Dating Games

by RM Johnson

  “So is that what this is now? A real relationship?”

  “Is that what you want it to be?”

  “Absolutely,” Wade smiled.

  “Then that’s what it is,” Livvy said, smiling back, and started to move in to kiss him when she heard the fridge open and close. When she turned around, Livvy saw Alize walking out of the kitchen, wearing nothing but tiny panties and a thin tank top, the dark area around her nipples showing through the almost transparent fabric.

  Ally, a can of grape pop in her hand, looked up at her mother and was shocked to see a man peer out from behind her mother’s body. Immediately, with her arms and hands, Ally tried to cover all her scantily dressed parts as she sidestepped toward her bedroom.

  “Sorry, Mama. I didn’t know you still had company,” Ally apologized, disappearing down the hall and into her bedroom.

  Wade laughed. One of your daughters?

  “Yeah,” Livvy said, still looking in the direction Ally had walked away in. “And I told that girl a million times about walking around here naked.” Livvy moved back toward Wade. “Now where were we?”

  “I really should be going.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” he said, standing, pulling Livvy up with him, and hugging her. “Work in the morning.”

  “Okay, but next time we’re hanging out at your place. I bet you got a big, beautiful kitchen, and I’m going to cook you dinner. Maybe we can even make a weekend of it. Do some things downtown again, and then I’ll pamper you at your house all weekend. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds good. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get the time off, though,” Wade said, uncertainty in his voice. “But we’ll make it happen. Let’s talk about it more tomorrow.”

  “Okay, baby.” They kissed, and Livvy let him out the door. She watched out the peephole until she saw him get on the elevator and the doors closed. She turned around, a smile on her face, happy that their misunderstanding was behind them.

  A moment later, Ally peeked out, wearing one of Henny’s college sweatshirts and a pair of sweatpants.

  Immediately the smile on Livvy’s face disappeared, turning into a frown.

  “Mama,” Ally said, walking a little farther out into the room. “I heard the front door close. You still got company?”

  “What were you doing?” Livvy said, anger in her voice.

  Ally looked as if she had no idea what her mother was talking about. “What do you mean?”

  “What were you doing coming out here with no clothes on?”

  “I was thirsty. I was getting a pop, but I ain’t know you still had company.”

  “You’re lying!” Livvy said, raising her voice, storming over to Ally. “You just heard the door close, and you knew now that my company left. When you came out before, had you heard the door close?”

  “No, but—”

  “But what?” Livvy grabbed Ally by the arm. “But you decided to come out here with your ass hanging out—see-through shirt and everything—and flash the man that I’m seeing? For what, Alize? For what?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Why did you come out here like that when you knew he was still here?” Livvy said, raising her voice even louder, shaking Ally for the answer. “You wanna fuck him?”

  “What!” Ally was shocked.

  “You wanna fuck him like all the other men I hear you be fuckin’?”

  “What other men?” Ally asked, but her mother ignored her.

  “You the one that said that men like your ass. You thinking he’s going to like it too?”

  Ally yanked away from her mother, something between shock and deep hurt on her face. “I told you, I ain’t know you still had company, and when I saw him, I apologized. I don’t want your man. Why would you even say that?” Ally was on the verge of tears.

  “Because all you ever do is take, take, take. You criticize me for the man I had, and now you try to ruin things for me with the man I got. I’ll be glad when your ass is gone.” And Livvy immediately knew that this was the worst thing she had ever said to her daughter.

  Ally looked more hurt by this than any slap that Livvy had ever given her, and a single tear rolled down her face. It looked as though there was something she wanted to say. But then she changed her mind, turned around, and ran back into her room.

  Livvy thought about running in after her, apologizing, telling Ally that she hadn’t meant what she’d said, but she couldn’t, because that just wasn’t true.

  THIRTY

  THE NEXT day at work, Wade was pretty much worthless. He spoke to customers, answered their questions, but if they seemed as though they were on the fence as to whether they wanted to buy, he didn’t go in for the kill as he normally would’ve, closing the deal. There was too much on his mind.

