Can't Let Go - A Contemporary BWWM Romance Read online

  “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.

  Actually, I had deleted his number a long time ago. Shit.

  Not wanting to seem like a stalker, I couldn’t make myself go into the building after Antoine. I also couldn’t risk him hearing or seeing me ask another guy out on a date. I wished at that moment I could become Dorothy Gale and click my heels and be home, but instead I turned around and made my way ten blocks in the opposite direction, bringing a new thought with each step. I knew that Amaya was going to be very upset with me. I kept expecting her to jump out of random bushes on my walk home.

  I finally made it back to my apartment. The minute LaLa heard my keys in the door, she came running. “Did you get my message?”

  “I haven’t looked at my phone all day.”

  “Liar. I left you a message. We’re doing dinner tonight with my cousin Marcus. He went to Columbia with Ayla Giovanni. How great is that? We’re going to get some inside scoop for you. Hurry up and get ready. We’re meeting him in twenty minutes at Graze.”

  Gathered around the table at Graze sat LaLa, Marcus, myself and Marcus’s pitifully insecure girlfriend, Amber, who would not stop checking her teeth all night in her little black MAC compact and checking her iPhone every two and a half seconds for new text messages.

  “So, Marcus, didn’t you go to school with Ayla Giov
anni?” LaLa finally interjected halfway through dinner. It was about damn time.

  “Who?” Marcus acted completely clueless.

  I shot LaLa a look of death. She promised me scoop. I wanted scoop, damn it.

  “Remember? The newscaster for Channel 6?”

  “Oh!” Marcus looked as though a light bulb had gone off. The waitress walked by. “Excuse me, miss. Can I get another glass of red? Thanks.”

  He pointed to his empty wine glass.

  Amber whispered something in his ear. He whispered back. Amber looked bored as she checked her phone again. She then got up and pranced to the bathroom, her almost-too-short skirt swaying behind her.

  “Oh, yeah, I definitely remember Ayla. We lived in the same dorm freshman year. She dated my roommate, Demarius, all four years. She was so in love with him.” Marcus dished up a huge fork full of spaghetti. I figured four years at Columbia would provide him with some kind of manners, but I guess not.

  “That’s the best dirt you’ve got on her?” I asked.

  “Rashida.” LaLa shot me a look. She didn’t frighten me. I was on a mission.

  “Anything else I have probably wouldn’t be appropriate for the dinner table,” Marcus said. “Plus, Amber’s coming back. Let’s just say, she loved to love and she loved attention.”

  “Loved to love?” I mouthed to LaLa across the table. She looked just as confused as me.

  Why do some people get a kick out of encrypting their gossip?

  The rest of the dinner I spent racking my brain on what Marcus meant about loving and attention. Was she a textbook college whore? Did she cheat on poor, defenseless Demarius? Was she constantly trying to be the center of attention, or just Demarius’s center of attention? I didn’t like her already. She wasn’t good enough for Antoine. She was just going to crush him like I did, I knew it.

  As we left the restaurant, I pulled LaLa aside. “That was a waste of time.”

  “I know. Sorry. I didn’t know he was going to bring Amber.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Really. If Amber hadn’t been there, I think Marcus totally would have spilled the beans on Ayla,” LaLa said. “Another time?”

  “It’s all right, I guess. Maybe this was a dumb thing to do,” I said.

  “Oh, now you’re coming to your senses?” LaLa laughed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.”

  Up ahead standing in the foggy light of a flickering streetlamp stood none other than Kevin Harris.

  “LaLa, that’s him. I think that’s Kevin up there,” I said as I tugged her arm in his direction.

  “Are you going to say ‘Hi’?”

  “Why not?”

  We moseyed on up to where Kevin was standing, giggling like little teenagers thanks to the red wine we had just consumed at dinner. As we got closer I saw he was on his cell phone.

  “He’s on the phone. I can’t interrupt him. It’s okay. Let’s keep walking.”

  Kevin turned around we made eye contact. I kept walking.

  “Hey,” he yelled.

  “Kevin? That you?” I smiled as I played dumb.

  “What are you doing out here? You shouldn’t be out here.”

  “What do you mean? We just left Graze. We’re walking home.”

  “There was an armed robbery right there in that pawn shop. Someone was fatally shot. The guy who did it got away. He could be out here lurking in the alley somewhere. It’s not safe. Didn’t you see the police tape back there?”

  I heard the static from a radio that must have been under his coat.

