"Damn! Damn! Damn!" Danika threw her broken stiletto on the floor.
"What's wrong?" Her mother's voice sounded clear through her computer speakers.
To have her mother agree to have phone conversations via webcam surprised Danika. Her mother wasn't known for being the at-home type.
"The heel on my shoe just broke." Danika limped into her walk-in closet. "Now I'll have to wear a different pair, which means wearing a different dress."
Danika stripped out of the comfortable, pearl-colored empire-waist gown and dumped it on the closet floor.
"That might be a good thing, honey. That dress looked like something Queen Elizabeth would wear."
Even in the closet, Danika heard her mother tsking. For a party animal, her mother sure knew how to bring her down.
"You really couldn't get a real feel for the dress through the camera, Mom." She coasted her hand over a row of gowns.
"What did I tell you? You're grown. Call me Tova."
Danika rolled her eyes. Why her mother thought it would be cool for Danika to call her by her first name, she would never know.
"We can be friends," Tova once said.
Danika didn't need a friend. She needed her mom to be Mom. Searching for another dress to wear tonight, she needed a bit of both.
The purple one? No, purple meant passion, or so her mother, or rather Tova, had told her years ago. Although it was Valentine's Day, Danika was in no mood for passion. Today was about business, or maybe charity was a better description.
Danika snorted. "Just because I'm going to a Valentine's Day ball, even if it's an anti-Valentine's Day, doesn't mean I have to dress like I'm looking for love." She touched her red dress. "It would be nice though." She dropped her hand on the strapless red gown with a bejeweled, skinny belt around the waist. It was a fairytale princess dress if she ever saw one.
"Why don't you wear the red dress?" Tova asked.
Danika moved her hand over to a long black dress she knew her mother hated. Tova called it her Morticia Addams dress.
"That dress hasn't been cleaned," Danika replied, hoping beyond hope that Tova wouldn't call her on the tall tale.
"Whatever you do, please don't put on that--"
Danika stepped out of the closet wearing the long-sleeved dress. The clear twenty-one-inch screen displayed her mother's gorgeous dark mahogany skin tone and the horrified grimace that came as soon as she saw Danika in the outfit.
"Morticia Addams rides again." Her mother shook her newly shorn head. With her brazenness and overabundance of confidence, her mother still looked gorgeous.
"It's clean. It's ironed. And I have shoes that match it." Danika sat down on the edge of her bed and slipped her feet into her black strappy stilettos.
"You know, honey, it's not all about perfect matches. You could have worn red shoes or black shoes with that dress."
Danika fastened the strap around one ankle. "I bought those shoes for the dress. If I substituted them for another pair, it wouldn't have been the same."
"To you. No one else would have known the difference. All you would have to do is to strut into that dance with all of the confidence in the world and no one would look at your feet."
"You could do that, Mom." Danika lowered her voice as she bent down further to fasten her other shoe. "You always could." She raised her head. "Look, it's just a social gathering. I don't even know why I bothered buying a new dress or getting new shoes."
Another lie. In everything Danika did in life, she had a plan. Tonight she would help her friend G.T. Pithall find the right woman. Helping her hapless Bubba buddy would be the perfect distraction from her own lonely state.
Wait. Not lonely. Choosy. Picky. Selective. Hell, who was she kidding? Lonely and searching.
Every time Danika thought she met her Mr. Right, some drama quickly followed. There was the Mr. Right with an outstanding warrant. Then the Mr. Right with children all over the place, and more on the way. And the last Mr. Right who was hunting for his own Mr. Right.
If all of the guys she'd dated were like G.T., minus the awe-shucks attitude and the rolled up Farmer's Almanac in his back pocket, she would have had a winner. She wanted someone as funny as G.T., as kind as him and who was down-to-earth but loved being in the city.
"I'm not taking this party seriously." Danika stood and smoothed out her dress.
"That's what I'm talking about. It's a goof, honey," her mother said. "The Bitter Ball is a party that says, 'So what I don't have a date for Valentine's? I still love myself enough to strut my stuff.'" That's when Tova stood and swayed her hips back and forth. Too bad she was naked.
"Mom, what if I had company?" Danika covered the screen with her hands.
"Lighten up. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that you're my daughter. You act more like--"
Danika dropped her hands and stared into the screen, waiting for her mother to make some mention of her father. They had only been divorced for five years, but Danika knew there was still something there, something worth salvaging.
"--a banker," her mother said.
Danika let out a long breath. "That is what I am. I'm a banker. I'm a black woman. I'm single. And, quite frankly, Mother, I'm tired of it."
"Tired of being black?" Her mother chuckled.
"Funny. You know what I'm saying. I want that happily-ever-after ending."
