We were stoked: Kevin, Tiki, Marquise, Sandrine, Larry, and I. I was the only one who had never set foot on New Orleans soil. We stood there in the French Quarter among the parades, laughter, and color as the natives celebrated Mardi Gras.
I wrapped my hand around Kevin's arm and squeezed with my eyes zoning in on every foreign thing. The beads I'd seen before, but I'd never seen the parade or heard the voices so comfortable in their dwelling. If the same atmosphere had been in Houston it wouldn't have been the same. There would have been zero magic. In the NO it thrived, and people just like us stood at the front of traveling boats poised as black kings and queens dressed so comically and yet finely at the same time.
I loved it.
"Ang," Kevin tugged at his arm, "You got fingers like vice girl. Let me alone."
"Oops, sorry." I snatched my hand away and found a safe haven for it in the bottom of my jean pockets.
"Where you get a grip like that girl?"
"Lifting weights," Sandrine said after a sip from her plastic goblet of frozen margarita. Her brown eyes shined while her light skin glowed, and her wavy hair blew in the wind around her small heart shaped face, "She took up kick boxing, too."
Kevin crossed his arms. Under the faint light, I made out his tanned skin, periwinkle blue shirt, and amused smile, "Is that so?"
I lifted one shoulder; my loose neck sweat shirt slid down and revealed my bra strap, "It's a hobby."
Sandrine slurped noisily and shook her head, "That aint a hobby Kevin, and if you believe that then you're gullible. She's convinced that she's not small enough."
I bit my tongue and pressed my hands against the curve of my hips. Sandrine had a big mouth; she had no right to tell Kevin any of those things, and it pissed me off, "I just like being fit."
Not every one could be naturally skinny like her. Some people (like me) had to do extra just to make do. She didn't have to work out: her metabolism was through the roof. I, however, jogged three times a week, lifted weights two times, and took up kickboxing once or twice a week ,and I still wasn't as small as I wanted to be. I thought about my hips and thighs and reckoned the only thing that would ever be small about me would be my upper body. Small bones didn't run in my family-- we were raised on mustard greens, cornbread, turkey necks, and sweet potato pie. That would knock the small out of anybody.
"Don't you get any smaller Angie," Kevin's N.O. accent was thick like he'd just gotten through lifting something heavy and couldn't breath without emanating his childhood accent, "real men like something to hold on to."
Sandrine guffawed, "bull shit, when we were dating you told me I was getting too fat for you."
My lovely friend, a native Louisiana inhabitant herself, sounded more like a city girl than a Louisiana girl.
Kevin rolled his shoulders and tilted his head back with his eyes toward the sky, "bull shit calls bull shit. We were both chunky and you told me to get my fat ass in gear if I wanted to stay with you."
"Well, you did didn't you? And I was never fat."
A low grunt sounded in his throat, "'course you were never fat. You pissed me off that day and I wanted to see you cry."
Oh boy.
"So you called me a lard ass..."
"Well..." Kevin chuckled, brought his head back down and wiggled his eye brows, "Your ass is pretty fat."
"Gross," I rubbed my ears and took a step away from the ex pair of lovers. Sometimes I couldn't tell if they were still dating or if they were just friends. By the time I met them the second semester of my freshmen year at Sam U, they had already broken up and declared themselves to be friends.
