Free Caviar Dreams: The Prequel Novella to Champagne Life by Nicole Bradshaw

Naomi
    I took a step off the plane. As soon as I hit the airstairs, the sun’s rays burst through my dark shades, exposing its radiance. I shielded my face with my hand. The warmth felt good against my skin, in contrast to the forty-five degree weather I left behind in Philly.
    “Why does it have to be so sunny?” Laeticia, my best friend since fourth grade, reached inside her way-too-much money, oversized designer bag and pulled out her sunglasses.
    “That’s because we’re in the Bahamas,” I told her.
    She lifted her head to the sun, and in movie star mode, carefully placed the sunglasses on her face. She reached up, tucked a small section of her weave behind her left ear and said, “You ready, Naomi, girl, ‘cause I sure enough am.”
    I laughed. “Look out Bahamas. Here comes Laeticia The Superstar. Shall I call the paparazzi and let them know we’ve landed?”
    “That’s right,” she said with a smirk. She reached into her bag and pulled out a floppy sun hat. She jammed the hat so far down on her head, she covered up the entire top half of her face. The hat combined with the glasses really made her look like a star now. “I do not play when it comes to getting sunburned,” she said slathering on greasy sun block all over her exposed arms. “That’s how Bob Marley died, you know?” She worked the white creamy glop into her hands, in between each finger. “My auntie Gertrude got skin cancer, too. Black may not crack, but it does burn, especially us light-skinded folks.” She looked me up and down and thrust the sunscreen tube in my face. “That’s why you may need this. Sure you don’t want none?”
    “I put mine on already. And would you stop talking like that?”
    “Like what?”
    “Light skin- ded ,” I said. “All the way over here, you kept talking about what you seent and what you be like . Why are you talking like that? You’re a grown woman speaking Ebonics. I hate that!”
    Laeticia was twenty-eight, a year older than me, but from the way she acted, you wouldn’t know it. She graduated from Texas A & M with a degree in Marketing and was one of the smartest women I knew. She worked for one of the largest medical insurance companies on the east coast and was going to law school in the fall. This was precisely why I couldn’t figure out why she insisted on speaking like she was a day out of the hood.
    “Girl, please. I done heard you talk like this all the way down here, so shut up.”
    “Oh, no you didn’t.” I grinned. “You done never hurt that mess comin’ from me.”
    She laughed and smacked my shoulder.
    I was finishing my degree in Finance (one semester left) at Temple University. I planned to apply to Wells Fargo for a Business Analyst position in the fall. I couldn’t wait to finally kiss my crappy customer service job goodbye.
    “You got anymore of those cookies you baked?” Ticia asked. “I’m hungry as hell but I wasn’t about to pay extra for that nasty plane food. Did you smell that fried chicken that chick brought on the plane?”
    “I think the whole plane smelled it.” I reached into my purse and pulled out a brown paper bag. I went to open up the bag, but before I could, she snatched it from my hand. “I love these things,” she said, taking a huge bite of a chocolate chip cookie. “You can bake your butt off. You should be selling these things. You could make a billion dollars off the chocolate chip alone.”
    She shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth, dug her hand inside the bag and grabbed another one.
    “If you were that hungry,” I told her. “You should have gotten something on the plane.”
    “So I could have the entire plane smelling like chicken too? No thanks.” She popped the last bit of cookie into her mouth.
    “Oh, please, Ticia, You know you wanted that wanted.”
    “Don’t misunderstand, Mimi. I didn’t say I didn’t want it, but there’s no way you’re gonna ever catch me slobbin’ down some chicken on no plane. Oh