Until (29 page)

Betty turned her face away as Jacqui began pacing again.

“I don't care what you say, he could have called The Art House and left a message for you. He could have called you yesterday at home and said— I'll tell you why
Drew
didn't show up. It's because he's a liar. He lied about his looks,
about his body or something. Push came to shove and he backed out instead of telling the truth. You probably shocked the hell out of him when you accepted his invitation and he couldn't get out of it. Otherwise, if he was halfway decent, he would have called. If something sounds too good . . . Think about it.”

“I don't know. Maybe something came up.”

“Yeah, right. Something came up and he couldn't call? And please tell me you didn't call that damn firm of his chasing after him.”

Betty's eyes watered as she thought about being let down once again by a man. A man she believed in so dearly. “No, I didn't call him. But I don't think he has my number or even knows my last name.”

“Betty. Please. Don't defend this jerk!”

Betty was silent, then rolled onto her stomach and aimlessly thumbed through the latest edition of
Ebony Magazine.
“Okay, okay. It's been two days. Let's just drop it,” she said.

Taking a deep breath, Jacqui looked up at the TV and flipped to BET. “Listen,” Jacqui said while watching the tube, “let's go get something to eat; we've been in this office all morning.”

“I don't wanna,” Betty said with the first glimpse of a smile she had mustered in days.

“Come on. Let's get some food in you and you'll feel better.”

Standing slowly like a woman twice her age, Betty said, “Okay, let me put on my sneaks.”

“Damn,” Jacqui replied as she stood. “If you moving that slow now, can you imagine how you would have been in ten years with that firm, putting up with their nonsense?”

“I know,” Betty said, standing in front of the mirror. “I actually look forward to Mondays again.”

“Tell me about it,” Jacqui said, looking at her in the mirror. “I remember all the office politics I had to deal with when I was in corporate America. Like when your boss comes and says, ‘Ahh, Jordan. Let's get together on this project this afternoon.'”

“Yeah, and what he really means is, ‘I don't have a clue, Ms. Jordan, but tell me what you know.'”

“Yeah, right. Or my favorite one. ‘Listen, ahh, would you look this over tonight and give me your opinion tomorrow?' When they actually mean cancel your plans tonight because you don't have a fucking life and give me an in-depth report at nine o'clock sharp!”

“I know. I've been self-employed,” Betty said, looking at her watch, “for seventy-nine hours and I already feel better.”

With a smile at her friend, Jacqui said quietly, “And trust me, girl . . . it only gets better from here on.”

As they walked out of the office Betty said, “Hey, I heard a great lawyer joke today!”

“Aw shyett, here we go.”

Betty sat in a booth, awaiting Jacqui and their lunch. As always, Jacqui was filling in where needed while Willie Mae brought their food. “You can set it here,” she said, moving a file out of the way. Betty tasted the soup and then decided that she should wait for Jacqui to join her, so she pushed the bowl away and placed a thick file on the table in front of her filled with old case summaries she had worked on for Murphy, Renfro and Collins. Betty put on her glasses and thumbed through the pages until she felt someone staring at her. Looking over her oval frames, she saw he wore shorts and his thighs were thick. And then her perusal moved up to his chest, which was wide, and then his eyes, which gazed back at her. And then he tipped his head politely, smiled, and walked away with a slightly confused look on his face.

What the
. . . and then it occurred to Betty where she had seen him previously.
That's the guy I saw at the firm a few months ago,
she thought, leaning back in the booth. As her pulse rate increased, Jacqui walked up to the table.

“Did you see that brother standing here looking at you? Now, tell me he wasn't fine.” Both ladies watched him as he walked outside, and got into his Honda Civic, and drove away. “What's wrong with you, girl?”

“Nothing,” Betty lied as she closed her file. “Can you eat yet?”

“In one second, but don't let your soup get cold. I need
to balance out this register before Tequila gets off. She pays her baby-sitter tomorrow and she missed half of last week. I don't want her to approve a
loan
for herself.”

Jacqui walked away as Betty reopened the file and noticed that one of the copies she had made of Drew's poem “Until . . .” was tucked inside it. She ran her fingers lightly over the print as if it were braille, then attempted to focus on the cases for possible future business. However, the more she tried, the more she failed. Her thoughts bounced from Evander to Drew. Why was it every time she was
so
sure about a man, she ended up being
so
wrong? As she sat looking at the legal-size pages, she decided that she would not call Drew's office the following day. It was time for a fresh start and a new beginning. This would be her first full week in the firm, and she looked forward to . . .

“Excuse me, but may I sit?” said a deep voice behind her.

Betty's head jerked around and her hand jostled the poem off the red and white checkerboard tablecloth. As it floated downward leaflike, he caught it with his fingertips inches before it would have hit the floor, glanced at it, and smiled as he handed it back to her. Then he sat and as he held his stomach and slightly grimaced said, “Have you ever had déjà vu?”

