Crave: A BWWM Romance (14 page)

I
had been sitting
at the bus stop for five minutes, thinking over every little thing I wish I’d said to Cole. I played every insult over and over again in my mind. I could have called him a pig-headed coward or a slovenly piece of human refuse. I could have told him that his apartment looked like it doubled as a city waste storage facility or that his morning hair reminded me of Hermann Munster getting sprayed with lighter fluid. I hadn’t said any of those things though. All I’d managed to call him was a jerk. All I’d managed was to play the role of the pathetic one night stand who thought she was getting something more. I called him a jerk, I stormed out, and I cried my way to the bus stop. Color me cliché.

As I sat there though, wondering why the 87 chose this morning of all mornings to be late, I realized that my window was still slightly open. Cole Saunders was not some Casanova I picked up in a club, nor was I a dewy-eyed chicklet that fell for his routine.

That’s how I found myself back at his door around 9:00 in the morning, hammering it with my fist and wearing the most perfectly disdainful expression I could manage. He wasn’t going to decide how this was going to end.

“Moneka.”

I was a bit overwhelmed by the fact that Cole had actually opened the door. Part of me expected him to ignore me. In that case, I would have gone home feeling like I’d done my best. Now, apparently, it was on.

“Cole…”

“Moneka, come in.”

Another unexpected turn of events, I awkwardly lumbered inside, trying to hold onto my anger.

“Moneka, I’m…”

“No, Cole. You’re nothing. I came back here because I have something to say. You had your chance to communicate, or whatever you called that horseshit, and you blew it.”

“Please…”

“Shut up, Cole. I’m tired of you always thinking that every exchange revolves around you. Even yesterday, when you made a big show of making things about me, you were really doing it for yourself. Tell me Cole, have you ever thought about anyone other than yourself?”

“Moneka, that’s not fair.” Cole’s demeanor had undergone a swift change. Whatever he was trying to say before, he was on the hate train now. That worked just a well for me. I was rearing up for a good one.

“Oh it’s not fair? It’s not
fair
? And you’ve been treating
me
fairly is that it? What a fucking joke. I thought we were getting somewhere. It turns out I’m just some lame chick that you can booty call whenever you’re feeling a little horny. You probably saw my sister’s accident as a real
opportunity
!”

“Fuck that, Moneka. I was just on the phone with your sister when you came pounding on my door. I care about her and I….”

“You could have fooled me. I didn’t think you could care about anything other than dry wall and paneling.”

I felt myself running out of steam. I couldn’t let him wear me down with his bullshit about being on the phone with my Kaila. That was probably just another manipulative ploy he’d been planning so he could salvage enough of our relationship to try and hit me up for another quickie sometime. He was obviously a liar. There was no other way to qualify the man he was this morning with the man he pretended to be last night.

“I’m sick of your shit Moneka. I didn’t react exactly the way you wanted me to this morning? Well,
sorry
. Maybe this will come as a surprise to you, but I’m not fucking perfect. I didn’t realize that
you were
. Give me a break with this bull about how I tricked you. We’ve been a team in this little farce from the moment it happened and you know it.”

“Fuck you Cole.”

“You already did, three times if I recall. I also recall you enjoying yourself. Remember that if you ever decide to get off your high horse.”

“Your hair looks like Herman Munster’s…”

“What?”

“Gah! Just, fuck you. That’s it. OK?”

I stormed out for a second time, feeling even more unsatisfied than I had before. I managed to accomplish one thing though. Cole was pissed.
Good.
He could join me in my gut-burning misery. Why should he get to have a chill morning while I was all twisted up inside. He was a jerk. That turned out to be the perfect word after all.

The universe took pity on me and sent the 87 to the stop only moments after I’d returned there. I would head over to the restaurant now instead of going home to change. I wanted to catch the crew before our 10:00 opening. Luckily, Sonia would be the only one who knew I was wearing the same clothes as the day before. Still stewing over the events of the morning, I phoned her from the bus. I didn’t want to have this conversation in the kitchen within earshot of my new sous-chefs or out on the restaurant floor where the wait staff could spy on my misery.

“Hello?” Sonia answered.

