by Beth Rinyu
Now it was Darius who looked a little in shock. “Oh no, Faith, trust me…he’s a prick. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and he’s sitting on a multimillion-dollar company there, but he’s a total control freak who wants things done his way. Just because he works seventeen-hour days, he expects everyone else to do the same. It’s probably just as well if you don’t get the job. I’m telling you right now, the two of you would be butting heads big time.”
“Wow, I would have never guessed that,” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich. “It’s funny because I actually saw him in the food store the other night. He helped me out when I came up short after Joey decided to give some cash to the animal shelter without telling me!”
He let out a loud laugh. “That’s my girl! How’s she’s doing?”
I grinned just thinking about her. “Just as crazy as ever. Her latest kick is she wants to be a nun and wishes to be called Sister Joelle. She was the cause of embarrassing situation number one at the food store and embarrassing situation number two today.”
“What’d she do today?” He smiled in anticipation.
“I got called down to the principal’s office the other day because my dear daughter decided to get in my inventory from Frisky Business.”
His eyes widened.
“She then proceeded to pass out a certain product that goes around the male genitals to…heighten…well, you know…as friendship bracelets to her class.”
“Oh no, she did not!” He roared with laughter.
“Yeah, she did.” I nodded. “But wait, it gets worse. I had forgotten that it was still in my purse and today when I was leaving the interview, I tripped and almost fell on my ass. Needless to say, my purse went flying and everything inside was all over the floor. So guess who helped me clean up the mess?”
He shook his head, clenching his side with tears streaming down his face in a fit of laughter. “Did...did he see it?”
“Oh yeah! So now, do you see why I won’t be getting the job? Other than the obvious…I’m totally not qualified.”
“Oh, Faith…that’s a story you can tell your grandkids,” he said after finally calming down from his laughing fit. “I miss my crazy chick. Cole hasn’t been bringing her by the apartment as much.”
“You can blame that on me. I kinda told him I didn’t want her around that bachelor lifestyle.”
“I’d rather have it because of that instead of the reason I was thinking.”
I wasn’t following him. “And what reason would that be?”
“Brittany…” He rolled his eyes, not disguising his dislike in any way for Cole’s on-again, off-again girlfriend.
“What about her?”
“Oh nothing.” He tried dismissing it, but I wasn’t letting it go.
“What about her, Darius?”
“Nothing really. They got in a fight a few weeks ago because she wanted him to go to a concert with her on one of his nights with Joey.”
“Oh, really? I thought they were broken up?”
“They are now...after that.”
“And when exactly was that?” I could feel my blood pressure rising. The nerve of that bitch for getting pissed off at him for spending time with his daughter.
“I don’t know, Faith.” He looked down, pretending to be interested in something on his phone.
“When was it, Darius?” I demanded.
He threw his head back in defeat. “Like a week or so ago. The same night that Nat went with you to your party.”
The same night we slept together…the first time. Was I really that naïve to think that maybe Cole was starting to have the same feelings for me that I was having for him? I was nothing but a rebound. A payback to his bitch of a girlfriend. Sometimes my stupidity even amazed me.
“Why does your head look like it’s gonna explode?” he asked.
“No reason.” My teeth clenched down on my straw as I took a sip of my soda.
“Oh….” He nodded, finally putting the pieces together.
“I guess he told you then?”
“No, actually Nat did.”
Sometimes she had the biggest mouth! I loved that we were all so close back in college and freely told each other everything, but now things were a little different. Natalia didn’t get that some topics of my life were off-limits with Darius. Even though he was her boyfriend he was still very good friends with Cole.
“Look, Faith, Cole is my friend, but you are too. Just watch yourself. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Why would I get hurt? I know how Cole is. I’m not expecting a marriage proposal out of this,” I replied, hoping that I was coming across as believable.
“Okay.” He gave me a sympathetic gaze as if he were reading my thoughts. “Well, I need to get rolling.” He looked down at his watch and took one last sip of his drink.
“Yeah, me too. I have to get back into my Cinderella clothes and clean some houses.” I sighed as we both got up to exit.
“Someday your prince will come, Faith,” Darius teased as he held the door open for me.
As much as I wanted to believe that…someday seemed to be getting farther and farther away.
***
My anger at Cole for using me as a rebound subsided ever so slightly when I got a text from him, letting me know that his afternoon class was canceled and that he’d pick Joey up from school for me. The anger completely diminished when I walked into my apartment to the heavenly scent of what I was hoping was dinner. I had passed starvation a few hours ago and was now in the famished zone.
“Hey.” He smiled, displaying that cute little dimple in his right cheek that I just happened to be noticing a little bit more as of late.
“Mommy, I’m making you a pretty picture.” Joey smiled up at me as she sat at the coffee table in the living room coloring away.
“Aww, thank you.” I leaned down and kissed her on the top of her head. “No habit today?” I asked, noticing that she wasn’t wearing her traditional hooded sweatshirt hanging from her head that she had been sporting for the last three weeks.
