My Best Friend and My Man

by Cydney Rax

  But at the same time, I wish Demetria could see this man in action. She could probably assess him in ten seconds and determine if he’d be a good match for me.

  “I am not afraid to fall in love,” he continues. “At this point in life, my philosophy is to let the woman be herself, tell me what she needs me to know, good or bad, and I’ll do the same, and we’ll figure out whether we’re meant to be. That’s about all anyone can do, you know what I’m saying? No point in playing games, pretending to be something you’re not, wasting everybody’s time. ’Cause one thing that’s never going to change is tomorrow is not a promise, so we gotta make the most of the little time that we’re given.”

  Suddenly my stomach feels queasy. I wonder if Seaphes considers me a fake. But I don’t want to drop the games—Demetria and the book and everyone else have been telling me I’m wrong, and I want to be right with this man.

  His cell starts ringing, but he doesn’t even look at it. Instead he stares intently at me and says, “Now, if it’s okay, may I ask you a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What exactly made you want to call me?”

  “I, uh, jeez, it was just something to do,” I say tapping my foot against the floor as if I’m listening to a fast song. I am being nonchalant. Can’t tell him. Can’t tell him. “I was, hmmm, bored, I guess and…”

  “Sorry, but I don’t believe you, Veron.” He grins at me with reassurance. “Tell me the real answer.”

  “I beg your pardon,” I squeal.

  He pauses for a beat. “Do you like me?”

  “Oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re asking me this.”

  “Look at you, you’re blushing, you’re covering your face with your hands, you look like a cute young high school girl. Your body is telling me what your mouth won’t.”

  I stand up on wobbly legs. “Uh, I’m so sorry, but I need to go to the ladies’ room. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  I can hear him loudly chuckling behind my back while I sprint to the rear of the restaurant, my heels noisily clanging across the floor. Thank God, no one else is occupying any of the stalls in the ladies’ room. I barricade myself in one of the empty ones and breathlessly lock the door. I reach inside my cell-phone pouch and manage to dial Demetria. The call goes straight into voice mail. I dial Michael West. When a woman picks up the line, I hang up.

  What would Demetria do? What would she say? How would she make herself come out on top in this situation? I allow myself three minutes to dwell on what happened and what needs to be happening, then I emerge from the stall.

  When I get back to the booth, Seaphes is turning the pages of the USA Today.

  I calmly sit back down and clear my throat.

  “Seaphes, to answer your question, I just find you intriguing. That’s it. That’s the truth. And that’s all I’m gonna tell you for now. Is that cool?”

  He just grins and nods his head, and I am happy that I knew not to say too much or go too far. This is so hard, but I am managing to keep my instincts pushed down and do right.

  —14—

  VERON

  It’s Friday, exactly one week since Seaphes and I met at Panera Bread. Our March of Dimes subcommittee agreed that I’d bake and sell delicious slices of frosted carrot cake, so after work I head to the HEB Pantry to buy ingredients, as well as supplies for our book-club meeting, which I’m hosting on Sunday.

  When I get there, I see there’s only one available shopping cart. I rush to grab it, but another hand lands on the cart at the same time as mine.

  “Michael?” I gasp.

  “Veron!”

  I laugh and give him a hug. “What you been up to?”

  “I’ve been around, doing my thing.”

  “So you wanna share this cart? I don’t have too much stuff to get.”

  “Hey, I don’t need it. I saw you and was just messing with you. I only gotta get some washing powder, some of those dryer sheets, bleach, and some furniture polish. All that can fit in two hands.”

  I giggle. “Dang, Mike, you sound so domesticated. What happened to the player-player?”

  “Even players gotta wash clothes sometimes.”

  We start walking toward the fresh-vegetables section. “So.” I clear my throat and peer about my surroundings. “Is it safe for us to be seen together?”

  “What you mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean.” I pretend to crack a whip.

  “Awww, don’t even try it.” He chuckles. “She ain’t got that much control over me.”

  “Hmmm, then why did she answer your phone when I tried to call you last week?”

  “Say what?”

  I don’t know if I should buy Mike’s look of surprise. I know how prideful men are. They will deny the truth just to save face and seem like they’re on top of their game.

  “What you talking about, Veron?”

  I explained how I called him on his cell last week and the person who answered the phone definitely wasn’t Mike.

  “I didn’t know that. I had my phone all the time and never heard it ring.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. Man, there’s some weird shit going down lately with my phone. It didn’t ring all last weekend, but a bunch of friends told me they tried to call.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure it was her who answered when I called.”

  Suddenly Mike stops walking. “Damn, you know what? On Monday, Francine was acting real funky. She had attitude all up and down her face. And when I asked her what’s wrong, she tells me, ‘You know exactly what’s wrong, you liar.’ And I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about!”

  “Well, I did notice that I got a couple of hang ups on my phone from a private caller the next day. You think she…”

  “Francine is the queen of pulling stupid mess. She probably got ahold of my cell when I didn’t know it and forwarded my calls to her number. She probably figures I’m messing around, ’cause a bunch of my friends that tried to call were females.”

  I giggle with amusement. “Can men and women be just friends, Mike?”

