by Renee LaRuse
I garbled some words of protest and then chewed and swallowed my food.
“Now,” my mother began, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m your mother and I don’t care what the hell you want to hear. I have to tell you what you need to hear. A man his age is using a girl like you. You’re innocent and trusting.”
At that point I snickered inwardly. Innocent and trusting? If only she knew the disgraceful things I said to him and the intrusive questioning I’d put the man through.
“He thinks he can get control of you and possess you because you’re so young. You should ask yourself why he can’t find a woman his own age that wants to be with him.” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Don’t look at me with that tone of voice!”
I smiled at her phrase. “I understand your concern, Mom. You’ve given me something to think about. I just wanted you to know what was going on in my life lately. You know I’m mature, got my head on straight. I’m no floozy. I really feel that Gavin is…good. He respects me and I respect him. We even pinky promised we wouldn’t hold our differences against one another.”
“You pinky promised?” she said contemptuously.
I mentally slapped myself again and again and again. It’s impossible to prove to your parents that you’re a responsible adult because you’ll always be their child. It is especially hard when you mention a pinky promise. “About what you said earlier, Mom, it’s not that he can’t pick on someone his own size. He was in a relationship with a woman for two years and it didn’t work out and he’s been single for a year and a half.”
“I'm not trying to be hurtful but,”
Oh no. I’ve heard those words before.
“Maybe you might be some sort of rebound relationship. Was his last girlfriend white?”
I nodded solemnly.
“It’s like ‘stickin’ it to The Man’ but he’s ‘stickin’ it to The Woman’. He’s going out with someone younger and with someone of a different race. How can she compete with that? It’s the perfect way to get her riled up.”
“But…he broke up with her. He doesn’t want her back.”
My mother shrugged her shoulders and took a bite of her scrambled eggs. “Doesn’t matter. Love doesn’t disappear; it just gets pushed down and away. I know what I’m talking about after dealing with your father leaving us.” Seeing the look on my face she softened her approach. “Sweetie, I just want you to be careful. It’s rough out there. You don’t need a guy right now messing with your mind. Concentrate on getting into med school and being able to buy what you need and want without having to scrimp and save like I’ve had to. Thank God you have a good job at Dennison’s and scholarships from school so I don’t have to worry about you’re next meal anymore.”
I smiled sadly at her. “Love you,” I said.
“Love you, too."
I quietly finished my cereal, grabbed my book bag and got in my car to head to school. I don't think I heard a word my professor said that Friday morning.
Friday night at work I couldn't focus. I forgot to actually bag a customer's food. I just swiped the items and gave her the total. The customer pointed out that I hadn't bagged her items, speaking to me as if I were retarded. Usually I would have said something back, but my mind was too preoccupied to think of a clever defamation. I was so distracted because I needed to talk to Gavin. I needed to talk to him so he could answer all the questions. I knew my mom was wrong. She had to be.
My prayers were answered when I saw Gavin walk through the automatic doors of the grocery store. He waved at me, smiling, and grabbed a cart to do his shopping. As he pushed his cart toward the aisles he turned his head to look at me. He mouthed ‘Are you okay?’ I nodded. He didn’t seem assured by my response but he went on with his shopping. Twenty minutes later when he came to my checkout counter he had a different expression on his face, kind of like he had a good joke he was anxious to tell. He looked so gorgeous. He was still wearing his work attire; a light grey dress shirt with maroon pin stripes, a black belt, and grey dress pants. “Hey,” I said with a small smile.
“I want to kiss you, ya know?” He said in a hushed voice. “I’d lean over the counter, but I don’t want you to get fired.” I mustered up a weak smile and continued swiping items over the scanner. As I swiped the frozen pizza Gavin reached over the counter and grasped my wrist. I flinched, my eyes glued on his hand, the olive skin of his hand contrast against my brown skin. The frozen pizza box dropped from my hand and Gavin interlocked his fingers with mine. “Sydney?” I looked up at him. “Why are you…What’s wrong?”
