by Tiana Laveen
“I have one more thing I want to say. I don’t know why I want to tell you, but I do… Something about you makes me feel like I can, and something about you, Milan, makes me feel like you could benefit from me hurting a bit more…”
“What is it?” She braced herself.
He looked down at the table, refusing to make eye contact. “The other day, you asked about the tattoo of my child. It’s the most important one I have. I am going to tell you what happened. You see,” He looked away for a moment, ad if needing to catch his own breath. “My son…my son’s umbilical chord was wrapped around his neck. For about sixteen hours, according to the doctor, he struggled inside of my ex-wife, trying to breathe, trying to live.” His voice shook. He swallowed hard as Milan swiped a tear from her eye. “This should not be going on, not on a first date…this is too much. Why would I think this was okay?” He shook his head, seemingly upset with himself for even going there. “I promise you I’ve never done this before, spilled my guts like this. This is wrong. I’m so damn sorry.” He kept his head down and angrily slapped the table.
“Stop it. Don’t ever apologize to me for sharing such a personal thing again…” she murmured. “It is happening right now because it is supposed to be happening right now. We can’t plan these things, Julian. Now, finish telling me what happened.”
He shook his head. Emotion drifted from him to her, heavy on the air. “When he was born, it was…it was obviously too late. I held him in my arms. Seven month old fetus…practically fully developed. He looked…he looked just like me. Head full of black hair, same eyes…it was like looking at myself, like seeing my own death, and you know what? I did die a little bit after that!”
Milan choked back a sob, placed one hand to her mouth and reached across the table, gripping Julian’s hand with all of her might. He kept his head down, but she didn’t miss the sight of one lone tear stream down his face.
Jesus… Lord have mercy! He’s never talked about this before, either!
She knew it in her heart; this was Julian’s first time really sharing what he’d gone through, what he endured the day he lost his baby.
“I was able to say goodbye to him.” He sniffed. “I don’t know how this whole heaven and hell thing works, if it is even real, but it might be. If it is, I want to see my father and my kid again…but while I’m here…” He slowly looked up, his cheek shiny from the recently fallen tear. “While I’m human and on this planet, partaking in this lifetime, I want to be able to try again, you know? I want a second chance. No one can replace anyone, that’s impossible. But…I want to try the whole marriage thing again, because I liked it. And…I want to succeed. Next time, I know I’ll win.” He squeezed her hand a bit tighter, driving some point home that she wasn’t prepared to fully encompass. “And…I want to be a father. I want a couple kids, maybe three or four… Yeah, I know I was meant to be many things, and two of those things are a husband and a father. And not just any husband and father, but a devoted one, a good one, the kind a great woman wants and deserves, the kind that my kids would say after I’m gone, ‘Dad was crazy, but he loved the fuck out of me, and he took care of me…and he was a damn good person.’”
They paused for a long while, holding each other, giving quiet support in their time of falling the hell apart. Time ticked on by, and time cared for them, too.
“Well, speaking of marriage and families, what were your parents like?”
He’d broken the silence, given up the ghost, and switched lanes. She accepted that he wanted out. He was done. After all, he’d shared something so intimate, and so devastating. Milan came to the realization that it was true—Julian was the ‘bartender’. Everyone came to him about their problems, but no one gave a damn about his own. He was the listening ear for so many, yet he never had a place to fall apart, to unleash his own beasts. What more did he truly need to say? The truth was out now, and he was, at least for the time being, finished discussing it.
“Well, I told you about my mom, Katrina.” She couldn’t help but smile as she looked down at the table. “She was always encouraging. Like you said about your stepdad, she could be strict sometimes, but she was loving, too. I could open up to her. My father was older than my mom and though he was a good provider, he was a bit…” She grimaced as she searched for the right words. “I suppose emotionally distant is the word. Don’t get me wrong, I know he loved me; we just didn’t have that coziness, you know?”
Julian and I have some things in common. He may not be so different from me after all.
He nodded and leaned in closer, hanging on to her words.