  He was happy that he cleared things up with Livvy, but there was also a downside to that. Because they were in a “real relationship” now, as she put it, he knew there was no way that he could continue to lie to her about his financial situation. He would have to tell her there was no huge home, that he didn’t own a Lincoln dealership.

  Livvy probably envisioned herself moving into his place, living there, walking across his marble floors, under his crystal chandeliers that hung from fifty-foot ceilings. She had mentioned them spending a weekend together, maybe doing some things downtown again.

  Wade got out of his car in front of the house, and wondered if she knew how much “doing things downtown” cost for just one night, not to mention an entire weekend. But as he climbed the stairs to his floor and glimpsed the mail on the table in the hall to find he had only one piece, he asked himself, Was she to blame for thinking those things? After all, he drove around in his shiny Lincoln for the sole reason of making women think he had that kind of money. When Livvy asked what he did, his silly ass had lied to her, saying he had a job that would make anyone believe he had truckloads of cash. And when he took her out, it wasn’t to Old Country Buffet, where they could’ve eaten all the food they wanted for $6.95. No, he had to take her ninety-some odd floors into the sky and serve her steak and lobster.

  Fuck, Wade thought morosely, closing his room door behind him. He was knee deep in it now.

  * * *

  HALF AN HOUR later, Wade’s head was spinning. He was sitting across from the kid, Rafe, from down the hall again. Just after he had come in and taken off his jacket, there was a knock on the door. Wade opened it to find Rafe standing there, looking kind of lost, his hands behind his back.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Wade asked.

  “I, uh … I ain’t go to work today. I wasn’t doin’ nothing, and just wanted to know if you were cool to talk about some things?” He pulled his hands from behind his back and was holding a bottle of Hennessy. “Drinks on me this time,” he said, managing a smile.

  An hour later, the bottle was more than half empty, and even though the kid had come to talk, he hadn’t been say in’ much, had just been listening to Wade spill his guts.

  “So, guess what. You’ll never believe this,” Wade said smiling, gesturing with his glass.

  “What?” Rafe said, sitting slumped forward in his chair, his eyelids hanging low from all the alcohol he consumed.

  “You ready for this?”

  “I’ll be ready when you finally tell me.” Rafe casually took another sip of his drink.

  “Your girlfriend is the daughter of the woman I’m dating.”

  “You’re bullshittin’.” Rafe sat up straighter, opening his eyes wider.

  “Naw, ain’t shittin’ you, man. Your girl’s name is Hennesey, right? Just like this fine liquor here?” Wade said, holding up his glass.

  “That’s her.”

  “Got a sister named Alié, who got a big fine behind on her and perky tits,” Wade said, his speech beginning to slur.

  Rafe looked at Wade oddly. “How you—”

  “She walked out in her panties while I was there. I tried not to look,
I swear I did. But I couldn’t help myself,” Wade said, laughing.

  “Oh, I know what you mean,” Rafe said, laughing too. “I had me a peek. How are things workin’ with you and her mother?”

  “Aw, man,” Wade said, taking another tiny sip of his liquor. “It’s a long story, Rafe. I fucked up and lied to her, told her I’m makin’ all this money, and now I don’t know what to do now that it’s time to prove it. Hate that I started it all, but the fact is,” Wade said, tapping Rafe on the arm, as if what he was about to say demanded an extra little bit more of his attention, “regardless how sweet, these women are all about money. Everyone knows what draws a man to a woman is beauty and sexual appeal. What draws women to men is money and power, status, success. You know what I’m saying?”

  And Rafe did know. He had heard this all his years coming up, if not from Smoke, then from every other man he knew.

  “I mean, bless her heart. Livvy ain’t really got a pot to piss in, and even she’s talking about she wants a man that makes a lot of money. What you think a woman who’s really doin’ something, like a lawyer or a doctor, wants? A billionaire, I bet.”