“I…I need to talk to you.”
“Okay. I’m all ears.”
“No, not here. Maybe…Could I come over? Tomorrow?”
Gavin nodded and let go of my hand. I took a deep breath and finished scanning. “You’re total is $28.54.” Gavin dug into his pocket to get his wallet. I opened my hand for the money and instead received pearly white sand dollars. Four pristine discs, smooth and light weight, as well as perfectly round and intact. A big smile spread across my lips. Where did he get these? Did he keep looking on the beach after I’d left?
“There was a gift shop on the beach about three hundred feet away from where we were sitting.”
“I don’t remember seeing a gift shop.”
“Yeah, I didn’t see it at first either. I guess we were both distracted.” He grinned and I grinned back. He paid for his groceries and we agreed on a time that I could stop by on Saturday. “I’ll see ya, Sydney.”
* * *
As soon as he answered the door, wearing a blue t-shirt and white and blue basketball shorts, he cupped my face between his hands and planted a kiss on me so delicious and so euphoric that my eyes couldn’t focus for a while. “You look great,” Gavin said after we both caught our breaths. I was only wearing a green tank top, jean Bermuda shorts and some flip flops so I’m not sure what was so great about that. I found my way to the couch in the living room and when I could once again see straight I noticed the layout of his apartment.
The living room and kitchen were open and flowed together and were flanked by a hall way on each side. The kitchen had gray granite countertops, wood cabinets, and stainless steel appliances. A glass table with an antique iron stand sat in the middle. The living room had chocolate brown leather couches sitting away from the eggshell walls of the hardwood floored room. Two tall bronze lamps with white glass shades stood on each side of the wall in front of the couch where a plasma TV hung above a decorative non-functioning fireplace. Everything was very mature and clean. I didn’t even see an errant pen on a table or a bit of mail on the counter. It was straight out of a catalog. I didn’t like it.
“You should see my room,” Gavin suggested. He led me to the hall on the left, past the kitchen and towards a door on the right of the hallway. His bedroom was crisp with its cream walls and fresh white bedding on his king sized bed. The bed head and head board was a bold black leather. I stood in the doorway and observed the room. I didn’t want to sit on his bed and have him think that was some sort of invitation. On the mahogany night tables stood white marble figurines of the Greco-Roman gods Dionysus and Apollo. Gavin noticed me looking at the sculptures and said, "Dionysus is the god of merriment. I bought that five years ago and it kind of symbolizes my old party hardy life. I bought Apollo a couple months ago. He's the god of light. An expert archer and prophesier he could only speak the truth. That is a symbol of the way I’m trying to live my life now; being truthful to myself and my needs in life.”
“Nice,” I commented. “What are those?” I asked pointing to the six small pillows that sat in front of the two bed pillows.
“Those are just for decoration,” he smiled. I had to stop myself from flat out laughing. Hadn’t I predicted this exactly? Actually, the decorative pillows didn’t look bad at all. In fact, I wouldn’t mind them if, say, we moved in together some day far into the future.
“Can we go back into the living room and talk?”
“Yeah,” Gavin said reluctantly. He knew I wanted to have a serious talk with him. That kiss he gave me earlier was probably to throw me off course.
We went back into the living room and we sat on the soft couches. I wondered to myself if I blended into the brown couch. All of a sudden something jumped on me. I slapped a hand over my mouth so I wouldn't scream and provoke the animal to jump up and claw my face.
"Belle likes you," Gavin grinned, "She wants to say hi." Once I got a look at Belle’s sweet face I relaxed, realizing she meant no harm. Then she jumped over to Gavin for some attention and then hopped off the couch and walked off to somewhere else in the apartment.
“Okay, first question,” I started, “Did you clean up a bit before I got here?”
“Yeah, I was trying to make a good impression,” he smiled.
