Table for Two

by Nia Forrester

  Now, when he puts a damp hand at my jaw and turns my face toward his, I kiss him back. It is a deep, soulful, bedroom kiss, and we are probably making a spectacle of ourselves, but I don’t care.

  I don’t care.

  He tastes like lime, and beer. And Rand.

  He’s mine, and I can have him whenever I want, but I still can’t get enough of him. We kiss for what seems like a long time, and not long enough. When he pulls away, I can barely see his eyes in the darkish room. He presses his lips to my ear.

  “Just another hour, and then home,” he says. “Because I’m about to tear that ass up.”

  “See, the key to connecting with someone,” Q is saying, “to really connecting, isn’t just the love. It’s the synchronicity. The love? Yeah, that counts for something, but …” he makes a tsk-tsk sound. “If you’re not in sync, it’s all over but the crying. It’s just a matter of time.”

  I’ve heard that when you’re high, just about everything is profound. And, because I am listening to Q and feeling like he’s the Dalai Lama, legs folded beneath me, sitting on a Turkish rug in his “smoke room” I’m sure I’m high. There are only four other people here besides me, and every one of them is listening with rapt attention.

  In the background Maxwell is singing ‘This Woman’s Work’. Each word feels weighty, and pregnant with meaning, and the entire song sounds like the most important thing that has ever been sung. I’ve been in the room for not too long now, but my head is swimming from the beer, and the smoke.

  Someone offered me a hit of a humongous spliff, but I refused. It doesn’t matter, though, because there is a haze of secondhand smoke that I am inhaling by the lungful, making everything seem like it’s filtered by a soft-focus lens. I feel like I am floating on a cloud, and my eyes are barely open. I bet they’re bloodshot.

  “Dani.”

  Rand’s voice penetrates the fog and I look up to see that he is standing at the open door, and extending a hand to me. My man is so, so beautiful.

  I smile at him and he doesn’t smile back, but shakes his head, and looks at Quincy.

  “Q,” he says, “we ‘bout to break out.”

  “It’s Saturday tomorrow,” I say, aware that I sound like a whiny kid who wants to stay up late because she knows she doesn’t have school.

  “Yeah, I know. And I’m driving to Bristol, remember?”

  “Oh,” I say. I drag out the word a little longer than I intended, and then push myself up from the rug, going toward him.

  For a moment it feels like one of those shots in a horror movie, or cartoon where the character tries to walk down an ever-elongating hallway, and can never reach their destination, no matter how hard they try. But I do get to my destination, because I feel Rand’s strong fingers grasping mine, tugging me out of the room.

  I don’t know how long ago it was, but I managed to give him the slip sometime after we were sucking each other’s faces off on the dance-floor. Rand was having an intense, football-related conversation with some guy I didn’t know, and who I suspected Rand didn’t know either.

  That happens to us a lot when we’re out—guys approach Rand to talk about the NFL. Sometimes women try to approach him, too. But they’re generally not interested in the NFL. They pretend to be, but really, they’re interested in him. And I honestly don’t care that much, because these days, Rand shows no inkling of being interested in anyone but me.

  Anyway, while he was in the middle of his football talk, I spotted Q heading to the back of his house, followed him, and found this little Shangri La. It was fun while it lasted, but now Rand has come to collect me.

  “Don’t do that again,” he says as we walk back down the hallway toward the public rooms in the party. “Disappear like that. You didn’t smoke, did you?”

  “No,” I say, dutifully. “I didn’t smoke.”

  “I don’t want you doin’ that,” Rand says. “Not unless you’re with me.”

  “I know,” I say. “I wouldn’t.”

  He drapes his arm across my shoulder when we are back in the crowd. We shove our way through it, and head out into the night. It is cooler outside, and the air feels thin, and much fresher than inside where, even with the central air on, the press and heat of dozens of bodies made the atmosphere thick, and sultry. I inhale deeply and feel my lungs sigh with relief.