“I'm sorry. You didn't have to—” And then as Betty looked into his eyes she noticed it was the man who had watched her previously. But this time when she looked in his eyes, her heart stopped.

He sat there and said nothing. He stared at her, as if to memorize her every feature, and then once again looked into her eyes.

Dammit. See, I knew it. He too damn good-looking. I bet he's crazy or high or . . . Oh hell.
“Ah, can I help you?” Betty said, and slid her hand into her purse under the table for her Mace.
You move the wrong way and I'll blind you.

“I was detained.”

“You were what?” she asked, placing her finger firmly on the trigger of the Mace.
Why is he telling me about his police record?

“I was—” he reached down and painfully held up his
shirt, showing her a large bandage on his stomach “—detained.”

“Excuse me?”
Dammit. A freak. One more move and I swear . . .

And then as he carefully lowered his shirt, he looked outside and spoke to himself. “I don't believe this.” Turning squarely toward Betty, he said, “I've seen you around town. The first time I saw you was a few months ago at Murphy, Renfro and Collins and I wanted to at least say hello . . . but I couldn't. I knew you looked familiar, which is why I was staring at you earlier, but since you had your hair done differently and you're dressed in sweats, I couldn't place you. But when I drove out of the parking lot, I saw the navy BMW and it all started to fall into place, although I had to come back inside to be certain. And then you dropped the poem.”

“What are you talking about?”

After a swallow he said, “Betty,
love
, I was detained.”

“How do you know my—” And then it sunk in with the subtlety of a ton of bricks. Betty's eyes widened. She wanted to scream, she wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry, but all she managed to do was say, “It's you? It's you, isn't it,” even as she noticed Willie Mae walk back out with Jacqui's food, followed by Jacqui, whose mouth was slightly open. She tapped Willie Mae on the shoulder and motioned for her to take the food to another table. “I thought I had lost you forever.”

Shaking his head, he said, “Betty, if only you knew.”

Betty leaned back and gathered herself as she thought about the experience she had just gone through with Evander. With an assertive tone she said, “Seriously. Tell me. What happened?”

“Well, to make a long story short, I stopped to help this lady on the side of the road.” He paused and looked at his trembling hand smoothing wrinkles out of the tablecloth. “These kids drove up, and well, we were carjacked, that's how I got the wound. But the entire time it was happening . . . the whole while I was in the emergency room . . .” And when their eyes met Betty skipped a breath as he said, “All I could think of was you. I saw your face.
Not your physical face but . . . your essence. And all I could think about was getting out of the hospital and waiting for your call.”

“Umph-umm,” Jacqui said, clearing her throat loudly at the table.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Betty said, looking at her for a split second, then turning to look at her guest. “Oh my God, I can't believe you went through that. I can't believe this is happening at all. Jacqui, this is Drew. Andrew . . . Patrick . . . Staley. Drew, this is my Jacqui.”

“You have
got
to be kidding me,” Jacqui said. “This is the guy? From the computer?” Neither of them said a word as Jacqui smiled and said, “Well, girl, handle your
business,”
and walked away with Willie Mae.

“So could you by chance be my Betty?” he asked with a smile that highlighted a twinkle in his eyes that had previously been missing.

Betty returned the smile and replied, “Could you by chance be the man from my dream?”

Their fingers softly embraced somewhere in the middle of the table as their conversation picked up where it had ended previously on the phone. Drew mentioned the places where he had seen her and was surprised she remembered him from their brief encounter in the restaurant. As she felt the velvet edge of Drew's voice resonate within her, Betty noticed Jacqui occasionally in the background and laughed aloud with sheer happiness.

“I love your smile,” Drew said, which then made her blush. In their conversation they talked about many things and Betty watched his eyes move. As they spoke she enjoyed the fact that she had no inhibition about allowing her feelings to show. While she had cautioned herself to be reserved when they met, those thoughts were melted by the warmth in his face and she felt she had finally found that soft place to lean.

Then in the midst of their conversation Drew stopped. Softly caressing her hands, he asked, “Have you ever met someone for the first time, and all you want to tell them is how much you've missed them?”

Betty's smile vanished as she said quietly, “Not until today.”

The late lunch extended to dinner as the newly met couple watched the yellow and orange ball steal back its shards of light and kiss the spring sky good-bye, as it tiptoed away leaving everything in its path traced in saffron gold. Drew turned Betty's hand over and softly traced the M in her palm. With the white clouds on the horizon turning to shades of pink, Betty and Drew laughed and told stories, smiled, forgot, remembered, and looked forward. But never did they mention their past loves, nor did they mention their bad experiences, nor did their fingers separate from the middle of the table.

Until . . .

“
TIMMOTHY B. MCCANN
is a brother who is in touch with not only the masculine viewpoint, but offers up a curiously accurate insight into the minds and thoughts of women. He had me hooked.”

—Lolita Files

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-94860

EPub Edition October 2015 ISBN 9780062467829

ISBN: 0-380-80579-0

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