by L. A. Banks
I put down my coat and purse on the table in the hall and inched my way to the bathroom. I turned on the tub and let it fill with hot, steamy water, then I added some Epsom salt to help with the aches and pains.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror I slowly stripped out of my clothes and stopped breathing. What I saw brought a new fear to my heart. My body looked as if I’d been in battle. Bruises and scratches covered every inch of my tender flesh.
What was happening to me? This couldn’t be my imagination. It simply could not be. This was real. I touched a raging red spot on my left breast and even as much as what I saw repelled me, I was oddly turned on.
The incidents through were unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Although they were wild and unexplainable, they were the greatest sexcapades I’d ever had. And the more it happened, the more I feared it, the more I wanted it. How sick was that?
Sighing deeply I turned away from my damning reflection and got into the tub.
The hot waters enveloped me like an old favorite blanket. I slid down up to my neck, rested my head against the back of the tub and closed my eyes.
Three months earlier my life was as ordinary and mundane as a nun’s. I wasn’t seeing anyone, hadn’t for months. My life was pretty much consumed with work, doing the whole party thing and lusting after Mel when she wasn’t involved with whomever her latest beau was at the moment.
“You need a guy in your life,” Mel said to me one afternoon while we were hanging out at her apartment.
She was wearing these skimpy shorts and a cut off T-shirt while she was reaching and bending, watering her cornucopia of plants.
I was trying to pay attention to what she was saying and not how her shorts hugged her ass or how her nipples poked up in the T-shirt. I wiggled in my seat and turned my attention to the stack of magazines on the coffee table.
“My life is just fine. Having a man in it doesn’t guarantee anything.”
“At least you’d be getting it regular.” She giggled. “Quite frankly I don’t see how you manage to get through the droughts.” She spun toward me, hands on her hips, tits jutting forward. I swallowed. “I gotta tell ya, if I don’t get a good stiff one at least three times a week I turn into a real bitch. I don’t know how you do it, girl.”
“I manage. Besides, sex isn’t everything.”
Her right brow rose in a perplexed arch. “It isn’t?”
I shook my head and chuckled. “We’re just different that’s all.” I tucked my bare feet under me. “I enjoy a good fuck just as much as the next one.”
“What you need,” she wagged a finger at me, “is someone to rock your world. Then you’d have a new attitude. Believe me.”
“I’m starved,” I announced, needing to change the subject. “Whatcha got in the fridge?” I hopped up from the couch and marched off toward the kitchen.
“Some cold chicken and potato salad,” she called out to my retreating back.
That’s another thing about Mel, she could cook her ass off. One of these days if she ever settled down she’d make someone a great wife.
“You ever think about getting married, having kids?” I asked her when she followed me into the kitchen.
She shrugged. “Hmm, sometimes. But I’m enjoying my freedom. I don’t know if I’m ready to be tied down to the same man night after night. Know what I mean?” She snatched a chicken wing from the plastic bowl and began munching. She hopped up on the kitchen stool. “What about you?” she asked over a mouthful of chicken.
I took a plate from the overhead cabinet and set it on the counter, then loaded it up. I was suddenly starved for real.
“Me? When’s the last time you really looked at me? I’m overweight and contrary to popular opinion about light-skinned chicks and good hair, mine isn’t.” I plopped a dollop of potato salad on my plate. “Most guys only want me for a minute and then move on.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that about yourself. You’re a good looking woman. Intelligent and fun to be with. But you never want to fix yourself up. You don’t wear makeup and when is the last time you splurged on yourself? Besides, men don’t really want Barbie dolls, they want a woman with a little junk in their trunk.” She winked at me and my heart skipped a beat.
“According to you,” I grumbled.
“Tell you what, next Saturday, let’s have a real girlfriend day. We’ll get manicures and pedicures, get our hair done, buy some makeup and then go shopping.” She grinned. “How’s that sound?”
A day with Mel, no matter what she had in mind, sounded fine to me, even if I could care less about what she wanted to do. The truth was I was a plain Jane. As plain as they come. And no amount of shopping and makeup was going to change that.
That following Saturday me and Mel had our girl’s day out. That crazy broad dragged me from one end of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to the other: Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Chanel, Lord and Taylor and of course, Victoria’s Secret. Until that Saturday the closest I’d ever come to anything in those high-end dens of inequity was the Sunday sales section of the newspaper.
“You must have the perfect day-to-evening suit,” she’d said as we strolled the aisles, me in awe of the price tags and her with the eye of a connoisseur. When Mel’s eagle-eyes landed on the perfect garment she’d zoom in like a missile on lock and snatch up the unsuspecting outfit with a triumphant flourish.
By the time we were finished—four hours of non-stop shopping later—I had two suits, three pairs of shoes, jeans, sweaters and enough lingerie to open my own small boutique.
I was filled with a giddy kind of excitement, albeit tinged with my ingrained Catholic guilt and about two thousand dollars poorer.
“The first thing that attracts a man,” Mel went on with her lesson as we toted our designer shopping bags to The Cookery, a restaurant inside Rockerfeller Center, “is outward appearance. They’re all visually stimulated creatures.”
