You're the One I Want

by Shane Allison

  “Listen to me. I came in and found her like that.”

  “Ma’am, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights I have just read to you?”

  “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her.”

  Lewis walked me outside to his patrol car. Red and blue lights lit up the muggy, wet night. A crowd of people was starting to gather. Kids and grown folks alike.

  “Call my husband.”

  “Ma’am, you will get to call someone down at the station,” Lewis said as he stuffed me in the backseat of his car.

  As people looked through the fingerprint-smudged glass at me like I was a blood-thirsty fugitive that was on the loose, the tears came and kept coming. I couldn’t stop them and just let them come.

  33

  TANGELA

  I guess that bitch Katiesha is going to start appearing in my dreams now. She wasn’t the first person I ever bodied. That title belongs to Dante Sullivan and he isn’t the one to let me live it down the way he fucked with me in my nightmares every night. The dream is always the same. I’m standing in my kitchen on a beautiful Saturday morning, making myself a bagel and a caramel macchiato. I turn around and there he is, Dante, standing there in front of me with these cold, dishwater-white eyes with rotting flesh and blood running out of his mouth. I start to scream, but no sound comes out. Dante was dead, but not really alive. He was like a zombie or some shit, I guess.

  Before I could make a move, he plunges a knife into my stomach. I look down, shocked by this knife sticking out of me. Blood starts to stain my powder puff-pink robe as the metallic taste of the crimson-red liquid fills my throat. And all I can do is cough it up as Dante screws the knife in deeper. I wake up in a cold sweat, screaming and disoriented, realizing that I’m safe, if not sound in my bed. I feel my stomach to find that there’s no stab wound, no blood stain on my robe.

  I scream my head off, but no sound comes out. Sometimes I even think I can smell his cologne in the house. Cool Water, the same fragrance he wore the night I sent his lying-ass to hell for breaking my heart.

  The first time I saw Dante was at Grown Folks Night at the Moon. My all-time favorite R&B group, New Edition, was in Tallahassee. Sexy-ass Ralph Tresvant, Ricky Bell, Johnny Gill, Michael Bivins, Ronnie DeVoe, and Bobby Brown, didn’t miss a beat, tearing it up from the floor up that night. I didn’t give a damn what anyone thought, Ralph Tresvant was the most gorgeous man alive. Ricky Bell was my next fav. I would fuck all five of them, but would marry Ralph. Mrs. Tangela Tresvant has a nice ring to it. New Edition sang all their greatest hits: “Candy Girl,” “Cool It Now,” “Can You Stand the Rain,” and my all-time favorite New Edition song ever, “Mr. Telephone Man.” I’d listened to that whole album about a trillion times. I wanted to marry Ralph Tresvant and have, like, twenty babies with that beautiful man.

  Dante looked a little like Ralph, I remember. I was sitting at the end of the bar, nursing on a whiskey sour, when I noticed him staring at me at the end of the bar. He was fine as hell, looking like something out of GQ or Esquire. I smiled at him, giving him permission to come down and say hello.

  “Is this seat taken?” he asked.

  Hell no, I thought. “Not at all. I was saving it for you,” I said boldly.

  Dante had this deep, smoky voice that made my toes curl and pussy quiver. He saddled up next to me, the smell of his cologne infiltrating my senses.

  “Hi, I’m Dante.”

  “Tangela.”

  He took my hand into his palm and softly shook it.

  “I was watching you in front of the stage earlier. You’ve got some nice moves,” Dante said.

  “Thank you. I love New Edition. I have all of their albums, including all of their best-of stuff. When I heard on the radio that they were going to be doing a one-night show here in Tallahassee, I bought my ticket the same day.”

  “Now see, already we have something in common. You’re a bigger fan than I am.”

  “It’s always nice to meet a fellow fan. That’s that good old school R&B and not that mess they got playing on the radio nowadays.”

  Dante had chestnut-brown skin, a short, low-cut haircut, and dark chocolate-brown eyes, with a smile to die for, like my future husband Ralph Tresvant

  “So, Dante, what do you do?”

