by Omar Tyree
“Don’t cry all night, Sharron. Or should I call you Mary?” Celena teased, peaking her head into her roommate’s room before she left.
Like the R & B singer Mary J. Blige, Sharron just wanted to be happy. She was tired of crying about it, physically, verbally, spiritually, and otherwise.
“Dang, girl!” she snapped, responding to Celena’s ringing of the front doorbell just minutes after she had left. “I should just let you stay out there! Stop forgetting your damn keys!” she yelled through the door before opening it. What a surprise she found on the other side. Anthony “Player” Poole, dressed in an all blue denim outfit, and smelling as good as he looked.
“What kind of fool you take me for, girl?” he snapped at her. There was not even a hint of a smile on his face. He was twice as pissed off as she was!
“Now you gon’ have me drive all the way to the other side of the world to pick you up from work and then you gon’ leave before I even get there.”
Sharron smiled. She was delighted by the idea. He had actually showed up. On time!
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she responded. “You didn’t call me back and tell me.”
“So what? You asked me to pick you up, didn’t you? You should at least wait to see if I’m gon’ show up. I was there at eight o’clock on the nose,” he said, taking a peek at his gold-plated watch, five minutes ahead. “And they told me you had just left.”
Sharron was flattered by it. Anthony was not!
“So I just came over here to tell you the hell off, because I don’t appreciate that shit, and my time is very valuable to me,” he hissed at her from the doorway.
Sharron was so pleased that she didn’t even feed into his tantrum. She had other ideas in mind.
“My roommate’s not here,” she told him, still grinning.
Anthony calmed down to evaluate her information for a second.
“So? And?” he asked her, still pissed. He was curious, too. Naturally.
“You don’t wanna come in?”
“Of course I wanna come in,” he responded with his first smile. “I’ve been driving around for two hours.” How quickly male minds can change.
Sharron chuckled and thought, What would he do if I told him he can’t?
“What took you so long to get here?” she asked him instead. The airport was only twenty minutes by car from where she lived, unless he got lost.
“At first, I wasn’t even gon’ come over here. I was just gonna say, ‘Good riddance,’ and not talk to your ass again. But I was so pissed off that I said, ‘Naw! I gotta see this girl face to face and tell her.’ That’s how mad I was. I even got off work early for this.”
Talk about being happy, Sharron was growing cheerier by the second. She had really gotten under his skin. Believe it or not, that was a good thing. A heated man expressed a lot more than a cool man on any day of the week. And evidently, Anthony could be counted on. He was punctual. He cared very much about extending his time to someone. And he was not going to be walked over by anyone! Sharron respected that. All of it!
“You wanna come in or what?” she teased him again.
The first rule in Sheneska Jackson’s book was that you never invite a man into your house. You think Sharron was listening to that advice? Heck no! She was definitely letting him in!
Anthony looked over her long, baby blue nightshirt and immediately wondered what she had on under it, exactly like her book had warned. But hell, that was all a part of the territory with men.
“I thought we were gonna get a bite to eat on you?” he asked her. But he wouldn’t mind if plans had changed.
“We can still do that. Let me go get dressed,” Sharron told him, leading him in and over to the tweed sofa in front of the 19-inch television.
“Well, we don’t have to go if you just want to chill. I’m tired myself.”
She stopped and looked back at him from her bedroom door. She smiled, thinking, Would you be too tired to fuck me if I let you? I don’t think so.
“Well, what do you feel like doing?” she hinted.
He smiled, way too wide, giving away the full intentions of his manhood.
Sharron sucked her teeth and said, “Is that all that men ever think about?”
He laughed it off and said, “Look, if you wanna go out, we can still go. You see I’m dressed for it.” After all, he didn’t want to seem too pressed about getting into her stuff on his first invitation to her place. He could wait for that. Or at least for a little while.
Sharron had a better idea.
“What if I just wanted to sit next to you and talk, like this?” she asked, displaying her outfit, with no bra, pert breasts, and blue panties underneath. She was really working it, trying anything that came to mind. She wanted to see up close and personal how much discipline he could have.
Anthony smiled and said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” she asked him. She was already walking over to join him on the sofa.
He shook his head as she approached him.
“I’m sayin’, it’s just ah … It’s just not a good idea.”
“But what if I want to?” she asked him, sitting right next to him and touching, arm to arm and leg to leg.
Anthony looked into her face and said, “What are you trying to do, test me or something?”
“Am I?”
All of a sudden, she looked twice as good to him, with perfect symmetry in her brown face. The elements that photographers looked for in models. But Sharron wore little to no makeup and had a natural look. She was an everyday woman. And boy did he want to touch her. All over. So he did, starting with her knee, which felt as soft and as plush as new carpet.
Sharron grinned and said, “If I was testing you, I guess you would have failed already. You just couldn’t keep your hands off of me,” she told him, planting his hand back on his own knee.
Anthony laughed again, busted, and wondered what her next move would be.
