by Donna Hill
“Naomi, listen to me.”
Reluctantly, Naomi lifted her head and looked through tear-filled eyes at her friend. “You don’t have to say it. It was stupid and reckless.” She sniffed. “Every time I think about it, I still can’t believe I could have done something so incredibly dumb.” She sniffed, reached for a tissue and dabbed at her swollen eyes. She balled the tissue up in her palm.
“Naomi, let’s just forget that it was plain silly for a minute. What really has you upset is not so much what happened in your office, but the fact that you saw him right afterward with Pamela.”
She looked at Alexis with an awakening in her eyes. “Yes. Exactly. And he looked at me as if he didn’t see me.”
Alexis pursed her lips and looked at her friend. “Nay, what did you expect him to do?”
Naomi frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Alexis blew out a breath of frustration. “Naomi, you couldn’t expect him to blow you kisses, or in any way acknowledge that anything went on between you two. You couldn’t possibly expect that.”
“No,” she said slowly, turning the word into three syllables.
“Then he did the right thing. He acted the way he’s always acted. And you may very well be reading something into it that isn’t there. You’ll never know until you talk to him. But this is really complicated, Naomi. I mean, he’s a student, even if he is a grown man. I’m not sure how things can work out with the two of you, and you certainly can’t play the jealous girlfriend routine. If anything, if there is a relationship with him and this Pamela, that’s more conventional than what’s going on between you and him.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying…I don’t know what I’m saying. Pass the wine.”
For the next hour, they commiserated about everything from health care reform, pension, new shoes, to what they really wanted to talk about—men and sex.
“Was he really that good, Nay?”
Naomi looked at her with dewy eyes. “Yes,” she said on a wine-laced breath. “Better than good.” She leaned back. “But it was more than that. The toe-curling sex just made everything else better. He’s smart, and funny and ambitious. And he wants to open a school for young boys. He’s handsome and sexy. He makes me laugh. He makes me feel good about myself again. I didn’t have to be brainy and overly smart. I could relax and simply enjoy being courted by a man.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “What am I going to do?”
“Didn’t you say he gave you his number?”
Naomi nodded.
“Why don’t you call him?”
“I’d probably say something stupid. I’ve had one glass of wine too many.”
“You’re probably right. But you should call him in the morning. But don’t listen to me. I haven’t been giving the best advice lately.”
“I’ve stumbled this far. What’s a few more potholes?” She laughed then hiccupped. “No matter what happens, we can’t go on like this. There has to be a line, some agreement.” She sighed and looked at Alexis. “And then there’s my job to consider.”
Brice was stretched out on the couch in the one-bedroom apartment that he’d rented, waiting for the phone to ring. He’d been expecting to hear from Naomi all evening, but the call never came. He pushed himself up from the couch and padded out to the small efficiency kitchen. He pulled open the refrigerator door and took out a bottle of beer, just as he heard his cell phone ringing in the next room.
He quickly retraced his steps and snatched the phone up from the table next to the couch. It wasn’t Naomi.
“Hey, Carl,” he said.
“You could sound a little happier to hear from me. Bad time?”
“Naw.” He plopped back down on the couch and twisted the cap off the beer. He put his bare feet up on the coffee table. “Whatsup?”
“You tell me. You fell off the grid these past few weeks. What’s going on?”
He made a sound in his throat. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“That good, huh? I got some time.”
Brice blew out a breath, took a long swallow of his beer and launched into his story. Carl knew all about the great woman that he met in Antigua. It was all that he talked about in Cancún, that and the fact that he was making himself crazy because he’d lost his phone. What totally blew him away, however, was the fact that the dream-come-true woman was a professor at the college—and his professor.
“Wait, wait, wait! Back up. I thought you said she was a bookseller, or librarian or something.”
“Yeah, that’s what she told me.”
“Why?”
“Do I know!?”
“Okay, take it easy. I’m just asking. Have you talked to her?”
The steamy session earlier that afternoon in her office flashed through his head. “Not exactly.”
“What does that mean? Either you did or you didn’t.”
Brice told him about their first meeting, the ensuing atmosphere in class leading up to the sexcapade in her office.
“What!” Carl blurted out. “Are you crazy? What if someone would have walked in? Damn, man.”
“Look, the door was locked and I don’t need a lecture. I know. It just…happened.”
“It just happened…?” Carl paused for a moment. “So now what? You haven’t really had a conversation with this woman. You have no idea what her agenda is, and quite frankly, you don’t know a damned thing about her. Everything that she told you in Antigua is obviously a lie. What else is she lying about? Maybe she’s married or has a man. You don’t know.”
“I don’t believe that.” He shook his head in denial. “She’s not like that.”
“Are you listening to yourself? You don’t know what she’s like, other than the fact that she has you sprung, my brother.”
Brice leaned back against the cushion of the worn couch. He knew Carl was right, at least a little bit. He didn’t know her in the traditional sense, but he knew her. Deep in his soul he knew that Naomi Clarke was a wonderful, intelligent, sexy, extraordinary woman. And maybe a lot of what happened between them in Antigua was an illusion, but what happened when they saw each other again was not.
