Free Pop Singer: A Dark BWAM / AMBW Romance by Asia Olanna

The steam swirled around her chin, and she smiled. “When I graduate, I’m going to have a shot at going to Harvard. I want to do investment banking. Go into IBM. Chase that paper, you know?” She laughed, smiling into the night.
     
    “You can chase whatever you want. Go corporate and all. I’ll be with you all the way through.”
     
    “You don’t sound so happy about me doing IBM.”
     
    At the time, I wasn’t.
     
    I felt jealous of Latasha. Her family. Even if they were diamonds in the rough. They stuck around together and were whole. Even the women owned their own “establishments,”— hair salons that were run out of their apartments.
     
    They knew how to monetize their skills; they weren’t always legal, but still, they knew.
     
    Prostitution, slinging crack, and pimping out their girls. Sure, they weren’t exactly business people per se. But they did know how to hustle. They went around town, gaming the system, getting that paper.
     
    And Latasha studied hard. She studied harder than I did.
     
    She had things going on in her life that sounded exciting to me—even cool. Going down to Broad Street, panties spilling to the floor. Come shots. One of her family members was a rapper, I heard.
     
    You had to be quick and her world, hardcore, and a good studier. Knowing what a person’s weakness was invaluable to her. What is the competition doing? She had to know. She had to figure it out.
     
    All together, they worked as a unit. As one. Solving their problems in the hood, making their world a (financially) better place (for themselves).
     
    Latasha knew I was jealous of her. There had been a long-standing disagreement in the way our body language talked. Whenever I smiled at her, she stopped smiling herself. Whenever I talked about myself, she tried to one-up me.
     
    And then whenever someone made fun of me, she defended me.
     
    Frenemies, as they say, our unique kind of relationship. More like a sisterhood than anything.
     
    “It’s not that I’m not proud of you,” I said, turning the barbecue on the grill. Yes, we had brought a grill out. And I was cooking up a storm. We were going to have spicy chicken alongside a pair of lamb chops. And so much to grill, so much to eat.
     
    I focused my attention on the grill as I turned, so that I didn’t sound too harsh.
     
    “I am,” I said. “Believe you me. I want you to succeed. It’s just I don’t want you to go away either. Far off to a distant place.”
     
    Latasha pulled out a paper plate from the bags we carried to the park. She got herself one. Then she took out another for me.
     
    But she did not responded to me.
     
    She just left me hanging.
     
    We shivered together, although it got warmer and warmer as we bent low and built a fire, setting it alight, the glow turning everyone’s faces orange. Some of the other kids were coming in to the asphalt we stood on. An island paradise in the middle of winter.
     
    “About what you said earlier,” Latasha said later. “I’m sorry.”
     
    I nodded. We hugged, our hands lacing around each other’s necks. “I don’t want to hold you back.”
     
    She never got the job on Wall Street. She never made it anywhere close to IBM. She had to settle for life as a bank manager, which to her, meant failure. In my mind, I wanted to tell her, “At least you’re not a stripper.”
     
    But I never had the gall to approach her like that. To humiliate her. The same way, how after college and pursuing art, I never got to showcase my work at an actual museum.
     
    I had to “settle” for a “weird” Korean popstar pass.
     
    Latasha took a scoop of rice on her plate. She got me some as well, a second helping, an understanding coming between us.
     
    “Maybe you can even join me,” she said. “Imagine us together, walking around Wall Street? Wouldn’t that be fabulous?”
     
    I laughed back then. I knew that Wall Street was so far away from art history. I knew it would be