A Natural Woman

by Lori Johnson

  “Correction,” he said softly. “What you were that night was drunk and upset. It happens sometimes, even to the best of us.”

  “Still, even more than a cake, Dante, I owe you a formal apology . . .”

  “No, if you owe me anything it’s dinner to go along with that cake. I mean, being how you keep bragging so tough about being able to throw down in the kitchen and all.”

  She smiled. “Hey, my Big Mama showed me a thing or two. I don’t think it’s bragging to say, I think I’m capable of holding my own.”

  She’d intended to let that be her parting shot before she offered her, see you next time, and she was all but poised to take a step forward when she heard him say, “Yeah? So when are you gonna invite me over?”

  Stunned, she turned and studied his face. Was he serious? Or teasing again? “I thought you said you had a rule about mixing business and pleasure,” she said, deciding to play it safe.

  He nodded. “I do—one, for you, I’m fully prepared to amend. Just tell me what time and after I leave the shop, it’ll be strictly pleasure—yours and mine.”

  She blinked and thought, Damn! Where’d all that come from?! She waited for him to laugh or break into a wide grin, but the expression on his face couldn’t have been more earnest and hopeful. “Okay, let me think about it and get back with you,” she said, suddenly feeling a need to move before the tingling, which had begun in her feet, became any more intense.

  “Sure, you do that,” Dante said. “You know where to find me.”

  She thought about it, all right. In truth, it was all she thought about on her way back to Wells. She carefully weighed all of the pros and cons, and by the time she reached the faculty parking, she’d made up her mind. She called him, and when he came on the line, she said, “I don’t do pork or lamb. So what’s it going to be—fish, chicken, or beef?”

  “Tell me you are not letting that man come to your house” was the first thing out of Monica’s mouth when she learned of the Friday night plans Aliesha had made with Dante.

  “And why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because the only thing you really know about him is that he works up at that damn barbershop, that’s why.”

  “I know more than that about him.”

  “Oh yeah, like what?” Monica said. “Ooh, no, wait, let me guess. That’s right, you know he’s finally summoned enough balls to come over and hit it. You do know that’s the only reason he’s coming over, don’t you?”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I don’t have a problem with that?”

  “Yeah, and then what? You know, you are undoubtedly the most whorish churchgoing girl I’ve met in all my life.”

  “Look, Monica, I’ve been out here long enough to know better than to have any grand expectations. Whatever happens, happens. If it’s good, wonderful. If it’s bad, I start looking for a new barber. . . .”

  “Or take your fast behind back to Peaches.”

  “Shut up!” Aliesha said with a laugh.

  CHAPTER 28

  She spent Wednesday night planning her menu and giving her house a thorough cleaning. Since her classes on Thursday were all in the late afternoon and evening, she did her grocery shopping in the early part of the day. By Friday she’d decided that Vera Wang would be her fragrance of choice for the evening. And on a last-minute impulse during her free period on Friday, she’d even run out and purchased a couple sets of fluffy towels and a gift for Dante. But it had taken her forever to pick out the right outfit. Definitely nothing too revealing, on one hand, or schoolmarm-like, on the other, is what she decided. When she’d approached Monica for advice, without skipping a beat, her good friend had told her, “Why not dispense with the formalities altogether and just meet him at the door butt-ass naked?”

  She finally settled on a casual pair of black slacks and a simple red blouse with a block neckline that stopped right above her cleavage and tapered ever so slightly at the waist. She kept her jewelry and makeup simple, too. After all, she reminded herself, what they had planned—a friendly home-cooked dinner at her place—was barely even a date. No need to go rushing into it with any romantic notions only to wind up disappointed later. Still, she couldn’t help but feel like a jittery teen on prom night. She ran to the mirror any number of times to check her hair, adjust her clothing, and touch up her makeup.