“It’s Moneka…”

“Oh hun! How are you doing? Are you visiting Kaila again today?”

“Yes. In the afternoon. I’m coming in first though. I feel like I should make an appearance since I didn’t show up at all yesterday.”

“Are you sure? I’ve got it handled. I really do. Yesterday was a breeze.”

“How was the business?”

“Well, less breezy. But we got compliments on the menu. It’ll happen Moneka, it really will.”

“Ok.” I was too tired and angry to care about the business.

“Was that all? Will you be here soon?”

“Twenty minutes maybe….and no, it’s not all. Do you think you can steal away for a minute? Someplace private?”

“No one’s listening in.”

“I mean it Sonia. Please.”

“Ok ok.” I heard some shuffling and the opening and closing of a door. “Peace and quiet. What’s up?”

“It’s about Cole Saunders.”

“Ooooooo, do tell.”

“Stop it with that voice,” I snapped. I immediately felt bad afterward and tried to soften my tone. “I’m sorry. It’s just, I hate him.”

“Tell me something you haven’t told me a million times already.”

“I mean I really hate him now. Let me start from the beginning….”

I gave up the goods. The whole enchilada. I told her about our first hookup, about the moving truck, and about last night’s ill-advised activities. I powered through the squeals of delight that accompanied each encounter and tried to place great emphasis on the way he’d behaved this morning. I tried to characterize him as a classic player, something I knew she was familiar with. Of course, I’d forgotten the times when she herself had been a player.

“Look, Moneka. Fact one, you enjoyed yourself. Don’t taint that enjoyment with all your expectations. Fact two, he likes you.”

“Obviously not,” I interjected.

“You are painfully bad at reading guys. All that fumbling he was doing in the morning? That’s him being equally bad at telling you he likes you.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Welcome to the conclusion women have been coming to since the dawn of time. Changes nothing, however. He likes you. He likes you and you compared his hair to Herman Munster’s.”

“I did do that, yes.” I sighed.

Could Sonia be right? Could this all of been the work of a bumbling Neanderthal of a man? The idea of going back and apologizing crossed my mind. However, it was too exhausting a thought. We’d done the damage we were going to do. If there was anything there, it was gone now. I’d made sure of that.

“I’ll be there soon.”

I hung up.

I curled up in my bus seat, ignoring how ridiculous I looked in a wrinkly pantsuit, holding myself like a little girl who just had her puppy stolen. Boston storefronts zipped by like so many little pictures in a book. There was an old man smoking a cigar in front of a laundry mat. The old woman who was sweeping the walk turned to yell at him as my bus rushed past. Further down the road, I saw a couple of teenagers, the kind that chose homelessness as a lifestyle. One was playing on empty paint cans like they were bongos. The other was unapologetically smoking a joint. Sometimes I liked to let life wash over me. It helped me distance myself from the busyness in my head. It worked on my brain like bleach, emptying it of my confusion and replacing it with images of people who were just as mixed up as I felt.

Sometimes, when I was working on the restaurant, I imagined someone zipping by in their own bus. They would glance out the window at my restaurant and see Sonia wiping down the bar or me greeting customers by the window. I imagined them wondering about me the same way I wondered about them. I was curious what kind of life they pictured for me. Not the kind of life, I bet, where I’m incapable of getting a handle on love.

T
he smell
of freshly sawed wood, paint, and finish all mixed pleasingly in my nose. This was my favorite part, when the place is ugly and covered in plastic sheeting and trash. Some contractors might look at that and feel overwhelmed by the job ahead. Not me though. All I saw was potential. I looked in one corner and I saw a million terrific ways that it could look before it was done. Often, I would go around snapping photos, preserving this moment of pure, unadulterated potential. Then I would snap photos of the finished product. I’d frame the best pair and gift it to the clients. I never did that for Moneka. Things between us ended on such a weird note. It didn’t seem right to send her a gift. Not when she clearly still hated my guts.

So far, I’d managed to avoid seeing her out right. That would have been fine and I would have happily continued that tradition up until the day I died. However, with our parents living together, this charade wouldn't last long. If I didn’t make some effort to keep the peace, our next holiday would turn into a wrestling match. As much as I wanted to see Moneka rolling around on the floor, I didn’t savor the image of her kicking me in the nuts at the same time.

