Captivated Love

by Yasmin Sullivan

  “Truth or dare?” she asked.

  “I don’t think I can handle another dare right away,” Darien answered. They both chuckled. “So I’ll say truth.”

  Safire leaned back down, resting on his arm. “So, who made you think that women are tramps?”

  Darien wasn’t ready for that question. It was a real question. It required a real answer.

  “I don’t think women are tramps, Safire. But I have been burned a couple of times, really burned. I used to play the field—in high school, in college. I was a lot like you seem now—living the life, partying, playing around. Then I went out with one girl for almost two years. When I was a senior in high school, I found out that she was seeing someone on the football team. No goodbye, no ‘I’m not serious about you,’ no nothing. She was just playing the field like I had been. So I went back to playing. Then, right after I graduated from college, I was actually engaged for a while. She traded me for a BBB—a bigger, better brother. She was just playing the field like I had been.”

  Safire caressed his arm. “I’m sure he wasn’t better than you.”

  “No,” Darien said. “He was an idiot. But that’s what she thought. I just got burned and burned out. And I decided that I wanted to wait until I found someone real, someone I could love—no more playing around, no more playing the field, no more women who just wanted to have a good time.”

  “So you shut down completely—can’t have a good time, can’t be with someone and see where it goes, can’t be your sexual self, can’t—”

  “I didn’t say that. I just decided to take things slower and not just play anymore.”

  * * *

  They had talked more, or rather, Safire had gotten him to talk. Darien thought about that conversation now, while he was chiseling a piece of wood in the early afternoon. He hadn’t spoken to Safire in four days, but that night, she got him to open up about things he didn’t want to remember and thought he had forgotten.

  He hadn’t known it was so obvious that he’d been burned before. Maybe she just assumed he’d been burned because he wanted to get to know someone before heading to bed with them—at least now he did. He’d tried it the other way. It hadn’t worked. If that was conservative, so be it. In fact, he hadn’t planned to get intimate until he was reasonably sure that he’d found the right one. So what had he done with Safire?

  Darien got a piece of sandpaper and started sanding the curve he’d just created in the walnut he was working with. He thought back to when he’d played the field in his younger days—meeting women, having casual encounters, letting things go wherever they went. That’s not what it felt like with Safire—not at all. Their passion had been amazing, but he felt a connection there, too. He felt it while they were making love and when they were caressing each other afterward and when they were talking. But still, he was abandoning his own rules with her, and he didn’t rightly know why.

  Or rather, he didn’t know fully why. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t it; that wasn’t what drew him to her and kept her on his mind. It was something else. It was the flashes of tenderness that swept over her—like those tears on the first night, or the stillness that came into her body when he cupped her chin, or the passion in her voice when she talked about how many of the cases at the Heritage Center involved children. He sensed something inside her that felt...like a hunch—sweetness lurking just under the covers, under the brashness and forwardness of her, even inside her Cheshire cat smile. He wanted to know that woman.

  Instead, she had gotten him to talk about himself, and she had told him very little about her life. And now it had been four days.

  Darien turned the wood he was working on and picked up one of his carving chisels and one of his mallets to start on another plane. They had slept in each other’s arms and had gotten up Saturday morning late. He had to get to his Saturday-afternoon art classes for adults at the Heritage Center as well as his own artwork and then a paper for school. She had plans as well, but she didn’t say what. They had a quick breakfast at a café near her place and parted with a gentle, telling kiss. She had given him that Safire smile—the sweet one—and told him she would be in touch. Darien didn’t have her home number. He hadn’t gotten hers when he entered his into her cell phone over breakfast. They’d been interrupted by the waitress. If it wasn’t play for her, why the wait? Why hadn’t she called?

  Darien put down his tools and stepped back from the piece he was working on. He was in the second bedroom of his apartment, his workroom for his wood. It was filled with supplies, projects in process, finished pieces, tools, dust, wood chips, shavings—general bedlam. It took a little lawlessness to create art, any art.

  Behind him was the piece he’d started after meeting Safire, and he turned to it. The sculpture was large to begin with, but it kept growing. He had started with large slabs of claro walnut. Now he was gluing Indian rosewood together for a base that was as wide as the claro walnut was tall. The central figure was now Safire, but being able to capture something of Safire’s image wasn’t curing him of the inclination to think about her. He’d thought about her all the more since their night together, and he had a yearning that wasn’t just for her body.

  Darien walked around the piece, testing the clamps and visualizing the figure that he would pull from the erratic form. He wanted to slow things down with Safire, get to know her, follow the path created by what he had already started to feel for her. But with each passing day, he was less and less sure that it was anything more than a one-night fling to her. What did she want? Or had he already seen the only thing she wanted? He had started wanting more, but maybe he was the only one. Maybe he should have stuck with his plan and not gotten physically involved until he knew he’d found the right one.

  He turned from the piece. He couldn’t work on it now. He had to change and run some errands before coming home to finish his work for classes the next day.

