Boyfriend Season Read Online Free PDF

and the sweat raining down her back told her so. She turned around, pushed herself up on tippy toes, and cupped her hands on either side of her eyes, then pressed them to the glass and looked inside the store at the clock on the wall. She’d been there fifteen minutes. She was just starting to worry when she turned and saw Just Right and his boys turn the corner in the car. A smile spread on her face and any doubts she carried disappeared. Her boyfriend wasn’t going to let her down. She raised her hand to wave, then her smile faded. Just Right and his boys sped down the street with a car full of the pretty girls she’d just seen walking her way and Aunt Maybelline’s ten dollars. Never once did Just Right look her way, but his boy blew the horn and waved.
    â€œWhat am I gonna do now?”

3
    PATIENCE BLACKMAN
    P atience speed walked to the front of the church amidst the seventy or so parishioners who paraded toward the Bishop’s outstretched hands. They all needed prayer, but not as much as she did. Not in her mind. But the difference between her and the churchgoers was she needed him to pray for her to save her from him —her father, and his strict rules. In one move, her hands clasped together and her knees bent as she dropped to them, closing her eyes.
    â€œDear God, please get me out of here!” Patience begged with bowed head. “No VH1. MTV. BET. Hip-hop. R & B. Fiction. Love Stories. True Blood . Boys. Facebook. Skype. Social networking of any kind. Not even my first cousin, Meka, or sister-girl friends of any kind outside of these walls. I can’t do or have anything worldly, not even sing a tune—that’s what he said, God. Nothing worldly . . . and I think everything should be considered worldly because you made everything in this world. Maybe I’m too literal, but I don’t get it,” she whispered her prayers into her clasped fingers alongside other members who’d come to the front for special prayer, then looked up and saw her dad on the pulpit holding out his splayed fingers toward the few members upfront, then the thousands of parishioners in the stadium seats while he prayed over them like he was the shepherd and they the sheep.
    He was crazy, Patience believed. How could he not want her to partake of anything of this world when the expensive suit he wore was of this world and not . . . say . . . the world of Jupiter? Or was she supposed to parade around naked? she wondered. That was, after all, how God had intended her to be. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been born that way. And what about all that “casting the first stone” stuff? Wasn’t her father indirectly teaching her to judge others by telling her to keep away from anyone who wasn’t saved or was of a different faith or had strayed from the straight and narrow?
    Patience unfolded her body from its position in front of the pulpit and surveyed her surroundings. People and cameras and lights and microphones and speakers and more people, cameras, lights, and microphones and speakers filled the stadium-sized church while music played. Thousands upon thousands of people hung on to her father’s every word, as if he only spoke heaven’s law and he wasn’t human. He wasn’t viewed as just a man. He was a messenger and worshipped.
    â€œPsst. Psst, “ someone hissed for her attention.
    Patience followed the “Psst” to where her mother was sitting. “Get back down and pray. Look like you’re praying. The cameras. The cameras!” her mother whispered.
    You’re Bishop’s daughter. What will the world think if you’re not paying attention at service—and on camera, at that! What, you want to be a worldly girl like your cousin, Meka? Always hanging in the street? Patience knew that’s what her mother would’ve said if she could, like so many times before.
    Patience almost rolled her eyes. And she would have if it