Page 1 of Leave It to Us
Chapter 1
TAMI
When you come from a long line of strong, successful Black women, the bar is already too high to reach. Even on something as basic as choosing an outfit to wear to a meeting with a lawyer.
Tami hadn’t been around lawyers since she’d walked out of Hagen & Hagen, LLC, three years before. She’d been a legal secretary at the medical malpractice firm for nearly a year, and each one of the six lawyers who worked there had been an ignorant, arrogant jerk she hated with a passion. It had been her first job in the “real world,” as her mother and sisters had put it, so she’d stuck it out for as long as she possibly could—ten months, to be exact—without catching a charge for stabbing one of those pompous idiots in the neck with the envelope opener.
Today she’d be walking into a totally different office. At least, the name of the practice was different, and the reason she would be there was too. Rosen, Crawford & Milligan was the firm handling the reading of Grandma Betty’s will. And Tami had to be there in the next hour or she’d be late.
Yvonne hated when Tami was late. Hell, Yvonne hated when Tami breathed. Or so it had seemed all Tami’s life. Older than she was byeleven years, Yvonne more often served as Tami’s second mother rather than her oldest sister. Correcting everything from the way Tami combed her hair to the way she walked, her overly critical sister was just another voice of condemnation in Tami’s head. A voice she swore she’d never be rid of.
“Jeans?” she asked herself while standing at the end of her bed.
She’d pulled piles of clothes from her closet in her search for the perfect outfit to wear today. But in the last hour, she’d narrowed the contenders down to three outfits: distressed light-blue jeans and a simple white shirt, which she’d pair with navy-blue flats; black jeans that seemed a bit dressier, with a denim button-front shirt and cheetah-print flats; or rose-colored slacks with a sleeveless white blouse and strappy, natural-hued high-heeled sandals.
If you don’t look like you’re about your business, nobody will think you are.
That’s something Yvonne had said years ago, when Tami was dressing for an internship interview during her college years. Tami had still been living in their childhood home then, and Yvonne had come by to see their mother, Freda, who’d only shaken her head during the exchange. Something she often did when Yvonne was chastising Tami, most likely because Yvonne’s thoughts generally mirrored Freda’s. And Tami had tried valiantly to ignore them both, since they rarely had anything nice to say to her anyway.
Still, she spent another ten minutes staring at the three outfits, trying her best to make the right decision ... for once. Finally, she opted for the middle ground, choosing the black jeans. With that decision made, she went to the bathroom to apply her makeup. Her hair was already done, pulled up into a neat bun on top of her head.
“Dammit!”
Stomping back into her room, she searched every bottle, cup, and tray on her dresser, then groaned. Making her way into her apartment’ssecond bedroom, which was now mostly empty, she grumbled, “If that heffa stole my moisturizer, I’m beatin’ her entire ass!”
Moving through the room, she looked in the few plastic bins that Shana had left when she moved out a week ago. Then Tami stomped into the second bathroom, which her former roommate had used, opening and slamming the empty drawers of the vanity. She rolled her eyes as she made her way back to her own bathroom, this time muttering, “Guess that’s her get-back for me supposedly trying to steal her boyfriend. But ain’t nobody want that funky-breath, unemployed, dirty-fingernail-having James.”
The thought of that sleazy bastard being up in her face when Shana had walked into the apartment last week still gave Tami a raging headache. She’d just slapped his hand away from her breast, which he’d attempted to grope, when his girlfriend came in. Shana had immediately taken his side when he’d sworn, “Your girl’s been tryin’ to get in my pants for weeks now.”
“What?” Shana had yelled, stalking over to where they were standing in the kitchen. She’d grabbed James by the arm, pulling him away from Tami, then stepped up into Tami’s face.
Shana’s scowl had told Tami this wasn’t going to end well, and so she had squared her shoulders in preparation for whatever was coming. “He’s lying,” she’d said blandly, because Shana’s lips were already turned up in distaste.
“If that’s true, why were you all up on him?” Shana questioned.
Shaking her head, Tami had replied, “Hewas all up onme. Again.” Then she’d crossed her arms over her chest. “I’d been trying not to spoil your delusions about his no-good ass, but like my grandma always said,When someone shows you their true colors, don’t try to repaint them.”
“She’s lyin’, baby. Don’t nobody want her flighty ass!” James had countered.
To that, Tami had only rolled her eyes. “Look, I don’t have time for this silliness. Just tell your man to keep his hands to himself, or the nexttime, he’ll be missing a few fingers.” She’d nodded toward the block of knives on the kitchen counter and then moved to walk around them.
Two days later, there’d been a note from Shana taped to Tami’s bedroom door that read:
I can’t live with somebody who’s trying to take my man.
That was it, and Shana—plus her half of the rent and utilities—was gone. Oh, and apparently Tami’s favorite moisturizer too.
She didn’t have time to keep harping on the fact that she was now totally responsible for all the bills in this apartment and was—as of two days ago—unemployed as well. She had forty minutes to get her face done, climb into her car, pray it started, and then drive to the law firm.
She was definitely going to be late.
“Hey, gorgeous. Where you rushing off to today?”
Her steps barely slowed as she tossed a glance over to Gabriel Taylor, the day-shift security guard in her apartment building and her part-time lover.
“Got a meeting with a lawyer in like ...” Her words trailed off as she twisted her arm to look at the watch on her left wrist. “Seven minutes.”
Gabriel fell into step beside her, the crisp, earthy scent of his cologne wafting up to her nostrils as she approached the side door that led to the garage.
