Sasha’s eyes lit up at Norman’s words. “You’re right!” Sasha said, her lips spreading into a grin. “While Terrance is out doing Terrance, I can be out doing me . . . with his money!”
“Now you’re talking,” Norman said proudly, sipping on one of the two drinks.
“I could use Terrance’s money to help with opening my boutique, which is what I came to Atlanta to do in the first place.” Sasha’s mind went wild thinking about all the gorgeous and expensive fabrics she could buy now that she had practically unlimited funds thanks to the United Bank of Terrance Clark McKinley.
Norman raised his glass. “Yas, girl! Now dry those eyes and stop with the tears. Turn that frown upside down and laugh all the way to the bank.”
Norman was right. Norman was always right it seemed, which is why Sasha called on him whenever she was at her bottom lowest. He might stomp her down further to the curb than she started out, but in the end, his words always lifted her back up. She picked up a napkin and dabbed under her eyes. “Let’s get out of here. I’m in the mood to go out and buy an entire new wardrobe . . . for each month of my pregnancy. Ha! How about that?” Sasha popped one last nacho into her mouth.
“But my drinks.” Norman looked from one delicious-looking margarita to the other. “This is like me leaving money on the table.”
“I’ll pay.” Sasha stood while going in her purse. She pulled out three twenty dollar bills and laid them on the counter. “There, now it’s like me leaving money on the table.”
Norman sucked his teeth and stood. He stared at the drinks one last time as if he was a little boy who got two new puppies and had to leave them home while he ran off to school. The next thing Sasha knew, Norman had pulled both drinks together, placing a straw in each corner of his mouth, and began to suck those drinks down quicker than she’d ever seen it done before.
“My God!” Sasha said once Norman came up for air.
Looking as if he was in pain, he threw his hand over his forehead. “Brain freeze,” he whined.
“You think?” Sasha said. “You sucked those drinks down as if your life depended on it. Where did you learn to do that?”
Norman removed his hand from his forehead and stared at Sasha with a raised eyebrow. “Trust me, darling, you don’t even want to know.”
Sasha thought for a minute as to what Norman may have been alluding to. “You know what? I think you’re right. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Sasha flipped her hair, linked arms with Norman and then put her hand on her belly. She would have to be strong for her baby. Even though the baby bump was barely there, Sasha felt strength coming from her child. In that moment she made up her mind that in the midst of the lies and deceit, she would carve out a piece of heaven for her and her baby, even if it meant she had to go through hell first.
Chapter 1
Six months earlier . . .
“What in God’s green creation have I gotten myself into?”
Sasha stood in the living room of her new apartment located in what looked to be a fairly decent neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. It wasn’t the best. It wasn’t the worst. But then again, she had never been to Atlanta a day in her life before this afternoon, so how would she know? She’d have to feel the area out and then determine if it met not only her needs, but her standards, which were by all means anything but below average. Keeping it one hundred, they were actually higher than the normal person’s. And Sasha had no qualms nor made apologies about having above average criteria when it came to all things in life. What some people were willing to settle for, she wouldn’t think twice to. That didn’t mean she felt she was better than everybody else, but try telling that to some of the so-called friends she’d come across.
“Stuck-up bitch!”
“Always acting like some white girl.”
“Sasha thinks she’s better than everybody else.”
“She lives one block from the hood, not in one of Trump’s towers.”
“She thinks her shit don’t stank ’cause her nose too far up in the air to smell it.”
It was nothing unusual for Sasha to hear these comments made about her—not only from the mean girls back when she was in high school, but now she even heard them from grown women. Sasha shook it off as pure jealousy. She’d always had an attitude that exuded confidence. It wasn’t her fault hating-ass hoes mistook it for conceit.
Sasha was poised and well spoken. Every other word out of her mouth was not a cuss word or ghetto slang. She chose college over the club, and chose independence over becoming the baby momma of a dope boy like some people she.