My Daughter's Boyfriend (25 page)

Tracey fanned her face with her hands. “Something like that. Hey, you ready to open presents now? I brought them with us so we could be under the heat of the sun and enjoy each other somewhere else besides Williamstown Apartments, you know what I mean?”

I knew what she meant, all right.

“Okay, Miss Avoiding-the-Issue, let’s do the present stuff. You first.”

Tracey blushed and retrieved the large box from a Foley’s shopping bag. Smiling, she slid her fingers across the wrapping paper, a rich-looking silver and gold metallic design with matching bow and ribbon. She picked up the box and shook it and then brought her nose close and inhaled.

“Whatever it is, it smells good.”

She tore the paper, removed the lid, and laughed.

“Ohhh, thanks, Aaron. This is so awesome,” she replied, and took out a gift box filled with lavender everything: bath crystals, body mist, shower gel, two containers of lotion, candles, incense sticks, and cologne spray. She held the soap to her nose like she could taste it with her nostrils.

I leaned back and grinned.

“I
love
things like this. Makes me feel so feminine and pure. Thanks again.”

“My pleasure.”

“Okay, now your turn.” She handed me a teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy box.

I cocked my head and gave her a teasing look.

“Look, don’t act all funny and stuff. I—I special-ordered this for you a couple weeks ago. It’s not much, something different. Hope you like it.”

“I’m sure I will.” I let my eyes linger over the Afrocentric wrapping paper, a brown, black, and gold decoration.

Within the box was a black watch ring with a white face, something I’d seen before, but never really thought I’d own one day.

I placed the ring on my finger and looked at Tracey and reached over to graze her cheek with a kiss.

“I like it,” I told her.

“You’re sure? Positive?”

I laid down the box, grabbed Tracey in my arms, and kissed her on the lips, kissed her like she was the woman in the long white gown and I was the proud man who stood by her side.

Aaron 27

The day after Christmas started out looking like a nor
mal day. Sun rising like always, birds singing the morning’s arrival.

My loins were moved by the tons of soda I drank the day before, so I hopped out of bed and headed for Tracey’s bathroom. The phone rang.

“Hello?” Tracey answered, looking at me with the phone pinned tight to her ear like it was a lover’s mouth.

Her eyes rolled.

“Hey,” she said. “How’s GA? How was your trip?”

I hobbled off to use the toilet and closed the bathroom door.

Ten minutes later, when I returned to the room, Tracey was off the phone and dressed in some navy blue sweats with matching pants. She bent down to lace her running shoes.

“Going somewhere?” I asked.

“No, silly, I always cook breakfast in this outfit. Hey, let’s hop in the car and park at that lot near Brays Bayou. We need to get out and walk, get away from the apartment.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Brays Bayou is a man-made river that extends for miles in southwest Houston. People jog, walk, ride their bicycles, and do exercises along the adjacent pathway. Several fitness-conscious folks were already out this morning, mostly toned-looking white guys who wore shorts with no shirts. No matter what day of the year it is, there’s always someone who’s going to be wearing shorts in Houston.

Tracey and I began our excursion walking against the brisk winds of the morning.

“So how did the conversation go with your daughter?” I asked.

“To be honest, she wasn’t too happy, Aaron. Of course, the topic of the day was you and me. She fussed and rattled on and I listened for about as long as I could take, then I let her go.”

“You think she’ll tell her grandparents?”

“For what? They can’t do anything about it. I don’t talk to them anymore, and I know they won’t be calling me, getting into my business.”

“Well, you know when women are going through something, they always feel they have to tell somebody—a friend, a cyber pal, a talk-show host.”

“Well, if you ever see Lauren on
The Ricki Lake Show
, I don’t want to know.”

“Nah, she’s not that crazy. She’ll be all right.”

“Aaron, let me ask you something. Why do you seem so calm through all this? It seems like you’re taking things way too casually.”

I cleared my throat. “It’s not that I don’t care. I do. About you.”

“So, just that quick you’ve lost feelings for Lauren? Like she never meant anything?”

