Can't Let Go - A Contemporary BWWM Romance (2 page)

   
I seized the opportunity and
tip toed over to Kevin’s front door, where from the
peep-hole
I clearly observed my ex, Antoine, and one Miss Ayla Giovanni. She was even
more beautiful than I ever could have anticipated. Her laugh was infectious and
her hair bounced like a slow motion shampoo commercial with each step.

   
I could barely make out their
words through the muffled whispering, but before long they had entered
apartment 1B across the hall and my little peepshow was over.

   
Kevin came out of the
bathroom with a puzzled look on his face. “Was someone just at my door?”

   
“No, why?”

   
“You were just looking out
the peep hole.”

   
“Was I?” I played dumb. “But
on that note, my friend did call and she’s going to meet me at my place in a
bit, so I’m taking off. But thanks for, um… thanks. It was nice meeting you.”

That
was awkward.

   
“Okay. I guess I’ll see you
around?” a bewildered Kevin said with a half-smile.

   
I bolted from his place and
walked the ten blocks to my apartment in a daze. I fished around in my oversized
bag and pulled out my phone to call the only person who would understand what
had just happened.

   
“LaLa, answer your
damn phone
. I’m having a major problem right now!” I left a
message on LaLa’s voicemail. I made sure to speak in a low voice so passersby
wouldn’t hear.

   
By the time I got home, LaLa
was sitting on her couch sipping hot tea in her pajamas and watching the
evening news.

   
“I just called you,” I
announced as I walked in the door.

   
“Yeah, I was washing my face.
I got your message. So what‘s up?”

   
I stood with one hand on my
hip as I threw my bag on the ground and kicked off my wedges.

   
“Spill it, sweets. Come. Sit
down. Tell me all.” LaLa muted the television and patted the seat next to her
on the sofa.

   
It drove me wild how easy going
LaLa could be about things. But then again, LaLa was always there for me,
though her advice was hardly worth taking. It always seemed too logical to be
of any use to my irrational monkey brain.

   
“Remember Antoine?” I began.

   
“Yeah, what about him?”LaLa

   
“You know Ayla Giovanni?”

   
“The Channel 6 news anchor
whose style you always try to copy?”

   
“What? Yes. Her.” I never
copied her style; I merely paid homage to it.

   
“What about her?”

   
“They’re getting married,” I
regretfully informed her, though the regret was all mine.

   
“You say that like you’re sad
or something,” LaLa said. “Good for him.”

   
I tilted my head back as I
felt a rush of tears coming on. I had held these tears in since 11:00 that
morning when the engagement announcement form first landed in my inbox. I
immediately felt sick to my stomach, just like I had then. “I need some Pepto.”

   
“Funny,” LaLa stared off. She
was clearly not as surprised by this news as I was.

   
“That’s all you can say?” I
wiped my tears on the back of my hand. “I don’t find it funny.”

   
“Okay, so they‘re slightly
mismatched. Happens all the time anymore. It’s the new thing.”

   
“Mismatched doesn’t even
begin to describe it. I’ve written thousands upon thousands of engagement and
wedding announcements, but never in a million years did I think that Antoine
would be getting married so soon.
And before me.
And to an insanely beautiful girl.
She’s practically a local
celebrity. I didn’t think Antoine was into girls like her.”

The
truth was I didn’t think girls like her were into guys like Antoine.

   
“Do I even need to remind you
that you broke up with him?” LaLa rolled her eyes when she thought I wasn‘t
looking. “Why are you upset? You crushed that little guy like a bug. I heard he
was so distraught he didn’t shower for two weeks afterwards. You should, at the
very least, be happy for him.

“Besides,
Ayla Giovanni is not ‘insanely beautiful’. Do you realize how much makeup they
have to wear for the camera?”

   
“No. She’s gorgeous. I saw
her in person.”

   
“In person? You never
mentioned that.”

   
“Through a peephole. It’s a
long story. I think I’m going to go to bed,” I said.

   
“It’s not even ten o’clock,”
LaLa objected. “Our show is on soon.”

