This Can't be Life (25 page)

“I’ll be right back,” she said, getting up and carrying all the information that I had given her, including the check. I sat back with not a worry in mind. I had noticed that the check was drawn from a Bank of America account, and I knew all she was going to do was call the company or compare signatures to make sure I wasn’t trying to get away with fraud. They could check all damned day and wouldn’t find any damned shady shit even near me.

I relaxed and picked up a pamphlet that had information on small business loans. I started to leaf through it out of boredom when I felt someone staring at me. I looked up to find multi-platinum selling rapper, C. Banks staring at me while belittling the branch manager for his check card getting stuck in the ATM machine.

“This is not acceptable,” I heard him say, never once taking his eyes off of me.

“What if I was somewhere else? Out of the country or something? I don’t have time to waste. If I had time to come in here and do all this, I would have just come in here in the first place.” The man he was talking to was beet red. C. Banks wasn’t yelling but he was talking to a grown man like he was a child. The branch manager looked as if he wanted to disappear.

“I’m sorry, sir. Actually, I’m very sorry for this inconvenience. I’ll go and get your card out of the machine right now and make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” he replied, wiping sweat from his brow. C. Banks dismissed him by answering his cell phone when it rang. I put my head down and pretended to read the brochure, knowing full well that he was still staring at me. For some strange reason, he turned me on, and I was so not into rappers. I chalked it up to it being way too long since I had some wanted attention from a man.

“You already asked me what I was doing. If you didn’t want anything or have anything significant to talk about, why’d you call me?” I looked up and noticed that he was talking on his cell phone, sounding very indifferent with the person on the other end.

“Well, I’m busy. I’ll holla,” he replied into the phone, before flipping it closed and dropping it into his pocket. I was using my peripheral views to watch him as he watched me. The banker finally returned, apologizing for taking so long. I was just happy that I didn’t have to pretend to be reading the damned brochure any more.

“Okay, everything is fine,” the banker said to me.

“Of course, it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” I asked with a fake smile on my face.

“No, ma’am, I didn’t mean it like that,” she replied, getting nervous again.

“Yeah, I’m sure you didn’t.” I readjusted my legs and looked over toward C. Banks in time to see the manager return his bankcard to him. The manager was still apologizing profusely. I kind of felt sorry for him.

“Whatever, man,” he said, pocketing his card. He took one last glance at me before walking out of the bank without so much as a thank you to the bank manager.

When I walked out of the bank 15 minutes later, I noticed C. Banks smoking a cigarette and leaning against the passenger side of a black Escalade ESV with black tinted windows. I kept walking toward my new, super charged Range Rover Sport that I’d gotten to replace my totaled out Benz. I noticed that he was walking toward me, cigarette still in hand. I started searching around my purse for my keys, bypassing them a couple of times on purpose to give him more time to get to me.

“Hey, beautiful, what’s your name?” he asked, before taking a pull of his cigarette. The dimple in his right cheek indented deeply into his toffee complexioned face.

“I’m Simone Johnson,” I answered, extending my hand to him.

“Carlton Banks, but you can call me Banks. Everybody else does.”

“Well, I don’t like to do what everybody else does. So, can I call you Carlton?” I asked with a mild degree of difficulty.

“Nope. Only my moms call me that.”

“Well, it was nice meeting you then,
Banks
,” I replied curtly, and unlocked my car door. I proceeded to open it and threw my handbag into the passenger seat. I was raising my right leg to get inside when he stopped me.

“Hold up. Damn, ma. You can call me Carlton if that makes you feel better, shit you can call me whatever the fuck you want!” He replied, laughing, revealing a set of beautiful white teeth and that damned dimple again. I smiled and took his cigarette out of his hand and flicked it into the street.

“Second hand smoke kills and I’m just starting to love my life, so please, not around me.” I rested my butt against the side of the driver’s seat and smirked at the look on his face.

“Well, I’ll be got damned.” He was shaking his head from side to side in disbelief.

“You’re a fucking trip, yo. I swear,” he smiled, walking up closer to me. He was all up in my personal space before he finally stopped. I was becoming annoyed because he was making me so damned sexually charged. I thought my knees were going to buckle. He stood maybe two inches above my five foot nine inch frame, but I had on at least two inch heals so we were eye to eye. I was trying to act hard and stare him down like he was staring me down. We stood there for close to a minute, which is a hell of a long time to be staring into a stranger’s eyes, especially one that was so close and looked as good as he did.

His hair was cut close to his head and his eyes were tight and slanted like he had a taste of Asian in his blood. His eyes were so dark, almost black. He had a tattoo of a woman’s name in cursive on his neck. I couldn’t front any more so I looked to the side, pretending that I was distracted by the armored car that had just pulled in front of the bank.

“You ain’t gully,” he smiled, still standing mere inches from my face. His gaze had not wandered, even after I threw in the towel.

“Whatever,” I couldn’t for the life of me look back into his eyes. There was something so mysterious and sexy about this man that I was all messed up and bothered.

“Well, I have to get going,
Simone Johnson
. It was nice meeting you,” Carlton said, beginning to walk away.

“Oh, so you’re just going to leave?” I asked, taken aback.

“What else am I supposed to do? Play games with you in the parking lot of the bank all damned day?” he asked, smiling and walking backward slowly.

“You don’t want to keep in touch with me?” I asked. I was definitely out of my element and he knew it. I had never before in my life asked a man if he wanted to keep in touch with me.

