should have been mine. I want to be happy for my little sister, but why’d she have to choose him? Why’d it have to be Alex?
Nadine is a highly sought-after Instagram model with perfect melted-caramel skin, jewel-brown eyes, chic, shoulder length, ombré-brown curly hair, thick plush lips and possessed a rocking, skinny, hourglass figure with a nice pert ass she spent hours at the gym molding. She could have chosen anyone from the mountain of people that throw themselves at her daily, but instead she chose Alex. My Alex.
“Aww bestie. I’m sorry. I’m being a bitch again, aren’t I? I blame my momma for passing it down to me like a bad case of generational acne.” I can hear a smirk in her voice, and I feel my lips try to pull themselves into a smile in response despite how badly my heart hurts.
“You and your momma are forgiven for now. I just really don’t know what I’m going to do, Mia. Apparently, Mom invited Alex to come on our family vacation to Makarska since hard-headed Jacob is bringing his girlfriend, Ellie,” I grouch, sitting up with my phone now flat in my hand while I start thumbing through Alex’s Insta to see if there are any pictures of him with Nadine. But it seems God is punishing me because the first thing that pops up is a picture of them smiling while hugging my large family on either side between their widespread arms and the living room filled with our suitcases as the backdrop. I groan in frustration and flop back on the bed, my phone held loosely in my grasp.
“Ellie? That little preppy cheerleading white girl?” Mia asks in confusion. I nod even though she can’t see me.
“Yep. That’s the one. She’s so up Jacob’s ass it’s not even funny.” I take Mia off speaker mode and hold my phone to my ear so we can shit-talk without anyone passing by my room overhearing. Hell. At least we’re not still talking about me screwing up my chance with Alex.
“Girl, that’s cuz your little brother is the hot jock at her college, exactly how Alex used to be when you two went to Arcadia,” Mia snarks with a laugh. Annnnd we’re back. I roll my eyes so hard they’re about to fall out of my head from how hard I’m rolling them.
“I’m about to put you on a ‘Best Friends for Sale’ website for a penny if you don’t stop,” I warn and glare at the ceiling like Mia can see that, too.
“Okay! I’ll stop, but I’m just saying. Alex used to be hot stuff. What does he look like now? I know it’s been a year or two since you last saw him before this hot mess appeared on your doorstep.”
“He looks okay,” I mumble and hop out of bed, suddenly feeling restless and embarrassed that I couldn’t help checking him out thoroughly when he first walked into the house with Nadine dragging him behind her.
“Okay? That can’t be right. Girl, give me more details than that,” Mia urges and I hear the frown in her voice.
“He looked nice, alright.” I try not to sound too defensive, but I can’t help it. This was like picking at a recently healed-over scab. I did not feel comfortable admitting I was checking out my little sister’s new boyfriend and it didn’t matter that he could have been my boyfriend first if I’d just had a little bit more courage to talk to him at any moment during college or any time after I ran away. Alex was Nadine’s now.
Reaching behind my butt, I tug on a long lock of my brown curly hair while I pace the beige carpet in front of the mirror of my old vanity.
“Nice?! Girl. Seriously? You’re about to go on vacation in a couple of hours to a private island that your dad’s boss owns, practically in the middle of nowhere, and you’ll barely have time to talk to me cuz your family has that weird cellphone rule for family time.”
“Hey! ‘No phones out when the fun’s out’ is a good rule. My dad came up with that,” I say in mock outrage.
“I can tell.” We both snort. My dad was Swedish and was well known in our neighborhood to come up with the weirdest sayings ever since I was a little girl. At least this one rhymed. Most of them didn’t make a lick of sense and he’d always blamed it on English being a weird language. My brothers and sister and I would all roll our eyes, and meanwhile Mom would always laugh and agree because she was born and raised in Jamaica. I guess she would know best.
“Now, stop distracting me and acting like you didn’t hear my question. What does Alex look like now?” Mia pushes, reminding me exactly why I was trying to change the subject in the first place. I sigh heavily.
“He looks good. Like, really good.” I sigh again and sink onto the edge of my bed. Wrapping my arm around the peeling, pale-blue paint of the wooden bedpost my dad and I hand-painted when I was six, I rest my head on the round knob.
“Really?” Mia asks in surprise.
