After The Dance

by Lori D. Johnson

  He touched my face and was like, “You earned that title, baby. I say you ought to wear it proudly and as often as you’re able. Besides, ‘Dr. Abrahams’ has a certain ring of authority and power to it that to me is downright sexy.” With that, he leaned over and kissed me. I mean really kissed me, girl, like he used to way back in the day, okay? And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t stir just the teeniest bit of something within me.

  But rather than let any of those old-time feelings get the best of me, I eased away from him, pulled myself together and said, “I thought you didn’t indulge in that sort of thing anymore.”

  He said, “I don’t. At least, not to the extent to which I think you’re referring. I just didn’t want you to think that I’d forgotten how.” He caressed my lips with his bandaged finger and said, “I still know what you like, Faye, and I’m still very much capable of giving it to you.”

  Given his arrogance, I couldn’t help but chuckle and say, “Well, now, is that a fact?”

  “It is indeed,” he said in a tone that let me know he didn’t think there was anything funny about it either. Then he added, “But like I told you before, babe, all of that is going to have to wait.”

  When I ventured to ask, “Until when?” his response was, “Until after you’ve decided where you want to go with this.”

  I told him, “If the this you’re talking about is us, Scoobie, I’d have to say in large part that depends on you.”

  That’s when he got up, walked over to the fireplace, and rooted through one of the large baskets decorating the hearth. He brought the small wooden box he’d pulled out of the basket over to the couch and placed it in my lap.

  On opening the box, the first thing I saw was what looked like handwritten letters—some folded, some stuffed in envelopes. Scoobie pulled one from the bunch, handed it to me, and said, “Go ahead.”

  I unfolded the stationery, took in the “Dear Scoobie” salutation, and immediately recognized the scrawl as my own. Yeah, girl, the box was full of, among other things, all the love notes, letters, cards, and things I’d given home-boy over the years.

  He smiled and started reading from some mess I’d scribbled to him back when he had me believing our puppy love was the real thing, “My dearest, sweetest Venard. Words can’t express the depths of my love for you. Every night I pray that our hearts will always beat in sync—”

  Even though I couldn’t help but laugh, I snatched the paper from him and said, “Stop! We were in the ninth grade. I’d dare say neither one of us knew any better.”

  “Oh, I always knew,” Scoobie said, giving me that same look he’d given me right before he’d pressed his lips against mine and swept me back down memory lane.

  “Knew what?” I said, shifting my gaze from his.

  “That you were the one” is what he told me. “That you and I were destined to end up together. My mama knew too. In the years before she passed, she was always asking me, ‘Whatever happened to Faye? She was such a sweet girl. When you get ready to settle down, promise me you’ll look her up.’”

  You know I started to roll my eyes and say something sarcastic, but in a glance I could tell, at least when it came to that part about his mama, the boy was being completely sincere.

  He fished a bracelet out of the bottom of the box and asked me if I remembered it. Of course I did. It was the bracelet I’d given him on his sixteenth birthday. The one I’d saved up for and bought with my allowance and babysitting money. I’d even gone so far as to have the durn thing engraved with both our names—Margaret and Venard—as well as the words “forever” and “always.”

  Scoobie took my hand and guided my fingertips over the bracelet’s lettering. “I was thinking that maybe one day soon we could give this to our son.”

  Since I didn’t trust myself to respond to that without getting emotional, I didn’t say anything. I just sat and listened as Scoobie made his plea. “I want another chance with you, Faye. I think we owe it to the child the Good Lord gave to us to at least try.”

  HIM

  All it took was one look at her face to know that I was all but done for. “I’m not sure how to say this” is what she sputtered after coming in and having a seat next to me on the sofa.

  “You don’t have to say it” is what I told her, hoping to spare us both the pain and embarrassment of an “it’s me, not you” speech. I said, “I already know. I saw you on TV with him the other night. Isn’t he some big-shot chef who works for the rich and the famous and lives in some big-ass mansion on the hill?”