Like I didn’t know that.
“So the first thing is to get your outside together. You have the outfits, next is hair and makeup.”
“Mel,” I groaned, “I hate makeup. It makes my face itch.”
“That’s because you always use that cheap drugstore shit. We’re going to Bloomingdales!” She smiled with glee.
Needless to say I plopped down another two hundred bucks on makeup by MAC, whoever the hell that was. At the rate I was going I’d have to work so many hours to replenish my bank account I wouldn’t have time or the energy for Mr. Dick.
On the sneak, Mel had booked an appointment for me at John Frieda, the same guy who does all those television commercials about hair care.
His salon is what you would call swank. It was in a building with an elevator, a real receptionist, a cushy waiting area that had refreshments and a salon floor right out of America’s Next Top Model. None of that storefront crap that I was used to in the ’hood—big windows where anyone walking by on the street could see your stylist slapping perm on her head or gluing in your new hair. This was an experience. Not to mention that while I sat under the dryer, a manicurist did my nails and my feet. I felt like a million bucks. Maybe all this girly stuff wasn’t so bad after all.
By the time Mel pulled up in front of my apartment building, courtesy of her leased Mercedes Benz CL, I was bone tired, but Mel insisted that I try on my outfits with my new look.
I obliged and I must admit, I actually looked pretty damned good.
“Girl, you look like a completely different person. If I was a guy I would sure give you a play.”
If only.
She walked around in me in a slow appraising circle.
Mel was barely inches away from me, so close that the hairs on my arms stood at attention. She stopped in front of me and ran her tongue across her lips. The pointy tips of her titties brushed against mine and I almost came in my brand new Victoria’s Secret thong.
“Humph, humph, humph.” She shook her head, reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair beh
ind my left ear. Her breasts pushed up against mine and my pussy started hollering in a foreign language.
She was so close, I thought. I could smell the softness of her chocolate skin. What would she do if I reached out and gave her pouting pussy a friendly little squeeze.
“Are you okay?”
I blinked a half dozen times in a nanosecond. “Huh?” I focused on her face.
She put her hand on her hip and stared at me with a cocked brow.
The air that I’d suddenly gulped in got caught like a fish bone in my throat. I started coughing and couldn’t stop.
Mel ran into the kitchen and returned moments later with a glass of water. She held the back of my head and lifted the glass to my lips. It was at that point that I wanted to fall down and die of something sudden and rare.
“I’m f-fine,” I was finally about to sputter.
“Had me worried there for a minute.”
I forced myself to smile and moved away, then headed for the kitchen. Mel followed.
“So, uh, what was going on back there?”
I went straight to the fridge for some ice. “What do you mean? The coughing? Chile something got caught in my throat.” I dumped ice in my cup and started sucking.
“Don’t hand me that shit, Chris. Your eyes were closed, your head arched back, mouth open with your little pink tongue flicking in and out from between your teeth. If I was into women that little show would have turned me on.” She grinned like she knew my secret. Then she wagged her finger at me. “You were practicing!”
Huh? “Oh…that. Yeah. I was sorta. You know thinking…that’s all.”
She nodded in understanding.
“Pretty realistic, huh?” I asked, thankful for the reprieve.
“Sure had me fooled.” She stretched and yawned. “I’m beat. I’m going to head on home.”
I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Mel started for the bedroom to retrieve her bags and her purse. “I need to get in a quick nap. I have a hot date tonight.”
“I’m just going to take a nap that lasts until tomorrow morning.”
Mel giggled. “You are too funny.” She walked to the front door. “Call you tomorrow.”
“Sure. I’ll be here.”
She walked out and I closed and locked the door behind her.
I slapped my palm against my forehead. How stupid was that little episode? I needed to get my mind off Mel, that was for sure. One thing was for certain, I was using up the best years of my life lusting after someone that could never be mine.
There had to be someone out there for me. Somewhere.
Chapter Three
* * *
It was shortly after that Saturday extravaganza that I started feeling kinda funny. Not sick funny, but weird funny as if something or someone was always in the room with me, following me around my apartment. I find myself stopping and looking over my shoulder, checking the door and windows, opening closets. It was making me crazy.
One night I literally jumped up out of my sleep because I swore someone was sitting on the end of my bed. I switched on the light and blearily searched the room. Not a soul there but me. I attributed it to some crazy dream. But it kept happening, night after night.
Then one evening I dreamed that I was struggling for air. I couldn’t breathe and was gasping for breath. I tried to wake up but I couldn’t. It felt as if a weight was sitting on my chest holding me down. When I was finally able to break free, throwing my arms and legs around, once again I was alone in the room. I sat in the chair for the rest of the night peering into the dark, looking for whatever it was that was plaguing my nights.
For about a week, I spent my nights sleeping in the chair and the weird shit finally seemed to stop. I got my first decent rest in ages. And it’s a good thing, too, I was about to get some holy water or a priest up in there.
Finally feeling chipper I bounced into the office ready to make a star out of someone. I was humming a John Legend song when Mel sidled up to my desk.
“Guess what?”
I looked up from my call log. “What?”
