The Science Of Love: A Billionaire BWWM Romance (3 page)

But
David had no interest into delving into the seedy side of the
internet. Fortunes might be created in the adult content market, but
he didn’t want to make himself seem like a pervert to any girl
he might meet. How was he ever going to increase his success rate
with women if they found out he was making money supplying lonely men
with sex fantasies? And Jada, he had found out was from a religious
family who would be shocked to know the man their daughter was going
out with happened to be a porno king. So he needed to find some other
way to make his fortune. He would find it if it took him years to do
it.

David
had his finger in the internet marketing end of things. He was
writing programs which could make it all possible on a fraction of
the computing power which the older systems had needed. He had the
ability to see where it was all going. He’d been forced to
endure a math teacher in high school who thought personal computers
were a waste of time even when it was obvious everyone was getting
one. David was going to find a way to make some serious cash with his
skills while everyone else was busy impressing their professors. He
might have little skill with women, but that was all about to
improve. Because, he felt, if he had the money, who cared what kind
of social skills he had? He could hire someone to manage skills for
him.

Jada’s
face began to obsess David. He had called and talked with her three
times but still hadn’t had the nerve to ask her out. He avoided
the student lounge where they met because he didn’t want to run
into her again and have nothing to say. He felt so far below her in
status it made him sick. How could he hope to ever match her
standards? The hell with race, what man with a pulse
wouldn’t
want to spend an evening with her? He dreamed of her every night and
saw her face in his sleep. She would always be sitting on the
carpeted floor of the lounge and looking up at him.

And then
it hit him, she liked science and math, why not a trip to local
museum of industry? He would call her up and ask Jada if she wanted
to go visit it. Neither one of them had cars, but they could always
take the bus. He could look up the bus schedule and ride with her
downtown to it. They could have a nice day walking around and looking
at the exhibits. It was a great idea. He looked at the clock: it was
only eight in the evening, she wouldn’t mind if he called her a
little early. David punched out her number and waited for the phone
to start ringing.

“
You
weren’t supposed to call me this early,” Jada told David
when she picked up the phone. “I’m at Lyon Hall and in
the middle of a game. Call me in another hour when I’m back at
the dorm.”

“
Game?”
was all he could manage to get out of his mouth.

“
I’m
at the Go club. It’s the one night I let myself go play,”
she told him. “Look if you really want to meet, just come by
the room and you can walk me back.” She gave him the room
number of where she was.

David
hung up his phone and thought. She played Go? He’d attempted
the game once or twice, but it didn’t interest him. He stuck to
chess which he’d learned from his cousins. He would spend dull
winter nights over at their house trying to keep from being
obliterated by them. His cousins, every one of them boys, would play
against each other all the time and became quite good at the game. He
would play them only when he visited. They would use him to try out
different moves and see how fast they could beat him. He eventually
learned enough to keep from getting slaughtered, but never reached
their level.

Go was
the sort of game which seemed to him very easy at the surface, but
incredibly complex once you started learning it. Played out on a
series of seventeen by seventeen grind lines where you placed stones
of white and black on the intersections, it was wildly popular in
Asia and had been so for over a thousand years. When you surrounded
your opponent’s stone with your stones on the cardinal points,
they lost the space. It could also happen with entire groups of
stones. The game could last days between seasoned players who didn’t
want to yield territory. It ended when one opponent captured all the
other’s territory or one party voluntarily surrendered.

David
had attended a few meetings of a Go club in high school, but didn’t
have the level of dedication these people had to the game. They would
sit and stare at the board for hours, trying to find an opening
against their opponent. Overseas tournament were so wildly popular
that they would be covered on TV and in the newspapers. After a few
attempts at trying to learn the game, David had moved back to chess
with his cousins.

But
knowing Jada enjoyed the game made his interest grow. He now had a
reason to learn it and an excuse to be around her. Perhaps the trip
to the museum wasn’t such a good idea after all. She had
invited him to walk her home from the club meeting, so now he had
another reason to go over there. It was getting cool outside, so
David tossed his jacket on after shutting down his computer.

On the
way over to the building he tried to think of a way to impress her
with his general knowledge of the game. He knew the basic rules, but
no strategy. Go was a game popular with some programmers as it was
seemingly simple, but filled with layers of complexity, not unlike a
program which had been elegantly written. He decided to show up early
and watch her play, not making comments, but appearing to nod and
look interested every time she put down a stone.

He
showed his campus ID card to the bored security officer on duty and
entered the building. It was one of the older administrative
buildings on the campus had been rebuilt in 1976 to resemble the
historic building where the Declaration of Independence had been
signed two hundred years previously. This created all kinds of
confusion since there was another building called “Independence
Hall” which didn’t look at all like the historic
building. It usually took new students a few months to get it right.

He went
up the stairs and saw a light in a room that had an open door. David
walked in, cleaning his glasses on his shirt absent-mindedly as he
did so. He looked into the room and saw a series of tables and chairs
sat-up. There were five sets of people playing each other and
concentrating on what they were doing. As he observed what they were
doing, one man slapped a stone on the board and stared at his
opponent, a man about thirty years of age, across from him. His
opponent smiled and placed a stone down against his. The man who had
slapped the stone down looked at the board, got up and marched out
through the other entrance to the room. His opponent shrugged his
shoulders and gathered up the stones, putting them into their
separate baskets. He saw David watching him

“
He
just can’t understand how I pull it off,” he said,
smiling as he put the Go set away.

