My Best Friend and My Man Page 12

  —17—

  SEAPHES

  “Veron,” I call to her, frustrated. But she continues walking down the long stretch of hallway with her head held high.

  “I don’t care,” I mutter to myself and stagger down the hall, my legs feeling as if weights are attached to them.

  Finally in my office, I sit down at my desk and glance at my work phone—no message-waiting lights flashing. I pick up my BlackBerry and dial the last number that called me. It rings two times, then quickly goes to voice mail.

  She gave me the busy button! I dial her up again right away, but voice mail kicks in, kicking me out. Sighing, I pull my humongous baked potato from the white paper bag. I only eat these when I’m very hungry. But this time I take only two bites, then push the food to the side.

  Using my BlackBerry, I swallow my pride, and dial up this woman again, but she busy buttons me a third time. I don’t like this at all. I pick up my work phone and dial Veron’s cell number.

  “Hello,” she says with slight hesitation.

  “This baked potato is some kind of big, you want some of it?” I say, sounding like a chump.

  “I don’t want any of it,” she says, and hangs up.

  All that afternoon, no matter what work I am doing, my mind is on Veron. Although her rejection hurts, I think about her sweet soft voice and how she genuinely listens to me when I talk. I notice how she stares at me even though she doesn’t realize that I’m hip to that. I enjoy our easy banter, and I love that she’s a feisty little one if I get on her bad side and that she won’t let me get away with anything. But I wish she would be more up front with me—it’s like she’s always playing games and pretending to be someone she’s not. Effective communication is what I’m looking for in a woman, because God knows I’ve been around too many of them who are too afraid to tell me what’s bothering them. I know she says I used her to make Ursula jealous. But I don’t even like Ursula anymore. So why would I do that?

  I wait until four o’clock and spontaneously make a quick run to a florist shop on Fannin Street to buy a single white long-stemmed rose. I return to work and insert the rose in the window wiper of Veron’s HHR. And I get in my car and drive toward home, waiting and nervously wondering what will happen.

  At 10:00 p.m., I’d already watched 24 and lots of Court TV then tossed and turned in bed. But my anxiety kept whispering to me, dividing up my mind as well as my heart, and when the phone rang I answered it. Now I’m sitting on the edge of my bed staring through the dark shadows at her body. The outline of her round breasts makes my dick expand ever so slightly, but will it be erect enough to get the job done?

  “What’s wrong?” she asks softly.

  “Nothing.” I lay back until my body meets the soft covers of my bed. A few minutes earlier some Will Downing was softly transmitted via the clock-radio CD player that sits on the night stand, but it felt too sincere for this so I turned it off.

  Although every other piece of her clothing is messily covering my carpet, she’s still wearing a pair of panties. I guess it’s just as well.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she exclaims as though shocked, but she smiles as she’s speaking. The musky scent of desire glistens on her body. She rises up to position herself between my legs, kneeling, with her hands spread out like a slave willingly offering itself to its master. I’m lying flat on my back, one hand resting lazily on top of my head, looking at this attractive creature with mixed feelings.

  Ursula leans in closer and awkwardly tries to press her thin lips against mine. Her breath smells like Smirnoff Ice.

  I turn my head away from hers. My mind is preoccupied.

  “Why no kiss?” she whines. “We were kissing real nice not too long ago.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then, I want to fuck,” she pleads.

  “Go ahead,” I tell her, thinking about Veron and how badly she hurt me when she refused to talk to me.

  Ursula sighs but crawls over me, placing her wide hips on top of me and pressing the weight of her ass on my lower half.

  “I love being on top,” she proudly whispers.

  “Not surprised.”

  Using two fingers, she seductively slides her panties to the side and mounts herself squarely on top of me, pulling and twisting on my dick several times, then moving to insert it between the lips of her dripping vagina.

  “You still not ready. How long it’s going to take? My husband is supposed to be home in an hour.”

  “I think we have time.” Veron really messed up.

  “Then you need to hurry it up and find a better way of staying erect.”

  “Girl, how can I stay erect with you rushing me and saying ignorant shit like that? Wait,” I say. “No. No, girl. Hang on.” I gently stop her movements down there.

  But I still care about Veron.

  “What the fuck ever,” she cries, lifting herself up off me. An anguished sob bursts through her lips. Crying shakes her naked body, which she twists over so that she’s lying in my bed facing the wall. My hands tell me to reach for her and caress her shoulders, but I don’t do what my hands say.

  My heart can only think of the woman who has touched my heart. As upset as I am with her, my desire is to call her one more time, and it’s what I plan to do as soon as Ursula finds the strength to get up out of my house and return to her own. I don’t know why I gave in to her and let her swing by. Maybe it was the sultriness of her voice when she said, “I’ll only be a minute. I really wanna see you.” But I’m not positive she’s any more into me than I’m into her—she just didn’t like seeing Veron and me together earlier. And the hubby part! She let that little detail slip out a few minutes after she got here. Even though I’m undeniably lying flat on my back, I don’t feel comfortable sampling another man’s meat.

