by Love Belvin
“I wouldn’t call it ministry,” she tried.
“Well, of course it is,” I scoffed. “You’re doing it with the First Lady of your church. It may not fit the mode of a traditional auxiliary, but it’s moral work and not to mention it can usher in women in need of the gospel. The way I see it is any opportunity to introduce souls to Christ is core ministry.” I stuff my mouth with pancakes this time… good pancakes with maple syrup.
Still, I could hear a pen drop at the table over my chomping. Just when I was beginning to think I’d gone overboard, Rayna asked, “Are you a woman of faith…” She tried recalling my name, successfully. “Elle?”
My eyes went wild and I quickly and involuntarily swallowed the contents of my mouth. Immediately, Jackson croaked a chuckle. I could kick him!
“I’m familiar with the difference between the act and the lifestyle of worship.”
Surprised by my response, Rayna recoiled, “Oh!—”
“Mrs. J, it’s time to roll if we want to take off on time,” a thick baritone cut in.
I peered up to find Azmir Jacobs. My god, this was a mighty fine man.
“I’m sorry,” he retracted when he noticed me. “I didn’t realize our party grew while I was on a call.”
He stood next to the table with his head cocked to the side, regarding me expectantly.
Pull your damn thoughts together and speak. I’d never been the type to get star struck, especially in my current role, but this was the man I’d prayed would employ me. Past his devastating stark handsome features, he was a modern day genius in the industry with his hands in many facets of business.
My timid eyes danced over to Rayna, urging her to take the lead. She supplied a knowing chuckle.
“Jacobs, this is Jax’s “colleague”—she used air quotations—“who has come to offer up a few pitches for the L.I.P. organization.”
“L.I.P.?” I questioned.
“Yes,” she beamed proudly. “The mission you spoke of is called Love’s Improbable Possibility. Azmir has been instrumental in encouraging me to move forward with it.”
“Oh,” I was stammered by that missed significant fact.
Azmir Jacobs chuckled, picking up my discomfit as he extended his hand. “Azmir Jacobs.”
“Elle Jarreau.” I executed with matching confidence and returned his megawatt smile.
“Jax,” he called over me without removing his speculative gaze. Azmir Jacobs was not checking me out, he was feeling me out. I guess my abrupt appearance would cause that. “A moment before we bounce.” I caught his Brooklyn tongue, a huge contrast to his formal presentation from moments ago.
Jackson left the table and the two men went into the corner, but remained in the back of the restaurant. I paid a moment to Jackson’s lean figure next to Azmir Jacobs’. He was a few inches shorter, but just as lean and wonderfully poised with that youthful athletic slant in his back that I knew was there through his jacket. Ironically, both men were wearing sweat suits. Jackson’s was crush velvet and dark gray. Azmir’s was heather gray cotton. Both oversized, displaying simple elegance and unyielding virility. I had no idea of Azmir, but I did know what that slope in Jackson’s spine and broad shoulders could drive me to do. That was the reason I was there after all. I wanted more of him.
“You know, I made an impromptu visit on a man I was sleeping with once, too.”
Rayna’s quieted voice snatched my attention. My head whipped to face her. Her eyes were preoccupied with something I couldn’t identify. After a moment I was able to gain a hold of myself and picked up the fork, fighting to remain placid.
“Oh, yeah?” I chewed. “What brought about the imposition?”
She shrugged as she sorted out the table, placing her personal items in her oversized Chanel bag and tossed used napkins in the discarded plates.
“He was meeting with someone I didn’t trust,” she murmured and when she was done her eyes rose to mine with arched brows.
If she was inferring that my reason for crashing this meal was because I held an ounce of jealousy, she was sorely mistaken. I didn’t lay claim to Jackson… that and neither did I care to. I was simply curious about the depth of his relationship with the Jacobs’ seeing that it drug him from my bed at an ungodly weekend hour.
“No trust. Interesting,” I hummed. “Bet that didn’t get you far. Whatever happened?” I tossed cold eggs into my mouth at a speed and facial expression that communicated boredom.
