Can't Let Go - A Contemporary BWWM Romance (3 page)

   
Actually, I had deleted his
number a long time ago. Shit.

   
Not wanting to seem like a
stalker, I couldn’t make myself go into the building after Antoine. I also
couldn’t risk him hearing or seeing me ask another guy out on a date. I wished
at that moment I could become Dorothy Gale and click my heels and be home, but
instead I turned around and made my way ten blocks in the opposite direction,
bringing a new thought with each step. I knew that Amaya was going to be very
upset with me. I kept expecting her to jump out of random bushes on my walk home.

   
I finally made it back to my
apartment.
The minute LaLa heard my keys in the door
,
she came running
. “Did you get my message?”

   
“I haven’t looked at my phone
all day.”

   
“Liar. I left you a message.
We’re doing dinner tonight with my cousin Marcus. He went to Columbia with Ayla
Giovanni. How great is that? We’re going to get some inside scoop for you.
Hurry up and get ready. We’re meeting him in twenty minutes at Graze.”

   
Gathered around the table at
Graze sat LaLa, Marcus, myself and Marcus’s pitifully insecure girlfriend,
Amber, who would not stop checking her teeth all night in her little black MAC
compact and checking her iPhone every two and a half seconds for new text
messages.

   
“So, Marcus, didn’t you go to
school with Ayla Giovanni?” LaLa finally interjected halfway through dinner. It
was about damn time.

   
“Who?” Marcus acted
completely clueless.

   
I shot LaLa a look of death.
She promised me scoop. I wanted scoop, damn it.

   
“Remember? The newscaster for
Channel 6?”

   
“Oh!” Marcus looked as though
a light bulb had gone off. The waitress walked by. “Excuse me, miss. Can I get
another glass of red? Thanks.”

He
pointed to his empty wine glass.

   
Amber whispered something in
his ear. He whispered back. Amber looked bored as she checked her phone again.
She then got up and pranced to the bathroom, her almost-too-short skirt swaying
behind her.

   
“Oh, yeah, I definitely
remember Ayla. We lived in the same dorm freshman year. She dated my roommate,
Demarius, all four years. She was so in love with him.” Marcus dished up a huge
fork full of spaghetti. I figured four years at Columbia would provide him with
some kind of manners, but I guess not.

   
“That’s the best dirt you’ve
got on her?” I asked.

   
“Rashida.” LaLa shot me a
look. She didn’t frighten me. I was on a mission.

   
“Anything else I have
probably wouldn’t be appropriate for the dinner table,” Marcus said. “Plus,
Amber’s coming back. Let’s just say, she loved to love and she loved
attention.”

   
“Loved to love?” I mouthed to
LaLa across the table. She looked just as confused as me.

   
Why do some people get a kick
out of encrypting their gossip?

   
The rest of the dinner I
spent racking my brain on what Marcus meant about loving and attention. Was she
a textbook college whore? Did she cheat on poor, defenseless Demarius? Was she
constantly trying to be the center of attention, or just Demarius’s center of
attention? I didn’t like her already. She wasn’t good enough for Antoine.
She was just going to crush him like I did
,
I knew it
.

   
As we left the restaurant, I
pulled LaLa aside. “That was a waste of time.”

   
“I know. Sorry. I didn’t know
he was going to bring Amber.”

   
“Of course not.”

   
“Really. If Amber hadn’t been
there, I think Marcus totally would have spilled the beans on Ayla,” LaLa said.
“Another time?”

   
“It’s all right, I guess.
Maybe this was a dumb thing to do,” I said.

   
“Oh, now you’re coming to
your senses?” LaLa laughed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all
along.”

   
Up
ahead
standing in the foggy light of a flickering streetlamp stood none other than
Kevin Harris.

   
“LaLa, that’s him. I think
that’s Kevin up there,” I said as I tugged her arm in his direction.

   
“Are you going to say ‘Hi’?”

   
“Why not?”

We
moseyed on up to where Kevin was standing, giggling like little teenagers
thanks to the red wine we had just consumed at dinner. As we got closer I saw
he was on his cell phone.

“He’s
on the phone. I can’t interrupt him. It’s okay. Let’s keep walking.”

   
Kevin turned around we made
eye contact. I kept walking.

   
“Hey,” he yelled.

   
“Kevin? That you?” I
smiled
as I played dumb.