“No family is perfect. Like yours, my parents loved me, so…” She felt a bit awkward, not quite sure as to why. The conversation was getting heavier, like clumpy gravy atop stiff, lumpy mashed potatoes, and she couldn’t stomach it. “Here come the floats!” She clapped her hands, thankful for the reprieve now that the focus of the conversation was on her. Moments later, they sat quietly devouring their respective desserts. She thought her appetite had waned, but she was suddenly more than ready to demolish the tower of sweet, fizzy power.
This shit has got to be home-made… It is a crime for anything to taste this good!
He sucked on his straw diligently, then paused.
“You wanna try this?”
“I don’t like root beer. Thanks though…you want to try this?” She pointed to her half eaten float.
“Nah, I’m good.” They kept the silence for quite some time. Then, as if after much thought, he grasped her hand. He intertwined their fingers, the straw still in his mouth, eliciting a smile from her.
“So.” Finished, he moved his glass aside. “I want to see you again.”
“I want to see you again, too.” Her cheeks pricked with heat.
“The conversation got a bit heavy tonight, but I agree with you. It served its purpose. I’ve…I’ve never really told that story to anyone before. That means your special to me already.” She couldn’t help but smile, a grin born of gratitude. “Now, that aside, let’s get down to business. We’re both kinda busy, but…I believe people make time for what they want to make time for.” He had a longing in his eyes.
She nodded in agreement and looked down into her empty glass with the long silver spoon, coated with a thin layer of ice cream. He was speaking earnestly now; it was time to straighten up. She desperately tried to hide the new, growing smile on her face. She tried, but trying and doing were two different things.
“So, I take it you had a good time, and the food wasn’t too bad? You’ll give me another chance to make you blush?” He bit his bottom lip seductively and tilted his head forward, forcing his long black hair to fall forward and puddle on the table.
“Yeah…”
He nodded, appearing quite pleased with himself. “Good. So, pencil me in; let’s secure a day and time.” He slowly removed his hand from hers, and scratched his ear lobe. “Tell me where you want to go, but take some time to think about it.”
“Actually, I think I already know what I’d like to do.”
He leaned back in his seat and ran his hand through his hair, combing it back away from his face as he kept his eyes keenly upon her.
“And what would that be?”
“Actually, um, this isn’t it, what I’m about to say.” She fumbled over her thoughts, hardly believing the words she had on the tip of her tongue. “See… we are having a company function in a few months.”
“I want to go out with you again before that,” he teased, causing her smile to tighten.
“Yes, I know. I just understand how your schedule is and wanted to know, well…” She looked down at her lap, nervously fidgeting with the tablecloth. “If you’d be my date.”
“So you trust me to not embarrass you, huh?” he goaded, causing her to shake her head and smile. Then he added, “Do you even have to ask, baby?” He grinned. “I’d love to.”
Baby…
“Great, it’s the last Saturday in April.”
> Julian pulled out his phone and looked at his schedule. “I’m booked, but I have enough notice where these appointments can be switched around. He began to punch information into his phone—she assumed text messages and calendar updates.
“We’ll be dressed up; the restaurant is kinda fancy. The party will be in Atlanta. It’s for one of the upper management guys. Darryl Perfeti is retiring…a really good guy.”
“Got it…now, I want to see you again, soon, but before all of that, I need you to do something for me.” He arched his eyebrow and a mischievous grin creased his face. The perfectly trimmed goatee completed the roguish look.
“What?”
“Lean over this damn table and give me a kiss…”
She looked at him for a while, toyed with the notion of protesting just for the sake of it, then thought, ‘Fuck it.’ Tossing her hair back, she leaned over the table and pressed her lips into his like he was her man and there was nothing left to consider. Soon after, she reclaimed her seat. The soft music in the background didn’t match the tempo of her beating heart. Not with the swarm of busy butterflies in her gut. Hard as it was, she tried to act adult about this, yet her attraction to him kept growing and growing until she couldn’t contain it any longer.
“Actually, I have a meeting tomorrow night… However, the next day I’m free. Would you like to do something then?” she offered, finally coming back into the moment.