  But it almost happened, you almost let it happen, my mind tells me. And I agree. Terrible. I’m weak—am I that upset about Veron? I couldn’t have justified this to myself. I’m just glad I caught myself in time.

  As soon as Ursula pulls herself together, gets dressed, and finds her way out my front door, I return to my room, lifting my phone from underneath my bed and dialing *67.

  I listen while the phone rings, waiting for the answering machine, which soon connects. She’s still not taking my calls.

  “Damn, she’s straight up pissed,” I say to myself. I wonder how her face looked when she saw the rose on her car. Did she smile at my apology? Or does she now think I’m a pest? I want to right this wrong so bad, I get on my knees and ask the Lord to forgive me for what I almost did and beg him to straighten out the mess I’ve created with Veron.

  The next morning I have to attend a design meeting off Highway 290, so I don’t get to work until almost 10:30. My heart jumps when I see the message-waiting light on my work phone. But my heart falls when they’re all messages from Ursula: “Where are you?” “You are so wrong for what you did,” and “I brought you some donuts this morning, they’ll be in my office.”

  “Oh, hell.” I have no one to blame but me.

  My phone rings.

  “You finally are answering your phone,” Ursula says.

  “I just got here. Listen, don’t leave those types of messages on my work phone. Nothing is private anymore. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I didn’t think you’d answer your cell, and I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Talk to me, okay? Not my answering machine.”

  “Baby, can we do lunch today?”

  “Lunch won’t work,” I tell her.

  “Why not?”

  “We probably should talk now…on the phone.”

  “But I want to see you face-to-face.”

  “That’s not gonna happen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I remembered that I need to do a few things. I don’t know exactly when I’ll be able to get out of here, and, uh, I wouldn’t want to have you waiting on me.”

  “Oh, so you do still care about
me?” she asks with hope weaved in her voice.

  I don’t answer. I’m too busy tripping out over how just two weeks ago, I would’ve given up a kidney just to bask in this woman’s attention, but now that I have it I realize she’s not worth it.

  “Look, Ursula, let’s keep things professional. I was wrong for what I did. I’m sorry for doing it. Let’s just move on, okay? I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to do lunch or talk.”

  “Nope, no, no. You chased me, muthafucka, you got my heart all twisted up, and now you want it to stop all of a sudden?”

  “I-I, you aren’t even…”

  “I’m not what?” she cries, hurt mangling up her voice as if she’s on the verge of a meltdown.

  When I don’t answer, she shrieks, “I gotta go,” and slams the phone down.

  I gladly hang up, but then I just sit there staring. Women are complicated as it is, and this one here hides her issues underneath her stylish clothes and cool-as-ice demeanor.

  “Hey,” she says walking in and quickly closing the door of my office.

  “Ursula, you can’t be doing this. What’d I just say?”

  “Just this once. I want to talk to you to make sure you mean what you’re saying.”

  “Why you gotta look at me to tell? I mean business. It’s not you, the whole situation just isn’t quite right. You’re a lovely woman, but we can’t be seeing each other.”

  “I’m so sorry. My spouse and I had broken up, but we recently got back together, and I’m having second thoughts. It’s so confusing,” she says and takes a seat in my guest chair, holding her head in her hands.

  “Maybe you should take the rest of the day off,” I tell her.

  “No, I’m not that bad. I’ll be okay,” she sniffs. “I understand where you’re coming from. But I still want us to be friends.”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what we are, what we’ve always been. I’m just looking for a situation that’s going to work for me.”

  She nods and sniffs. I stand up from my chair and reach to pull her up so I can grasp her in a solid, heartfelt hug, something she needs; she trembles a little bit and briefly closes her eyes. She squeezes me so tight that I’m eager to release myself from her grasp, but I want to do it in a gentle way so as not to hurt her but at the same time get my point across.

  “I can’t believe it’s over before it ever started,” she whispers, placing her head against my neck while I hold her around the waist.

  Just then Veron walks in while Ursula and I are still hugged up. “Excuse me,” she says curtly and quickly disappears.

  My heart stops.

  Inside I’m screaming, but I don’t let it show. I shrug and calmly ask Ursula, “What were you saying?”

  “I was saying that we never really got a chance to do what I dreamed we could do together. Like fate stepped in and snatched away my happiness,” she replies in a despondent voice.

  “It’s like that sometimes,” I remind her.

  “Well,” she says with a conclusive sigh before she releases me from her grip. “If you ever want to talk or even hang out, just give me a buzz.”

  Months ago I would have said, “I’ll do that” or “You got it.” Now, I just hold on to the gift of silence.

  The rest of the week Veron is always flying past me in the hallway without a word, and she never returns even one of my phone calls. So by the beginning of the new work week, I cave in and confront her friend Demetria.

  “So you say she’s gone where?” I ask. I am standing in the doorway of her office, trying to cull any information possible about Veron’s cold behavior.

  “Vacation. She’ll be back next week.”

  “Did she mention me before she left, or…?”

  Demetria attempts to look at me, but her eyes don’t quite meet mine. “Look, if you want me to tell you everything I know, I can’t. That’s my girl, and I’ll do anything and everything to protect her. Just know that she’s worth the wait.”