   
“What are you doing out here?
You shouldn’t be out here.”

   
“What do you mean? We just
left Graze. We’re walking home.”

   
“There was an armed robbery
right there in that pawn shop. Someone was fatally shot. The guy who did it got
away. He could be out here lurking in the alley somewhere. It’s not safe.
Didn’t you see the police tape back there?”

   
I heard the static from a
radio that must have been under his coat.

   
“I didn’t realize…” I started
to say. The more I looked around the more I realized that we had just walked
into a crime scene. Police cars pulled up and uniformed officers walked in and
out of the
pawn shop
that stood before us. “I’m sorry.
Let’s get out of here.”

   
Kevin started to say
something but an officer wearing latex gloves came up and stole his attention.
I glanced back at him as we walked off. He looked so serious, so unlike the
happy hour Kevin I met just a couple days before. It was kind of sexy. I
definitely needed to ask him on a date. Amaya was perfectly right about Kevin
being a potential distraction for me.

   
The next day at work, I
decided to get Antoine’s number off of his wedding announcement form. He
thought I still had it, so it wasn’t like he would know. I really wanted to
catch up with him, and more importantly, I wanted to know what Ayla saw in
Antoine that I had missed.

   
I dialed his number before
10:00 a.m., thinking I would get his voicemail.

   
“This is Antoine,” the voice
on the other end answered in the middle of the second ring.

   
“Antoine, it’s me, Rashida,”
I wanted to kick myself. “It was so good running into you the other day. I just
wanted to call and see if maybe you wanted to meet for coffee after work one of
these nights?”

   
“Sure. Tonight is the only
night I’m available. There’s a coffee shop next to my apartment we can go to,
but I have to be out of there no later than six thirty,” he said. He didn’t
seem enthused about it at all.

   
“I will see you there,” I
replied, unable to hide the excitement in my voice.

I
also couldn’t help but wonder how he had gotten over me so quickly. Less than a
year ago, Antoine would have been jumping at the chance to hang out with me
again. That boy was really attached to me. Breaking up with him was just as
painful for me as it was for him. I still felt guilty about hurting him like
that.

   
In that moment, I turned
around only to be startled by Julianne standing in the doorway to my humble
corner cubicle.

“Keeping
busy, I see,” Julianne said. I could never tell if she was joking or serious.
She was incredibly hard to read. “Anyway, I want to go over my stepdaughter’s
wedding announcement with you later. It has to be just perfect, and I promised
her I’d see to it that it is.”

   
“Of course.” I smiled like
the good little employee that I was. “Whenever you’re ready.”

   
Just like that, Julianne
walked away and Michael approached my cube.

   
“What can I do ya for?” I
tried to joke with Michael. For a movie critic, he was seriously lacking a decent
sense of humor. I loved to try and crack a smile out of him once in a while,
but it was a challenge.

   
“Rashida, I know you don’t
like movies, but I just got sneak peek passes to the new Tom Cruise film and
wanted to offer you first dibs.” Michael looked like a nervous teenager asking
a girl to prom. How could I say no?

   
“Sure, Michael, I’ll take one
off your hands.” I was feeling generous, and I could tolerate Tom Cruise
movies.

   
“Don’t go because you feel
obligated. I’m sure I could find someone else to go,” he replied.

   
“Michael. I’m going,” I said.

   
“Sweet,” Michael smirked as
he walked away.

   
I had just agreed to a
pseudo-date with Michael, the nerdiest movie critic in the world, and I didn’t
even realize it. And I hated movies. Maybe he was smoother than I thought.

   
Before I knew it, seven hours
had passed and it was time to meet up with Antoine for coffee. I knew exactly
the place he was talking about. It was the place we used to meet for lunch when
we dated, Caffeine. They had the most amazing caramel macchiatos and the most
deliciously inventive salads.

As
I locked up my desk for the day, I whipped out my compact and lipstick for some
subtle touch ups and quickly combed through my thick, ebony hair with my
fingers. I found myself desperately hoping he still found me somewhat
attractive. Secretly, I felt like cat food in comparison to Ayla Giovanni.

   
As I sat and waited for
Antoine to arrive at the coffee house, I wondered if it was such a great idea
to meet up after all. What would come of this? What if I broke up his
engagement? What if he found me repulsive? What if we had nothing to say to
each other and we sat in awkward silence the whole time?

