Choose Me (27 page)

Eva convinced me to return on poetry night to read again from
Sinner.
I didn’t get sick on this occasion, focusing instead on Eva’s forehead the entire time. After the reading, I sold the surplus
copies of my book to benefit the local women’s abuse shelter. I didn’t mind donating part of the proceeds since it was a worthy
cause and the books
had
been collecting dust in my self-storage unit.

“Do you know what Buono Dio means in English?” Eva asked, bringing me back to the present while methodically cutting into
her fish and gliding a forkful into her mouth.

I tried hard not to leer at her lips as she chewed. “I know ‘buono’ is good … Dio, I’m not sure.”

“God. It’s means ‘Good God.’” She moaned as she chewed her food.

“That good, huh?”

“Mm-hmm.” She offered me the next bite.

I accepted the morsel, grabbing hold of the fork as I delicately took the food into my mouth, gazing at her through half-closed
eyes. Sometimes I did things like that just to see her reaction. Most of the time she smiled indulgently, as if I were a child
in need of patience. This time she held my eyes and she didn’t pull the fork back. I couldn’t help but think about the kisses
we had shared in the last two weeks. While I had enjoyed kissing her and was slightly intrigued by the pseudo foreplay, I
didn’t know how much longer I was going to be able to keep it up. The power I had envied in women like her was beginning to
drive me mad. And yet, I still wanted her. Wanting her was testing my patience. Lately, I was becoming short tempered and
irritable—a side effect, I told myself, from wearing the smoking patch. Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder was
definitely not talking about abstinence.

“Maybe they should have called it ‘Good Food,’” I suggested, letting go of the fork, and she laughed, the awkward moment broken.

The food
was
good and we were both hungry, so we resumed eating and I cooled it on the flirting.

“You want to taste this?” I asked, giving her some of my pesto salad.

She shook her head emphatically. “Pesto has eggs. I’m allergic to eggs.”

“That’s too bad. So you can’t eat
anything
with eggs? No cake, cornbread—?”

“Nothing. I don’t need the calories anyway.”

“You don’t look like you have a weight problem.”

“Ha!” she laughed, and began telling me about her battle with anorexia and crash diets. Periodically, she winced in between
bites and eventually, she excused herself to go to the bathroom—I assumed to take her headache medication.

The night before, I had called Sondra to ask if she had taken my Chapman CDs when she moved out. I figured that it had been
more than a year and we were definitely over each other. Of course, I could have let her keep the CDs and just bought new
ones, but considering what happened just before we departed, I didn’t think she would assume I had a hidden motive for calling.
It wasn’t even the principle of the matter. More than anything, I hated a thief.

“What makes you think I took them?” Sondra had asked, her voice flowing through the phone smooth and pure like milk and honey.

“They’re all missing. And you’re the only one I know who liked her as much as I did.”

“It could’ve been one of your other women.”

I didn’t bite at her attempt to inquire about the state of my present love life.

“So, are you seeing anybody?” she then asked bluntly.

“Are you?”

“What do you think?”

“Do you have my CDs or not?”

“Yeah, I have them.”

“Can I have them back?”

“Is that what you want? Is that really why you’re calling me? Because really, Adam, you can just buy new ones or download
them from the Internet.”

“That’s time consuming and I have better things to do. Anyway, they’re mine.” I sounded like an insecure immature jerk, but
I didn’t care.

“You want me to bring them over now?”

I tried not to picture her lounging lazily in bed, in a skimpy T-shirt and underwear, her eyes half closed as she smiled seductively
into the phone. I was tempted, man was I tempted, but my insecurities got the best of me. There was no way I was going to
risk a repeat of our last encounter. I could see her laughing at me already. And then there was Eva. We were officially going
together, even though with past women that included physical consummation, and even though there was a possibility that it
might never happen. Any other day …

“I don’t think my lady would like that.”

There was a significant pause on her end and as juvenile as it was, I felt vindicated for that unfortunate incident during
our last sexual encounter. For one glorious moment, I felt redeemed.

