I grinned at how happy she looked, and felt glad we could do something here where she could take a break from everything she had going on. I called after her in a teasing tone, “I don’t know about that, Yesenia, you were giving me a run for my money today.”
She laughed as she took the stairs to her room. “Well I try.”
I turned to Ayako who was still standing there, waiting for my answer, and pointed to my office at the bottom of the stairs. “Come on, I need to get my keys and then head out. I told Tom I’d be there by five thirty p.m. and it’s almost five p.m.”
She rolled her eyes as she walked in and closed the door behind her. “It takes five minutes to walk to Red Rooster from here. You’re rushing because Tom Hughes has you in a bad way.” Her smirk was fucking annoying.
I almost deflected or did my usual “deny, deny” routine, but today felt different. From the moment I opened my eyes this morning my skin was buzzing, and I knew the reason for it had a first and last name. It’s not like I didn’t usually feel good, I loved my job and I had a lot to be happy for, but I could not remember the last time I’d felt this exhilaration with someone. Like I could show up and be exactly who I was, and it would not only be okay, it would be exactly right.
I sighed and looked at Ayako—or, as I thought of her lately, my No.1 Enabler. “I’m excited to see Tom. I’d deny it, but your pushy ass probably wouldn’t let me leave until I admitted it.” I grabbed my keys from my desk as I glared at her. I turned to the window and looked at myself. I didn’t exactly look like I was going to a business meeting with the billionaire who was donating money to my agency. But I did look like I could be meeting my boyfriend for an after work drink.
Ayako’s whistle jerked me out of my spell just as it was getting good. “Wow, you’re legit daydreaming about Big Dicked Tom.”
I had to laugh. “You’re a piece of work, Ayako Russell.”
“I don’t know why you don’t just go for it. You’ve been meeting with this guy for like a month and every single week you’re more into him than the last.”
I widened my eyes and waved my hand up and down indicating she was raising her voice. “Shhhh. Also,” I whispered furiously, “go for what? Tom has not made a single move in the direction of taking things further.”
“Ah-ha!” She grimaced at her loudness, and continued in a lower tone. “So you would be up for it.”
“Maybe.” I cocked my head genuinely mystified. “I don’t want to disappoint Melissa or ruin things for this project. I—”
Ayako walked up to me shaking her head. “A. He probably hasn’t come on to you because he doesn’t want to abuse his position. B. You’re both adults and he has given no indication he’ll be the type of asshole who would refuse to finish the domestic violence shelter renovation he’s funding if things between you guys don’t work out. C. You fucking glow every time you see that guy. I’ve known you for way too long not to know that a man who has not tried your patience after a month is a fucking keeper.”
I nodded to the door. “I’m aware of the fact that Tom Hughes is fucking perfect. It’s just not that simple.”
She nudged me as we walked out of the shelter and into the lobby of the building. “Just don’t talk yourself out of something that could be great.”
“When have I ever denied myself something that could potentially feel good?”
People always said my eyerolls were over the top, but Ayako’s were next level. “I’ll tell you when, if it involves your mother or your job, your own needs automatically drop to the very bottom of the list.”
I could deny it, but what would be the point?
We parted ways then and as I walked the couple of blocks to meet with Tom, I kept thinking about what Ayako said. I knew she was right. By this point I had a very good idea about the type of man Tom was.
As I was about to walk up to the restaurant my phone buzzed with a call from my mom, as if Tom needed any more women in my life rooting for him. “Hey, Mama.”
“Milito, are you off work?”
“No, I’m about to go meet with the donor.”
“Ooooh.” Dinorah perked up immediately, the recaps from my meetings with the “Handsome Billionaire” were her new favorite telenovela. “Well I don’t want to keep you then. Don’t be too grumpy with him, Milito. He sounds like such a nice man.”
For fuck’s sake, like Tom was some kind of helpless kitten. If anyone needed help it was me. The struggle to keep my clothes on whenever I was around him was no fucking joke. I was the one in need of assistance.
“I won’t be grumpy, Ma, but I have to go, I’m already late. Love you.”
I slid my phone back in my bag and stood just on the corner before the Red Rooster for a moment. Maybe I needed to, for once, take romantic advice from my loved ones and see where Tom Hughes and I could go.
Chapter Eleven
Tom
The buzzing on my phone from Priya’s text gave me the jolt I needed to get myself together.
Priya: Are you going to do it?
I looked around before responding, then tapped a message on my phone.
Tom: I think so.
Priya: Good luck! I feel really positive about this. *heart eyes emoji*
I had to laugh at Priya’s close monitoring of my love life.
I put my phone on the table and looked up. I noticed him as soon as he walked in, and when I saw what he was wearing, every nerve in my body lit up.
Today he had his hair up in a bun and he wasn’t in his usual business casual. It’d been an unseasonably warm October day, and he was wearing leather Vans without socks and tight black yoga pants looking things. A loose black tank top under an oversized denim shirt and a patterned gray scarf wrapped around his neck. He had black leather cuffs on his wrists and I could see black nail polish on his fingernails.
