by J. J. Murray
I pull him inside, the ice cream still between us. “Did you already take down your tree?”
“No.”
I look at the ice cream. “Is this supposed to seduce me into coming back to help you?”
He laughs. “No.” He looks into my eyes that sexy way of his. “It’s only for seduction.”
My mouth is a tiny little o.
“I hope you like chocolate. The vanilla looked a little old in that—”
I slam my body into the ice cream and into him and into the door until it finally shuts. He tries to move the ice cream from between us, but I keep that pint firmly between my titties. “I don’t have any bowls, Mr. Browning.”
“You don’t?”
I do, but…“No. How on earth are we going to eat this ice cream?”
He looks down at the ice cream. Or my titties, I don’t know! “It could get messy.”
“It could.”
He lets go of the pint and reaches around me, his hands sliding lower and lower until…Oh, yes, a man’s hands are handling my booty like a booty should be handled!
“It might…melt all over us,” he says as he cups my caboose and lifts me almost off the ground.
“It sounds…yummy,” I say.
And after that, we rip each other’s clothes off and have ourselves some “Exploratory Foreplay Sundaes,” and we don’t need whipped cream, wet walnuts, strawberries, pineapples, or even a cherry on top. I have a Jack Sundae, he has a Diane Sundae, and I have never tasted anything so good!
And right there on the floor of my kitchen! His hot tongue licking the ice-cold ice cream off my seriously hot body in every possible place on the cold linoleum floor is almost as good as me doing the same to him. When all the ice cream has melted, we do a little “mud wrestling” in my tiny little kitchen until I’m sitting in his lap with my legs locked around him, wanting all the while for Jack’s “banana” to complete my sundae. All I have to do is lower myself maybe an inch, and I will have a man inside me for the very first time.
“I need a bigger kitchen,” I pant as he licks on my neck. Why did I just say that?
He kisses me and laughs. “It’s big enough.”
“I’m all sticky.” I look down at his…Johnson. “And so are you.”
There is a moment of silence as we look from his…stuff—I don’t want to use the D-word—back into each other’s eyes.
“Jack, I’m…I’m a virgin.”
“Whoa,” he says.
“Whoa as in stop, or whoa as in…whoa?”
He hugs me tightly, and my nipples are so hard I’m afraid I’ll cut him. “Whoa as in both,” he whispers.
“Yeah?”
He wipes a smudge of something from my cheek. “Diane?”
“Yes?”
“Diane, I need you, and I hope some small part of you needs me.”
I bite my lip. “A large part of me needs you.” Oh, God, what is this feeling? My whole body is warm, and my eyes are filling with tears—but I’m not crying. I’m looking, not staring, into a man’s eyes whose face…is covered with chocolate ice cream. Yet…could this be…“All of me needs you, Jack.”
“Good.” He kisses me on the nose. “Good, because I want this to last.”
I’m not sure what he means. “Want what to last?”
“Us.”
There’s that warm feeling again.
“We met, what, two weeks ago, and I’m just getting over my wife. I never thought I’d ever get over her but you…you came into my life.”
Oh, the tears.
“And I don’t want you to think that this is all I’m after, Diane, though I want it really, really badly.”
We both look down. Yep, he still wants it badly.
“I want something…permanent with you, something lasting…something forever.”
Cold feeling all the way to my toes. What’s this? Where’d that warm feeling go? “And you can say all this after only two weeks?”
“Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, I know, but…my son’s books, those overdue books, brought us together. It’s as if we’re…meant to be, you know.”
My eyes are drying up. This sounds so much like a crummy romance novel! “I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know if I feel the same way, Jack.”
He looks away, but I turn his head back to me with a sticky hand.
“I mean, about this, yeah, we might be rushing this, though I’ve waited a long time for this.” I smile and look down. “This is as close as I’ve ever been, Jack, and all I have to do is move a few inches, but”—I search his eyes—“Do you really want me that way?”
“Yes.”
He wants me that way. No one has wanted me that way. The warm feeling creeps back through my body. Whoa. “Look at us. If you put our situation in a novel—”
“Reviewers would say it’s preposterous.”
Oh, he had to use Nisi’s words.
“So,” I say, “what do we do next?”
“You mean, after our shower?”
Oh, I’m a-tingling now. “Yeah, after our shower.”
“Well, we date.” He smiles. “We see each other, we go together, we talk, we go steady.”
I giggle. “We do all that?”
“I don’t know what people call it these days.”
I like the way his eyes dance when he’s babbling. “Go on. What else?”
“We go out to eat and go to the movies and go window shopping and attend concerts and go to shows and sit next to each other in church and…and you help me write a better book.”
“All of that?”
“Yes, Diane. We become a team.” He takes my hands in his. “I guess I’m saying that I want you to be my girlfriend, Diane. I know that sounds weird. I mean, I could call you my lady friend or woman friend or significant other—”
“Or main squeeze or old lady,” I interrupt.
He squeezes my hands. “Or I could just call you Diane.”
God, I’m blushing again, and he only said my name!