“I’ll mail them to you,” she muttered, before hanging up.

After what seemed like an excessive amount of time to use the restroom and take a pill, Eva still had not returned and I began
to get worried. I signaled the waiter.

“Can you have one of the waitresses check the ladies’ room for my date?”

“I think the lady, she is sick,” the waiter said in a heavily accented European English I couldn’t quite place. He indicated
toward the restroom area. “She say not to bother you.”

I got up and hurried toward the restrooms and found Eva sitting in the hallway, in a lounge chair, her head in her hands.

“Eva, are you alright?”

Startled, she looked up quickly, her face twisted in pain and tears brimming her half-closed eyes.

“You have a headache,” I stated matter-of-factly. “I’m taking you home.”

She waved me away. “It’s not bad. I’m supposed to take this new medication as soon as I feel a headache coming on. I waited
too long. I’ll be fine.” It was obvious that she was in terrible, excruciating pain.

I sat down next to her. “Give me your hand.”

“What? Why?”

“Give me your hand,” I insisted.

She extended it and I firmly pinched the web between her thumb and forefinger.

“Breathe deeply,” I told her. She closed her eyes and inhaled, exhaled, then moaned. “How does that feel?”

“I can feel the pain going away, a little.” I momentarily stopped applying pressure. “Now it’s coming back again,” she said.

“It’s called ‘acupressure.’ Something about invisible channels of energy in this part of the hand being connected to the head.
My mother used to do this when she got stress headaches during my father’s illness.”

“I’ve read about that. Your hands and feet are supposedly related to different organs or something. I always thought that
stuff was quack medicine.”

“My mother believes in all that mess. She won’t take any kind of medicine. She has to be really sick to go to a doctor.”

“My mother was the same way. Then one day she had a headache, laid down, and died in her sleep.”

“Oh, man.”

“She had a brain aneurysm. I was always afraid that my migraines were a symptom and that one day I would have an aneurysm.
But the doctor assured me that they’re almost always sudden. I get an annual MRI just to be sure.”

“And they’ve never found anything?”

“Yeah, they told me that my symptoms are consistent with migraines,” she said dryly. “I was, like, ‘thanks for stating the
obvious, guys.’”

As I listened, I intermittently pressed and released her hand. “How does your head feel?”

“Better.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. I guess there is some truth to it. Either that or the medication’s finally kicking in.”

“Because there’s a pressure point in your foot that works for headaches, between your first and second toe—”

She smiled wanly. “You are
not
touching my feet.”

“You ready to go home?”

“After the coffee.”

“I thought doctors said coffee was bad for migraines.”

“Are we reading medical journals now?”

“Internet.”

We got up and walked back to the table. As we waited for our coffees, I took her hand again and started massaging it between
both of mine. Her skin was so soft it made my stomach clench. Perhaps because I had been abstinent so long, every little thought,
smell, or touch of her set me off.
God, your skin is so soft,
I thought, wondering what the rest of her body felt like. I wanted to say the words, but I knew she wasn’t the type of woman
who bought compliments, even well-intended and truthful ones, so I didn’t even try to put it out there. And knowing her for
the short time I had, she might have taken it as a sexual comment. Judging by the way she broke her stare, however, I knew
she must have read the pleasure in my eyes. The waiter brought our coffees and we pulled back. It was getting late and we
were almost the last patrons in the restaurant. There was only one other table, where two loud and lively couples remained.

“You talk about your mother a lot, but you don’t talk about your father too much,” Eva said sipping from her cup.

In all our conversations, I had always managed to evade any discussion of my father. I would give her short answers or conveniently
change the subject. Sensing my hesitation, Eva looked apologetic.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I don’t like talking about my father too much either. I understand.”

But then I started the saga of my father, beginning with the good, going into the bad, and ending with the ugly—meeting my
half brother and half sister and their mother at the funeral. I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my chest. It wasn’t
that I had never talked to anyone about my feelings for him, it had just been so long.

