A Good Excuse To Be Bad Read Online Free PDF

“What’s this all about?”
    â€œI’m changing the subject like you asked of me,” he said.
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    â€œAngel, did the doctors check your head? Give you an MRI? Because you may have a concussion.”
    â€œOf course I have a concussion, but still . . .” I paused. “I don’t understand where all of this attention from you is coming from.”
    He walked up one step toward me. “I admit that I’m intrigued by you. I want to know more about you than what I’ve learned in the little bit of time I spend watching you from afar at church. And since I don’t know when I will have the opportunity to see you like this again, I thought I’d ask. Will you allow me the chance to know you?”
    My mouth dropped. I felt it go numb.
    Before I could answer him, my cell phone rang, flattening the sizzle out of the past two minutes. Ava’s name appeared on the caller ID. I grumbled, rolled my eyes, and took the call. “Ava, you have some nerve.”
    â€œCan we crash at your place tonight?”
    â€œWe? Who?”
    â€œThe kids and I. Only the kids and I. Don’t ask why.” She sighed. “Please.”
    At that moment, I felt time pause, like my answer to her held the weight of the world. I shook my head in angst and looked back at Justus. “Sure, just get here.”
    After Ava hung up, I shrugged. “Do you take rain checks?”

3
    Thursday, 11: 00 AM
Sugar Hill Community Church, Sugar Hill
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    S ugar Hill was an old church, a beautiful church in a quaint little town north of Atlanta. I had prayed to find a church like Sugar Hill. A church that from the moment I walked inside the sanctuary, I couldn’t help but lift my eyes toward the steeple mosaic and fall to my knees in awe. A place that made me forget the world outside wasn’t created to trouble single mothers, but to support them; a place that reminded me why I moved way out in the boondocks in the first place. Solace.
    My soul needed sanctuary. Bank robbers hanging in nightclubs weren’t our typical miscreants. They were mostly mothers strung out on meth and fathers too broke to be a joke, regular people who made one bad turn too many and had no one to catch them when they hit the wall.
    Thankfully, I had family, a certain skill set, and I had this place, not to mention First Thursday Ladies’ Communion and Brunch, which was convenient for mothers who worked near the church. The brunch was designed to relieve young mothers who were swamped with Sunday-school duties, diaper changes in the nursery during regular service, or sleeping in because they were out all night hauling bail jumpers to jail. At the First Thursday Ladies’ Communion and Brunch, we could commune with each other, share survival tips, and eat lunch like grownups for a change while our children were either in school or the church nursery. And I didn’t have to dress up and dip out before all the Holy Rollers informed me that I was #1 on their prayer lists. Perfect.
    But today, much like my life, I had lost my focus. I should have been seeking advice on preparing for Bella’s upcoming first day of kindergarten or how we would survive if I stopped taking contracts from Big Tiger. Instead, I marveled over the new shepherd of our little flock, Reverend Justus Too-Hot-to-Be-Holy Morgan, and wondered did he really ask me out on a date last night?
    The tip of his hand touched mine. I shivered and shut my eyes tighter.
    â€œThis is my Body. Take it,” he said.
    My chest stiffened . Lord . . . I tried to expel every uncompromising thought about Justus’s body out of my head. Yet, my heart and my longing . . . have mercy . . . I had much work to do.
    I felt a nudge on my right side. I didn’t have to peek to know it was Mrs. Toliver, my wannabe-surrogate mother. She was one of the few African American mothers of this church and one of the few other women here