Cougars

by Earl Sewell

  “I haven’t seen you here in a long time,” he said, watching her every move.

  “Yeah, I’ve been very busy lately and haven’t had much time to get in here.”

  “I can tell,” Harrison foolishly said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jasmine was all set to fire off several rounds of insults if she discovered that he was poking fun at her because of the extra pounds she’d gained.

  “It just means that I see that you haven’t been in here in a long time,” Harrison quickly clarified what he meant.

  “Well, you’ll probably see me in here more often. I’m determined to get back into better shape.”

  “You should come back to my yoga class and work on your flexibility. I wouldn’t mind having you back.”

  “I’ll think about it, Harrison,” Jasmine said as she sat her weights down.

  “I’ll be looking for you,” Harrison said just as a woman came up to him and looped her arm around his waist.

  “Are you ready to go, baby?” she asked as she smiled at Harrison and then Jasmine. The woman was a Cougar, just like Jasmine. Her complexion was much lighter and her eyes looked like they belonged on a goldfish. It was clear that the woman was being pretentious, as if Jasmine was after Harrison. Jasmine wanted to say something really catty, but decided that it wasn’t even worth wasting her breath. Harrison’s season with her had come and gone, and she was happy that he’d gotten over her and moved on.

  “I’ll catch you later, Jasmine,” he said as he curled his fingers into a fist and aimed it at her for a fist bump. Jasmine obliged him so that he and his new Cougar could go someplace and play. When Jasmine finished her workout, she was exhausted. She grabbed her belongings from the locker room and headed home.

  When she arrived back at her house, she immediately went upstairs into her bathroom and ran a hot bath. When the water was just perfect, she slipped into the water, positioned a comfortable bath towel at the base of her neck, closed her eyes and relaxed. An hour later, she got out of the tub, toweled off, moistened her skin with her favorite scented lotion and resided to her bed. She picked up the new book she’d purchased at a book fair from her nightstand. The novel was Dangerous Consequences. The title caught her eye because it spoke to the truth about some of the things going on in her professional life. Just as she was about to start reading, her phone rang. She thought it was Travis calling her, but it was Millie.

  “Hey girl,” Jasmine answered with a big smile on her face.

  “Hey Jasmine, I didn’t call you too late, did I?” Millie asked.

  “No, I’m just sitting here about to read a book called Dangerous Consequences.”

  “Ooo, that title sounds interesting. Hell, in fact it sounds like that crazy shit I went through with my husband and lover fist-fighting a while back.” Millie laughed nervously about the ugliness of that particular incident.

  “Girl, the title really speaks to a lot of shit going on in my life right now,” Jasmine admitted as she placed the book back on the nightstand.

  “Sounds like you and I are in the same boat, although my ride on the Titanic is just about over. I signed my divorce papers today. I’m just waiting for Bruce to sign and then it’ll all be official. I’ll be a single woman once again,” Millie said happily.

  “Wow, congratulations. What are you going to do with your newfound freedom?”

  “Well, the first thing that’s going to happen is my young lover and I are taking a much needed vacation to the Virgin Islands. Then after that, who knows.”

  “Are you going to marry your lover?” Jasmine asked.

  “No. I’m not in any particular hurry to get married again. I just want to take it easy, have a little fun, and just take each day as it comes. My boyfriend, Roy, wants me to make a commitment to him, but I’m just not ready for all of that yet.”

  “Well, good for you. You sound like you’re much happier now,” Jasmine said.

  “Girl, ‘happy’ isn’t a strong enough word. I’m fucking ecstatic!” Millie laughed.

  “So, how is everything going with the investigation and the allegations of corruption?” Jasmine asked.

  “Let’s not even talk about that one right now. There is so much shit going on with that investigation that just talking about it makes me dizzy. But I will tell you this. Two other judges that I know are also being scrutinized.”

  “Oh wow,” Jasmine said.