“Yeah, that’s cool. What did you have in mind?” He leaned casually back against the chair. His eyes said things to her. Things like he was waiting and wanting…
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe the movies, something like that?”
“I tell you what, and there is no pressure. How about you come by my house after work. We go to see whatever movie you want, and then come back to my house for a nightcap. I don’t like taverns too much, but I have a really nice bar that I built myself, in my home.”
“Your house? Hmmmm.” The butterflies made a back flip. “I don’t know about that.”
That perfectly arched brow shot up again. His eyes sparkled with devilry. “And what is going to happen when you come over? What are you worried about?”
“I suppose nothing. Don’t get your hopes up,” she countered, semi-joking. “Can I trust you to not try to touch me?”
“No, but if you don’t want me, I won’t.” He looked dead serious.
“You just said I couldn’t trust you!” She laughed.
“No, you asked ‘Can I trust you to not try to touch me?’, and I said ‘No.’ But then I added, if you don’t want me to, I won’t. Meaning, if you tell me you don’t want me to touch you, then I’ll respect that but otherwise, I may do just as you’ve mentioned. You’ve got to pay close attention, sweetheart.”
“I’m so sick of you and I don’t even fully know your ass!” She laughed.
He grinned and nodded. “You know me enough, at least for right now. That’s why you’re still sitting there…”
They simply stared at one another for a long while after that. He paid for their dinners and they walked out, hand in hand. On the drive home, he told her a story that had her stomach cramping from laughter.
“…And I just shouldn’t have done it. You know, that’s how it was back then though. You’d experiment on your best friend. My best friend at that time was a woman, my ex-wife. I was good with pen on paper, but skin is slightly different. Skin stretches, moves. Skin is alive. So she uh…” His vibrant eyes turned into tiny, blue pools as they narrowed in thought. He was stifling a damn laugh but she knew he couldn’t last long. He turned the car down the next street and continued. “I started up again, and she wouldn’t stop moving, and I was laughing, and she was too… She said it tickled real bad. It was supposed to be a dragon, but instead it looked like a long piece of shit with a tail…”
Milan burst out laughing, unable to hold it in any longer. She’d asked the man about the worse tattoo he’d ever given, and this was his damn story.
“I had the nerve to try and draw scales on it…so now, it just looked like a dried out piece of shit, with a tail.”
“Stop it! Stop it!” She cracked up even louder.
“I then drew a smiley face on it, so now, it was a happy piece of dried out shit, with a tail.”
“Oh Jesus take the wheel!” She leaned over to the side, panting. “Why in the world did you do that?!”
He shrugged, a goofy smile on his face. “I was trying to correct it! Of course, all I did was make it worse.”
“Okay, okay, tell me about the worse customer you had.”
“Ohhhh man. Nah, I can’t do that. You might hold it against me.” They reached a red light.
“No I won’t.”
“Alright.” He swallowed. “This actually just happened not too long ago. This guy walked in, and I accept all people, okay?” He gave her a quick glance, as if trying to convince her of his sincerity. “I don’t care what someone’s body type is, how old they are, none of that, as long as they are legal and in decent enough health to receive a tattoo. Well, this guy walked in and he had a bunch of tattoos. They didn’t look like much so I assumed they were homemade or from some artist that didn’t know what they were doing. So, he walked in, and no one jumped up to help him. It was like…instinct. We all just kinda knew it was going to be a mess. It was strange, like a universal premonition. As the owner, I had to eventually go up.”
“Why didn’t you just make one of your other guys go up?”
“Because they had customers already and Angela was on the phone with a potential client. Still though, if a cute woman walks in, Cedrick will stop whatever the hell he is doing to try and claim her and schedule her in, and Alex will always jump in to help, too, like, he’ll say, ‘Hold on, someone will be with you in a sec,’ and tell his customer to hold tight. But this time, they didn’t budge. So anyway, the guy was like four hundred and fifty pounds, easily. It is harder to work with people that are extremely skinny, or very obese, because the skin, the canvas basically, doesn’t act the same. The more layers of tissue, the harder it is at times, or if there are too many bones jetting about…but I’ve done it, no biggie. Yet this guy was just giving me a vibe, you know.”