  “I’m an attorney at Foote, Williams, & Sullivan. I’m the Sullivan in there.”

  “Oh, hold up. I think I’ve seen y’all’s commercials on TV.”

  “That’s us.”

  “Wow, you look even better in person. Television doesn’t do you justice.” When it came down to men, I was always laying the compliments on thick.

  “I’m glad someone thinks so. I hate doing those things, but we all agreed that it would be a good idea for drumming up new clients, let people know that we’re out there.”

  “I feel you. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “So what about you? What do you do?”

  “I’m a stylist at Radiance Salon.”

  “How long have you been a stylist?”

  “Let me see, going on about eight years now.”

  “And you like what you do?”

  “I do. It pays the bills and some of the clients can be a pain, but it can be fun, too, like when we have Grandmother Appreciation Day. Women bring in their mothers and grandmothers to get their hair done, and when we get women in from the shelter to get done up for job interviews. I like when we do a lot of work for the homeless shelters and charities, so those are the times when the job is great, when I can give back to the community.”

  I realized that I was running my mouth, giving too much information to this fine-ass man I had just met all of five minutes ago. “I’m sorry. Am I talking too much?”

  “Not at all. I’m fascinated. I think it’s great what you’re doing. We’re trying to do some pro-bono at our firm. There are a lot of people out there who can’t afford a lawyer who are in real trouble, so one of the things we want to do is offer up representation for those disenfranchised who can’t afford the high cost of an attorney.”

  “Well, now that I know a lawyer, I know exactly who to call if I ever find myself in a mess. I definitely want you on my side, for sure.”

  Dante grinned. “Everyone talks about how they hate lawyers. What’s that running joke? What do you call a bunch of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start, but when they get into a bind, who do they call?”

  “A lawyer,” I said, finishing Dante’s sentence.

  “Exactly. It’s all a joke until someone gets arrested and accused for murder.”

  “I could not agree more. All of a sudden, an attorney is your best friend when you could be facing life in prison or a needle in your arm.”

  I realized that the conversation had taken a turn for the morbid and quickly veered into something more lighthearted, like discussing Dante’s dick size.

  The bartender noticed that my glass was empty and walked over to where we were sitting. “Can I get you another whiskey sour?”

  “Yes, please, thank you.”

  I hoped Dante didn’t think I was one of these drunken messes that were stumbling around the club for a man. There is nothing less classy than seeing a sister bent over the shitter, puking her pretty little guts out, only having to be carried over the shoulders of a couple of bouncers, or worse, by some man who had slipped some of that Georgia Homeboy in their drink. That’s why I kept my shit classy at all times. You never know when a fine man like Dante is going to come along. Judging from the pecs tight under his shirt, he’s no stranger to the gym. Thanks to the way Ralph was gyrating on stage, my pussy was sopping wet and hungry for some sweet dick.

  Dante and I talked until they hollered last call.

  “I hoped I haven’t kept you out too late,” he said.

  “Not at all. I’m actually off tomorrow, so I don�
��t have anything planned. Would you like to come back to my place for a nightcap?”

  A nightcap? Really, Tangela? Who the hell talks like that?

  “Sounds good. Lead the way.”

  Dante followed me back to my house where we continued to get acquainted over glasses of brandy. I was anxious to throw my pussy to Dante’s meat.

  “How about a tour of the place?”

  “Lead the way.”

  “This is the living room. In there is the kitchen where I throw down.”

  “You like to cook?”

  “Oh, baby, I don’t like to cook. I love to cook. And up here… is the bedroom.”

  As Dante followed me upstairs, I could feel his eyes on my ass like hot beams. When we reached my bedroom, we didn’t waste any time. I started to undo the buttons on my blouse. Dante took me into his muscled arms, placing one hand lovingly around my waist and the other firmly on my booty before he pressed those juicy, sexy-ass lips of his against mine. He plunged his tongue in as I ran my hand along the bulge that tented his jeans. Dante smeared me onto the bed, his kisses wet and deep. He tugged his jeans down around his bubble-booty. I was surprised to find that Dante didn’t have on a stitch of underwear. Here was this man of sophistication, walking around free-balling.