“Good. I was thinking you were a bit obsessive compulsive for a minute there.” I gave him a weak smile. I knew I needed to talk to him about all the questions I had, but all I saw was innocence in his soft green eyes. I was conflicted. Elizabeth was encouraging me, practically pushing me, to be in a relationship with Gavin. My mother believed he was using me as a rebound. Elizabeth had a fairytale idea about me and Gavin. She married her high school sweetheart so she’s very much a romantic. My mother is a woman scorned; very pessimistic about relationships. I was being pulled in two extreme directions. I needed something in the middle. I should be trusting and yet cautious. I hate these games.
“Sydney,” Gavin interrupted my thoughts. “You’ve been kind of distant lately. Um…I keep thinking you’re about to break up with me or something,” he laughed nervously. Oh, look what I’m putting him through! He thinks I’m going to break up with him. Wait, so we’re officially going out?
“We’re going out? Like, boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I thought we could be if…you wanted to…still.”
“Yes,” I smiled, “I want that.” I was rewarded with a big hug from Gavin. While we hugged I told him, “I’m sorry I’ve been acting weird lately. This is my first real relationship, you know? So I have a lot of things on my mind. And now we’re officially together. I don’t know what to expect.”
“Believe it or not, I’m scared too.”
“I didn’t say I was scared, per se.”
Gavin laughed and pulled away from the hug. He ran a hand through his dark hair. He’s so sexy when he does that!
“Gavin? I think that we should have…the sex talk.”
“I know. When a man and woman love each other verrrrry much—Ah!”
I’d poked him in his side with my pointer finger. He smiled at me. “Now I know where you’re ticklish so pay attention, mister!” I warned. Gavin nodded. “So, in all seriousness,” I looked down at my hands that were now folded in my lap, “When I was in high school I made a promise to myself that I would save myself for the guy that would be my husband. And…I’ve had plenty of time to go back on that commitment but I haven’t because I’ve seen that it’s the only way I know how to find the right person. It’s the only way I could possibly live my life with someone else; if I know that they love me enough, that they respect me enough, to wait. To wait for me.”
I looked up at him. At first I thought he looked angry because his eyebrows were a little furrowed, but he was staring at me with this pensive look. He shook his head from side to side. And then he kissed me, not a hungry kiss like before. It was so tender, the way he softly grazed his lips across mine. He pulled away and whispered, “How could I not?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Me, when I was a couple months old. Rockin’ the onesie and the booties.”
“Awww. Baby Gavin!”
“This is a picture of me when I was five with my Mom and Dad.”
“Oh my gosh, you have a mullet!”
“I prefer to call it a shlong, thank you.”
“Hahahaha! A what?”
“Short in the front, long in the back: shlong. It was the eighties. This is me when I was…twelve, I think. I know I was in middle school because this was the Christmas Concert. I played the trumpet.”
“Cool! I played trumpet too.”
“Really? Wow. See the girl sitting beside me at the concert? I had a huge crush on her.” I studied the angelic face of the little white girl with curly auburn locks and dimples in each cheek. “I guess I’ll always be a sucker for female trumpeters.”
“Let’s see some embarrassing high school pictures already!”
“Let’s see. Here’s one.”
“What the hell? This isn’t embarrassing, you look great! And you have that little mole above your lip. And your hair was so much longer.”
“Yeah. Here’s me on the track team.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. You just look really good in this picture, kind of sweaty with some of your hair stuck to your forehead. And those short shorts…”
“Um, I still jog some mornings.” I winked at him in reply. He cleared his throat and continued flipping through pictures. “Here’s me being a beach bum with some of my high school friends.” He was sitting in the sand with just board shorts on. He was very well tanned and his chest and abs were very well defined. I wondered if he still looked like that underneath the t-shirt he was wearing. I know he isn’t as tan. In the photo he was surrounded by a bunch of other long haired, well tanned beach pals. Then he turned to some prom pictures.