  “I didn’t realize…” I started to say. The more I looked around the more I realized that we had just walked into a crime scene. Police cars pulled up and uniformed officers walked in and out of the pawn shop that stood before us. “I’m sorry. Let’s get out of here.”

  Kevin started to say something but an officer wearing latex gloves came up and stole his attention. I glanced back at him as we walked off. He looked so serious, so unlike the happy hour Kevin I met just a couple days before. It was kind of sexy. I definitely needed to ask him on a date. Amaya was perfectly right about Kevin being a potential distraction for me.

  CHAPTER 3

  The next day at work, I decided to get Antoine’s number off of his wedding announcement form. He thought I still had it, so it wasn’t like he would know. I really wanted to catch up with him, and more importantly, I wanted to know what Ayla saw in Antoine that I had missed.

  I dialed his number before 10:00 a.m., thinking I would get his voicemail.

  “This is Antoine,” the voice on the other end answered in the middle of the second ring.

  “Antoine, it’s me, Rashida,” I wanted to kick myself. “It was so good running into you the other day. I just wanted to call and see if maybe you wanted to meet for coffee after work one of these nights?”

  “Sure. Tonight is the only night I’m available. There’s a coffee shop next to my apartment we can go to, but I have to be out of there no later than six thirty,” he said. He didn’t seem enthused about it at all.

  “I will see you there,” I replied, unable to hide the excitement in my voice.

  I also couldn’t help but wonder how he had gotten over me so quickly. Less than a year ago, Antoine would have been jumping at the chance to hang out with me again. That boy was really attached to me. Breaking up with him was just as painful for me as it was for him. I still felt guilty about hurting him like that.

  In that moment, I turned around only to be startled by Julianne standing in the doorway to my humble corner cubicle.

  “Keeping busy, I see,” Julianne said. I could never tell if she was joking or serious. She was incredibly hard to read. “Anyway, I want to go over my stepdaughter’s wedding announcement with you later. It has to be just perfect, and I promised her I’d see to it that it is.”

  “Of course.” I smiled like the good little employee that I was. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Just like that, Julianne walked away and Michael approached my cube.

  “What can I do ya for?” I tried to joke with Michael. For a movie critic, he was seriously lacking a decent sense of humor. I loved to try and crack a smile out of him once in a while, but it was a challenge.

  “Rashida, I know you don’t like movies, but I just got sneak peek passes to the new Tom Cruise film and wanted to offer you first dibs.” Michael looked like a nervous teenager asking a girl to prom. How could I say no?

  “Sure, Michael, I’ll take one off your hands.” I was feeling generous, and I could tolerate Tom Cruise movies.

  “Don’t go because you feel obligated. I’m sure I could find someone else to go,” he replied.

  “Michael. I’m going,” I said.

  “Sweet,” Michael smirked as he walked away.

  I had just agreed to a pseudo-date with Michael, the nerdiest movie critic in the world, and I didn’t even realize it. And I hated movies. Maybe he was smoother than I thought.

  Before I knew it, seven hours had passed and it was time to meet up with Antoine for coffee. I knew exactly the place he was talking about. It was the place we used to meet for lunch when we dated, Caffeine. They had the most amazing caramel macchiatos and the most deliciously inventive salads.

  As I locked up my desk for the day, I whipped out my compact and lipstick for some subtle touch ups and quickly combed through my thick, ebony hair with my fingers. I found myself desperately hoping he still found me somewhat attractive. Secretly, I felt like cat food in comparison to Ayla Giovanni.

  As I sat and waited for Antoine to arrive at the coffee house, I wondered if it was such a great idea to meet up after all. What would come of this? What if I broke up his engagement? What if he found me repulsive? What if we had nothing to say to each other and we sat in awkward silence the whole time?

  “Hey, Rashida.” Antoine walked up in a pair of fashionably ripped jeans and a dusty gray, graphic print t-shirt. I could tell right away he didn’t pick out that outfit
himself. He grabbed a chair.

  “Nice seeing you again, Antoine,” I said. “It’s nice to be able to reconnect like this.”

  He gave me a blank stare and then sort of winced. He looked like he didn’t want to be there. I knew something was on his mind, and it killed me knowing that it wasn’t my place to ask.

  “So, what’s new in your life these days? Still over at HarlaTech?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “That must be nice. You working your way to the top still?”

  “Trying,” he said.

  This was getting really awkward, just as I had feared. “I got transferred to wedding announcement writer.”