What The Heart Desires (2 page)

I softly and with my heart hammering in my chest confronted him and said, “You don’t have to worry about me disturbing you ever again. I won’t disturb you for long. I just came to give you back your ring and I will collect my clothes tomorrow.” He stopped and turned his head to the side. Shock was not the words to describe his reaction, but I noticed one thing.

Troy didn’t pull out of her and he didn’t run after me screaming for me to come back. I dropped his meager, cheap, one carat diamond engagement ring on the secretary’s desk, and I walked like a zombie down the stairs, and stood up in front of Tamika, “Give me your key to your apartment, I will be staying with you a few nights.”

She was getting ready to go on the dance floor, and she was a little drunk that’s probably why she didn’t ask any questions. She reached into her large bag and handed me the key.

I felt like a drink but I was so traumatized I would probably end up in the river. I couldn’t see or hear anything. I headed for the exit and walked out of the club with the intentions of getting a cab. I didn’t know if one would take me to Brooklyn but I had to try. I stood in the street raised my hand and cabs zoomed by. I was so out of it that I kept walking and when I looked up I was in Midtown Manhattan on the Westside highway. It was dark on a Friday night and few cars passing.

I walked out my frustrations, and pain of being ditched by Troy for a cocktail waitress. All the signs were there but I was so bent on pleasing him that I didn’t see them. I walked until I declared that I would never again let a man pull the wool over my eyes. Troy taught me a lesson.

It occurred to me that I couldn’t walk to Brooklyn at midnight. I stood in the street and tried hailing a cab. I had been there an hour when a limo pulled up. I thought it was one of those UBER cars so I open the door and hopped into the back.

S
itting down and taking my shoes off getting ready to relax, I looked across to the seating to my right, in the stretch limousine, and sitting there is the most gorgeous specimen of a man wearing a black silk tux. He was stunning in his appearance and looks. I had never seen a man like him black or white. He’s sitting with his legs crossed and grinning at me. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for a working girl to be in this part of town?” I had unknowingly walked on the Westside highway and ended up on Wall Street. The last thing I remember was heading in the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge but found myself closer to the Brooklyn Tunnel.

After watching for my reaction, he took a sip of his drink from a crystal glass filled to the brim with some kind of liquor. From watching bartenders at Troy’s club, I’d say it was Scotch whisky with no ice. It appeared to be straight liquor and he was drinking it like you would a bottle of Pepsi or Coke.

I remember thinking that he must have bigger problems he wanted to forget. Much worse than I had. If he was getting wasted like this, it must be serious. He looked young, like a rich man in his late twenties. Maybe he had to turn himself in to the police the next morning.  

I glanced up at him. “I thought this car was empty. Why did the driver pick me up? I said watching at his face which was hidden by a small beard that made him look sexy in the low light. He wore an expensive black tux with a bow tie accentuated by a white shirt with expensive gold cuff links with initials on them. My eyes caught a pair of expensive black shoes with shoe strings, and a buffed shine on them. Not the kind of shoes where you pull them on or kick them off.

“I directed him to stop for you.” So he didn’t just rent this car, he owns it. I’m thinking.

At the time I didn’t realize that the guy thought I was a prostitute waiting to be picked up, after all, what woman would walk on the Westside highway if she didn’t have serious business to transact or she had lost her mind?

“I had a bad day,” I said to him straightening my skirt. “I’m a working girl, but just not the kind you’re talking about.”

He leans to his left and says, “What’s the matter little lady, you didn’t make enough money to satisfy your pimp?” He wasn’t being demeaning, he appeared concerned about me. He reached into his pocket and took out a roll of hundred dollar bills, “Here take it. Consider it a gift.”

“I can’t take that. I’m not a prostitute.”

“I know you’re a working girl,” he says with a smirk, not understanding, or he was too drunk for anything to register. “You can take it, it doesn’t mean anything to me. Maybe you can find some use for the money. Leaning over in my direction he places the wad of money on my lap. Looking down, I furrowed my brow, then my horrified sharp gaze flicks back to him.