It was more than sex. There was a connection between them, a vibe that was inexplicable. All he knew was that he wanted to find a way to make it work…somehow.
“Yo, listen, I’m sure she’s wonderful and all that. But you have to remember why you took a sabbatical from school in the first place. You have an agenda of your own that will impact hundreds of kids. You were lucky to get in there at the last minute. Don’t blow it by getting caught up in some college scandal. If I see you on the news, I want it to be with you standing in front of our school with a big smile on your face, not hiding behind your suit jacket on E!”
“I hear you, man. I hear you.”
“You need to work this out, B. Stay away from her, man.”
A vision of Naomi’s smiling face, her command in the classroom, her laughter, her wit, her lush body connected with his ran through his mind.
“I can’t.”
Chapter 12
Naomi awoke with a splitting headache. She really wasn’t a drinker, and wine definitely didn’t agree with her. She tried to open her eyes, then groaned when the rays of the morning sun forced her to close them. Slowly, she turned on her side, away from the window, blinked several times, and the room finally drifted into focus. Soft café au lait colored walls, gleaming wood floors, an ivory leather chaise lounge tucked into a comfy corner beneath a swag lamp hanging seductively above it and a small stack of books below. A blooming fern graced the opposite corner. She frowned. Nothing looked familiar. Where was she?
With a bit of difficulty she sat up and squinted against the light. Then it came to her. This was Alexis’s guest room. They’d both had one drink too many and Alexis insisted that Naomi spend the night.
“Ohhh,” she moaned, pressing her palm to her forehead. She glanced at the bedside clock. Seven a.m. Thank goodness she
didn’t have class or office hours today. And then, like an opened faucet, the prior day came rushing back. “Oh…my…God.” She lowered her head and shook it. Brice. Her office. Pamela.
She put her feet on the floor and slowly stood. At least the room wasn’t moving. In the chair by the window, Alexis had piled up some needed toiletries. Gingerly, Naomi gathered them up, left the bedroom and walked down the hallway to the bathroom and turned on the shower.
About a half hour later she was beginning to feel human again. The pounding had been reduced to a mild, intermittent throb. Nothing that a couple of aspirin wouldn’t cure. When she stepped out of the steamy bathroom she heard Alexis moving around downstairs, and went to seek her out.
“’Morning.” Alexis greeted from her perch at the kitchen island counter. She was sipping a cup of coffee and reading the paper. “Coffee’s hot, if you want some.”
“Definitely.” She walked over to the stove and poured a cup. “Any Sweet ’n Low?”
“Over your head, in the cabinet. How are you feeling?”
“Better.” She grinned sheepishly, pouring two packs of sweetener in her coffee. She joined Alexis and sat down.
“I mean about what we talked about?”
“Better about that, too, actually. I’m going to call him.” She took a sip of her coffee.
Alexis nodded. “Yeah, there’s a lot of air to be cleared.
“Yes, there is.”
Brice was tying up the laces of his sneakers preparing for a run, when his cell phone vibrated in the pocket of his sweatsuit pants. He dug it out and stopped short when he saw the number. Pamela.
Pam was a great woman. And under other circumstances he might even consider seeing where it could go. But she wasn’t really his type, or maybe she was; but he was too fixated on Naomi to realize it. But the bottom line was Pam was beginning to make it clear that she wanted something more than to sit next to him in class and have inspiring discussions about black literature and the diaspora. She knew perfectly well that he was only there for the semester and that he was returning to New York.
“Hey, Pam. Good morning,” he said, finally answering before the call got kicked to voice mail.
“Hi. Um, I know it’s kind of early, but I don’t have classes today and neither do you, and I was wondering if you wanted to hang out, maybe have lunch, catch a movie?”
A date. “Uh, that sounds nice, but unfortunately I have plans for today.”
“Oh.”
He could hear the disappointment in her voice and felt badly, but he didn’t want to take this someplace it had no business going.
“Well, how about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” He squeezed his eyes shut and tilted his head toward the ceiling. “Um, why don’t I give you a call and let you know?”
“Sure. You have my number.”
“Yes. I’ll call you.”
“Great. Well, have a good day.”
“Yeah, you too.” He disconnected the call and stuck the phone back in his pocket. He was really uncomfortable with the way things were going with Pam, and he didn’t want to lead her on. He needed to find time to talk with her face-to-face so that there was no confusion, or worse, hurt feelings. That wasn’t his style.
He turned off the air conditioner and headed out. He started down the tree-lined block at a slow jog and never noticed the car parked across the street from his apartment.
Naomi had been back in her house for about an hour. She could have stayed and hung out with Alexis as her friend suggested, but Naomi wanted some alone time. She needed a clear head when she called Brice, and she wouldn’t get that with Alexis hovering in the background. For the past hour, she’d been walking back and forth with the phone in one hand and the slip of paper with Brice’s number in the other. She stopped and sat down, stared at the number and the phone. She drew in a breath and pressed the numbers.