  Amid his tasks, Darien stopped at two of the places that sold his work. One was an art dealership, and they had sold one of his pieces. This was good news; he was getting his name out there. The other was actually a lighting store. He made lamps from wooden carvings of African family trees—the ones with the elongated bodies of people connected one to the other that were made in Kenya and other countries. These were of the same flavor but with a flair all his own, usually in ebony or African blackwood or mahogany.

  The lighting store carried samples of his lamps and took orders for him. When he stopped in, he found that they had just taken an order of six for him—six of the tall floor lamps with moderate detail. This changed how he could commit his time. He needed the exposure, so he would have to go into overdrive. He would have to budget his work on the Safire piece and ration the time he let himself ponder over her.

  Chapter 5

  Safire finished double-checking the bathroom cabinets and the closet and then sat on her couch to wait for her family to arrive to help her with the last leg of her move. She’d been moving the remaining small things. Everything was gone except the heavy stuff—the furniture. She had dollies all ready and just needed the extra hands.

  Safire looked around her apartment. She would miss it. She was giving up living alone so that she could go back to school. With her sister getting married and becoming more financially stable, it seemed like a good time. No one knew as yet because she still had a lot to figure out, but this was part of the plan. She’d saved up money from working for a couple of years and could use student loans for the rest if she couldn’t find scholarship money. But to tighten her budget, she had to give up her space. It was a smaller space or a roommate, and she’d decided on the roommate.

  She was able to take advantage of an opening in her apartment building for a two-bedroom apartment. She had planned to find a woman with a similar sensibility to her own, hopefully a student at Florida International University, where she planned to go to school
. But her super knew of someone he could vouch for. Her name was Janelle Hawkins, and she was also from North Miami. She was a little conservative, but they’d had a long talk and thought they could work things out.

  She’d already checked, and when she was ready, she would be able to continue working part-time and during summers for the Law Offices of Benson and Hines. This would give her rent and living expenses. It should be okay. Now she only had to decide what she wanted to go to school for.

  The original plan was law school with a focus on children’s issues. As an undergraduate, she’d taken an English major and an Administration of Justice minor and had done her associates degree to be a paralegal on the side. She loved being a paralegal. Only now she wasn’t sure that she wanted to study law. She had to decide about her true calling, which might be teaching. That was why she was starting to volunteer at the Heritage Center. She’d arranged it through the director, Mr. Johnson, and she’d even gotten the days when Darien was off, so he didn’t even have to know about it.

  Safire couldn’t think of the Heritage Center without thinking of Darien and the night they’d spent together. She wished he would be coming today because she hadn’t seen him in almost two weeks. But she needed a larger group and hadn’t even had the time to call him with an invitation. She’d been busy packing and moving and doing lesson plans, and work was busy, too. That, however, wasn’t the only reason she hadn’t picked up the phone.

  Being with Darien that night had been incredible, and being with him in general had been unlike anything she was used to. She had wanted him, but getting him was more than she had bargained for. He had rocked her world, and then he had rocked her in his arms. They’d spoken into the wee hours of the night, falling asleep in each other’s arms.

  Safire could imagine herself becoming attached in a way that wasn’t her regular style, and if what he said was true, he might feel the same way. And as different as they were, that might not be a good thing. She wanted the new man in her life, but she had needed to slow things down—not physically but in every other way. Ironically, Darien had been right, not about waiting for sex but about not letting things get out of hand too quickly. She hadn’t thought about it until now, but this was why she had delayed calling him—to cool things down.

  When Safire heard the buzzer sound, she was lost in thought. She pulled herself out of it and let in her big sister, Angelina, who was a history teacher at FIU and who was followed by their baby brother, Philly, who had just turned seven. Straggling behind these two came their twenty-year-old cousin, Alex, and Angelina’s fiancé, Jeremy, a radiologist she met on a cruise at the beginning of the year—the cruise that Safire was supposed to have taken but couldn’t.

  Safire hugged her big sister and patted her little brother’s head.

  “I didn’t know you could walk without heels,” Jeremy said as he hugged her.

  Safire looked down at the sneakers she had on and pursed her lips. “Very funny. I only use these to exercise—when I do that. Don’t mess with a black woman and her shoes now.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Imelda Marcos,” Jeremy said.

  “Hush now,” Safire said. “Sistergirl had almost three thousand pairs of shoes. She must have needed a house for her shoes.”

  Safire, Jeremy and Angelina laughed.

  “Thank you for the help, you guys,” Safire said. “I couldn’t get these by myself. The rest is done.”

  “I see,” Jeremy said, “that being hardheaded and having to do everything on your own runs in the Lewis family.”

  Safire and Angelina glared at Jeremy while Alex silently smirked.

  “But I’m not doing it on my own, am I?” Safire said. “It’s just downstairs. And trust me. I’ll call in for favors. Don’t forget you owe me one already.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Jeremy replied. “And this doesn’t count. You’ll be doing the same soon.”

