Bro-mance 101

Bro-mance
101

Zhané
Williams
has just been dumped by her boyfriend of six months.  When she learns that he
broke up with her
on the advice of Devlin Hart, a
popular
radio show host who counsels men through his
program
,
Bro-mance
101, she’s fit to be tied.  She drives to the radio station determined to confront Devlin and give him a tongue-lashing he won’t forget. 

Devlin Hart uses his radio show as a platform to help men overcome the disasters of relationships.  He considers himself an expert in all matters related to the heart–his was crushed a few years ago.  As a result, he considers most women to be deceitful and manipulative.  When he’s confronted in an elevator by
Zhané
, her attitude
only adds fuel to his argument.

A freak thunderstorm knocks out the electricity, leaving the two of them trapped together in the elevator for hours.  With nowhere for their pent-up passions to escape, their encounter promises to be explosive–in more ways than one.

O
NE

“Welcome to
Bro-mance
101
, the radio
talk
show that gives dating advice from a male
point of view.  Tonight’s question
is
should you get your ring back?
 
Caller, you’re on the air with D
ev
l
in
Hart
.  Tell me b
ro, did you get your ring back?”

“
Hell yeah!
” a deep voice filtered across the line. 

Dev
l
in chuckled.  He knew this was going to be a hot topic from the minute he saw it on the show’s blog page.  Women were always talking about keeping the engagement ring when a relationship
ended
. 
J
udging from the responses on the blog,
it appeared that
Devin’s
listeners
were primed and ready to sound off on the subject
. 

“Caller, can I get your name and your story?”

“
Uh, j
ust call me
…Ishmael
.”

Dev
l
in
smile
d at the caller’s reference to
Moby Dick
. 
To ensure privacy, callers were encouraged to give whatever name was comfortable for them.  For many guys, baring their souls was tough enough.  Add the element of anonymity, and you could get a brotha to practically admit to
anything.  “Okay,
Ishmael
. 
Tell us, w
hat happened with the ring?”

“
M
an,
you won’t believe this. 
A week before our
wedding,
I caught my fiancée cheating
with another man
.
”
 

“
Oh, n
o!”

“
Oh,
yes
.
”

“I know you didn’t forgive that trespass.”

“
Right.  I ain’t goin’ out like a chump. 
A
fter I broke the dude’s nose, I broke off the engagement. 
I told
my fiancée
I didn’t
ever want to see her again
.  Of course, s
he was trippin’
hard
. 
The woman
had the nerve to
try to keep her ring
and
mine! 
Said I embarrassed her.  So
,
she
felt like she
should get something for her
pain and
suffering.”

“
Wait.  She said y
ou embarrassed her?
Sounds like you got the raw deal, bro.”

“That’s what I’m sayin
g!
”

“I hope you got your ring back after you kicked that guy’s ass.”

“It took a couple of weeks, but
I told her if she didn’t give those rings bac
k, I was gonna put
all
her
business on
Twitter and Facebook.
”

“Oh, that’s cold
.” 

“
No, what’s cold is that the guy she was cheating with filed assault and battery charges against me. 
I go
tta go
to court
next month
.”

“Where’s the justice, man?
”
 

“
I’ll tell ya this,
I’
ma
think long and hard before I get serious with any chick again.”

“
I don’t blame you. 
If it’s any consolation, I’m sure a lot of guys would have done the same thing in your place.” 

Ishmael grew so quiet, Devlin thought he might have hung up.  “I gave this woman two years of my life.  Two years is a long time.”

Devlin’s heart had been ripped to shreds by a woman he’d cared deeply for.  Many nights he’d sat up nursing a bottle of liquor, trying to find the answers to God’s mysteries.  “I’ve been where you are,” Devlin
admitted
.  “Sometimes, when we are going through a storm, we don’t know why it happened until days, months, or even years later.  I look at this as a blessing for you.”

Ishmael snorted.  “How’s that?”

“You could have ended up married to this woman.  Instead, you got to see her true colors.  You should consider yourself lucky.”

“I guess I never thought about it like that.”

“You sound like a good man, Ishmael.  The best way to move on from this is to focus on the positive.  Don’t wallow in the negativity of the past.”

“That
’s gonna take some time
.”
 

“
Stay strong,
bro.  I
know it took a lot for you to call in tonight.  Thanks
for sharing
your
experience
with me
.”

“
I should be
thank
ing
you
,
man.  I’ve been a fan of your show for years. 
You
confront
the issues guys really need to hear about. 
It’s good to know there are
men
out there going through the
same thing as me
.”

“I appreciate that.
Good luck in court, Ishmael
.”

Dev
l
in hun
g up and for the next
hour
, he took calls on the topic of the night. It was the same story with each caller.  A woman had done them wrong. 
A girlfriend had cheated.  An ex refused to give the ring back. 
Only one caller admitted he would not request the ring back. 
The man didn’t want any reminders of the fiasco. 

Dev
l
in’s feelings on the subject were
as
mixed as a pot of his
late
grandmother’s scrumptious
Jambalaya
.
As the
victim
of a
cheating woman, he knew how pa
inful the
betrayal
could be.
 
In fact, the sole purpose of
him doing this show
was to h
elp men
grow and learn from their experiences. 
Women had tons of magazines, talk shows, novels
, and I
nternet sites devoted to telling
them
how to
overcome breakups,
how to
catch the man of their dreams,
how
to build their self-esteem, etcet
era, e
t
cet
era. 
Men had few avenues
available
to vent
, o
ther than hanging out with other men and asking for advice
–which could be downright dangerous
.  Both his radio
show and his blog column offered men
viable solutions
. 
Most guys were good at hear
t, but clueless when it came to manipu
lative
women.

He heard a light tapping
on the glass pane separating hi
s sound studio from the
offices in the main hallway
.
Ramon
Aiello
,
his close friend and
the s
tation
m
anager
stood on the other side
signaling him through t
he glass. 
As soon as Devlin went to commercial break,
Ramon
poked his head through the studio door.  “Dev, it’s getting bad out there.  You might want to pack up for the night.”

Houston was famous for
its
unpredictable
thunderstorms
. 
Even in the heavily insulated
studio, Devlin could both see and hear the heavy rain bombarding the large
glass windows that wrapped around the corner office studio where he hosted his radio show.
 

Fires in
Heaven
. 

That’s what Devlin’s late grandmother called the eerie lightening like the kind dancing across the sky right now.  His nana could smell a storm before it began, and when it finally arrived, she would hide in her bedroom, sitting in her rocker with a crotched blanket draped over her arthritic knees until it subsided. 
She passed away ten years ago, at the ripe old age of ninety, but he knew i
f she were alive now, she’d be doing the very same thing. 

Devlin
removed his headphones and
turned away from the
brewing storm
. 
“We’ve got a half an hour to go,” he told Ramon.  “I want to try to stay on the air until the end.”

Ramon
glanced at his watch, his green eyes narrowing beneath his thick brows.  “I don’t think you have thirty minutes, bud.  We’re under a flash flood warning now
, and
it’s supposed to hail. 
You’d better make a
mad
dash for the
house
.”

Devlin lived
less than
fi
fteen minutes from the radio station in a quaint area of Houston called The Heights
. 
He’d inherited his
charming yellow and white cottage-style home from his
nana
.  The house held not only nana’s antiques, but warm childhood memories as well.  The only drawback was that there was no room in the small garage for his oversized pick-up truck, which was currently parked safely in the radio station’s parking garage.  If it was still raining when he pulled into his driveway, Devlin would no doubt be soaked before he reached the swinging chair on his shade porch.  “My listeners
need me, Ramon.  I can’t leave ‘
em hanging.”