“Chucky, this isn’t going to end well for you,” Ran says. “I’m actually surprised that you fell for her this hard. Out of the two million or so women in the Atlanta metro area, you would fall for the one you had the least chance of success with.”
It’s just like Ran Walker to think he can just piss on my parade. I tell you. You work with someone for two years, and all of a sudden they think they know everything about you.
“I’m telling you that something’s there. We’ve been together everyday since the wedding. At first she told me that she didn’t want to sleep over, but she’s slept over every night this week. I think she’s feeling me just as much as I’m feeling her.”
Ran smirks. “Is it me, or did you just tell me that she told you what the deal was from jump?”
“Yeah, but I think she’s just talking. Trying to save face.”
“Or maybe she’s letting you know what the real deal is.”
“But her actions conflict with what she’s saying.”
“Think about it,” he says. “Is that really the case?”
I spin around slowly in my office chair, taking in my tiny cubicle and then Ran’s adjacent space.
“So,” I respond, “you’re saying that she can make love to me every night and sleep in my bed and watch movies with me and eat dinner with me and it all just be some meaningless stuff?”
Ran shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just suggesting that it might not all be going down in her head the same way it is in yours.”
“Damn, you sound like J,” I say.
“Who? Your boy in New York?”
“Yeah. That’s him.”
“Well, I guess great minds think alike.”
“Maybe.”
I can hear people on their phones in other cubicles and some retro Journey song playing in the background. It’s just a usual morning at Cool Empire.
“I hope this works out the way you want it to,” he finally says.
I smile. “Well, if I were a character in one of those books you write, how would you make my story end?”
“I don’t know, man. I would want you to have a happy ending, I guess. But in all honesty, I have trouble seeing how that could happen when her boyfriend shows up.”
I place my index fingers on my temples and rotate them. “I should probably get back to work, man. I figure I’ll just take it for what it is.”
“Let me know how that works out, though. Seriously, Chuck. I wish you success with this.” He scoots his chair back into his cubicle before pushing himself right back and saying, “You ought to take her to Dizzy and Akil’s launch party. Let all of the Ellison-Wright folks get a glance at the lady that’s straight hijacked your brain.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “We’ll have to see.”
“A’ight then.”
I ease back to my computer. Out of everyone I work with Ran is probably my closest friend. Yeah, he can be brutally honest sometimes, but I can tell he understands a lot of this stuff better than I do and wants to see me in a good space with all of this. I was kind of hoping that he would give me better words of encouragement, though. He was definitely a fan of Maya and me, so I figured he’d be a fan of Marcia and me, too. Maybe he’d change his mind if he ever met her.
I look at the stack of paper on my desk and begin my daily task of sorting things out, making follow up phone calls, sending out letters, preparing for afternoon meetings, and all of the things I do in the day that fall between the lines of my job description. We have a small staff and are between interns, so a few of those duties fall to me, too, since I’m an editorial assistant and pretty much the lowest man on the full-time totem pole.
As I return a few phone calls on my office phone, my cell phone buzzes with a text message from Marcia.
Plans for lunch?
I think for a moment, then type, “No. What’s up?”
A few seconds later I get a response: Meet me at the corner of Euclid and Moreland at 11:30.
I stare at my phone. My first thought is that something is wrong and that she can’t wait until the end of the work day to call all of this stuff off. My stomach starts to bubble with anxiety. In the seconds that follow I wonder if I should agree to meet her or not. I could be overthinking this, I remind myself.
I punch “OK” into my phone and hit send.
I don’t receive any more texts after that one. Instead, I am left to count down the minutes until I leave the office. By 10:30, I am wound pretty tightly, so I roll my chair back to see if Ran is in his cubicle. Thankfully he is.
I explain the text messages to him and ask him his take.
“You know her better than I do. What do you think it’s about?” he says.
“I don’t know. Part of me thinks that it’s something bad.”
“Why do you think that?”
I shrug. “Well, she works across town, and she texts me out of the blue asking me to meet her at the corner of Euclid and Moreland.”
“So she knows you work in Little Five Points,” he says, his intonation flat as he considers this. “Are you sure it was her texting you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t speak to her on the phone—at least you didn’t say that you did.”
Now I’m starting to get nervous. “No. She just texted me, and I texted her back. Are you thinking that maybe it was her boyfriend texting me from her phone?”
“Hold on, before you get worked up. Have you guys ever texted each other before?”
“A few times.”
“What kind of stuff did you text?” he asks.
“You know. Stuff like ‘how are you doing’ or ‘thinking about you.’ Stuff like that.”
Ran arches his eyebrow, kind of like The Rock, and says, “So you’ve been putting your feelings into your texts?”
I hadn’t really thought of it like that, and I am embarrassed to admit this. I lower my head instead.
“I guess the question you have to ask yourself is if she would have this stuff still on her phone and her boyfriend be around to actually read it.”
At this point I am starting to think that I might be on the verge of getting jumped by a jealous boyfriend—or worse. “Shit!” I utter under my breath.
“Chill, Chuck. We don’t know for sure. My motto is to not worry until you have something to worry about.”
“Is that one of your Zen sayings?” I ask, exasperated.
“Why? Does it sound like one?” he says, laughing.