“Look, you ready to go out and get something to eat or what?” he asked her again. He couldn’t see himself passing her test. She felt too good to even imagine trying to. He was already wondering what the rest of her felt like. He had reloaded his wallet with condoms. He had more out in the car to make sure he wouldn’t have a replay of the incident with Shawntè, where he was unprepared.
“I don’t want to go out anymore,” Sharron told him. “Why, are you hungry? We could order Chinese food if you want.”
She stood up and walked to the phone on the kitchen wall. Anthony watched her behind jiggling. It was the perfect size and roundness. Not too big, not too small, and definitely grippable.
Damn! he thought to himself. She gon’ drive me crazy up in here! He had to compose himself before he went out like a mark and ended up in a trap. Sometimes women could throw a guy off by appearing to be down for whatever and then pulling away, producing awkward relationships that become irreparable.
What did Rico say again? Anthony asked himself about his cousin’s advice. He had talked more about cars and sports than women with his older brothers.
He said to get the panties on your time and not on theirs. And this would be hers, because this whole night was her idea. Now she’s teasing me with no clothes on, he told himself. Yeah, this shit is all a setup. So I can’t touch her until it’s my idea.
On Sharron’s end, she was thinking, God, I can’t believe how things are happening! This is unreal! But he’s not getting any tonight no matter how I feel. We’re not doing anything until I want to! And I don’t want to yet. Not yet. No way!
These are the games that humans play. So they ordered fried rice, ate it, and talked while sitting nervously for the rest of the evening. Then they didn’t know how to say good-bye.
“Well, I gotta get up early for work tomorrow,” Anthony finally announced, standing up from the sofa and stretching.
“Okay,” Sharron told him, ready to lead him to the door. She didn’t seem too pressed to have him le
ave. He noticed her hesitancy.
“What do you want, a hug or something? That would be affectionate, right?” he asked her with a grin. Women rarely would turn down a good hug, especially from a good-looking, good-smelling man whom they were fully attracted to.
“You trying to read my mind?” she asked him back, moving in to receive her hug.
He held her soft body and he didn’t want to let it go.
“You want a fried-rice kiss with that hug?” he asked her with a laugh. But he was serious.
She chuckled herself and leaned in to kiss him. And with her eyes closed, Sharron dreamed of making it last forever. That same icecream dream was common to most women: to keep a man’s sweetness forever, whether the flavor was chocolate, vanilla, coffee, or lemon sherbet.
But how do you pull away from the dream and deal with the reality of time revelation. It’s not supposed to be perfect the first time. You have to wake up, and stay awake, to make it last that long. Because dreaming is unconscious, but decisions made were usually not.
So before the kiss got too good to her, Sharron forced herself to push him away until next time. Or next time. Or next time. As long as there would still be time. And from what she was able to learn so far about him, Anthony wanted to finish what he started, like with his automobiles. So she was confident that she would have the time that she needed.
Anthony broke off their kiss, looked her in the face, and knew it. I gots to have this girl! And I’m gon’ get her! No doubt!
“Well, I’ll call you whenever,” he told her.
“Why can’t you call me tonight?” she asked.
“You wanna know the truth?” he asked her back.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Because I had enough of you for one night. And I can’t take no more.”
Sharron broke up and said, “At least tell me that you got home safely.”
He wasn’t promising her that either.
“We’ll see.”
Realizing she couldn’t push him into it, Sharron decided to let it slide, to look forward to their next time together. Because she knew that they were nowhere near being finished yet.
Anthony wasn’t even finished with his night. Once the door closed on Sharron’s brown face, separating them, he knew that, once again, he would not be able to sleep. Not without some kind of a climax. Sharron had built up too much unused energy in him. And men, when set off, were like time bombs that were impelled to explode.
Anthony drove fast to the first pay phone he could find and pulled out his book of numbers he was fortunate to have carried along with him in the car that night. He started dialing at close to midnight on that Tuesday.
“Hey, Shawntè. It’s Anthony.”
“I know who you are,” she answered too excitedly.
“Oh, yeah. Well, that’s a good thing,” he told her. “But what are you doing right now? Are you in for the night, or what?”
First she paused. Then she asked the automatic question: “Why?”
Booty calls are fairly obvious. If the opposite sex calls you up on a Tuesday night, closer to Wednesday, chances are, most restaurants are closed, along with the theaters, amusement parks, and shopping centers. And unless you happen to be the greatest cook in the world, and your opposite-gender partner has the eating tendencies of a nocturnal werewolf, chances are, they are not hungry for food. However, they may indeed be hungry; hungry for something else. Maybe that’s how the werewolf legends began in the first place: late-night hungers for OPP—other people’s property.
The automatic question to Ant’s late-night investigation lingered…. “Why?”
“You feel like seeing me tonight?” he asked Shawntè instead of answering it.
Of course she wanted to see him. She wanted to see him daily if she could. Not just for sex either. But what could she do about it? Realistically? Some women are just dealt a better hand of cards than others. That was her dilemma. She did not miss the underlying message of being second fiddle. The other woman.