Whatever my feelings about Moneka now, I was glad I was finished with the restaurant. I preferred jobs that didn’t involve grossly inappropriate levels of attraction to the person who is responsible for paying me. I should have trusted my instincts and kept it in my pants.

I continued my circuit, taking some pictures for the before and after and a few extra ones of my crew that I hoped to add to our website. This law firm gig was a big deal for us. I planned to brag about it as much as propriety allowed. As I paused to flip through a few of my shots and make some space on my digital Nikon, I noticed a few shots from Crave.

One was just a wide-angle shot of the kitchen. Normally, I stuck to regular lenses, but I knew how badly Moneka wanted a kitchen of her own and how particular she was about the details of its construction. I remembered now that I’d intended for this to be her before and after shot. It made me sadder than I expected to think that I’d never gotten that after shot.

A few shots later, I landed on one of Moneka. She was leaning over pieces of the bar, deep in discussion with Sonia. The jeans she wore framed her ass nicely. If it were any other girl, I would have treasured that shot, thanking myself for having the forethought to preserve that posterior for posterity. It wasn’t any other girl though; it was Moneka. An unfamiliar lump starting materializing in my throat and working it’s way up. I turned the camera off.

“Boss, which room gets the oak paneling?” One of my crew snuck up behind me with a slab of paneling. Another one of my guys was helping him with the other end.

“The biggest office. End of the hall-that way.” I pointed with my camera, taking care not to make eye contact. I suddenly felt like I might tear up the moment somebody looked at me.

“No prob Bob,” he said as they moved on.

No prob Bob.
I remembered feeling that nonchalant on the job. This was supposed to be the best part of my day. I just felt sick though, sick in a way that reminded me of the last morning that I saw Moneka. I’d decided since then that it was all for the best. She was nuts and unfair. Besides, I loved this bachelor life. I could build all day, drink all night and go home with whoever I damn well pleased. There’s no room in this world for a real relationship. At least, that’s what I told myself every night. It helped when I was trying to block out the other voice in my head, the one that sounded like Kaila and said
nobody ever finds true happiness if they lie to themselves about what they want
. It was easier to block it out than admit that I might have totally screwed up my best chance at this thing they call love.

I heard the sounds of celebration around the corner. When I went to check it out, I saw a handful of my crewman high-fiving each other like the Red Sox had just won the World Series. One of them kept getting slaps on the back from the others.

“What’s the news?” I asked. Trying not to sound like ‘the boss’.

“Tony here just got engaged.”

I stared. Tony was getting married. Toothless Tony who had lost three permanents on a bar top after a late night out two years ago. I didn’t even know he was in a serious relationship. I didn’t know her name or anything.

“Congrats Tony,” I said automatically. I slapped him on that back. It seemed like the thing to do. Everyone else was doing it after all.

I felt my extremities go numb and my head start to swim a little bit. I thought I’d been living a lifestyle surrounded by like-minded men. It turned out, they were all living their own lives at their own paces. I wondered how many more of them had families in their futures.

I was tired of pretending that I was above a real relationship. I was tired of using my flimsy familial connection to Moneka as an excuse to push all of these feelings out of the way. If she was overbearing and bossy, I didn’t care. I didn’t even care about the things she said to me during that last fight. Real love, I guessed, was when you knew it was a perfect match no matter what.

I resolved to commit. I didn’t care what my father thought, or her mother, or Kaila or anybody else. The only person I needed to win over, was Moneka. The thought of that behemoth of a task almost made me quit right on the spot. After all the things we’d said to each other, it felt impossible to believe that Moneka would ever want to be with me. I imagined myself calling her up and her taking one look at the caller ID and ignoring the rings. That, or she’d answer without looking and hang up the second she heard my voice. Did she love me the way I loved her? Was she struggling with this the same way I was? Did she worry about our parents being together? I was going to find out one way or another.

I took a hold of my cell and called her. I stared at her name on my phone’s screen as ring after ring disappeared into empty space.

No answer.