by Cydney Rax
“Well,” he said, and moved his hands from my face to my nipples, “you know I love being with you, love touching you, love making love to you, if you’d only let me.”
I laughed and struggled to close my eyes. His magical hands squeezing and rubbing my breasts made me one breath away from a faint.
“Mmmm, I love doing it to you, too,” I told him. His hands felt so good on my nipples, I had no doubt that my body’s milk factory was in production. I squirmed and pressed my legs together.
“I wish I could see you all the time. And I think I might have to do something about that,” he said.
“Something like what?”
“I don’t think I should date Lauren anymore,” is what it sounded like he said.
I opened my eyes. “Oh yeah?”
He was silent.
“What are you going to do, Aaron?”
“I may have a talk with her and break things off.”
“When?”
“That’s the problem. Christmas is this Saturday. For some reason people always break up right before Christmas. I’d hate to do that to her, though. Already got her a present,” he said, and I felt him release my breasts.
I sighed and said tersely. “You never told me what you got her.”
“Does it matter at this point?”
“If you still plan on giving it to her, it does,” I said, staring straight ahead, knowing that he was near, yet he seemed so far.
He came and slid next to me on the floor, studying my expression for a moment. “D-do you mind if I give Lauren a present?”
“Hell,” I said, and jerked to the side, “I don’t know. It’s too close to Christmas to take back the gift . . . so maybe you should give it to her. That would only be right.”
“Okay, cool.”
“What did you get her, Aaron?” I said, and bumped my shoulder against his.
“I-I got her a quartz watch with a black leather band.”
“Oh, really? That sounds good,” I said, and looked at my wrist.
“You mad?”
“Why would I be mad, Aaron?” I replied, and forced a smile.
“Just checking.”
“Well, you don’t need to check. I know that at the time you got her a present, you two were on different terms.”
“But things have changed since then, right?” he said, and raised his eyebrows.
“Most definitely.” I swallowed a lump in my throat.
“Well, I think it’s very considerate of you to let me give her the gift. I think we’ll do the Christmas thing and I’ll tell her that we gotta break things off. Think that would be okay?”
“I don’t want to be in on the decision of when and how you break up with my daughter. Already feels strange as it is.”
“Yeah, you’re right. You are okay with this, aren’t you?” he said, and grabbed my hand.
“Aaron, it doesn’t matter how I feel, it’s your relationship. Do what you think is best,” I said, hoping my words would convince him in a way my heart couldn’t.
“I think being with the one I’d rather be with is best,” he said, squeezing my hand with a finality I couldn’t ignore.
I turned my head, my lips, toward him. We kissed hungrily, tongues raking across one another, exchanging sensual juices and reckless love.
“Mmmmm,” I groaned after grabbing his head between my hands, sucking his tongue for a few minutes, and feeling instantly overheated. “I have a suggestion.”
“What’s that?” he asked, wiping his mouth.
“Whatever you plan to do with Lauren, however you plan to break it off, it’s better that you don’t tell me.”
“Why?” he asked, kissing me once more.
“Mmmm, yummy, thanks. If you don’t tell me, I’ll be genuinely surprised when she lets me in on what’s going on,” I told him, and raked my hands through my hair. “She’s probably going to come to me, and I have to be able to play things off, so it’s better if I don’t know anything, even if I know something.”
“Gotcha.”
“Hey,” I said, patting his leg and rising to my feet. “Let’s go downstairs and find something to get into.”
“Sure. I’m with you.”
We went to the first level, walked around in the hallway for a while, and then made a stop in the quaint gift shop. Dozens of souvenirs were arranged on various shelves: coffee mugs, shot glasses, oversized Texas T-shirts, and postcards were marked up at such high prices that the average shopper probably wouldn’t want the merchandise even if he could afford it. Walking through the store, I noticed quite a few hotel guests who wore badges that said RETAILING IN THE YEAR 2000. At first I didn’t think too much about it. But minutes later the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I saw Derrick’s unmistakable side view. He was standing in the hallway, holding a conversation with one of his supposed colleagues.
