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Authors: Nia Stephens

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How was For Colored Girls Who Tried Online Dating
When the Rainbow Was Not Enuf?
Bree laughed, and read it aloud for Sam.
“So what do you think about online dating so far? Better than suicide?” he asked her. In addition to reading and writing poetry, Sam had an interest in contemporary theater.
Bree grinned at him in the rearview mirror. “Better than
Cats
!”
Chapter 6
Soap Opera Love
“I
don't get it,” Sutton said, sprawling on Bree's couch while Bree carefully applied foundation. Bi-weekly trips to Spa Kenya in Harlem for facials kept her skin fairly clear, but it wasn't flawless, and Bree wanted it to look flawless.
“What is there to get?” Bree asked, blending the foundation carefully at the edge of her chin. “He's nice, he's cute, he wants to spend more time with me. Why wouldn't I go out with him again?”
“Because he doesn't talk about anything but himself? Clearly, he thinks you're just arm candy.”
“Just what?” Bree applied a cream blush from Tarte to both cheeks. It was almost invisible, which she adored, and looked like she was actually blushing.
“Arm candy. Something pretty to hang on his arm, like a nice watch,” Sutton supplied.
“That would be arm jewelry, not candy.”
“Whatever! The point is that you're supposed to be looking for true love, not just another cute guy.”
“‘The course of true love never did run smooth,'” Bree quoted, trying to decide between a smoky eye and plain black liner. Reasoning that smoky eyes might be a little much for a basketball game, she applied black pencil with a bit of gold glitter, Urban Decay's Midnight Cowboy.
Sutton sputtered furiously in the background.
“This is exactly what you always do!” she griped. “You go on a sucky-to-lukewarm first date, but you're so tender-hearted, so, ‘Maybe things will work out after all!' So . . . so Pollyanna that you agree to go out on date two, date three, all the time knowing that it's not going to work out. Why do you even bother?”
“You and Jordan were just friends for sixteen years, and then, last summer, things changed.” Bree blinked both eyes carefully, making sure that they matched. The hardest part of her daily routine was getting the lines equally thick over the center of her eyes. “Things do change, if you give them a chance.”
“That's different. Jordan and I always liked each other. It doesn't sound like you really like Justin.”
“I like him well enough for a second date,” Bree said, applying a single coat of mascara to her top lashes. She only wore it on her lower lashes if she was going to be on-screen. Otherwise she thought it made her eyes look spidery. “And that kiss!”
“I give up!” Sutton sighed. “You're hopeless!”
“‘Hope springs eternal.'” Bree smiled at Sutton in her mirror.
“There you go, quoting Shakespeare at me when you should be checking out other guys online. You're making a big mistake.”
“I think it would be an even bigger mistake to miss out on The One after just one date.”
“What about your friend from Ikea? You plan on giving him a second chance?”
“That disaster was your fault, Sutton, so don't remind me. This thing with Justin's different.”
“Yeah. You already know what a great kisser he is.”
“Speaking of . . . which do you like better?” Bree held up two tubes of lipstick, both picked up that morning at Chanel. She might wear blush from Tarte and eyeliner from Urban Decay, but for lipstick and perfume, it was always Chanel.
“The one on the right. Are they both kiss-proof?”
“You bet.” Bree carefully painted it on her lips with a tiny brush, then topped it off with a color sealant, just in case.
“Well, you look fantastic,” Sutton said with a sorrowful shake of her head. “I hope you have a good time.”
“At a basketball game?” Bree shrugged uncertainly.
“What happened to ‘Hope springs eternal'?” Sutton teased, climbing off the bed to brush Bree's hair. They had spent half their childhood playing with each other's hair.
“It's still springing. Just not about the ball game.”
“Well, good luck anyway. Maybe it will be great.”
Bree grinned bravely at her in the mirror.
 
Three hours later, Bree was still trying to be brave and hopeful, but she was mostly bored. The Knicks were getting killed, and Justin was actually cheering for the Celtics.
“What are you? Crazy?” Bree hissed when Justin whooped for the Celtics' first two points.
“What? I like Boston. I was born in Boston,” he shrugged.
“You're in Madison Square Garden,” Bree explained, though she thought that point would be obvious. He wasn't kidding when he said he had good seats. They were sitting six feet from the court. “I may not be a big sports fan, but I know the cardinal rules of living in New York. Here, you cheer for the Knicks.”
“What if the Lakers were playing? Would you still cheer for the Knicks?”
“Maybe.” Her loyalty was definitely torn between New York and LA, but she wasn't sure it extended to sports teams. “But I would never root for Boston. I don't even watch sports and I know that Boston is the enemy!”
“That's just baseball. Did you see that sweet pass?”
Bree sighed, then told Justin she was going to the restroom.
“So go home,” Kylian suggested when she called him from the crowded, chaotic ladies' room.
“I can't! I left my scarf and gloves in his room!”
“Why did you do a stupid thing like that?”
“I didn't want to lose them at the Garden.”
“And what were you doing in his room, young lady?”
Bree laughed. “I just met him at his dorm before going to dinner.”
“Just met him, or got to know him better?”
“Just met him,” Bree insisted with a laugh. “Seriously! He didn't even try anything.”
“What's wrong with him? Do you think he's gay?”
“He's not your type, Kylian,” she giggled.
“You said he was hot. Hot is my type.”
“No, skinny, geeky boys are your type. He doesn't even know what a wormhole is.”
“Really?” Kylian sounded shocked. “You're right. Not my type. And not your type either! Screw the gloves and go clubbing with me and Lucas and Sutton.”
“Sounds like fun,” she said wistfully. “But I can't bail on Justin in the middle of the game. Listen, I'll call you once we get back to his room and see where you are. Keep your phone on vibrate.”
“Roger, captain. Try not to be too miserable, okay?”
“I'm not making any promises,” Bree insisted before hanging up. She sighed again, then fought her way to the mirror.
“Excuse me, Ms. Knowles?” said an older woman, completely decked out in Knicks gear from her baseball cap to her socks. Definitely a tourist. “Can I get your autograph?”
“Sure.” Bree smiled and wrote
Briona Black
on the woman's baseball cap. The woman thanked her effusively, and a few of the other women in the restroom looked a little jealous.
No one pays attention to the details,
Bree thought, shaking her head in amazement as she rejoined Justin on the floor.
 
