He leaned against the jamb.
Okay, changed my mind.
His house was da bomb.
His eyes weren’t on me.
They were watching the Uber take off.
“Hey,” I called.
His gaze slowly came to me. “Hey.”
He didn’t move from his door as I took the two steps up his stoop, off of which was his cute little porch with its flower pots, which also had two red Adirondack chairs on it with a table in between.
Seeing as he was in my way and not moving, I stopped.
“Something wrong with your car?” he asked.
“I hope not, since Roam’s out on a date in it.”
“Something wrong with your phone?”
I was confused but I answered, “No.”
“So is there some reason you didn’t use it to phone and ask me to pick you up?”
Ah.
“It’s all good, my man,” I assured. “I’m an Uber expert.”
“Sniff at home?” he asked, not moving from barring me from his house.
“No. He’s out with some buds,” I answered.
“So it isn’t that you didn’t want him to catch me picking you up.”
Hmm.
“Moses.”
“Okay. Before we start this date, since I got your undivided attention, I’ll share something important. You’ve been an independent woman a long time. Lookin’ out for yourself. Lookin’ out for your boys. I get that’s habit. And I’ll point out I find it attractive. But we do this, it works with you and me, you will no longer be alone. You’ll have someone to help look out for you. Granted, you’ll have someone else to look out for, but he’ll be returning that favor. To end, if you need a ride, you call.”
If I was a normal Rock Chick, say, any one of them but Daisy, I would lose my mind at him barring the door to deliver this statement, a statement not even vaguely disguised as a command. I’d then stomp off and call my girls to meet me at a bar so I could throw a hissy fit.
I was not a normal Rock Chick.
I was me.
So I said, “Okay.”
“Okay, baby,” he whispered then moved aside so I could enter his house.
I walked in, deciding not to hide I was interested in what I was seeing.
Up front, carpeted stairs that were nice.
To the right, a door that opened to what was clearly a laundry/storage room, what with the telltale signs of washer and dryer and bikes mounted on the wall.
I headed up the steps.
There was a landing where things got interesting, this being a little alcove cut out of the pearly-white wall. There was an African tribal mask on a stand set there, lit from above. It was beat up a little, but painstakingly painted, and still had all the little shells that ran across the top.
“Nice,” I noted, stopping to look at it.
“Ngady amwaash. Mask for a woman. From the Congo.”
I looked up at him. “No kidding?”
“My uncle was a collector of African art. On our twenty-first birthdays, he gave all his kids and nieces and nephews a piece.” He tipped his head to the mask. “That was mine.”
I looked down at it. “It’s amazing.”
“Yep.”
“I should do something like that for Roam,” I murmured.
“Yep.”
I looked at him again to see he was grinning at me.
He then put his hand to the small of my back and propelled me up the next flight of stairs.
More nice.
Wood floors.
A living room to the left, big.
A kitchen to the right, also big, off which there was a bar and beyond that a dining room table.
Balconies off the front and back.
I didn’t know what was behind it, but between living room and kitchen there was a big pantry, the doors were open and inside it was a work of art.
“Don’t get ideas,” Moses said as I stared at it. The distressed wood countertop that had been installed into it. The drawers under it with interesting handles, the cabinets under the drawers that had dense wire mesh as fronts. The shelves above it a display of pantry-type items in baskets, jars and glass canisters as well as cans on recessed baby shelves. All of it could be photographed for a magazine. “I let my oldest loose on that. I made it. She designed it. And after her week is up with her mom, she comes back and straightens it when I fuck everything up.”
I again turned my gaze to him. “She’s got an eye.”
“She wants to be an interior designer, and the rest of the house will reflect her desire to do that.”
I smiled at him.
He took that opportunity to lean in and touch his lips to mine.
Oowee.
When he pulled back, I tried to keep breathing right as I remarked, “It’s sweet, you let her loose.”
“Let her loose as much as I can. She’s got an eye, a talent, and will need clients who do not have the limited budget her old dad has. Fortunately, she looks at it as a challenge.” His gaze roamed my face before he looked back into my eyes and asked, “You hungry?”
I nodded.
Hand to my waist, he propelled me into his kitchen, saying, “Let’s get you fed.”
Interesting punched tin backsplash above the stove. Gray concrete countertops. Stainless steel appliances. His girl took into account her dad was a guy in everything but the stained glass suncatcher hanging in the window shaped like a sunflower.
“You wanna sit in front of the TV and eat or you wanna eat at the bar and talk first?” Moses asked, getting down plates.
“Bar,” I answered. “Can I help?”
“Next time, yeah. This time, let me look after you. Have a seat at the bar, baby. Wine to drink? Or beer.”
“Wine’s good,” I told him, heading around to the wooden stools on the other side of the bar.
He got down a wineglass as I hefted my ass up on a stool.
“Red or white?” he asked.
“You got both?” I was surprised. He drank beer all through dinner at Barolo Grill.
He looked to me. “You were coming over. So yeah, I got both.”
I didn’t know what to say to that because I didn’t know what to think.