“Damn,” I muttered when I saw him turn and walk toward me.
“Tracey Lorraine Davenport, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Hi, Derrick. I’m—I’m just, uh, looking at the gift shop items. They are so ni—”
“You’re here at a conference?” Derrick glancing at his watch made me glance at mine. It was six-thirty-five.
“Uh, not really.”
“Hmmm! Why else would you be hanging out at the Marriott on a Sunday night?” He raised his eyebrows and had the nerve to grin. Our eyes connected, and I was afraid to try to look anywhere else. The palms of my hands felt hot and sweaty, yet the tips of my fingers were cold.
I was cheesing so hard it felt like my face was about to explode. “Well, you know, I’m just—”
“She’s with me, Mr. Hayes. How are you doing?” Aaron extended his hand, but Derrick simply stared distastefully, as if Aaron had just handed him a glass of fresh urine.
“Hey, Aaron?” He looked from me to Aaron with narrowed eyes. “What—what the hell is going on here?”
“Nothing,” I blurted.
Derrick placed both hands on his hips and looked at Aaron and me like we were hoodlums who’d just run over his favorite dog with an eighteen-wheeler.
“Well, sir,” Aaron told him, “I needed to talk to Tracey about something, and that’s why we’re here.”
Derrick spread out his arms and looked around the gift shop. “Couldn’t you have talked somewhere else besides a hotel? This doesn’t look too favorable,” he said, his big nostrils flaring big-time.
“You know, being that we bumped into you, I can only guess that your mind is taking you places that it shouldn’t go. But let me assure you— things are cool. We won’t be here long.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me . . . son,” he said, and stabbed me with his eyes before he walked away.
My legs felt like tires wedged in thick mud after a torrential rain, and I stayed in that position until Aaron tapped me on the arm a few minutes later. We walked without talking. He had self-assurance in his step. His head was upright, but my head felt like it was cemented to my chest, like it was weighed down as low as the surface of the earth.
We returned to our room and I threw myself on the chair. I kicked off my shoes and kneaded the corners of my head as if that alone would make sense of what just happened.
“Uggghhhh, stupid, stupid, stupid. Dumb, dumb, dumb,” I said, and slapped both sides of my face in rapid succession.
“Hey, whoa, Tracey,” Aaron said, and knelt next to me. He grabbed both of my hands and placed them in my lap, holding them in place until I relented. “Please, don’t start tripping. Everything was cool.”
“That’s what you say, but what if Derrick opens his mouth to Lauren before you get a chance to tell her anything?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” he said, and poked my leg with one strong fingertip.
“You don’t know him. He’ll do anything to make me look bad.” My mind was going, going, and spinning a web of the worst images possible.
“Hey, you guys haven’t been together in how m
any years?”
“Seventeen.”
“Ain’t no way somebody would hold a grudge that long.”
“Like I said, you don’t know Derrick. Damn, I hate that we saw him.”
“You’re really scared he’s going to say something to Lauren?”
“It’s just that it’s none of his business. He doesn’t have the right—”
“Tracey, Tracey, don’t worry about something that you have no control over. So what if he tells? Let me do the talking. I don’t want you to have to say anything to Lauren.”
“Aaron, that’s going to be pretty hard to manage, don’t you think, being that we do live in the same apartment.”
I slapped my legs together.“Aw, shoot, this is impossible. We can’t do this,” I said, and leaped from the couch, nearly twisting my ankle in the process.
“Yes, we can, Tracey. You’re just upset over Derrick, but nothing is going to change. We can still get together. It’s all up to you, because my plans haven’t changed,” he said, following behind me.
“Hmmm!” I was hearing him, yet I wasn’t.
“Tracey, talk to me.”
I thought a minute before I gave Aaron my answer.
“Well, to me this kind of messes everything up, because you hadn’t planned on saying anything for another two weeks or so.” I glanced at Aaron. “You still going to wait?”
