WILD THANGZ by Winston Chapman (An Essence Magazine National Best Seller)

Chapter 6

Late Saturday morning, we ate room service breakfast in the hotel room.

It was a beautiful sunny day, not too warm or too cool. A perfect day for what we'd planned to do, spend some time on the beach.

Despite a restless night over knowing the betrayal, that I was harboring from Trina, I'd come to terms that it wasn't going to be a big deal. Trina hadn't talked at all about Jamal, so I figured she wasn't interested anymore. Plus, Brea, Jamal nor I had any reason to divulge the secrets we had in common.

As I walked onto the balcony that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and surveyed the scene below, amidst the other spring-breakers throwing frisbees, footballs and flying kites, I noticed what appeared to be a camera crew.

I couldn't tell from my viewpoint on the balcony what was going on other than the crew had carved-out a good size space of the beach for themselves.

I figured it wasn't MTV's Spring Break Show because they'd have lots of signage everywhere like they did at last year's spring-break in Miami that we'd gone to.

Brea and Trina were taking a long time to get ready as usual, so I decided to go downstairs to the gift shop to buy some sun-block lotion.

I used to think that sun-block lotion was for white people only until I learned a painful lesson last year that black people can get sunburn too.

That lesson wasn't one that I needed to learn twice. I didn't even know I'd been burnt last year until my skin started feeling tight and dry at the end of the day.

It wasn't until the next morning when I began my normal morning ritual of using Noxzema cream on my face that I truly understood what white people go through. The Noxzema burned so badly, it felt like my face had a thousand tiny microscopic razor blade cuts on it and the Noxzema felt like alcohol.

As I exited the gift shop, I paused because I noticed Mr. Whitfield was across the lobby talking with a woman.

Ooooo!, I thought to myself at first. But then I figured that he was a businessman and she could be a client, wife of a client, who knows.

In either case, I decided I'd leave undetected having had enough of being in the middle of situations like that from just yesterday's turn of events.

Hurriedly, I made my way to the elevators.

"Jazmyn," Mr. Whitfield called my name even before I had a chance to push the up- button.

"Hi, Mister.... Umm...Michael," I said, remembering to call him by his first name. I wasn't sure if he knew that I'd seen him with the woman or not.

"You guys are up already? I thought you would've been sleeping in," he questioned.

It made me feel that he was concerned about whether or not I'd seen him with the woman. "No, everyone's up. We're going to the beach. I just came down to get some sun-block lotion, that's all," I answered as I pushed the up-button.

"Hey, Jazmyn, do you have a moment?" he asked after watching me push the button.

"Umm...I was just about to see if Trina and Brea were ready," I tried to escape.

"It'll only take a minute," Mr. Whitfield rushed trying beat an elevator becoming available.

"Well..umm...ohh-kay," I hesitated, but didn't know how to evade.

"Good," he said as he motioned for me to follow him to a group of lobby sofas.

We sat down across from each other. I was nervous because I didn't want him to confide anything.