Cole shook his head and mouthed something to me just as Joey put her crayon down and her eyes filled with tears. “Sister Catherine yelled at me today!” she whined. “I don’t wanna be a nun anymore. They’re mean!”
“Why did Sister Catherine yell at you?”
“Because she said I was talking too much.” Her bottom lip quivered.
“Well, were you?” A question that I didn’t even need to ask when it came to my little chatterbox.
She shrugged her shoulders and began coloring once again. “Mommy, who’s Barbara Waters?”
“Who?”
“Barbara Waters. Mean old Sister Catherine told Sister Mary that I was Barbara Waters of the kindergarten class….and then they both started laughing.”
I tried to hold back my laughter, but I couldn’t, causing Joey to stick out her lower lip even further and go into full-blown pout mode. “Joey, honey, I think you mean Barbara Walters, and that’s not a bad thing. Barbara Walters is a very famous person. So I think that was a compliment.” I put a spin on it, trying to make her feel a little better.
“Hmmm…” she scoffed, going back to her coloring. “I’m still very, very angry at Sister Catherine.”
“Please tell me that’s dinner on the stove and not some weird science project.” I turned my attention to Cole.
“Of course it’s dinner. Raviolis and garlic bread.”
“Delicious…I’m starving.” I picked up the empty jar of sauce on the counter and looked it over.
“I...I know…you’re not used to eating jarred sauce.”
“Nope, it’s fine. I like being a rebel every now and then.” I laughed, just thinking about how the idea of jarred sauce or gravy as my mother referred to it got under her skin.
“So, how’d your interview go?” Cole asked, nudging me out of the way so he could get to the sink to drain the raviolis.
“I bombed it.”
&nb
sp; “Well, you don’t know that for sure.”
“Oh…no, trust me, I do know for sure! It’s probably just as well. Darius said the owner of the company is an asshole.” I sighed. “It’s funny how just last week I couldn’t care less about this job. Now here I am actually getting upset over the thought of not getting it. I do this all the time.”
“What’s that?” he asked as he began to put the food on the table.
“Once something becomes unobtainable then I want it.”
A slow, adorable grin spread across his face.
What the hell am I doing? How could I have forgotten I was pissed at him for using me to get over his bitchy girlfriend? Yet, here I was talking some kind of strange code to him about us.
“Joey!” I called her to the dinner table to break up the awkwardness of the moment.
I’m not flirting with him. I’m not sleeping with him again. I’m not going to fall into his green-eyed, great body, adorable dimpled smile trap again. Never!
***
“Cole, we really need to stop this,” I panted while trying to come down from the last two hours of amazing sex.
“Why?” he asked, pulling me closer.
“Because, you’re just coming out of a relationship, and I…I just need a fix every now and then.”
He pulled me closer and moved his lips down my neck. “Are you sure that all I am to you is a fix?”
“Cole, I’m being serious.” I sighed, taking his face in my hands. “What the hell are we doing?”
“Umm...do you want to go another round and I’ll show you step by step?”
“Seriously, Joey is gonna get the wrong idea if she keeps seeing you sleep here.”
He pushed my hair from my face. “Why’s it the wrong idea, Faith? I think we both can agree that there’s something there between us besides just sex. I want to be with you. The way we should have been years ago when Joey was born. Maybe the time wasn’t right then, but I feel like it is now.”
I propped myself up on my elbow and looked down at him in the darkness. My head was going at warp speed as I replayed the words he had just spoken. “What are you saying, Cole?”
“I want to be with you and Joey. I already have some great leads with some companies once I’m done with school in the spring, and I’ll be able to give both of you everything you deserve.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Just what I said. I want us to move in together. What do you say, Faith? Do you want to finally take a chance on us?”
I sat up, completely dumbfounded. Yes, I was starting to have feelings for Cole, but I figured I was safe. Never in a million years did I expect him to reciprocate those feelings. “Wow…this is just….” A million reasons to tell him no popped into my head, one of them being my mother would probably disown me. This could devastate Joey if things didn’t work out. My heart was taking a huge risk. But as his hand swept across the side of my face, all of those reasons went out the window, and all I could do was whisper, “Yes.”
Chapter 7
Gabe
“There’s my handsome guy!” My grandmother greeted me with a kiss as I walked through her door. “You want something to eat? I made some blueberry muffins earlier.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Well, this is a very nice surprise. I was so happy when you called to say you were on your way over.” I sat down on the couch, and she took a seat next to me. “So, what’s been going on? Are there any special ladies in your life?”
“No, Grandma.”
“Honestly, Gabriel, if you weren’t once engaged to that girl, I would begin wondering about you. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
Ever since I had called off my engagement, my grandmother would always refer to my ex-fiancée, Alyssa, as that girl.
“I’m not gay, Grandma, so don’t start tracking down nice Jewish guys for me to meet.”
She waved her hand in the air and shook her head.