“Don’t worry, I don’t want you to suck my dick or fuck you in the ass, or anything like that,” he says with a drunken tone to his voice. “But the way I feel I couldn’t get it up for you anyway.” He glances at me with his big blue eyes and he sees the frown on my face. “You’re pretty and have a great figure under that blue suit, but I’m just not in the mood.”

“I wouldn’t do that thing you said about my ass anyway, and besides you’re a strange man, and you’re drunk, and you could have any number of things wrong with you,” I say to him taking offense at his conversation.

“What’s wrong with me?” He questions.

“Nothing. You’re handsome for a white guy, but I’m not into white men.”

“Well, what kind of working girl are you? You can’t make any money unless you’re willing to suck dicks white and black, and the other stuff with your ass. If you plan on making any kind of money you can’t be particular.”

He pours himself another drink. “What’s wrong with white guys anyway?” He drinks his drink in one gulp. “Why don’t you want to fuck me?” he says his voice

“You’re not listening to me. I’m not a prostitute. You are a handsome man and I would fuck you but like you said you are too drunk.” I’m trying to humor him because he has self-esteem problems. I understand that because I’m having a few of those myself. But I’m not trying to self-medicate like him. And unlike him, I don’t want to forget what Troy did to me and to our perfect relationship. Well, I thought it was perfect.

The limo slows down and stops at the red light. He takes his drink and moves in the seat next to me. He’s making me uncomfortable being that close to me. I lean away from him. My scan of his body gives an incomplete picture of him. Now I can see his eyes, they are a mixture of lavender and blue. His body is muscular firm and poised, and his gaze is on me as if studying me too. I search around for words to explain to him why I wouldn’t have sex with him and I can’t find a reason, except maybe he drinks too much. I turn facing him, his eyes are on me, but his mind is somewhere else.

“I’m having a problem with my boyfriend,” and I stop...he glances at me as if he wouldn’t believe me anyway, so I just say, “Can you have your driver take me home?”

“Where do you live?”

“I live...I had forgotten that I didn’t live there anymore. “Take me to Brooklyn across the bridge and drop me at the Atlantic Avenue subway and I’ll get home.”

“No. Let me take you home. I have nothing to do and I don’t want to go to my apartment, there is no one there waiting for me. Not unless you want to spend the night with me.” He’s waiting for an answer.

“I said I’m not a prostitute and I’m not about to go to a strange man’s home.”

“You got into a strangers car.”

“That’s because...I didn’t feel like going through that again. It was a bridge to nowhere with him because he was obviously drunk. So I changed the subject. “What about your wife?”

“I don’t have a wife.” He looks at me trying to decide whether to pour his heart out to me. “I was engaged but I caught her with my best friend.” He takes another drink.

“Then she wasn’t worth you being upset over.” I was the last to talk. Here I am finding my fiancé fucking a woman in a position that he declared wasn’t respectable and animalistic, but I still wanted him to turn around and send her away. After all that I still wanted him. “I don’t know what to tell you,” I say meeting his gaze.

“It’s what the heart desires that gets us in trouble. The heart wants what the heart wants.” I say to him. I didn’t know where that piece of philosophical crap came from but it seemed appropriate at the time and for the conservation we were having.

We were both being fucked over by the people we desired the most.

He turns to me picking up the money I placed between us and says, “Here, take the money. I know you don’t want to take it.” He puts it in my hand. “Would you prefer to work for it?”

“I told you before and you weren’t listening. I’m not that kind of girl. I work for a living.”

“Yes I know,” and before I could try to make some sense with him because he was pissing me off, he leans over and kisses me. His kiss burned through me and I taste liquor and smelled the scent of an expensive cologne or body wash. His tongue meandering around my mouth heating me through and through. I couldn’t catch my breath. His hands dropped to my legs and I felt as if I could give in and let him think that I got in his car for sex, but as desperate as I felt, and as much as I wanted to be loved by a man, I didn’t want that feeling from a stranger.

I needed that feeling from Troy even if he was a dog.