  “You wanna know the truth? Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s gonna be a fuck naw. Men are always thinking about sex. The minute a man meets an attractive woman he’s figuring out if he can get in the panties. No man wants to be just a friend.”

  “Mmmm, I find that hard to believe,” I say, my eyes glazing.

  “Why’s that?” he says, craning his neck to stare at a cute Vietnamese woman wearing a thin line of sky blue eyeliner.

  “Because,” I say loudly, irritated. “There are men that you meet who never make a move on you. You feel that they aren’t attracted to you. They don’t even try to kiss you, let alone try to have sex with you.”

  “Awww, boo. That make you feel rejected?”

  “Well,” I pout, “of course it does. Who doesn’t want to be desired?”

  “Listen, little mama, don’t be upset just because a man may not want to do the nasty with you. That’s nothing. A man can have sex with any woman. So let me hip you up on something,” he says leaning in closer. “Sex just don’t matter. Now if the man wants to make you his wifey, that’s what’s up.”

  I stare at Mike while he continues talking. And in those few seconds I realize that I have been undervaluing myself. I’ve been thinking that getting to have sex with my dream man equates the largest achievement in life. Horrifying! I barely want to think about it.

  “Have you ever been married or engaged?” I ask.

  “No, ma’am. Never will.”

  “Why not?”

  “My folks divorced when I was three. Daddy had four other kids by three women and two of his women weren’t black. Both my brothers divorced, and they are paying child support out the ass. One lives in a halfway house ’cause he can’t afford rent. The other can’t stand his ex and he hates women, doesn’t even have sex anymore. If marriage does that to people, destroys them to the po
int that a man can’t even raise his head proud ’cause his life is stripped away, I don’t want any part of it.”

  I nod my head, realizing that men harvest deeper feelings about love, family, and sex than I thought. “I feel bad for your family, Mike, but just because…”

  “No, Veron, I know what I want and what I don’t. I can live to be fifty without a wife, and they can call me gay as Richard Simmons, I don’t care.”

  “So what do you want from life?”

  “I love women, period. I want to find a chick that backs me, builds me up, and lets me be the man.”

  “I hear you say you love women, but you don’t love them enough to give them your last name.”

  “I don’t need to be married to have banging sex, to laugh with my woman, to take her out. That’s just how I feel, Vee.”

  “But, Mike, a few minutes ago you just told me that marriage is honorable, more honorable than just having a sex partner…”

  “Listen, I’m just not going to get married. It’s fine for other people, but if you do it, do it right. That’s all I’m saying. Make sure it’s with the right person for the right reasons. I guess more than anything, I haven’t experienced that yet. Don’t know if I ever will.” And he once again glances at another young woman, barely out of her teens, sporting some tight Apple Bottom jeans. He smiles for a second, but when he turns back to look at me, his face bears such a sullen, empty look, and my mouth can’t form anything appropriate to say to him.

  But he speaks up. “Enough about me. How’s your love life going? You kicking ass and taking numbers?”

  “Well,” I say feeling more relaxed, “one of the two.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A guy that I really like gave me his number. We both work for the city. Last week we hooked up and everything was cool,” I tell him, my voice tapering off.

  “But?”

  “But this week while at work he was oddly polite. Said hi to me. Made small talk. I mean like ‘how you enjoying this weather’ talk. It confused me. As if our date didn’t even happen.”

  “Did he consider it a date, or is that just you?”

  “Look, Mike,” I say, my face feeling warm with humiliation. “We ate at a restaurant.”

  “Did he pick you up?”

  I look down and don’t say anything.

  “Veron, wake up. I hope you didn’t think that just because you meet up with a man and y’all chitchat and share a cup of coffee that that’s a date, especially if he hasn’t called you since.”

  I place my hands over my ears. Mike removes my hands from my ears.

  “Listen up, Vee, I know it’s hard to understand. But forget this dude. If he hasn’t followed up, he ain’t anybody to be following. Always let the man chase you.”

  I swallow deeply, and my vision becomes cloudy. Why does this man mean so much to me when I barely know him? I really felt something special the other night and I can’t imagine that he didn’t.

  With that Mike takes my shopping cart and says, “Okay, I’m helping you shop. Let’s go.”

  I reach in my purse and hand him a lined sticky note that lists the specific items I need to purchase, and we go. Mike ventures down the aisles and waits for me to point out my preferred brand of confectioner’s sugar, cinnamon, and granulated sugar. When he’s done with the spices he continues rolling the cart and picks up two dozen eggs, opening the carton and making sure none of the eggs are cracked. On the produce aisle, he places carrots in my cart and then takes a deep breath and faces me.

  “You really want this man?”

  I nod vigorously.

  “Then ignore him. Lose his number. Don’t talk to him at work. Always have something going on, like you don’t have time for him.”

  “But that just feels so wrong, especially since I want to talk to him all the time!”

  Mike reminds me of everything that I’ve told him about Ferris. “Remember that the more you ignored Ferris, hung up on him, and cussed his ass out, the more he called.”

  I hate this, I hate the games. “Okay, I do remember that,” I finally agree. “But Ferris isn’t my guy.”

