It would settle on my thighs.”
She’d cooked for me. Good woman. I added sugar to my grits, stirred it up, ate.
I said, “You’ve lost some weight.”
“Been working out a lot.”
“Running?”
“Nah. Tae Bo.”
“Where?”
“Billy Blanks’s sister’s class.”
“Heard she was tough.”
“She’s a damn Nazi.”
“You’re toned.”
“Been pushing weights after class too.”
“Trying to get buffed?”
“Light weights. I don’t want muscles.”
She sat next to me, her leg touching and warming mine while I ate.
She asked, “You gonna tell me how you busted your head?”
“Slipped, tripped, and fell.”
“Rrrright. Thought we were the kind of people who kept it real with each other.”
Then I changed the subject, asked, “You still kicking it with ... ?”
She shook her head and gave me a smile that said she didn’t want to talk about him.
I waited a moment before I asked, “How’ve you been?”
“It’s been rough.” She shrugged. “Sick and tired of being sick and tired. ”
“What’s the problem?”
“I’m lonely. Want to stop fucking and start making love.”
Even with what I’d seen in her bathroom, her heartfelt words caught me off guard. Maybe the timing was bad, the personal shit in my head wouldn’t let emotions settle in a place where I could handle this conversation. I nodded, kept my attention on my grits and sausage.
She rubbed my hand. “Sorry for rambling. It’s just weighing heavy on my heart.”
“It’s cool. Everybody gets sick and tired of being sick and tired of something.”
“I get really attached to people. The wrong people for the right reasons. That’s just the way I’m made.” She laughed at herself. “I don’t have control of my emotional barometer.”
I asked, “What’s going on with you?”
“Did some things I’m not too proud of. Same old.”
When I was done, she took my tray away, rinsed off the dishes. I walked up behind her, kissed her on her neck. Whatever she wore tasted like sugar, made me want to lick it all off.
She yawned, looking more bored than sleepy. “We gonna do something before you go?”
“You wanna?”
“I always wanna. And I know you didn’t call me because you like my cheese grits.”
She smiled but I could see the truth behind her eyes. She needed to get away, lose all thoughts and sense of time. Wanted me to do for her what she couldn’t do for herself. Sometimes it felt like sex was a good way to mask deeper issues. Everybody was running from something. Sex was the easiest thing to run to, cheaper than alcohol. Nothing more soothing than scratching an itch. Sooner or later all that scratching made a wound, then a scab.
In my eyes Panther was young, beautiful, powerful.
Small breasts. Full lips. Tight eyes. Skin deep brown, baby smooth. Thick and curvy.
I kissed her neck. She cooed. I sucked her skin until she was hot as a thousand suns.
She moaned. “You do that, I lose my breath and my legs part like clouds.”
I touched her, licked her shoulders and spine, got her riled up on the inside. I shouldn’t have, but I pulled her boy shorts down, took her slow and easy right there. Real slow. Let her lose her breath over and over, let her have knowledge of me moving across every fold and ridge.
She pushed back into me and shivered like I was scraping against her soul.
My mind was stuck at a red light. I’d lost control of my life a long time ago, when I first heard those sirens and made a hard choice that would let Rufus remain free while I became the one in shackles. Panther has had a rough time too. When I first met her and she invited me into her private world, she’d tell me about Atlanta and its bosky landscape, about Club Vision, Phipps Plaza, Café Intermezzo, and a million streets named Peachtree.
She was lovesick, lonely, and confused. I was a passenger on the same road.
She used to call me when she was on her way home. For a while I used to kick it with her, was at her apartment over in Hawthorne a few nights a week. Panther loved to cook and hated eating alone. She’d throw down black-eyed peas, corn bread, and some of the best fried chicken I ever had, or catfish and yams, a different Southern meal each time. I’d bring Jack Daniel’s for me, then have a six-pack of soda, Kool-Aid, Riesling, whatever she wanted. We’d eat, cuddle up, start rubbing each other’s pain away the best we could, and we’d use each other.
One woman could kill a man’s soul but a different woman