  Y’all freak-nasty asses never cease to amaze me, I thought.

  “Wait,” I said. I reached into one of the drawers of the bedside table and took out a condom. I wasn’t about to catch an STD or a baby. I didn’t care how good you looked. I didn’t play that shit. “Protection always, boo.”

  Dante took the rubber and tore open the gold cellophane with his milk-white teeth. Like me, he was good and ready to fuck. Dante unrolled the rubber over the fat crown, down the shaft of his dick. I whimpered when I felt him slide it inside me.

  Damn, that feels good.

  I wrapped my legs tight around the back of Dante’s thighs, kneading his shoulders as he fucked me hard and hot. I held him in my arms as we both came to what could have been labeled as an earth-shattering climax.

  Dante began to get dressed, slipping his arms back into the sleeves of his shirt.

  “You want to stay the night? I could make us breakfast. I make some mean apple cinnamon pancakes.”

  His ass was bare to me as he pulled jeans up over his apple butter-brown mounds.

  “I wish I could, but I have an early morning meeting. I would like to see you again.”

  I knelt behind him on my knees on the bed and started to massage Dante’s shoulders. “I think that can be arranged.”

  Dante took out one of his business cards and handed it to me. “Give me a call. We’ll have lunch.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  We kissed each other good night. Dante’s lips felt like warm marshmallows.

  “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

  “I would love nothing more than to wake up with you next to me, but there are some things I need to take care of before this meeting at the office tomorrow. How about a rain check?”

  Dante pulled his car keys out of the front pocket of his jeans and gave me a last kiss good night.

  A week had passed and I hadn’t heard so much as boo from Dante. I didn’t want to think that he had only used me for sex, that I was some notch on his proverbial bedpost. I called the number he gave me, only to be sent to voicemail after three rings. He sounded as sexy on his machine as he did in person. I usually made it a rule to never call a man, but let him call me. I didn’t want to give these fools the impression that I was some dick-thirsty bitch. After the fourth call that week, I decided that I wasn’t going to bug him.

  “If he wants to talk to me, he will call me. Ma Bell runs both ways.”

  I kept myself occupied with work and doing some things around the house I kept putting off because I was lazy, like organizing the kitchen pantry and color-coordinating my wardrobe. But no matter how much I busied myself with work, it wasn’t enough to take my mind off of Dante Fine-As-All-Hell Sullivan. So instead of blowing his phone up, I thought it better to go to his office and surprise him with a picnic lunch. It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon for it with the rain finally letting up after days of a heavy downpour. I packed the basket with one hell of a spread: fried chicken, spiral ham slices, potato salad, buttered rolls, cold slaw, crinkled season fries, and Hershey’s Chocolate Cheesecake for dessert. I couldn’t wait to see the look on Dante’s gorgeous face when he saw all the food. It’s like my mama always told me: the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

  When I entered the eight-story, red-brick building, I was mesmerized by its beauty. The marble flooring, the solid oak tables, and plush lobby chairs. I made my way up to the receptionist desk, armed with enough food to feed a small village. This brown-skinned chick who looked to be in her early twenties was sitting behind the black-and-white marble desk. Her hair was long and straight down her back. She had split ends and it was obvious to me that she was frying it with a flat-iron. I could see the bumps on her forehead behind caked-on makeup. She gawked at me with a kind of grimace expression on her flawed face, looking at me like I’d just crawled from under a rock.

  “Can I help you?”

  It’s “may I help you,” dumb bitch. Read a book, why don’t you?

  Her gold-plated name tag read Lakrecia Courland in black emblazoned letters.

  Shit, with all those blackheads on her forehead, she warranted being called Lacreature.