  “What about you? How’s everything going with you and Travis?”

  Jasmine exhaled a long sigh.

  “Oh boy,” Millie said, sensing that there was something afoot.

  “Let me get your opinion on this.” Jasmine paused, gathered her thoughts and then began. “There are going to be dangerous consequences if I allow myself to fall in love with Travis.”

  “Wow! What’s that about, Jasmine?” Millie asked very surprised that Jasmine was thinking along those lines.

  “Because…if he ever wants children, I’m so past childbearing years.”

  “Why are you thinking about children now? I thought you were cool with the fact you didn’t have any,” Millie asked.

  “Trust me, I don’t want to have kids at my age. Hell, I really don’t think my body would like me very much if I got pregnant, but I’m pretty confident that he wants to have his own biological children.”

  “Have you had that conversation with him?” Millie asked.

  “No. This is just stuff going on in my mind that I’ve been thinking about. Travis hasn’t said anything one way or the other.”

  “Okay, so what are you worried about?”

  “A bunch of things are on my mind. As much as I hate to admit this, I’m in a very funny place. I am competing for Travis’s time and attention with our job. Now, doesn’t that sound crazy as hell?” Jasmine admitted.

  “Yeah, it does. But how exactly is his job your rival. I mean both of you guys work for the same company.”

  “Travis has a Jekyll and Hyde split personality and one of them needs to be calibrated so that the best parts of him can rule a majority of the time. Millie, I sit at home at night waiting for him to call me just so that I can hear his voice. In fact, when you called I thought you were him. Most nights he doesn’t call me at all. At first that didn’t bother me because I knew he was at work. But now, I feel like he’s working way too much. He’s so determined to find the right combination of properties for the aphrodisiac. He works on that more than any of his other research projects. I need Travis to have an internal cutoff switch.”

  “Okay, but why?” Millie asked still confused as to what Jasmine was driving at.

  “Here’s what I think: I know that Travis has stronger feelings for me, but he won’t express it because he’s so absorbed in the work. I think if he had someone like me that he could come home to at a certain time, he’d shut down and come home to me. We’ve been seeing each other for almost a year so our relationship has grown.”

  “Does he spend any time with you outside of the bedroom?” Millie asked.

  “Of course he does. We go out to dinner, concerts, and plays. But I want more. I don’t want to play second fiddle to his work.”

  “Well, Jasmine, you can’t change who he is.” Millie pointed out the obvious.

  “I don’t want to change who he is; I just want to regulate it a little. My biggest competition for his time right now is the sex pill project which is going absolutely nowhere. The project needs to be scrapped and our time and resources need to be redirected to other projects. I think that shelving the project will help.”

  “Don’t you think that’s going to upset him?” Millie asked.

  “Projects get jettisoned all of the time. There is nothing strange about that.”

  “So why do you sound worried about bringing the project to a conclusion?”

  “Because I don’t want him to know that I spearheaded the effort. I really want to have a meaningful relationship with Travis. That’s the bottom line and if the only thing keeping us apart i
s some experiment, then I want it removed from our lives.”

  “Wow, Jasmine. That could lead to—”

  “Some dangerous consequences if it backfires,” Jasmine interrupted Millie and finished her sentence.

  “Do you think it will come back to haunt you? I mean, what if another project comes up and he gets equally obsessed with that?”

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” Jasmine said.

  “Okay, so answer this question for me. I’m just putting something on the table for discussion.”

  “Bring it on,” Jasmine said ready to tackle the dilemma Millie was about to present.

  “Why doesn’t he date women his own age?”

  “He says that he finds them to be immature. He likes being with older women,” Jasmine answered.

  “Okay. Another question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What went wrong in his last serious relationship?” Millie asked the killer question.

  “You know, Millie. It’s very interesting that you brought that up. I’ve asked Travis about his past relationships, but he hasn’t really had any.”

