Jake should have known that he wouldn’t be able to get away with the vague response. Jake, the younger brother by seventeen minutes, and his twin, Johnny, had been thicker than thieves since holding each other’s hand in the womb. They were fraternal twins, but their looks and the differences of opinion in one important area are where the dissimilarity ended. In all other ways the men were alike—tall, good-looking, determined, successful. Jake and Johnny had two older brothers, Harold and Mike, and while it was a close-knit clan, the twins’ bond was even more special. “I had a date cancel on me tonight,” he responded, after a pause.

“Is that all? With the number of females lined up to sit in your presence, I’d think this a mere inconvenience at best.”

“Should be, huh?”

“But...”

“But this one isn’t like the other women. I don’t know what it is about her but she’s different.”

“Different how?”

“Looks for one thing. You know how I’ve always preferred the slender, petite sistah...”

“Yeah, which I could never understand since you’ve been over six feet since you were sixteen years old.” But if anybody had asked him, Johnny would have vouched for the fact that his tall brother and late wife, Robin, who had been shorter by twelve inches, had made the perfect pair. “So... what’s the stats on this one?”

“Tall... around five nine, ten. Big-boned.”

Johnny’s shock reverberated through the phone. “A fat chick?”

“Yes and no.” Jake closed his eyes, remembering soft velvety fabric hugging a vivacious body. “She’s a big girl, but she’s got curves in all the right places, breasts out to who and ass out to what... man.”

“A big pretty,” Johnny said, using another term passed down by the grandfather but mostly used by their dad to describe their mom before he passed.

“Brother, you don’t even know.”

There was a pause in the conversation as both men thought on similar things from different angles. “I tell you what I do know.”

“What’s that?”

“This is the first woman you’ve mentioned to me since Robin died. It’s been over four years, bro. If this one is worth brooding over, she’s worth going after.”

Jake agreed, but a call from his older brother, Harold, followed by one to their mom, delayed Jake’s call to Dominique. When he finally dialed her number, it went to voicemail. He wasn’t surprised. In many ways, her actions reminded him too much of himself. He resolutely waited for her greeting to end, and then left his message. If he wasn’t going to give her a piece of his body tonight, she was definitely going to get a piece of his mind.