  “It wasn’t something I planned, Carl,” she said, sounding genuinely remorseful.

  “I thought it was over between you two” is what I told her. “I thought you weren’t in love with him. So what happened? You spent the night with him and some of those old-time feelings that you didn’t even know you had resurfaced, or something?”

  She said, “It’s not what you think. I haven’t slept with him or anything. We’ve just been talking, really, about a lot of different things. And after thinking long and hard about some of those things, I’ve decided that it might be best if I tried to work it out with him.”

  Feeling like I’d just been kicked in the stomach, I said, “I see.” But not wanting her to know just how bad she’d hurt me, I tried to be smooth with it. I said, “So I guess this means I don’t get my third time at bat, huh?”

  She stared down at a spot in the carpet, shook her head, and said, “Carl, did you hear anything I just said?”

  I stood up and looked her in the eyes. “Sure, I heard you,” I told her, “and that’s fine. Go on. Be with him. I just don’t see why that means I’ve got to be cheated out of my third strike, is all.” Then I kissed her, and to my surprise instead of pulling away or going passive, she responded in kind.

  But as soon as I made a move to draw her closer, she said, “Don’t do this, Carl. It’s only going to make it harder.”

  Rather than go for the obvious joke about it already being hard, I told her, “I don’t see how. It’s just a game, remember? And we’re both adults.” When she didn’t say anything, I eased up off her, sat back down, and said, “Is this how you’re gonna play it? You tell me one thing and then you up and change the rules and go and do another?”

  She looked toward the door like she knew she really ought to be leaving, but when I tugged on the one hand of hers that I was still holding, she sat down with me. Before I could say anything she reached over, stroked my cheek, and said, “This isn’t at all how I thought things would work out, Carl.”

  Man, now you know that was all the doggone incentive a brother needed. I buried my face against her neck and as I worked my hand beneath the back of her blouse, I told her, “Right now, right now, baby, all I want to hear from you is whether you’re going to abide by the rules and play this thing with me all the way through the end or not?”

  Rather than put forth any type of resistance, she went along with my advances—from my fingers on her breasts to my tongue’s persistent forays between her lips. It wasn’t until she heard me fumbling with my belt buckle that she muttered so much as a single word of protest. “Carl,” she said, “if you think this is going to change anything, you’re wrong.”

  I drew her hand against the bad boy in my pants, who at that point was all but begging to be let out, and I told her, “Baby, I just want my third strike. That’s all I’m asking.”

  She ran her palm up and down my pride and joy a couple times before she searched my eyes and said, “And you promise you won’t try to make any waves afterward?”

  “Not a one,” I said, knowing that she knew doggone well at that point I would have promised her near ’bout anything.

  HER

  Yeah, girl, I wanted it. Ain’t no use in me trying to pretend otherwise. I did tell him I wanted to take a shower first, to which his laugh-riddled response was, “Dag, girl, I’ll be dog if you ain’t the cleanest woman I’ve ever met.”

  So anyway, I’m in the shower, right? And
I guess I’m taking too long for him, because before I know anything he’s jerked back the curtain and is stepping in to join me.

  “What?” he said when I reached for the shower curtain and used part of it to cover myself. “We’ve been together twice already, remember? It’s not like we haven’t seen one another in the buff before.”

  “Carl, I was almost done. Do you mind?” is what I asked, even though what I really wanted to say was, Excuse me, but if you think I’m the kind of girl who’s going to play out some triple-X sex in the shower fantasy scene with you, you’ve got me pegged all wrong.

  But rather than take his tail out, Carl turned around and tilted his grinning mug toward the water cascading from the shower nozzle. Standing there, getting a right nice eyeful of his naked ass, I knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted me to touch him. And don’t think I wasn’t tempted. He’s got these big, broad shoulders, a wide, muscular back, and one of those high, tight behinds—the kind you generally see on track athletes. Honey, please, just thinking about it gets me all … Anyway, fine specimen of Black manhood that he is, I knew if I touched him, it would be all over with. He’d either have me squirming on the hard, cold porcelain floor of the tub, or else in some awkward position all up against the wall. So rather than give in, I got out, wrapped myself up in his robe, and went and had myself a seat on the end of his bed.