Danika had never seen her mother glare at her like she was now. A shiver crawled up her spine, a response she hadn't had since her mother scolded her for staying out past her curfew when she was seventeen.
"Happily ever after doesn't exist. Trust me." She sucked her teeth.
Before Danika could argue the case for finding perfect matches, Tova continued. "Instead of trying to recreate someone's past, why not create a wonderful future for yourself? You don't have to rush into a relationship and marriage because you're at a certain age and it's expected."
"Don't you ever miss Dad?"
Her mother wrinkled her nose. "Miss him? We run in the same party circles so I see him all of the time. Besides, he and I are too much alike to want to settle down."
"Maybe then you two could be happy running around together. What's so wrong with having a normal life anyway?"
"Nothing. It's great if you're a Republican." Tova laughed. Then her face became deathly serious. "Oh God. You're not a Republican now, are you? I raised you better than that."
Danika, aware of her mother's tactic of steering from any conversation about Danika's father, jumped on another topic, one she knew would rile her. "No, I'm not a Republican. Not yet." She winked. "Besides, aren't you ready to hear the pitter-patter of little feet?"
"Hush your mouth! I'm too young to be a grandmother."
Danika slipped on an oversized silver bracelet on her wrist and clipped on matching silver-and-diamond hoop earrings. "And pretty soon I'll be too old to have children." She slid a ring on the ring finger of her right hand, a special gift she'd bought for herself for last year's Bitter Ball. "Give me a break. You see on the news all of the time about women in their forties and fifties having children. Enjoy your life now and stop investing in knitting needles."
Danika fought the urge to disconnect the computer. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I love you, sweetie. You are the light of my life. When I go through bad patches, you're always my anchor. I couldn't have gone on without you during some of my rougher times."
"I hear a 'but' coming."
"But sometimes you act like you are just too good for the world. Then you want to come off like you're the parent and I'm your child. It needs to go back to the way it was."
The smile drifted from Danika's face. "I'm responsible, and I care."
A pause lingered before her mother spoke. "You act like you have a stick up your ass."
So much for a serious conversation.
Tova stretched her arms over her head, exposing her breasts again. "When you go out tonight, just have fun. Don't scope out potential husbands. Talk about a show stopper."
Danika smiled, but she was a woman on a mission. "Don't worry. Tonight I'm looking for the right woman." Her mother's face registered shock and confusion.
"Wow, Dani."
Danika had never seen her mother's eyes get so wide. "What?"
"Are you coming out?"
Danika gritted her teeth and hoped she didn't crack her molars in the process. "No, I'm not a lesbian. I decided that tonight instead of concentrating on finding that great guy, I'm going to find someone for a friend of mine."
"Sounds romantic. Will you schedule their sex lives, too, or will they be allowed to be spontaneous?" Too bad sarcasm wasn't diluted through the new phone either.
"Three times a week. That's all they'll have." Danika winked. "I'm finally following your advice. You've always said that when you look for love, you never find it. I figured if I'm so busy hooking my friends up, then when love comes a-knockin', it'll be a pleasant surprise." "What happened to you trying to have fun tonight?"
"Seeing my friends happy is fun for me." After five years of attending the Bitter Ball, Danika had had enough of it. The whole idea of the party meant she had no prospects. One thing she didn't want to be, not anymore, was lonely. Sure, she had friends, friends like G.T., someone who started off as just a bank customer but ended up as a close, dear confidante.
As though her mother had read her thoughts, she asked, "Is the farmer coming to the ball tonight?"
"Mom, don't call him that." Danika sprayed perfume on her inner wrists. When she thought about G.T., she spritzed her bare chest where the deep 'V' of her dress's neckline exposed her cleavage.
With perky breasts, she could wear a garment like this without it being too revealing.
"G.T. is a farmer, isn't he?" Tova pressed.
"He's a businessman." Danika reached behind herself to zip up her dress, but could only get it to go up to the small of her back.
"And his business is?"
Pain wrenched at Danika's shoulders as she struggled to zip up the article of clothing. "Produce and dairy products," she said with a grunt.
"Which makes him?"
The doorbell chimed.
"If that's him, early."
"I hope it is him. He's the only one of your friends who can make me laugh."
"Well be prepared to start giggling because he's the friend I'm working my matchmaking powers on."
"God help him."
Danika ignored her mother's barb as she headed to the door. She thought about throwing on a robe or coat to hide the back of her dress. Then again, she and G.T. had been friends for nearly six years. In that time, she'd grown to trust him. Besides, he was as good as anyone else to zip up her dress.
Having a great platonic male friend was always good to have. She could bounce off ideas about other men. The man had a gift of meeting people and seeing right through them.
Danika took a deep breath and opened the door to her high-rise condo unit. She had to blink a couple of times to register what she saw on the other side.
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