Rich Little Poor Girl: An Interracial Second Chance Romance

by C. L. Donley

  Ben emerged from his closet to see her clear eyes meeting his, and she broke into a smile as she raised up her head and rested it on her elbow. He melted.

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost 7.”

  She stretched, looking for a moment like she would turn over and go back to sleep. Instead, she sat up, wearing one of his dress shirts since she refused to bring her things over.

  Something either came over him or lifted off of him. He sauntered over to her side of the bed and sat down, her body between his and his propped arm. Her hair was a bit messy. She’d dyed it a dark red a few days ago. Before that, it was blue at the tips. Despite the daring color, there was still something classic and demure about her appearance. He looked into her eyes as he smiled.

  “See you tonight?” he said, not having much of a reason to even be talking to her right now, let alone draped over her in bed. He imagined for a moment that she was his.

  “Yup,” she nodded, cracking a smile. She seemed to be doing the same.

  “Okay,” he answered needlessly.

  “'kay,” she replied softly.

  And then he moved in close. His head leaned in left, she went right, and slowly, their lips touched. A perfect kiss for a perfect moment. It was so perfect in fact, that he didn’t even need more.

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  He walked out of the apartment with a spring in his step and stopped in the middle of the hallway, wrestling with himself. Surprisingly his intellect won out and he continued on his way to work.

  All day his computer screen blurred in front of him as he was lost in thought.

  “So, rumor has it Cynthia’s got a boyfriend.”

  Ben pretended not to hear.

  “Dammit. Who?”

  “Don’t know. I think it’s someone in the kitchens.”

  Ben gave a smirk.

  “Ben, you’re awfully quiet. Anything to confess?”

  “Why me?”

  “Everyone knows you took her up to Princeton. Any extra-curriculars happen?”

  “No. We’re just friends.”

  “She hasn’t told you about a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Pretty sure there’s a policy about the staff dating. She could seriously get fired for that.”

  “Yeah, it’s called the Declan policy.”

  The guys laughed. Declan Smith was a Junior VP who’d allegedly gotten one of the maids pregnant a few years ago.

  “Nothing wrong with kitchen staff dating each other,” Ben said, knowing the rule since he’d looked it up himself. “Technically we shouldn’t be tangled up with the staff’s personal lives at all. It screams ‘lawsuit.’”

  “Something about poor kitchen wenches gets me all hot and bothered,” Leland said. Ben didn’t know much about Leland, but it seemed like he was always trying to prompt Ben to talk about his personal life, so he probably worked for his father. Ben had been meaning to tell his dad to get someone a little less eager next time if he were trying to get any real information, but why give him the advantage?

  “Who’s the source of this ‘rumor’ anyway?” Ben feigned interest.

  “Dev said he saw her leaving with someone after work a few times.”

  Ben stiffened. The room practically disappeared and words faded into the background noise.

  Cynthia got off at five. Much earlier than him. Early enough to have a guy in and out of his place without him being the wiser.

  Was Cynthia bringing other guys to his place while he was at work?

  Other ‘guys’ plural? Really? the voice in his brain snarked. Meanwhile, his imagination was flooding with images of Cynthia running a brothel while he was gone.

  Okay, maybe it was just one guy. He’d given her a key, and virtually no stipulations. It’s not like they were together. They weren’t. At least, they weren’t supposed to be. He was sort of getting used to her as a roommate. And she was a good one. She cleaned up. She brought home take-out and always had just enough left for him to scarf up on the days he skipped lunch.

  Maybe there was one guy. She was allowed to have a guy. He himself had a girlfriend. Nay, a fiancée. He told himself he’d been honest with Cynthia, but he’d never been able to describe Melanie as anything but a girlfriend.

  Which was the lie? That Melanie was only a girlfriend or the fact that, after meeting Cynthia, he ever intended to marry Melanie?

  He didn’t know what Cynthia could ever be to him, but it was so much bigger than what Melanie had ever meant. If he had known then that a relationship could weigh so much, he would’ve never proposed.

  He’d caught Melanie cheating once. With one of his best friends during summer break, right before he proposed. She cried, he cried, and when he agreed to take her back, she was sobbing with elation. The relationship with his best friend was doomed, but he figured if he and Melanie could survive that, they could survive marriage.

  But now he realized that he couldn’t marry Melanie. Because even though he’d given Cynthia the title friend, roommate, co-worker, and every other title that existed besides girlfriend, the very thought that she could even be looking into another man’s eyes without him knowing was causing him such anguish, such emotional discomfort, that he was resolved to leave early and confront her before she walked in the door.

  He’d never felt that for another woman. And now that he knew that he could, he realized he was in a real quagmire. He couldn’t imagine a future without Melanie, but he didn’t want to imagine the present without Cynthia.

  * * *

  “Are you bringing guys here?”

  “What?”

  Cynthia walked in the door of Ben’s apartment, startled to find him already there on the couch when he had hours left on his shift.

  “Dev said he saw you with some guy at work?”

  “Oh, that’s just… my boss. We used to work at this steakhouse not that far from here, so we were getting together with some of our old co-workers. He’s the one that hired me when he got the job here—”

  “Dev said there was more than one.”

