One Date, One Man, Never Twice: My Rule After the Divorce novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Grandview

The overlook on Grandview Avenue was nearly empty by eleven.

The city was spread out below the railing in a thousand yellow lights.

Deshawn parked his Buick at the far end of the lot, under a bare tree, and turned off the engine.

Neither of us said anything for a minute.

The rivers were black, and the Point was lit up, and the bridges ran across it in strings.

"I come up here when I get off," he said. "Most nights it's me and a guy walking a beagle."

"Do you like it?"

"I like knowing where everything is."

He was twenty-three, with a short fade, a slow smile and one silver stud in his left ear.

He was a barback at a bar on East Carson.

He lived with his grandmother in Homewood.

He had told me all of this at the bar the week before while carrying a crate of limes.

He had a low, slow voice, and he had called me "ma'am" nine times since dinner.

"Deshawn," I said.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"You can't keep saying that."

"My grandmother would come out of the ground," he said. "I can't help it. It's manners."

"I'm thirty-six. I'm not your teacher."

"Okay." He turned in the seat and looked at me, and the smile came slowly across his face. "What should I call you, then?"

"Dee."

"Dee," he said, and tried it out, and I felt my stomach go warm.

I looked at the back seat.

It was a wide old bench with a gray vinyl cover, and there was a child's booster seat folded flat on the floor.

"My cousin's," he said. "I'll take it out."

"Leave it."

"Dee, I don't think..."

"Deshawn." I opened my door, got out into the cold, and opened the rear door.

I climbed in and sat in the middle of the seat.

He stood outside for a moment with his hand on the roof of the car, looking at the dark lot and then at me.

Then he got in and shut the door, and the dome light went out.

We had the whole back seat, the dark, and the city glittering through the windshield.

"Come here," I said.

He came.

He kissed me carefully, with one big warm hand around the back of my neck.

I was the one who pulled him closer.

I pulled his coat off his shoulders and shoved my own away.

His cold hands slid up under my sweater and found my bare skin.

"Oh," he said into my mouth. "You're warm."

"Take it off me."

He peeled my sweater up over my head, and then my bra, and the cold air hit my breasts.

He looked, and he didn't hurry.

"Look at that," he said.

He cupped them in both hands, so big that they covered me, and ran his thumbs over my nipples until I arched.

I unbuckled his belt myself.

He lifted his hips so I could drag his jeans down, and then I took hold of him.

He was long, dark and heavy in my hand, and he sucked in air through his teeth.

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