Moose and Goose

Chapter Fifty

"It feels like a sauna," she says in a desperate attempt to divert her anger. Ja'liyah looks at her with her brows drawn from confusion.

She follows her stare to the crowd of people around the kiosk and narrows her eyes just as Mary sits in the seat. The pale woman with her tar hair cut into a shag is standing behind her with a piercer gun in her left hand.

"What're you looking at," Ja'liyah finally asks, and they glance at each other. "Do you wanna get your ears pierced or something?"

"No, I," Judith stops and takes a deep, shaky breath. She licks her lips, then continues, but her voice is quivering again, "Remember when I mentioned being with someone before Jerome?"

"Yeah," she answers with a nod and a questioning undertone.

"Well, I think that's the guy I was dating, but I'm not sure. I'm seeing fuzzy shapes," she confesses with a nervous chuckle. They turn their heads to watch the scene, and Judith squints.

David's leaning onto his right side, propped upright with the help of his crutches under him. Her delicate hand is in his, and her fingers squeeze him when the woman presses the gun to her left earlobe.

"Yeah," Judith relaxes her face, and her voice softens with sadness. "That's him."

"Who's that white girl he's with?" Judy lets out a forced chuckle with her lips tightly shut, and the sound exits her nose like a dry cough.

"That's a girl I met when I got back on campus after Grandma's funeral," Ja'liyah whips her head to her, raising her brows in surprise. "She was my best friend - until she wasn't."

"What happened, and why's she with him," she asks. Mary yelps and they turn to look at her as she bursts into laughter. David shakes his head then mutters incoherence. "I can tell she was annoying as hell."

Judith scoffs in remembrance. "David was abusive, but I stayed with him because I knew him more than his family can say they did. She told me to leave him alone, and I didn't - I didn't think she understood. Next thing I knew, I saw her and him kissing on TV."

"And you're okay with this?" When she doesn't immediately respond, she returns her attention to her. Judith's eyes drift onto the smooth checkered floor beneath them. "You know what? Come on. You're not gonna sit on the bleachers watching your ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend become a thing."

Ja'liyah takes her wrist and guides her toward the couple. Judy darts her worried eyes between her cousin and Mary, then David.

"Wait, 'Liyah, I don't care about him or her," Judith shouts in a whisper, her words bouncing with her. "She can stay with the abusive - tyrant for all I care, and they can get married if they please. I'm fine."

"Yeah - right," she merely says, and Judy lets out a whimper of defeat when they reach the kiosk. Mary climbs out of the chair with a smile across her rosy lips, and with David walking alongside her, Judith's eyes land on the thighs of her jeans. "Hey, were you two dating?"

She releases her and folds her arms. They take their eyes off each other to look at Ja'liyah and Judith, and their smiles fall to straight faces.

Jesus H Christ. She's unbelievable.

"Yeah," he admits with uncertainty. Mary hooks her arms around his left forearm and stares at Judy. Her blonde sections by her ears sway like drapes against a breeze, and with each pass going back, her new diamond earrings sparkle.

"I thought you didn't like girls with pierced ears," she asks before words can exit her cousin's parted lips. Mary and David glance at each other, and the loving look in their eyes twists her stomach with sickness.