She wasbad.
Tall.
Slender, but thick in the thighs and had small hips that I wouldn’t mind grabbing on.
She smelled heavenly, like something floral and fruity.
Full lips and a pretty smile.
Her laugh was attractive as fuck too, and her voice had this sexy ass rasp to it. She had one of those voices that you could listen to talk all night.
Fuck. I ain’t felt like this in a minute… ifever.
But more than her beauty, I was attracted to her aura. Her boldness. How she seemed genuinely curious about what I was reading.
Hell yeah, I would take her on a date. I just needed to figure out how to plan one first. Pulling up the browser on my phone, I started to Google it, but felt awkward. I needed some sound advice from a person who really knew me.
So I called my Pops.
Varnell Hill answered on the third ring, and I could bet my last dollar that he was sitting in his den, watching the Bears play on mute with some John Coltrane playing softly on his Bluetooth record player I got him for his birthday one year. He was newly retired and a creature of habit.
“Aye, Pop?”
“What’s happening, son?”
“I had the craziest encounter tonight,” I started. “You know that new bookstore and wine bar?”
“The Black owned one? By them gals who got that crazy colored hair?”
I chuckled. I had shown my Pop their Instagram once, and he was shocked that the owners rocked emerald green and ginger colored hair, respectively.
“Yeah, man. That’s them. Anyway, they had that new manga I was telling you about. They have some good Black-owned bourbon too. I think it was Uncle Nearest. Anyway…. I met someone.”
“And? I hope you ain’t make a fool of yourself with that whole shy act. You ain’t ugly and you ain’t no bum ass nigga!”
“She actually did most of the talking. She walked right up to me, introduced herself, we made some small talk… and sheasked if I wanted to exchange numbers because she wants me to take her on a date.”
He hung up on me and began to FaceTime me on his iPad. I answered, and he was grinning like the Cheshire cat. “She did what now, son?”
I repeated what I said, and he went off camera, no doubt leaning back and stroking his salt-and-pepper goatee.
“Sounds like she’s a rare one, son… ya mama was like that. Saw what she wanted and came right up to me after our sociology class in college.”
Silence hung in the air between both of us, no doubt trying to push down the emotions that came when either one of us brought up my late mother. My parents met in their junior year of college, and the story goes is that my mama saw my pops, walked up to him, and handed him a slip of paper with her phone number on it, and told him that she’d be ready by eight. Pops was stunned, but shortly after their first date, they were inseparable and later married when they graduated from college a year and a half later. Nine months after that, I was born, and things were good until my mother passed away suddenly from a rare disease called pulmonary embolism when I was five.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I rushed to change the subject. I missed my mother and hated that I didn’t get more time with her, but I really felt bad for my Pops. Let him tell it, they were soul mates, and he never remarried, just raised me as a single man, and left it at that. And while my Pop was an amazing man, sometimes a nigga just needed his mama, you know? I remember my mama always smelling like brown sugar cookies and how she taught me how to read and write. But I’m sure that no one missed her more than my Pop did.
“Yeah… so how you think I should go about doing this?” I asked, getting back to the reason for my call.
He cleared his throat. “Well, son, have you called her yet? Start there. You gotta find out what the girl likes and dislikes and listen. Women like to be listened to. They like it when you remember small things about them that most people overlook. This girl seems sure of herself and what she wants, so you let your natural confidence take the lead.”
“When should I call her? Is tomorrow too soon?” I asked because I was genuinely confused. It seemed like there were so many rules to modern dating that baffled me. If I showed too much interest, I was being thirsty. If I were nonchalant, then I would be accused of trying to do the bare minimum. Some women I came across said they wanted one thing, but then when it showed up in their faces, they ran from it. I know niggas were weird just from all the shit they had to deal with, but some women were equally as weird, if not weirder. Like, how were people supposed to find their happily ever afters in all of this?
Not that I thought any of that was in the cards for me.
My Pops sighed. “Swear your generation just makes shit so difficult! She gave you her number tonight, right? Did she drive? Did you walk her to her car? Did you send her a text to make sure she made it home okay?”
I responded with silence, and he grumbled. “Son, you about to be thirty-three years old. You can’t be this clueless! Text or call the damn girl. Find out what she likes. Then use that big ass brain of yours to plan something nice. If it works out, cool. If not, that’s okay too. You deserve to see what happens, son.”
