The Game of Love

4

"You would swear you don't have a husband or child the way you call me everyday."

Jade said to the phone screen as she held the curling rod to her hair.

"And you would swear you don't have naturally curly hair the way you flat iron your curls and then add waves to it everyday."

Jewel responded, earning an eyeroll from Jade.

"Ha ha ha, very funny. Do you want an award?"

A chuckle escaped Jewel's lips.

"You sound so bitter, anyway where are you going?"

"A house warming get together. Stephanie and her boyfriend moved in together."

She stared at her reflection in the mirror.

Her nude bodysuit clung to her body as she paired it off with leather loose fitting shorts and brown sandals.

Was she doing to much?

Jade asked herself as she passed the lip-gloss across her lips. Would he feel as if she got dolled up for him?

But wasn't that point, to keep him interested?

This was too much, she was mentally giving herself a headache.

"Earth to Jade?"

Her sister called from the other end of the phone. Jade looked at the woman that stared at her on the screen. A skin a tinge lighter than Jade's and her natural curls full and luscious, picked up three quarter of the screen.

"What did you say?"

"I asked if Stephanie didn't just meet this guy?"

"Mhm."

Jade responded as she threw the black side bag across her body.

"And yet you're here still single, waiting on your eggs to dry up."

"I'm twenty-eight, not forty-eight and the last time I checked Kim had North at thirty-three, I still have time."

Jade retorted, not wanting to get into this discussion with her sister at 7p.m.

"For what? There are a lot of influential men that want a woman like you on their arm."

Her sister's words felt like a jab to everything she'd accomplished in life, but her family never did well with understanding their role in each other's trauma.

"I should go, I'm running late, give my nephew a kiss for me."

She ended the call before her sister could even respond, her fingers tightening around the rim of the sink.

Why did everything in her family have to do with influence and position?

Why did who she date have to have a high position or some kind of credential that her family approved of?

How was that even working out for her mother, sister and cousins? Were they happy or were they pretending to be?

She gave herself one last glance in the mirror, she wouldn't focus on her family tonight. Tonight was game night and at the end of it, Adrian would be asking for her number.

She stared at the card on the bathroom counter, he left her his number but she would not call him and look desperate. His boyish charm and killer smile did not have that much of an effect on her that she would ever make the first move.

It would be him that would come running to her, not the other way around.

Even as she pulled into the crowded driveway of Stephanie and Theo's new apartment, as her eyes landed on his grey SUV, a smile graced her lips.