Pink & Patent Leather (8 page)

“
Hey, girl,” Amber, my secretary, called out to me as I approached her cubicle.

I gave her a long glare before I tu
rned into my office. I knew Amber would be right behind me.

“
I know, I know,” she said as she followed me. She closed the door behind us. “I’m sorry,” she apologized.

I was always correcting her and she was always apolo
gizing. “Amber, you know that you can’t talk to me like that out there.”

“
I said I was sorry,” she huffed as she dropped into the chair in front of my desk. “From now on, I’ll just say, ‘Hello, Ms. Jansen’.”

As I dropped my bag onto my desk, I shook my head, then took in the red dress that
Amber was wearing. She was always sharp, but that silk red wrap with the turn-up collar was one of the flyest outfits I’d ever seen her wear.

“
So,” she continued, “are we still friends?”

“
We’ll always be friends, Amber. It’s just that I don’t want everyone out there to know it. You know those women already don’t like me.”

She waved her hand in the air. “
So what? Even if you didn’t help me get this job they wouldn’t like you. So you might as well just go with the flow.”

She was right about tha
t. I’d never been friends with girls, so I never made friends with women. In fact, Amber was the only woman that I could come close to calling a friend. We’d been pretty close up until the third grade when my parents took me out of public school and sent me to the prestigious Sidwell Friends School. But because Amber and her parents attended Grace Tabernacle, I saw her every week.

While I went to Spelman, Amber had gone straight to work after high school. I hadn
’t seen her for four years, but my first day back, she’d called, taken me out to lunch, and told me she hated the health club where she’d been working. She’d been looking for a more professional job and since she was the only person I could call a friend, I used my feminine wiles, flirted with one of the guys in HR, and ten days after I started at
Power Play
, I had a new secretary.

“
So,” Amber said, interrupting my thoughts, “how was your weekend? You do anything special?”

The weekend. It had just been two days, but so much had happened. The anniversar
y dinner, the church service, and then, the visit. But all I said to Amber was, “It was okay.”

She frowned as if she were waiting for more. When I didn
’t add anything, she asked, “So, you didn’t hang out with that fine Xavier?”

I shook my head. I had never
let Amber in on anything—not my relationship with Xavier, not what God had told me about Malik, nothing. We weren’t girls like that. The only reason she even knew about Xavier was that he always called me here and twice he’d stopped by, making me have to explain a little to Amber. I’d told her that we were just friends from Atlanta, but she didn’t believe me. She assumed that X was ‘hitting it’ as she liked to say.

“
So you didn’t see him over the weekend?” Amber pressed me.

Again, I just shook my head.

“Then, why has he been blowing up your phone all morning?” she asked.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Yup.” She nodded. “After the third call, I stopped answering and let his calls go to your voicemail. So, I know you probably have a million messages on there from him.”

I sighed. I knew this had been too good to be true. Since I
’d run out of Malik’s office yesterday, I hadn’t heard a peep from Xavier. I just figured that he was finally done with me, though I can’t say that I’d felt good about that.

But it looked like h
e wasn’t done. It looked like he wasn’t about to let anything go. It looked like I was going to have to deal with this.

“
So if you and Xavier are just friends, why is he blowing up your phone?” Amber didn’t even blink when she asked me that question. She asked like she had a right to know. But she should’ve known that if I hadn’t said anything by now, it wasn’t going to happen. My father had always told me that you couldn’t share your dreams with just anyone. And with the way things had gone down with X, my daddy was right.

The way Amber sat
—like she had no plans on ever moving—let me know that I was going to have to at least toss her a bone.

“
Okay, I did see him,” I said.

“
Yes!” Amber said, pumping her fist in the air as if my words gave her some kind of victory.

“
I saw him at church.”

Her smile fell as fast as her fist. “
What? Church?”

I nodded. “
Yes, and Pastor asked Xavier and I to head the Singles Ministry. So, I suppose X is calling because he wants to go over the specifics and make some plans.”

I nearl
y laughed out loud when she rolled her eyes. She wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she didn’t believe me. “Mmm-hmm, I bet. That man thought I was lying when I told him you hadn’t arrived yet. And his tone didn’t sound like he wanted to talk about anything that had to do with church. Now, if you ask me…”

“
That’s just it, I haven’t asked you!”

“
Well, I guess that’s my signal to get back to work,” she said as if she had an attitude. But then when she stood up, she grinned. “But this isn’t over. I’m gonna be right back in this chair after your meeting.”

“
What meeting?” I asked, clicking on the calendar icon on my iPad. “I don’t have any meetings scheduled for today.”

“
That’s what you think,” she said right before she opened the door.

And standing there on the opposite side, looking as fine as he wanted to, was Xavier. As he stepped in, Amber stepped out, but she turned back and said, “
You can thank me later.” Then, she winked and closed the door.

In the silence of my office, Xavier sta
red at me and I stared at him. And then, he shifted from one foot to the other and I shifted in my chair. After a couple of seconds, he took a couple of steps and sat where Amber had been sitting. He sat as if he’d been invited to do so.

And then, he smile
d.

With my expression still as cold as a block of ice, I said, “
I didn’t say you could sit.”  But then, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I busted out laughing and so did he. And in those moments when we were cracking up together, it felt like old times with X.