“Can I get you a drink?” Justin asked, unlocking the door to his suite. He had one of the nicest dorms Bree had ever seen, complete with a common room and a miniscule kitchen.
“Just one, I think. Then I'm headed home.”
“Home? But it's not even ten o'clock!” Justin sounded amazed, as if it was unimaginable that Bree wouldn't want to spend the rest of the evening with him. She supposed he hadn't even noticed that she barely said ten words on the cab ride back to his dorm.
“Yeah . . . well . . . I don't know. I feel like making it an early night.” Bree was hoping he wouldn't make her say,
I think you're boring, so I'm going out with my real friends,
but he didn't seem to be catching the hint.
“Well, let's see if a cosmopolitan won't change your mind.” He smiled down at her, but it had lost its knee-weakening effect from the night before. He was still cute, of course, but he babbled on and on, as if Bree were a reporter doing research on a story about his fascinating life.
“I don't like sugary cocktails,” Bree said, scooping up her petal-soft hat and gloves, hand-knit the previous winter by her grandmother. “What else do you have?”
“Pretty much a full bar, actually, except maybe wine.”
“Scotch and water then, please,” Bree requested, sitting on the edge of a leather butterfly chair. She didn't want to give him the wrong idea by getting comfortable on the futon, but she knew that accepting one drink was common politeness.
She expected him to wedge himself into the tiny kitchen, but instead he disappeared into one of the suite's three doors.
Figures,
she thought darkly.
He's exactly the kind of guy who doesn't trust his roommate to leave his alcohol alone.
Bree examined the two-day-old issue of the
New York Times
, since it was the only printed material within arm's reach of her chair, and quickly became engrossed in a story about a mysterious murder on the Lower East Side. She was so involved that she didn't hear a door creak open behind her. She paid no attention at all until a voice that was deeper and even more velvety than Justin's said, “Hello, Briona.”
Bree looked up and froze. She had heard of love at first sight, but she didn't think it happened outside of soap operas. Especially not instant, head-over-heels-in-love-with-your-date's-identical-twin-brother. But there was no doubt in Bree's mind, or, more importantly, her heart, that Jason, not Justin, was The One.
It wasn't even his looks, which were practically identical to Justin's, after all. It was his look: the way his brows furrowed thoughtfully over gold-rimmed reading glasses; the way his hair stood out in wild, crazy twists; the way his red sweater was rolled up to his elbows, as if he had been working hard on a play at ten o'clock on a Saturday night; the way his jeans were smudged with dust on the knees from crawling around backstage at a theater. Okay, Bree was jumping to conclusions—maybe he was just looking at porn online or something—but she just knew that Jason, who was in the middle of directing one of the best plays of the last twenty years, had better things to do on a Saturday night. Serious things to do—like talk to her.
“Hi. You must be Jason,” Bree said, a little faintly. She was glad she was sitting down. Her head felt too light, like a balloon that might blow away.
“I'm surprised he mentioned me,” Jason said, smiling ruefully as he settled onto the futon. “He likes to pretend I don't exist.”
Bree shrugged and said, “Sibling rivalry.” Then she wanted to slap herself on the forehead. The last thing she wanted to do was make Jason think she wanted them to fight over her. It was just so . . . melodramatic. Almost trashy. Part of her wished that she had never met Justin, but what if that meant never meeting Jason?
Listen to yourself,
Bree told herself sternly.
This isn't a movie. This isn't
Romeo and Juliet
or
The Tempest
. Jason might be just like every other guy you've ever met. Maybe this is all in your head.
Jason cocked his head to the side, almost as if he could hear what she was thinking. Then he smiled, a very small smile. “Justin and I don't actually fight much. Not without a very good reason.”
“That's good. That's . . .” Bree forgot what she was going to say, distracted by the beauty of Jason's hands, huge, as befit his height, but also rather delicate. An artist's hands.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, holding his hands, palms out, to her. “I would shake, but I've been writing, and my pen leaks.”
“Oh? What kind of pen is it?” Once again, Bree wanted to hit herself. What kind of question was that? Was there a more boring question in the universe than what kind of pen do you have?
“It's an old Mont Blanc I picked up at the flea market my first weekend here in New York. It feels lucky, somehow. And I love the craftsmanship. It's so well made, it's got to be eighty years old, and it's only got this slow leak.” Jason paused, then laughed at himself. “I must be boring you to death.”
“Not at all,” Bree said, completely rapt. “I know exactly what you mean about old things. I have eighty-year-old opera gloves at home that fit perfectly. The stitches are so tiny—”
“Sorry that took so long,” Justin said, interrupting Bree as he came back into the common room with a couple of drinks. “I couldn't find the scotch.”
“Hi, Justin,” Jason said, not getting up.
“Hello, Jason. I didn't know you were home.” Justin wedged himself onto the futon so that he could sit between Bree and Jason.
“I was working on my play for Dr. Kirby's class.”

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