Chapter 1: All Good Things

All good things eventually come to an end. It was a saying as old as time, and one that very readily applied to Imani’s current situation. Up until as of recent, she had been doing very well for a college dropout with no other real prospects ahead of her. Being one of the more attractive bottle girls at a very popular club uptown where the money was… It was easy cash, considering most of what Imani’s job came down to was flaunting her ass in front of horny older male customers while she brought them out overpriced champagne. And if flaunting one’s ass was all that it took to make a good living in the city, then Imani was pretty much set.

The deep magenta-colored braids that cascaded all the way to her waist were only her second most striking feature. Imani had the genetic fortune of sporting a very curvaceous figure, particularly when it came to her bottom half, which meant that while she wasn’t exactly as trim as she could be for her height, what extra pounds she did carry seemed to settle themselves in all of the right places.

A fairly short but stacked girl at 5’5, what Imani lacked in lean muscle tone she made up for in her eye-catching weight distribution. The genetics on her mother’s side of the family had always heavily favored the pear shape, and Imani was only the latest in a long generation of generously bottom-heavy dark-skinned beauties with slender faces that had garnered her a fair bit of attention even outside of work, the heads that she turned as she sauntered down the street in apple bottom jeans only feeding the sultry and sumptuous twenty-three year old’s ego.

If anything, the praise that the somewhat vain vixen received for her figure on the outside world only emboldened and improved her performance at the club. Imani knew how to move what she had and she knew how to flirt, which meant that the wealthy male patrons that frequented the upscale club where she wagged her tantalizing tail were quite the lucrative source of cash flow. The money she made pouring champagne in skimpy dresses had been more than enough to cover her cost of living and then some; if Imani had any acumen for financial planning she might have managed to build herself quite the nest egg before things had gone south. But, in the reckless twenty-something year old’s mind, earning big meant spending big, and as long as she continued to rake it in at the club, there was no need to reign in her lifestyle, to plan for any ill circumstances in the foreseeable future.

But, as was the case with many Americans’ lives, things changed drastically due to covid.

The club had to close indefinitely, which meant no more easy tips, no more “simps” at her beck and call willing to Cashapp her out of trouble, no more steady income to keep her solidly on her feet… To be fair, it had been months since she’d been let go, but Imani thus far hadn’t bothered to get a new job to support herself. A combination of having too much pride to work in retail but having too few credentials to work anywhere else meant that the bodacious bottle girl had nothing to rely on but funds that were dwindling fast. Sure… there was the small amount of scratch she made through her socials as an “fitness influencer”, the ironic thing being that she’d never set foot in a gym in her lifetime but still managed to receive excellent feedback for her leggings hauls and sweatpants try-ons, but all the same, she’d barely managed to make June’s rent… and here she was with August fast approaching.

Imani wasn’t the type to worry too much though. She was absent minded to a fault, often putting problems aside and out of her mind until they became too detrimental to ignore, much in the fashion of procrastination that had led to her flunking out of school in the first place. And that would be fine enough had she only been responsible for herself.

But Imani wasn’t solely responsible for herself. No, the fact that losing her easy job had left her with dwindling finances that made it infeasible to continue to pay her rent had an impact on not just her but multiple other people.

Simply put, Imani had roommates.

And one, in particular, happened to be very fed up with her.

Imani was lounging in her bedroom, fully focused on her third round of Plants vs Zombies when she got the text from her roommate Candy politely calling for a “little house meeting”. She’d been lazing about comfortably in her underwear all day, all week, if one were being honest, and was in no mood to get chewed out by, as she put it, “the fakest bitch in Freeland”.

The supine and sassy girl sighed, her gaze drifting away from her phone screen for the first time in hours as she rolled her eyes. She had a good idea of what this impromptu “meeting” was about, and knew that she was in for another rant about rent money. Candy had been on her ass about missing the last couple of months, and no matter how sugary and sweet the wording she had used in her group text was, Imani could tell her de facto landlord was hiding a lot of lividness behind that flowery language.