As the clock ticks slowly to 11:25 a.m., I rise from my desk. I lean over to Ran’s cubicle. “Dude, I’m going down to meet her—or whomever.”
“Hold on,” he says. He types on his keyboard and finishes an email before saying, “I’m rolling down there with you.”
“For real?”
“Dude, best case scenario I get to see this woman you’re losing your shit over. Worst case scenario, you have backup just in case this guy is on some street shit.”
I can’t begin to express how relieved I am knowing that someone actually has my back on this. I have managed to scare the hell out of myself with the possibilities of what could happen, but knowing that there’s someone who could jump in, if necessary, gives me a reassurance that is hard to put into words. I know I will owe this dude majorly going forward.
We reach the corner right at 11:30 and start looking for anyone walking around suspiciously.
“So you see her?” he asks, looking in each direction.
“Nope.”
“Do you know what her boyfriend looks like?”
“Nope.”
“Well, just keep your eyes peeled for anything.”
I nod, the knot in my throat so hard I can barely swallow.
Then a car pulls up to the curb. It’s Marcia behind the wheel.
“It’s her,” I say, relieved.
Ran cranes his neck to see her. When I open the door and sit down in the passenger seat, he leans in. “I’m Ran. I was just headed to grab lunch and figured I’d wait with my boy until you got here.”
“Hi, Ran. I’m Marcia. Thanks for keeping him company.” She looks back at the oncoming traffic. “Nice meeting you,” she says.
I close the door and roll down my window. “Thanks, dude,” I say.
“No problem. By the way, I’ll cover for you if you get back late, but don’t forget we have a 2 o’clock meeting in the conference room.”
I nod. “I owe you one.”
He chuckles and turns to walk away.
Marcia leans over and kisses me quickly, and within seconds she is headed toward I-20.
Marcia wastes no time pulling into a multilevel parking deck and driving up to the seventh level and parking in a back corner. During the drive I started to tell her what had crossed my mind before she arrived, but I thought better of it. Instead, I am reflecting on the thing she said when she picked me up: Remember what you promised me? Any time I need you, you would be available.
So now here we are, camped out in this parking deck, and I have my seat lowered all the way back. She has crawled into the backseat and is lying low with her legs spread and parted in my direction. As I lie on my side, my shoulder pushed into the cushion of the passenger seat, I lean in and taste her.
“That’s it, baby,” she says, rocking her pelvis back and forth, brushing against my tongue and then my nose and then my tongue again.
She reaches for my hand and begins sliding in my fingers, as she rubs herself with her free hand.
“Eat that pussy like you want it,” she moans, her voice intense and controlled.
I dive in and give it all that I have. My jaws are becoming sore and the awkward position of my body has my side aching, but I’m determined. I want to hear her scream so loudly they can hear her in the ticket booth down on the bottom level of the garage.
Suddenly, I feel her body jerking in stiff staccato movements. “Yes, right there! Right there!” she screams, and then she roars like a lioness and her entire body goes rigid. “Shit! Ooh wee!” She runs her hands back and forth over my hair, as her body begins to slowly relax.
I smile. I don’t speak, though. She doesn’t like for me to say a lot. She likes me to speak through my body, and I can’t tell if that’s just a way of her making the moment less personal or if she actually has this preference in general.
“I want you to fuck me good,” she finally says.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” I respond, my confidence level at an all-time high.
“But not now,” she says, easing away from me and pulling up her panties.
“What? Are you serious?”
“Yep. I need to get you back to work. And I have to drive across town.”
“That shit can wait,” I say. “I’m so hard right now that if I sneezed, I’d cum all over this car.”
She laughs. “Then you’ll cum hard tonight when I see you.”
“You’re serious,” I say, the intonation in my voice falling. “No reciprocation?”
“Later tonight, Chucky.”
“A handjob?”
“Anything you want tonight, it’s yours.”
I am still sorting this out in my head, when she opens the back door and hops back in the driver’s seat. By the time I wrap my mind around what just happened, we are exiting the garage and headed back toward Cool Empire.
“You okay?” she asks when we turn onto Moreland Avenue.
“I’m good,” I lie.
“I have always wanted to do that. You just don’t know.”
I slowly smile. “So that was the first time you ever did that?” Not that I had ever done that either, but still it is cool that we shared a first together.
“Definitely a first. And the shit was good!”
The male bravado part of me smirks, like “Yeah, I’m a champion!” These words rest just behind my lips, never to be uttered, but, dammit, they are there.
When she drops me off in front of the office building, she leans over and kisses me deeply. “Make sure you drink your electrolytes, because when I get to your house tonight, you’re going to need them.”
I nod. “Will do.”
When I get out of the car, Marcia leans toward me and says, “Chucky?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you. I’m serious, baby. Thank you.”
I smile as I close the door.
When she pulls away from the curb, headed back to work, I stand at the front of the building for a second. There are probably a thousand things that could cross my mind: Was it silly for me to worry about her boyfriend? Should I have just rubbed one off in the parking deck to ease the ache in my pants right now? Would next time be even wilder?
I could think about any one of those things. It would only be logical.
Instead, I can only think about one thing: I might have eaten for lunch, but I’m still hungry.