Any Given Thursday

Chapter 7

The morning sun's rays shined down upon her, and Celina knew that she needed to get up. She also knew that Jake would chide her for her laziness but she didn't care. According to their own research, they were in the lead over any other group of students from Professor Gaither's PolySci class. Even with these confirmed facts, Celina still did not wish to wake up yet. She liked being a laze-a-bed. She cherished that feeling of in-between, the state in which a person was half awake and half asleep. One wrong move could mean waking up and facing the day. She wasn't yet ready to do that.

How could she face the day when her partner could be heard last night extolling all the reasons why Celina could never be as beautiful, smart, or as sexy as his beloved Melinda Banes? Jake hadn't exactly made himself quiet when his girlfriend called. Now, it wasn't like Celina tried to listen in on his conversation. She just happened to be exiting the shower and carefully leaving the door ajar so that the steam could escape. Surely she hadn't counted on hearing such private and personal thoughts. When someone maligned her, Celina would turn the other cheek. She simply would forget about whatever rude and ignorant comment made about her and move on.

This time was not as simple as the other times. She had known Jake for years, and while arguing and debasing one another was nothing new between them, it still hurt to think that he would not have the decency to say these things to her face. Over the years they stopped communicating, and if one defamed the other it hadn't mattered because neither would ever hear about the comments. In this case, Celina had a bird's eye view of everything he said.

So what if she was not a perfect sized six? Who cared if she didn't have naturally curly red hair? She was a black woman, and genetically speaking she was meant to have dark brown kinky hair. She couldn't escape genetics, nor could she escape the pain of his commentary. She loved all of her features, both ethnic and gender wise. As far as her weight was concerned, well she was big boned that's all. Yes, she could probably stand to be less of tomboy, and it probably wouldn't hurt her to go on a diet and she those unwanted twenty pounds. However, she wasn't going to let an egotistical bastard like Jake Collier be the catalyst for change in her life. She just wasn't brought up that way.

Her grandmother would roll in her grave if she knew that her grandbaby was letting a white boy affect her so. Never in all of her grandmother's years had she ever let any man, be he white, yellow or brown say such things about her character and make her lose her sense of self. She was Ina Mae Thicke and before anything else, she was a person. A woman was more than the sex between her legs. A woman was powerful, beautiful, and intelligent. From her womb birthed the world's nations, from her breasts she nursed the children of the world. Celina was giving women everywhere a bad name by idling standing by and letting that moron get away with his treatment.

Suddenly, she was aware of her great grandmother's old adage. 'If you're white, you're just right. If you're brown stick around, and if you're black get back.' She snorted then, aware of how completely insane she sounded. Since when did Celina Thompson allow her life dictated by a man, let alone a white man? Biting her lip, she realized that this wasn't the first time the issue of race between the two had cropped up. Shaking her head, Celina stood and yawned, stretching her long limbs. None of this mattered anymore anyway, because all of those feeling meant something when she once loved him. Now that it was over, none of it mattered anymore.

Yet why was it now, walking into the tiny bathroom sharing the sink as she brushed her teeth did her eyes linger over his muscular physique? Her toothbrush hung idly by in her mouth as her eyes adjusted to the environment around her. She could see him staring at her through the mirror's reflection. Her shirt had come undone as she slept the night before. Her long sleeved pajama top now hung idly off one shoulder exposing brown flesh. Celina didn't really care about the shoulder flash. She was more concerned with the fact that he could see down her very loose top. Celina shoved past him to spit into the sink, and then proceeded to rinse out her mouth. Jake stared at her throughout this routine, without saying a word.