Page 50 of Heartless

“As my ex and a woman that I find attractive, she’d take issue with that.”

“Smart woman,” she says.

“We’ve talked about me quite a bit. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Tell me about Sharla Watson; the woman and not my employee,” I encourage.

“You already know me.”

“No, I know the person that you were. You’re a full-grown woman with life experiences now. I want to know who that person is.”

Laughing, she says, “Now, those are the types of questions that can get you in trouble.”

“Why is that?” I ask, grabbing a napkin and wiping my mouth with it after finishing the last of my sub sandwich.

“Because when you become interested in a woman and get to know her personally, you find yourself stepping into deep waters. The rubber boots you put on will only weigh you down,” she says with a sparkle in her eyes and a flirty smile on her lips.

I smirk. “Is that your way of telling me to mind my business?”

She chuckles and says, “No. Let’s see, I’m a divorcee with no kids and whose ex-husband lives on the other side of the country to be close to his son from a prior relationship. He’s working on their broken relationship.”

“How old were you when you married him?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Wow! Not long after college?”

She smiles and nods. “Yes. Dated him from freshman year on. I was determined to prove that he wasn’t a rebound relationship for me. Go ahead.”

“What?”

“You want to ask what happened to my marriage.”

“A polite, Southern gentleman would never pry into a woman’s business like that, especially not one whose mother raised him right.”

“Fine. I’ll tell you anyway. He discovered that he was into polyamory. I discovered that for him that meant men and women alike. He discovered that I wasn’t that girl, and I’d cut his dick off for fucking men or another woman.”

My eyes widen, and she giggles as I choke on my soda. Sharla scoots closer to me on the bench and pats my back. Her proximity, the smell of her sunflower perfume, the brush of her breast against the side of my arm, her warm breath caressing my face, and her soft but firm hand on my back throws me off kilter. Maybe she’s right, and I can’t handle being her friend; but I don’t say that.

After I regain my composure, she returns to her side of the bench.

“I never would have guessed it. Although that dick-cutting thing I could see.”

“I met Manny when we were both freshmen in college, but I wasn’t ready for a relationship then.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“Right. So, on the rebound from you, I didn’t want to make him that, but he didn’t care. And I was determined that he wasn’t that. He pushed and pushed for more from me until I finally gave in during the middle of freshman year. We had a false scare in our senior year and were both relieved to find that we weren’t having a child, especially since he’d already had one during his junior year of high school.

“When we married, I took his son in as my own. He was eight and a handful. Jose’s mama was trying to teach us a lesson by dropping him off on our doorstep the day that we moved into our apartment. We didn’t see that woman for almost six months. I don’t regret my marriage or my relationship with Jose, my stepson. He’s nineteen, in college, kid-free, and still has an excellent relationship with me.”

“It’s commendable that you took on a child that wasn’t yours and loved him like that.”

“It wasn’t really an option for me. If I took on the man, then I took on everything that came with him. And when I foundout the truth about his sexuality, my stepson overheard our argument, and it took a toll on him, too.”

“How did you two manage through that?”

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