  “What are you talking about? The guy is going to be twenty-nine years old. There had to be at least one serious relationship in his life.”

  “I’m telling you, he says that he hasn’t. I find that to be rather odd myself. So I asked him who he’d been dating and he says, ‘Babe, I did some things in my past that I’m not exactly proud of. I did what needed to be done to move forward with my life and that’s all you really need to know.’”

  “I don’t think I like that answer,” Millie said suspiciously. “Are you sure he isn’t some ex-con who’s murdered people?”

  “Girl, you and I think just alike. That’s what I thought, too, so one night when he was sleeping over, I got his driver’s license number and had Lauren run a check on him to see if anything came up. She told me that he was clean and he had no criminal record. So I figured that he probably never had a real romantic relationship because he was so driven by his work. I want to be his first true love affair. I want him to really love me. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “There is nothing wrong with being in love. I mean, I believe that a person should take love wherever and whenever it comes into their lives, regardless of age.”

  “I do, too, but still, I’m at a very tricky crossroads,” Jasmine admitted.

  “I think everything will work out. Just take your time and communicate how you feel to Travis.”

  “Do you think I’m being foolish here? Honestly? Am I some old desperate woman trying to snag—”

  “Jasmine, stop it!” Millie cut her off. “Don’t do that to yourself. Do what you feel needs to be done and go from there. Don’t apologize for a damn thing. You’re not doing anything wrong.”

  “Thanks, Millie, I really needed to hear that.” Millie and Jasmine talked a little more and then ended their call.

  Chapter 18

  Travis

  What the fuck do you mean the plug has been pulled on the aphrodisiac project?” Travis was sitting in Jasmine’s office. She’d just told him the news about Helen’s decision to stop wasting time and resources on the project.

  “Will you lower your voice!” Jasmine spoke to Travis in a loud whisper as she rose up from behind her desk and moved swiftly across the floor to close her door.

  “We were making real progress, Jasmine. Why would she pull the plug on this? I thought this was the project that she was really behind.” Travis picked up an ink pen from Jasmine’s desk and began tapping the ballpoint on her desk rapidly and noisily.

  “First of all, you need to calm down.” Jasmine’s demeanor suddenly turned authoritative, but Travis no longer viewed her as his boss as much as he did the woman he was fucking.

  “Why should I calm down, Jasmine! I’ve been blindsided and the rug has been pulled from under my feet! What’s really going on? Is there some kind of problem? Are they giving the project to someone else? I don’t understand what the problem is.”

  Travis made numerous gestures with his hands. Jasmine leaned back in her seat and brushed the tip of her nose a few times with her index finger.

  “Travis, projects get pulled all of the time. I can understand how important this particular one was to you, but there are other things that require your attention and mine as well. There is a chance that we’ll revisit this later, but for right now, we have to put a hold on this. The side effects of the drug can lead to death. We both know this to be a fact.”

  “I can fix it, though, Jasmine. I just need more time in the lab. I need this. I’ve invested too much time and energy into this project. It’s all that I think about.”

  Jasmine tried to look sympathetic. “Travis, listen to me,” Jasmine spoke in a calmer tone. “It’s not—”

  “I’m going to schedule an appointment with Helen to get to the bottom of this.” Travis cut Jasmine off.

  “You will do no such thing, Travis Adams!” Jasmine snapped. She had no idea just how deeply rooted the obsessive side of his personality was. He spoke like a madman whose lab had just been destroyed by an explosion.

  “Why not!” Travis barked at Jasmine as he rose to his feet. She didn’t like it one bit.

  “Don’t you use that tone of voice with me!”

  Jasmine stood, too. On the outside she was stern and direct, but on the inside she worried about him transforming into the Hulk and going on a destruction rampage.

  “Look, Jasmine. Listen to me.” Travis approached her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Go talk to Helen for me. Tell her that I need more time on this.”

  “Travis,” Jasmine said, as a look of perplexity formed in the wrinkles in her forehead and the slight turn of her mouth.

