Can't Let Go - A Contemporary BWWM Romance Page 5

  “Who are you, and what have you done with my LaLa?” I teased. “Fine, if you want me to, I’ll go. But only if you want. And only if it’s okay with him.”

  “It’s not his call,” she said. “He’ll have to deal with it. It’ll be a test to see how he reacts.”

  “Great,” I said as I carried what was left of my lunch to the kitchen trash. “Just glad I can be of service to you.”

  “You’re the best!” LaLa yelled out.

  LaLa and I got ready together again that night, and it felt good to have the pressure off me for once. I didn’t feel the need to get dressed to the nines. I had no one to impress.

  I did LaLa’s hair and makeup once again and helped her pick out the perfect date night outfit.

  “What’s he going to say when he realizes that you don’t usually wear your hair and makeup like this?” I asked as I dusted setting powder over her face.

  “Oh, he’s seen me in my natural form, don’t worry,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. That seemed to be her attitude towards most guys. She had no qualms about being single or tossing a guy to the side if he didn’t like something about her that she had no intention of changing. I always admired that about her. “He hasn’t run away screaming yet.”

  She checked out my work in the mirror and tossed her long, dark hair over her shoulders.

  “Can I borrow your perfume?” she asked as she reached for it.

  “Then we’ll both smell the same tonight,” I said.

  “And your point?” She spritzed a few squirts onto her neck and wrists. “I need to get me some of that.”

  “Yeah, you do. It’s like, one hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. You owe me five dollars now,” I teased.

  We grabbed our things and locked up the apartment, heading out to a little sushi place on the north side of town. It was close to the police station, and part of me wondered if we might run into Kevin. I half hoped we wouldn’t. I didn’t want him thinking I stalked him. I felt like I ran into him everywhere all the time, almost too often for it to be a coincidence.

  “There he is,” LaLa said as she pointed to Demarius, who was sitting in a booth by himself in the corner.

  “I like that he’s not glued to his phone,” I said. “Shows he’s not insecure and not afraid to sit by himself and look like a loser.”

  LaLa nudged me and then grabbed my hand, leading me inside. I saw Demarius’s face light up the moment he saw her, but it quickly changed to a perplexed look as soon as he saw me.

  “I hope you don’t mind, I brought Liv tonight,” she said as she scooted into the booth next to him. “She loves sushi.”

  It was a total lie, but now I was going to have to eat that raw fish like I meant it. Gross.

  I flashed him an awkward smile, which he kindly returned, and slid into the booth across from the two love birds.

  The server took our drink orders and I placed a request for some seaweed salad and miso soup, two of the things I could usually tolerate at a Japanese restaurant.

  “Aren’t you going to have some sushi?” Demarius asked.

  He obviously wasn’t going to forget about LaLa’s little fib.

  “We ordered a big boat, so you can just share with us,” LaLa said, winking at me. I shot her a glare as soon as Demarius looked away. Next time we cooked, I was going to force her to eat a mushroom. A whole one. I promised myself that.

  The boat soon arrived and I sat back as the two of them dug in and dished up their plates of colorful little sushi bites. I had to admit I appreciated the aesthetics of sushi, just not the slippery texture or the bland taste.

  “Want some?” Demarius said to me as he nodded towards the boat.

  I paused before looking at LaLa and trying my best to act excited.

  “Sure, thank you.” I reached out and took two pieces.

  “Don’t you want more?” LaLa asked as she stifled a laugh. She loved torturing me. That bitch.

  “I think I filled up on too much soup and salad,” I said with a smile. “This will be fine for now.”

  I placed a sushi roll on my chopsticks and stared at it before gathering enough courage to shove it in my mouth. I washed it down as fast as I could with a few gulps of my Asian pear mojito and all was well.

  “Will you two excuse me for a moment?” LaLa said as she slid out of the booth. “I’ll be right back.”

  She ran off to the restroom as Demarius and I sat there in silence, chewing our dinner. Demarius was going to town and had devoured about half the boat all on his own. I hoped that he’d keep eating and eventually nothing would be left. I was pretty sure two was going to be my sushi limit for the night.

  “So, LaLa seems to think pretty highly of you,” I said to him as I attempted to fill the silence between us.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I feel the same about her.”

  “She usually doesn’t spend this much time with guys,” I said. “You two are together, like, every day it seems.”

  “We’re just having fun,” he said with a wink. “Taking it one day at a time.”

  I smiled at him. He did seem like a pretty laid back, genuine kind of guy. LaLa deserved that after the string of asshole losers she’d dated over the last couple years.

  I took a sip of my mojito and glanced around the room. I admired the gorgeous fish tank behind the bar, but not for long. My eyes landed on the back of a very familiar looking head of hair.

  “Kevin?” I said out loud to myself.