“It’s not that I’ve lost feelings for her. My main thing is that the decision has been made not to be with her anymore. That’s a done deal. What am I supposed to do, try and be buddies with her while I’m spending time with you? That’s not going to work.”

“I know, I know, I know what you’re saying; it’s just that you seem kind of emotionally unattached.”

“Hey, just because I don’t show it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’m just fast-forwarding my mind to a future with you. Why stay stuck in the past? Because like it or not, things will never be the same between me and Lauren.”

The intensity of Tracey’s eyes mellowed, as did her voice. “I think you’re right.”

She continued walking without saying anything to me for a long while. I let her nurse her thoughts, find some peace. After we’d walked about another half mile, she turned to me.

“Well, what about karma?”

“I don’t know her.”

“No, silly. Karma. Reaping what you sow. This thing that we’re doing, it may come back to haunt us.”

My eyes flickered into an unfocused view of Tracey’s face.

“Aaron, if you want to know the truth, although I enjoy being with you, every night when I go to sleep, I pray that children’s prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“I haven’t prayed that prayer in years. Or I’ll only pray it when I think something bad might happen. At the end of the day, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll go to sleep and never wake up again. So I speak it over me to make sure everything is squared away between the Lord above and me. You know what I’m saying?”

I nodded.

“Aaron, I haven’t been to church in so long they’re going to come after me for back tithes in a minute, but I still remember certain things. When it comes to God, knowing right and wrong, some things you never forget.”

I sighed and stopped walking. She kept going.

“Trace, hold up.”

She stopped and returned to my side.

“Yeah?”

“Look, I want to be with you, but if our being together has you to the point that you think God is going to pull a fast one on you in your sleep, then maybe we should just end this right now. I mean, I think you over-analyze everything, you say one thing with your mouth, and do something else with your actions. So what, you pray that prayer every night? If you wake up in the morning and find you still have a pulse, but go right back out and do the things you feel guilty about, doesn’t that cancel out the prayer? You think the God who knows everything is stupid all of a sudden and that He can’t see through all that?” My voice trembled and so did my hand when I tried to place it on her shoulder, forcing her to look me in the eyes.

She blinked and said softly, “Aaron, I’ll let you in on something else. I just don’t pray the children’s prayer at night. I find myself praying every time I get in my car to go somewhere, anywhere. Any strange movement of another vehicle driving near scares me, especially eighteen-wheelers. I wonder if they’re going to accidentally crash into me and send me to an early grave. Oh, Aaron, you just don’t know how hard all this is.” Her fear snatched her breath, like she was hyperventilating, and she rubbed her forehead.

“Tracey.” I grabbed her. “Your being scared scares
me.
”

“Well, there’s no need in both of us being scared,” she told me, loosing herself from my grasp.

“So, what do you want to do?” I wanted to know.

She grabbed her hair and yanked on a couple of strands but didn’t say anything.

Felt like my heart skipped a few beats. My hands felt sweaty, like they were crying and advertising my fears.

“Well . . .” She winced. “If we stop this, if we . . . okay, let’s say we stop the sex part. You think it would be okay for us to just know each other as good friends, but leave out the sex?”

I bared my teeth, but closed my mouth real quick.

“Sure, yeah, whatever, Tracey. If you think that our not physically being involved would clear your conscience, then go ahead. Go ahead and leave me alone, because I can’t promise you I’d want to know you as just a friend. Men and women who’ve been lovers can’t go back to being just good friends. You just can’t do it.”

“But what if we—”

“Steve Monroe! You guys were involved big-time. Are you still friends now?”

“No, but—”

“That’s my point! If you really think I’d let you go to the place where I can’t touch you but can only talk to you and be happy with that, think again. When I want a woman, I want all of her. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not enough for me to have just some of you.”

She looked at me and a small grin escaped through her frustrated mouth. Her brown eyes, large and engaging, lassoed me inside her mind. I could almost hear her brain clicking, calculating what I’d just told her. She grabbed my face between her hands and kissed me warmly on my lips.

I let her kiss me, but I didn’t grab her. Just stood there, and she broke the kiss shortly thereafter.

