Shoving the bluetooth in my ear, I greeted DeAngelo. “Hey, Lo.”
“Hey, you. I’m sure Deidre has made it by now. How’s everything going with that?” At this time of day, he was at work. If life was fair, his firm’s problems would be his only concern. Too bad life wasn’t fair.
“Well,” I circled the house, heading for the tree stump doubling as a chopping block with the axe impaled in it and surrounded by a shit load of logs. “I’m scared of—”
“I know you’re scared you won’t get back to your life, brother,” he butted in. “Hell, I’m scared too, but we’re going to get through this, bring whatever motherfucker that did this to us to justice. And we’re not just pressing charges, we’re pressing their ass to the ground under the jail no need for a cell.”
“No, I’m scared of Deidre.”
Silence occupied the line for a full heartbeat. “What? Why?”
“She scares the fuck out of me on so many levels.”
Personally, I feared she had the ability to rip my heart out of my chest with the flutter of her lashes. My heart didn’t beat for me often, forget anyone else, but I could feel it trip up worriedly every time ‘fling’ loped through my mind.
“What did you do to her, Brock?” he snapped.
When he didn’t refer to my size in comparison to hers and roasted my ass for not being able to handle her, I knew he was troubled. As was I who couldn’t handle her. “First, why did I have to do something to her?”
“One, you run through woman like a marathoner then run on. That can’t happen with her. We need her to save us.”
I couldn’t argue, so I switched topics. “All that was before I met her, Lo. Second, I lied to her after she ran away from me while I was holding a snake… a live one.”
DeAngelo spat, “Oh fu…! Dude! She told… You knew… Jesus on a bicycle! Are you trying to run her off?”
“That’s just it. I already have ran her off.”
Something hit the floor on his end. “WHA—”
“She’s still here,” I got in before he went completely off on me. “Listen dammit!”
Controlled wind was exhaled in my ear. “Go on.”
“I didn’t know she was capable of getting here as easily as we do. I expected her to call me from the bottom of a ravine, and I was sure I’d have to go rescue her to tell you the truth. Well, she caught me about to kill another snake on a second search for stragglers. He was keeping warm under the generator. I had to lie to her about there being rattlesnakes by the ravine she was headed for at a hundred miles an hour. I had to do something to get her to turn around.
She did, finally, then attacked me when I blocked her path that she was most definitely following home like the yellow brick road. After she threatened to murder me, she climbed me like a goddamn tree and turned me into a swing while I explained that I lied. That woman is a real damn spitfire.” My mind flashbacked to the moment of discovering that, hilarious to me now that it was over.
I had to sit down on the chopping block until my mirth passed. “I couldn’t get her feet back on the ground to save Jesus. The poor man would’ve died on the cross all over again for my sins if he was counting on that one thing to live.”
DeAngelo didn’t find it funny. “Fuck, Brocklyn. We need her.”
“We do need her and I need to have her,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Anyway, after I got her set up in the kitchen, I touched her hair.”
“WHAT!!!” DeAngelo boomed like he been diagnosed with missing a soul. “Why are you touching her hair anyway? That’s sure to send her into the red zone. Do you want to get sued for sexual harassment… or worse, cut?”
“Now you tell me,” I scoffed, hefting the axe in my hand and considering hiding it from Deidre. “How do you even know that men really risked getting cut for shit like that? I thought that was just every comedians go-to joke.”
“How the hell was I supposed to know you needed to know it’s fact, Brock? We’ve dated black women before.” He had the broken heart to prove it, I wanted to avoid it.
“I haven’t dated anyone long enough to know not to touch their hair. I just didn’t because I don’t want to until now. For a seasoned wild oats sower, I sound pathetic not knowing what I shouldn’t touch on women. I’m starting to think I’m not the connoisseur of them I thought I was.”
“Neither was Pops,” DeAngelo snarked.
My train of thought kept rolling liked he hadn’t piped in. “It’s more like I get chased by women, their panties tossed at me. I exit stage right when the chase goes left.”