  Cynthia’s heart beat faster, but only because Ben was being so confrontational. She tried not to read too much into it, in case she was paranoid.

  “Dev?” she furrowed her brow, “why wouldn’t you just ask me?”

  “Because if you’re bringing guys here, you may not want to be truthful with me about it.”

  “…I’m not, nor would I ever, bring a guy here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t care who you sleep with,” Ben added, “I just care if you’re using my resources to do it.”

  She didn’t know which part of his sentence to hate more.

  “Well, like I said… I’m not, nor would I ever bring a guy here.”

  “So you are sleeping with someone?”

  Was this a joke?

  “When would I even have time to do something like that?” Cynthia asked dumbfounded.

  “I don’t know what you do on your days off. I’m at work 7 days a fuckin’ week.”

  “Well, my mom does occasionally like to see me.”

  “I’m not keeping you from your mom.”

  “I didn’t say you… Ben, what is this?”

  “I just need to know if you’re running some kind of scam—”

  “Because I’m poor and black and I work in a kitchen? What, I’m too young to graduate college, but I know the ins and outs of scamming?”

  “Why are you bringing race into this?”

  “Because I’m poor and I work in a kitchen, then? Which part of me should I blame this ridiculous conversation on?”

  “That would be your tits.”

  “Since when have you seen my tits?”

  “I haven’t.”

  Cynthia put her hands up slowly as though she were dealing with an escaped mental patient. “Look, you’re obviously talking crazy and having paranoid delusions, so I’m just gonna go.”

 
“Great. I’ll be needing that key, before you leave.”

  Shit. Did he think she meant for good? He was kicking her out?

  God. Rich guys are the worst.

  She stopped for a second, exasperated and ready to clarify that she only needed to go for a walk.

  But why bother? If he could do this to her at the drop of a hat, then she didn’t need it. She hated finding out that her relationship with Ben was so unstable.

  She reached in her pocket for the lonely key that he’d given her. She used to have a set. A little ugly old Geo Metro she got for a few hundred bucks. She and her friends used to smoke weed in it. Her house keys, of course. A key to the garage apartment she was going to move into once she graduated. But those were long gone. She had nothing in her pockets but lint. It’s not like she considered Ben’s apartment home, but she never dreamed that life entailed so many instances of giving away keys to things that were once yours to have.

  She lobbed the key at his head before she walked out of the front door and left it wide open.

  “Shit!” Ben launched himself off the couch the minute Cynthia was gone, bracing himself for the uncomfortable bramble down the stairs he was going to have to do to catch up with her. How the hell did he just let that stupid moment happen?

  By the time he got to the hallway, Cynthia was already on her way down the elevator. He made his way painfully down to the lobby, where she was nearly out the door.

  “Cynthia!” he yelled.

  He went outside, where he was freezing. He suddenly noticed Cynthia was wearing only a small bomber jacket. Why didn’t she just stop being stubborn and bring more of her things?

  Oh, I don’t know, Ben. Maybe she was worried you would kick her out without warning like a madman, he thought. God, why was he doing all the wrong things?

  “Cynthia, stop,” he yelled behind her as she walked.

  She wouldn’t stop.

  Shit. His apartment door was wide open. But he couldn’t turn back. Not if Cynthia wasn’t coming with him.

  He caught up enough with her to grab her by the wrist and she stopped, visibly shaken and unwilling to turn and face him. She was kidding herself if she thought she could be prideful right now. Her mom was in the woman’s shelter for 50 and older, a clean one, where she was safe. Where exactly could she go? To sleep on the subway?

  He grabbed her hand and she sobbed a little louder as she sheepishly followed behind him, the New Yorkers passing by thankfully minding their business as he led her back to his place. The scene of a well-dressed Ben unapologetically waddling down the street with a crying black girl in tow was probably just strange enough to earn their respect. Still, a few guys couldn’t help have an excuse to impress the cute girl with the pale ocean eyes.

  “You aight ma?” one of them said. She nodded in response.

  He dragged her all the way back to his building, up the stairs and into his apartment, onto the couch. The door was still wide open when they both flopped down, Cynthia’s intermittent sniffs still adorning the silence.

  He looked at her dainty, wheat-colored hands in her lap holding a balled-up tissue, a cheap burgundy on her fingernails. Her jeans against the fabric of his tufted leather. She was still wearing her flimsy bomber jacket. He stared and stared as though his memory depended on it, his mind empty. Suddenly he spoke.

  “I don’t want you to leave. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Cynthia was quiet.

  “Actually I do know why I said it. I was angry. Jealous. I was crazy jealous.”

  Cynthia swallowed, feeling as though she were drowning. He kept his eyes glued to the empty space between them.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend. Why would I let you kiss me?” she said, as though that were proof.

  “I let you kiss me. And I have a girlfriend.”

  “Well, I’m not like you, Ben. You don’t even know if you love your girlfriend. And you have the nerve to be jealous? At least I know that I have no right to you whatsoever.”