  After their honeymoon, Jeremy and Angelina would be moving together to a new house midway between their jobs; of course, they would be bringing Philly and Alex with them. They were outfitting it now and would renovate the old house—the house Safire and Angelina grew up in—to sublet later on.

  Jeremy and Alex each took an end of the sofa and headed out into the hall.

  “Phillip,” Jeremy called, “you can come with us.”

  With the boys gone, Safire’s sister turned to her. “Safire, are you sure you want a roommate?”

  Angelina knew her well, and Safire caught her meaning. Safire didn’t want to tell Angelina about her plans for school until they were all settled—financially and otherwise—so she made it seem like a space issue. “Oh, I can still do what I want. It’s perfect. Less rent, more space.”

  “How can you do what you want with a roommate?” Angelina asked.

  Safire and Angelina each grabbed an end of the armchair, lifted it and headed into the hall.

  “I can be discreet,” Safire said, and she couldn’t resist telling her sister more. “In fact, I think that there’s a new man in my life. Maybe you’ll meet him soon.”

  Bringing home her latest beau wasn’t new for Safire. This time, though, she really wanted her family to meet Darien, not incidentally but because he mattered. Feeling this way confirmed for Safire that Darien seemed to be getting to her in a way that her other boyfriends hadn’t, and that worried her a little. Once again, she considered that she might want to slow things down a bit—not physically— that wasn’t her style—but in other ways.

  “Anyone special?”

  Yes, Angelina knew her sister.

  Safire smiled to herself before she answered. “We’ll see.”

  The next couple of hours were spent moving the furniture. Then Safire took everyone out for pizza. That night, she was staying with Philly and Alex so that Angelina could have some time alone with Jeremy at his place. She had been doing more of that recently—since their great-aunt had died and since Jeremy had come into their lives. It felt good to do her part to help take care of her little brother. Angelina was raising him because Angelina was older, but Safire could play a role, too.

  After dinner, the group split up, and Safire took the boys to a movie before taking them home to the old house where she grew up. It was getting dark when they got in, so she got Philly set for bed, read to him a bit and then tucked him in.

  She was spending the night in her sister’s room and left Alex downstairs watching television so that she could get some work done. It made her imagine what her sister’s life had been like all along—work, taking care of Philly, taking care of Aunt Rose before she died. Safire couldn’t live that way, but then she didn’t have to. Safire sighed, glad that she was doing more now to help out and glad that Jeremy was doing more to get his sister out of the house.

  Safire hunkered down at Angelina’s table with her knapsack to look over selections for her reading groups at the Heritage Center. Last week, she had done two sessions with the instructor who used to lead the reading groups. This week was her first time presenting book selections on her own. Her Tuesday-evening group was the older group, thirteen to sixteen, and they were reading the first installment of a novella about racial prejudice. Her Thursday-evening group was composed of the younger children, eight to twelve, and they were reading a short story about cultural differences.

  Safire took a breath, wondering why she was so nervous about this. Why were groups of kids harder to anticipate than a group of hardened lawyers?

  “I was an English major,” she said out loud. “I can do this.”

  After she adjusted, if she wanted, she could even stay after and tutor in the Academic Enrichment Program. For now, leading two reading groups was enough. It cut into her work at Benson and Hines, which they didn’t mind since her time was going to a worthy cause. But it also cut into her time with her girls and going out. She had thrown out her daily planner; she hated
keeping schedules and being on timetables. Late nights at the law firm were more than enough. Now she might have to give in and get one so that she could keep up with her reading groups. And she would definitely need one when she started school again. Ugh.

  Safire reviewed the texts she would be using with the kids, going over the parts she planned to have them read out loud in class and rehearsing her discussion questions.

  She paused and was about to go check on Philly. He’d started having seizures earlier that year, and though his condition seemed under control, they needed to keep a close eye on him. As she got up, there a came a knock at the door. It was Alex.

  “Come in.”

  Alex opened the door but hung back near the doorway.

  “Is everything all right?” Safire asked.

  “Yeah. Philly got up and wants to stay with me tonight. He says the movie scared him.”

  Safire smiled. They had seen an animated science fiction movie, but it did have scary alien creatures in it—scary for a seven-year-old child.

  “That’s fine. I was just going to check on him, but if you’re going to bed, just keep an eye out.”

  “Yeah. You want his room tonight?”

  “No, I need Angelina’s table tonight. I brought a bit of work home with me. Hey, what about your online class in...animation graphics?”

  “It’s basic game graphics. It’s going okay so far.”

  He didn’t say more, as usual, so she left it alone, and they said good-night. Now she saw what Angelina had been up against all that time with their quiet cousin. She might not be much help on that front, but she could be of more assistance with her younger brother, and she was helping to plan her sister’s wedding. She’d brought sample invitations to leave for Angelina, which she pulled out and deposited on the desk before she forgot.

  Safire had also brought her application packets—one for law school and one for graduate school—and she started reviewing her personal statements. She wasn’t long into it when she decided to stop and make the call she’d been wanting to make but putting off for almost two weeks. She took out her cell phone and called Darien.