“Me and my prom date and my high school crew.” Gavin was in a black tux, looking handsome as usual, his date was in a hot pink halter prom dress and had her blonde curls piled on top of her hair in some sort of styling. She was quite thin. I couldn’t help but notice that all of his friends in the picture looked like the type of people I wouldn’t have liked to hang out with when I was in high school. How could I get along with his friends if he was still friends with these people? Maybe I’m just being stereotypical for thinking that just because their jocks their not cool people, but…I don’t know.
“Okay, now let’s move on to the college days. Here is me and my best friend Jay. We met when we were assigned to be each other’s roommate my first year. We hit it off and we’ve been friends ever since.” In the picture he and Jay seemed to be at a home football game in the bleachers. They were being silly, posing like they were hood, trying to look hard but not really succeeding. Jay is black. Well, mixed anyways. I felt a bit of a weight off of my shoulders. His best friend was mixed so perhaps Jay and I would get along. Or not, who knows. Gavin scanned through some other pictures of him and Jay. And then he came to a picture of he and a brunette woman dancing together very close. The weight that was taken off my shoulders was then transferred onto my chest. “How’d this get in here? I thought I’d gotten rid of all of these,” Gavin said in a strangely reserved manner.
“Is that…?”
“Elise.”
He sure looked happy with Elise. She was wearing a white tank top and a red and orange sarong around her waist. She was very leggy and had a large chest. Larger than mine anyways. It looked like they were at some Hawaiian themed bar, dancing and smiling. Gavin had one hand at her back and one at her neck, his fingers buried in her long brown hair. Their faces were inches away from one another. I started to feel nauseous.
It really hit me that he’d gone out with only white women before me. And he was only with me after some life altering bout of depression. Did he think that I was all he could get now that his spirit had been broken? Was being with me some subconscious decision to abandon the idea of the perfect same-race relationship he had once sought? My mind was reeling.
“Looking at this, I don’t know what I ever saw in her. I think it was probably something very stupid and superficial about me which led me to her.”
“Are you going to rip it up already?” I said with a tinge of attitude.
Gavin looked at me and then back at the picture. He pulled it out of its sleeve and ripped it into eight little rectangular pieces. My mood
changed for the better when he got up and ceremoniously threw it at the fake fireplace. We both chuckled. The weight was lifted off again.
* * *
Gavin and I walked slowly into the dining room holding hands. “Good afternoon, Ms. Lenton. Nice to finally meet you. You have an amazing daughter,” Gavin smiled. Ms. Lenton rose from her seat at the dining room table and I watched as her hands rose to strangle him. I instinctively jumped in front of Gavin. "Nooo!" My mother gave me an annoyed look.
“Girl, move so I can give the man a hug!”
“A hug? Oh, a hug is fine. Heh, no problem,” I inched away. I watched as my mom and my boyfriend hugged each other and sat around the table getting acquainted. They talked about work and 401(k)’s and backaches. Not once was my name mentioned. I guess that means the two grown-ups were getting along well. After half an hour listening to them talk I felt that they were getting along too well. Then I realized for the first time that my mom is only nine years older than him. It creeped me out so much that for the first time in thirty minutes Gavin and my mother took notice of me.
“Sydney, are you okay?” Gavin asked. “Why did you make that little squeak sound?”
“Oh, that’s Sydney’s mouse squeak. She does that sometimes when she’s nervous or scared or shocked. Just give her some time to recover and she’ll be fine, dear.”
Gavin looked worriedly at me. I nodded at him to let him know I was alright and then he went back to talking with my mother. I was mad that I humiliated myself twice in an hour. First I lunged in front of Gavin like a maniac and then I did that stupid mouse squeak thing that I do unconsciously. At some point I got up from the table and wandered around the house and into my room. I sat in my comfy red chair and tried not to think about Gavin’s age. I promised I wouldn’t hold that against him. He’s only trying to relate to my mom and make a good impression. He’s not that serious when we’re together. I should be happy he and my mom get along. There was a soft knock at my door followed by Gavin stepping into my room.