The Other Black Girl(99)

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… Curl Central was the first time you met Hazel, right?”

Owen had blinked at her. “What?”

“You didn’t know her before that evening? She’s not someone you were talking to online before you met me?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that there was this one time when she referenced you by name—‘bring Owen to Curl Central!’—but I’d never told her your name before. So, I wondered if—”

“I’ve never met Hazel in my life,” Owen had said, his blue eyes ablaze with defensiveness. “You probably just mentioned it to her in passing and forgot.”

“I know I didn’t. I’ve hardly told her anything about you.”

Owen had flinched.

“It just never came up,” Nella had said, as though this would make it better.

His arms had left her neck. “Have you considered that most of your other coworkers know me from all of your whack holiday parties? That they could’ve said something to Hazel about me at any given time, since you’ve somehow always been too busy to mention me?”

Any chance of Nella telling Owen about everything that had happened at work had walked out of the kitchen with him. She hadn’t followed. She’d just sat there and thought about how impressed Owen was by Hazel’s connections. How together Owen thought Hazel’s shit was, and how untogether her own shit was.

Owen had a point, Nella thought now, copying Isaac’s jumping jacks even though she felt like she’d been beaten by a human-sized tenderizer mallet. Receiving mysterious notes at work and not telling anyone about them; agreeing to meet the stranger who’d been sending them; and now doing this crazy workout class so she could… what, be ready to run from someone at the drop of a dime? Her shit wasn’t together at all. Not lately. Lately, it felt like it had been scattered across all seven continents. And all Owen knew was that she was having a weird time adjusting to the new Black coworker at the office.

Nella promised herself that the moment she started to get answers, she’d explain exactly why she’d been so strung up.

“On a more positive note,” she said to Malaika now, jogging in place after she’d thrown herself down onto the floor for a burpee, then decided she wasn’t going to do that again, “Richard told me that I’m going to be getting a promotion soon.”

“No shit! I’d say ‘way to bury the lede,’ but that kidnapping you saw definitely took precedence.”

“True. Guess what else might be coming with this promotion, though?”

“I’m incapable of guessing anything in this current state of being, so please just tell me.”

“The opportunity to work with Jesse Watson.”

Malaika abruptly stopped moving, this time from elation rather than exhaustion. “What?!”

“He’s thinking about doing a book with Wagner.”

“With you guys?” Malaika snorted. “No offense, but Jesse Watson being published by Wagner Books is akin to putting mayo on corn bread.”

Nella gagged, partly from the metaphor, but also from the fact that they’d now switched to push-ups, and the late-afternoon latte she’d had at her desk had come back to haunt her. “Well, for some reason—cough, Hazel—we’ve finally made our way into the twenty-first century.”

“Yes! Welcome,” Malaika said, bemused. She took her time rolling onto her stomach, unbothered by the fact that Isaac had already done ten push-ups on one hand. “It contains lots of woke white people. And a whole lot of Pitbull.”

Nella laughed.

“So, let me guess: They want you to do a nice little song and dance when he arrives, telling him ‘dat Wagner is one of the best places to work on earf, and dat you just couldn’t ’magine working no-whea’ else…’?”

Nella had heard Malaika’s slave affectation plenty of times before, but never had it made her as uncomfortable as it did now. She wasn’t sure if it was the worry that other exercisers might overhear, or the fact that the slave in question here—theoretically—was Nella herself. But she clenched her jaw, waiting for her friend to finish her little soliloquy.

“Oh, c’mon,” Malaika said when she noticed Nella hadn’t found her minstrel impression particularly amusing, “we both know that’s really the reason why they asked you to meet Jesse. Not that you’re not qualified,” she added quickly, “but when have they ever let you meet someone as high-profile as him in the last two-plus years you’ve been working there?

“And he’s not even that high-profile anymore, either, since he dipped out.

“God, I wish I could hear him weigh in on that shooting that happened in the Bronx last month. And all that KKK shit happening in Indiana. Just… all the shit.”

Nella nodded, oblivious to whatever incidents Malaika was talking about.

“So, I have to ask: Have they enlisted the services of you-know-who for this Jesse thing, too?”

Nella snorted. “Yep. Richard said he may even let her edit it.”

“What? She just got there! And didn’t you write Jesse that email? Did you tell Richard about that?”

“I thought maybe he wouldn’t appreciate that I’d gone behind his back.”