All Pink Everything

8 - Choose Teams

She reach over and grabbed ahold of his hands. "That's not true. The truth is that after all this time, I still don't know the real you. All you've ever really done is throw money at me, Ralph, but I'm not a stripper. I'm your girlfriend. If you want me to want you like you want me, then you're going to have to show me something more. I need to see the tangible side of you."

Ralph scratched the back of his head in confusion. "Tangible?"

She had been hanging around Sydney too much. If she continued to allow her own vocabulary to broaden, the other Barbies were going to suspect that she was keeping company with her and Jada. She couldn't have that. "What I mean is that you've been good to me, but I haven't been good to you. I want to make up for that, Ralph, but you have to give me a reason to."

Ralph motioned his head in the direction of Mo and his Dick's Sporting Goods spokesmodel girlfriend. "What about him?"

Imani shook her head. "I'm not even thinking about him anymore. He is completely out of the picture. I'm all about us now. I'm committed to you, baby." Ralph looked at her like he wasn't believing her for a second. "Give me some time to prove it to you. You'll see."

"Don't mess with my heart, Imani. Thugs have feelings too."

"I promise you, I've changed." He continued to look at her sideways. "I have." She leaned in and kissed that spot behind his ear, the spot that always made him melt in her hands. She didn't love him, but she was confident that she could grow to love him as time went on. He began to loosen up and slipped his arms around her waist. She breathed a sigh of relief that she had finally done it, put Ralph in her future and Mo in her past, and it hadn't killed her.

"I want you to meet Moms," he whispered in her ear. Her eyes flung wide open. He played too much.

»»-------------¤-------------««

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" Latrice slammed her phone down so hard on the table, she was lucky that it had not shattered into pieces that Auntie Lo's insurance plan would not cover.

Candy flicked her shades up, looked over the screen, then pulled them back down again. "Not today, Latrice." She had been trying so hard to be grown lately, that she was beginning to act as if she didn't know anybody.

Latrice pointed to the phone on the table like a detective on Law & Order showing evidence to a person of interest. "You did read this mess, didn't you?"

Candy again looked dully at the lit screen. "Yeah, I got Imani's message. She's staying with Ralph. What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with it?" Latrice grabbed ahold of her head with outstretched fingers, trying to keep it balanced on her neck. Candy was looking like a traitor right about now, and sisters weren't supposed to be traitors. "You know how I feel about Ralph."

Candy looked up at her with disgust. "First of all, sit your ass down and stop looking down on me like a mafia king." Latrice threw her one sloping brow as she complied. "Second of all, eww!"

"What you mean, eww?"

She shuddered as though it grossed her out to even be having the discussion. "I mean, I knew how you felt about Ralph when you were in the ninth grade and he was in the tenth, but now you're a senior and he's a junior."

Latrice shrugged it off like it was nothing. "Ralph don't got it like everybody else," she defended him. "He's always been in and out of school because he has to help out Moms. You know, throw some stacks at the mortgage. Ain't nothing wrong with it." She sniffed and surveyed the central area of the campus as other students choked down those nasty thawed lunches that the cafeteria had the nerve to serve.