Real Love

by Alexandria House

  He shrugged. “Whatever. I bet your woman would think differently.”

  Before I knew it, I was jumping over my desk and pulling him up by the collar of his Elite Ink t-shirt. “Let me explain something to you. I might joke and play around with your ass about a lot of things, but that little short woman in that office across the street is nothing for you to play about. You understand?”

  “You gonna hit me over a woman, H? I’m your brother! I’ll still be your brother when she leaves your weak ass! That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Her! That’s why you talking all this shit about not rescuing me, huh? The pussy that good, H? It’s good enough to make you turn your back on the only brother you got?”

  That’s when I punched him. He hit me back, and that shocked me, because in all the years we’d been arguing and fighting over big shit and little shit, he’d never tried to hit me. But then again, I’d never hit him, either. Not like that. I stood there for a moment and stared at him. He looked just as shocked as I felt. When the blood started trickling from his nose, he reached up, swiped at it, and I could see his eyes fill with tears.

  “I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry, H. I shouldn’t have said that shit about Denise. I don’t know why I do this shit, but I’ma do better.”

  I rubbed my jaw and shook my head before opening my office door. As I headed out, I turned to him, and said, “I meant what I said. Don’t call me in the middle of the night with some bullshit, Rafiq. I mean it.”

  27

  I was supposed to be working, preparing for a meeting the next day with a really sweet little lady who cleaned houses. She wanted to open a place where she could train young mothers to clean houses or office spaces. She just needed money to rent a space to do the training. She was sixty and had no credit. She’d bought everything she owned by saving her money and paying cash. The bank had no respect for her savviness, and hence, had turned her down for a loan. Since she had no experience with computers, I was to help her set up a Facebook page and a crowdfunding account, but all I could do was think about the tall, fine man across the street.

  I missed Hasaan.

  But I was still pissed at him.

  Not necessarily because he’d done something wrong, but because his big ass was letting Rafiq run over him. But then I started thinking maybe I just didn’t get it, because I wasn’t close to my so-called siblings. Well, that was putting it mildly. They hated my existence.

  I sighed as I rested my elbows on my desk and clutched my head. Then I looked up and my heart bounced against my ribcage at the sight of Hasaan walking out of his shop. A part of me hoped he was coming to see me. Another part hoped he wasn’t. I wasn’t ready for him to come over here and tell me he wasn’t turning his back on Rafiq and I had to take it or leave it, because my big bad ass was going to take it. Because whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was falling in love with him. But “taking it” was out of character for me. I was the one who delivered the ultimatums in my relationships. I was the one-strike chick. But Hasaan? Shit, he could make me purr like a kitten. I was almost willing to break all of my rules for him.

  It turned out he was heading to my mom’s place, so I released the breath I’d been holding and frowned when I saw Rafiq rushing out of Elite Ink with his hand covering his nose. He snatched the door to his midnight blue Chevy Impala open and jumped in, peeling out of the parking lot. What in the hell was going on?

  Before I could formulate another thought, my cell phone buzzed. A quick glance at the screen told me it was Greer.

  “Hello?” I answered, my eyes still on the parking lot across the street.

  “Hey, heifer! I got Trevia on the line, too.”

  “Hey, Trevia,” I said absently.

  “Oh, hell. What’s going on?” Greer asked.

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Is something going on with you and Hasaan?” Trevia asked.

  That’s when my ass started crying, and I never cry.

  Ever.

  The time I cried over losing my job was an extremely rare occasion.

  “Shit! I’m in Chicago with Nyles. You need me to come back? Or Greer? Greer, can you go to Dallas?” Trevia said, her voice shrill.

  “Let me text Derek. He’s at work. Maybe there’s a jet available. I’ll tell him it’s an emergency. Are you hurt? Is Hasaan okay? Oh, shit! It’s your mom! Something happened to your mom!” Greer rambled.

  “What happened to Ms. Jenny?!” Trevia shrieked.