“Listen, Grandma, how do you know that girl, Faith, who came in the other day for an interview?”
“Oh, she’s my cleaning lady. She’s so sweet. She actually stopped over today to drop off something I ordered from one of her parties. She brought her little girl with her. What a little firecracker she is!”
“Her parties?”
“Yeah. Oh, she told me what happened at the interview and the thing that came out of her purse.”
My eyes widened as she continued.
“She hosts parties for adult toys. So the cock ring wasn’t really hers.”
Just hearing my grandmother say that word made my ears burn.
“Oh, Gabriel, stop looking at me like I’m an old lady...I’m with the times.”
“So, you ordered something from the sex toy party?” I was afraid to hear the answer.
“Yup, I did! A pretty nighty.”
I raised an eyebrow and nodded, trying to get that image out of my head.
“So, are you going to hire her?”
That was the question I had been asking myself ever since I watched her walk out the door. I didn’t know what it was about her, but there was something that stayed on my mind. “Umm...she’s really not qualified.”
“Oh…” My grandmother looked down at the ground and pouted. “Don’t you have anything else you can give her? She’s such a nice girl. We had coffee and talked for over an hour today. I just think she’s lacking confidence in herself and it’s causing her to make poor choices. Maybe if she got this job it may give her the boost she needs.”
“What kind of choices?” Why was I even engaging in this? My grandmother was always such a busybody, and here I was falling right into her trap.
“Well…never mind, I don’t know if she would want me airing out her dirty laundry to everyone.”
This was a first. Normally my grandmother never had a problem putting everyone else’s business out to the rest of the world unless it was her own or someone in our family. She must’ve really liked this girl.
“Sorry, Grandma, but for now I have nothing.”
She let out a deep sigh.
“What’s the big deal? You didn’t tell her I was your grandson, did you?”
“No.”
“Then there shouldn’t be a problem. She doesn’t know you know me, so you shouldn’t feel bad.”
“It’s a shame.”
“Look, Grandma, if something comes up that I think she’s qualified for, you’ll be the first to know.”
She waved her hand in a dismissing manner. “Oh, I’m not talking about that. It’s a shame she’s not Jewish.”
I rolled my eyes, knowing right where she was headed with this one, but unlike the others she had tried to fix me up with, this one was actually hot.
“Well, she’s not.” I played along. “And even if she were, she has a kid.” Which to me was more of an issue than her not being Jewish.
“And? Why is that an issue?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Because I’m not a kid person.”
She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Need I remind you that you were a kid once?”
I let out a light chuckle. My grandmother was forever trying to mold people’s lives the way she saw fit. If people didn’t view things exactly as she saw them, they were wrong in her opinion. My father had been the perfect example of that when he married my mother. As soon as they married, she was on my father to have her convert. When my mother refused, she stopped talking to them for a while. Religion never played a big part in my mother’s life. She really didn’t see the point. She was more of the believe what you want to believe type, and don’t judge others for their beliefs.
Once I was born, my grandmother swallowed her pride and backed down. That was when my mother made the compromise to raise me Jewish just for her. My grandmother was content with that, but every once in a while she would have to get in: if the mother isn’t Jewish then neither is the child. I was more like my mother when it came to my beliefs, even though I would never te
ll my grandmother that.
I often wondered if I’d be a different person if my mother was still around. She died in a car accident when I was fifteen years old. I knew deep down inside that I had never gotten over it. My father was a great guy, who’d always been there for me, but it wasn’t the same as having a mother to go to for advice that only a mom could give. That became clear to me when Alyssa and I called off our engagement. I knew we were both at fault for the demise of that relationship. I had become so wrapped up with my work and put a lot of things on the backburner, including her. So, she, in turn, found someone else who gave her the attention she’d been lacking from me. At first I was angry and bitter over the whole thing, but after a while, I realized it was my fault. She was sweet, caring, and my number one supporter when I started up my business, and at one time we were happy. That was until I decided to put my business over her. Looking back now, I couldn’t blame her for doing what she’d done. That was where my mother’s words of wisdom would’ve come into play. I knew if anyone could have reeled me in from shutting out my relationship for my business, it would’ve been her. If she was still around, then chances were I’d more than likely be married right now. I’m not really sure if that marriage would have included a happily preceding it, but at least it would’ve kept my grandmother off my back about trying to set me up with every single Jewish girl within a ten-year age span of me.
After listening to my grandmother complaining about her neighbors and finally giving into a blueberry muffin, I was happy to be on my way home.
“What’s up, Chad?” I answered my phone just as I was pulling into my condo complex.
“I just called our number one pick for the job back for a second interview, and she was offered and accepted another job just this morning.”
“Okay, what about number two?”
He let out a loud laugh. “Called her too and apparently after talking it over with her husband, he doesn’t feel comfortable with her working for a man.”
I let out an annoyed breath and rolled my eyes. “Whatever,” I mumbled, grabbing my mail and heading inside.
