Read Online I Almost Forgot About You by Terry McMillan - Free Book Online Page A

man.”
    “James Number Two.”
    “Bisexual.”
    “Brad. We already know he was the thief.”
    “Mark.”
    “Mama’s boy.”
    “Elijah.”
    “Pathological Liar.”
    “Thomas.”
    “Freak.”
    “Good freak or bad freak?”
    I ignore her.
    “Graham.”
    “Arrogant.”
    “Aaron.”
    “Boring.”
    “Abraham.”
    “Well.”
    “Phillip.”
    “Married.”
    “Frederick.”
    “Inconsiderate.”
    “Harold Number One.”
    “Another freak. And vain.”
    “Harold Number Two.”
    “Bad hygiene.”
    “Glen.”
    “Vulgar.”
    “Steve.”
    “Cowardly.”
    “Horace.”
    “No comment.”
    She tosses the list to the side. “Well, that was fun. These crackers are stale, and that avocado stuffing was cute but I’m still hungry. Who is Horace?”
    “The only black man I’ve ever slept with who almost didn’t have a penis at all.”
    She spits out my wine. “Shut up, Georgia.”
    “I couldn’t even call it a pencil dick. It was a cocktail weenie. I felt sorry for the dude.”
    “What’s Abraham doing on this list?”
    “He probably shouldn’t be. He was good at everything. Maybe because we didn’t finish what we started.”
    “And that was a character defect? You’re full of shit. I’m crossing him off,” and she does. “What about that white guy you had a crush on in undergrad?”
    “You mean Stanley?”
    “Don’t play dumb with me. Yeah. Stanley.”
    “I didn’t have a
crush
on him. I had sex with him.”
    “Why isn’t he on this list?”
    “Because I didn’t have a relationship with him. I told you back then how he wouldn’t stop flirting with me, so I finally gave in, since he was fine and I wanted to see what it was like to have sex with a white guy.”
    “And you liked it, if I remember correctly.”
    “It was outstanding, and he was very nice, and I discovered the stereotype is just that, but it was a seventy-two-hour tryst I did under the condition that there’d be no strings attached. I tried to act like it never happened and did everything I could to avoid him, but it was hard, since he was in my Afro-American history class. That was one long-ass quarter.”
    “I forgot that’s how you met. Back then a whole lot of white folks suffered from guilt.”
    “Okay, so now my secrets are out in the open. Time to put this list on Facebook?”
    “You better not be serious, Georgia!”
    “I’m just kidding, Wanda. Damn.”
    “Stanley should be on this list,” she says, and hands it back to me.
    I snatch it and scribble his name at the bottom but don’t know what to put next to it except: “
White.
”
    “So just for the record, would you ever consider dating a white guy now that we’re in the twenty-first century?”
    “I’ve never really thought about it. My daughter seems to prefer white boys, and I’m not mad at her, but you know I love me some black men and especially black skin.”
    “I do, too, but the only thing God made different about us is our skin color.”
    “Duh. You are too deep for me tonight, Wanda,” I say as I toss the list into the trash can and step over the other stuff.
    “All I’m saying is you’d certainly increase your odds if you thought outside that black box, Georgia. A man is a man. What kind of real food do you have around here? I’m starving.”
    “Frozen lasagna.”
    “As a guest do I have to microwave it myself?”
    “Yes, and then go home.”
    “I’m spending the night, remember?”
    I give her the finger.
    She gives it right back to me.

I greet Amen, whom I really like, with genuine enthusiasm, and Percy, whom I already don’t like, with faux excitement. Amen is smart and knows the Oakland hills like the back of his hand. He lives higher up than I do. Where the fire was. He’s also Greek. Tall. Good-looking. Happily married. Twenty years and counting. Two kids still in college, one on Wall Street. A winter home in Tahoe he’s already offered to let me use this winter. For free! After the appraisal, which was lower than I’d