After awhile, we got our laughter under control and X said, “
Listen Sasha, I just came here to clear the air. Since Friday, I feel like we’ve lived a lifetime, and all I know is that I don’t want to lose my best friend.”

I pushed myself up and moved
around to the front of my desk. As I leaned up against it, the hemline to my already short skirt rose and I watched Xavier’s eyes scan my legs. I waited for him to finally look into my eyes before I said, “I don’t want to lose you either. It’s just that when I couldn’t convince you...”

He held up his hand and stopped me. “
You don’t have to convince me. Now, I’m not saying that I understand, or agree, but I know you well enough to know that you’ll always listen to God. Eventually. And my prayer is that you will hear and listen to Him soon.”

In a way, this sounded like another slam from X, but I let it go. He had come here so that we could remain friends and I respected that.

“So, do you forgive me?” he asked.

I nodded.

“And we’re still friends?”

I nodded aga
in, this time, a little harder.

He grinned. “
That’s what I want.” He stood and pulled me into his arms.

I hugged him back, loving the familiarity of his embrace. When I finally pulled away from him, I smiled, but his forehead was etched with lines.

He stepped back, but he still held my hands as he said, “You have such a call on your life, Pink. I saw it the first time we got together, I saw it when we did the prayer line together, I saw how you led people to Christ.”

I didn
’t know what Xavier was talking about. To me, he was the one who’d been called. He was the one who led our group, he was the one saving souls. I was just his helper.

Xavier kept on, “
I want to see you walking in your gifts. I want to see you walking in the fullness of what God has for you.”

A shiver shot up my spine and I trembled.

He frowned as he stepped away from me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and crossed my arms. “
I just got a little chill.” Glancing up at the ceiling, I added, “Maybe it was the air conditioning.” That was my explanation, though I felt as if the chill had come from the inside of me. It felt like there was a message inside Xavier’s words, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. Wasn’t I already walking in the fullness that God had for me? Hadn’t I been obedient since I was sixteen?

Even though I was glad that Xavier had stopped by, I felt even better when he said, “
Well, I’m not going to hold you up any longer. I have a client in an hour, but maybe we can get together for dinner this evening?”

There were so many reasons why I wanted to do that, and so many reasons why I couldn
’t. It would’ve been nice to forget all that had gone down this weekend and just hang out, sharing a plate of sushi at The Thai House. Or splitting the pineapple upside down cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.

But I couldn
’t because hanging with Xavier like that wasn’t my life anymore. I couldn’t get sidetracked by the good times we’d had in the past. I had to stay focused. And my focus tonight would take me to my parent’s house for the first part of my plan.

Xavier wasn
’t part of this plan. He couldn’t go with me into my future.

“
Maybe some other time, X,” I said, trying to let him down gently. “I’m sort of busy here and I know it’s going to be a long, long day. It’ll be too late for dinner by the time I get off and by then, I’ll just want to go home and chill.”

Xavier knew me well. And I knew him, too. That
’s why I could tell that he didn’t believe me.

He just nodded and said, “
That’s cool. Another time. So you’re coming to Bible Study tomorrow night?”

Of course I was going to be there.
That
was part of my plan. But I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t want him arriving at the church, waiting for me, messing up what I had to do. So, I said, “I’m not sure. I want to, but this is going to be a crazy week at work. If I can make it, though, I’ll be there.”

He gave me another nod and then, he pulled my hand to his lips and gently kissed my palm. For the second time in just a few minutes, shivers swept through me.

“Have a wonderful day,” he whispered in that voice that could have won my heart if I didn’t already belong to Malik. Then, he walked out of my office without another word.

Even after he closed the door behind him, I stood there, still staring at the space t
hat he had just occupied. That man right there had to be the sweetest guy I’d ever known. In another lifetime, it could have been the two of us.

I sighed. I was going to have to do something about Xavier because if I wasn
’t careful, he could become a distraction. Whether he was yelling at me or kissing me or talking to me, he took my focus away. Although I didn’t want to do it, I was going to have to stay away from Xavier. 

I
’d figure out something, but I would have to do that later. Right now, I did have to get work done. Because unlike what I told Xavier, I didn’t have a long day at the office. There was something I had to do right after work. Something I had to get done tonight.

I pressed the code on
the entry gate, then drove up the circular driveway of my parents’ estate. It was just a little after seven and my plan was to get in, get what I needed, and then, get out.

Slipping out of my car, I walked across the cobblestone walkway, then, pressed in the second code that opened the fron
t door. I pushed the twelve-foot tall door open and then, stepped inside.

“
Hello.”

My parents weren
’t home. Of course, I knew that. They were only into five days of their two-week vacation, but I wasn’t sure if Mrs. Johnson, my parents’ housekeeper/cook was home. When I heard nothing, I called out one more time, just to be sure. But all I heard was the echo of my own voice that reverberated against the oak walls of the entryway.

I closed the door behind me, then leaned against it as I looked up at the windi
ng staircase. All I could do was smile as I remembered the times when I would slide down that wrought-iron railing. My brothers had taught me how to do it and boy, did they get in trouble when my mother came home one day and saw us sliding down, one after the other.