“I hooked you up with a great guy. He’s a friend of Tony’s. That’s the new guy I’m seeing. Anyway he has a friend, Mitch. And he’s dying to meet you.”
I squeezed up my face. “Dying to meet me? How can he be dying to meet me if you just started going out with Tony?”
“Look, if I say he’s dying to meet you, he is. I talk about you to Tony all the time.” She smiled. “So, get your outfit together. We have tickets for Friday night to Caroline’s Comedy Club.”
“Friday? How do you know I don’t have plans already?”
“Because I’m your best friend and I know everything about you. You don’t have plans.”
I heaved a sigh. “All right,” I conceded.
“Hey look at it this way, you get a night out, some good company and this might be Mr. Right!”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay. What time?”
“Be ready by seven. Show starts at eight.”
“Fine.”
Friday arrived a little too soon for my liking but in a crazy way I was excited. It had been longer than I cared to admit the last time I’d been out on a date. So I planned to make the most of it.
From the moment I got home from work, I began preparing. I took a long hot shower, bumped my hair and meticulously applied my makeup exactly how the salesgirl instructed at Bloomingdales.
Those tasks out of the way, I hunted through my lingerie drawer for the perfect undergarments. Hey, you never know. I picked out the hot pink set and did a few twirls in my full-length mirror to see the effect. Not bad at all. Then it was off to choose an outfit. I didn’t want to be too dressy or too casual, so I settled for in between: a pair of jeans, my caramel-colored cashmere turtleneck sweater and my caramel ankle boots.
I was standing in the mirror taking in the full effect of my outfit when it started.
At first it felt like something had passed by me, like a light breeze across the back of my neck. But none of my windows were open. Then there was a distinct presence behind me, a kind of heat. But like I said, I was standing in the mirror and all I saw in the glass was me.
I shook it off as my over-active imagination and nerves about meeting Mitch. I turned away from my reflection and I swear to the heavens, something squeezed my breasts.
I yelled and backed up, stumbling over my feet and fell right on my ass. My eyes darted around the room and I was breathing so fast I got dizzy. Then the doorbell rang.
My date. Shit.
I scrambled to my feet and darted toward my bedroom door. And it slammed shut. Slammed shut right in my fucking face.
“What the f—”
Something pushed me back into the room until I wound up on my bed. The bell rang again. I tried to get up and couldn’t.
Then just as suddenly as all the weird shit happened, it stopped. I looked across the room and my bedroom door was open. That funny feeling that I had that something other than me was in the room was gone. The bell rang again.
Cautiously I got up. I had no intention of being knocked down again. I inched toward the door then bolted out before it could shut, but nothing happened.
I kept looking over my shoulder as I headed for my front door. I drew in a breath, fluffed my hair and pulled the door open. And damn if it wasn’t Mr. Right himself standing there with a smile bright enough to light up a dark room.
Damn, damn, damn.
“Hi, I’m Mitch Walker.”
“I’m Christine. Sorry for the wait.”
“Not a problem. Ready?”
“Uh, yeah. Let me just get my jacket and bag.” I took a quick glance over my shoulder. “Come on in.”
I stepped aside to let him in. Dang he smelled good too. I inhaled deeply.
“Nice place.”
“Thanks.”
Good thing my jacket and purse were in the front hall closet. I didn’t want to take any chances on going back into my bedroom and not being able to get ou
t.
“All ready,” I said, joining him in the living room.
He turned from studying the family photos on my mantle. “Mel and Tony are downstairs in his car. Me and you are going to take mine if that’s cool with you. I hate being dependent on someone else for transportation.”
“Great. Then let’s go.”
He stepped out into the hallway first. I peeked my head inside the door one last time before closing and locking it. My imagination was on overdrive. There was no other explanation.
At least I thought there wasn’t.
The car ride to the club was pleasant enough. Mitch was pretty talkative, telling me about his job as a computer programmer for IBM, and his love of all things sports related. He confessed that he’d never been on a blind date before but his good buddy Tony had convinced him and so far he wasn’t disappointed. That admission definitely boosted my ego.
“How about you? Ever been on a blind date?”
“This is a first for me, too. I’ve always heard such horror stories about blind dates.”
He chuckled. “You and me both.” He cast a quick glance in my direction. “So, do I pass the test so far?”
I turned to him and smiled. “So far…”
As our evening continued I’d all but forgotten about the weird stuff that happened at my apartment. I was truly enjoying myself and Mitch was the perfect gentleman, seeing to my every need.
“I told you he was a winner,” Mel said when we made a quick dash to the ladies room.
“Hey he has it going on for sure. Thanks.”
She patted me on the shoulder. “You know I wouldn’t hook you up with some loser. You’re my girl.” She leaned closer to the mirror to reapply her lipstick. “So you think you gonna give him some?”
“What? I barely know the man.”
“So? He’s fine, available, you can tell he likes you, you’re both consenting adults. What’s the problem?”
I shrugged. “On a first date, Mel?”
“Hey, it’s the easiest way to tell if there should be a date two. Why waste time with all the preliminaries when you can find out up front if it’s worth pursuing.”