  “Please,” Travis begged.

  “Why does this one project mean so much to you?” Jasmine had asked the question she really wanted the answer to.

  “If I can create the formula—scratch that; if we, as in you and I, baby, can come up with the right recipe, we’ll get prestige, fame, and perhaps win the Nobel Peace Prize for our discovery. Don’t you want that? Don’t you have the same dream? Isn’t that what our profession is all about, making a difference?”

  “Travis.” Jasmine paused and looked into his blazing brown eyes. “Baby, I want you. I don’t want some medal or prestige. Those things are nice, but they don’t define who I am. And you shouldn’t let it define who you are. You’re brilliant without those accolades, don’t you know that?”

  “You don’t understand, Jasmine. I thought you truly understood me.” Travis looked as her as if she were a traitor. He had a bewildered gaze in his eyes and felt as if he’d just been shot with a double-barreled shotgun.

  “I do understand you. I know you better than you think I do. Travis, you’re walking with blinders on. You’re so caught up that you barely have time to stop and enjoy life, togetherness, and how to appreciate someone who cares deeply for you. Don’t you see me, Travis? Don’t you see the beauty of us? Don’t you see how this project was getting in the way of giving you one of the best gifts in life? The chemical interaction between a man and a woman, called love?”

  “Wait a minute here, Jasmine. What are you saying? I thought we weren’t going to go here.” Travis didn’t like what he was hearing.

  “You mean to tell me that you don’t feel what we have?” Jasmine whispered out of concern that others would hear them. “I’m trying to reach your tortured soul, baby, and love it like no one ever has.” Jasmine placed her hand over her heart and reached for him.

  “Look.” Travis paused, meeting Jasmine’s gaze with his own. “I’m taking the rest of the day off. I need to get out of here.”

  “Let me go with you then?” Jasmine said.

  “No. You don’t want to be with me right now. Trust me on that one,” Travis growled and walked out the door.

  TRAVIS WAS FURIOUS ABOUT THE NEWS Jasmine had shared with him as he drove away from the lab. All of his hard
work and efforts were all pointless and even worse, he didn’t like that other people could interrupt his work.

  “Damn it!” Travis shouted as he punched the dashboard of his car several times with hammer fists. “I hate this shit!”

  Travis didn’t feel like going home, so he decided to give Alex a ring to see if he was home.

  “Hey Travis, what’s going on?” Alex answered the phone.

  “Where are you, man?” he asked.

  “I’m at home right now.”

  “I’m heading in your direction. Mind if I stop over?” Travis asked.

  “No man. Come on through,” Alex said with a welcoming voice.

  “All right. I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”

  WHEN TRAVIS ARRIVED, Alex could tell immediately that something was bothering him.

  “Wow. Why do you look so crazy? What’s the matter with you?” Alex asked as he let him in.

  “Fucking bullshit-ass people at work are jerking me around,” Travis griped as he plopped down on the sofa.

  “Do you want a beer?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah, I could use one.”

  When Alex came back with the beer, Travis took several long gulps and then set the bottle on a glass table in front of him. Travis glanced around the room and noticed that most of the furniture was gone with the exception of the sofa and a chair. All of the art work that adorned the walls was gone.

  “What happened to all of your stuff?” Travis asked.

  “Sold it,” Alex said.

  “What for?” Travis asked confused.

  “I got fired. When they gave me my severance package, I went to the riverboat casino hoping to change my luck, but instead I lost all of my money. So in order to cover my mortgage I had to have a fire sale.”

  “Damn, Alex. So I guess getting my money back anytime soon is out of the question,” Travis said.

  “Why do you want to bring up old shit? I’m going to get you the money, Travis. Besides, you know my situation, man. I’ve got to get out of this bullshit I’m involved with somehow.” Alex shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you that I got fired from my job?” Alex sat down in a chair which faced the sofa.