Free Playing Hard To Get by Grace Octavia Page A

changed. She was glowing like nothing from her past mattered that second.
    “What’s up?” Charleston asked.
    “I…Ava and I…we’re about to get married.”
    “What?!” Simultaneously, Tamia and Charleston’s attention went from how to ask about the phone call and how to avoid answering anything about it to Nathaniel and Ava, who were now entangled like a lopsided pretzel.
    “Yes.” Ava smiled big and clicked the disco-ball clutch open again.
    “Yeah, baby, you can show them the ring now,” Nathaniel advised. “Man, I made her take the thing off so we could surprise you. It was like taking a credit card away from my mother.”
    “Married?” Charleston asked, looking at his friend.
    From the gleaming, gem-covered sphere, Ava pulled the most perfect and precious emerald-cut diamond ring Tamia had ever seen. It was so big, so bright, Ava didn’t even have to push her hand across the table once she’d put it on. Tamia could see the entire thing. No need for questions. It was a Harry Winston. Baguettes on either side of the stone. A platinum band. Flawless on every surface. The kind of ring little girls dreamed of and big boys were proud to purchase. It said something about both of them.
    Ava was dancing in her seat, moving the ring from Tamia to Charleston and then back again.
    “Yeah, man,” Nathaniel said proudly. “I figured I’m a grown man—time for grown-up things.”
    “Guess so.” Charleston’s voice was stacked with trepidation for his friend’s decision and everyone at the table, except for Ava and the dancing fish in her veins, could hear it.
    While Tamia shared Charleston’s anxiety, her uneasiness came from a different perspective. Knowing everything she did about Nathaniel made the announcement more than predictable. He was rich, successful, and entitled, and all the men she knew like him, including her own father, married at a certain time in their lives and married certain kinds of women. Her father, like his father and most of the men in her family, married right after law school. He’d met her mother two weeks after getting news that he’d passed the bar exam. She was celebrating the same achievement, had a similar background, knew all of the same people, and came from a good family. They were engaged in less than a year.
    Tamia had seen this story repeated so many times that it seemed that if any woman with the same credentials as her mother stuck around longer than that, either she was a fool for waiting or he was a fool who was never getting married. Those kinds of men made fast, studied decisions based on high-society law and the necessity to remain a part of it. Now Ava, who seemed to have nothing in common with Nathaniel and his upbringing, and knew nothing about any of the circles Charleston and Nathaniel chatted about over dinner, presented a different kind of woman, whom more of the men in Nathaniel’s position were now marrying. She was beautiful. Not just pretty. Not just lovely. Beautiful. Model beautiful. Who cares what she has to say beautiful. Having given up on competing with the women in their circles they now labeled “independent” like it was a curse, the men cared little about where these new breathtaking beauties were from or where they were going. They simply drew up prenuptial agreements and put a ring on it. He’d have an attractive wife, and thus attractive children, and by the time she’d gotten tired of his cheating or had an affair of her own, her looks would be fading and he would need a replacement anyway.
    Tamia hated to believe this circle of selfish, predictable decision making, but she knew it was more true than false. And while she knew that Nathaniel’s decision had nothing to do with her, she had to consider what it would mean for her in the future.
    More out of duty than desire, Charleston ordered the best bottle of champagne for his friend and his new fiancée. They toasted and, a true sport, Charleston gave a speech as if he’d been