What He's Been Missing (23 page)

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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: What He's Been Missing
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“That's super easy!” I said. “That's from ‘Shirk'!
Devil's Halo
!”
“And . . . she's wrong!”
“Hell no!” I laughed.
“Well, right song, but wrong album. ‘Shirk' is on my favorite Meshell Ndegeocello album—”
“
The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams
!” I cut him off.
“Gold star, boo!”
“Boo?”
We looked at each other.
“So who else do you like?” I asked.
“That might surprise you? Hum . . . India.Arie,” Xavier said and then he started singing, “I am not my hair. I am not this—”
“Please stop!” I covered my ears. “India is probably somewhere screaming!”
“What, a brother can't get in touch with his feminine side?” Xavier said and he kept singing horribly.
We went on playing like this for hours. Until the sun went down. Dinnertime passed and only growls in our stomachs forced us to get up from the floor. This easy conversation. This easy connection. I was immediately taken away. I kept looking at him in disbelief that he was with me. But then I was so happy that he was. After two days in the house, eating everything in my refrigerator and two pizzas Goldie delivered (Goldie was not happy to see Xavier), Xavier insisted that we go somewhere.
I was in the shower having withdrawals. I felt like if we went out into the world everyone might notice that I was living in a little fantasy and maybe the fantasy would shatter. I was also worried about how we might operate together. Ian still didn't know about Xavier and I didn't know how to tell him—not that I needed to tell him anything. There was also still the lingering question I'd been considering when Xavier was asleep with me in my bed—why was he so into me? He knew what had happened between me and Ian at the wedding in New Orleans. Why wouldn't that turn him off? Was he just jonesing for me because he knew how much I'd wanted Ian? Was he jealous?
The new events manager at the Atlanta Botanical Garden had been trying to get me to come see the summer bloom for weeks in hopes of talking me into perhaps booking my client's summer wedding there the next year. I asked Xavier if he wanted to visit the garden with me, sure he'd say he wasn't interested—it wasn't the most masculine place. He surprised me by saying he often went on walks in the Chicago Botanic Garden to clear his head and would like to see if Atlanta would top it. I swear, everything about that man was mounting up to be a surprise. A beautiful surprise.
“It's the
Punica granatum
.” Leek, a slender, soft-shouldered man in peach pants and a cream shirt with a peach collar, walked Xavier and me through a spinning maze of flowers that overpowered our senses with colors and sweet scents. We waited until sundown when they served wine and played jazz for couples walking through the gardens. The June heat was making Atlanta melt, and while the moon in the sky made little difference in the humidity, it was far more romantic than the sun. There were a few more couples with wineglasses walking through the maze ahead of us.
Like them, Xavier and I held hands and sipped wine. He grabbed my butt a few times when Leek wasn't looking.
“Taste it,” Leek said, pointing to the red flower he'd identified as the
Punica granatum.
“Eat the flower?” Xavier asked.
“Yes. Everything in here is edible. The
Punica granatum
is a dwarf pomegranate. You can eat the little orange bulbs.” Leek pointed to a round growth that looked like fruit hanging from the flower. “Please.”
“Go ahead, Xavier. Eat it,” I pushed.
“Um . . . no, Eve. Last time I checked, a man shouldn't eat red things offered to him by a woman in a garden.”
“Well, maybe she could eat it first,” Leek said. “Maybe you could feed it to her.”
Xavier looked at me and picked the tiny pomegranate. “Sounds like a plan.”
Everything slowed down. Stopped moving. I just saw Xavier and the red fruit.
He held it up to my mouth and set it on my tongue slowly, locked in a stare.
“How does it taste, Ms. Winslow?” Leek asked, coming into our world with us.
“Like something in Eden,” I answered. “Perfect.”
“This is the
Dendrobium spectabile
,” Leek said, pointing to an orchid in the Orchid Display House that looked just as alien as it did beautiful. He turned to me. “It's one of the most deliciously unique orchids that grows year round, here in the garden.”
“Lovely,” I said.
“Look at it closely.” Leek stepped back so Xavier and I could see. “It is an exotic flower that shows something different to every eye.”
We leaned in.
The
Dendrobium spectabile
was maroon and lily white in the center with yellow tails that looked like flames poking out around the edges.
“Tell me what you see,” Leek said. “Get in closer.”
Xavier and I leaned our heads from side to side.
“Hum,” we said together, then we started laughing. Maybe giggling. There was only one thing to see. A woman's vulva.
“Whoa!” Xavier said. “It's a pus—”
“You better not!” I laughed.
“Ahh,” Leek started. “I see the flower has shown you two the same thing. That's a good sign.”
“There's nothing else it could be,” Xavier said.
“I've heard many others,” Leek revealed.
“Like?” I asked.
“A dragon. A heartbeat. Curls of pasta.” Leek started walking to the next flower bed. “Funny how beautiful things in nature's garden speak to us. Maybe what we see is more about who we are on the inside than what it is on the outside.”
Later that night at dinner, I finally got the nerve to ask Xavier what I'd been thinking about since he'd arrived in Atlanta: why was he so interested in me? And why now? He didn't even blink before answering.
“You're dope. Period. Everything about you.”
I'm sure I was blushing, but I pointed out that his compliments, kind as they were, didn't fully answer the questions. “Ian told you I was in love with him. He's one of your best friends. Doesn't it break some kind of ‘man law' to date me? Or is this just a sex thing?”
“You think I packed my bags to come down here for a sex thing?” He laughed.
I didn't move.
He sobered up. Put down the drink he was holding and reached out for my hand. “I am not afraid of who you loved. I'm more interested in the fact that you loved. And, to be honest, how you loved—”
“You mean that I tried to break up his wedding? My best friend's wedding!”
“Yeah, crazy,” he said, nodding. “But also honest. And courageous. That shit is such a turn-on.”
I recoiled.
“Calm down,” he said. “I don't mean that in a sexual way. Rachel, most women today don't really know how to love—not with their whole selves. They love because they want a ring. A husband. A nice house. Kids. Someone to go to church and sit up in a pew with. They love because they're supposed to. Not because it's urgent.”
“And you know about loving urgently? Mr. All About Me?”
“I'm learning.” He looked at me sharply.
“This is crazy.”
“Precisely.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to love me that way.”
“Is this some kind of competition?” I asked. “Who will
she
love more? I'm not trying to get involved in a pissing contest.”
“There is no competition,” Xavier said confidently. “I knew I won when you opened your hotel-room door that morning. You wanted to let me in. Admit it.”
The music in the restaurant stopped suddenly. We looked around. The piano player was getting up from his bench.
“Tell the truth.” Xavier turned back around and nudged me in the stomach playfully.
“You're a player, X. Maybe I kind of thought you were fine, but it wasn't like that. I was dealing with a lot. I think I wanted a shoulder to lean on.”
“I'll be your shoulder to lean on,” he said. “And my playing days are behind me. I'm an old veteran now. And, by the way, I could turn all those question on you.”
“What?”
“You said you were in love with Ian. He's your best friend. Is this just a sex thing?” He cupped his pecks like a girl whose bra had been snatched away. “Are you using me for my body?”
“You're a mess!” I said. “I don't really know what's going on. I admit that I love Ian—that I was in love with him when I said what I said, but you . . . you came in and . . . I probably shouldn't be saying all of this.”
“No. You probably should.”
“I really like you. It's confusing the shit out of me, but you just . . . it's like you're whispering in my ear,” I said with the candle on the table between us flickering in Xavier's eyes.
“Damn, girl”—Xavier leaned into the table toward me—“you just made me hard as hell!”
We both laughed so hard, we nearly knocked the drinks off the table.
“You're a mess,” I joked. “But I mean what I said. You've got me feeling a whole lot of things. I'm just wondering what Ian will say.”
“Say?”
“Yeah. About us . . . hanging out. I haven't spoken to him since the wedding. It's been over a month.”
“I spoke to him yesterday,” Xavier said, taking a sip of water.
“What? You didn't tell me that. He knows you're here?”
“Of course.” He looked at me, surprised. “What, you thought me being here was some secret?” He chuckled. “I don't get down like that. I don't creep.”
“What did he say?” I was just stunned. My heart started beating faster. Suddenly the month I hadn't spoken to Ian felt like years, and miles, and landfills of distance. I imagined him living his life with Scarlet. Eating at the table I was sitting at with Xavier. Not thinking about me. Not missing me. He hadn't even called.
“Not much. He was shopping with his wife.” (Wife? Why had Xavier said that like I didn't know Scarlet? Suddenly, she was to be referred to as “wife”?)
“That's cool,” I said, taking a sip from my water then, too.
“Are you OK?” Xavier asked.
“I'm fine.”
 