When his hands reached my mound and his lips searched for my nipples, I pulled back from him. He looks at me confused. “You will never make a dime as a working girl. You can’t be so tense.”

“I thought you didn’t want anything from me?” I say to him. Now I’m angry because he’s too drunk to even hear me, or make sense of what I’ve said.

“I don’t want anything from you if you don’t consent to having sex with me. I was just feeling sorry for myself because my best friend and fiancé betrayed me, and still I want her more than ever. I thought if I could fuck you, then I wouldn’t feel as bad. I see it as a revenge fuck. Fucking another woman.”

“I caught my fiancé tonight fucking a woman over his desk in his office and I didn’t want to fuck you.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not what you do when you have a traumatic situation. You don’t just pick up a woman and fuck her and in a car.” My voice raised as I chastised him.

“Would you come with me to my apartment?”

“You’re not listening to me.” I find my hands holding his gorgeous face. “You just don’t get it, do you? I find you very attractive, but I just don’t go around having sex with a man when I first meet him.”

“I normally don’t either,” he says to me leaning and ready to reach under my skirt, but I swat his hand away from me. “You really aren’t a prostitute? Are you?”

“Now you get it. No. I’m not.”

“Then would you consider seeing me again.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Because I’m white?”

“No, because you are trying to fuck away your pain. I don’t want any relationship with a man black or white or any other color who wants to have a woman because another woman has disappointed him. And I wouldn’t be a good date anyway because I’m thinking about my boyfriend. I look up and the driver has stopped at the subway station on Atlantic Avenue.

“Thank you and it was an interesting night.” I extend my hand to shake his and hand him back the money.

He reaches for my hand and raises it to his mouth and kiss it. “You’re interesting and you make me laugh. What’s your name?” He questions opening the door.

“It’s Leila Brooks, and it was a pleasure meeting you.” He reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a card, and hands it to me before standing outside and extending his manicured hand for me to take when I step out of the limo.

My eyes drops on his cuff links the initial are E.H. “If you need anything call me.” I took his card without looking at it and shoved it into my purse. I walked down the dark stairs and through the turnstile and stood waiting for a train to Prospect Park.

I
woke up in a strange place on Saturday morning; Tamika’s couch. She didn’t come home that night but she made it in that Sunday night just in time to get ready for work the next day. I didn’t hear from Troy except for a text telling me he was sorry. And he would have Rodney bring my clothes to Tamika’s house.

I wondered how he knew I would be here, but it wasn’t a secret, she was my best friend and because I had no family in New York that was the most likely place I would be.

When Tamika came home, she fell into the bed and I heard her rummaging around that Sunday night for food. She must have been busy and found someone she liked because she stayed with him all night.

That Monday morning we rose early and I borrowed one of her jackets and tops. I had to wear my own skirt because Tamika had a little more hips than me but as small as I was I had a large ass and big breasts.

To get to work by eight am, we had to leave before seven o’clock. We got off the subway and walked a half a block to the bank. We talked the entire time and before we realized it we were standing at the door in front of the bank. I pulled the handle and it didn’t open. Usually there is a guard standing there to open the door early in the morning but none came even when I rang the bell.

“Don’t waste your time,” Tamika said dryly.

“What do you mean,” I say, and she shoves a notice she pulled off the glass door.

This Bank is closed by order of The United States Treasury
.

My worried gaze wanders to Tamika, “What does this mean?”

“It means we are fucked and we are out of a job.” I rake my hands through my week old perm. All I can think about is that I won’t be able to go to the hair dresser and I will probably end up doing it myself and going bald or burn my face.

“This can’t be happening. What are we going to do?” I question not expecting an answer.

“We have to apply for a job. We can spend the day at Human Resources and some of the big and small banks in Manhattan. We may have to take what we can get.” Tamika paused and choked on here words. “We might have to take a teller’s job.”

“With a degree in financing?” I asked.

“I’m talking about myself. You at least have a Master’s degree. But that won’t guarantee you a job these days. Remember we are woman and we’re black.” I shut my eyes for a second and we’re standing in front of the bank as if we are in a tub full of cement.