  Maybe because he knew that Henny was going to school to be a doctor, Rafe put his glass down, leaned in, and paid more attention to the older brotha.

  “You sayin’ that just because a woman is makin’ money, if she a doctor or something, she couldn’t get with a brotha who’s an electrician?” Rafe asked, mentioning a job that he felt was comparable to his.

  “It’s okay if it’s the other way around, but for the woman to be making that much more money, have that much more education, it would be hard. Women like to show things off. They want to be proud of their man. ’Oh, my man does this,’” Wade said, doing his impression of a woman. “’My man does that, or he drives this kind of car.’ Why you think I drive that Lincoln out there? Women like nice cars.”

  Wade swallowed down the last of what was in his glass, then grabbed the bottle, and poured himself another shot, then started to pour Rafe one.

  “Naw, I’m cool,” Rafe said, looking as though he was deep in thought.

  “Why you asking these questions? You got a good woman. Doesn’t seem like she’d be caught up in all that.”

  “Yeah. You’re right,” Rafe said, more to himself than to Wade. He thought so too. He just hoped the fact that he was an ex-con, poor as hell, and didn’t have a pot or a plastic bottle to piss in wouldn’t start to matter.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ALLY sat on the couch drinking a grape pop, the same kind of pop she walked into the kitchen to get the other night when she was thirsty, wearing panties and a “damn see-through shirt.” That was the way her mother put it.

  Ally flipped the channel to BET, and on the screen, the little computer-generated sistah with attitude, Cita, danced all about and gave her opinion, with a little ghetto flavor, about the topic of the day.

  Normally Ally would’ve been up, dancing around, mimicking Cita’s moves, laughing at her wisecracks, but Ally was in a funk today and pissed off that she’d let her mother put her there. Her mother had more or less called her a ho and then had the damn nerve to say that she was try in’ to take her man. That old ass relic? Ally didn’t think so.

  If she wasn’t hurting so badly at that moment, so near the verge of crying, Ally would’ve laughed in her mother’s face, but there really wasn’t anything funny about any of it.

  Ally wasn’t trying to get with that old dude, and she was sure that if her mother really sat down and took a moment to think about it, she would’ve realized the same thing. So it had to have been her feelings for this Wade character clouding her judgment. She must’ve really liked him so much that she feared even her own daughter was trying to take him from her. Or maybe it wasn’t even him in particular, Ally thought, taking a sip from the can of pop. Her mother had been dogged by so many men in just the time that Ally had been around, she was sure that it had to have a negative effect on her. Ally’s father had gotten her mother pregnant, and then he took off. There’s no telling how badly all the boys that came before him must’ve treated her, and now, of course, there was Carlos.

  Ally figured him to be the worst of all, catching her mother when she was most vulnerable, and regardless of how many times her mother said she’d get rid of him, regardless how many times she tried, he keep showin’ his slimy, smiling ass up at their door, wanting only one thing.

  Her mother needed to be away from that man once and for all. If he hadn’t treated her so badly, hadn’t had her questioning her worth, maybe she wouldn’t have gone off on Ally last night for making a mistake as simple as not putting on something before going to the fridge.

  Or maybe she wouldn’t have said that awful thing to her, about not being able to wait until she left. That had hurt her feelings more than she was sure her mother could’ve ever known. She wasn’t kicking Henny out of the house, and Ally wondered that if her perfect sister weren’t going off to college, would her mother be so quick to improve her life. She didn’t think so. But that was just the double standard that Ally had learned to live with.

  Ally sat up on the sofa and was about to flip the channel when there was a knock at the door. Ally looked over her shoulder, then stretched back out across the couch and ignored it. She had too much on her mind right now to bother with anyone who ain’t had the sense enough to call first before they came over.

  The knock came again, harder this time.

  “Who the fuck is it?” Ally finally called out, annoyed.

  No answer.

  Ally blew a frustrated sigh and pulled herself from the sofa, carrying her can of pop with her. When she got to the door, she didn’t even bother to look out the peephole, because regardless who it was, they would all get the same funky reception.