  Rand’s arm tightens so the crook of his elbow is about my neck. He kisses me briefly on the forehead.

  “You little stoner,” he says. He keeps his arm around me as we head down the block to find the car.

  ~2~

  “I really wanted to go to Amada,” Dani is saying. “But this was fun, too. Wasn’t this fun? I mean, after a certain age, no one even has house-parties anymore, but I feel like you can really get to know people on a new level when you’re in someone’s home, y’know what I mean?”

  She is babbling a mile a minute, and the whites of her eyes are a pinkish, I’ve-been-gettin’-into-some-buddha hue. That doggone smoke room stunk like an opium den in Marrakesh, and everyone inside looked like that’s exactly where they belonged.

  I know that Dani’s all about experiencing new things, but lately, I feel more protective of her. I mean, I always felt like she was the kind of woman who deserved to have a man look out for her, but now it’s a level deeper than that. Now, I want to look after her. It’s a subtle difference, but it is different.

  Just as I am turning that over in my mind, to the backdrop of Danielle’s monologue, I hear the ‘whoop’ of a siren, and the back windshield of the Land Rover lights up in red and blue lights. We are no more than three minutes from my house, and now this. I take a breath, and look over at Dani whose eyes are wide.

  “Open your window, Danielle,” I tell her.

  “Why?”

  “Dani,” I say sharply, “just do it!”

  She’s been in the smoke room, probably for the better part of an hour and I have no doubt she reeks like weed. If I can’t smell it, it’s only because I stepped into the room myself. I lower my window and when I see that she’s fumbling on her side, hit the button to make sure Dani’s slides down as well.

  “Jeez,” she mumbles. “I was going to do it.”

  For a moment, the cop car just sits menacingly behind us. I look in the rearview mirror, but all I can see is the blindingly bright headlights, and the still-flashing red-and-blue. No one has exited the vehicle yet, and I guess that’s because they’re running the tags.

  “When they get here, don’t say shit,” I tell her. “Don’t speak unless they ask you a direct question, okay?”

  “What would they ask me?”

  “Nothing probably. But just don’t … start a conversation or anything.”

  Her speech is audibly slurred, and if she sounds drunk, they just might give me a field sobriety test for the hell of it. And having had two beers at home, and three at the party, I’m not too sure how that would turn out. I don’t feel impaired, or I wouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel but that doesn’t matter. If that little breathalyzer says I’m under the influence, things would get real, and fast.

  It is another minute or so before the doors of the cop car open. Both doors.

  Two officers step out onto the blacktop, and despite knowing that I have no warrants, that my insurance is in good standing, and more than likely, there is not too much alcohol in my bloodstream, I feel my heart rate increase. But I grow very still, and watchful, except to put both my hands at the top of the steering wheel, thumbs touching, fingers relaxed.

  I glance down at myself, quickly making a mental assessment of how I will appear to them in my close-fitting black Henley, jeans and boots. I am just a man casually-dressed for a night out with his woman, but now, from another perspective, my outfit seems almost militant.

  When they are about five paces away, I exhale, deeply expelling the air I have been holding in, hoping that it will temporarily cleanse the smell of beer from my breath. I see now that one cop is Black and the other White. The fact t
hat one is a brother lowers my blood pressure a little. But only a little. In these situations, I know that blue might be the only color that matters.

  They approach on opposite sides of the SUV. The officer on my side, the White one, already has his flashlight out, though trained at the street.

  “Good evening,” he says.

  I squint up at him and return the greeting.

  “License and registration, please?”

  I fish into the glovebox for the registration, and hand it to him.

  “License is in my back pocket,” I say. “Can I …?”

  “Yup.” He is looking at my registration with the flashlight now.

  “Where you folks coming from?” the officer on Dani’s side asks.

  “A party,” Dani says.

  “Dani,” I say, reminding her without saying so, that she was going to let me do the talking.