  The room pulsated with the sound of Carl’s musical selection for the evening, Erykah Badu’s “Orange Moon,” on repeat, no less. The song is one of my favorites, but sitting there listening to it against the backdrop of my own rapidly beating heart made me somehow feel like I was hearing it for the first time.

  Before long Carl came out and joined me, his body more wet than dry, but with a towel tied loosely around his waist. The latter I knew he’d done only out of a latent sense of courtesy toward me. On positioning himself next to me he took my hand, leaned over, and whispered into my ear, “You know your modesty is a turn-on, don’t you?”

  “What doesn’t turn you on?” I asked him.

  He chuckled and said, “When it comes to you, baby, there isn’t a whole heck of a lot that doesn’t. Even your bitchiness is, at times, extremely arousing.”

  He already had me way past hot and bothered. And knowing from previous experience how hard it was to get him to stop gabbing, once he got started, I said, “So are we going to talk or are we going to do this?”

  “Oh,” he said, “we are most definitely going to do this.”

  But instead of making a move toward my lips or taking me into his arms, he lowered himself to the floor and started rubbing my feet. At first I was like, I’ll be durn if this man don’t like himself some heels and toes. Rather than linger, though, he kissed a path up my ankles, past my shins, and over my calves. By the time he reached my locked knees, I had a pretty good idea where he was headed.

  When he tried to peel his robe off my thighs, I grabbed his hands. He looked at me and said, “Why are you so tense? You act like we haven’t done this before.”

  As far as I was concerned we hadn’t. Well, not that anyway. That wasn’t something I’d indulged in with anyone since … well, since Scoobie. Remember the whole Sunday morning, strawberry sex-capade I told you about? Even though Carl had tried to coax me into changing my mind, I’d drawn the line at letting him take his drip and lick act too far down into my lower divide.

  Call me old-fashioned and out-of-touch with the current trends if you want to, but I still say casual sex ought to come with certain rules and limitations. And as far as I’m concerned that’s just too intimate an act to be out here doing with some of any and everybody. Of course, this wasn’t just anybody—it was Carl, a man truly unlike any I’d ever encountered.

  And instead of giving up and turning his attention elsewhere, like he had the time before, this time the brother persisted. He rubbed his bristled chin against my tightly clasped knees and asked me if I trusted him.

  I told him, “I suppose, or else I wouldn’t be here.”

  He said, “So let me do this. Let me give you something to remember me by.”

  His cockiness cut through some of my anxiety. I smiled and said, “Come again?”

  He guided my hand to the nape of his neck and said, “Go on, close your eyes, baby. If you get uncomfortable, all you have to do is take your hand away and I’ll stop.”

  So with those durn “Orange Moon” flutes paving the way and my girl’s sultry “How good it is,” refrain egging me on, I unlocked my legs and let dude lower his head between them. He brushed his mustache and his closed mouth against the inner portion of my left thigh, before treating the right one to the wet press of his lips and just the tiniest bit of tongue. Moving slowly and steadily upward, he went back and forth like that, from one leg to the other.

  The intensity was more than I thought I could possibly bear. He’d only made it to the halfway point when I eased my hand away from his head. And just like he said he would, he stopped. But with disappointment creasing his face, he looked up at me and said, “You sure? You’re gonna always wonder …”

  I knew he had a point. So without a word, I reached down with one hand and slid my fingers over his shoulders, up the back of his neck, and into his hair, which was still damp from the shower. After giving him the nod to go ahead and pick up where he’d left off, I closed my eyes again and waited for the music and the warm caress of Carl’s tongue to take me wherever it was they wanted me to go.