  “Huh?” Demarius asked, clueless.

  I stared hard, probably so hard he could feel it, and within seconds he spun around, take out order in hand. He locked eyes with me, but he was with someone else. Another guy. Probably a fellow detective from the department.

  From across the room I saw him glance at me and then Demarius, and then back to me. From far away, it probably looked like we were on a date. My heart sunk. I didn’t want Kevin to think of me that way. I wasn’t someone who dated a lot of people. I’d never dated more than one guy at the same time.

  I still had yet to hear from him since our date the weekend before, and the fact that it now looked like I was on a date with another guy was definitely not helping my case.

  My mouth went dry as I watched him walk out of the restaurant. He seemed to be in a hurry and he didn’t look back. Not even once.

  “What’s going on?” LaLa asked as she came back to the table. Talk about shitty timing.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Thought I saw someone I knew.”

  The urge to run after him and explain that it wasn’t what it looked like flushed over me. My legs began to jump a little, and I scooted a good couple of inches out of the booth before changing my mind.

  We weren’t dating. I didn’t owe him an explanation. If I did chase after him and tell him what the deal was, he’d probably think I was crazy for assuming we were exclusive. We’d just met a couple weeks ago. We had one date. I knew better than to jump the gun with someone as dashing as him.

  LaLa stared hard at me as I talked myself down from the ledge. I could tell she was trying to read me. She hadn’t even touched her food since she’d been back. I smiled at her and shook my head as if to tell her it was nothing, but I knew she didn’t buy it.

  CHAPTER 6

  I was completely useless Monday morning at work. My head was not in the game. I had started up my email, but an hour into my day I still hadn’t opened a single one. My coffee was slowly growing cooler by the minute, and I found myself unable to even function. All I could think about was Saturday night, seeing Kevin, and the fact that he still hadn’t contacted me.

  Certain I’d royally screwed up any chance I had with gorgeous Kevin Harris, I whipped out my phone and began composing a text. I wanted to test him.

  HEY! WERE YOU AT HAIKU SATURDAY NIGHT?

  I figured if I pretended I’d seen him, it would be like acknowledging that he did see me there with another guy, which would make me look innocent. It would open up the gateway for that conversation to happ
en without me seeming like a crazy weirdo and bringing it up out of the blue.

  My finger hovered over the send button. I was this close to sending it. Impulsive, after all, was my middle name. Then I set the phone down and thought about it. I had to be strategic. I didn’t want to blow this with him.

  “Hey, Rashida,” I heard a man’s voice say. It was Michael. Of course.

  “Hey, Michael,” I replied. I was groaning on the inside.

  “Have a good weekend?” he asked, lingering at my desk like he always did.

  “You could say that,” I replied, avoiding eye contact. “You?”

  “Not bad, not bad,” he said. He never did get the hint. Ever.

  “Oh, wow, look at all these emails,” I said as I fixed my gaze on my computer screen. “Oh, there’s one from Julianne. I better get working on that.”

  By the grace of God, he took the hint and walked off, coffee in hand. I heard him bugging someone else down the way, talking about some movie that had just come out. I wished they’d just make him work from home all the time. I didn’t understand why he needed to have a cubicle or come into the office. He did nothing but distract other people all day long.

  I picked up my phone and re-read my text message. I deleted the entire thing.

  WANT TO GET TOGETHER THIS WEEKEND?

  I sent it without thinking twice. That seemed more appropriate and more cut-to-the-chase. LaLa would’ve been proud of me in that moment.

  I sat my phone back down and waited. And waited. And waited. Five minutes went by, and then ten and then twenty, and still no response.

  “Rashida.” I looked up. Julianne was standing over my cube. She totally caught me messing around on my phone. I was busted.

  “I just wanted to make sure you got the submission for my stepdaughter’s wedding,” she said as her eyes traveled down to my phone and back to me. I could tell she was annoyed, but she was too nice to say anything. Her look said it all, though.

  “Let me check,” I said as I pulled up the submission folder on my desktop. “What’s her name?”

  “Ayla Giovanni,” she said. “She’s marrying Antoine Jackson. Maybe it’s under Jackson?”

  My heart sunk and the hardest lump formed in my throat. I could feel paleness washing over my face as the blood quickly drained.

  “I-I didn’t know Ayla Giovanni was your stepdaughter,” I stammered. I forced a natural smile on my face.

  “You know her?” she replied.

  “No,” I said. “I mean, I just watch her on the news and everything. She’s kind of a local celebrity.”

  “Oh, ha,” Julianna laughed. “Well, when you’ve known her since she was a little girl, I guess you just don’t realize she has that effect on people. Some folks just get a little star struck by her.”

  “So, who’s this guy she’s marrying?” I asked, playing dumb. “You approve?”

