Burn for You

You feel special. You feel like a special little snowflake twinkling in the sun, until you realize he smiles that way at every single woman he comes into contact with, and then you just feel like a dope.

He said, “Where you going in such a hurry, bumble bee?”

Hearing him call me by my old nickname made me grind my back teeth together. “Away from you,” I said, and picked up my purse. When I straightened and moved to go around him, Trace stepped in my way.

“Wait,” he said, suddenly serious. “I want to talk to you.”

“No.” I tried to move past him again, but he didn’t let me.

“Bianca, please,” he said in a low, pleading tone I’d never heard. “I really want to talk to you.”

I looked him right in his eyes. In his gorgeous, caramel-flecked-with-gold eyes that used to be able to coerce me into anything. Not anymore.

I said, “I know you’re not really clear on this, Trace, so let me break it down for you. When a woman says no, she doesn’t mean yes. She doesn’t mean maybe. She doesn’t mean please try to talk me out of it because I really don’t mean it, but I just want you to work a little harder. She means no. N. O. Now get out of my way.”

“But you never gave me a chance to explain—”

“Explain! ” Astonished by his nerve, I laughed. “Explain what? That you tripped and fell and your penis accidentally landed inside my best friend? And the checkout girl at Halley’s Market? And the waitress at Dooley’s? And whoever the bimbo was who kept texting you for a booty call at two a.m.? That’s a lot of tripping, Romeo. You need to see a doctor for your balance problem.”

At least he had the sense to look ashamed of himself. “I know I was an idiot, but I swear I’ve changed.”

My brows lifted. “Really? Got a brain transplant, did you?”

Very solemnly, Trace said. “No. I found God.”

After a beat of shocked silence, I threw my head back and laughed. “Well good for you! Hallelujah! Now get your slutty butt out of my face before I lose my temper and send you off to meet Him!”

I had to give him credit. The old Trace would’ve been pissed about that remark. Probably would’ve made a rude comment about my butt, which he used to tell me could be “fixed” by a visit to a lipo doctor. But this Trace—whoever he was—only looked sad.

“It’s been two years, Bianca. I swear, I’m a different man. Please, I just want to talk to you.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I get it. This is like a thirteen-step program, right? You have to apologize to me or else you won’t get past the pearly gates?”

He winced. “I think you mean twelve step. And no, that’s not it. I just . . . You cut me off and never took any of my calls again—”

“I’d rather talk to a bill collector,” I interrupted angrily. “At least I know it’d be an honest conversation.”

Then—hand to heaven, I could not make this up—the man got a tear in his eye. A big ol’ crocodile tear that sat there and glimmered and trembled like a makeup artist had just run over with a bottle of glycerin in between film takes.

He said roughly, “I’m sorry. That’s all I wanted to say. I treated you badly, and you didn’t deserve it. I didn’t want to stalk you after we broke up, but I kept hoping I’d run into you somewhere. And here you are. So . . . I’m sorry. I really did love you, even though I did what I did. It just took losing you to make me realize it.”

He looked at his shoes, took a breath, and then met my gaze again. Very quietly, he said, “Actually, I still love you, bumble bee. I think I always will.”

I admit it. My heart did a major flip-flop. I got a serious case of butterflies in the stomach. Who doesn’t want the ex she was madly in love with to do a bit of groveling after he treated her like a disposable napkin?

Unfortunately for him, the girl I was then and the girl I am now are two different Biancas altogether.

I took a breath, squared my shoulders, and lifted my chin. “I can’t say it was nice to see you, Trace, but it was definitely interesting. Good luck to you.”

My head held high, I walked briskly past him. I didn’t look back. I kept walking—my gait was almost a power walk it was so fast—until I got to the restaurant. Then I threw open the front door and ran inside to hide because I wasn’t 100 percent sure he wasn’t following me.

“Um, whatchya doin’, boo?”

Eeny’s confused voice came from behind me.

“Making sure I wasn’t followed,” I said, peering out to the street through the blinds on the windows.

“Followed?” She chuckled. “Your meetin’ with the werewolf went that bad, huh?”

Satisfied Trace wasn’t about to burst through my front door, I let the blinds fall back into place and turned to look at Eeny with a sigh. “Ugh. That was a whole other disaster. Remind me to have a shot of liquor before I talk to Jackson Boudreaux again. Maybe he’ll make sense if I’m tipsy. But I wasn’t talking about him. I was talking about Trace.”

At the mention of his name, Eeny made the sign of the cross over her chest.

I’m not even sure she’s a Christian, but she likes to keep all her bases covered.

“Trace! Lawd! What on earth you doin’ talkin’ to him?”

“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea.” I walked past Eeny on my way to the kitchen. Huffing and excited, she followed right on my heels.

“Well what did he say? More importantly, how did he look? Does he still have all those big ol’ muscles in all the right places, or did he let himself go?”

I snorted. “The day Trace Adams lets himself go is the day the earth stops spinning.”

“So he looked good? What was he wearin’?”

I stopped and turned to look at her. “Eeny. Focus. The man is a liar and a cheater. It doesn’t matter how good he looks.”

She pursed her lips. “Can you just tell me if he was wearin’ those tight jeans like he always used to that accentuated his nice big package and tight butt?”

I sighed and turned away, headed for the kitchen. “No. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants.”

Hello, white lie. Trace had actually been wearing jeans that accentuated his bulge and tight butt, but I wasn’t about to tell Eeny that. She’d get nothing done for the rest of the day. And I wasn’t admitting to myself that I’d noticed, anyway.

Only I had, which was pathetic. Trace was the last man I’d had sex with, and he knew what he was doing in bed. I wasn’t sure if my lack of attraction to anyone since was due to how badly he broke my heart or a terrible suspicion that no other man would be able to make me scream the way he had.

Either way, my dry spell had gone on so long the inside of my vagina probably looked like one of those old Western ghost towns, all tumbleweeds and abandoned buildings, mean-looking vultures picking over dried-up bones.

“Sweatpants!” exclaimed Eeny. She made a clucking sound, like a hen. “Lawd, what a waste. That’s like hangin’ curtains on the statue of David.”

Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t disagree. Trace might be all kinds of wrong, but I’d never seen another man as beautiful.

If only the inside matched the outside. But, as Mama always told me, beauty is as beauty does. Some of the prettiest faces hide the meanest hearts, and smooth talk is no substitute for good character. The only way to judge a person is by his deeds.