“Look, I’m gonna go on and head out of here. Okay. You’ve got class in less than an hour, and I’ve got a hundred things to do before I get back to the office. Let’s not do this before the start of a perfectly long day.” He looked down at his watch. “I’ll call you tonight.” Kissing Ivy on her forehead, he turned on his heels and headed out of the door, leaving her speechless.
*
Dr. Peterson was a stickler for tardiness even in the unheard of September snow that was falling heavily under the dismal silver skies. Less than one hour after Grey left, barely missing the classroom door close and saving herself the embarrassment of interrupting Dr. Peterson’s lecture, Ivy sat down beside her best friend, Trina, to begin yet another boring lecture about business ethics.
“Did you type up your essay last night?” Trina whispered to Ivy as Dr. Peterson closed the door.
“Yeah, did you?” Ivy asked, pulling her work from her brown leather satchel and placing it confidently on her desk.
“I forgot.” Trina said, taking Ivy’s essay and sliding it under her desk. “Don’t remind him. He may have forgotten, too.”
“Good morning, class. Please take out your essays,” Dr. Peterson said, smiling at Trina. “I hope that you all remembered that this counts as twenty percent of your final semester grade.”
“I hate him,” Trina said under her breath as she smiled back at Dr. Peterson.
*
Class passed quickly and within an hour Ivy and Trina found themselves at their favorite eatery Abundant Creations Bistro in the Cooper-Young district having a light lunch and warm lemon tea cozy corner restaurant watching the busy mid-town traffic pass by in the window. It was a once a week trip they made to relax at and enjoy the afternoon away from the campus.
“You’re gonna fail,” Ivy said disapprovingly to Trina, who only lifted her eyebrow in response.
“Quit being so damned dramatic. I ain’t gonna fail; I just won’t graduate with a thousand honors. Everyone can’t be a 4.0 student, you know.” Trina teased.
“I just know that you’re better than average,” Ivy said, ignoring Trina and the second accusation of the day that she was a drama queen.
“Yes, mother. What’s bothering you today?”
“Grey,” Ivy said, looking down at the green-checkered tablecloth. “Sometimes, he seems so freaking unreasonable. And I just don’t understand why.” She tried to smile. “And sometimes, I feel like maybe it’s all me being way too uptight.”
“Probably a little bit of both.” Trina touched her hand. “Planning a wedding during your senior year of college is a lot of responsibility.”
“I know. We’re both stressed out. Maybe I should just take it easy for a little while, you know, not bother him so much and be a little more relaxed about certain issues.”
“Issues like what?” Trina pried. Grey was known for asking far too much of Ivy for his own selfish aspirations.
“Sex without a condom while I’m off birth control.”
“Oh,” Trina smirked, wiping her mouth with the napkin. “I thought he asked for anal or something.”
Ivy laughed. Leave it to Trina to think of the most out of control scenario. “No,” Ivy said, shaking her head. Suddenly, his request didn’t seem so bad compared to Trina’s guess.
“But at least you can’t get pregnant through the backdoor.”
“But I still wouldn’t,” Ivy interjected. “I would never. That is so…disgusting, dehumanizing…,” she said as a horrible afterthought shaking her head violently.
“I know you wouldn’t,” Trina chuckled..
“What is that suppose to mean?” Ivy put her sandwich down again.
“Girl, please. You’ve got on a button down Oxford, sweater vest, slacks and loafers. You’ve got a Blackberry with a list of things to accomplish everyday. You’ve got a five-year plan, a ten-year plan and a back up plan for your entire professional career. Ever since Grey got hold of you, you’ve changed. You’ve become…him in a skirt.” Trina laughed.
“I can be wild,” Ivy said, outraged in a high-pitched voice, as if to convince Trina. “It’s just that Grey always has somewhere he wants me to go with him and his family, and they are so politically correct. I just stay prepared. But I have jeans and t-shirts. And I don’t always carry my Blackberry.” She looked down into her Coach bag to see it at the top of the contents of her purse.
“Well, I think that you’re perfect just the way you are, if this is who you really are,” Trina said, looking at Ivy’s sweater. “Because that outfit is still banging and probably more expensive than the equivalent of everything in my closet.” She smiled. “It’s just so…uptight.”
“Well, I’m not uptight,” Ivy said reassuringly. “I pull this look off.”
“Uh huh, I know.” Trina smiled. “In all the years that I’ve known you, you’ve always been true to yourself…even if it took you a while to figure out who you were.”
“Well, I know who I am. I’m a woman in charge of her destiny. I’ve focused in on what I want, and I plan to go for it,” she said squinting her eyes. “And Grey is only a small part of that, just like this outfit is only a small part of me. If he left me today, I would still be the same person.”
“I doubt that,” Trina said, bucking her eyes. “I mean, you’ve been sculpted into what he and your family wants for so long, that if that were to change, you would change dramatically.”
“This is who I am, Trina.”
“And I love you for it,” Trina said, realizing that she would never prove her point.
For a minute, Ivy went into a reactive daze. In her mind, she was as happy as any young woman her age could be within reason. She had been dating Grey for five beautiful years and this last summer, he proposed over a candlelit dinner after three bottles of champagne. Everyone in both