  “Oh, God, yes!” Julianne exclaimed. “We love him to death. Seriously. If she doesn’t marry him, I think her dad is going to have a heart attack. He’s been such a breath of fresh air compared to all the other guys she’s brought around. And she’s stayed with him longer than anyone else too, so I think it’s a pretty tight thing they have going on.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, forcing another smile as a little bit of me died inside. I didn’t understand why it hurt so bad to hear how happy Antoine was. I should’ve been happy for him, happy that he met someone who wanted to marry him and happy that he was marrying into a nice family who appreciated him. “Good men are hard to find these days.”

  “You’re telling me,” she said as she took a sip of coffee.

  “So is it going to be a pretty lavish affair or something small and intimate?” I asked.

  Julianne seemed shocked by my question until she remembered that I wrote about weddings for a living. The question was only natural.

  “Oh, you don’t know Ayla,” she chuckled. “Lavish. Lavish. Lavish. Chi chi. Fancy pants.”

  “Really?” I replied with one eyebrow raised. That didn’t sound like Antoine at all. We had talked about getting married several times over the course of our relationship. He hated being in front of large groups of people. He wanted to elope, just the two of us, and marry on some tropical island in the South Pacific. He must have really loved her if he was doing that for her.

  “You don’t even want to know what the flowers are costing us,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “Well, costing her dad, actually. He’s footing the bill. I’m staying out of everything.”

  “When’s the wedding again?” I asked as I rifled through my folder looking for the submission again.

  “April eleventh,” she said. “Only a couple more months.”

  Antoine and I had broken up the previous May. He and Ayla had been together less than a year. I had to wonder if maybe she was pregnant, but I doubted that. I’d seen her on the news. I’d watched her day in and day out. Her waist was whittled, cinched tight and narrow. There was no way she was knocked up.

  “Where’s the wedding going to be?” I asked. I hoped she didn’t think I was being too nosy, but I felt like I might not get another opportunity to bring any of this up again without it being too obvious.

  “First Presbyterian Church,” she said. “Reception at the Starmont Hotel downtown.”

  Prime wedding locations in Harrisville. She was definitely going to have a beautiful wedding, that was for sure. Most people only dreamt of those locations, but for people like Ayla Giovanni, they were no problem to secure. They probably loved the publicity they were going to get from her. Heck, she probably got to use the reception hall at the Starmont Hotel for free.

  “Nice,” I said. “Sounds like a lovely celebration.”

  “It’s going to be the talk of the town,” Julianne gushed. “You should see the dress she picked out. It’s incredible. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’d love to,” I said, quickly realizing she didn’t literally mean I should see the dress. “I mean, I bet she looks stunning in it. She’s so tall. She can probably wear a potato sack and look gorgeous.”

  “You’re telling me,” Julianne laughed. “I’d love to steal a couple inches off her height.”

  Julianne stood maybe no higher than 5’2’’, but she was a firecracker. She packed a punch. Whenever anyone saw her tiny little frame making its way down the halls, the seas parted. People got out of her way. She may have been small, but she was mighty. It probably helped that she had a blaze of short, fiery red hair to match her personality. No one messed with her.

  “All right, well, I just wanted to make sure you’d received their submission,” she said. “It’s February now, so we’ll probably want to run the announcement soon. We need to make sure the whole city knows she’s officially taken. Ward off those suitors so she doesn’t run away from Antoine!”

  Julianne chuckled as she walked away, her heels shuffling on the thin carpet. I couldn’t believe Julianne was Ayla’s stepmother. What a small world.

  I sat back as I took it all in. And then my phone vibrated. It was a text from Kevin.

  YES. FRIDAY AT 8?

  And suddenly, all was right in the world again.

  CHAPTER 7

  Exercising more self-control in one week than I had in my entire life, I managed not to text or call Kevin again that entire week. It was the longest week ever, but I knew come Friday, seeing his gorgeous face would be worth it.

  I scrambled to get home as fast as I could and immediately threw off my clothes and took the hottest bubble bath I could stand. I had a good three hours to get ready for our big date, but I wanted to take my time and enjoy it. I wanted to unwind. It had been such a long week.

  After soaking in the tub until my fingers and toes had pruned up, I climbed out and wrapped myself in my plush, white robe. I wrapped my hair in a turban and slathered my face and neck with my best moisturizer.

  “LaLa?” I called out the bathroom door when I heard some noise on the other side.


  “Yeah, I’m here,” she called back. “Not for long. Just grabbing some things. I’m staying at Demarius’s tonight.”

  I rolled my eyes and laughed. I’d never seen her so smitten with anyone before. Good for her.

  “Okay,” I yelled back. I’d be getting ready solo that night, but that was all right. LaLa tended to Bogart the music sometimes. I could listen to whatever I wanted and not worry about her judging me or turning it to a different song. “Have fun.”