“Brock, technically, you haven’t dated anyone to get near their panties, but you have, hundreds. You should know all the rules after accomplishing that feat.”
I rolled my eyes. “I just admitted that I didn’t realize I was hunted, chosen, not the hunter doing the choosing, and you’re still squawking about what I should know. Well, I know the rule about the hair backwards and forwards now. If there are more rules, you better give them all to me.”
“What for and do you know how long that’ll take? We’re talking about women.” Very complicated beings.
“I don’t want to fuck up with Deidre. She’s limited us to a winter fling. I want longer.” That wasn’t all. “I need time to learn her likes, dislikes, what makes her smile—”
“Wait. You and my junior associate are having a winter fling? She just got there. How did you… Never mind, it’s you involved, but you’re shitting where I eat.”
I raised my face to the sun, letting its radiance wash over me as Deidre took over my head. “I know that, Lo, and I’m trying not to leave a bad taste in your mouth, but I’ve never met anybody like her, so help me to not fuck this up.”
DeAngelo didn’t speak for eons.
“Lo?”
“Hold on, I’m drinking my weight in bourbon,” he deadpanned. That was a lot of alcohol—he was six foot one, almost two hundred pounds.
“Lo, why are you drinking your weight in bourbon?”
“I’m stressed. Your winter fling is stressing me, and you sound like you actually like a woman, want to be around her. Hell, with her, like maybe for longer than a month and you’re coming to me for advice when I don’t even have a woman.”
“I…” Did I truly see this woman as my future? Nothing within disputed it. “I want her longer than a fling.”
DeAngelo went ghost on the call again.
“Lo, that much bourbon is going to come back to haunt your liver. Stress-eat or something. You can just lose the weight later and save your liver now. I need you too.”
“I’m not drinking, I’m texting my supervisor over the JA’s. He’d know all there is to know about black women because he’s black. We need in-depth info. I know some things from dating Sherry.” Last name Laramie, real model who lasted six months, six years ago, and mostly traveled for work during that time. He gave up on her at the cost of his heart to save his soul… and hair. Not getting much quality time to find out what made her tick, he bailed. That was the last time he had a ‘current girlfriend’. “What I do know is not enough because obviously, I failed at that relationship or I’d still be in it. This has to work out for you or you’re going to cost me a stellar employee and I’ll never forgive you. And you’re going to need all the help you can get, Brock, if you’re already touching Deidre’s hair. That’s suicide.”
I winced. “That’s one lesson I’ll never forget for the rest of my natural life that’s for damn sure.”
DeAngelo slurped, getting the last drop out of the bottom of the tumbler no doubt. “I’m surprised you’re still in one un-bloody piece.”
“I told you, I haven’t met a woman like her. I’m in one un-bloody piece because my saving grace is getting her to laugh. She allows me to live afterwards.”
“You sound like you two are married already. Damn, you’re actually taking the time to learn things about her and she must like you too, because you’re not funny period.”
Chuckling, I shot back, “Fuck you, Lo.”
“No thank you. I’d pay you not to fuck my employee but I know that’s not gonna work. Hold on, Brock. Derek your savior is calling back. I’m conferencing him in.”
“What’s up, DeAngelo?” a deep, the-ladies-probably-loved-it tenor joined the session.
“Hey, Derek. My brother Brock is what’s up. He wants Deidre Lanier, the junior associate under you, badly, but he’s already touched her hair. This call is privilege.”
“Privilege, got it, and shhiiiiitttt!” Derek dragged every last consonant and vowel to within an inch of its life. “Deidre’s as cool as a ceiling fan usually, but I’ve seen her road rage when she gets cut off in traffic, so he might need urgent medical care. That’s 911’s gig, not mine, DeAngelo.”
“Nope, he’s good,” DeAngelo spoke up cynically. “He tickled her funny bone and saved his own life.”
“Damn, he’s a fast learner.”