“And maybe in a few months, or years, who knows? Maybe we can take the next step.”
Oh, Lord! The next step! Why is this a better feeling than wanting sex? I’m beginning to feel…hope and joy…and maybe love. But will he want me that way if he finds out—
“Jack, I write reviews for books under the name of Nisi.”
He blinks but doesn’t stop smiling. “You…do?”
“Yes, and I read an advance review copy of Wishful Thinking, I didn’t like it at all, and I posted that horrible review.” He starts to speak, but I growl, “I’m not finished.”
He nods.
“But since I’ve been reading your second draft, I realize that Wishful Thinking wasn’t the book you wrote. What I’ve been reading today has been wonderful. It’s so romantic and loving.” I smile. “Kind of like this moment.”
I said “loving.” I didn’t say “love.”
“Look, Nisi,” Jack says, “your review helped me.”
“It was unfair and cruel.”
“No, it was honest. That’s why you need to help me edit this next book into something you like. I need your critical eye. I want the character to be you, and it can’t really be you without you…or something.”
I can’t believe he’s not mad. “Jack, I trashed your book without even reading all of it.”
He shrugs. “I had trouble reading it, too.”
“So, you’re not mad at me?”
“No.” He nuzzles my cheek with his nose. “Why would I be mad at someone with an honest heart and a critical eye?”
This man is too amazing for words! “What if…what if I don’t like some of what you’re writing…about me?”
“You’ll tell me, and I’ll make the changes. And in the next few months, I’m sure we’ll make changes to the changes.”
Changes to the changes. For some reason, I like the sound of that.
“Now, you need a shower,” he says.
“Just me?”
He smiles and
looks at his arms and chest. “I kind of like this color on me. Maybe I’ll smear myself with ice cream for my professional photograph.”
I put my arms around his neck and pull his eyes to mine. “I’d rather you smeared me all over you.”
“I kind of already have,” he whispers.
“Good point,” I whisper.
“So, Diane, I want to be your boyfriend. Will you have me?”
“Yes.” Baggage and ghost wife and all.
I think I have myself a man.
44
Jack
Don’t let her read that rainbow mess.
Why?
It’s too…girly. It’s not womanly enough.
I’m sure she’ll tell me.
And, definitely don’t let her read those background chapters about your family. They’ll scare her away because they’re too strange.
Well, I’m strange.
“Your lips are moving again,” Diane says, from the sofa downstairs in my house a few hours after we had showered and cleaned her kitchen.
“Just arguing with myself,” I say.
“You do that a lot.”
“I have a lot to say to myself.”
Especially during that shower.
Shh. Diane’s waiting.
When you kept saying, “Oh, I’ve missed a spot. Here’s some more chocolate”—that was slick, Jack, and so was she.
Yeah. Now leave me alone so I can connect this laptop to Noël’s printer.
You spent forever on her legs.
Please, I need to concentrate.
“Hurry up,” she says. “Give me something to read quick, or I’ll have to turn on the TV and watch a football game.”
I finish the connection, print it out, hand her “that rainbow mess,” and kiss her on the lips. “Be cruel, be mean, be—”
“Be quiet,” she says. “Go write some more.”
I return to Noël’s desk, insert a new page on the screen, and stare at the flashing cursor in front of me. Okay, let’s write that scene at the library—
“How old is Diana supposed to be?” Diane asks. “She sounds so young and naïve.”
“I was hoping…twenty-five.”
“She sounds like a teenager, Jack.”
I swivel in Noël’s chair. Diane wouldn’t let me write down the hall in my office because she refused to make room on the guest room bed. “She doesn’t sound romantic to you?”
“She sounds sixteen, and is this a prologue? It’s reading like a prologue.”
She’s right. “That’s a good idea.”
“Is she going to be your only narrator?”
She should be. “I have been experimenting with third-person omniscient—”
“For a romance? How boring.”
You wanted her opinions.
Yes, I did.
She’s right, you know.
I know.
“And this green card idea has been overworked. If she is a black woman and she’s going to hook up with a white man, why would she even consider a foreigner?”
She is sharp!
I have an answer for this one.
“I’m just trying to show that she’s open to all colors.” I smile at Diane. “I got the idea from something Maya Angelou wrote.”
“Hmm,” Diane says. “Well, couldn’t this be a poem she writes instead of her thoughts? We’d have to edit out all the naïvete, of course.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “We could.”
“Do you have a character sketch of her handy?”
I walk over and sit next to her. “But you’re her.”
Diane rolls her eyes. “Like I said, do you have a character sketch of her?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
She shakes her head. “Well, you’re going to need one. Get some paper.”
45
Diane
Jack the writer doesn’t take up for himself enough. This prologue isn’t bad, but I’m reading it as Nisi would. At least he’s open to new ideas and my suggestions.
He returns with one of his trusty memo pads. “Why do I need a character sketch when the character I’m sketching is you?”
“One of us has a job and won’t be around all the time.”
“True.” He rubs my leg. “I could call you…often.”
