After more prayer, Chandler decided to let Inaya make the next move. If
she did, he’d know for sure if the attraction really was mutual or if it had
been just a figment of his imagination. Once she did that, he’d take it from
there. At least until the shy woman was more comfortable with him. Then he’d
let her pursue him at will like all the others had done before her. Like some
of them still did to this day, despite his celibacy.
In Chandler’s opinion, when someone pursued him, it meant that they
actually wanted to be with him. It also meant that he stood less of a chance of
them abandoning him in the future. He was looking for a woman like that, the
kind of woman that wouldn’t leave him like his birth mother had.
Although Chandler wanted to be pursued, he did not want to be stalked.
He’d been stalked during
his junior year at Montrose University
by a girl named Susan Estes and it was not fun. He eventually had to take a
restraining order out on her.
Because of that incident, Chandler frequently cautioned Christina about
pursuing Linus so zealously. He didn’t want her to get in trouble or to be seen
as another desperate big girl, despite the fact that she had the face of an
angel and the bubbly personality of a cheerleader. In fact, she’d been a
cheerleader at every school she ever attended regardless of her size. Now
Christina was one of the top real estate agents in the area. She helped him
find and secure the four-bedroom, three-bath house that he currently owned.
Now that Chandler had a house, he was ready to do like Luther Vandross
sang and ‘turn his house into a home’. The right woman would help him do that.
Was Inaya the right woman? He hoped so. He had a gut feeling that she was.
Chandler finally received a call from Inaya two weeks later.
Unfortunately, it was five minutes after his shift ended, so he didn’t have a
whole lot of privacy to talk because he was still in the studio area. Loretta
and Pablo Avarelo, the radio engineer, were in the room with him.
Chandler wanted to go to his office and finish the call, but he could
not, or rather would not leave the
area. He had to make sure the glitches in the microphones were properly taken
care of. Although Pablo was a good engineer, he lacked follow through at times.
It had been hard enough trying to find the evasive man around the station today
and they didn’t want him to get lost again.
Chandler couldn’t rest easy until the popping P’s were eliminated. He
didn’t want what happened during his shift to happen during DJ Treat’s shift.
It had been highly irritating to hear a popping sound every time he pronounced
a word with a hard ‘P’ in it.
Of equal irritation is the fact that Inaya started her call with business
talk. She mentioned nothing about Chandler’s date request. She showed no
gratitude or even acknowledged the fact that he’d played her favorite song specifically
in her honor.
Why is she talking about this
stuff again? Did she not hear the next day’s show at all? And why is she
talking so fast? Chandler wondered, puzzled by Inaya’s current
no-nonsense behavior and by the fact that she was rehearsing things they’d
already gone over in their long meeting or that was already included in
literature she’d given him to read.
Suddenly it dawned on him why she was behaving so strangely. He’d had
enough women in his life to know when one was trying too hard not to show how much she liked him.
Which meant not only had Inaya heard that date request show, she’d finally
gotten up the nerve to call in response to that show and just didn’t know how
to broach the subject yet.
Chandler smiled at that realization. His confidence rose again. He stood
a little bit taller against the sturdy glass wall of the studio area, squared
his shoulders, and poked his chest out a little bit more.
I knew there was something between us that day. No
one spends two hours in a meeting that should have only taken fifteen minutes,
he thought, watching the engineer change the black screens on the various
microphones to pinpoint the problem. So my
pretty little Eva Marcille look-alike is a bit slow out of the gate, huh? Let
me see what I can do to help her out.
Chandler went along with Inaya’s business-as-usual talk for several
minutes. He even told a few light-hearted jokes to help her relax all the more.
Yet at the end of the call, he dealt with the situation the way he dealt with
most situations in life – with straightforward honesty.
“Thanks for all of that great information, Inaya. But in case you forgot,
we covered all of that the last time
we talked. Now what did you really
call me about, Miss Lady?” he said in a teasing manner.
© 2014 by Suprina Frazier
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