It Ain’t Easy Being Jazzy

“It Ain’t Easy Being Jazzy” by Quanie Miller

Excerpt of “It Ain’t Easy Being Jazzy”:

My best friend, Serai, invited me to her aunt’s seventy-fifth birthday party because she thought it was a secret ambush by her family that would end with her marrying some guy that they had found on Craigslist. “You have to come, Jazzy,” she begged me. “I think I saw a wedding gown in my mother’s trunk. They’re getting desperate.”

“You’ll find somebody. Besides, you can’t marry just anybody.”

“I don’t think they care anymore. It’s been too long since Chuck and I broke up and they’re starting to wonder about us.”

“Us?”

“Yes. You don’t have a man either.”

“That’s by choice!”

“I told them that even if I were gay, you wouldn’t be my type, but that only made Aunt Cleotha clutch her pearls.”

“Fine, I’ll go. But if the guy from Craigslist is cute, I have first dibs.”

When I arrived at Aunt Cleotha’s house and rang the doorbell, I heard music and laughter inside. Serai’s nephew, Jordan, answered the door with one of those Super Soaker type water guns and squirted me right in the eye. His mother, Kimmy, scooped him up and squeezed his cheeks. “Jordan, baby! Don’t do that!” She looked at me apologetically and handed me a napkin from her bosom. “I’m sorry, Jazzy. He hasn’t had a nap yet.” As if that explained it. The truth is that the little fucker was just bad.

Kimmy took the water Uzi from Jordan, who kicked and screamed and said, “Put me dow-own!” He wiggled free and ran around the room kicking people in the shins while Kimmy chased him. I wiped my face with the napkin (it smelled like Victoria’s Secret Amber Romance Body Splash and tangerines) and walked around saying hello to the people in Serai’s family whom I knew; Uncle Raymond, Aunt Delores, and her cousin, Byron, who, no matter how hard I tried to dissuade him, seemed to have the hots for me. I had tried numerous times to pawn him off on my sister, but he insisted that Annie was not his type.

I’d said, “Wait a minute; you mean to tell me that a smart, sexy, confident, and beautiful woman is not your type?”

“No,” he’d said, “I prefer someone like you.”

“Define someone like me.”

“No bells and whistles. With those pretty, independent women, you always have to worry about them sneaking behind your back because they have so many options. But with someone like you, I wouldn’t have to worry about that.”

“So just a regular, run of the mill woman.”

“Exactly.”

“Someone who doesn’t have many options when it comes to dating so she spends her nights baying at the moon.”

“Exactly.” He looked so nice wearing that punch bowl. In fact, the best I’ve ever seen him look. So when he saw me that day, he took off in the other direction. I guess having spiked Hawaiian Punch in his eye really cured him of his crush.

About author, Quanie Miller:

Quanie Miller grew up in New Iberia, Louisiana. She fell in love with reading at an early age and spent most of her time at the Iberia Parish Library discovering new authors like R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike (she was often found walking back home from the library with a stack of books that went up to her chin). She holds degrees from Louisiana State University and San Jose State University. She has been the recipient of the James Phelan Literary Award, the Louis King Thore Scholarship, the BEA Student Scriptwriting Award, and the Vicki Hudson Emerging Writing Prize. She loves writing humorous stories about strong willed, sassy women who can’t keep themselves out of trouble. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her husband and is currently, as always, working on another novel.

Contact Quanie to find out more about her and her works in progress:

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Email: info@quaniemiller.com   Email:  quanie@quanietalkswriting.com

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