Leon had put some effort into it in the beginning, but not much. I was too young. I didn’t know to expect more, expect better. And by the end I suspected even in the beginning he had no clue how to give more, definitely not better.
I’d never had a man serve up a meal to me unless I was paying him as a waiter at a restaurant.
Or buy me wine.
“Red,” I said softly.
His head tipped to the side and his attention became acute. “You good?”
I had kind, decent, loving friends. I had a job I was proud of. I had two boys under my roof I wasn’t quite done raising, and I didn’t get to them until late, but what I’d done, I’d done right.
And I was on a stool in Moses Richardson’s kitchen.
What I was not was “good.”
There was no definition for the wonder I was feeling.
“Yeah,” I replied.
He studied me a beat, nodded, then moved to a bottle of red wine on his counter.
Moses was opening it when he asked, “There a reason why those boys don’t have their own cars?”
“I made a mistake.”
He pulled out the cork, but didn’t move to fill my glass, just looked at me.
I took that to mean “explain.”
I explained.
“In the beginning, I wanted them to trust me. But I was stuck. They’d been gettin’ on on their own for a while, they didn’t need me to feed them and give them a bed. Still, beds and food at my place were better than what they could scrounge up. Their clothes were for shit. Secondhand, got ’em at the shelter. They had phones and I did not ask how they got them, or how they paid for them, but they weren’t top of the line.”
When I paused, Moses nodded to tell me he was with me.
/> So I kept going.
“Coulda gone the route of givin’ them everything they needed and most of what they wanted. But I didn’t think spoiling them was the way to make them trust me and the home I was giving them. Bought them enough they had new of what they needed, got ’em good phones and I paid for the plan. But that was it. Otherwise, I gave ’em chores so they’d get allowances and have money in their pockets to buy themselves things. I didn’t want to just hand everything over so they didn’t learn how to work for something they wanted. It was more, though. I wanted it normal. I wanted to teach things and for them not to expect things. But I also wanted them to know I wasn’t buying them or their behavior or my place in their hearts.”
“Think that was a smart move, sweetheart,” Moses said, now pouring my wine.
“Yeah, the problem with it was, they never asked for anything. Not once. Not new jeans. Not new phones. Not new undies. Not a thing. Christmas is crisis time for Shirleen. Got no clue what they want or need.” I shook my head. “But anyway, got it in my head cars were too big a deal for them. Especially two boys who’d had nothing, until they got me. They’d definitely never ask. I couldn’t just hand them over, ’cause what am I teachin’ ’em if I did? So I decided, anytime they wanted the Navigator, I’d give it to ’em. And told ’em, they both graduated high school on the honor roll, they could pick their own cars. That way, they’d earn ’em. But I didn’t realize I’d be putting myself on the Uber VIP list for frequent riders by doing all of that.”
Moses set my wineglass in front of me. “Since they’re graduating soon, you won’t have to worry about it much longer. Unless they’re not on the honor roll.”
“They’re on the honor roll,” I shared, lifting the glass and taking a sip.
Nice. Dry. But fruity. With a hint of oak.
The man could pick wine.
Maybe he was perfect.
“Two street kids graduating on the honor roll,” he murmured, pulling a bag of big sesame seed buns his way. “You’re like a miracle worker.”
“They’re smart kids. They don’t even try. It just happens,” I told him.
He turned his eyes to me. “They gotta go to class. They gotta pay attention in class. They gotta hand in assignments, which means they gotta do homework. And they gotta pass tests, which means they gotta study at least a little bit. So no, Shirleen, that shit doesn’t ‘just happen.’ Kids do that because they’re either taught to do it because they’ve lived lives with parents that helped them learn to live those lives right. Or because they respect the person who’s lookin’ after them and they don’t want to let her down.”
“I hear that, honey,” I said softly and watched his eyes flare. I didn’t get the flare, but I kept on the current subject. “What I’m sayin’ is, they’re good kids. Smart kids. And that’s just how they are, natural-like. I didn’t make that in them. That’s who they are. So I don’t think I should get credit for that. I think they have to understand who they are and it’s good down deep so they don’t ever get it into their heads that what made them is what is them, because it’s not. They’re their own people and they built that through hard work and just bein’ good.”
He pulled the top off a Crock-Pot, after which zesty, saucy goodness wafted into the room, doing this saying, “This is because you’re humble.”
“Roam took a bullet for Jules.”
He stopped spooning brisket on the bottom of a bun and turned to me.
“And one of the reasons Roam and Jules didn’t die on the floor of that living room is because Sniff was runnin’ flat out, he’d lost his phone, so he was flagging down anyone who would stop, lookin’ for help. Just God’s love that the car he flagged down had Luke Stark in it.”
“Sweetheart,” he whispered.
“What made them is there, natural-like,” I said firmly.
“Okay, baby,” he agreed quietly.
Since we had that straight, I took a sip of wine.
He dished up, and when he slid my plate in front of me, it did not have a sandwich and some chips on it.