“Ready, Rayna?” Azmir called for his wife to my relief.
Thank God!
Something about this tête-ê-tête had me feeling queasy.
Rayna rose from the table and shuffled her coat on.
“I married him.”
My jaw collapsed and I froze in my seat. I didn’t realize she’d rounded the table when she spoke at a higher volume, “Looking forward to learning more about you, Elle. Take care of my brother here!” she chirped for good measure.
I nodded my goodbye, still stuck on her implication.
Seconds later, Jackson took his seat next to me. His fresh scent permeating my nostrils. My eyes remained on the empty plate in front of me.
He took a long breath. “I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, feeling my anger from earlier this morning return. “And I didn’t wake up expecting to see you fleeing from my bed.”
I peered over to him. Jackson snorted. Staring off, out of the window at nothing in particular, he licked his lips. “Elle, I read between the lines last night. I knew you needed a break.”
“Jackson, you don’t know what I need.” I grated. “And I think I’m old enough to tell you when and if I do.”
“You did, Elle.” That’s when he met me with his eyes. “You absolutely told me what you needed. What you needed was space because things were getting too thick for you.”
“Too thick for me?” I asked affronted. “I wouldn’t have invited you in this morning if things were getting too thick for me.”
“I don’t believe that’s true.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t expecting to be heavily anticipated when I came. It wasn’t decided that I’d show at your door.”
Seething, I countered, “So, why did you?”
Jackson straightened in his chair, getting in my face. “Because I wanted to be with you and I don’t have a problem acting on it without pretense when I do. The question is, what do you want? Why are you abruptly imposing on breakfast with my friends and me?” He widened and then smacked his hands together. “What can I do to help you?”
“I want to finish what we started this morning when you abruptly imposed at my door.” I took a deep breath to fortify myself. If truth was what he wanted, I’d give it to him. “I wanted to actually have breakfast with you. I wanted you to serve it to me in bed. I feel like you still owe me that.”
“Clearly, we just had breakfast—no, correction: you just had my breakfast.”
“Well, it’ll be lunch time soon,” I quickly returned.
“Elle.” He softly heeded.
I sighed, needing another moment to collect myself. I rolled my eyes, frustrated from not being able to express myself fluidly. Things got quiet for a while. Then I was slapped with a revelation.
“She cares about you,” I noted quietly.
He snorted softly. “Yeah. I think I said that this morning.”
“Yeah, but now I see it’s a nurturing kind of love. A familial type of love.”
He shifted in his seat, not affirming my theory.
“How long have you known her?”
“About two years now.”
“Wow. And that quickly she’s grown that protective of you?”
He chuckled lowly. “Yeah. I tend to have that effect on some people, just not you.”
I blew air from my pursed lips. I could have gone the jealousy accusatory route for a rebuttal, but that wouldn’t have worked. Rayna Jacobs was, in fact, not inappropriately interested in Jackson. She just cared a hell
of a lot about him as someone should. Not even his own mother looked out for him.
I noted, “You never told her anything about me.”
“No. Why would I? This isn’t a fairy tale. This is just sex. Right, Elle?” Call me crazy, but I sensed a bit of mockery in that claim.
That seared me. But no matter how much my heart screamed, “Wrong! It’s much more than that!” my mouth couldn’t corroborate it.
“Right.” I nodded with deficient confidence. “It’s just sex.”
He exhaled a long breath. “Well, that’s funny to me because Just Sex doesn’t show up uninvited after I just gave Just Sex just sex a few hours ago. Especially not in the rain.” He stretched, extending his arms and legs in the chair. “But she knows.”
“She knows?” I parroted.
“She knows you’re my lover. She knows you’re the woman whose bed I’m claiming on a regular basis and exclusively.”
With incredulity I asked, “How could she know if you’ve never told her? Especially given your track record with older women.”
“You are an older woman, Elle.”
“Not your type of older woman. I still have a monthly period.”
