Leftovers at 4:47:00 PM

After attending two more games in the following week before he flew to LA for two weeks of games, both which Dorian’s team lost, and getting daily texts from Maurice saying, “what’s good,” and “what’s been going on with you,” I found myself sitting in a chair across from a highly lethargic potential buyer fumbling with my trembling fingers underneath the table.

The man’s hazels came to mine for the first time and I watched his settle on my neck and I cringed. I blinked my eyes several times and slowly brought my hand around my neck pretending to massage it instead of covering up the scar that was still there from a three-inch slash I got years back.

“If you’re going to do this, I’m thinking more along the lines of recycling and reusing. Lots of businesses have found great viability in doing this. It’s definitely the smartest road to take when looking at the way this economy is going these days. For this kind of small business to eventually grow into something bigger and open up more spots in different cities I---,”

“Are you saying all the time I’ve spent idealizing this carpet cleaning business has been a damn waste?”

He barked, cutting me off. I glared at him and felt my upper body temperature heat up. With Dorian on the edge of the opposite side of the continent, Tracy content with her estranged relationships with her women, Maurice constantly reminding me of how inadequate I had been in our annoyingly dysfunctional relationship in one-line messages courtesy of T-mobile, and this stocky and balding man sitting across from me with his hands folded on the table and a bored scowl present on his lips, I was forced to shift back to reality. I was on edge, thoughts surfacing from emotions that I thought I could manage. 

Maurice’s texts stirred feelings that I struggled with everyday to fully step over. Yeah, I had gotten over that the connection we had shared once upon a time was over because even though I hadn’t realized it before, we hadn’t loved each other for the greater part of the two years that we were involved with each other. However, I battled with getting over the time and effort I gave him from me. It was one thing to put him in my past, but it was another to just forget him and the times we shared. I didn’t want to be with him, but I didn’t want to forget him. If I did, our relationship would have ultimately been a waste.

With Maurice I had never experienced that instantaneous he’s-such-a-nice-person-and-he’s-kinda-sexy-I-think-I-might-like-him that turns into oh-my-god-this-is-perfect-he’s-got-to-be-the-one feeling. When I first met him I was not attracted to him. I didn’t even want to know him. We met, hated each other, then craved each other through our hatred. We moved fast and started dying out at the end, losing form and distancing. We were the couple at the party that everyone stared at while we fought about who’s fault it was that the lights were left on in the car. We were sloppy, unconventional, and awkward, and what I want to fully grasp one day is what it was that kept us together for two years.

Now, since Dorian was that guy, the guy every woman wishes floats into her life when everything is going oh so wrong, I felt swamped with growing concerns. How could this be happening to me like this and so fast? How could something so scripted not be too good to be true? Business woman, Denise Ellis falls for youthful and eager NBA shooting guard, Dorian Pitts. It was very cliche and different from anything that I was used to and I let my past heartbreak, failed relationships, and odds control my outlook for us as a couple. I started making excuses at why it could never work and convincing myself that I was wasting my time. Subconsciously, I had started waiting for the waves to swallow me instead of enjoying what obviously was a blessing and something I had deserved.

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If It's Just Kissing at 12:39:00 AM

“Where are you?” 

I skimmed around. There were blotches colors everywhere, NBA gear hanging in stands, food stations inches apart, boys running in oversized dresses that came past their knees, mothers holding onto her children’s hands, teenagers crackling and carrying on, and everything in between.

“I don’t know.” I admitted.

I said into my phone. I was so excited when an unknown number popped on my screen that I should have felt embarrassed. I had been waiting, standing in my gold Brian Atwood cork pumps for over a half hour, for Dorian to call me. I assumed that he had to deal with the press, do some quick interviews, talk to the coach, and cool down before I could come into the picture. Even though I was tired, I was so thankful that they had won because if his team would have lost, I would have been stuck in an awkward position and I didn’t know him enough to be giving him an empathetic speech about a sport I knew very little about when it came to professional means.

My face was bare with the exception of some black liquid liner and a neutral gloss on my lips like always. I was wearing my full, dark hair pulled away from my face in subtle, choppy waves. I had an pink a-lined racerback tank top with a pair of denim leggings so I looked both comfortable and feminine and far from a suit.

“What do you see?”

“People.” I answered simply. It was the best way to describe it at the moment.

“What else?”

“More people.” I said laughing, my eyes bypassing a tall, thick-boned buxom woman with a swaying ponytail who stepped in front of me. I was still buzzing from the magnetism and voltage of the game.

“Did you come to the first level?”