“And you’ve never visited his grave?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “No use.”

“I think you should visit it. I go every year, on my mother’s birthday.”

“Yeah, but you loved your mother.”

“And you loved your dad,
no
?”

I liked it when she ended her sentences with a Spanish “no” or peppered her dialogue with Spanish words or phrases. It was
something else about her that made her so out of the ordinary, and made me feel like this time, things were different. And
it wasn’t, as Luciano claimed, that I saw her as this exotic woman just because she was of a different ethnicity. When we
walked down the street, Black women didn’t give me the evil eye like they did when I was dating the French-Canadian female.
For all they knew, Eva was one of “them”; a Black woman. Most times, because of her bronze skin and curly hair, I forgot she
wasn’t a sister. It was only when she spoke Spanish, which she rarely did, that I was reminded.

“Before I found out what kind of a man he really was,” I finally answered. “Yes, I guess you could say I loved him.”

“After my mother died, my father dropped us off at my Aunt Titi’s,” Eva said quietly. “He didn’t tell us why or anything.
He didn’t talk about my mother again, never mentioned her name. Then he stopped coming to visit us, and whenever we wanted
or needed something, we had to track him down. It was like he had divorced us and stopped being our father.”

“And how often do
you
visit him?”

She paused and looked down at her cup, turning it counterclockwise slowly before looking up at me with a gleam in her eye.

“I told my father about you.”

“What did you say about me?”

“I told him I’m seeing this man whom I like very much.”

I smiled my gratitude. “And he said?”

“Otro moreno?”

“What does that mean?”

“Another Black man?”

That stung. I made a mental note to stay away from Papa Clemente. “He doesn’t like you being with a Black man?”

“He would just prefer that I be with a Hispanic man. I mean, he likes Alex. And he liked Anthony—until he cheated.”

“Do
you
want to be with a Hispanic man?”

“Remember what I said? You can’t help who you fall … who you like.” She smiled coyly and interlocked her fingers through mine.
I remembered what she had said:
You can’t help who you like, or fall in love with. Or think you love.
But I didn’t correct her. “I want to be with you,” she continued.

I thought maybe I should return the same sentiment but she didn’t seem to expect it. Although she squeezed my hand, her mind
seemed to momentarily wander away.

“I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven my father for what he did back then,” she said, then looked into my eyes. “Have you? Forgiven
your father?”

“I can’t forgive someone who’s no longer here.”

“Can’t you?”

I contemplated the question and thought about my father’s infidelity, and although I still felt I didn’t owe him anything,
I began to wonder for the first time in years whether it was time to start facing my demons.

HE WAS HOLDING
my lips hostage, tightly but tenderly with his teeth. In turn, I was trying to get him to release them by holding
his face in my hands, slowly pulling his head away. My body was trying to convince me it was tired of fighting, while my mind
was screaming
NO!
One minute we were debating the spiritual connotations of
The Matrix,
the next minute he was asking me how to say his name in Spanish. He was babysitting his niece and nephew again, and this
time, he had succeeded in persuading me to come over and watch
The Matrix.
One minute we were sitting on the floor eating popcorn and Raisinettes, and the next we were tasting each other’s tongues.
Although his arms were neutrally on the small of my back, moving slightly up, at the same time, he was pressing me closer
to him. The slight aftertaste of mint coupled with the buttery popcorn and sweet chocolate lingered on his tongue as it tangled
with mine. This was a dangerous kiss, more sensual than the others, more urgent. I kept trying to convince myself that as
long as we were just kissing, in a sitting position, I would be fine.

His hand moved up to my neck, palming my throat as if he were going to choke me, then he proceeded to caress the back of my
neck. Suddenly, he stopped kissing me and I was relieved, able to take a few deep breaths. I slowly opened my eyes. I was
ready to end our moment of reckless passion, at least for the night, but his face lingered in my personal space, the air between
us sweet, salty, and heavy with expectation.