He snorted his humor.
“So, how does she know?”
“Because you don’t know Rayna Jacobs. She’s very perceptive. And for some reason when it comes to me, she’s particularly keen.” He cast his eyes out the window again. “But anyway, you can tell two people are lovers, especially when there’s more.”
Things got quiet again. I didn’t want to correct him and blow my chance at having him again today.
“You’re wrong.”
He faced me again, eyelids heavy, reminding me of his late hours from his birthday. “Wrong about what?”
“Just Sex isn’t satisfied although you just sexed Just Sex. Because of the rain, Just Sex wants you back in her bed for more just sex.”
I rose from the table, starting for the head of the restaurant to leave, being sure to employ my strut.
Jackson called after me. “I have to go home and tend to Bella. I haven’t been around for the past few days.”
It seemed his undertone was referencing his time with me lately.
I tossed him a glance over my shoulder. “Then it looks like we’ll be meeting at Trump World Tower instead of Harlem for just sex then.”
sixteen
Tick-tock… Tick-tock… Tick-tock…
“…and this meeting is adjourned,” Jackson announced to the table.
My eyes collapsed as I let out a loaded breath it seemed I’d been holding for the duration of the meeting. I pushed back, rolling myself from the table, trying to figure out how I was going to make it through my day. Jamie and Tim immediately approached Jackson with post-meeting bits I’d supposed and I began my trek out of the conference room.
It was hard to explain my mood, yet easy to pinpoint the many factors contributing to it. I was exhausted after a long night with my young gingered lover who made me eat my words of wanting him back in my bed the day after his birthday party. Jackson and I had spent the following two nights together since my improvised meeting at Momma D’s.
And of course, Sunday was strange because although I woke up in his bed, Jackson quickly fled my arms for his weekly ritual that he still never spoke about. Even when I circuitously inquired by offering to drive him—weak, but an attempt nonetheless—he directly replied that Sunday mornings were his private time and soothed the sting of rejection by inviting me to dinner with his family later that afternoon. I declined, giving a feeble excuse of having other plans, yet ended up showing anyway. That’s the way things were working between us. I’d reject Jackson and would turn back around and yield to my magnetic pull to him.
Typically magnets are made of either metal iron, or another material with lots of iron like steel. Steel: that would be Jackson and me. A single magnet has two poles: North Pole and the South Pole. These poles may look the same, but they behave differently. Look the same, but behave different: that would be Jackson and me. We are both clearly haunted people, but we reacted to our demons differently. Place the pole of a magnet near the pole of a different magnet and watch what happens. I felt the attraction…the pulling force when we were together—and sometimes apart. Conversely, you can feel aversion…the pushing force as the two poles push away from each other: this was Jackson and me. I pushed away when things got too intimate and he pushed away when I tried to understand him: his Sunday ritual.
Although Jackson and I were back in bed together at Trump International on Sunday night, I couldn’t shake the inkling of something being terribly off about this. Morbid curiosity had begun to eat at me. Even this morning when, while coming from a promising round of foreplay in his bathroom, I was caught on my knees, deep-throating my stud lover by his cleaning lady. Something about that concerned me, too. It wasn’t that I’d gotten caught in a compromising position with Jackson, it was that I cared that I’d gotten caught in a compromising position with Jackson. I’d been stealthy with my sex for as long as I’d been having it. Why is it now that I have a conscience about it?
This was because what I did with Jackson, though just as salacious as I’d done with many men in my past, was not shameful. It wasn’t scandalous or one-sided. Yes, he had a pseudo-girlfriend, Ashley, who would have loved to be in his bed, or have her lips wrapped around the ridges of his impressive appendage, but not even that challenged the magnetism I found myself ensnared by when alone with him. There was something pure, soul-fusing about our connection. Inside or outside of the bedroom, Jackson and I attracted like magnets.
Bridgette warmly rubbed against my arm as we headed for the door. “You looked smoking hot at the party on Friday!” she smiled excitedly. “Bobby couldn’t keep his eyes off you all night. I had to remind him who blows him every goddamn day.” She rolled her eyes playfully.