   
“I’m not in the mood for it,”
I sulked as I drug my feet down the hall to the bathroom.

   
“I think my cousin used to
date Ayla Giovanni in college. I’m sure I could find some dirt on her,” LaLa
yelled back down the hall.

   
The following day, I did
everything I could to prolong actually sitting at my desk. I got to work right
on
time
instead of fifteen minutes early as I usually
did. I spent an extra fifteen minutes shooting the breeze with Mike, our one
and only Harrisville Tribune Movie Critic, and I took my sweet time preparing
the most perfect cup of coffee from the employee break room.

   
“So that’s why I liked the
original Star Wars better than the remakes,” Michael explained. “You really
need to go to some movies with me. I get in free everywhere.”

   
“I would hope so, being a
movie critic and all,” I replied. “I’m not big on movies. They always end up
depressing me somehow.”

   
“Even loves stories?” Michael
enquired.

   
“Especially love stories.
They remind me how pathetic my own love life is,” I said, taking a sip of my
coffee as we walked slowly towards my cubicle.

   
Michael looked like his dog
had just been run over. “Rashida, I never knew that about you.”

   
“What? Do you think I have a
date every night of the week or something?”

   
“No, of course not,” he said.
Then he added with all seriousness, “I meant I never knew that you didn’t like
movies.”

   
Before I even had time to be
offended, my boss, Julianne, walked in on our idle
chit-chat
.

   
“Everyone keeping busy this morning?”
Julianne asked. She was onto us.

   
“Yeah, gearing up for wedding
season all right,” I said with a nervous chuckle as I glanced into her cup of
coffee. It was almost empty, and I knew she’d probably been in the office for
at least a solid hour already. She always made me feel like I was doing
something wrong, even if I knew I wasn’t. “I can definitely tell by the stack
of requests on my desk every morning.”

   
“That reminds me,” Julianne
started. “My stepdaughter is getting married early next year. You should be
getting their announcement any day now.”

   
“Congratulations!” I forced a
huge smile.

   
Julianne walked off with her
cup of coffee and left me realizing I didn’t know as much about my boss as I
thought I did. I tried to imagine Julianne being maternal, but it was just too
hard. Over the last three years, she had not once mentioned any children or
stepchildren. The only reason I knew she was married was because she dragged
her husband to every charity event and work function we ever had. He was always
the bald, chubby man in the corner, trying to chat up the wait staff because
they were “easier to talk to”, or so he always told Julianne. He gave me the
creeps, so I always steered clear of him.

   
By 8:45, I trudged off the
elevator to my desk in the corner where a stack of printed announcements
awaited my arrival. I liked to print them out from my email so I could easily
sort, stack, and file them. I had cabinets upon cabinets of old announcements
behind me, drawers full of love and hope.

   
On the bottom of the stack of
was the request to announce the imminent nuptials of Antoine and Ayla.

   
The handwriting was obviously
Antoine’s. He had written out her name so carefully and neatly, yet everything
else was scribbled.

Attached
to the submission was an engagement picture I had printed. Antoine’s arms were
wrapped around Ayla’s tiny waist as they faced each other and Antoine’s back
was resting against a giant redwood tree. He wore khaki pants and a navy
sweater vest over a white button down shirt
;
very
Antoine. Ayla wore one of her signature Tory Burch dresses, but in shades of
blue as to coordinate with Antoine’s sweater.

It
was sickeningly cute. Ayla’s pearly whites were blindingly bright in comparison
to Antoine’s coffee-stained smile.

   
Ayla Giovanni was a young,
buoyant news anchor on the most widely watched news station in the tri-city
area. Everything about her was long: her hair, her eyelashes, and especially
her legs. She was arguably a glamazon in her own right. She was downright
gorgeous. Rumor had it that her mother was a Brazilian supermodel in the 1980s.

Many
a local twenty-something young woman would watch the news if only to see what
Ayla was wearing so they could go out the next day and buy the same thing.
Okay, so I may have been one of the local twenty-somethings who dissected what
she wore on a near daily basis.