David
found Jada on the other side of the room. He walked over to her table
and sat down, watching the game she had in progress. Jada was playing
a man in his sixties who wore a business suit. The older man sported
a salt-and-pepper beard and was concentrating on the board before
him. It was painfully obvious he was losing the game. Jada had
surrounded his black stones with her white ones and was closing in
the final blow. The man placed one stone down on the board carefully
and looked back at her with desperation in his eyes. He wanted her to
make one mistake he could use to save his forces.

But it
was too late. Jada sat her stone down, looked at him and said “Atari”
the traditional Japanese announcement that you were about to lose
your stone. The older man looked at it and dropped his head. She had
beaten him. There was no further room he could claim without setting
up a pattern which would lead to the loss of an entire group of
stones. He could have spent the rest of the evening fighting a losing
strategy, but it was best to end it now.

“
You
nailed me,” he told her. “I should have seen it coming in
the second move.”

“
Nonsense,”
she told him. “You gave me a three stone handicap. If you
hadn’t done that at the beginning, it would have ended
differently.”

“
I’ll
know better than to do it the next time,” he laughed. The man
put his coat on, told everyone to have a pleasant evening and left
the room.

“
Was
he a pretty good player?” David asked Jada. He didn’t
want to seem like a complete ignoramus, but he had trouble
understanding the last few moves.

“
One
of the best in the club,” she told him. “First and only
time I’ve ever beat him. It took me a good hour to do it, but
it was worth the time. He won’t give me an advantage the next
time.”

“
So
how is this game played?” David asked her. “I’ve
played it before, but it’s been years since I last tried.”

Jada
looked at the clock on the wall. It was getting late. She still had
plenty of studying to do, but had time to show him a few basic
things. She had an early dance rehearsal in the morning and was in
classes all afternoon. She wore a large sweater over a pair of jeans
and had her book bag next to her.

David
sat with her for the next hour until the club room had to be cleared
out. She showed him the different patterns she used on her opponents
and which ones spelled victory. She showed him some early strategy to
use against an opponent of equal skill and what worked on someone of
a far lower ability. She told him about the ranking system and where
she was in relation to the other players in the room. David sat
spellbound listening to her and watching her nimble fingers glide
across the board.

In his
mind he was alone with Jada, kissing her long fingers and telling her
how much he loved her natural hair. He had once saw a black woman
braid a friend’s hair on the beach and sat just out of their
visual range watching them. In his fantasies he would be alone with
Jada braiding her hair into tight rows. Then she would lean back on
him and tell David how much she loved what he had been doing.

Jada
introduced him to the other club members before she left. Most of
them were either White or Asian, but there were a few Black guys as
well. Not too many women for some reason. The Go club would not have
been a place to meet girls if you were a young man interested in the
opposite sex. They were all glad he had come and looked forward to
seeing him there on a regular basis. He couldn’t tell them Jada
was the only reason he was there to learn the game. It was so he
could find an excuse to be around her. It seemed he had plenty of
rivals for her affection by all the hugs she gave out when they left.

They
walked down the idle campus streets, which were almost deserted that
time of the evening. The only people out were students returning to
dorm rooms and professors and teaching associates on their way back
from the main library. They walked past the main library which
towered over the campus ten stories high. It was an impressive
structure and paid for by tax money and contributions. It was open
all night and students could be found in it any hour of the day
studying for the latest exam.

They
talked about their families and what their long term plans were going
to be. David was sure there had to be a way to make money in the
internet marketing companies which were exploding all over the
country. Jada saw herself as a teacher in five years at a rural
school, similar to the one she had attended while growing up. She
wanted to open her own dance studio someday. As they walked, her hand
slipped into his and they grew silent.

David
couldn’t believe he was fortunate. She was letting him touch
her hand! Inside he was cheering, on the outside he was trying to
remain calm and not show his excitement. Jada was starting to like
this tall computer guy. He treated her well, showed some interest in
the things she like and, most of importance, didn’t try to get
in her pants the first time he met her.

The
walked up to the dorm where she lived and David finally broke the
silence.

“
I
guess this is good night,” he said to her.

“
Thanks
for walking me home,” she told him.

And then
Jada leaned over and gave him a kiss on the lips. David was
transfixed. He was lost in her touch and stood looking into her
beautiful brown eyes with his blue ones as she embraced him and let
the kiss linger for a few seconds longer than a friendly one. She
pulled back and looked at him. David hadn’t tried to push for
more than she had given him and he was a decent kisser. David, took
her hand and leaned forward into her, giving her a kiss in return on
the cheek, not too aggressive, but enough to let Jada know he wanted
to show her some affection. For a second, Jada wondered if he wanted
to go further, but she needed to study. Besides, it was still early
in their relationship and she didn’t know how much further it
could go. They had plenty of time to date and see if there was
anything more.

David
told her good-bye and walked away, almost skipping on his way back to
the apartment. By the time he was unlocking the door he had been
married to her for ten years in his mind. They had four beautiful
children and lived in the nicest neighborhood in San Francisco with a
big house where she could teach dance and play Go whenever she
wanted. They would have a bedroom separate in one corner so the kids
wouldn’t bother them while they were making love all night
long.