Sharron Francis controlled the deck. Or at least for that particular night. Especially when it came to this man, who couldn’t stay away from the playing table. Who would deal the deck in the next game? However, second fiddle or not, Shawntè still wanted to be fiddled. So she was not in a position to say no, no matter how much she wanted to. No matter how much she needed to, if only to gain some semblance of respect for herself.
“Where are we going?” she asked hopelessly.
“Wherever you wanna go. My car is warm,” he told her. And I got rubbers on me this time, he told himself.
Shawntè sighed, wishing there was another way to see him, and during the daytime, where there were other things to do outside of pointless humping.
“Where are you coming from? Give me twenty minutes,” she told him. She was already dressed for bed. But did he care? Are you kidding me? If he cared, he would have never called and put her in such a precarious situation. He just wanted to blast off into outer space, burning away all of the emotions as part of the fuel.
“Aw’ight then,” he told her.
Lickity-split. He walked back to his car as happy as a kid on Santa Claus’s knee. He was on his way to pick up his Christmas present, like it or not.
When he arrived, Shawntè was waiting outside on her front steps, dressed in a dark blue shorts outfit. She walked over to the car as soon as Ant pulled up to the curb and climbed in, closing the door behind her. She sniffed the aroma of his cologne and surveyed his clothes as physical proof that she was second fiddle for the night. She was the dessert, not the full-course meal. The quick cherry pie, not the well-done sirloin steak that cost more. Nevertheless, she was still there. Game bait.
Ant looked her over and asked, “Are you sure you weren’t sleeping? I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
What difference does it make? All you wanna do is fuck me, she thought to herself.
She could no longer hold her thoughts on the matter.
“Where did you go tonight? You sure look good and smell good,” she hinted.
Here we go, he mused. He had prepared himself for just that question while on the way to pick her up.
“I was over the bridge in East Boogie with my cousin, and I really ain’t feel like hangin’ out tonight, so I had to wait for him to hook up with another ride home, and then I left and called you.”
Excellent answer! It was loaded with enough information to lead her completely away from the hunt.
“How come you didn’t call me before you went?” she asked, still filled with attitude. But at least, based upon his exquisite lie, it wasn’t another woman in the way.
Ant faked an attitude deserving of an Oscar award. “Come on now, it was a guy’s-night-out thing.”
“But you said you didn’t feel like going.”
“Haven’t you done things that you didn’t want to do, and then changed your mind. Everybody does that,” he snapped.
Shawntè calmed herself, and was too calm, because the snake was well in the grass.
“I mean, aren’t you happy that I called you? At least I was thinking about you,” he added.
Shawntè looked away and out of the passenger-side window to stop herself from smiling. At a red light, Ant leaned from the wheel and took the opportunity to plant a soft kiss upon her neck, sealing the fate of his prey.
Women had more to lose in a world ruled by instincts alone. And Shawntè wanted to stop herself before things ventured out of hand.
She pushed him away and said, “No, we can’t do this.”
“Do what?” he whined, playing the innocent.
“You know what.”
“Are you sure? I mean, you really don’t want to?”
Ant was admitting it. He was admitting his instincts. The hypocrisy of humanity was a bitch! Because she wanted to be instinctive as well. Badly! But couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Or could. And would.
Yes, I want to, she thought painfully. I mean, no, I don’t. I mean, I don’t know. I me
an, I can’t. It’s not right. I shouldn’t. We shouldn’t. We can’t! No, don’t touch me like that! Don’t touch me there. Don’t kiss me there. Pleease! STOP!
And then she verbalized it.
“No, we can’t, Anthony. I don’t feel right about this.”
But he was rock hard already. And she was wet. Yet, Ant understood her plea. Women were not supposed to be easy. They were supposed to be talked into in. Tricked into it. Slicked into it. Otherwise, humans would rarely do it. Or definitely not as much as the males wanted to.
So he thought of a way of convincing her. It was what men were supposed to do. Otherwise, humans would rarely reproduce. Or not as much as they did. That’s why players were players in the first place; they understood the power of human sexuality, the reproductive selection system. Good-looking, charming, well-dressed, fast-thinking players were at the top of the charts, along with men who commanded surplus currency.
“You wanna go back to my house then? Would that make you feel better?”
Compromise. And make everything all right.
“Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?” she asked, stalling and avoiding the question.
Damn it felt good in his bed last time! she thought.
“Yeah, but you don’t,” he countered.
Ant was already heading east, toward Nebraska Avenue. Home.
Shawntè sighed, with no control over their destination.
“I don’t like getting up early like that,” she pouted.
Compromise again.
“You wanna go to your place? You got your own room, right? But what would your mom say?”
“Oh, that’s out of the question,” she responded, firmly shaking her head with a grin.
“Where do you wanna go then? Because I have to get up for work tomorrow regardless,” he told her.
She was tempted, but she knew better. Nevertheless, if he was that pressed about it, then he would have to compromise a third time.
“Just let me stay there until I’m ready to leave then. I’ll lock your door and take a taxi home.”
Oh, that’s out of the question, he thought to himself with a grin.