  “You gotta treat your guy like he’s Ferris, though. I know it makes no sense and it’ll be harder than hell, but trust me on this one.”

  We walk to the checkout line. Mike pays for all my groceries, walks me outside with them, loads them in my car, and then asks for my keys and starts the car for me.

  “You make me feel like Demetria,” I tease him.

  “If you wanna really feel like Demetria, treat that dude like you don’t give a damn about his ass.”

  —15—

  DEMETRIA

  Attraction Principle Number 24: Every man wants to have sex first; whether he wants a girlfriend is something he thinks about later. By not giving him what he wants up front, you become his girlfriend without him realizing it.

  I put the book down and look up at the other members of the book club.

  We are all spread throughout Vee’s living room, some of us comfortably plopped on her couch, others perched on dining room chairs. There’s a nice little spread of fried and seasoned salmon patties, Spanish rice, onion-laced green beans, oven-baked rolls dripping with margarine and bowls of pure honey on the side, plus fresh strawberry shortcake with whipped cream for dessert.

  “Well,” I say. “Y’all agree with that principle about sex?”

  “I wish I’d had known that before I gave some to my man,” says Mia.

  “Hey,” Gladys speaks up. “As I see it, if he became your man then you lucked out even though you didn’t hold out.”

  “That’s what’s up.” I nod.

  “And that’s rare,” Tweetie says, smiling like she’s amazed, “but I definitely think that particular attraction principle is one of the most important ones women need to focus on. From what I hear, most women give it up within a week or two, and sometimes they open their legs on the first date.”

  “From what you hear?” I ask Tweetie and frown. “You don’t know about quickly giving up the goodies from personal experience?”

  “Nope, never, ever,” Tweetie says, still smiling. “I try to get to know a guy first, and we will date for a long time before I’d even considering going to bed with him.”

  “Damn, that’s different,” Fonya says sarcastically. “And old-fashioned. But I don’t believe you, Tweet. All women got a freaky side even though you won’t twist your lips to admit it.”

  “Fonya,” Gladys cuts in, “if Tweetie says she waits then don’t be trying to slander her. How you know what she does behind closed doors?”

  “Because I was behind those closed doors. We used to be roommates, remember? And I’ve heard her wild screams before.” Tweetie looks horrified and jumps across me to place her hand over Fonya’s mouth.

  “Fonya, girl,” Tweetie says with hurt cutting her voice. “I can’t believe your big fat mouth. That’s exactly why we aren’t roommates anymore.”

  “Like I care,” Fonya snaps after removing Tweetie’s hand off her face. “You can’t tell the truth half the time.”

  “And you can’t pay your bills a hundred percent of the time.”

  I am the one smiling now. Tweetie rarely shows anger, and it feels great to see her stand up for herself.

  “Hold up, Tweetie baby,” I say. “Go sit yourself back down and cool off. Y’all are getting off topic. We’re talking about Why Men Love Bitches, not why bitches can’t be roommates. Let’s stick to the book.”

  “That’s what I was trying to do, Demetria. I was trying to answer your specific question, but I got attacked. Why can’t we all just get along?” Tweetie asks, frustrated. But then she breaks into her signature smile and holds up two fingers to make the peace sign, her way of restoring order to the meeting and letting bygones be bygones.

  “Okay, anyone else have comments about this principle?” I ask. “Vee, you’re very quiet. Speak up, girlfriend. I know you got something to say. She loves this book y’all—she really needs
to be moderating this meeting instead of me.”

  “Well, I read the book from cover to cover. And I don’t know if it works, but that principle is something that I’d want to try,” Vee says. “Holding out just to see if the man will become my boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, I heard it works—I just can’t do it,” I say, giggling. Everyone knows good and well I love to fuck too much to keep my desires locked up for long.

  “Good that you’re bringing that up,” Vee says. “’Cause to be honest, Demetria, it seems like you break all the rules and still get everything you want, and I just don’t understand.”

  “What you mean? I don’t break all the rules, I go by the rules.”

  “Girl, be for real, since when do you follow rules?” Vee says. Her attitude is suddenly so nasty that I actually stand up.

  “Let’s take this out of the room,” I instruct my friend. “Sounds like you have something on your mind.”

  “Let’s do it,” Vee says, just as arrogantly. The other women become very quiet, but I yell at them, “Y’all continue discussing the book, we’ll be right back.”

  Vee follows me to her bedroom. I close and lock her door, turn around and face her with my arms folded under my breasts.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Vee? Don’t you ever try and loud talk me in front of anybody. I haven’t done anything to you and don’t appreciate you getting nasty with me for no reason.”

  Vee flops on her bed and turns her back away from me. She curls her body into a tight ball, and I notice her shoulders shaking.

  “Damn, girl, I’m sorry,” I say, touching her on the arm.

  “It’s not you,” she wails and hisses.

  “If not me, then who?”

  “It’s me. I messed up, and I don’t know how to get things right again.”

  “Talk to me.” I lay right next to her, grab her and hold her in my arms as if she’s my child.

  “I got weak last night,” she sniffs. “I got so weak that I called Seaphes. He didn’t sound happy to hear from me, but he didn’t sound outright rude, either.”