Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
She’s still wearing her hoagie buns, which look even more incongruous with box braids hanging to her waist.
“I can never take you seriously,” I laugh, tweaking her lettuce, “when you’re covered in fake mustard.”
“Pays the bills.” Tessa grimaces.
I pull her close and squeeze. I wouldn’t even be in New York had it not been for this woman.
“Have I thanked you for all you’ve done for me?” I ask, the smile melting from my face and giving way to tears.
“Only about a million times.” She rolls her eyes, but I don’t miss the tears she blinks away. “Us gems gotta stick together, right?”
“Yeah, we do.” I tilt my head to rest against hers and offer a shaky smile. “Gems for life.”
When I first met Tessa in an online bipolar support group, we clicked right away, even though we’d never met face-to-face. We were both in the arts, and we deepened our friendship first through messaging, then phone calls and video chats. Even though she’s a Sagittarius, she referred to herself as a Gemini because of the twin sign’s duality. She always said she’d rather be called a jewel than crazy. It stuck and we became the gems. When she heard about a PA position at a production company through a friend of a friend six months ago, she begged me to consider moving to New York. The aunties nearly had a fit, but I finally persuaded them I’d be fine… even though I wasn’t sure I would be.
And I have been fine, in no small part because of the support Tessa and I offer each other.
“What am I gonna do without you?” I ask tearfully.
“Same thing I’m gonna do without you.” She shrugs. “Blend in with the normies. We gotta keep ’em fooled. If they figure out how extraordinary we are, they’ll be all weird about it.”
I laugh and squeeze her closer.
“We got this, kid,” she whispers, her voice shaky, even as her strength shines through. “Don’t forget we got that magic in us.”
Tessa has Bipolar 2. Generally speaking, folks with Bipolar 2 tend to deal with depression and hypomania, but not as much full manic episodes. Tessa, like so many others, was misdiagnosed for years. In her late teens, she started taking meds for unipolar depression, which only exacerbated her symptoms. She spent a few months on the streets, her family worried sick and unable to find her, before she got the appropriate help. She has three suicide attempts, a string of broken relationships, and an abysmal credit score to show for those years, but with the correct diagnosis, the right medication, and coping skills, she clawed her way back and is somehow still the most optimistic person I know.
“If you need me,” she says, cupping my cheeks between her hands, “SOS.”
I take her wrist and gently touch the SOS tattooed across the scar from her first suicide attempt. I have a matching SOS tattoo on my wrist—the O shaped into a heart—woven into the scars from the glass I shattered breaking into the fine arts building. We got them together as a covenant of sorts, a promise that one will always come running if the other is in trouble.
“SOS, baby.” I sniff. “And you better come if I call.”
“I probably can’t afford the flight to Cali, but maybe I’ll get a sugar daddy just so I can be prepared.”
“You been wanting a sugar daddy.” I huff a laugh. “Don’t use me as an excuse.”
“’Tis true.” She looks off into the distance, her expression turning wistful. “Maybe a silver fox with a big bank account and an even bigger dick.”
“Oh God,” my other roommate, Melissa, a beautiful curvy Peruvian woman who thinks she’s our mom, says when she enters the room. “Is she talking about that sugar daddy again?”
“You know she is.” I grin and hook my arm around Mel’s neck, bringing her into our group hug. “I’m gonna miss you, too.”
“There you go getting all mushy on me.” Mel grins, squirming away to plop on the couch we rescued from the sidewalk and thoroughly sanitized. “It’s your last night in the city, and we have something good planned.”
“Oh yeah?” I fall onto the couch beside Mel. “Like what?”
“There’s a stoop party in Harlem,” Mel says, eyes wide in anticipation.
“And there’s supposed to be this fantastic band,” Tessa chimes in. “Good music, good food, horny niggas everywhere. You in?”
“Hell yeah.” I glance down at the grubby jeans and T-shirt I wore to work today. “Guess I should change, huh?”
“Um, yeah.” Tessa gives my outfit a quietly horrified once-over. “You ain’t going nowhere with me looking thrown away.”
“Says the woman who wears cold cuts for a living.” I squeal when she bops me on the head with a couch cushion. “I’m just saying, glass houses, boo.”
“Wear the dress from that boutique we like,” Tessa says. “It makes your ass look like a shelf.”