  “Good afternoon, Lakrecia. How are you? My name is Tangela Michaels.” I gave her a false last name. “I’m here to see Mr. Sullivan.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I don’t. He did some pro-bono work for me, and I thought I would come by and surprise him with lunch.”

  This bitch twisted her top lip up slightly. Not even five minutes in the building and she was already starting to piss me off. I wanted to jump behind that desk and rip out the rest of her damn split ends. The picnic basket was heavy and was starting to put a strain on my arms with all the food inside, so I plopped it on the end of the receptionist desk. The ripe odor of eggs from the potato salad began to waft through the lobby. Just as she was about to call Dante, he entered the lobby with a woman who had pound cake-yellow skin, a head of thick curls, and brown eyes. Lakrecia gave me this sinister look like I was in for it.

  “Here’s Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan now,” Petri Dish Face emphasized.

  A cold, stoic expression formed on Dante’s mug when he saw me standing at the receptionist desk. I had to quickly pull an excuse out of my ass to get out of there.

  “Sorry. I think I have the wrong building.” I grabbed the picnic basket of food and hauled ass before they could make their way to where I was standing. I was beyond pissed.

  Once I put some distance between me and Dante’s law office, I noticed a homeless bum sitting on the corner with a piece of white cardboard that read, Homeless vet, please help. He looked like he hadn’t seen a decent meal or soup and water for days.

  I set the basket of food next to him and said, “You look like you could use this. There’s some fried chicken in there, some potato salad, some pie; help yourself.”

  When I got to my SUV, I locked myself inside and could do nothing but scream as loud as any angry black woman could, banging balled-up fists against the steering wheel. I wanted to hit Dante, rip his guts out with my newly manicured bare hands, but he wasn’t there, so I had to take my anger out on something. I screamed until I felt myself going hoarse. I slapped myself until the left side of my face started to go numb. I had allowed this man to make a fool out of me, to use me like I was some cheap piece of Frenchtown ass.

  “You’re just like all the rest of these niggas out here. It’s that kind of shit that makes us want to date white men.” I was not the woman, but the other woman. I swore that I would never be any man’s mistress. My eyes were hot with betrayal but cold with revenge.

  Dante had phoned me several times the next day, but I refused to answer my ph
one.

  “Now your ass knows how it feels.”

  He would leave messages, expressing his deepest apologies, but I wasn’t trying to hear nothing this deceiver had to say.

  In one message, he said, “I want to see you. Call me back at this private number. Let’s have dinner.”

  Even though I missed him and his deep-dick long strokes, anger had gotten the best of me. “No one makes a fool out of me, goddamn it.”

  I thought about Dante’s last message, and a plan started to brew in my head. I had decided to give Dante a call three days after I saw him at his office with his wife. The phone rang twice before he answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Come over to my place.”

  “Tangela, is that you?”

  “I want to see you, baby. All is forgiven. Come over here and fuck me.”

  I didn’t say another word and ended the call. I changed into some sexy lingerie, something to get his dick hard, and poured us two glasses of red wine. I took a sip before setting both glasses on the coffee table. Twenty minutes after I had gotten off the phone with Dante, my doorbell rang. I checked my hair and tits in the mirror that hung above my scarlet-red leather sofa.

  “Right. On. Time.” When I answered, Dante was breathing heavy like he had run to my house. “Good evening.”

  “Hey,” Dante said, his eyes scanning over my bountiful breasts pushed into a black, lace brassiere. “I’m glad you called.”

  “Come on in.”

  Dante couldn’t keep his hungry eyes off my titties. I led him into the dimly lit living room. We made ourselves comfortable. I handed him his glass of wine.

  “I want to explain about—”

  “Shhh.” I pressed my index finger against his lips. “Let’s make a toast. To forgiveness.”

  We clinked our glasses together. I watched Dante as he drank.

  “I’m truly sorry about—”

  Dante started to shake profusely.

  “Oh, this would be you having a seizure.”

  Spit began to run from his mouth, trickling down his chin. Dante gawked at me with the realization that he had been poisoned.