  Thankfully, Dante didn’t keep her waiting. At 7:30 sharp he showed up at her door smelling freshly bathed and wearing dark-colored slacks with a matching vest, which he wore buttoned atop a nicely starched and perfectly creased dress shirt. For a moment, Aliesha was so taken by his scent, how nice he looked, and the bright smile beaming at her beneath the rakish angle of his cap, she didn’t even notice the gift-wrapped box tucked beneath his arm.

  “For you,” he said, handing her the present and whipping off his headgear on entering her home. “I know it’s traditional to bring wine, but given our last, wild adventure with the bottled spirits—”

  When she flashed him a look, he laughed and followed her to the sofa. “Anyway, I thought about flowers. But since I didn’t know the kind you might prefer—”

  “Petunias and lilies,” she said as she unwrapped the gift. “I’m a simple girl with simple tastes.”

  “You like it?” he asked, sounding a bit worried as she pulled the dark chocolate-dipped colored doll from the box.

  Aliesha stared into the large, expressive coca-coca brown eyes. She raised her fingers to the doll’s curly, jet-black crown of hair and startled a bit when Dante’s fingers joined hers in caressing the full, soft strands and locks.

  “I was out one day, back during those couple of weeks when you disappeared on me, and I noticed her in a shop window,” he said. “She actually made me stop, back up, and go inside.”

  “Thank you. She’s wonderful,” Aliesha said. She nearly acted on her desire to reward him with a kiss on the cheek, but chickened out at the last moment.

  “Yeah, I think Miz Babygirl is pretty special, too,” Dante said as his fingers brushed the back of Aliesha’s hand. “So much so, I almost didn’t want to give her up.”

  Aliesha looked at him. “What did you call her?”

  He withdrew his hand from the doll’s hair. “What? Miz Babygirl? Oh, I didn’t mean any disrespect. It’s sort of like a spin on Miz Professor. Don’t you think she looks a lot like a miniature version of you?”

  Aliesha nodded. “Miz Babygirl. That was the childhood nickname my daddy pinned on me.”

  Dante smiled. “You’re a daddy’s girl, huh? You think your daddy would approve of me?”

  She smiled back at him. “Oh, I know he would. And before I forget . . . ” She retrieved a gift bag from the floor beside the sofa. “I got something for you, too.”

  She watched as his eyes lit up when he reached into the sturdy bag and rescued the thick book from the sheets of decorative tissue paper. “Now, I know this doesn’t fit the profile of the books you normally read,” she said. “Chief Big Foot isn’t exactly an African American icon.”

  “No, but this will make a nice addition,” Dante said as he opened up the book and began thumbing through the pages. “Wasn’t Big Foot the Lakota Indian chief who wiped out Custer and his crew at the Little Big Horn?”

  “Well, actually that was Sitting Bull, who was a shaman, or what we typically call a medicine man. But both Big Foot and Sitting Bull were involved in the Ghost Dance movement.” She reached over, flipped to the book’s picture section, and pointed out the two different men.

  “The Ghost Dance movement?” Dante said. “Wait, I think I saw something about that in a movie once. Wasn’t that sort of a like a religious belief among some Native Americans? Didn’t it have to do with them being reunited with their dead ancestors and their return to the life they led before the Europeans’ arrival?”

  “Very good!” Aliesha said. “You know, sometimes when you read about other cultures and people who on the surface seem nothing like you, it can, if you let it, lend a fair amount
of clarity and insight into your own world.”

  Dante eyes twinkled with amusement. “You just can’t help channeling that inner schoolmarm, can you?”

  She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go all stuffy and academic on you.”

  He laughed. “No, don’t apologize. I don’t mind being one of your students, as long as I get a turn at playing teacher sometimes.”

  She smiled as the lyrics to Al Jarreau’s “Teach Me Tonight” started playing in her head.

  What Aliesha had secretly feared, that her infatuation with Dante was one born of simple lust and nothing more, as Monica kept implying, and that the evening would be filled with awkward moments and uncomfortable stretches of silence, never came to pass.