“What up with that, Tracey?”

“You just don’t know what your words did to me. It’s like you’re validating or confirming what it is you want from me. In my mind, that’s just what I needed to hear, because if that’s how you feel, maybe all this is worth the risk. Maybe there’s more to this than what I thought. I’m glad you want me for more than sex, because that’s what it’s going to take for us to make it. I mean, I don’t know what the future holds, but if we’re going to have a fighting chance, then we’re going to have to have more than just surface feelings, you know what I mean?”

I smiled at her. Hesitated before I spoke again.

“Yep, I do. So, Tracey, how do you feel about me?”

“I’m crazy about your jailbait behind,” she laughed. “I don’t know what it is, but I do enjoy you. We don’t fight all the time; there are very few hassles, and the few that we have come from outside sources. So I think we get along pretty well, and I like that. With Steve—hate to keep bringing him up—”

“I’m secure enough for you to talk about him, baby.”

“—but we didn’t always see eye-to-eye. I don’t know. The sex was the bomb, like you said, but there was a price to pay. I never understood how Steve could want his ex and me at the same time. It always made me feel like something was wrong with me, like I didn’t have everything he needed in a woman. And let me tell you something, I gave a whole lot to that relationship. I lived the air that he breathed, I mean, it was deep.”

“You make him sound so bad, why’d you want the dude in the first place?”

She sputtered out a laugh, then got serious. “Rose-colored glasses make you see all kinds of things that end up not being there. It’s like any other relationship. In the beginning you accentuate all your good sides, just to entice someone. But once you feel you have the person in your grip, boom, all the skeletons come flying out the closet and you gotta run for cover.”

“Dig that,” I told her. “But on the other hand, if it weren’t for him, maybe you and I wouldn’t have gotten together, huh?”

“Oh Lord, there you go. So I should be thankful Steve is an asshole? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m trying to keep you focused and help you feel better about things. About how all this is really just life when you think about it. Put it like this: if it hadn’t been me who’d just broken up with Lauren, it would have been somebody else. She’d still be mad, hurt, and angry. She’d still have to work through her feelings, and in my eyes, this is the same.”

“Oh, I don’t know about all that. Come on, let’s start heading back.”

We started walking west toward my car.

“Why don’t you agree with me, Tracey?”

“For the simple fact that it would be different if Lauren and a guy had broken up but they didn’t have to be in each other’s faces all the time. But because you’ll still be coming to see me, well, she’s forced to see it. She can’t really heal if what we’re doing is still going on right in her face.”

“I have a solution for that.”

She looked doubtful. “Which is?”

“I won’t come visit you at your place anymore. Once she returns from Christmas break, you can start coming to mine. How’s that sound?”

“Hmmm! Uh, I don’t know. I’ve never been to your place. What would your roommate say? What’s his name?”

“Brad. What could he say? You’re my company, my lady friend, and plus he’s not there all the time anyway.”

“Oh. Well, your parents. Do they know? About us?”

I cleared my throat.

“Uh, not really. They know Lauren and I aren’t together anymore, but I haven’t told them about you.”

She stopped walking and grabbed my hand till I stopped, too. “Why not?” Her voice was sharp, cutting.

“Tracey, be for real,” I said in a calm, logical voice. “This just happened.”

“No, it hasn’t—”

“What? You think just because I tell my parents about you, that alone will solidify or validate us? Hey, just by the very nature of our age differences and Lauren’s relation to you, we’re going to have to jump through hoops to please everybody. Some folks aren’t going to like it, but we’re not living for them.”

She waved one finger at me, and I walked alongside her once more. “Okay, that being said, maybe a future meeting with your parents is a must.”

“Yeah, okay, Tracey. Very future, though. I don’t think it’ll prove anything.”

“It’s not to prove anything. It’s just so they’ll know what their son is up to.”

“You talking all that noise,” I said, stepping over a trashed paper bag, “but are you really ready to have a face-to-face with my parents?”

“No.”

“I thought so. Scared?”

“Ahh, not really. Just not ready. Maybe one day. Definitely later than sooner, though.”