I knew she was speaking in jest, but having another woman’s man openly attracted to me, historically, spelled trouble, so it was difficult for me to warm to that concept.
“I had a good time. It was good seeing you guys outside of the office,” I smiled.
As we passed the printer, Bridgette quickly swiped paper off the machine without missing a step. She scanned the top sheet and trilled, “Oh! And thanks for handling that woman for Jackson. I felt horrible that she waited so long. That reminds me”—she called behind us to where I realized Jackson and the guys were, just a few feet away—“Tim, next time you call out, you need to find a replacement for the day. I had a fucking time covering the phones on Friday.” Then she spoke to Jackson when she informed, “I had Elle give the lady your message. She insisted on waiting in your office that day. Weird.”
“What lady?” I heard Jackson ask, more in a warning tone than inquisitive.
“The one from your birthday,” she replied incredulously. I recalled her saying she’d spoken to Jackson that day, so it was odd that he’d forgotten so quickly.
“Why in the hell would you defer that to Elle?” Jackson’s angry tone had everyone stopping in their tracks.
“Ummm…” Bridgette supplied sardonically. “Because I had exceeded my working hours that day and I’m not your admin assistant.”
“You’re not my admin assistant, but you damn sure get paid enough to cover for him on a directive I charged to you specifically,” he grated, unusually weighty with his authority.
Bridgette was stunned to silence.
In a knee-jerk reaction I offered, “It wasn’t a big deal at all. I was still behind, working. I just gave her the message and—” Struck with a thought, I slapped my forehead. “Shit! She left an envelope for you. Wait…” I began to my desk. “I’ll grab it.”
“She left…” Jackson growled. “What?”
I froze for a second before continuing to my desk. He followed, stalking on my heels.
I exhaled once I located the envelope. “Here.” I handed it to him. As he examined it with hard eyes, I recalled, “She said it’s fro
m Miracle.” Another thought struck. “Oh, and that you can’t…” As my brain caught up with mouth, I digressed.
Jackson’s seething glower was now on me, searing me. His nostrils flared and mouth set into a hard line. I could see the visible heaving of his chest. He was livid.
He turned to Bridgette. “The next time I ask you to deal with a matter, you are not to pass it off to anyone or you can find your permanent replacement.” Then he turned to me. “Did she mention anything else?”
“No-no!” I sputtered.
“Are you sure?” he shouted.
My face folded, concerned. “No!”
After a few seconds of silence he grated, “You’ve had ample time to make me aware of this. Truly un-fucking-acceptable.”
When Jackson stormed off, Tim made an expression of confusion. I glanced over to Bridgette who gave the oldie-but-goodie jerkoff gesture with her fist, pelvis and mouth. I was too grossly alarmed and confused to laugh.
Reflecting back to those magnets: Jackson reacted to an apparent unfavorable situation different from the way that I do. He’d totally spazzed out when I’d usually run for the hills. Our reactions may have been different, but the source of our pains were similar. But being haunted myself, I could recognize there was a demon lurking. I just didn’t know if I’d ever learn the identity of it.
“See, that wasn’t too bad, right?” Jackson whispered over to me as we left from congratulating Stenton Rogers on his baptism. “But you know more about these types of ceremonies than I do.”
I smiled up at him, relieved to be leaving the palatial house of worship. I no longer felt at ease in them.
“It was a beautiful service. Zoey seemed proud,” I replied sincerely. “Odd that it was on a weekday. I’m used to baptisms being on Sundays, after morning worship.”
Stenton’s ceremony, held on a Wednesday afternoon, was moderately attended and followed by a catered reception, serving light foods. It was classy and…especial, like nothing I’d ever seen. There were notable figures in attendance, from athletes to musicians. It wasn’t exactly over the top, though. I was able to estimate at least one hundred people present. That’s an infinitesimal number considering his larger than life celebrity.