ODDS OF LOVE : SEASON TEN

Episode 101

Faith was late.

Joy Jones had been oddly excited about this dinner with Faith tonight although she was not going to consider it to be a date. It was just a dinner between two spiritual sisters. A dinner that she hoped might lead to something more. After all ,  a little time had passed since the death of Faith's wife although Faith hadn't really seemed to mourn the woman much. Of course she hadn't yet told her of her own HIV status. She was not going to hide it from Faith although most didn't really know unless they needed to know about it. At the church the only person who actually knew was DuBuis because he was a doctor and she wanted him as a medical professional to be aware in case she had any physical complications during church proceedings. She was not ashamed of it but she was still aware of the discrimination people still launched at HIV patients even now in the supposedly enlightened world. Too many refused to even accept that women could get HIV or AIDS but she was living proof that they could. She was both living and surviving with HIV. She would tell Faith. When the time was right.

She had taken the longest time to search her closet for what to wear tonight. Everything seemed so bland, boring, soccer mom like.

Church clothes.

Gardening clothes.

Lounge around the house clothes.

Finally after taking a long relaxing bubble bath , brushing her teeth twice and trying to tame her unmanageable thick curly hair into something normal she decided on a simple red and black striped dress with low heeled black pumps. In the bedroom mirror she had made a face at her appearance. She looked like she was about to attend a PTA meeting but what could she do about it? She was who she was. Nothing would ever change that.

And then she waited.

And waited.

Faith was a half hour late and not responding to text messages.

Joy was sitting on her overstuffed beige couch, clutching one of the couch's big colorful pillows in her arms for comfort, wondering if she was getting stood up on their first date and if she should call the woman when suddenly there was a knocking that sounded like a cop at her apartment front door.

She tossed the pillow aside and almost ran to the door, unlocking it and yanking it open to find an embarrassed Faith standing there in tight black jeans and a Hard Rock Cafe tee-shirt, her long wild black hair hanging in a tangled glory past her slim shoulders , her brown eyes pleading for forgiveness, a long stemmed pink rose in her hand.

Faith said sheepishly," So , what had happened was ......."