But a house meeting?

Imani was just the tiniest bit nervous as she strode over to her vanity to pick out something to wear. Why did the other girls need to be involved this time around?

Frowning as she rummaged through her bottoms, she figured that she might as well look good if she was going to have to confront the three of them at once. After taking what only seemed like a few minutes to pick out her favorite pair of leggings, she heard her phone vibrate again, directing her attention back toward her screen.

“Huh,” she scoffed, raising an eyebrow as she read Candy’s followup message. “This bitch did not just send me a hurry up text.”

As defiant as Imani was to the idea of being rushed, she still quickly shimmied her way into her skintight leggings, taking a few extra seconds to work them over her prominent behind as she always did. Having such a bubblicious figure meant that bottoms could oftentimes be a struggle in that particular area, but the vixen in her vainness merely brushed it off as a welcome reminder of her pert and perky proportions.

She did notice just a bit of extra snugness pulling them up over her thighs as well; this, Imani was less pleased about. Months of lazing about the apartment with little to no motivation to exercise had caused the careless coed to pick up five or ten unwanted pounds, nothing that didn’t look good on her, she thought, although she knew that with her family’s genetics just a few pounds could lead to a slippery slope.

But for now… Imani cast her gaze backward and into the mirror on her vanity, admiring how she looked from behind. She whispered a soft “Damn….” to herself and flashed a seductive smile to her reflection, running her freshly manicured fingers down the soft slope of her hips. Satisfied with what she saw, she turned her head forward and brushed her long braids of synthetic red from in front of her eyes.

“At least gimme some time to put on some damn mascara,” she griped to herself before barging out of her room and heading down the stairs.

On the surface, Candy might have come off as being as sweet as her namesake might suggest, but Imani was having none of it. Candy was as superficial as any of the four of them under all the foundation she wore, and Imani had long since felt as though her snideness and condescension were beginning to rub off on the girls’ other two roommates as well. That was to say, all three of Imani’s roommates came off as catty and “fake” to her, the hypocrisy of the accuser completely lost on her as she reached the bottom of the steps and tussled with her braids again.

Imani could hear chatter coming from the kitchen where the girls were located, and knew that the moment that she crossed the threshold onto the tile, if the three girls were shit-talking her, they would fall silent once they knew she was in earshot.

Sure enough, as Imani, sashayed into to kitchen, adding just a bit more wiggle to her walk to show off the fit of her leggings, all three girls immediately hushed and instead turned their attention towards her, three sets of eyes doing their best to avoid direct contact with hers, as though the trio were withholding some mutually shared information.

Imani realized what this was. She’d stepped into a united front.

Naya on the left, Rashida on the right, and Candy smack dab in the middle, with that forced and phony facade of a smile that Imani had grown to regret after so many years. All four of the girls went back, all of them having known each other casually in high school, but Imani and Candy were the closest of the two; if all of the girls were frenemies, those two were “best frenemies”, and the thinly veiled dislike that Candy had for Imani in particular had been growing, well, less and less veiled as Imani’s late payments had begun to compound.

Which was why was only slightly surprised to see herself being ambushed like this.

Candy was even shorter than Imani was, but the slender and short young woman carried herself in a way that made Imani feel small. Especially flanked the way she was between the other two girls.

Naya was pretending to check her nails while Rashida put her hand on one hip and cocked it to one side. Candy was the one to speak, taking the lead as she always did, and she crossed her arms over her petite, nonexistent chest as she first took in a deep breath, her forced grin not faltering at all through the process.

“So… glad you could make it,” she passive aggressively commented on Imani’s tardiness. Imani rolled her eyes but didn’t interrupt, wanting to get to the purpose of this “meeting” as soon as possible. “Anyway…” Candy continued after a few moments, noting Imani’s uncharacteristic lack of a sassy response. She looked to the girls on either side of her for reassurance, “the three of us have been talking, and we wanted to share a decision that we’ve made…”