“Yeah. He’s gotten a bit taller again. I swear he’s like six-foot-five now and Mia, his face! I could lick melted fudge out of the slight hollows of his cheeks and off of the smooth tan skin of his chiseled jawline. Heck. I wouldn’t mind licking it off of his pouty bottom lip too if I had the option.” I pause and shake my head in amazement as his smirking gorgeous face comes up clear as day in my mind like he’s right here in the room with me.
“Girl. What else?” Mia asks eagerly. The sounds of her munching on chips crackles over the phone from her end, but it doesn’t drown out my dreamy sigh.
“His eyes are the same happy dark green I remember, but his hair is different. It’s still his famous sexy black, but it’s not shaggy and wild anymore. He has it styled short on the sides and longer at the top like a sexy older Zac Efron and oh gosh, his shoulders—” I bite the corner of my plump lower lip and sink back onto the bed with one hand buried in my thick strands while I squeeze my baggy sweatpants-covered thighs together. “Mia, they’re just as broad as I remembered. I swear I would give my left tit just to have a small nibble of those biceps.”
“Not the left tit,” Mia gasps in shock.
“Girl, left tit, right tit, both tits, I would give them up in a heartbeat if I could watch him lift his shirt and expose all those rippling abs of his while he wipes the sweat from his forehead and chugs a bottle of water like he used to.” My body flushes at the memory those words evoke and suddenly I'm back in time, in Arcadia’s bleachers and desperately trying to quell my hunger for Alex as he waves at me from the large lacrosse field wearing a grin that I want to believe is just for me and me alone.
I shake the memory away and repeat to myself for the umpteenth time over the past two years that he only saw me as a great study buddy and nothing more. I needed to stop fooling myself into thinking otherwise.
“So, what I’m hearing is, a certain black-haired, green-eyed, physically fit beauty is back in your life looking even sexier than you last remembered and you’re still hiding in your old room talking to me? Nah. That don’t sound right.”
“Mia—”
“Nope.” Mia pops her lips. “Get up and go steal your man back from your sister. Nadine may be Beyoncé but you’re the Kelly Rowland of this situation, so you still got a fighting chance of winning him back,” she urges.
“Mia, I never had him in the first place, so how can I possibly win him back?” I grouch. “Anyways, I’m no Kelly Rowland, but Nadine is definitely Beyoncé. I don’t stand a chance ... not that I would actually stoop low enough to steal my little sister’s boyfriend,” I add.
“Oh please,” Mia snorts. “Put some respect on my best friend’s name. She is Sage freaking Nolan, and she is a caramel Merida-from-Brave knockout. Say it.” I sigh. Mia could be so pushy sometimes, but this time she was absolutely right. I was being negative and acting like I looked like Quasimodo or something. Maybe I did have a chance, but I didn’t think I had it in me to steal Alex from Nadine. That would be wrong. However, I could use this boost of confidence and finally head downstairs. I was tired of hiding in my room.
“I’m Sage Nolan and I am a knockout,” I exhale on a laugh while I roll my eyes. I feel silly, but also a bit more confident. I’m not going to tell Mia that, though. It’ll just give her a big head.
“Damn right you are. Now, go get you some Alex and try to enjoy your vacation because who in Philly do you know vacations on a private island? My best friend, that’s who,” she boasts and I laugh because she’s right again. This was unreal and I still couldn’t believe my dad won this trip during his company’s wild annual raffle. Stuff like this just didn’t happen in real life.
“Mia—” I snort.
“Knock, knock. Is my little sunflower still hiding? It’s time to leave soon,” my dad calls through the closed door, interrupting what I was about to say next.
“Sorry Mia, I gotta go. I’ll text you after we get off the plane before Dad’s rule goes into effect.”
“Okay. Enjoy the vacation. I’ll miss having my ride-or-die around to bitch to.” Mia huffs like the weight of the world is now on her slim, milk chocolate shoulders.
“I’ll miss having my ride-or-die, too. Vacation is going to be less fun without you.” I join her somber mood. We’ve been besties since we met in kindergarten and yet I couldn’t remember the last time I went a long time without talking to Mia. Three weeks of no texting or phone calls was going to be rough for us.
“Girl, you ain’t have to tell me. I already know,” Mia gripes and I can practically picture her flipping her box braids over her shoulders and pursing her lips.
“Alright, sassy pants,” I chortle. “I’ll text you,” I promise and prepare to press the end-call button.
“Bye, bestie!” she calls out and the call ends. I heave a deep sigh and rise to my feet to unlock the door and head downstairs while I shove my phone into the pocket of my baggy grey sweatpants. It was no time like the present to rip the proverbial band-aid off.