  She found herself pleasantly surprised by the ease at which Dante held up his end of the conversation even as he wolfed down several large helpings of the meal she’d prepared at his request—fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, green beans, and hot water cornbread, slathered with lots of butter and chased down with one glass after another of her raspberry-flavored ice tea. She could tell he was comfortable when, on seeing her kick off her shoes, he not only followed suit but dispensed with his vest, too.

  After dinner and on consuming an embarrassing portion of the peach cobbler dessert Aliesha had thrown in as a bonus, they’d remained at the table, talking, laughing, and growing closer, even with all of the empty plates, glasses, saucers, and bowls scattered between them.

  “You know, when I called you, I was afraid I might have waited too long,” he said at one point. “I thought maybe you and your old boyfriend might have already patched things up and gotten back together.”

  The loose, happy lines in Aliesha’s face suddenly tightened. “Well, I assure you, there’s little chance of that happening.”

  Dante leaned back in his chair and studied her. “Was he one of the reasons you were so upset when I saw you that night at Nelson’s?”

  She shook her head. “No, what you were unfortunate enough to witness that night was just some silly, work-related drama that got mixed and stirred with one too many martinis and ended up getting blown way out of proportion.”

  He nodded and said, “So why did you and your guy break up? You catch him cheating on you with a White girl or something?”

  After a nervous bit of laughter, Aliesha said, “Given some of what spilled out in my drunken tirade, I can certainly see how you might arrive at that conclusion. But no, he wasn’t cheating on me with any woman—at least, not that I know of. Javiel is a sweet guy. We just weren’t right for one another. I tried to make it work and stayed with him longer than I probably should have, in part because I was tired of being alone and in part because I was hoping he’d help me forget the man I was in love with before he showed up in my life.”

  Dante stared off into space. “I guess now you know it doesn’t work—trying to forget an old love, I mean. You either keep chasing them or else find the strength to relegate them to memory and move on.”

  After several hours at the dining room table, their shared interest in books and music and their mutual reluctance to bringing their evening to a close led them into Aliesha’s den. She found herself biting her lip to keep from laughing out loud at the way Dante’s eyes lit up when he saw the rows and rows of books in the handcrafted cases that lined the walls of the room. The joy and excitement she saw written all over his face was not unlike that of a little fat kid with a sweet tooth who’d just learned that his family had inherited a candy store.

  During a lull that occurred while they browsed the shelves and bobbed their heads to the smooth jazz playing softly in the background, Dante drifted over to the den’s iPod listening dock and sound system. “You mind if I play something for you?” he asked.

  “Sure, what do you have in mind?”

  “The song I owe you.” While replacing her iPod with the one he pulled from his back pocket, he responded to her puzzled expression with, “You remember that time when I got caught outside without my tunes?”

  “Oh, okay,” she said on having her memory jogged.

  “But you have to do something for me,” he said. “First, I want you to sit down here,” he said, pointing to the pillowed spot on the carpeted floor where Aliesha sometimes stretched out and listened to music and/or read when she was alone. “And then, I just want you to close your eyes and listen. You can’t say anything until the song is over. All right?”

  Though still not certain what he was up to, Aliesha agreed. She joined him on the floor, closed her eyes, and listened. The slow and teasing piano and guitar intro eased over her like a warm blanket and helped settled her nervousness about being in such close proximity to Dante. It took her a moment to recognize the soulful, sultry voice as that belonging to jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson. But she immediately identified the lyrics as bits and pieces culled from the Old Testament’s Song of Solomon and reassembled in a manner that was both haunting and mesmerizing. Within seconds Aliesha felt herself being drawn into the tune’s beauty and captivated by its haunting refrain, “Come bare your soul to me.”

  When she opened her eyes at the song’s end, Dante was staring at her. “It’s called ‘The Chosen.’ So, what do you think?” he asked.