Her stomach began tilting and pitching as she listened to the phone ring on the other end. She gripped the phone in a moment of panic when she heard his voice on the other end.
“Naomi?”
“Hi,” she whispered. “Um, if this is a bad time I can call back. Sounds like you’re busy.”
“No. No. This is fine.” He grabbed the towel from around his neck and wiped the sweat from his face, then sat down on a grassy mound in the park. “I just finished my run,” he said, still breathing a little heavy.
“Oh, look I can call back—”
“Naomi, it’s fine. Really. I’ve been waiting for your call.”
She released a soft breath of relief and curled up on the couch. “I, uh, guess I have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Yeah, just a little,” he teased. “And so do I. I’m sure the last person you expected to show up in your class was me.”
“That’s an understatement. I thought I was seeing things.”
They laughed and the ball of tension bounced away.
“So, Ms. Mystery Lady, would you like to go first?”
“It’s so silly, really…well…” She started from the beginning, from Alexis not being able to go, to her feeling totally out of her element to Alexis’s brilliant idea to cast her real, uptight self aside and pretend to be someone else. And to her delight and surprise, when she’d finished her made-for-television tale, Brice burst into laughter.
“You have got to be kidding?” he said over his laughter. “It was that simple?”
“Crazy, right?”
“Yes, very. Woo.” He wiped his face with his towel and then he sobered. “Was everything else make-believe, too?”
“No. No, it wasn’t. And that’s what made it so hard. I started off lying to you, and then everything got all tangled up and I wanted things to be different, but I didn’t know what to do. And then, when I didn’t hear from you, I thought it was just not meant to be anyway.”
“I lost my phone the first day in Cancún.”
“Oh, no.”
“That’s why I never called. I thought I would go crazy. I had no way to contact you, and when I got home I started looking for the bookstore in Florida and there wasn’t one.”
“Oops.” She scrunched up her face.
“Thought it was pretty much a lost cause, and then there you were. And I couldn’t put the pieces together—and you acted like you didn’t know me.”
“Oh, Brice, I’m so sorry for all of it. I didn’t know what to do.” She paused a moment. “Why are you in Atlanta, anyway? You told me you were a high school teacher.”
“I am. I put in for a sabbatical because I’d applied for a fellowship. That’s what I mentioned to you in Antigua, but I’d said I didn’t want to talk about it just yet. When I got back home, all the paperwork for my fellowship and my sabbatical had been approved.”
“Oh, my goodness. That is fabulous.”
“Part of the criteria for my fellowship is to study the curriculum of several universities that teach African-American literature. My paper is going to help build the Af-Am studies department in the school that I intend to open. I wanted to gather the best teaching curriculum, in order to develop my own.”
“I’m speechless. That is so incredible.”
“Only the president of the school and the trustees know that I am a fellow. I want to keep it that way.”
“I totally understand.”
There was a quiet moment between them as they absorbed all the new information and tried to understand where this left them now.
“So, Ms. Lady, now that we’ve pulled all the sheets back, where does that leave you and me?”
“I was asking myself the same question. I wish it was something simple.”
“Why can’t it be?”
“There are university rules about teachers and students. I’m in line for the position of dean. If anyone ever found out…”
“I get it. I understand. But I also understand that there’s no way that I’m not going to see you, get to know you better, make love to you. Not after all this. We have to figure somet
hing out, Naomi.”
His clear, no-nonsense tone didn’t leave her much room for argument; but as much as she wanted to be with him, she didn’t see how she could make that happen without jeopardizing everything she’d ever worked for.
“We can’t let anyone know,” she suddenly blurted out. “No one. We can’t be seen together. I don’t even want you coming to my office.” Her heart was thundering in her chest as she took this incredible leap into the abyss of the unknown with both feet and her eyes wide open.
“Whatever it takes, baby, whatever it takes. I’m not going to lose you again.”
Naomi hugged herself as she listened to this pact that they were making. It was a risk. She knew it, and for reasons that defied explanation she was willing to take the risk.
“This is my address,” she said. He scribbled it on a loose paper.
“I’ll fix dinner. Around seven.”
“I’ll be there.”
Naomi disconnected the call and fell back against the pillows of the couch. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her first thought was: what had she done? Her second was: what was she going to fix for dinner?
Chapter 13
“Well, did you call him?” Alexis asked over the phone.
Naomi was puttering around in the black and white, stainless steel kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the sweet-and-sour chicken and checking the pot of steamed vegetables. She had this one room totally redone when she’d moved in. All of her life she’d wanted a Martha Stewart kitchen, complete with every pot, pan, and utensil that one cook could ever need. She’d had a wall knocked out to accommodate glass-enclosed pantry, the view providing the onlooker a visionary wonderland of spices, fresh herbs, condiments, pastas and sauces.
“Yes, I called him,” she said, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder as she worked.
“And?”