in fact, win me a teddy bear. It only had a heart on it, but he made a point to use the bear’s mouth to say, “I love you.”
This, of course, had me dying laughing in the middle of the carnival. We rode on the rides, played the games, and when I was playing whack-a-mole, he lost, and I had another competitor, but Jacquez was the loudest one cheering me on.
Heart ping number forty-eight.
One day turned into a week. One week turned into a month, and one month turned into two. We shared breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We talked and talked. He shared his epiphanies about him and the counselor he had seen. I told him about my life coach as well. I had yet to tell him about the father situation, but the more we talked, the more I realized he was sharing a lot.
Every day we talked, saw each other, and oddly enough, my focus on my father dimmed a bit. The distraction was Jacquez. Not his presence, because he definitely gave me my time, but the fact that our relationship prior to this had been based on sex. I mean, lots of sex. He and I had started with talking trash about sex. Now the man hadn’t hinted, mentioned or even made an innuendo about sex or a baby. He was still his normal alpha self, but that was around his ability to let me do much of anything, pay for anything or just be plain old bossy. I had my ways, but when I exercised them, he stopped. If I set a boundary, he stopped. At first I was shocked, but then he kept doing it, and two months later, after breakfast, lunch, dinner and sunsets, we fell into a routine.
Until that one fateful day on the beach, a woman came running over with her son to get a beach ball. I was reading a book, but Jacquez was on his laptop, since he was not on a sabbatical. The woman basically had patches covering her nipples and a barely-there thong. She bent over to get the ball, showing her whole ass, and I knew my strong woman’s card would get revoked, but a ping of jealousy ran through me. Not just a ping, but territorial jealousy. Very unlike me, if I had to be honest.
Maxine kept asking how we were getting along, but I told her we’d fallen into a bit of a friendship. She did not believe me until I told her that we’d had no sex at all. Not even a hint toward it. We ate, talked, and then he left. There seemed to be a commitment about his declaration to get us right. This further sent Maxine over the edge. She shared that Noah had mentioned that he had changed. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I knew one fucking thing. This woman’s ass in his face was getting me hotter than fish grease. Then she had the dirty nerve to turn around and start talking with him. He engaged in the conversation, and half of me wanted to get up so they could talk, but the other half of me wanted to drag her ass to the ocean by her hair.
To do that takes a lot of balls.
“Excuse me, who are you here with?” I interjected without thinking.
“Oh, me. Just me and my son.” She gave a wide smile.
“Then you should go and tend to him, because we did not trot our asses over to you,” I followed up while pointing at her son playing by himself.
“Oh,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t mean any harm; I just was making conversation.”
This bitch must think I was born yesterday. Been there and did that.
“Listen.” I put my book down to stand up. “Your son is over there playing by his lonesome. I suggest you go and play with him and stay out of men’s faces. Especially men that are with other women. It’s fucking disrespectful, and you’re too old to not know that.”
After spelling it out, I guess she figured the cat was out of the bag, because she put her hands on her hips and said, “You’re out here all of the time and you don’t even touch. I just figured you were friends or distant siblings.” Her eyes narrowed, but just as I was about to take a step towards her, Jacquez was up and pulling me into his body so I would not drag hers.
“You’re mistaken,” he chimed in. “I