  He must have thought I just might catch another case of cold feet, because the brother’s pace picked up considerably on the second go ’round, and before I knew anything, girl, he was there. If I had to describe it, I’d have to say it was kind of like the feeling you get on a diet when you deliberately deny yourself the one special treat you enjoy the most—Häagen-Dazs’s black-cherry ice cream, for instance. And then after what’s seemed like an eternity, you finally allow yourself a little. That first taste is so wonderfully exhilarating, it rolls through you like an electric shock might. Every cell in your body seems to suddenly come alive. In a matter of seconds, not only did I have both of my hands rocking against the back of the brother’s head, but you’d best believe Ms. Badu wasn’t the only sister up in that joint giving shout-outs about how durn good it was.

  The brother has got skills, is all I can say, girl. I’ve never had anything close to what I had with Carl that night. It went beyond just good sex with an attentive lover who knows his way around a woman’s body. No, this was some of that “get a sister all choked up and bring her ass to tears” kind of ecstasy that you generally only read about or see in the movies. Honey, I kid you not, somewhere ’round about that second orgasm the brother had me all worked up and crying so hard I think I kind of scared him.

  He raised up and was like, “Damn, baby, what’s wrong? Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to. Really, I didn’t.”

  All I could do was shake my head and press my face into his chest. I couldn’t even speak, girl. But what I wanted to tell him was, “Yeah, you put a hurting on me, all right, one I’m not likely to forget anytime soon.”

  I lay there for a little while wrapped up in Carl’s arms, listening to the steady thump of his heart and dreading what I had to do next. It wasn’t hard to tell he didn’t want to let me go. Every time I so much as stretched a leg or wiggled a toe, he held me even tighter and said something along the lines of, “Not yet, baby. Just a couple more minutes.”

  When I finally did get up and go to the bathroom, I made sure to lock the door behind me. I had every intention of making my exit as quick and painless as possible, and the last thing I needed was Carl busting up in there, trying to throw more stumbling blocks in my path. I even forfeited the shower in exchange for a few hurried splashes here and there. After all, it wasn’t like I didn’t live right next door. Anyway, I got finished getting dressed and came out only to find him sitting up on the side of the bed, still naked as a jaybird and with my bag clutched in his lap.

  He stood up as I approached him
and even managed to summon forth a smile. But his eyes, which were bigger and sadder than any puppy dog I’d ever seen, said it all. On handing me the purse he said, “I guess this means I’m really out, huh?”

  When I didn’t answer him, he said, “It could have been good, you know?”

  Wrong as I knew it was, I couldn’t resist the urge to run my fingers over his chest one last time. I told him, “It was good, the best I’ve had thus far.”

  He caught me by the hand and said, “I wasn’t talking about the sex, Faye.”

  After making myself look at the hurt written all over his face, I told him, “I know. Neither was I.”

  He looked like he was about to say something else, but I hushed him with a kiss. And then … and then I walked.

  HIM

  She walked out. She left me standing there butt-naked and begging. It was terrible, man. I felt so … so used.

  Yeah, I know, it was my own damn fault for not heeding her warnings, right? Maybe if I hadn’t drifted off so deep into my own little world I would have taken more serious note of the subtle resistance on her part. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so ready and eager to carve out a permanent place for her in my life. But hey, all I’d wanted was to make her happy; to make her smile, to make her back arch in ecstasy as many times a week as she mighta wanted. Okay, so I admit, I was a brother who’d pretty much lost touch with reality.

  I was still trying to reassemble the bent and busted pieces of my playa’s mask the night I took my Uncle Westbrook up on his invitation to join him for a burger, a couple of beers, and a nice earful of some of them down-home blues. We’d just wrapped up our inspection of the quaint little spot I’ll soon be calling home. I told you about the deal I worked out with him, right? Yeah, see, Unc owns a couple rental properties and he’s agreed to let me move into one rent-free in exchange for helping him do a total rehab on the joint. Anyway, after walking through the place and checking out everything the old guy wanted done, I followed him to his favorite North Memphis getaway, Big Mama Mae’s Cafe and Grill.