It had a sandwich, potato salad, a mound of spinach salad with bacon, blue cheese crumbles and red onion sliced so thin you could see through it (and thank God I had mints in my bag for that) and baked beans he pulled out of the oven in a crock he had to have gotten from his momma.
“You wanna feed me or make me explode?” I asked as I stared down at my plate.
“My momma taught me, worst thing a guest could do after they sit at your table is want for more and not be able to get it. She never laid a table where each serving dish wasn’t filled to the brim with more in the kitchen.”
“And you took that one giant leap further and put so much on a plate a woman can’t get through it.”
He slid his ass up on the stool beside mine and grinned at me. “You complaining?”
I pointed a fork at my plate. “Is there molasses in these beans?”
“Brown sugar. I came home at lunch and started them up. They’ve been cookin’ for five hours.”
Nice.
“No, I’m absolutely not complaining,” I belatedly answered.
He leaned into me and gave me another lip touch (which was good, pre-blue cheese and onions) before he turned to his own food.
He was scooping up some potato salad mixed with beans (I approved) when I called, “Moses.”
He turned his head my way.
“No man has ever come home at lunch to make up some beans for me.”
Warmth (or more accurately, more warmth) seeped into his eyes. “Hate you had to wait this long, but still honored to be the first.”
“Stop bein’ perfect,” I whispered.
“Gonna stretch that out, Shirleen, as long as I can.”
It was then I leaned in and gave Moses a lip touch.
I didn’t look at his face as I sat back and turned to my food.
The beans were sublime.
The brisket was orgasmic.
But it was the company that altered my world.
I would find, around about the time all was well in the world of Tarzan and Jane, that making out on the couch like teenagers, hot and heavy, was a skill that stood the test of time, even if you didn’t practice it.
And I would find, to my horror, that post-traumatic stress was not just for soldiers.
This I would find when Moses was deftly sliding into second base, hand inching toward my breast.
I wanted him to tag that bag more than I wanted my next breath.
And then my mind blanked, sheer panic saturated every cell in my body, and somehow I was off my back on the couch with Moses’s long length on top of me.
Instead I was across the room, breathing hard, hand up his way like I was fending him off even as he lay on his side on the couch, up on a forearm, his breathing also accelerated, his eyes alert and locked on me.
“Baby,” he whispered cautiously.
I still felt the tingle in my lady parts, the taste of him in my mouth, the feel of his heat against my skin, the weight of him on my body.
I could see his beauty right there on his couch.
But my brain was twisting shit up, feelings I was feeling making him grow foggy.
I wasn’t having visions, seeing Leon’s ghostly face hovering over the magnificence that was Moses.
It was all in the emotions as things I hadn’t felt in years started stomping through the dust in my bones, kicking it up, making me not able to see straight.
“Shirleen,” Moses called, slowly moving his body so he was seated on the couch before, equally slowly, straightening from it.
Okay.
All right.
This was movie night with Moses.
This was brisket and baked beans, and lip touches and smiles and good wine while he told me about his oldest, Judith, named after his momma, spending an entire summer in search of the perfect lamps for his nightstands. She had this mission because, after he’d recovered from the financial strain of the divorce and the ensu
ing legal battles, three years ago he’d moved his daughters into this place and had given his eldest a budget to do her dad’s pad up right. And even at fourteen, she apparently took this task seriously.
He also told how he was struggling with what it said about him that he had a problem with her latest boyfriend, who was white “when I never saw my girl with anything but a brother.”
And he shared about his youngest, Alice, named after her momma’s favorite writer, Alice Walker, and how she was a good kid, a great one. But she’d arranged three sit-ins that year on a variety of things that she wanted changed about the school and “she just cares about things so much, baby. She wants change yesterday, doesn’t understand she can’t have it and I’m worried what the world is gonna do to my little girl when she realizes it’s never gonna be easy, it’s always gonna be hard and sometimes impossible.”
In other words, dinner was not light. It was heavy and it was the sweetest conversation I’d had, because he trusted me with these things about his girls, about his feelings about his girls, and that was an honor the likes I’d never had bestowed on me.
Tarzan, as fantastic as it was, was a letdown after that. But we needed light after all that heavy and it was good to cuddle through a movie with a man. Hear his beautiful chuckle. Feel his arms around me. Smell his scent. Be in his space.
And kissing after the movie was over was a revelation. I couldn’t say it started out easy, I was stiff. The ease came later as Moses led me to it, and he made it good before it got good.
Now I was there.
Across the room facing off with a decent, kind, deep-feeling man who could cook brisket and pick wine while the dust of the one from before drifted up in my bones, blinding me and making my mouth feel dry.
“Talk to me,” he urged.
“I . . . this . . . I . . . this,” I stuttered then shook my head. “This isn’t gonna work.”
“She cheated on me.”
I blinked at him when these words came at me.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“At her high school reunion. With her high school boyfriend. She got drunk off her ass and cheated on me.”
He was talking about his wife.
Had to be.
And was she insane?
I’d only had his kisses.