   
“Hey, Rashida.” Antoine
walked up in a pair of fashionably ripped jeans and a dusty gray, graphic print
t-shirt. I could tell right away he didn’t pick out that outfit himself. He
grabbed a chair.

   
“Nice seeing you again,
Antoine,” I said. “It’s nice to be able to reconnect like this.”

   
He gave me a blank stare and
then sort of winced. He looked like he didn’t want to be there. I knew
something was on his mind, and it killed me knowing that it wasn’t my place to
ask.

   
“So, what’s new in your life
these days? Still over at HarlaTech?”

   
“Yep,” he said.

   
“That must be nice. You
working your way to the top still?”

   
“Trying,” he said.

   
This was getting really
awkward, just as I had feared. “I got transferred to wedding announcement
writer.”

   
“Oh, wow.” Antoine almost
sounded sarcastic. “You must really enjoy that.”

He
looked to the left and smiled to himself. I knew it wasn’t a prestigious
position, but it was a lot better than what I was doing before.

   
“It’s not as exciting as I
thought it would be, and it gets a little redundant at times, but it’s much
better than the obituaries,” I said. This conversation was becoming very
one-sided. “Although it pays the same. Who would’ve thought?”

   
It was quiet for a moment.

   
“Would you like me to order
you a latte or something?”

   
“No, that’s alright. I don’t
plan on staying long,” Antoine said while looking straight into my eyes. I
wondered then and there why he even bothered meeting up with me in the first
place.

   
“Oh. Okay then,” I began to
gather my things. “This was pointless.”

I
spoke quietly but loud enough that he could hear it. In the old days he
would’ve picked up on it and immediately asked me what was wrong. I knew he
heard it, but he didn’t say anything.

   
In five seconds flat I had
exited the coffee house and my feet were hitting the hot pavement outside. Two
seconds later I heard, “Rashida, wait.”

   
I turned to see Antoine
standing in the doorway. I stopped, turned, and walked back to him with my head
down. I felt embarrassed for even getting myself into this situation, but it
seemed like maybe things were starting to turn around for me.

   
“You forgot this,” Antoine
reached out to hand me my cell phone.

   
I couldn’t help but laugh. I
probably seemed crazy by laughing in that moment, but it was all I could do to
keep from crying. I snatched the phone from his hand and walked as fast as I
could towards home feeling like a fool all the while.

   
I can’t remember how long it
took to actually get home that night, but I booked it and made it in record
time. The smell of my apartment had never been so sweet, the carpet had never
been so soft, and my bed had never been as inviting as it was that
night.LaLa

   
I
laid
in my bed for a while feeling sorry for myself, but then I got hungry. I
decided to drown my sorrows in a big bowl of Frosted Flakes with extra sugar
sprinkled on top. I didn’t need it, but I sure deserved it.

   
The next morning happened to
be a Saturday. It was tradition for LaLa and me to go down to the farmer’s
market together, but LaLashe was missing in action. As I thought about it, I
realized she hadn’t been home when I arrived last night, either. That was
definitely unusual.

I
pored over the kitchen table and counter tops for some kind of note, but there
was nothing. I glanced in her bedroom and her bed was still made. She likely
didn’t come home the previous night. I resolved that I wasn’t in the mood
anyway for those insane farmer’s market crowds so I was perfectly fine staying
at home for a change.

   
As if on cue, LaLa walked in
the front door.

   
“What’s with the smug look on
your face?” I said.

   
“What are you talking about?”

   
“Where did you go last night?
You hate not sleeping in your own bed,” I pointed out. “Did you have a date?”

   
“What’s with the fifty
questions? I went out last night with my cousin and his girlfriend and their
friend, Demarius,” LaLa finally answered. “Demarius Hansen.”

   
“Demarius Hansen? Do I know
him?” I asked. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

   
“No, but he’s the guy who
dated Ayla Giovanni back in college. Ripley’s friendLaLa, remember? It wasn’t
exactly a double date, but it kind of was. It was just dinner and drinks. I
stayed at my cousin’s place afterwards.”LaLa

   
“You didn’t happen to get any
scoop, did you?” I had to ask.

   
“Actually, Demarius got
really drunk and wouldn’t shut up about Ayla,” she said, tucking a strand of
hair behind her left ear. “It was kind of annoying.”

   
I grabbed her arms and shook
her. “Spill it all!”