“No, but I’m walking by an escalator now.”

I slowed down my pace.

“Are there bathrooms nearby?”

I took my eyes off a little girl with a thin head of strawberry blond hair who was fruitfully licking at her ice cream cone and lagging behind her hollering mother.

“No...wait...um, yeah. Should I take it?”

“Nah, keep walking until you come to a corridor.”

“Where are you?” I asked him.

“I’m coming to meet you.”

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Putting In The Work at 1:07:00 PM

"Hello?" I said into my wireless phone that Tracy held to my cheek with a fresh mouthful of raisin specked Cherrios. I dropped my spoon onto the table by the semi-peeled banana I had planned on eating next.

"Denise. This is Dorian."

My hand came up to my mouth and my eyes poked out of their sockets as I scrambled with sections of the newspaper on the table to get a napkin.

"Hey." I chirped, hoping he couldn't hear me spitting what was in my mouth into the empty Starbucks cup. I brought my fingers up to Tracy's arm and started pinching her. She laughed at me as I slid the back of my palm over my lips and eased the phone in my other hand.

"Who's that?" I could hear Tracy asking in the background. I waved her off.

"Good to hear you're up so early on a Sunday."

"It's not early." I took a peep at the clock on the wall behind me above the stove where Tracy was bringing two eggs to a boil and released my legs from underneath my butt. "It's only..." I struggled with the positioning of the fancy Roman numerals. "A little after eleven."

"To a lot of people it's still early in the morning."

Tracy leaned over and placed her chin on my shoulder and whispered in my ear.

"Who's that?"

"Well, you're up too." I said and pulled the receiver away from my cheek and rasped to Tracy harshly, "Dorian."

"During the season I'm always up before eight. But look, what's tomorrow?" He asked curiously.

I furrowed my brow and stood up from the small square dining table. Nothing came to me. I wondered if he was trying to be sarcastic.

"Tomorrow? Monday."

"Just Monday?"

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me.

"Yeah."

I ignored Tracy’s colorless voice as she continued asking me who Dorian was. I was ready to pop her.

"Wrong."

I was amused.

"Then what's tomorrow?"

"Game night at MSG at eight."

I began to smile.

"Oh, I thought you meant---,"

"Is it still just Monday?"

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Loosening Buttons at 7:26:00 PM

There was a warm breeze that tingled the nerves on the back of my neck and cheeks and rays from the bold sun that turned my skin into a dewy gem, but I didn’t blink. My dark, glossy, collarbone length hair was slicked back into a sleek eye level ponytail with the crown textured a bit. A heavy strip of eyeliner on my upper lash line that started out as a thin dotting and faded into a curve at the center of my temple and a sheer gloss was all I had on my face, excluding the ferocious leer and the black round acetate sunglasses that I often used for protection. Tiffany solitaire diamond earrings in platinum was the only piece of jewelry I wore. A polished black one-button closure blazer was what I wore over the lustrous groves in my abdomen and matching boot leg pants that slightly covered the high stiletto heel of my black suede mules. After work I had ditched the white button down blouse I wore. My nails, on both my feet and hands, were nude and elongating. My fingers on my left hand were tightly wrapped around my titanium BlackBerry when it buzzed in my palm.

It wasn’t until I spotted him about twenty feet away lingering by the entrance and speaking into his cell phone that I realized that I was going out with a NBA player after he’d fished my number out of the Yellow Pages. Who even goes through all that trouble for some digits? I never even knew I was listed. When he noticed me, ambling towards him with my chin parallel to the ground, he quickly pulled the phone from the side of his face and slipped it into his pocket. I slightly parted my lips, breathed, shut them closed again. I stepped to him and waited until he spoke first. I smuggled my sigh in as his eyes dipped low and gradually crawled back up the length of my body.

“Interesting outfit.”

I was a working girl. What did he expect? A tunic and leggings? I pulled down my tinted frames and tucked them into my purse. He grinned as I put my hand in his and walked through the double doors opened by two hosts. He followed my lead with his hand resting on the small of my back.

“I knew you’d like it.”

A waiter dressed in spectacular black with a contrasting white apron covering his lap greeted us with a dusty French accent. 

“Follow me.”

We did in silence until we reached the table. We watched as the waiter assured us that someone would be along shortly and as he pulled my chair out for me. Dorian eyed me from across the table until I grinned took the seat that had been offered to me. The waiter then politely asked us for our drinks.

 “Just a cranberry juice.” My date replied.

Mindless chatter over low drumming sounds filled the background.

“And for you, my dear?”