  “I know that I have no right to you. That’s why… look, I don’t want you to leave, okay? If you wanna bring other guys over—”

  “I don’t want to bring other guys over!” Cynthia cried.

  “Maybe not now, I’m just saying in the future…”

  “In the future? How long do you think I’m staying here?”

  “I… I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I just… I want you to feel welcome. I do. And I listened to my idiot co-workers, and it… caught me off guard, that’s all. I started freaking out that you were just taking me for a ride.”

  “You’re so vulnerable, Ben,” Cynthia sneered sarcastically.

  Ben sighed as he sat back. He took hold of one of Cynthia’s hands, palms up, caressing her fingers. His front door was still wide open, right off the kitchen. A few passers by fought the temptation to stop to look inside as they slowly passed. Cynthia’s breathing slowed. Her nipples tightened against her chest as Ben unknowingly stimulated the nerves across her fingers, skimming her skin. She began nervously to talk, to cover her erratic breathing.

  “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you. And I guess this is as good a time as any. I’ve been here nearly a month. If you want, I could start paying rent here.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” he scoffed.

  “Let me pay something. Anything.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Look, it’s not like I want things to change, well… I mean… I feel the same way, in a way, I guess, it’s just—”

  “I know,” he said, looking down at some mysterious point of interest, his long lashes shielding his dark brown eyes.

  “Know what?” Cynthia breathed, not even sure what she meant by her ramble. He still had her palm in his.

  “I feel it too, I’m not an idiot,” he scoffed.

  “So… what do we do?” she asked in a rasp.

  He sighed again, as though looking at a confusing puzzle in the lines of her palm that his life was dependent on solving.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to kiss me again?”

  “I think so.”

  She watched his brow furrowed, his brown eyes studying the brown-colored branches of indentions in her hands, looking past them.

  “Just kiss me, Ben.”

  Ben huffed a laugh.

  “That won’t solve anything it’ll just… cause more problems.”

  “Then I should leave.”

  “…So you’re blackmailing me?”

  “I’m trying to help you. And myself.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Just kiss me! Ben!”

  “Cynthia, I’m not gonna ‘just kiss you’!” he answered, exasperated. “If I start, I’m not gonna stop at ‘kissing’!”

  “Good!” she exclaimed.

  Ben sighed, Cynthia’s enthusiastic reply only fanning the flames under his roasting conscience.

  “Cynthia, I’m a cheater. Already. If I do that, it makes me just as bad as her.”

  “She cheated on you?”

  “…Once.”

  “…So you’re in a relationship with a cheating woman that you don’t love…”

  “Cynthia, enough. You don’t… it’s complicated okay?”

  “This isn’t fair, Benji.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m going to take a shower. I smell like vegetable oil.”

  Cynthia retreated to the bathroom, shedding her jacket and uniform while the water heated, frustrated more by Ben’s actions than her living situation. He wasn’t lying, he was genuinely unsure. Stupid rich weirdos and their girlfriends. She couldn’t deny his insistence on being faithful made her both love and hate Ben, and this Melanie chick. The idea that he wanted her back… she wished she just had the strength to walk away. For both their sakes.

  Suddenly there was a knock at the bathroom door.

  Cynthia startled, naked and about to wash off the day. She grabbed a towel and slowly began wrapping it around herself before she stopped. She
dropped the towel and took a deep breath before slowly opening the door.

  Instantly she was confronted with Ben’s raw gaze, his audible breath heavy, his eyes never leaving hers as though afraid to venture any lower. She opened the door wider and he slowly limped his way inside, closing the door behind him and leaning up against it. Finally, he let himself take in the sight of her pert breasts, her brown nipples.

  His hands went to starch white of his shirt buttons, undoing them one by one, revealing his undershirt. Hers went to his belt buckle, her hair in a long, choppy dark red bob, long bangs framing her face. Gingerly he stepped out of his pants, letting Cynthia peel them down over his legs pinching themselves together. She was surprised to see they were pale and a bit muscular at the calves and thighs. Unusually weak-looking in other places, covered in scars presumably from surgeries. He went from semi-erect to rock hard right before her eyes. She pressed herself against him as she stood upright. Ben was breathing so hard with his hands at his sides as if paralyzed. She reached up on tip toes, closed her eyes and kissed his lips. Their tongues slowly intertwined, again and again between kisses until they were dizzy.

  “Cynthia?”

  “What?” she replied, reaching for the elastic on his boxers.

  “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be your first,” he whispered.

  “It’s okay. I’m not.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?”

  “You’re gorgeous, Cynth.”

  “Benji…”

  Ben responded with his lips fiercely on hers again. A hand went to the side of her face. They kissed and kissed until finally she broke away from him, grabbed him by the hand and led him into the shower stall, Ben watching her bare shoulders and back as she moved in front of him, their mismatched hands lazily intertwined.

  9

  Present Day

  Esmee is back in town after two weeks in some location he hasn’t bothered to remember. If she hadn’t sent a text, he would’ve gone straight home to his apartment after work, rather than meet her at her hotel, her semi-permanent home away from home.

  “Want to make love, my dear?”

  “I’m really exhausted.”