  “No, no, no, it’s nothing like that. I just…I think I messed things up with Hasaan. I think we might have broken up. I don’t even know…”

  “Well, what happened, ’Nise?”

  I told them about the little Rafiq rescue mission he took me on and our conversation the next morning. “You think I was too hard on him. Shit, I was, wasn’t I?”

  “Well, maybe the ultimatum was a bit much, but I think what you said about his brother needed to be said, and frankly, Denise, if he can’t handle the truth or the way you tell it, he doesn’t need to be with you. That’s just who you are, and it isn’t a bad thing,” Greer offered.

  “Y’all, I usually say what I wanna say and don’t give a damn, but I feel so shitty,” I said, blinking back fresh tears. “And I’m all emotional. What’s wrong with me?”

  “I think, for the first time in your life, you’re falling in love, real love, and you’re worried about never being with him again,” Trevia said softly.

  I held the phone.

  “Oh, Denise, that’s it, isn’t it?” Greer said.

  “I don’t know. All I know is, when I saw his face after he dropped his brother off, I wanted to take his pain away. I guess I thought telling him what I did about letting Rafiq grow up would do that. When he just let me leave like that, I wanted to die. That shit really hurt.”

  “Well, one thing I know is that he cares about you. He’ll come to you. He just may need time to process things,” Trevia said.

  “Yeah, do you know that he called both me and Trevia a week or so ago to thank us again for setting up that date at Plush? He said you’re everything to him,” Greer added.

  Well, that only made me cry harder, so I had to get up from my desk and go to the bathroom in the back for some tissue. When I returned to my desk, Hasaan was standing in front of it with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a plastic sack in the other.

  “I gotta call y’all back,” she said, taking the phone from her ear and setting it on her desk. “Hey, H.” Her eyes were red and puffy.

  “You been crying, baby?”

  A tear fell from her eye as she shook her head and sniffled. “No. I don’t cry.”

  I moved closer to her. She stepped around the desk and fell into my arms. Flowers and sack still in hand, I wrapped my arms around her, and said, “I shouldn’t have let you leave. I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, I shouldn’t have given you an ultimatum. That’s your brother. I mean, I stand behind what I said, but I know I shouldn’t have tried to force you to do something you might not have been ready to do. I’m so sorry.”

  “Wait a minute, baby. Let me put this stuff down.”

  “Okay…” She backed away from me and wiped her wet cheeks with some tissue.

  I set everything down on the desk and then cradled her beautiful, round face in my hands, pressing a kiss to her soft lips. “Look, you were right. I’ve known for a while that I need to step back and let Rafiq fall. I know that’s the only way he’ll learn how to stand. It’s just…it was hard to hear it, okay? I guess I just didn’t want to face it. I…I talked to him, though, and I let him know I wasn’t doing it anymore. I told him I’m not going to rescue him anymore.” I took a deep breath and released it.

  She peered up at me, and asked, “How did he take it?”

  “Not well. He said a bunch of disrespectful shit, blamed you...he probably won’t talk to me for a while.”

  “I’m so sorry, H.”

  “No…it had to happen. I feel better now th
at it’s done. The only thing I’m worried about is us, baby. I missed you.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and leaned against my body. “I missed you, too.”

  “Are we good? I mean, is everything okay with us? I don’t wanna lose you, Denise.”

  “I don’t wanna lose you, either, H. We’re good. Now, what’d you bring me?”

  “Some of your mama’s fried chicken.”

  “Sheeeeiiiiiiit, we’re better than good, then.”

  I laughed as I kissed her forehead and then her lips. “Thank you, baby.”

  “For what?”

  “For just being you.”

  “Shit, I forgot to set my alarm, and I have a meeting in the morning. Hand me my phone, baby,” I said. We had just settled in my bed that night, both of us too exhausted from work and life to do anything but sleep. We’d have to catch up on all the sex we’d missed over the course of our three-day separation later.

  “On a Saturday? I thought that was against your religion.”