  Ally pulled the door open and saw Carlos standing in the doorway, wearing slacks, an open sports jacket, a nice button-down shirt, a slimy smile on his face. He held something behind his back, which Ally believed to be flowers or something, considering she hadn’t seen his ass in a little bit and figured he was over here with a bouquet tryin’ to suck up.

  “Yeah,” Ally said, coolly, leaning on the open door.

  “Hey Alizé,” Carlos said, talking to her like she was a child, when he was only thirty-four years old himself. “How you been doing?”

  Ally didn’t respond, just stood there shaking her head.

  “Mama ain’t home.”

  “When does she get back? She hasn’t been returning any of my phone calls.”

  “She don’t get off work for another four hours, but it wouldn’t make no difference if she walked in the door right now, ’cause it seems like she finally got yo’ number.”

  “Aliéé, what are you talking about?” Carlos smiled uncomfortably now.

  “Ain’t seen you in a couple of weeks, and that means that she obviously ain’t fallin’ for that nonsense you be tellin’ her no more. Tma take you out and show you the town,’ when all you tryin’ to do is crawl your sorry butt up in here and get you some pussy.”

  “Really,” Carlos said, a confident air about him now. “And what do you think about that?”

  “I think Mama stupid. If she down for fuckin’, cool. Then just fuck and be done with it. But to let you make her think it’s more than that just so you can get yo’ thang off,” Ally said, quickly glancing down just below his waist, “is just stupid.”

  “So you think your mother is stupid for dealin’ with me, hunh?”

  “What I just say?”

  “And what do you think of me?” Carlos looked very relaxed now.

  “What you mean? I don’t think nothing.”

  “Seems that ain’t necessarily true,” Carlos said, looking down at her baby-size see-through T-shirt. Ally followed his eyes to see that her nipples were growing anoud starting to softly protrude through the thin fabric of the shirt. She took a long swallow of her pop and pretended like it wasn’t happening.

  Carlos took a single step closer. �
�Can I touch one?” he asked, his voice low and heavy, one of his hands already appearing from behind his back.

  Ally looked at him for a moment, saw him lustfully taking in her breasts, scanning down, devouring her entire body with his eyes. Sorry-ass motherfucker, she thought. Then a thought popped into her head. “I don’t care.”

  With that, Carlos slid a warm hand under the T-shirt and cupped one of her breasts. He kneaded it around in his hands like dough, then pulled back, focusing on her hardened nipple.

  He was far past excited, Ally knew, saw him pressing forcefully at the slacks he was wearing. Carlos raised her shirt with the one hand, lowered his face, and locked his lips around her breast. Ally was hardly aroused, but she moaned in fake pleasure anyway.

  Carlos dropped the dozen roses he had been carrying right there in the hallway and used his other hand to grope her other breast, as he went back and forth between the two, coating them with his saliva. Ally quickly grew sick of this, and pushed Carlos down by his shoulders, onto his knees.

  His hands slid off her breasts, down her waist, grabbed handfuls of her round behind, his face landing just below her waist. He pressed his face into the panty-covered V her legs and pelvis formed, and then started breathing in deeply, rubbing his face across it frantically, as if he was trying to wipe something clean from his nose.

  Ally wrapped both hands around the back of Carlos’s head and pushed him in even further. He grabbed even tighter to her ass, and she felt his wet, hot tongue flittering around her inner thighs. She felt it latch on to one of the sides of her panties, pull it aside. She felt as his tongue busily worked just on the outside of her, brushing over her pubic hair, and then with a quick side movement of his head and a push forward, his tongue was inside her. Ally jerked abruptly, feeling the quick sliver of wet warmth slip into her, and again the sensation registered nothing more than faint nausea.

  She stood there in the doorway, looking down the hallway, this man down on his knees, feverishly sucking and slurping as if there was a lollipop shoved up her pussy. He was in plain view for anyone who happened to be walking down the hallway to see.