Holden

by Olivia Gaines

  Holden removed his wallet, pulling out a crisp fifty-dollar bill. Tallulah’s eyes were wide. The beautiful moment was about to be ruined by him being an insensitive asshole that she was going to have to cut off. Damn, damn, da damn.

  “Will you pick up a firm pillow for a back sleeper?” He asked.

  “What?”

  “A pillow...firm...for a back sleeper,” he said it again slower, as if she didn’t understand him.

  “I understood what you said. Buy your own damned pillow!”

  “Okay, fine, but do you want your neighbors to see me coming in your house carrying a pillow, or would you rather buy it yourself?”

  “What is with you and the damned pillow?”

  “It’s for my side of the damned bed,” he said to her with a wink.

  She choked on the eggs. “You have some nerve...your own pillow?”

  “Yes, you may want to clean me out a drawer, too, so I am not seen bringing in an overnight bag,” he said smiling at her as he put on his shoes.

  “You just automatically think you are coming back?”

  He started laughing, “You looked over your shoulder and yelled at me damn niggah, this shit is soooo good. When you change my race in the middle of us having sex, I kinda figured that was an automatic invitation to come back.”

  “I am so embarrassed,” she said, covering her face with her hands.

  “Don’t be. A niggah was putting it down,” he said with a laugh. “I have to go, beautiful. Call me if you need me.” He lowered his head and kissed her lips. “Call me if you don’t need me. Hell, Baby, just call a niggah and let him know you thinking about him.”

  “Get out of my house, Holden Cimoc!”

  The man may not have a need for a lot of words, but his actions spoke to her. He spoke to the woman in her on a level that she hadn’t experienced with any man, past or present. Holden made it to the front door, but came back to the bedroom. He moved the tray from her lap, setting it on the nightstand as he sat on the side of the bed. A warm hand touched her cheek.

  “I don’t do casual, Tallulah. I hope I passed the auditions to take on the role of being your man. I don’t mess about. I don’t cheat. I love with everything I have. I will take care of you if you take care of me. Can we do that for each other?”

  She couldn’t find any words, so she nodded like a small child wanting some candy before supper.

  “Tell me you will take care of me, Tallulah,” he said.

  “I am going to take really good care of you, Holden,” she said.

  “And I am going to be your everything,” he told her. One more gentle kiss, then he placed the tray back in her lap. “Have a great day.”

  Tallulah didn’t know what her everything was, but that man could fill any hole in her life. He would have filled every orifice last night if she hadn’t stopped him. Holden was a literal thinker. He was also capable of igniting a spark in her that she’d never felt before. Three rounds, each better than the last, as if he were fine tuning an engine, as he learned her body and ways she’d never responded to any man. The first round was amazing.

  The second round was beyond intense. Tallulah beside herself, begging for her release, blurted out the first thing that came to mind when he asked what she wanted.

  “It’s so good, you can stick it up my ass for all I care,” she screamed loudly.

  “Okee-dokee,” he told her and went for it.

  “Holden, stop! I didn’t mean that literally,” she said, pushing him back. He listened not only to her, but to her body’s responses to him. Sighs, breathing changes, all the nuances he responded to while making love to her on a level that men twice his age didn’t know.

  “Damn, da damn; that man did put it down,” she said as she put the tray to the side and made her way to the shower. I don’t know what I am doing, but I like it a lot. He is so different. I think I need some different.

  Friday rolled by quietly with few appointments and more time in the lab, crunching data and measuring mold smears in samples for the research she was conducting on childhood allergies. Truthfully, she had never wanted to be a doctor; her mother wanted her to do it. At six years old, Tallulah was caught in her bedroom giving her doll a heart exam, which is what led to the starting doctor’s kit. Reaching the kind age of ten, Ursula Robinson skinned her knee after falling head first over the handle bars of the raggedy bike she shared with her brother Joe Jr. Quick on her feet, Tallulah used the mercurochrome, a Band-Aid, and some alcohol on a cotton ball to patch up her childhood friend. Based on two random acts, her life was altered to a path of medicine because of a stupid doll and the use of a bottle of mercurochrome. The only saving grace was that twenty-five years later, Ursula Robinson was still her best friend.

