Page 48 of Ms. V's Hot Girl Summer

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“So, how many businesses do you own?” I asked Delilah. Walls of dark wood and plum velvet with colorful outfits surrounded us. The small boutique, called Delilah’s Fashion, had a variety of dresses for different occasions, the perfect location to find a dress for tonight’s fete. The giddy teenager rush coursing through me had overtaken any other sensible thought. Orlando, before leaving with his friends, had pushed me into a corner in the living area and proceeded to kiss away any nerves taking over. Still overwhelmed with everything moving so fast, I was glad to be here, even if it had to be with Delilah.

“Oh, we own a couple more; we have a mini-mart, and a bike rental, another bakery. You know.” Delilah waved her hand as if it was all inconsequential.

“Was Mikey ready to build all of that with you…or have you had to pull extra weight?” I asked, intrigued by their relationship. Now more than ever, with Milton not having reached out once, and Orlando so…so everything, I was starting to wonder if my relationship-building assessment was incorrect.

“Girl, he was the drive behind all of this. I’ve been trying to lean into my soft girl era since my divorce. But he makes sure all the financials are tight, and we have managers for all the places, so we get to enjoy each other. It provides us with the comfortable living I’ve wanted. And, girl, we travel—a lot.”

“But the age difference, don’t you worry?” Because I worried. There are things I learned in this last decade that were essential to my healing.

Responsibility, commitment, and compromise were keys to my success as an adult. Leaving some of my childish ways behind had been hard but necessary. Leaving the partying behind felt like the hardest thing to do. I lost a part of me, but it was what my twins needed.

They needed someone always ready to adult, not a mommy who had fun sometimes and was extra tired on a Sunday morning, so that breakfast was only porridge that I had planned ahead to make sure they had food if I slept in. They deserved to wake up to the smell of sizzling bacon and freshly made golden bakes, their favorite Bajan breakfast.

They deserved all of that and I had needed to realize my time to shine was done. This new era was my mom’s era, my giver era, my nurturer’s era.

So, I did worry about the age difference. Orlando deserved to live his selfish era right now, and it didn’t seem that it was what he was doing right now, and me adding to the mountain of responsibilities felt selfish.

“About what? Look at this? What do you think?” She pulled out a mustard-yellow dress with a simple draped cleavage and a high thigh slit.

“It’s my favorite color,” I marveled and imagined how the fabric would cling to every curve and how Orlando would hang onto my every move. I needed to have it.

“Then try it on. You look like a medium, maybe, but those hips look like a large. Let’s see how this medium works!” The dressing room had a comfortable sofa, which Delilah commandeered as she shooed me into one of the stalls.

“I don’t worry about the age difference because Mikey is an adult. He made decisions the same as I did,” Delilah said, her usual jolly tone absent.

“Not that, I mean…we know what it was to be their age. I remember being a mother and wondering how to do it all, and I had so many moments I wished I could do things a regular twenty-five-year-old could do.” My therapist would be very proud of me, voicing my anxiety. Giving it a name and reason wasn’t something easy to do for me. But as I started to imagine any type of future with Orlando, I began to see how mismatched our futures loomed on our horizons.

“Again, that is a decision made; you cannot make the decision for anyone by trying to guide the process and withholding your feelings. At least it didn’t work for me when I did it. Damn Mikey.” Delilah chuckled, lost in her memories. “He came to my house every morning and would sit on the porch until I came out, and we would sit down and talk. He’d ask me. ‘Okay, fine, what’s the excuse now?’ And I would tell him what was bothering me, and we would talk it out. It took a while and more action than words, but eventually, I realized I wanted to choose happiness. And I did.”

The dress draped me perfectly the soft material allowing the air to circulate. That must be why goose bumps erupted on my arms and legs. It couldn’t be Delilah’s words.

Delilah’s gasp when I modeled the dress was all the validation I required to buy it on the spot.

“No, it’s yours. It truly is. I mean, I couldn’t sell that to you. It was made to be worn by you.” There was goofy Delilah again, all googly-eyed. “Orlando will fall head over heels in love with you tonight if he hasn’t already.”

My temperature rose, my chest tightening again at her words. For once, I didn’t feel like rolling my eyes at her insistence about the two of us. For once, I grinned, and holding hands, we squealed like little girls talking about their first infatuation. And for once, I allowed myself to imagine a full future with Orlando, even while my stomach dropped at all the repercussions that would come from the fantasy.

* * *

“Are you sure you want to go out?” Orlando asked, stifling a groan. Good, I’d put my locs in a high bun, moisturized each crack and crevice in my body until every inch of my skin glowed, and applied light makeup that had the unenviable task of standing up to the sweltering humidity of Ofele. Strappy sandals and my clutch completed the look. All I required was liquid courage to make it through the night.

“You good, Ms. V?” Orlando waited for me on the ground floor wearing tan slacks and a deep blue shirt opened at the top. If I followed my instinct and dropped a kiss where his pulse vibrated, we’d never leave the rental. Instead, I approached him, my anxiety washing away after the touch of his skin against mine. The support I’d been searching for my entire life resided between his arms, in the spot right above his chest, in his eyes as they gazed at me with so much emotion I choked up.

“I’m excellent,” I confessed, the admission triggering a burst of activity in my stomach. The damn butterflies, which I’d been doing my level best to ignore, flapped their damn wings around until they left me breathless.

“If you’re doing excellent, then I’m doing excellent.”

Orlando navigated Ofele as if he’d lived in the town since birth. The venue for this fete was an open-air club. A hut by the beach, the wooden structure painted in purple, green, white, and yellow with exotic flowers and fauna depicted on the column of the open design. The structure had a surrounding second level where tables and chairs made up the VIP area. A large bar traversed the side facing the sea, the waves the perfect background to the busy bartenders taking care of the thirsty fete goers.

The breeze had finally won the fight against the constant heat of the weekend, the scent of salt and ocean reminding all the revelers this was a night of bacchanal. The beat of my heart synched up with the bass of the sound system as the DJ played the latest carnival hits. We paid our entrance and we made our way up to the VIP. Thanks to Mikey, we had a prime spot close to the DJ and close to the upstairs bar.

“Yo!! Y’all made it finally!” Trevor rushed toward us before we could make it to the table. Scrawny arms surrounded me, and his strong cologne suffocated me as he surprised me with a tight hug. “Thanks for making us see.”

He detached himself from me, and I turned around, wondering what I had missed.

“We had a heart-to-heart during lunch today; I told them everything. Just, you know, everything. The things that were easy for me to share with you but not with them. The way my brothers are acting like damn fools and can’t even take care of my mother for a long weekend without fussing. The fact that I don’t know if law school is the right answer, but I don’t feel like I have a choice.”

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