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Waking to the sound of the doorbell ringing, I rushed into my robe and slippers. Sleepy eyed, I walked down the stairwell to answer the door. I peeped through the living room curtains and saw a Rent A Pool Guy truck in the driveway. There was a man holding cleaning supplies standing in the doorway looking too happy for it to be only seven in the morning. Despite my irritation, I kindly called out through the door, “May I help you?”
“I’m Anthonio, Tanya’s friend. Your husband hired me to service your pool today.”
“Damn,” I whispered under my breath, as I disabled the alarm and unlocked the front door. I was too tired and sleepy to be dealing with pool maintenance this morning. Then I remembered Titus had wanted to have the pool area serviced before my party this Saturday. The early morning visitor was a Hispanic young man that sounded too chipper to be out doing his job so early in the morning. His Spanish roots were evident as he spoke. His shiny black hair was pulled back into a cute little ponytail. “Oh, that’s right. We were expecting you,” I lied, because I had completely forgotten. Titus told me about the new pool guy’s appointment after I had pulled him out of Rhonda’s apartment, but no sooner than he told me I had forgotten. I suppose I had bigger fish to fry that day.
His baby cousin, Tanya, referred Anthonio because he was one of her classmates at the local community college. He did maintenance as a side business along with working part time at a local department store. Titus liked the young man’s hustle, so he hired him to clean our pool area up for the party to give him some extra business. I invited him in so that he could get his job started, knowing the quicker I let him in the quicker he would be leaving.
Once he stepped into the foyer, I could not help but to check him out from head to toe. He was young, built nice, and easy on the eyes.
“Good morning, Mrs. Wilson! How are you doing today?”
“I’m fine, you?”
“I won’t complain. Which way is the exit to the get to your pool area?” he said, in a chipper singsong tone. It was only his voice that snapped me out of internally sizing him up. He really was a cutie.
“Oh, where are my manners? Good morning to you, too, Anthonio. It’s right this way.” I pointed in the direction of the pool and sauntered ahead of him in the direction of the patio side door. I don’t know why I thought about it, but I wondered if he was watching the way my hips sensually swayed from side to side as I walked. “The pool is out this door. When you want to come back in, ring the buzzer, and I will come down and let you in.
From the look on his face, he had been watching me walk. After getting him squared away, my plan was to go upstairs to get dressed, but [see what had happened was] instead I decided to sit in the patio window and watch him perform the maintenance on the pool. After all, I had to make sure he did things right since this was his first day on the job. A tiny voice in my mind told me I should carry on just as if the older old white pool guy who did the job before Anthonio was there. But I ignored that voice and watched Anthonio’s hunky tight obliques, covered by perfectly tanned skin, accompanied by sexy muscular hips put in work for the next few hours. I even had the nerve to pop a bowl of popcorn and sit in my lounger, watching him like a movie.
At one point, the sun beamed down so hard, he took off his t-shirt, exposing his firm chest that was covered only by a white wife-beater. When he took the shirt off, I couldn’t take it any longer. I got up to go take a cool shower and get dressed. I had to have a change of scenery before I did something foolish.
When I returned back downstairs, I took him a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade so that he would not get dehydrated. I didn’t know what he was used to where he was from, but I was ready to introduce him to some southern hospitality.
“Anthonio, you have been working nonstop since you got here. Take a break and have a glass of lemonade with me.” The sunshine reflecting off his skin was only second to heaven itself. Yes, that would be his nickname from now on Sunshine. The fact that fantasizing about him being my sunshine could only lead to trouble helped me to push the thoughts to the back of my mind and go on about my business. “On the second hand, I know you have a lot of work to do, so I’ll just leave a glass of lemonade on the patio table for you to drink whenever you’re ready for a break.”
His face lit up as if a cool drink had been just what the doctor ordered. “Thanks, Mrs. Wilson. I’ll take a quick break now.”
“Okay, well, I’ll be on the inside if you need anything.” I quickly sauntered into the house ready to get out of arms width of this hunk of a man. Three hours after he had started the job, Anthonio was finished and rang the buzzer to come back inside.
“We didn’t leave it in too much of a mess, did we?” I asked, knowing that a bad thunderstorm had destroyed the pool cover two months ago.
Flexing the muscles in his chest, he said, “I had my work cut out for me, but I got the job done.”
“And you did
an excellent job, so when can I expect you back?” My face turned flush red with embarrassment as soon as I asked that question. The man had just completed the job and lo and behold if I wasn’t trying to get him back over to do it again. I didn’t know if the starry-eyed look I gave him when I asked the question was enough for him to think that I was crazy, but I sure felt crazy asking the question.
“I could come back next month for a routine check, but it looks like you’ve been taking great care of the pool. Even with the cover being destroyed, it wasn’t in that bad of shape. Plus, with the bottom being made of marble, it won’t need that much professional care.” He wrote some numbers down on his receipt book and then handed me the bill.
“I’ll take care of this now. Wait here just a second.” I told him, before walking into the kitchen to get Titus’ checkbook. I wrote the check out for one hundred dollars more than the invoice amount and handed it to him. In the midst of the exchange, I allowed my hand to intertwine with his longer than a usual transaction.
It was then that he suggested, “Unless you need the pool cleaned out sooner than my one month check? I have no problem coming back over here as many times as you need me to.”
Overwhelmed with nervousness and confusion, I quickly said, “I’ll just see you next month,” and gave him a cue to leave.
“Okay, you have a beautiful day, Mrs. Wilson.”
“You, as well,” I said, ushering him to the door. As soon as I closed the door behind him, I exhaled a deep sigh. “I have too much confusion going on in my life right now. Please, send me an intervention, Jesus!” The only person I could think of that I could lean on at the moment was Jesus. I made a mental note to be in the first pew on church this Sunday. It had been months since I saw momma, so I knew she would be too ecstatic to see me at church. Searching my heart of hearts, I knew the Godly thing to do would be to bring my friends with me. They both were fighting their own demons. We all, in one way or another, were fighting demons and losing the battle four to nothing.
Gladys had made her decision to file for a divorce. She said it was not so that she could be with Maverick, but because she needed to be away from James’ abuse. The fact that Maverick was back in the picture didn’t hurt either. I agreed with her decision wholeheartedly, knowing that one day James’s deadly threats would be a reality. When he had finally gone one step too far, raising his hand to her in front of her daughter, she took his death threats seriously and filed for divorce. The last thing she wanted was for James to show Nazaria that men should beat her, or worse, kill her. That was not the way she wanted her children to learn how to love. I was proud of her for making that move. She had never told me that James had been physical with her before, but when he made that drastic mistake, she called me in tears and revealed the whole story. Thank God she was finding the strength to take herself and her children out of that situation.
As far as Rhonda, she was calling less and less, if at all. She apparently was irritated that Titus was spending more and more time at home again. Gladys had not figured out completely that Rhonda and I were on bad terms, but she did tell me that Rhonda had been going back and forth to the doctor with stomach pains. I could care less, because I wasn’t calling Rhonda at all to check up on her. I couldn’t fake the funk about our friendship, no matter how hard I tried.
Chapter 21
Rhonda
“Girl, what is your problem? You have been acting tart towards me all day,” I said, and I know I sounded annoyed. It was the day of Shayla’s birthday party, and she was up in her kitchen acting as if her shit didn’t stink – throwing dip bowls in the sink and moving around me as if she had not heard me say a word all day. “I didn’t have to set up your little stank party, especially if you were going to treat me worse than the help!” I added, letting her know that I didn’t care much at all for her attitude.