  They had a standing date on the second Friday of the month to meet for drinks and talk about life. Ursula, a college professor of biology, secured the research grant for Tallulah on the new allergic properties of household goods on developing children. Ursula didn’t give a crap about the project. She simply needed another grant project to make tenure. She was a lovely black woman with full lips, big hips, and a small voice. To Tallulah, she had the idyllic life. Ursula Robinson Peters was also the wife of the only good lawyer in town. Surely, there were three others, but her husband was the fair one with good rates who cared about the residents of Venture. Ursula cared about the second Friday of the month.

  Tallulah arrived right at 5:15 to the local Pub & Grille to have Willie Moorer bring over her tall glass of Merlot, a plate of hot wings, sauce on the side, blue cheese dipping sauce, and a small side order of fries.

  “I swear for you to be a doctor, you eat like a college kid,” Ursula told her.

  “It may be a good thing because last night I slept with one,” she said to her friend.

  “Shut the front door and call me Becky. Do tell...when are you seeing him again?”

  “I’m not. It was a one-time thing, and I will let him down easy tonight when he calls,” she said.

  Ursula actually rolled her neck, “You are always getting in the way of your own happiness. What is wrong with this one? Was he too fat? Too skinny? Too black? Too tan? Too controlling? Penis too small? What?”

  “None of those things. He is too young,” Tallulah said.

  “How young is too young? Are you talking too young as if you were a senior in high school, he would be a sophomore or something?” Ursula inquired.

  “No, Ursula. If I were a senior in high school, he would be in the eighth grade,” Tallulah told her.

  “Damn girl. Are you his pediatrician?”

  “No, but I am the pediatrician for his two younger brothers, Jem and Johnny,” she said in a hushed tone, looking at her friend cross ways.

  “Shut up!” Ursula said. She stood up, picked up her napkin, and smacked Tallulah across the head with it. “Are you talking about Holden?”

  Tallulah exhaled a deep sigh, taking a sip of her wine. “Yes, last night...me and Holden.”

  “Was the sex any good?”

  Tallulah started to laugh. She laughed so hard four people in the Pub & Grille turned around to look at her. No matter how hard she tried, the smile seemed to be permanently plastered on her face. It took some effort, but she managed to wipe the grin away,

  “Ursula, I never discuss my sex life, but I have to tell you, he was hitting it so hard and so good, I looked back at him and yelled, damn niggah!” she whispered.

  This caused Ursula to spit her sweet potato tot across the room.

  “He stopped and looked down at me, saying, ‘But I’m white;’ I told him to shut up and keep going as I buried my face back in the pillow to continue chewing on it like it was some big ass marshmallow,” Tallulah said with a frown. “I screamed like a fool all the way through the four orgasms he gave me last night. Then he cooked breakfast for me this morning.”

  “I am so jealous. I thought about having an affair so I can remember what it is like to sweat during sex. Hell, I want to remember what
it is like to scream because it’s being hit so good and deep. Right now when I orgasm, it reminds me of a ball of gas caught in my cooch and it comes out like a big ole queeff,” Ursula said with melancholy.

  “Girl, that man hit is so hard, I nearly called my gyno to make sure he hadn’t caved in my walls. Shit, you may have to help me up out of this chair I am so damned sore,” Tallulah said woefully. She hurt all over. Her body ached so much that today she wore a flat, sneaker like shoe instead of her trademark high heels. Hurt so good. She wanted to hum the song, but instead, she kept it to herself.

  The two sat in a comfortable silence. One, replaying the acrobatics of her night. The other, wishing for a time before the kids, mortgages, and private school tuition. Willie never made me chew on a pillow even before those things, but there was that one Mandingo like dude in Birmingham...a child physical therapist.

  “We don’t match, so I am not going to let it go any further,” Tallulah confessed interrupting Ursula’s trip down Memory Lane.

