Read Something She Can Feel for Free Online

his own form of celebrity in Tuscaloosa. And for years, he’d had a long line of fans linked up behind Billie. The biggest problem he had was crowd control—especially with the other female teachers at the school. But Billie loved even the sweat that bubbled on Clyde’s brow, and while she usually wrote off his philandering and slipping in and out of janitorial closets as rumors, the last chitchat hit her like a bucket of his sweat in her face. Nearly a ringer for a younger Billie, the new physics teacher, Ms. Lindsey, was twenty-one, petite, and so cute the senior class voted to have her put on the list for their “Best Looking.” Last year, when word spread around the “grown people senior class”—that’s what we called the faculty—that Roscoe the janitor caught Clyde and Ms. Lindsey in his storage closet, giggling like teenagers ... and naked, Billie broke it off and she’d dedicated herself to finding a good man ever since. I was happy that she’d had the strength to move on, but also thrown off by the fact that unlike every time before, it seemed that this time the breakup was final. And not from Billie’s position either. Unlike the others, Clyde seemed serious about Ms. Lindsey. He paraded her around town, and sometimes I caught him looking at her the same way he’d looked at Billie when she was twenty-one and vibrant, her mind not caught up in the desires of a grown woman looking for a husband and family. This, of course, I never told Billie.
    â€œHow’s the Internet dating thing going?” I asked, trying to change the subject from Clyde.
    â€œIt’s great.” She perked up suddenly. “In fact, do you remember the guy I’ve been writing? Mustafa?”
    â€œMustafa?”
    â€œYeah, the hot Nigerian man? We’ve been chatting for like a month. Anyway, he’s coming to visit me this weekend.”
    â€œVisit you? Did you check him out? Are you sure he’s not a part of some credit card scam or trying to marry you so he can get a green card? Did he ask you to transfer money into an account? I saw an e-mail about that.”
    While I’d accepted the fact that the chances of Billie meeting a single man above the age of twenty-five in Tuscaloosa was nil, and that next to driving to Birmingham every weekend, the Internet provided the next best way for her to fulfill her grown lady resolution, I was still a bit nervous about the men she’d been meeting online.
    â€œDon’t be so closed-minded, J. You know better. Mustafa is a good man. He has his own business and money. He’s single. No kids. Lives alone,” she rattled off but something in her voice was so rehearsed. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. “He has it going on. And with the shortage of good men over here in the States, a sister had to expand her options to the Motherland.” She started doing a ridiculous African dance and we both laughed.
    â€œI’m just saying—he’s coming here to see you? All the way from Africa? Does he know anything about Tuscaloosa? This isn’t exactly a melting pot.”
    â€œWell, he has a little extra money and neither of us wants to wait ... so, we figured ... why not? We’re grown.”
    â€œThat’s a good attitude, I guess,” I said, running out of questions. “At least you know he’s real and not some kid in Wisconsin with braces and a humpback.”
    â€œAnd I’m bringing him to church, so you guys can meet him.”
    â€œBringing him to church?” I repeated. This was a serious “don’t” for a single woman in the South. Bringing a man to church came with too many complications, including aunties assuming you two were getting married now (and saying prayers out loud over that very thing) and other single women trying to steal him away before the service was over. “This seems pretty serious.” I stood up and began walking