“That I don’t know. I know you’re worried, but I don’t think he’s going to say anything. What can he say? That he saw us at a gift shop? It’s not like we were making love in the middle of the floor.”
“Doesn’t matter. Anybody’s mind would go there if they saw two people together at a hotel. Shoot, even if I was seen with a woman, someone would think something trashy.”
“Well, we can’t worry about what other people think. If you want us to be together, not worrying about other people will be one of the first things you’re going to have to get over. That includes your daughter, your friends, your mother, whoever. Once you start making what they think a priority, our relationship will be on a countdown to nothing. If anything happens to make us not be together, I want it to come from us alone, not from any outside sources.”
Aaron, twenty-one? I couldn’t see it.
AN HOUR LATER I TAPPED AARON on his shoulder. He was sitting on the edge of the bed watching network news, and looked up.
“Let’s go,” I told him.
He didn’t ask a single question, just immediately turned off the television and followed me. Just like that.
I almost did a cartwheel.
For the first time since we’d been hanging out, we drove in the same vehicle. He sat next to me in the Malibu, both cell phones turned off, and we stole away to a bustling and noisy Red Lobster on Highway 6 near Westheimer Road.
I ordered snow crabs; he ordered steak and lobster.
Both of us had virgin daiquiris. Two apiece.
“Hey, a long time ago, I know the name ‘Tracey’ was the bomb. If you were a girl and that was your name, you were automatically popular,” he said looking intently at me.
“Tell me about it. Even when I was coming up, the girls in my class couldn’t stand my guts. Just because my name was Tracey, like that alone guaranteed me a great life or something,” I said perplexed.
“I’ll bet you looked like a Tracey. A cutie pie with nice clothes and hair.”
“Yep, and I acted like one, too.”
“What would you do?” he grinned and sat up in his seat.
“Shoot, I really wouldn’t do anything, but the boys would still be all over me. Following me. Begging for my number. Wanting to buy me stuff. I ate it up, too. Loved that attention.”
“And what would the girls do?”
“Talk about me like a dog, or refuse to talk to me at all. Then they’d set me up. Do rude things to me just to try and start a fight. And I never went out of my way to bother them. I wasn’t thinking about them,” I told him, and sipped on my daiquiri.
“But they were thinking about you, huh?” he asked.
“I guess so,” I told him.
“It’s like that when you’re young.” He shrugged.
“Aaron, that sounds funny coming from you.”
“You’re not so old, though,” he said.
I cracked the legs of one of my snow crabs. Snow crabs taste great but the looks of them always remind me of the monster in the Aliens movie.
“Hey, I’ll be thirty-five in August. My body’s ever changing and I hate that. I’m sure you’ve noticed all the c-lite and birthmarks on my legs.”
“Not really, Tracey. You look better than you think. Besides, no one has a perfect body.”
“How would you know that?”
“Well, I’ve been around plenty of so-called tens. And I don’t care how long their hair was, how great a complexion they had, or how small their waist, every single one of them still had physical flaws. And these women would be fine as hell, but they’d feel so unattractive because of one zit or the fact that one breast was bigger than the other. Or they’d be depressed because of skin discolorations on their hands. I didn’t understand that.”
“Aaron . . .” I lowered my head and gave him an intense stare. “Do you think you look good? Be honest.”
“I’m all right.” He blushed. “I think I’m healthy, got great skin, nice hair.”
“How much do you weigh?”
“Uh, around one-ninety,” he told me, and dipped a piece of lobster in the butter sauce.
“Are you into fitness?”
“Yep. I try to run three or four days a week, treadmill, and aerobics sometimes. I was trying to get Lauren to—”
I ducked my head and began toying with my baked potato.
“How about you? You work out?” He stared while I sprinkled salt and pepper on my food.
“Does Jennifer Lopez need a booty inflator?”
“I see. So what’s the problem?” he asked with sternness.