  “You don’t need to match. Willie and I match all the way down to our BMW’s in the drive way. I am bored out of my fucking mind. We don’t disagree on anything, we don’t fight, he has nothing new to show me, and I have nothing new to show him. If I did, he would want to know where I learned it,” Ursula mouthed.

  “I dunno. It was exciting until he handed me a fifty this morning,” she said.

  “He left you money?”

  “Yeah, for a pillow of all things,” Tallulah said.

  “What is up with a pillow...is it for sex or something?”

  “No, he is a back sleeper and he wanted it for his side of the bed,” Tallulah said.

  Ursula’s eyes squinted as she stared at her longtime life partner. Her friend was a statuesque woman with warm coppery brown skin, naturally long thick black hair, and a body that made most men want her. It also helped that Tallulah Strom was book smart but life dumb. Life dumb had kept her safe. It also had kept her lonely.

  “Stop it,” Ursula said. “I cannot recall the last time you and I had a conversation where your skin glowed and eyes sparkled, and you were smiling. Get out of your own way to love, learn, and enjoy this man.”

  “You stop it. He was raised by a pack of reefer smoking hippies who live in a double wide painted with peace signs that is guarded by red hat-wearing garden gnomes,” she said. “The gnomes are also holding peace signs.”

  “Hippies are peace loving people who care for others and the planet,” she said. “You could stand some caring for, Tallulah.”

  “I guess,” she mumbled.

  Ursula watched her friend.

  “Tallulah, do you ever get tired of coming home to an empty house? Weekends when it would be great to go to a movie or get away for a night or two with a man?”

  “Hell, no. I walk around in my house in my drawers, drinking wine, eating out of the containers of fatty foods I buy at drive in windows from pimply faced teenagers. My weekends are dates with NetFlix, a dildo, and no man sitting around saying ‘make me a sandwich babe,’” she said adamantly. “Screw all of you withering married bitches that think something is wrong with my life because I am in no hurry to breed and wash some dude’s drawers.”

  “Screw you back, you withering egg carrying future cat lady. You are lonely and in need of a real dick versus the big rubber one in your nightstand drawer. I refuse to believe that you are willing to give up some loving so good that you called the whitest boy in town a Ninja because he was giving you that great sort of connecting,” Ursula said. “That chile so white you could strip him down naked in a cave at night with no lights and say ‘Hey, there he is!’”

  “Ursula, he has a touch of OCD,” Tallulah confessed.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “When he undressed me he stopped, folded my panties and put them on the chair along with my bra and other clothing. He also folded his clothes and put them on the night stand separately from mine, Ursula! I was butt damn nekkid, wetter than a two-dollar hooker and laying on my bed panting like a hot dog in heat, and he took time to fold his clothes.”

  “You focus on stupid shit. I can’t stand that about you. Happiness showed up on your doorstep and you want to question how he is going to go about adding some depth to your shallow life. Shut your ass up, screw his pasty white brains out, and enjoy the love,” Ursula said to her.

  Tallulah sat for a minute, looking at friend. They had been friends for so long, she always called Ursula her life partner. A life partner who had never steered her wrong. She grabbed her pretty Prada bag, removed her matching Prada wallet, and pulled out a twenty and five ones. The money she laid on the table.

  “Where are you going, Tallulah?”

  “To Penny’s before it closes to buy a Ninja a pillow for a back sleeper,” she said. “Love you, mean it.” She blew Ursula a kiss as she headed out the door, her keys in one hand and her cell phone in the other. Inside her car, she punched in his number. He answered right away.

  “Hey there,” she said in the line. “I thought I would give you call to let you know I was thinking about you.”

  “Thank you. I have been thinking about you all day,” Holden said. “I hope you are calling because I am in your plans for the evening.”

  “I would like you to be,” she said softly. She turned onto Main Street, driving toward the college.

  “Tell me a time to be there,” he said.

  The clock on her dash read 7:10.

  “I have to run to the mall first and pick up a firm pillow for a back sleeper,” she said.