“And he’s right here,” I barged in. “I need help, Derek, not hear you guys talk about me like I’m not here especially when you’re talking shit.” Kind of funny though.
Derek sniggered for quite a while. “Because I want to you live past today, Brock, and your brother is my boy, I’ll help you. I hope you packed a snack and dinner. This is going to be one long ass conversation.”
I was afraid of that. “I’ll pack a snack, dinner, and ‘squatting fucker’ bait as in eggs when I feed Deidre again.”
“Hell, you’re already catering to her, Brock. That’s the key. He’ll be just fine, DeAngelo, he doesn’t need me.”
My brother huffed, “Brock’s a former playboy turned playman that hasn’t been in a serious relationship ever or had to work for the panties. They’re thrown at him, he catches.”
“Oh!” Derek shot-putted through the phone. “Well-established mating habits such as those are a game changer. So, Brock, I hope you got all fucking day because life as you know it is changed, over, dead, needs to be buried all at the same damn time or you’ll be six feet under if caught catching panties that don’t belong to your significant other. On the other hand, settle down with the wrong woman no matter the race and/or give her baby mama status, you’ll dig your own grave to get away from her. Trust me on that. My baby mama is recently my ex, Latino, and I just bought a shovel.”
“I’ve been trying to avoid the wrong woman all my life, but I found one I want to keep, so I’m listening.” All in, I got up—mainly because I was freezing my ass off—and started chopping wood to warm up and keep Deidre’s ass from freezing off. That’d be letting her down and I wouldn’t.
“That, my man, is the attitude to have even with your significant other,” Derek commended. “Listening, like for knives leaving their blocks, will keep you above ground.”
~Deidre~
A few hours after Brocklyn went out to chop wood, Cheyenne’s favorite leather recliner crackled and sighed in her living room on her side of my sat phone. I could her see now. The sat phone I happily purchased for her pressed to her ear. No sane person left without letting someone know your last stop, buying if must a way for them to link with you, and leaving instructions or an address to get to you if something happened and contact was down to nothing.
I hit her up to relay I was safe and for some human stimulus. She was the one stimulated, stretched back to give room in her tummy for the rolls of her hilarity traveling through it, hella amused by my misadventures. Her howls of merriment were making me smile and slaying the boredom sitting heavily in the cabin with me. I rather had called Brocklyn back in but didn’t think wanting to start sexy time early with him or just be in his powerful company was a qualifier for asking him to come back so soon.
Thus, bothering Cheyenne, who was glad for it because after a fucked up day at the pharmacy she managed, she craved a laugh or a hundred. “Glad I could make you feel better, Chey, and you’re going to do the same for me… when you’re not laughing at me. I forgot how boring computers were when running programs,” I mentioned, typing away on one of the iPads with their own purposes.
As her laughter winded down, she released a long relaxed sigh. “Thank you for that and, chick, I’m impressed you made it in one piece and still there after all that.”
“So the hell am I.” I hit enter for a plug-in opened in Brocklyn’s servers, cataloging the executed commands for just one of their software programs. There were many. Highlighting the least performed demands out of two years’ worth would pinpoint what was weird. Doing it by paper took months, digitally a few days at most. “It was touch and go for a minute there while getting here and after arriving. For a second, I thought Brock was a psycho with a whip.”
She started laughing all over again. “I bet you did, and it was and still is touch and go. Woods plus city-born black woman or anyone else in them for that matter usually equals touch and go for the entire length of time they’re out there. That’s without the psycho and whip. You’re a tiny, terrifying when you want to be survivor though, which is why I’m impressed and not surprised you’re still breathing.”
“I’m not terrifying,” I groused, picking up another laptop to open the same plug-in in DeAngelo’s servers.
Cheyenne harrumphed condescendingly. “Girl!” Nothing good ever came after a sentence started with that word. “I have known you the better part of thirteen years. We ran the streets together until the long arm of the law caught up with our asses, and you still managed to get off lightly whereas I did two years in juvie. That temper of yours is bigger than you and me combined.”
“That’s a lot of temper, Cheyenne.”