  She nodded. “It’s pretty.”

  He stretched out on the floor next to her, wedged a pillow beneath his head, and stared up at the ceiling. “Yes. And?”

  She smiled and stretched her body out beside him. “I’m not sure I know exactly what you’re asking.”

  He drew his focus away from the ceiling and looked at her. “What is it you want from me, Miz Professor?”

  She sighed and picked at the carpet. “You know, the usual, a friend, a confidant. Someone who’s easy to be with, easy to talk to, someone considerate, patient, gentle, and kind. And preferably someone open to seeing and accepting me for the fiercely independent and natural woman that I am.” She grinned and tugged at her hair.

  His face remained serious. “Is that all? Is that all you really want?”

  Her smiled faded and she gazed into his eyes for a few seconds before she said, “Well, right now . . . all I want right now, Dante, is for you to stop asking all of these confusing questions, so you can kiss me.”

  She didn’t have to tell him twice. He rolled toward her, cupped her face, and kissed her with a tender urgency that suggested he’d been longing all night to do so. She felt her heart rate increase, but more from a sense of titillation and excitement than fear. Within seconds she’d abandoned all sense of caution and found herself returning his kisses with the kind of passion she generally reserved for men with whom she’d already shared both her body and her bed. Other than when he moved closer and eased her knee between his thighs, Dante made no attempt to touch or grope or fondle. But there was no mistaking the intensity of his desire.

  Several minutes later, when he finally pulled his lips away from hers, he closed his eyes and rested his head against a pillow. Unable to resist the temptation and still hungry for more, she reached over and touched him, first his lips, then the hairs peeking from the open neck of his shirt, and finally the raised nipples pushing against the fabric stretched across his slightly heaving chest.

  He opened his eyes and stared into hers. “Should we wait?”

  “Probably. But there’s certainly nothing written in stone that says we have to, unless of course that’s what you’d prefer.”

  He looked down at the conspicuous rise in his pants and back at her. “I think, at this point, my preference is pretty obvious.”

  She laughed, then said, “So, did you bring any, you know, protection?”

  He sat up. “Actually, I have an overnight bag out in the car. I wasn’t sure you’d want me to stay, but I figured I’d come prepared, just in case.”

  They both stood up. The sight of him moving away from her as he started toward the door gave rise to a bubble of tension in her chest. “Look, Dante,” she said softly. “If this is only going to be one night, I’m
fine with that. Really, I am. And if it works out and evolves into something more, that’s even better. But that whole friends with benefits thing and being a part of some rotating harem of women, that’s really not for me. Okay?”

  He walked back toward her and reached for her hands. “Now why you wanna go and take it there? Huh? Didn’t I just say I came ready to take care of you? What? You think I’m gonna want to stop after tonight?”

  “I don’t know. Men say a lot of things, most of which they typically don’t mean.”

  “Okay, fair enough. So watch and see what I do. All right?” He kissed her before going outside and retrieving his things.

  Before she went into the bathroom, he asked her not to put on anything beneath her kimono. So, she didn’t and on emerging from the bathroom, she found him naked on the side of her bed. When he stood and turned toward her, even from a distance and in the room’s dim lighting, she realized she’d never been with a man as dark or with a physique as cut and chiseled as Dante’s.

  He smiled and said, “So what you think, Miz Professor? Do I get an A?”

  She allowed her gaze to linger on the growing erection angling toward her before she smiled back and said. “Uh, not only do you get an A+, you just earned a semester’s worth of triple extra-credit points, too.”

  When he held out his hands, she moved toward him and placed the flat of her palms against his. When his mouth descended upon hers, she caressed him and marveled at the firmness she felt beneath the warm, smooth cover of his skin. Aroused and eager to feel the full press of his body against hers, she unfastened the sash of her robe. But before she could unveil her nakedness, he moved his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Not so fast. Turn around for me.”