“What? You wanna keep in touch with me?” he asked, feigning surprise as he walked back up to me.

“Yeah, why not? You don’t want to keep in touch with me?”

“I can see some fun in that,” he said, pulling a pen out of his pocket.

“You got some paper?” he asked, licking his lips.

“Why don’t you just lock me into your phone?” I asked, wondering why he wanted to write down my number when I just saw him on his cell in the bank.

“I like the old school method. You got a problem with that?” he asked, licking his lips. He was so damned sexy he made my nipples hard, and he knew it, too.

“Whatever. Hold on,” I laughed as I reached over to the passenger seat and fished through my handbag for paper. Unfortunately, the only thing I came up with was the deposit receipt that I’d just gotten from the bank. I handed it to him with the printed side face down. I didn’t want him to see how much I had deposited, but to my surprise, he turned it over and looked at the amount printed on the bottom of the rectangular slip without even a hint of shame.

“Damn, ma! Like that?” he asked, smiling at the figure.

“Why are you so nosy?” I asked, surprised. I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to do that. He wrote his number on the back of the receipt, handed me the paper and told me to call him. I watched him as he walked toward his truck, and for the first time, I noticed two huge men, one sitting in the driver’s seat and the other standing next to the front passenger door of the dark truck watching us.

“I’m going to have some fun with him,” I whispered to myself, as I got in the car and pulled onto the street. I turned up the volume on the radio and Banks’ latest single, “You Owe Me,” just happened to be playing. Laughing, I picked up the phone and dialed Talise at work. When she answered, I said excitedly, “fuck Stella. Your
girl
just got her groove back!”

Stacey

  I can’t remember the last time it rained like this. I was tryin’ to make my way up PCH toward Topanga Canyon and home, but I wasn’t gettin very far. My mouth began to water and I could feel my breakfast movin’ up my throat. I hurriedly and recklessly pulled over to the side of the road just in time to swing my door open and earl all the nutrients that I had consumed this mornin’ out of me. Raindrops moistened my hair and neck as I gagged, trying to release all that could be released. I was beyond sick and it was all in my mind.

It took every ounce of dignity that I had not to beg Tyron to take me with him to New York. Since he will be gone for three whole weeks, I was hopin he would invite me to come out for a few days, at least. That was wishful thinkin’. He’d already told me beforehand that it was completely out of the question for me to ever think that I could go to the East Coast with him. That was one of his many rules: never ask for anything and never speak to him or acknowledge him in public. Those were the two most important rules that should never be broken. He meant that seriously.

This is the second time since I’ve been with Tyron that he’s had to go away on business without me. The first time was only for one week and I didn’t get out of my bed for two days straight. I was physically ill without him. I couldn’t think straight. Every thought was of him and what he might be doin’ at that very moment. I kept having visions of him bein’ with someone else in
New York
, which literally made me feel sick and dizzy.

I closed my car door after releasin’ this mornin’s breakfast and last night’s dinner onto the dirt and gravel. I rested my head on the steerin’ wheel and tried to make sense out of all that was goin’ on inside of my head. How could it be possible? I literally became sick when Tyron wasn’t around. I was halfway ashamed of myself, but the thought of him brought warmth back into my soul and my heart. I find love in every inch of that man. The way he touches me, the way he looks at me, it’s like nothin’ I’ve ever experienced before. But, the reality was that his girlfriend was goin’ to be in New York with him and comin’ back to LA with him. That thought had me reopenin’ my car door to puke up whatever else that coulda been hidin’ in the crevices of my stomach.

At no point had I felt one ounce of regret for bein’ with Tyron. The happiness I felt while I was with him outweighed all the bad, hands down. I put my car in drive and merged back onto PCH, trying to make it a little bit closer to home before I had to upchuck again. I reached my hand around the back of my seat and felt along the floor for my bottle of water. My mouth held the worse taste and I couldn’t find that damned bottle of Fiji for the life of me. I sped up the canyon, tryin’ to get home as fast as I could. The taste in my mouth alone was makin’ me want to pull over and give up on the drive. If I were a woman, I would bet all the money Tryon gave me, that I was pregnant with triplets. I felt like hot shit.

I pulled into my garage and came to a haltin’ stop, then began feelin’ under the passenger seat. It was buggin’ the hell out of me that I couldn’t find that damned bottle of water. I didn’t even want to try to make it into the house without at least a drop of water on my tongue. I got out of my car and pushed the seat up finally gettin a glimpse of the semi square water bottle lodged under my seat. I pulled it out forcefully, wonderin’ how it could have gotten lodged under the seat so tightly. I couldn’t wait another second to take a sip of the liquid. I felt completely dehydrated. I opened the bottle and took a long swig, feeling some moisture return to my throat and lips once again.

As I tilted the bottle upward, going for my second chug, I noticed a piece of paper was floating in the water. It was rolled tightly, wrapped with a white rubber band, and stuffed inside a clear zip lock bag. I ran inside my house through the garage door, headed straight for the kitchen sink, and poured the remainin' water out of the bottle. I held it upside down and tried desperately to get the damn thing out. When it finally plopped into the sink, I grabbed it with shaky hands. Then, it dawned on me that the note had to be from Tyron. I was parked in front of his home and you can’t just walk onto his property without first being let in. That was the only logical explanation. It surely wasn’t there before I got to his house. I smiled and quickly ripped off the plastic and unfolded the note.