He looked edgy and a little flushed, his gray eyes bright, like he was glowing from the inside. More than one head turned as he made his way to the table. When he saw me, he smiled wide and waved as he came toward me. At that moment, I wanted him to be mine so badly. I wanted to stand up and meet him halfway, so everyone could see the most beautiful man in this place belonged to me.
He was still smiling as he sat down and it took everything in me not to lean over and kiss his mouth.
“Hey, sorry I’m late and showed up dressed like this.” He apologized, gesturing at his shirt. “But we had a thing at the shelter and I didn’t have time to change before coming to meet you.”
“It’s fine. I was running late myself. So what were you doing? If it’s okay for me to know.” He waved his hand, indicating it was okay to ask. I could tell he was happy I wanted to know what he’d been doing. I would never get enough of seeing Camilo’s passion for his work.
“Well it’s this really cool thing we’ve been doing for oh—” he put his finger under his chin and looked up “—a year or so now. We’ve been partnering with this dance group called New York Bodies, they do these choreography classes. Like each session is just one song, and we practice a set of moves as a group and then do the whole thing at the end. It’s so much fun. Ayako and I have been taking classes at their studio downtown for years. So we talked to them about coming to the shelter and doing a sort of dance therapy class twice a month.”
I nodded, a smile already forming as I was infected by his enthusiasm. “That sounds great.”
“It is. Their whole mission is to offer classes in a shame-free body-positive environment. So any person of any shape or ability can come and do a group class. The instructors are fantastic too, and will modify the lessons so everyone can participate. I always make sure I can make it, because it’s amazing to see how much our clients love the classes. They also get to pick which song we’ll do each time.” He laughed and shook his head. “Most weeks it’s either Rihanna, Ariana or Beyoncé.”
I wanted t
o say something about how great the classes sounded, but my mind was stuck picturing Camilo in those tights and tank top dancing until he was sweaty and flushed. My cock got so hard I had to adjust my trousers. I swallowed a few times before I could speak, while he looked at me like he was well aware of where my mind had gone.
I regrouped and tried to say something at least somewhat coherent. “It’s great you offer some programs that aren’t just the typical financial literacy class or job training.”
He nodded again and gave me a funny look, like he’d expected me to say something different.
“Those things are very important, of course, and we have them too. But part of our mission at New Beginning is try to dismantle all these destructive constructs our clients are steeped in.”
I leaned closer as he talked, once again amazed at how effortlessly Camilo commanded my full attention. “Tell me more about that.”
“Like, if you’re poor, or black or brown you have no right to do something just for fun. That if you spend money on yourself or on something you enjoy you’re being careless and deserve to be victimized. Part of our work is to walk with our clients as they begin to see there’s nothing wrong with them. That the issues they’re dealing with aren’t there because they made them happen, but because they’re trying to navigate a system literally built to not work for them.”
By now he was leaning into the table and talking with his hands.
“It’s consciousness raising you know? We have to make spaces for them to do things they don’t feel entitled to, like take an art class or dance for an hour. We work from a perspective of understanding the intersectionality of oppression. Gender, race, sexuality, ability, socioeconomic status, country of origin—” he went on excitedly, ticking things off his fingers “—each one of those things cut across our clients’ lives and hold them back.”
Turning, he pointed in the direction of the street. “What they hear out there is, ‘If you’re black or brown, poor and a single mom, you have no right to joy, you haven’t earned it.’ We say, ‘Fuck that because neither has anyone else.’ So we make a point of doing stuff like the New York City Bodies classes. To reinforce they have the right to moments that are just theirs, that no matter what good or bad decisions they’ve made or how hard things are, they still get joy.”
He stopped talking then and widened his eyes like he realized he’d been going for too long. I was going to say something smart and neutral, but my heart was faster than my head.
“You’re magnificent. Did you know that?”
This time his smile was shy and small, and he looked down as if he was a little embarrassed.
“I get a bit carried away sometimes. I don’t mean to lecture people all the time.”
This shyness was so unlike him. I went out on a limb, reached out across the table and grabbed his hand. He jumped when our hands met, but didn’t pull away.
“It wasn’t a lecture. I love hearing you talk about your work. Seriously, you amaze me, Camilo. I’m so grateful our paths crossed.” This time it was my turn to look down. “I was talking to my friends about you today.”
“Oh?” That was all he said, but his eyes were wide with expectation, and I knew this was the moment. My chance to say what we’d been tiptoeing around for weeks.
“I was telling them how much I loved our conversations, how much you challenged me.” His face looked a little disappointed at my words, so before I lost my nerve I said it.
“I told them I wanted to ask you to dinner.”
He quickly pulled his hand away like I’d shocked him. The hesitation on his face made all the breath leave my body. Maybe I was in this alone. Maybe Camilo wasn’t interested in me like that. I’d forgotten what this was like, the breathless expectation of waiting to hear if the person you wanted felt the same way about you.
Finally he placed the hand he’d pulled away on top of mine and spoke. “I’d love to have dinner with you, Tom.”
The fluttering in my chest was so intense I was sure Camilo could hear it across the table. I knew I was grinning hard too. I was so glad to hear him say yes though. I couldn’t help it.
“Can we do it now?”
