The next
day, Inaya did the same
thing she’d done every weekday for years – she listened to her favorite radio
show as she braved the morning traffic. Her meeting with Chandler and her
heightened attraction to him hadn’t changed that. She wouldn’t allow it to.
Even though she was never going to
date him, she would not deny herself the pleasure of his deep baritone. It
soothed her somehow. It also excited her. Very much.
Even
so, he’s never going to be my man,
Inaya thought decisively. Besides, where
would we date? Certainly not in this town.
Montrose, for all of its leaps and
bounds in becoming a thriving metropolis of racial equality in business and
community affairs, still wasn’t the most tolerant of places to live in when it
came to interracial relationships.
Just two years ago, a qualified white
mayoral candidate named Julian Heyward lost the race big time when it was
discovered that he fathered a child out of wedlock during his college years.
Although this was not uncommon in today’s society, his opponents made it seem
so even though the man was taking excellent care of his son and was reputed to
be a good father, despite the fact that he hadn’t married the mother of that
child.
Fortunately, the voting public didn’t wholeheartedly
buy into the negativity. Many still gave Mr. Heyward and his wife their support…until
photos of the mixed child and his African-American mother surfaced three days
before the polls opened. It was a sad day when the final tally was in and Mr.
Heyward had only accumulated thirty-five percent of the vote. A week earlier he
had a favorable sixty percent of the city behind him. It seems that people
could practice more tolerance when racial/interracial issues remained faceless
and were kept in the background.
I
have enough problems. Don’t need any more, Inaya thought resolutely, switching to a faster lane.
The sky was getting darker instead of
lighter in that eight o’clock hour. She hoped the brewing storm wouldn’t
unleash its fury before she made it inside her downtown office. She’d forgotten
her umbrella this morning in her busyness of loading fresh baked goods into her
car.
Last night she baked banana oatmeal
muffins and a lemon curd coffee cake. It had been her way of working off the
sexual tension that Chandler incited within her body yesterday.
“This next song goes out to the lady
whose name means Providence in Swahili,” Chandler said, immediately capturing
Inaya’s attention.
He’s
talking about me. She
smiled, starting to feel hot all over again.
“Special lady, yesterday was the best
Valentine’s I’ve had in a long time. Thanks for brightening my day. Perhaps
you’d like to brighten one of my nights, too, by agreeing to go on a date with
me. You have all of my numbers, so call a brotha and let him know something, a’ight?
Thanks in advance, sweetness.” Then the stirring sounds of Luther Vandross’ Here
& Now began to strum in the background as he proceeded to play her
favorite song.
At
that unexpected request and those scrumptious endearments, Inaya almost forgot
to make the right turn into her workplace parking lot. She was shocked,
flattered, and undeniably turned on. Her fingertips tingled with delight. Desire
jumped in her veins like grasshoppers.
“Call a
brotha,” Inaya recited Chandler’s
words as images of his tasty long frame paraded across her mind. “I wish you were a brotha.”
Yet even if he was black, she still
wouldn’t call him. Inaya’s body may be hankering for sex now that he’d awakened
the sleeping giant of desire within her, but she wasn’t emotionally willing to
date anyone. Nor did she want to be in a relationship. Plus she never ever
called a guy first. She wasn’t about to start now.
© 2014 by Suprina Frazier
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