I've always been happy that I can't sing or dance or play the guitar or do a handstand. Those are all talents people like me are better off without. Like, if I could do a handstand or play guitar, I'd be doing it all day and every day. God forbid I had the skill to do both at the same time. I'd be in Vegas right now performing in Cirque du Soleil. If I could sing, anytime anyone needed a singer—say, at an open mic or funeral—I'd graciously decline all offers to bless the mic, but then, I'd hit the audience off with a wicked medley of “Amazing Grace,” “God Bless the Child,” and “Natural Woman.” I'd then fall out on the stage and arrange for random people in the audience to carry me out.
After hanging out with Xavier for two whole months, him out of my sight only four times when he went home to Chicago to meet with his restaurant managers, I was thinking I should probably add “having a man” to that list of gifts I shouldn't have. We showed out all over Atlanta through the heat of the summer. Every Saturday, we packed a real picnic basket along with a plaid blanket and sat in the park, where we sipped wine from real glasses and Xavier fed me cucumber sandwiches. We'd take pictures, smiling and poking out our tongues to catch the perfect French kiss on camera. We'd lean into each other over flowers at sidewalk tables in front of Buckhead cafes. Xavier would hold my hand on top of the table and kiss it while looking into my eyes. It was wonderful for us, wrapped up in our own world where perfect romance was acceptable and I knew he wouldn't let go of my hand if I reached for his. But everyone else around us looked nauseated by the total and careless exploitation of intimacy. Single women looked at us as though they would put arsenic in our glasses if we looked away. Single men looked at us like Xavier must be whipped or I must have the best vagina in the world. (I agreed on both points.) The only people who seemed excited to see us coming, walking beneath my parasol at the shops in midtown or hugging up on line at the amusement park, were old couples. They'd smile and ask how long we'd been dating. Xavier would proudly announce that we'd been “courting” for two months. I was loving that about him—how he seemed so unafraid of being with me. So damn sure. I was used to men playing all kinds of silly games, but he came right in with his his heart open.

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