He laughed at my eagerness and shook his head like I was ridiculous. “Well I’m all sweaty and gross from the dance class and this is definitely not what I’d wear for a first date with the Thomas Hughes, but yeah, we can have dinner now.”
I gave him an astonished look, because he had no idea the effect what he was wearing had on me when he walked in. “I think you look hot, exactly how you are. And so do a lot of the people here, if all the stares you were getting as you walked in were any indication.” He laughed and rolled his eyes.
“Okay, if it works for you, who am I to argue? But what do we even talk about? I feel like we’ve had all the first date conversation already?”
“Tell me about the dance classes. I have to say the idea of you in those tights, dancing to Beyoncé got me overheated very quickly.” The smile he gave me at that was dirty enough to make me blush. This was the Camilo from the gala. The sexy and confident man who grabbed me by the hand and gave me the best blow job of my life.
He tipped his head to the side and put his finger under his chin as though he was thinking about an answer. “Well let’s see, today we did ‘Formation’ which is kind of fierce but also sexy. There was a lot of hip gyration and hair flipping. We’ve done it a few times before. The clients love it.”
“When you say hip gyrations—”
That husky laugh was going to be the end of me. Under the table Camilo moved his legs so they were brushing against mine, and leaned in to me, “Well it’s hard to explain it. It’s more the kind of thing you have to see. I’d have to show you.”
I gulped and ran my hands on my thighs, trying to calm myself down. I needed to get out of here before I did something crazy in this restaurant full of people.
“So I was thinking maybe we could do a drink at my place before dinner.” Then closed my mouth and thought about what I’d just said. Why would we leave a restaurant to go and eat somewhere else? I’d been at meetings discussing billion dollar deals and felt less out of sorts than I was right now.
I shook my head as Camilo looked at me from under long thick eyelashes. “That’s sort of stupid isn’t it? We’re already at a restaurant. We could just get dinner here.”
I laughed a little hysterically and all I could think of was finally getting to touch him after weeks of holding back. But before I opened my mouth again Camilo took control of the situation. He grabbed my hand and ran his thumb over it, as if trying to put me at ease, then he squared his shoulders and looked at me full of certainty.
“But if by drinks you mean go back to your place for sex, then yes. We can absolutely go to your house for a pre-dinner drink.”
It felt like someone zapped my balls with a charge of electricity and I immediately stood up. I left way more money on the table than necessary to pay for the water we’d gotten, and for the second time since we’d met I let Camilo pull me by the hand and lead me away.
Chapter Twelve
Camilo
I was doing this.
I was walking to Tom Hughes’s house with the intention of getting my hands, mouth and everything else I could come up with on him as soon as we walked through the door.
I’d tried my best, I really had, but this man was irresistible. The way he looked at me, like I was a rare and precious thing he’d just discovered...it undid me. And the way his face lit up as I told him about our clients and the dancing, as if I was telling him something incredible, it was the last straw.
We were adults and there was no rule saying I couldn’t date (fuck) a donor. I’d actually looked at the agency policy manual the day Melissa gave me that boundaries lecture, because I knew if he pursued me, it was only a matter of time before I gave in.
As we walke
d up Lenox Avenue Tom looked a little shy, but full of anticipation. He glanced down at me with a question in his eyes, then extended his hand as if asking to hold mine. We were in Harlem and the streets were busy at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday. I usually would not go for any display of affection just as a precaution. But with Tom, in this moment, I felt bold. So I hooked my index finger around his and smiled at him.
“So where are we going? You said your house was close, right?”
He nodded and pointed further up. “Yes, I live in a brownstone on the next block. I’ve only been in it a couple of years. My friends Sanjay and Priya, who you met at the party, bought the one right next door. It’s nice to have them close by. We love the neighborhood.”
I nodded distractedly feeling a little intimidated. Living in the area myself, I was very aware of the prices that brownstones went for these days.
What was I doing with a guy living in a house that cost millions of dollars? I could barely afford my little studio in Hamilton Heights. As we got to 126th street and turned left, Tom squeezed my hand, beaming. I tried to push aside my nervousness and come back to the moment, to Tom. Then I remembered what my friends told me. I didn’t need to make a judgment based on things I perceived as problematic. I could rely on what Tom had shown me so far.
Everything Tom had done since I’d met him was more than enough evidence he was the kind of man I wanted to get to know better.
To be with.
“Why did you buy a place here in Harlem? I mean it’s not the typical spot for millionaires to move to.”
He nodded and his face got serious. “Harlem was the first place I lived in when I came to the States. I arrived like three months before I started my first year at Columbia, and I stayed with an old friend of my mom’s on 122nd and Park. She’s Dominican, but she’s been here since the sixties. That whole summer she would take me on walks around Harlem and talk to me about the history. She told me about the Caribbean diaspora who settled here over the last hundred years. I got hungry to learn more. I read about queer authors like Langston Hughes and James Baldwin who came up here. I learned about Latinx civil rights movements like the Young Lords which all happened in these streets. Learning about those who’d come through this same place made me feel connected to New York City, like I wasn’t so far from home.”
American Fairytale (Dreamers) Page 11