  I contemplate her words, then slowly allow, “I see.” Demetria calmly begins typing, her fingers rapidly clicking across the keyboard. I hesitate, then come in and sit down in her guest chair. The aroma of roses fills my nostrils, alternately soothing me and making me feel agitated.

  “That smell,” I start out, “it reminds me of someone I used to date.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Demetria says. When I don’t answer she stops and looks at me. “Keep going, I can type and listen at the same time.”

  “You never forget certain things, the scent of a woman or something that jars a long ago memory,” I tell her, crossing one of my legs over the other. “As much as I want to forget, sometimes nature doesn’t allow me.” When she doesn’t reply, my face reddens with warmth. “I hope that makes sense.”

  “Sure it does. I know exactly what you mean. I can ride down certain streets, recognize familiar buildings, and am instantly transported back into time, even if it’s a bad memory and I don’t want to be there.” She finally stops running her fingers across the keyboard. “And in those moments I am grateful to have just the memory of the pain and not be still affected by the actual pain that I felt while going through those situations.” She shudders and smiles. “And if you want to avoid having to put roses in women’s windshields, you’ll learn to stop causing other people that kind of pain.” She starts typing again.

  I nod, satisfied that her girlfriend has mentioned me and the gift I left her. Now, whether she spoke well of me or with disdain, that’s something I need to find out.

  “How can I get to her heart?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Demetria, you don’t impress me as being slow in the mind. Not by a long shot. You know what I want and what I should do to get it.”

  “And you don’t impress me as being slow in the mind, either, so what?”

  I stand up and advance closer to her, so close that I feel her body tensing up.

  “Demetria,” I say, softly singing her name.

  She again stops typing and looks me squarely in the eyes. I notice gentleness, a sincerity that makes me feel hopeful. “Veron is good people, but she doesn’t stand for BS forever. You gotta come to her correct or don’t approach her at all.”

  “That doesn’t quite sound like her…”

  “Look,” she snaps. “Do you want me to help you out or not? I oughta know what she likes. I mean, don’t insult me.”

  “Hey, hey, chill out. Give me a minute to me take in all that you’re saying. A lot is at stake here.”

  She frowns and looks unimpressed, but I still sense that she accepts my words as truth.

  “What do you want from Vee?”

  “What I want,” I respond, “is another chance. I feel like I haven’t totally put my best foot forward. I need her to know that I can admit I screwed up, and she should give me a chance to see that I’m a decent brotha who’s not out to intentionally hurt her.” I wince as a vision of Ursula’s tear-stained face dashes across my mind. “I mean, it’s not like a woman hasn’t ever been hurt by me, but I try to be as fair as possible.”

  “Well, that’s good,” she says. “Veron is a sweet girl.”

  “Yes.” I smile and nod. “From the little time we’ve spent together, I can tell.”

  “And she doesn’t have loads of experience with men, but you shouldn’t hold that against her. You’ll have to be patient and understanding.”

  “Hmmm, I think I can manage.” I laugh out loud. “You won’t believe this, but I’ve been thinking about this woman every day. I gave up on calling her since she doesn’t seem too willing to talk to me, but I am hoping that time and now distance will heal any hard feelings. Where’d she go? Is she alone?”

  “Seaphes, I am not going to go there. I tell some things but never everything.”

  I peer at her thoughtfully, studying her apple-shaped face. “Why’s that?”

  “You gotta do what works for you. Everyone does. I mean, do you tell it all?”

  “Eventually.”

  �
��I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s your prerogative.”

  Demetria looks intrigued. She moves a little closer to me, raking my body with her eyes. “I’d have to see it to believe it.”

  “Keep your eyes open,” I advise her.

  She looks at me. It’s an interesting look, a hungry, flirtatious one. But then she says, “Are you serious about Veron?”

  “Why would you wonder that?” I say, puzzled.

  “Because she told me you were all over what’s-her-face the other day.”

  “I wasn’t all over what’s-her-face. And to answer your question, of course, I’m serious about Veron.”

  “Alright,” she says. “So what’s your game plan?”

  I study her curiously. “You always have a game plan?”

  She shifts in her seat and breaks eye contact for a second. “I’m not the topic here. Let’s stick to Vee.”

  “As you wish. Do I have a game plan? I’m not sure. It’s been a long time since I’ve been serious like this. I know what I would do if I just wanted to get some from her, but I don’t quite know how to go about getting her to like me again. And that’s the truth.”

  “Why are you so into the truth? That’s different from most men.”

  “Listen, I’ve been around a lot of women and some were cool as hell, smart, sophisticated southern sweethearts, but others were straight-out hos. If people would just be up front with who they are, a man like me could avoid all the nasty-ass hos we don’t wanna deal with.”

  “That’s cold, Seaphes.” She stares at me a second. “What do you see when you look at me?”

  “I don’t really want to go there.”

  She gets up and sits in the chair next to me, her leg touching mine. I slightly scoot over.

  “No, go ahead, Seaphes, tell me what you think of me. I’m curious.”

  I lean toward her so close that I smell the mint fragrance of her warm breath.