“Working out is sooo boring.”
“And being fat is exciting? Not that you’re fat, but if you don’t watch out, you could be.”
I raised an eyebrow, but he was too busy trying to scrape out a piece of lobster to notice me.
“Say, Tracey, what size do you wear?”
“Excuse me?”
“Oops, sorry.” He meditated for a moment. “Okay, if you wanted to buy yourself a new dress, what store would you go to?”
I set down my fork and stared at him. He snapped his neck and gave me a ‘what’s up with that?’ kind of look. I gave him a ‘no, you did not go there’ glance. He shuddered and rolled his eyes.
“Rrrrrr, okay, let’s change the subject. What are your plans during Christmas? Traveling anywhere?”
I shoved my carb-filled baked potato to the edge of the table.
“Nah, I’ll be home. You know that Lauren is going to Georgia. I think she leaves the day before Christmas Eve.”
“So you’ll be alone on New Year’s Eve?”
“Indira will probably bring in the new year at Solomon’s Temple. I know I’m not going, so I guess I’ll be home alone. Why?”
“I could come be with you if you want some company.”
“You’re making me blush, Aaron. You know, I really enjoy being with you. And see, all this talking isn’t so bad, is it?”
“It sucks. I hate it,” he said, and wrinkled his nose.
“Liar,” I laughed. “You are a real trip.”
We clicked glasses.
“Here’s to a happy future together. Are you in agreement with me, Tracey?”
I paused. Tried to mentally fast-forward to even happier days.
“Put it this way, Aaron. If you believe we can have a happy future together, I’m in agreement with you.”
We clicked glasses again.
LATER THAT NIGHT WE WERE IN bed, wearing our pajamas. The TV was turned to The Movie Channel, but we weren’t watching.
“Aaron, tell me something.”
“Shoot,”
he said, setting aside a hotel brochure.
“Why didn’t you run from the gift shop when you saw Derrick approach me?”
“Tracey, only punks run from gift shops.”
I giggled. “Again, I ask, why didn’t you—”
He smacked me playfully on the cheek with the back of his hand.
“Seriously, Aaron. I just think it’s possible to be a man and still not want to face what could have been an uncomfortable situation.”
He nodded. “Well, first of all, I knew you were probably tripping. Humiliated. I couldn’t leave you, Tracey. How could I have left you?”
My eyes glistened, and for a moment I meditated on what he just said.
“Thanks, Aaron,” I said in a soft voice. “You’re so good to me.”
“Hey, a true friend will always be a friend. Always.”
“I’m so glad you said that.”
“Said what?” he asked.
“That you’re my friend. It’s important that we be friends and not just lovers, you know what I mean?” My eyes began tearing again just at the thought; he was saying all the things I wanted to hear, and then some.
“You think that by tagging on ‘friend,’ you’re making what we’ve developed more legitimate, don’t you?” he asked.
Instead of immediately answering, I rubbed my ice-cold toes against his ankle. He didn’t even flinch.
“Well, I guess in a way you’re right, but I just appreciate that you think of me in that way,” I replied.
“Oh, here you go again. Thinking I want you just for your fine-azz body.”
I laughed without opening my mouth; stared at him like he was a treasure of love. He took my hand and raised it to his lips. Kissed my fingers like they belonged to an infant, and kept looking in my eyes while he was doing it.
I snuggled closer to Aaron, licked my lips, and gave him sweet and gentle kisses. He closed his eyes and stuck his tongue inside my starving mouth.
Tongue-Wrestle Mania was on.
And if I had a spare eight hundred bucks, we would’ve been holed up at the Marriott another six nights.
Aaron 17
Monday morning. Different time. Same place.
After making love three times last night, our exhaustion surrendered to much-needed sleep. Usually my body jars me out of my unconscious state right around 6:00 A.M., but this morning I had a little outside assistance. The brilliance of the sun penetrated the curtains and the window, causing me to stretch and yawn.