  “It is, but it was the only time the client had available to meet. She works a lot.”

  “Okay, what time you need to be up?”

  “Six. You gonna set it for me?”

  “Naw, I’ma just wake you up. I’ll leave for the gym when you leave.”

  “For real, H? I don’t wanna be late.”

  “Don’t worry. I got you, baby.”

  “You better.”

  He pulled me into his arms. “I won’t let you down.”

  Around 5:45 the next morning, I was awakened by the sensation of Hasaan’s tongue sliding across my clit. As I squirmed and placed my hand on the back of his head, he looked up at me with a grin on his face, and said, “Rise and shine, baby.”

  “Ohhhh, shit. You are definitely gonna make me late. H…ohhhhh.”

  “Mmm, girl, I’ma have to start calling you Delicious Denise, because you taste so damn good!”

  “H!” I squirmed some more and scooted away from him a bit, because his tongue was driving me crazy.

  He snatched me back down to his mouth. “Why you running? Stop running, baby.”

  “H! Ooooh, H!”

  He dipped his tongue inside of me. “Mm-hmm…”

  “H! Damn-it! Shit!”

  “You like that, baby?” he asked, as he swirled his tongue around and around my clit, while sliding a finger in and out of me.

  “Yessssssssss.”

  He kept licking and sucking and licking and sucking and flicking until the pressure inside of me built to the point that I thought my entire body was going to explode. It was like there was a stick of dynamite inside of me, and every time he touched my clit, the fuse grew shorter and shorter. I wanted him to stop, but I didn’t want him to stop. Then, finally, my uterus began to quiver and contract over and over again.

  “Shiiiiiiit!” I screamed, as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest.

  He lifted his body and covered my mouth with his. “You up now?” he asked.

  28

  Three months passed.

  Three months of good love and good sex.

  Three months of dinner dates and movie dates and staying in and Netflix and chill, and just us being together.

  Three months without late night calls from Rafiq or broken rest. Actually, Rafiq hadn’t been around at all, not even at Elite Ink.

  Three months without fights or arguments.

  At the end of those three months, we had been together a total of five months.

  It took him five months to say it, and when he said it, my whole life changed.

  “I love you, Denise.”

  We were in his shower that morning, and he was soaping up my soft belly. I was dragging a washcloth across his chest, trying not to look down at his erection, because we both needed to go to work.

  My only response was, “What?”

  He grabbed my hand, stopping my poor job of cleaning him. “I said, I love you,” he repeated.

  Here came those foreign-ass tears again. It wasn’t that I’d never heard the words before, it was that I’d never heard them said the way he said them. When he spoke the words, I not only heard them, but I felt them. I felt them all the way to the deepest part of my soul.

  He loved me.

  He really loved me.

  And I loved him. I’d known it for a while, but didn’t want to be the first to say it. Yeah, I had a lot of shit to work on, not the least of which was my pride.

  I looked up at him with tears filling my eyes and threatening to rear their ugly heads, and I whispered, “I love you, too.”

  He leaned in and consumed my mouth with his, and then he lifted my big ass from the floor and I wrapped my legs around him. I spent the next thirty minutes screaming that man’s, my man’s, name.

  *****

  “You and that boy you think I don’t know you screwing need to be at my house Sunday at five for dinner,” my mother shouted into the phone. “Friend’ll be there, so he won’t be the only man there. It’s time for y’all to stop sneaking around behind my back and come into the light with this thing.”

  “Mama, what the hell are you talking about? We ain’t hiding nothing. We damn near live together, and you know it!”

  “Damn near, my ass. Don’t y’all spend every night together?”

  “Well, if you know that, how are we sneaking around behind your crazy-ass back?”

  “Look, just bring your ass over on Sunday!”

  “Mama, if you wanted us to come over for dinner, all you had to do was ask.”

  “Whatever. I’ll see you Sunday.”

  “Nah, you’ll see me in like five minutes when I come across the street to get me and Hasaan some lunch. You coulda waited and asked me when I got over there. You knew I was coming.”

