"I'm ready to bet it all/ unless you don't care at all/ but you know I want you/ you should stop frontin' babe" - The Neptunes (featuring Jay-Z & Beck), Frontin' (DJ Reset Mix) (Reset Music)
We sat in the Beauty Bar, my arm around her waist.
"I'm cockblockin'," I said.
"That's fine," she said.
"Are you two a couple," a strange girl asked.
"No, but we pretend to be," I said. I patted my pretender's thigh.
"No, this," the strange girl said as she pointed at the two of us, "is just too cute to not be for real."
"Look at her," she said to me. "She'd totally be into it. If you let her know, she'd be down." I chuckled.
"Look at him," she said to her. "He's playing it cool but if you were willing, he'd totally be down."
Strangers ain't never lie.
"It'd be weird," we protested. "Our friends would freak out...we just coul--"
"No," strange girl interjected. "This, this makes beautiful babies. Y'all need to stop bullshitting."
I turned to my pretender and said, "Our kids would be gorgeous."
"They so would be." We laughed. I shook hands with strange girl and then we walked off, holding hands, arm in arm.
Were we still pretending?
New day. New girl. We're having lunch. It's nice. We talk for nearly two hours about work and weird and life and love. She's very cute with the straight hair and the new highlights and the little nose ring. She's superstitious and quirky. She's bubbly. She's alive. But I'm not thinking about her. I'm thinking about her. "We're getting older," new girl remarks. I nod. "And, you know, I'm seeing all my friends and they are married with kids and the house and I feel like I'm behind." "I used to feel like that," I say. "My mom had me when she was 17, I felt like I was late on starting a family at 21. I didn't want to be an old parent. I wanted to be a cool, hip, young parent." "You can still have that," she says. ("With you?," I think. "No, with her.") "But the window is getting smaller." New girl ain't never lie. She set up the date so she paid, which is so against all my sensibilities of dating, but I'm distracted now so it happens without me pulling my usual tricks. We hugged. We said we'd do it again. I've already decided, however, that the next time we do it, we'll do it as just friends. Because something else needs to happen.
Same day. With her. "I need to talk to you." Goofy, sheepish, uncomfortable, giant grins on our faces. "So," I began. Everytime your name was brought up I would act all nonchalant in front of an audience Like you was just another shortie I put the naughty on But uh, truth be told you threw me for a loop, this Hov I'm too old to be frontin when I'm feeling Denzel And acting like you ain't appealing when you are Stunting like you ain't my only girl when you are (I was just frontin) I'm ready to stop when you are To be continued?