  I find, and hand the officer standing next to my door my driver’s license. He looks at it, then at me.

  “You’re Rocket Reese?” he asks. His voice sounds almost neutral, only mildly interested.

  Then the light is directly in my face. I swallow my annoyance, and squint harder, biting down on the inside of my cheek to prevent myself from asking him to get the beam out of my eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” I say.

  I know from experience that this could go one of two ways. Either he’s a fan and is excited to meet me, in which case this will turn out to be no more than an inconvenience. Or, he will be one of those ‘standout-player-in-high-school’ types who never made it to the League and resent me that I did, and then ‘threw it all away’.

  “You been drinkin’ tonight, Rocket?” the other cop asks.

  “He only had …”

  “Dani,” I say more sharply this time.

  “Have you, Rocket?” my cop asks, sounding indifferent.

  “Yes, I have,” I say. “A couple beers.”

  “A couple, as in two?” the other cop chimes in. “Or, a couple as in you’re just short of shit-faced?”

  “Excuse me?” It’s Dani again. Despite me telling her, now twice, that she needed to stop.

  “What he means is, are you talking about two beers, or … more than two?” my cop says.

  “Who’s counting?” I shrug.

  My cop gives a chuckle. “Well, the law is. But since from your license it seems like you’re within safe distance of home, I’ll just let you go on your way. Be careful.” He hands me my ID and paperwork, and I put both away, turning on the ignition.

  As the cop who was looking in on my side begins to walk away, the Black one leans in the window. His face is so close to Dani’s, it makes my entire body go tense with anger. If he stuck his tongue out, it would touch her cheek. I put my hands back on the steering wheel, and turn slowly to look at him with cold eyes.

  “So. You bitched-out of the NFL, huh?” he says, with a curl of his lips.

  I’ve heard this before. And it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as his hand hanging in the window as he leans, and his face, so close …

  “My father was a police detective,” Dani says suddenly. “And you’re what he would call …”

  “Goodnight, officer,” I say, talking over her.

  “Yeah.” He all but sneers. “Y’all enjoy the rest of your night.”

  I wait until they are both back in the squad car and pull away before turning to look at Danielle. She is grimacing as though she’s tasted something unpleasant.

  “Can you believe …?”

  “Didn’t I tell you not to say a fucking word?”

  Dani opens her mouth to respond but doesn’t, and shuts it again.

  I pull away from the curb and we drive the rest of the way back to the house in complete silence. I am too angry to tell her what she should already know. A traffic stop, late at night with two police officers, and with both of us on shaky ground after drinking and being around weed … that is a situation where if things went bad, I would be completely powerless to protect her.

  Annie is still up when we walk in, and smiles before reading our expressions and looking down, discreetly busying herself with gathering her book, and laptop, and sliding on her shoes. Dani says nothing and heads upstairs, leaving me to pay Annie, and thank her.

  I hang out in the kitchen for a little while after that, until I feel like I’ve calmed down, then head upstairs. I’ve almost been expecting Dani to come down and order me to take her home (since she is way too out of it to drive).

  But when I get to the bedroom, she is already in bed, curled on her side, wearing one of my t-shirts and pretending to be asleep. Her eyelids are fluttering, as if she’s struggling to keep them shut. I smile and go check on Little Rocket, still blissfully asleep. He has kicked off the covers, the way he always does. I don’t bother putting them back on.

  I shower before turning off all the lights and joining Dani in bed. Her breathing is a little more even, and her eyelids were no longer fluttering when I checked, so I figure she is really asleep this time, until she speaks.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, from the other side of the bed.

  Her voice is small, and she almost sounds like she is about to cry. Immediately, I roll over toward her, and stripping back the sheets, turn her onto her back then position myself over her.

  “What’re you sorry about?” I say, surprised. “I’m the one that cussed at you.”