   
Antoine was a different
story. His hairline was jacked. His teeth were stained and misaligned. He was
short and his shoulders sloped from his days as a wrestler at Cartersville
University. His persistent acne outbreaks combined with his receding hair and
dry, flaky skin would make for Queer Eye makeover heaven. His eyes were a
serene shade of sea green though, and I always found comfort in them. Sometimes
I really missed them.

   
Aside from his lack of
desirable physical attributes, Antoine Jackson was one of the nicest guys any
girl could want to date. He was entirely too nice, which unfortunately turned
me off more than on.

   
At lunch, I met up with my
good friend Amaya. She was Miss Independent if there ever was one. LaLa always
called her a “Man Hater”, but I think Amaya simply got sick of being treated
like crap by all men and one day up and decided she wasn’t going to take any of
their crap any longer.

   
“What you need is a
distraction,” Amaya said, taking a huge bite of salad and washing it down with
a swig of imported mineral water. She was about to start lecturing. I could see
it in her eyes.

   
“Like another guy?”

   
“Exactly. But one you’re not
going to get attached to. Keep him around until he fulfills his purpose and
then cut him loose.”

   
“Easier said than done,” I
said.

   
“What about that Kevin guy
you just told me about? He would be a prime candidate.”

   
“Okay, that was just a weird
thing, plus I don’t even have his number.”

   
“But you know where he
lives,” Amaya said. She was going to fight me on this.

   
Sometimes I needed Amaya to
shake the truth into me, but usually she just scared me. I often found myself
too terrified to not take her advice.

   
“Rashida, you are going to go
back to that man’s apartment,
march
your pretty little
feet up those steps and knock on his door. And then you’re going to ask him out
on a date,” Amaya ordered. Her big brown eyes shot daggers into mine.

   
“What if he says no? Or he has
a girlfriend?”

   
“What if, what if, what if.
Do it.” Amaya looked annoyed at my concerns. “If I have to hide in the bushes
to make sure you do it, then I will. What? You don’t believe me?”

   
I got back to work and
immediately Googled “Kevin Harris”. According to various
internet
sites, there was absolutely no dirt on anyone Kevinwith his name. He had no
virtual presence of any kind.
So much for that.
He
probably gave me a fake name, anyway.

   
Immediately after work, I
mustered the courage to march down to the Dewberry Apartments on Vine to see if
maybe, just maybe, I could run into him. I figured if I saw
him,
that
would be a sign. I wasn’t going to knock on his door and ask him
out, though. I wasn’t that desperate.

It
was so unlike me that the entire time I was walking and thinking about what I
was going to say, I had completely spaced off any of my all-consuming Antoine
and Ayla thoughts.

   
“Rashida?”

   
I looked up. It was Antoine.
I looked to my left. There was Kevin’s apartment.

   
“Oh, hey.” I tried my hardest
to act natural. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands, so I just
crossed my arms. My tote slid down my arm and swung at my waist. I never said I
was smooth.

   
“What brings you over here?”

   
“Just visiting someone. You?”

   
“I live here.”

   
It was quiet for a minute.
There was so much I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t find the right combination of
words to say how I felt at that moment. I looked at him. Really looked at him.
He seemed so good.
So honest.
So
kind.
So unlike every other guy I had ever dated before and since him.
How do you tell someone that they’re everything you ever wanted and you never
completely got over them, but you don’t want to be with them unless you can’t
have them? How do you explain that on a busy street at five o’clock when you
weren’t expecting to see them in the first place?

His
eyes were surveying
me,
taking me in like it was the
last time he’d ever see me. He didn’t look at me the way he used to, though. He
looked like a man who was in love, but not with me.

   
“So, it was good seeing you,”
he said. Antoine gave a fake half-smile and pushed past me to walk into his
building.

   
“We should get coffee
sometime, Antoine,” I said as I called after him. “I’d love to catch up.”

The
fact that he blew me off made me want to talk to him all the more.

   
Antoine looked completely
caught off-guard. “Sure. You have my number.” With that, he was already inside
the door.