I leaned my neck towards our temporary servant and replied without moving my head or looking at him.

“I’ll have a water with spearmint leaves.” I finally tilted my head and let my eyes flutter upward to look him in the eyes. He gave me a faint smile and nodded

When he departed from our table, I waited a couple seconds before I sat back in my chair and crossed my legs.

“You’re already too corrupted to try and become pure now.” he rasps jokingly and opens his menu.

I cleared my throat loudly,

“I was only trying to look out for the bill.” 

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Reaction at 2:16:00 AM

After I thanked him, Dorian sped off and I stood there by the curb until his car was only a figment of my memory.  The moon had decided to begin to roam around, illuminating everything that surrounded me, making my broken down world appear beautiful. A red Camry was hanging out of my driveway and instantly I prepared myself for questions. I planned on bypassing my roommate, Tracy and washing away the day’s hardness with the steam and rapid downpour of our walk in glass door shower. The door quietly clicked shut behind me. The sound was softer than the sound of my shoes. That’s why I, as quietly as I could, slipped each one off one at a time, gripping the doorknob for balance. 

My bedroom was on the first floor, to the left of the kitchen and to the right of the living area, which was code language for the room where Tracy liked to lick, suck, pull, twist, pinch, tease, kiss, nibble, caress, rub, stroke, and experiment when I was out. I generally stayed out of there, despite the flowery and tempting scents that always flowed from the candles she kept lit. Tracy was the kind of woman who lived for flowers and candles and quiet dinners with boisterous laughter. We rarely entertained groups of any kind in our home so we had the luxury of making it as beguiling and as nontraditional as we pleased. There were no parents in the picture to barge in and lecture either. 

I looked around, peeped in the living area and both the sofas were empty. There were four candles burning on the black side tables though. I speculated that maybe she could have just had them lit for reading purposes because Tracy was an avid reader, read two books a week sometimes, but the red Camry came back into mind. Looking straight ahead now, the kitchen lights were out, but the illumination from the moon would have been enough to sit in there and feed her guest(s) and sex her (them) on the table afterwards. Quickly, I ran a list of names through my head, names that have popped in here in the past few months to predict who was here. Red Camry. I knew it looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it with a face, body, or voice. Then I saw a red strapless bra adjacent to my bare feet. It was a very expensive bra, high quality, no doubt part of a designer set that cost half my share of the mortgage payment. Too frilly to be mine. Too posh to be Tracy’s.

I exhaled as I placed my hand on my room doorknob and twisted it as softly as I could. It made a small clicking sound, but it was barely audible if Tracy was upstairs in her own room.

“Denise.” Damn. A shiver rocked my body as I closed my eyes. The sweat and rain that tickled my skin earlier felt cold and dirty. “Is that you?”

I looked behind and around me. I didn’t see her, but I knew it was Tracy from her booming monotonous voice.

“Yeah.” I said, my voice meek and barely audible. 

I felt like I was confessing a deep, dark secret. I wasn’t quite sure where I was responding to until I heard her bare feet clomping down the hardwood floor. She was coming from the one place I hadn’t looked: the staircase. It was obvious now. There was a pair of perilous pointy black pumps thrown about, three stairs separating each one and the matching thong to go with the sleek red strapless bra was in the midst of it all. 

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Right On time at 12:35:00 AM

The air conditioning was on full blast. My body shuddered violently as droplets of rain dripped from my collarbone length black hair that I had taken out of the ponytail it had been in for most of the evening. The water was cold. My sopping cotton shirt clung to my skin that was filled with chill bumps and felt cool and pasty and had started itching. My head was ablaze and pounding at my temples, the fire burning through my smoldering eyes. Images of missing that train, running up and down those stairs, pushing those people out my way, waiting under the rain for almost an hour for a bus, cursing people out when I caught the wrong one, walking almost two miles to get back to the city, gutting out over two hundred dollars to a cabbie to get me to this club as fast as he could beckoned me. Now he was telling me that it was over. Everything was over. two years was over. I swallowed hard and exhaled loudly through my clenched teeth. My eyes tightened and squinted together. My voice clapped through the air like thunder.“You didn’t know what I went through to get here tonight.” I growled with my chin tilted down towards the ground as he turned his back to leave me.“You know what, Denise, it doesn’t matter what you went through to get here. The only thing that matters now is that you broke your promise. And you know what, that was the last one you’re going to break. Denise, I’m done. This is done. We are no more. I can’t keep doing this. You put everything in your life before me. I can’t. I-I...”I put my hand out in front of me. He stopped rambling. I could barely breathe. I had never been more humiliated in my life. All I could think of was that I had brought this upon myself. This is what I got.