“Oh boy…”
“Yeah, I’ve got good intuition on shit like this.” The light turned green and he began driving again. “So, I introduced myself to the guy, and asked him what he was looking for.” Julian ran his hand leisurely over the steering wheel, and took a deep breath. “He wanted something on his asshole.”
“What? You mean his butt cheek, right?”
“No, he wanted a tattoo drawn around his damn asshole, Milan!”
That did it. Milan slumped in her seat and covered her face with her hands as her body rocked with laughter.
“He wanted me to tattoo, ‘T.P.B.H’, which means, The Portal to the Black Hole.’ I refused.” Julian threw up his hand; his face twisted in a grimace, as if he were re-living the traumatic ordeal, making Milan laugh all the harder. “I knew for a fact I wasn’t doin’ that shit, and he couldn’t pay me enough. I told him we don’t do those kinds of tattoos and he made a big stink about it.”
“A big stink?! Couldn’t you… couldn’t you have chosen different words just now?!” She gasped, trying to regain her composure, but miserably failed.
“All this dragon shit and asshole talk is so mature, isn’t it?” He smirked as they drew closer to her home. “Oh man, it was crazy. I could spend hours telling you about some of the stuff I’ve seen in that shop. Georgia has all kinds, I tell ya.”
“Who are you telling!”
“Speaking of assholes, how are things going at work?”
She looked out the window, noting they were only a block away from her house. She resented that. She didn’t want the date to end.
“Well, I put what you said into action, and I haven’t seen much improvement unfortunately, but we’ll see.”
“Keep at it, and if he doesn’t change, go to plan B. Life is t
oo short to deal with that sort of shit. Besides, you’ve been through a lot lately; you need to be trying to get level, get back to your base.”
She gave the man a curious eye as he turned into her driveway. Shutting off the engine, he got out of his car, opened her door, and took her gently by the elbow, escorting her out the vehicle. He walked her up to her door, and for a moment, just a moment, she thought about inviting the bastard in. Funny thing though, he made no attempts to enter. No ‘may I use your bathroom’ excuses; no ‘can I step inside and just sit for a moment’ line. None of the stuff she was accustomed to hearing. When he picked her up, he’d done the same—stood right outside the door, like a perfect tin soldier gentleman.
Taking the initiative, she leaned in, wrapped her arms around his neck and touched his lips with her own, eliciting a throaty moan. He took over then, parting her lips with his tongue, and easing his way inside. He held her tight around her waist, bringing her a bit closer into his body. Cinnamon wrapped root beer flooded her taste buds, and the sweet, odd mixture tasted beautiful going down. She clamped onto him tighter, causing his soft, long hair to brush against her cheek. After slowly rotating his tongue inside of her mouth over and over like a slow hip grind, the ride eventually came to a complete stop. He stepped back and ran his hand over his lips, his keys dangling in his hand.
“I’ll see you soon… Give me a call tonight if you want.” He kept walking backwards, leaving her standing there with an impish grin across her face.
“I’ll do that. Thanks!” she called out. “The food was good; thank you for the experience.”
“Thank you for coming and being open minded enough to try…” He winked and blew her a kiss, then drove away.
I want to fuck that man…
She slammed and locked her door.
‡
Chapter Six
Julian couldn’t fight his surprise once Milan told him she had to reschedule for later that evening and to nix the movie, because first she needed to go grocery shopping. According to the gorgeous accountant he’d been fantasizing about non-stop that day, she realized she barely had anything in her cupboard, like old mother Hubbard, and was afraid of the predicted snow fall to come. Just like most of Athens and its surrounding areas, the mere threat of a deathly, white flake daring to hit their red soil covered ground caused everyone to go into an uproar, as if the second coming of Christ was woven into the eye of the pending storm. He laughed it off and let her know that he would take her to the grocery store later that evening. Of course, this seemingly struck her as odd, and she said so, but she agreed to his new terms, stating she’d be arriving soon.