“And when it’s set off,” she paused for effect, “you’re capable of taking down an army.”
“And you stole a lot of shit out of that store on several occasions recorded on camera therefore kiddie jail for you. I was just there annnnd,” I accentuated before she cut me off. “I didn’t take down Brocklyn per se, but I sure as hell wasn’t getting down off him until I was ready and girl!”
“Uh oh.”
“He’s better looking, sexier, and built bigger than a brick shit house than in his photo.”
“Shit! But I know that’s not the bad part, so wait a minute. Gotta find my church fan.”
Girl code stipulated I wait for her to get whatever assisted her in being a focused listener. No point to girl talk if no one was listening carefully. Her recliner protested as she literally salvaged a church fan from a side pocket on the chair. That fan was going to send her to Hell for stealing it out of a genuine church. Cheyenne was a rehabilitated kleptomaniac, many spoils of her thievery still in her possession thanks to me.
“Okay, I’m situated, Dee.”
I blew out air before revealing, “Between my past and him being out of my league and can have anyone he wants, when he admitted that he was attracted to me, I suggested a…” How did I put this delicately without her blowing up?
“A…” she prompted.
I couldn’t find a mild way of putting it, ripping the band-aid off my only recourse. “A winter fling.”
Dead silence filled the call until a soft, teeth-clenched, “Have you lost… your motherfucking mind?” expelled in my receiver.
Chapter Seven
~Deidre~
“Maybe.” I hunched in on myself, buoying up for the backlash she’d deliver for offering up the goodies for free. Survival of the fittest would never be over for her. “I don’t want anything from Brocklyn but him, Cheyenne. Everything isn’t about getting what you need by any means.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Dee. How you calculate your worth is though.”
“It is?” I uncurled just a little, not certain she still wouldn’t explode on me. My worth wasn’t our usual topic.
“Yes, it is. You are one of the most beautiful, shortest because you have no tree in your DNA whatsoever, smartest, sweetest, compassionate, and strongest when ticked off but more importantly, the worthiest woman I know. My heart has been stomped on
and taken for granted too many times for me to have any of your qualities left. I would take Brock, his brother, the devil and the good lord for all they were worth and then some if I was able. I like hurting men at this point. Not going back to jail is what keeps me going back to that pharmacy for a check and not punching the sick, weak and bitchy when sick people coming in and out of there all day, every day. Is there ever a damn day when people aren’t sick? If it is, I want that too, I’ve earned it.”
Rudely, I giggled as she vented. I couldn’t help it and she wasn’t done.
“But you, Dee, your heart is gold and your guide. Through all the shit we’ve been through together and apart, you managed to keep your heart humble, your strength intact, and your goodness whole. You take care of those you call yours in their time of need and hold stolen shit for your best friend while she’s doing a bid in juvie. That’s what makes you a good person and worthy. Not your past, your bank account, your material possessions, your skin color, or your bad acts. Nobody is perfect, so no one is greater. We’re all on this earth, putting our pants on one leg at a time and we’ll face the same judgment when we leave here if there’s a God above. Everything in between is just entertainment and if you don’t start believing that, you’re trippin’ and I’m coming to those woods and whoop your ass for it.”
“O-kay.” I was stunned; Cheyenne didn’t do motivational speaking. Threatening people, absolutely.
“You deserve better than a fling with a guy whether loaded or poor. He could place his whole fucking heart in your hands because you won’t hurt him unless necessary.”
“I don’t want his heart in my hands, Chey, or vice versa. That was the purpose of the fling. It’s safe, no catching feelings.” I drew that line so I wouldn’t step over it, I hoped.
“No risking that gold heart of yours either,” was her comeback. “Things can’t get painful or maybe better than you ever imagined if you don’t put anything on the line. If he can’t handle your past when you only wanted to survive like every fucking body else on earth, he doesn’t deserve a fling or relationship with you. Damn sho’ not the goodies.” If the Ebonics were flowing, she was highly upset with me.
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