  “Shit, I had to say it while it was on my mind. The specials are stewed tilapia and barbecue chicken. Which one y’all want? I’ll go on and make y’all’s trays and have them ready for you.”

  “You know I don’t want no dang tilapia.”

  “All right. See your ass in a little bit.”

  *****

  We arrived at my mother’s house ten minutes early. I wasn’t necessarily nervous about how she would treat Hasaan. She knew him pretty well from their interactions at her restaurant. Plus, he was a tall, fine, piece of chocolate, and my mama loved men who looked like him as much as I did. I was more concerned about her pushing my buttons and making me act a fool on her. Like I told Hasaan before, he hadn’t seen my crazy side yet. I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted him to see it, but if anyone could bring it out, it was my mother.

  I did her the courtesy of knocking instead of busting in on her or using my key like I usually would’ve.

  “Come on in!” she shouted from inside. “I’m in the kitchen finishing up cooking!”

  I opened the door and led Hasaan through the small entryway and dining room on the right to the kitchen. If we’d taken a left, we would’ve entered her living room. Mama’s house was a small, three-bedroom white frame structure with a neat yard and my daddy’s old Lincoln parked in the driveway, her main mode of transportation unless she made Friend take her somewhere. One thing about the woman, she was clean as hell. You could eat off of any floor in her house.

  Hasaan followed me into the kitchen where Mama stood at the stove with her back to us, a robe over her Sunday clothes.

  “Hey, Mama,” I said.

  She spun around with a fork in her hand, swiping a piece of her curly wig from her forehead with her free hand, her face beat like she was preparing for a TV appearance. Mama was mean as a damn demon, but when she went to church, she always looked fierce. I got my love of wigs and nice clothes from her.

  “Hey, ’Nise! Hey, Hasaan! Woo, my daughter got herself something in you! Your mama know you this good looking?” she gushed.

  He chuckled. “I think she might have an idea.”

  “Well, let me wipe my hands and hug y’all,” she said.

  As she wrapped her arms around
Hasaan, I said, “Don’t be tryna feel my man up, Mama.”

  “Aw, shut up and come give me a hug, girl.”

  My mama wasn’t the most affectionate person in the world. I mean, I knew she loved me, but she rarely hugged or kissed me, so I knew this little display of affection was for Hasaan.

  “Y’all made it?” That was Friend.

  I stepped out of my mother’s arms and looked to see him standing in the doorway that led from the kitchen to the garage.

  “I was just out here sweeping up,” he informed us.

  Friend was always “out somewhere sweeping up,” especially when Mama had cursed him out about something. No doubt that was the case, judging from the look on his face as he attempted to smile at us. Friend had a wife of several years at home, and all I could think was my mom must’ve been a damn tiger in bed for him to willingly spend so much time with her mean ass. But then, that thought made me want to hurl right there on her shiny linoleum kitchen floor, so I wiped it out of my mind.

  Friend extended his hand to Hasaan. “Herbert Miller.”

  Hasaan took the much smaller, older man’s hand, and said, “Hasaan Peterson.”

  A few minutes later, we were sitting at my mother’s dining room table, our plates heavy with fried pork chops, pinto beans, dirty rice, and thick cornbread.

  As we dug in, Hasaan said, “Ms. Jenny, how is it that everything you make tastes so good?” He added, “Including your daughter,” under his breath, and I poked his thigh under the table. I doubted he even felt it as hard as the thing was.

  She grinned. “Oh, just practice, I guess. My mama taught me when I was little. It was so many of us, we all had to pull our weight around the house.”

  “Really? Where you from originally?” Hasaan asked.

  “South Louisiana.”

  “Well, that explains it. Nothing but good eating down that way.”

  “Mm-hmm. I’m the youngest of eight kids. I got a sister who still lives down there. We’re the only two siblings alive now, but we don’t talk because of some mess from back in the day.”