If Only For One Night
Page 7
He waited a moment and then, he laughed. One of those man-get-out-of-here chuckles until he saw that I didn’t join him. And then, he straightened up real quick. “Wait…a…minute. You’re not kidding.”
While shaking my head, I went on to tell Lamar about how I’d met Angelique….
“I love her name,” he said.
And how we’d finally agreed to meet.
“Hooking up at Starbucks, that was good. No pressure,” he said.
And how I’d known we had a connection before we met, but after sitting together for two hours, I was so certain of it, I didn’t even want to leave her.
I finished up by saying, “She’s beautiful, intelligent, she stimulates my mind.”
His eyebrows rose. “And that’s what you need right now, right? Your mind stimulated?”
“Man, whatever.” I chuckled. “Seriously, though, by the time I walked her to her car and watched her drive away, I was already strategizing how I would see her again.”
He glanced at the clock on the wall. “So today is Saturday. What are you waiting for?”
“Because after Thursday night with Monica….”
“Oh.” He dragged out the word, letting me know he understood.
I said, “I thought things were going to be right with my wife.”
“But now you know….”
“I don’t know anything. I just know that…I’m lonely, man. And Angelique, she listened to me.”
“And she probably laughed at your corny jokes, too.”
I grinned. “Every time.”
We laughed, but then we both got serious. “Blu, man, I’m not gonna come right out and tell you what I think about this situation because you know where I stand.”
“I know.” I paused, letting a few beats pass. “There’s something I haven’t told you about Angelique.” I figured the best thing to do was to just come out and say it. “She’s married.”
“Whoa.”
“Yup. She’s been married for awhile. She and her husband have eight years in.”
“So what’s she doing creepin’ with you?”
“She’s not creepin’. We were just playing a game.”
“And hooking up.”
“At Starbucks, not the Sheraton.”
“For now.”
“Forever.”
He gave me one of those raised eyebrow yeah-sure-bruh looks.
I said, “I think her being married is another thing that makes her so attractive to me.”
His question was in his eyes.
“I know nothing will happen because I’m married…she’s married.”
I’d said that with every bit of seriousness in me. But for some reason, that sent my boy into buckled-over-laughter. I just sat there, staring at him, having a good laugh over my bad life. And when he finally sat up straight, he said, “Man, hand me one of those beers.”
I almost wanted to crack him over the head with it, but instead, I just tossed him the bottle.
“Can’t believe you got me out here drinking so early in the morning like we back in college or something.” He twisted off the cap, took a swallow and then said, “I guess you never heard, an unhappy wife makes the best mistress."
“You know you just made that up. And I never said she was unhappy.”
“Then, what is she doing creepin’ with you?”
I shook my head; I wasn’t going around in that circle anymore.
“I’m just kiddin’,” Lamar said. “Look, you’ve got to do what makes you happy.”
I bobbed my head up and down, not sure if I was really nodding to agree with him.
He said, “You’ve tried, man. You’ve done everything that you could with Monica. And now….” He held his hands up as if he were surrendering to something. Or maybe that was his signal to me.
“Just be happy,” he said.
Be happy. I repeated his words in my head. That really was all that I wanted. Which was why, I pulled out my phone and with Lamar’s eyes on me, I opened the app and made a move that had nothing to do with the tiles.
I sent Angelique a message:
I’ve missed you. What you doing?
I almost put the phone away, expecting having to wait, if not a couple of hours, at least a few minutes. But the notification came to my phone before I could move.
I thought you forgot about me.
My fingers couldn’t move fast enough:
Never! I was just busy….
I hesitated and then, added to my message:
At work. I was busy at work. But not busy anymore.
Her response: