by Twyla Turner
Her statuesque body made men fall at her feet. She was five-foot-ten with small breasts and a slender waist that curved down to the most unbelievably glorious hips, ass, and thighs people have ever seen in real life. She had to get her clothes tailored because of her lovely shape. She was a size 9 in her waist and above, but down below, she was a firm size 14. Her curves were dangerous and men sought her out like their next thrill seeking adventure. And she ate them up and spit them out like a praying mantis decapitates her mate.
Mia was and had always been, no nonsense. She was an interior designer and kept most of her clients in line out of fear of her disapproval. She treated most men like disposable objects to use at her whim. But she was fiercely loyal to her small circle of friends and she had a big heart that most outside of her circle didn’t know about.
Payton, even grown, was the beautiful yet shy and awkward, computer nerd. Under Kennedy, Mia, and Royal’s expert tutelage, Payton became a not quite so introverted geeky chic girl, now woman.
Her skin was of the deepest mahogany. Her shapely, Cupid’s bow lips were just as dark. Payton had stunningly large, dark brown eyes with enviable long lashes. All behind stylish, black horn-rimmed glasses. Her hair was straight and landed just past her shoulders. After much debate and fighting the three others had convinced, or coerced her into getting bangs. They now framed her adorable face.
Payton was five-seven and evenly proportioned all over. At a voluptuous size 16, plus her gorgeous face, she could have easily been a plus-size model. But her shy, clumsy nature kept her firmly behind a computer in Silicon Valley. One of the very few black female Web Developers/Designers that were even let into the almost exclusive, practically all male, club-like atmosphere.
Payton strode over to her group of best friends and a procession of hugs began as she greeted each of them. Kennedy was in her romantic bohemian style as usual. Mia had on a long, yellow sundress that hugged every curve of her body like she often wore when she wasn’t around her clients. Always on the lookout for her next masculine victim. Royal wore black skinny jeans with silver studded black combat boots, an off-the-shoulder white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket. And Payton was in jeans and a vintage Star Wars t-shirt. She had almost put her hair up in Princess Leia buns, but decided against it at the last minute, thinking, ‘What would MRK do?’ Translation: ‘What would Mia, Royal, and Kennedy do?’ They had taught her that trick many years ago and it helped when she was in situations that made her feel uncomfortable or awkward, or when she was about to make a fashion faux pas.
“So, anything new since last Saturday?” Royal asked the group as a whole as Payton plopped down in her seat.
They answered in unison, “Work.”
“Seriously, girls? That’s it?” Royal asked doubtfully.
“I have one scene left in my newest story,” Kennedy added. The sun broke through the San Francisco fog to set her hair on fire as it blew softly in the breeze. “My newest book boyfriend, Jake, is so smokin’ hot.” She finished with a wistful sigh.
“That’s still work, Ken. Did you do anything else? Meet anyone from the online dating site you joined?” Royal coaxed.
“I write for a living. I didn’t even leave my house. Hell, you better be happy I showered today, considering I was so deep into my story that I’ve been forgetting some days.” Kennedy took a sip of her wine and looked directly at Royal with zero shame.
Kennedy did have a tendency not to leave her house for long stretches when she was deep into a new story. Sometimes they had to go check on her to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to eat. And to make her brush her teeth. She often forgot the world existed when she was creating her own.
“Well, what about you, Mia?” Royal turned to the Latina stunner. “No boy toys over the past week?” She asked expectantly. Mia usually had some juicy stories that had them at the edge of their seats.
“Not this week.” Mia blew out a harsh breath. “I’ve been working with three different clients and they’re running me ragged. So damn demanding and spoiled that it takes everything in me not to choke them out. So I’m too tired and emotionally drained to even think about a man.” Mia finished with a shake of her head.
Royal looked over to Payton and she immediately answered before she could get out the question. “Don’t even ask. Statistically speaking, the majority of the males I’m around are more inclined to seek the company of a sexy Cosplayer. Someone whose body is similar in dimensions to…let’s say, Princess Leia in the golden bikini. Not someone who is built more like Jabba the Hutt.” Payton announced in her uber intelligent, lecturing professor voice.
Royal threw her napkin at their awkward friend. Payton lacking in the hand-eye coordination department missed catching the folded cloth square and it hit her in the face.
“Oh stop that! You do not look like Jabba the Hutt!” Royal scolded her. “You’re gorgeous and you know it. Don’t put yourself down just because you’re around a bunch of nerdy douchebags that have fantasies of fucking cartoon characters. Trust me, I’ve seen some of that hentai shit and know they have crushes on those Japanese animated characters.” Royal said indignantly.
“Didn’t you have a crush on John Smith from Pocahontas?” Mia piped in.
“Hush up, Mia.” Royal grinned, before defending herself. “I’ll admit, he is a damn fine cartoon character. But that’s beside the point. I didn’t want to have sex with him. These dudes beat their meat to those cartoons.”
“Well, what about you?” Kennedy spoke up. “You keep asking us what’s going on in our lives. That’s obviously code for ‘I’m dying to tell you guys what happened to me this week.’” She cocked her head to the side, waiting.
“Uh… Nothing special, really. Devon stayed the night last night.” Royal admitted with a shrug.
“Seriously?! Your editor?!” Kennedy exclaimed.
“Yeah.” Royal smiled slightly.
“And…” Mia trailed off.
“And, what?” She stalled.
“And, how did it go?” Kennedy completed the sentence.
“It was okay.”
“Dios Mio! Don’t tell me that mutherfucker left you hanging?! And after you’ve waited so long to get with him.” Mia asked angrily. She had a tendency to curse like a sailor when she wasn’t around her clients. “I know the look of an unsatisfied woman. Believe me, her reflection stared back at me for ten years.”
“Calm down there, Sex Nazi.” Royal held her hands up, palms out to try and stop Mia from busting a blood vessel. “I think he might have had performance anxiety last night. And this morning he was just in a rush to meet his friends for golf.” The excuses sounded all kinds of lame, even to Payton’s inexperienced ears.
“That’s still no excuse. You’ve been flirting with each other for months. On the first night you sleep together, he should be making sure you can’t even walk the next day. Yet here you are, in perfect physical condition. You don’t even look tired.” Mia gestured to Royal’s body, then turned to Payton for a valuable teaching moment. “When you’ve had some good pipe laid, you will look like a damn wildebeest when he’s done with you. Hair all over your head, makeup smeared, sweaty, eyelids droopy, lips swollen…both sets, and sore all over. Polite sex is terrible sex. Remember that.”
“How do you know he wasn’t any good? Maybe I’m just good at fixing myself up to look presentable the next day.” Royal tried to defend herself.
Mia lifted one perfect eyebrow and paused for a few beats, letting Royal sweat a bit before she continued. “If he put it on you good, you’d at least have a satisfied gleam in your eye. Your eyes look as lackluster with disappointment as they did last week when you were still waiting for that asshole to make a move. You’re surrounded by beautiful men every damn day. So why do you even want this jackhole?” Mia shook her head in disappointment.
“Oh yeah, I’m surrounded by beautiful men alright. Men that don’t look twice at me unless I’m behind the camera that they have to look at to get a good sh
ot. Models are not interested in me. They’re interested in other models, actresses, or singers. Besides, some of them are either so wrapped up in their reflection they don’t have time to notice anyone else. Or dumb. Or gay.” Royal crossed her arms over her chest protectively, sending the silent signal that the discussion was officially closed.
“Come on, Royal,” Kennedy said sympathetically. “You so deserve better than a guy that doesn’t care if you get yours before running off to play golf with his buddies.”
Payton nodded, “She’s right, you know. You have a much higher probability of finding a decent man to date if you stop expending so much energy on one that doesn’t expend as much energy on you.” Payton finished. She had the strangest ways of saying the most profound things.
“Thanks, Spock,” Royal said to Payton and she smiled happily at the comparison. “Look. I know he seems like an asshole. But we really do have some kickass moments. I know he has more feelings than he’s letting on. And maybe he’s keeping me at arm’s length because of work. It is kinda frowned upon for editors and other staff to be dating. People think there would be preferential treatment. Maybe he’s waiting for me to start my photography business,” she tried to reason.
“That’s two too many ‘maybes,’ Royal.” Mia gave her a look like she would one of her more difficult clients.
“You know what? None of you really have any room to lecture me.” She began, letting the harsh truth spill over and out. “At least I’m trying. Kennedy, you’re so wrapped up in writing your fairytales that you don’t even know what reality is anymore. And you judge every man you meet by the book boyfriends you’ve made up in your head. Those men don’t exist and if they did, you probably wouldn’t want him anyway.” Kennedy blinked in shock, while Royal moved on to Mia.
“You are still so angry about your failed marriage that you act like men are playthings that you can dispose of whenever you want to. Like they don’t have feelings or don’t matter. I know some guys are dicks, but you’ve bypassed some pretty rad guys because you’re so afraid of getting hurt again.” Mia ground her teeth together in anger but remained quiet.
Royal then looked at Payton and her eyes widened a bit in trepidation behind her large glasses. But Royal softened her voice just a bit for their socially awkward friend. “And you, I know, have a hard time talking to guys. Especially, after what happened back in college. But you’d also have a higher probability of finding someone to date if you tried a little harder instead of hiding behind your computer or the next sci-fi novel or reruns of Star Trek.” Payton nodded in sad agreement at her friend’s summation of her love life.
Royal sighed and looked at each one of them before continuing. “I love every single one of you like you guys are my sisters. I know I might make stupid decisions, but then again we all do. Just in our own quirky ways. So just get off my case. Alright?”
They nodded their heads reluctantly.
“What are we supposed to do, though?” Kennedy asked sadly. “We’re all about to turn thirty this year and we’re all still single. Plus, it’s so hard for black women when it comes to love. None of us are interested in thugs, but most of the black guys with any sense or class aren’t interested in dating us anymore. And guys of other races, either stick with their own or are too afraid to date or marry a black woman. We can’t catch a break to save our lives.” She admitted, taking a moment to step out of her fantasy world and acknowledged the plight many of them faced throughout the country. “What are we supposed to do, remain alone?”
“Don’t even think about it, Payton.” Mia blurted out just as Payton opened her mouth to say something. “I don’t want to know about whatever shitty statistic you’re about to educate us about. And you wonder why I don’t want to get close to any of these worthless ass clowns. Better to do the dumping than to get dumped.”
“Dude, that’s a horrible way to think about it. You can’t go around hurting people because you don’t wanna get hurt.” Royal scolded.
“Wanna bet?!” Mia sipped her rum and coke. “Besides, they don’t get hurt. They get laid. There’s a difference. If any of the men I’ve been with since my divorce say that they love me, they are full of shit. I don’t even let them get close enough to know me, let alone love me. So if they’re in love, they’re in love with the idea of me, not actually me.”
“She does have a point.” Payton agreed. “In order for someone to feel a true emotional connection with someone else, one must spend a considerable amount of time around that person. Outside of sex, Mia is only around a man long enough to take her panties off and then pull them back on again.”
Kennedy and Royal, nearly spit out their drinks at Payton’s joke. Mia just scowled. Payton had many moments of hilarity. Made funnier by the fact that she didn’t even realize just how funny she could be.
“I hate you bitches.” Mia pouted.
The three of them burst out in a fit of giggles as the wait staff brought out their food and Mia continued to scowl at them. Once the staff left, Kennedy leaned in to say something, her face serious.
“Let’s make a pact today. A pact that we’ll try to remain open to new possibilities. We’ll stay open-minded about men we may have never considered before. To open our eyes to love.” She looked at each one of them and held her hand out in the middle of the table. “You in?”
They all looked at her and then each other for a moment.
“I’m in.”
“I’m down.”
“In.”
They each put a hand in the middle of the table. One on top of the other. Payton placed her hand on the very top.
“On three. All for one. And one for love.” Kennedy grinned. “One...two…”
“All for one. And one for love!”
Chapter Two
Over the next few days, Payton thought about the conversation they’d had over lunch. She knew it really was time to get over her aversion to men. Logically, Payton knew that not all men were asshole rapists. But emotionally, she still had moments where she was truly terrified of being near a man.
Throughout the rest of college, she couldn’t even be alone in the same room as a man without having a panic attack. Working mainly with men, day in and day out helped to make her more comfortable around them. It helped that the majority of them weren’t huge, hulking guys. Big, muscular men used to make her swoon, but now they just sent Payton into a full-blown anxiety attack. She couldn’t even watch football without getting the shakes. She despised the sport.
Payton would never forget the look on Brett’s face when he was convicted of sexual assault and was being cuffed in the courtroom. He’d looked at her with the deepest hatred she’d ever seen. Pure evil was in his eyes and it sent a shiver through her soul.
After she’d pressed charges and he’d been arrested, the story made it to the news, since he was such a rising star. Then other girls started coming forward because of Payton’s bravery. Little did they know, she was only brave because of the three women that stood by her side through it all.
In the end, he’d gotten only five years in jail. But he’d lost everything. His friends, his college career and his pro-ball career. It was little consolation, considering the emotional wreckage he left behind. Especially, for those young women that weren’t as lucky as Payton to get away from him.
Payton knew it was time to let go of the past and move forward. But she had no idea how. She wasn’t sure how to go from avoiding any and all contact with men on a social level one day, to suddenly trying to find one to date the next.
She figured it was her best bet to start where she was familiar. Work. She felt relatively safe there. And she knew the men she worked with. You thought you knew Brett too. The negative side of her brain taunted her.
Payton scrunched up her face, pushed up her glasses, and tried again, ignoring her sub-conscious. She glanced around the long table filled with her co-workers at their company, By Design. They were in the middle of their weekly, Monday morning meeting. The m
ajority of the table was filled with guys, so she had a ton of options. Average. Tall and lanky. Short and round. Short and fit. Glasses. No glasses. Hipster. Cosplayer. Gamer. The nerdy options were practically limitless.
“So we all know that Comic-Con is coming in a few months.” Her boss Tim started in on the next order of business. There were fist bumps and excited murmurs throughout the group at the mention of their beloved convention. “We have to come up with new strategies to wrangle in new clients.”
Tim tried to turn on the projector to start his presentation. But just like every Monday, the machine decided it didn’t want to cooperate. The ironic part was that it happened all the time, in a room full of computer geniuses. It was almost comical how everyone took turns trying to fix the infernal thing.
As a few scrambled to fix it, Payton observed the guys in her department. Web design. Mostly made up of super smart and computer savvy people, with a flair for art. Much like her. Though she had plenty in common with them, Payton didn’t get that giddy feeling like the girls talked about. She hoped that it was just because she was so hesitant to date anyone. She did find a few of them pretty cute and non-threatening.
The two in particular that she was most interested in, were sitting across from her and deep in discussion about the next Comic-Con. Zach and Ben. Zach was kinda tall and slender, with adorable unruly blond curls and stylish glasses. And Ben was soft and cuddly like a teddy bear and a total hipster, trying so hard to be cooler than what he was. Payton knew the same could be said for her. The girls definitely gave her extra cool points, helping her bring out her own geeky chic style.
“Man, I can’t wait to see some of the girls!” Ben said with barely contained anticipation. “I swear, Comic-Con was the best creation ever for helping comic book nerds get laid across the country. And by hot chicks too!”