  “I know how situations like that can go left … like, fast,” she continues. “I shouldn’t have been mouthing off to that cop, and you did tell me not to say anything, and I know I probably smelled like the smoke room, and we were just lucky that …”

  I kiss her. Long, hard, deep. After a moment, her hands come up and around my torso, pulling me down toward her.

  I kiss her shoulder, reach for the hem of the t-shirt and yank it upward, until it’s bunched under her arms. Dani helps me getting it the rest of the way off. I move my weight back onto my haunches and pull the waistband of her panties until she lifts her hips so I can pull them all the way down, and off.

  The first time I ever went down on her, I swear, Dani made me feel like I might have invented it. She raised her head to watch me, her mouth open in stunned excitement, her fingers digging into and clutching the sheets next to her. Her head thrashed back and forth on the pillow, alternately moving from side to side and then lifting again so she could watch me. She watched me, and I watched her watching me.

  That shit was just … I mean, I don’t even have words for what it felt like. It was the first time I realized how much satisfaction I got from giving pleasure. Especially to someone who had never experienced that before. Especially because that someone was Danielle.

  It made me realize that I had been, all my adult life, a little bit of a selfish lover unless I was with a woman who made me feel like I had something to prove. With Dani, I don’t have anything to prove, other than that I care about her needs, her wants, her pleasure.

  Tonight, when my tongue first touches her, and I see that she is already wet, when I hear her moan my name, feel her hands rest atop my head; and when she lifts her hips off the bed, still holding me in place, that gives me pleasure.

  And when I feel and taste the rush of her first release; that is the ultimate.

  I rest my head on her stomach, I feel it ripple beneath my cheek, and wait for her breathing to slow and the jerks to stop. Then I move up her body, kissing along her center as I go, stopping at her breasts because I can’t resist them.

  I make my way, eventually, up her neck, beneath her chin and to her waiting lips. She kisses me, and speaks, but I don’t know what she’s saying. And I don’t care, because I am inside her now, and the power in that slams me in the gut for the hundredth time.

  Fuck, I think, just before I come. I might have to wife this woman.

  Dani wakes up before I do, and when I finally get out of bed, she has already gotten Little Rocket bathed and dressed for the weekly trek to Connecticut. By the time I make it d
ownstairs, they are eating cereal in front of the television, and Dani is asking Little Rocket questions about characters in a cartoon. I peek in on them from the kitchen and Dani looks my way.

  “Wait, wait,” she is saying to him, “who’s the little bear in the blue policeman’s uniform?”

  “No, he’s not a policeman,” Rocket says, sounding exasperated. “He’s a captain.”

  “Of that spaceship?”

  “Nooo. They’re under the water. Outer space is different.”

  “Huh,” Dani says as she eats a spoonful of Cheerios. “It looks super-complicated.”

  “It’s not for girls anyway,” Rocket tells her. “You can watch My Little Pony instead. You can watch it in my room, if you want.”

  Dani meets my eye over the back of the sofa, and stifles a smile. “Okay,” she tells Little Rocket. “That’s probably a good idea.”

  She gets up and carries her bowl of cereal into the kitchen, giving me a sly look as she walks by. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure he isn’t focused on her, she nods.

  “See what I did there?” she asks. “He kicked me out. So I didn’t have to leave and look like I wasn’t interested in his show. I’m genius at this ‘interacting-with-kids’ thing. Tell me I’m not a genius. I dare you.”

  “You’re a genius,” I say, leaning in and kissing her quickly on the lips. “But you know what would be even more genius?”

  “Let me guess.” She pauses and puts a forefinger to her chin as if contemplating. “If I came to Connecticut with you?”

  I nod, and feign amazement. “Exactly. Damn, you’re good!”

  “You know I would,” she says. “But I couldn’t reach that one client to reschedule, and I can’t afford to stand him up because I don’t see him too often.”

  “I dislike every single one of your people,” I tell her. “High-maintenance, low-coping-skills-havin’ …”