“I’d like that, but…”
He stops rubbing my leg.
“That doesn’t mean you have to stop rubbing my leg.”
“Oh.” He rubs my leg again, reminding me of the way he washed it in the shower and later as he rubbed in all that lotion. Heaven.
“Okay, let’s start with the physical features.” You know, just to see what he really thinks about my body.
He starts writing.
“Out loud, Jack.”
“What’s the paper for?”
Hmm. “You’ll see.” I have an idea.
“Okay…five-six—”
“Seven,” I correct.
“I was close.”
“Weight?” And he had better guess low or else.
“One-twenty.”
I smile inside. “You are correct.” If I cut off one of my legs. “Eyes?”
“Beautiful.” He starts nibbling on my ear.
“Stop.”
“I’m investigating your ears.”
It gives me chills, but we aren’t getting anything done. I push him back gently. “What color are my eyes?”
“Light brown with dark specks.”
He knows my eyes. “Complexion?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “Well, some parts of you are beige, others tan, others brown, others dark brown. You don’t, um, have any one color. To me, anyway. And, I’m sure there’s still some chocolate ice cream on you somewhere. We may have to take another shower.”
I like the way this man thinks, but…“You can’t put all that in a quick description, Jack.”
“So, it won’t be quick.” He smiles. “I’ll just have Arthur go really slow up and down her body while he explores all the sexy aspects of her color.” He kisses my neck. “Just as I did in the shower.”
Whoo! “You’d better write that one down.”
I give him time to make his notes, all in capital letters, for some reason. At least they’re legible.
“What’s my favorite song?” I ask when he’s done.
“You tell me,” he says.
“Guess.” I’m curious.
He looks me up and down, and I like it. “How about Stevie Wonder’s ‘Something about Your Love’?”
I blink. “That’s so old school, Jack. She’s supposed to be twenty-five. Why not something by India Arie or Alicia Keys or even Mary J. Blige?”
He writes it all down.
“What’s my favorite…meat?”
He hesitates. “Beef?”
I gasp. “You think I’m a heifer, Jack?”
“No, no. I was trying not to stereotype you with chicken or ham.”
“I like chicken and ham.”
He writes it down.
“And pork chops with pinto beans is my favorite meal.”
He writes that down, too.
“What’s my favorite vegetable?”
He sighs. “Potatoes?”
“Jack! Do I look like a beef and potatoes woman?”
“I’m trying not to offend.”
I do like potatoes most, but Diana will like…“Corn on the cob.”
He writes it down.
“What’s my favorite…fruit? And think out loud with your answer, okay?”
He leans back on the sofa. “An apple has some symbolic value, forbidden fruit, that kind of thing. And so does pineapple, since you have to cut off the surface to get to the sweetness.” He debates with himself for a few seconds. “Okay, pineapple.”
“I like peaches,” I say.
“Oh.”
Twenty minutes later without any “corrections” from me, Jack tells me that Diana is the all-American black woman who
loves the fall, drinks Coke, snacks on Chex Mix and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, doesn’t watch TV, and thinks Casablanca is the greatest romantic movie of all time.
I am so glad I’m here to correct him.
“First, I love the spring. I love it when the world comes back to life. Second, I’m a Pepsi girl; Coke makes me burp. Third, I can eat sour cream and onion Lay’s potato chips all day, and those peanut butter cups give me gas. And, I don’t have a favorite movie, because I think they’re all so unbelievable.”
“I was way off.”
True, but how would he know? “Okay, I want you to list any pet peeves you think I have.”
He nods. “Funk in any form, long hair on a man, long or dirty fingernails on a man, rude people, men who don’t make eye contact, fake people, men who talk to themselves, men who hesitate too long before answering, unreal books…” He takes a breath. “Any of them wrong so far?”
Not a single one! “Why do you think I have so many pet peeves?”
He smiles. “I’m right, though,…right?”
I laugh. “Add one more: a man who thinks he knows everything about a woman he’s seeing. There is no way you will ever truly know me.”
“I’d like to try.”
“And I’ll keep you trying.” I get an idea. “As long as you…bring me lunch every day for the next, oh, four months.”
And if he has any sense, he’ll bring pork chops and pinto beans at least once a week.
46
Jack
So, in between a long day at the DMV with Jenny—You know, Jenny’s pretty, but when you spend two hours at the DMV with anyone, that beauty fades in a hurry.
Having to show that death certificate was hard.
You managed.
And then later watching Noël’s car drive away—
It’s a good thing you’re having Jenny mail the checks.
And taking Diane Chinese food just once to know that she doesn’t like Chinese food at all—
She liked the fortune cookies, though. “You have tremendous charisma” was yours, and she added “in bed.”
And writing like I’ve never written before—
Don’t forget trading in your truck for a Honda Accord.
That, too.
Diane likes it.
So do I.
In between all that, I get to know Diane so much better. We go for rides in the Accord. We go to movies at The Grandin Theater, an old-time movie theater; sit in the back; eat popcorn; and make out like teenagers.