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Unfortunately, it went nothing like that.
When we went to my place to drop off Xavier’s bags, I went to make dinner reservations and he decided to get in the shower to wash away the musk of his flight.
Somehow (and I mean for that to sound ridiculous), while passing each other in the hallway, I got a look at Xavier’s arms. Wet. Big and brown. Made for holding things. His skin made me beg to touch it. I had to know what else he was hiding under my white towel.
Now, I’m not the kind of girl who sleeps around. I left that in my twenties with a bad case of gonorrhea I got from a guy I met at my church. But I hadn’t had a gentleman caller in months—and not one before that drought looked quite as good as Xavier.
I guessed my interest was in my eyes, because in the middle of the hallway where I was passing while on my cell phone and he was heading to the living room to get his bag, he leaned up against the wall and grinned so I could see his white teeth.
“What?” he posed with his hand holding his towel in place at his hip rather indifferently.
“That’s just a lot.” I looked at his chest. Two solid pectorals with licorice-colored nipples still wet from the shower led to a staircase of abs that led down to a solid V-shaped pelvis. “I guess you just like to be in the gym, like, all day.”
“Not really. I just try to stay healthy.”
“You look healthy.”
“You wanna touch?”
Sure we could’ve gone on with this exchange, but the wonderful thing about being in my thirties, I was learning, was that it was hard to keep me away from physical action with a man I really wanted. And I really wanted him.
I jumped on Xavier with everything I’d heard about his bedroom acrobatics in my ear. But this was no college boy anymore. He was a grown man. And he handled me that way. Handled me with my back against the wall in the hallway, and then in the bedroom, and then on the floor beside the bed after I tried to get away. I wasn’t a smoker, but I would’ve liked a hit of something after that. I wasn’t thinking about going to a café or walking through the park to pick daisies. Right then, I was cool with staying in my place forever.
We laid on the cold floor, naked and thirsty, for thirty minutes, linking fingers and laughing.
“You must think I’m a slut. A straight-up freak ho!” I said, trying to gauge his reaction to my action. He may have played the game, but I’d started it. And sometimes that perception dictated how a man treated a woman, moving forward.
“Nah. That just lets me know that you know what you want out of life.” Xavier reached up to the bed and pulled the covers down over us.
“Cool . . . wait a minute . . . isn’t that André 3000?” I said, trying to remember where I’d heard that line. “That’s from ‘Where are My Panties.’ ”
“Damn! You got me!” Xavier laughed.
“Trying to run lines on me up in here,” I said, laughing with him.
“I’m sorry. I just figured Dre said it better than I ever could. I judge women based on how they chase their dreams, not how quickly they sleep with me. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I’m more offended that you obviously didn’t think I would know that song!”
“I didn’t peg you for an OutKast fan,” Xavier said.
“Um . . . you’re in Atlanta. . . . It’s my hometown.”
“No, your hometown is out in the country. Ya’ll probably listened to people yodeling. Probably didn’t have radios.”
“OK . . . you got jokes. So, what, you’re some kind of OutKast head or something?” I asked.
“I like them. My musical taste is very diverse, though.”
“Who’s your favorite artist?” I asked.
“That’s hard. I like so many.”
“Name one that might surprise me.”
“Meshell Ndegeocello,” he replied.
“No!” I sat up and looked at him. “She’s one of my favorites. I love her work. She’s totally my lesbian crush.”