  “See you at eight,” Holden said.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” she told him and ended the call. I am really looking forward to it. Holden, however, had other plans in mind.

  Chapter Seven – Powering Up

  Holden spent the entire day driven to distraction. No matter what he did, he saw Tallulah’s face. At one point in his day, he had to sit in his truck until his boner went down when his memory relived the moment their bodies first connected. She was powerful, giving, demanding and possibly the most marvelous woman he’d ever spent a night with, not that there were many. Sex required a connection for him on something deeper than the physical. For Holden, there had to be an electrical draw. The first time he had spotted Tallulah Strom, he was drawn to her like lightening to a metal bridge.

  Each time he ran into her, he was dragged into the power grid that sapped him of most of his reasoning. No matter how many times he tried to come off as cool and aloof, in his mind, he ended up looking and sounding like a monosyllabic cave dweller. When he was around Tallulah, the cave dweller who drew the stick figures on the walls came to life. Women like her had always made him nervous and uncertain of himself. It didn’t matter how much he read or how well versed he was in organic living– strong, beautiful, educated women always made him feel like a cave dweller. She needed to see the other side of him instead of becoming something to play with on lonely nights when she couldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t be that for her or any woman, though many had tried, married and single. That was not his life nor the life he wanted with Tallulah.

  She was special and deserved something a bit more from him than just an intense but sexually gratifying experience and he planned to give it to her. He had a brain and he knew how to use it. An unreasonable fear gripped him around noon when he hadn’t heard from her. I won’t call her. The ball is in her court if she wants to see me again...when she wants to see me again...I hope she wants to see me again.

  Holden was parked in front of Flynn’s Hardware store on Main Street, pushing down the boner in his pants, praying it would go away so he could go inside to take care of Harlan’s request. He looked up to see Orlando, Harlan’s son and current owner of the Flynn’s Hardware, walking beside the truck. It was too late; he’d looked in the window and spotted what he was doing.

  “Holden, why are you in front of my hardware store sitting in your truck with a boner?” Orlando asked him.

  “I had a date last n
ight that just reminded me how amazing she was,” he told the shop owner.

  “Well, either think about something else or move from in front of my store. I don’t want you scaring off my customers with your hippie weirdness,” Orlando said.

  “If you haven’t scared them off with your assholeness, then we should all be fine, Orlando,” Holden told him with a straight face.

  “I want to like you, kid, but I don’t get you,” Orlando said.

  “You wife likes me just fine. She gets me,” he told the store owner. As he said the words, Orlando’s wife walked up. Jacquetta Mason Flynn was a gorgeous black woman and an artist who, from what Holden had heard, was world famous.

  “Hey there, Electrical Man,” Jacquetta said, walking over to the truck. The approach was hindered by her husband’s arm, preventing her from getting too close to the vehicle to see what Orlando saw. She asked, “Orlando, what are you doing?”

  “Baby, you don’t need to look in that truck. He’s doing some weirdo hippie stuff,” Orlando said.

  “Stop playing, Orlando,” she said as stepped around her husband. “Holden, I absolutely loved that tea you brought me. Can I place an order for the lemon julep and the peach pantomime?”

  “Sure thing, ‘Quetta. I will have it to you on my Wednesday run. Are those lights working okay in your studio?” Holden asked, looking at Orlando.

  “Yes, you did an amazing job, my electrical man. Thank you so much,” she smiled at him. “I will see you Wednesday with my tea.”

  “Okee-dokee, Ma’am. If you need anything else, you can feel free to call me,” Holden said to her, but his eyes were still on Orlando.

  “Sure will. Thanks a million. I will see you on Wednesday,” Jacquetta said as she walked away.

  Orlando’s eyes remained on Holden to ensure he wasn’t watching ‘Quetta’s butt while she went into the store. Holden’s eyes were locked onto Orlando’s, showing that he wasn’t watching his wife’s butt either. Tallulah’s butt was better. It was just perfect enough to fit inside the palms of his hands.

  “What are you doing here, Hippie?” Orlando said with a frown.