“Stop.”

Every voice and every sound disappeared. Every feature on everyone’s faces had become so opaque that they looked like unfinished portraits. My heart was shattered and I hadn’t seen where all the pieces had gone. Yet, I had heard enough. I wasn’t going to fight him anymore. We’d been there too many times before for me to be naive enough to believe that this time he didn’t mean it. I trotted out of that VIP lounge through the weight of the stares, pushed through the heavy curtains, rushed down the stairs, passed the bouncers, got out the door, and didn’t breath until I leaned my back flat against the brick wall. I began panting in short puffs under the now soft rain.

His voice made every sense come alive inside of me. It was incredibly deep and baritone, rich with bass and tremor.

“You're still here.” I was quiet and didn’t move a muscle. I was at the thin point between growing angry and pushing past it and it felt like mush. “I thought you would have been long gone by now.” My curiosity go the best of me. 

I twisted my neck to the sound of his words. He was coming out of the club. First, my eyes landed somewhere between his pelvis and neck, an empty spot on his chest. He was very tall, appearing almost seven feet. Then, I slowly raised then to meet his eyes. My eyes fluttered down once I noticed his eyes staring directly into my face. I recognized him. Just before I walked into the club to meet Maurice, I had stopped at the corner store across the street to get a bottle of water to down my aspirins with and he was standing outside the door talking on the phone. He seemed to forget who he was talking to when he watched  the muscles in my mouth, chin, and neck move as I practically gulped down the entire bottle of water in one swig. He hadn’t said anything to me, but I heard him talking into his phone.

“Hmm, yeah.” I replied softly. I didn’t have much of a voice at that point. Part of me hoped he would take my nonchalant response as a clue to just keep walking by.

“I hope you're not waiting for him to come out here.”

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Running at 9:47:00 PM

“Our words resounded in my head.”

“Are you going to be here?”

“At seven, I will be there.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

I skidded my eyes over the wrinkles on her skin, at the corner of her eyes and at her temples, and then over the dark circles under her puffy eyes as I awaited her response. She had tiny holes all over her skin. Her damaged red colored hair was matted on top of her head. The darkness inside her mouth startled me when she finally spoke and I looked down at my balled fist on the gray counter. “That train is scheduled to be here in one minute and it looks like it’s going to be on time.” My breath escaped me. My eyes swept up and landed on hers. She glanced at the huge digital clock on the wall to my right and her left. My eyes followed. “You better run.”

I swallowed hard, took one last glimpse of her deranged appearance and I did what she told me. My knees started bending, my legs started extending, and my ponytail started swinging all before I took in how vast the crowd was in the train station. There were people scattering everywhere. Some carrying things, some not. Some people eating, laughing, carrying on, screaming, arguing, pushing, and crying. Adrenaline pumped through me and I didn’t care who I smashed into, who I knocked down, or who I stepped on. I was thinking about one thing and one thing only. I had to catch that train in one minute because I had to get to Penn station, hop in a cab across town, and get to Maurice in less than an hour. This time, despite everything, I was keeping my promise. People were slinging profane threats at me, pushing me back, and someone even tried to trip me. But I kept going. Even when someone grabbed my arm. I grunted and looked behind me back at the person who had my arm. I stared into the dark face of an angry man who seemed to be a mile tall. I never stopped moving. He followed, tightening his grip.

“You need to excuse yourself there miss.”

I snarled at him and narrowed my eyes.

“Let. Go. Of. Me!” I shrieked and wrenched my arm back out of his grasp, gaining more momentum as each word fell off my tongue.

I straightened my body and dashed away and ambled my way through the relentless crowd. I didn’t feel it as much as I normally would have when two little boys crashed into me from the side, spilling a Coke on my leather jacket and an overweight woman shoved me, causing me to loose my balance and stumble forward. I ignored it all and kept moving like I was wanted for murder.

Gasping and grasping for air and looked above and saw the sign for track 1&2. I quickly pushed through the double doors and tore out the two flights of concrete stairs despite the sudden whisk of humidity and tenacious downpour of rain. Wheezing, I looked around expecting to either see the train pulling off or hearing the loud blaring horn of the train coming in. Instead, I saw a bunch of calm people shielded from the rain under the large umbrella, some sitting, most standing, all either talking or on the phone or listening to their i-Pods. I coughed through the rain and tried to catch my breath.

“Where is this train going?“ I exclaimed, stopping an old white haired man.

He seemed disturbed and spat out a one-word answer.

“Miami.”

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