A Special Relationship (8 page)

 
“I know you didn’t drive your Harley in that nice suit,” she said smilingly as he leaned his big body over her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Although his kiss was a long way from passionate, Tyler closed her eyes just the same, drinking up his sweet, cologne smell and kind, gentle touch.
 
When she opened her eyes again and saw him now seated at her table, her heart raced.
 
He had a broad, strong face with large gray eyes and enticing, narrow lips.
 
His black hair was now slightly sprinkled with gray, which only made him look more distinguished to her, but what made him so attractive, Tyler felt,
wasn’t
just his looks but the fact that he exuded a sensuality that was so subtle and unforced that it lured many an unsuspecting female to fall hard for him.
 
Just as she had done the moment they met, nearly a year ago.

 
He was dressed to tailored perfection in a rich, dark blue suit with a blue and white tie, colors, she thought, that seemed to bring out even more starkly the beauty of his big, gray eyes.
 
He was the catch of the century and she knew it, and that was why she had agreed to share her catch with other females around town.
 
Having part of him was better than nothing, she thought at the time.
 
And it was an arrangement that worked for both of them.
 
Robert wasn’t about to commit exclusively to anyone, not after the pain his ex-wife had put him through, and she was just getting out of a bad relationship herself.
 
But after a year of spending so much time with Robert, a year where she may not have been his only woman, but was certainly, she believed, his most prized one, she now felt differently.
 

 
“I’m glad you made it,” she said smilingly as she removed her reading glasses and sat down the menu she had been perusing.
 
She slung back her long, blonde hair and tried with all she had to appear upbeat.
 
Robert saw right through it.
 
Her smile was forced, it seemed to him, and her pretty face, though hardly bleak, betrayed her uneasiness.
 
   
But they would talk about everything but what she really wanted to talk about for nearly thirty minutes more.
 
Robert talked about the many disasters he had to fix at Dyson, and she went on and on about her law practice.
 
It wasn’t until their dinner orders arrived, and they began to eat quietly, that she got to the point.
 
“I’ve decided to join Fletcher and Lowe,” she said nervously and looked at him.

 
Robert sipped from his glass of wine and looked, not at his distressed girlfriend, but at the plate of food before him, food he suddenly had no appetite for at all.
 
“Have you?” he asked.

 
“Yes,” she replied.
 
And then she smiled.
 
“I think it’s about time I do something.
 
I’ll be forty years old in two weeks.
 
It’s about time I start paying closer attention to my career.”

 
“I thought your law practice was doing okay.”

 
“It’s doing fine, if that’s all you want.
 
It pays the rent.
 
But at Fletcher and Lowe I’ll more than double my take home pay.”

 
“But you won’t be your own boss anymore.”

 
“Thus the down side,” Tyler said.
 
She hesitated, however, before continuing.
 
“Karl offered me the position,” she said.

 
Robert looked at her.
 
“Karl?
 
I thought he left Fletcher to open up his own practice?”

 
Tyler nodded.
 
“He did.
 
But they offered him a partnership.
 
So he took it.
 
And he’s a changed man now, or so he claims.
 
He declares his
running around days are
far behind him.”

 
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

 
Tyler looked at Robert.
 
If only he understood, she thought.
 
“He wants us to get back together, Robert.
 
But I told him I couldn’t.
 
I told him I’m not available.
 
Was I correct?”

 
Robert hesitated and then looked at his girlfriend.
 
“What are you getting at, Tyler?”

 
“You know what I’m getting at.”

 
Robert shook his head.
 
“I don’t know what to tell you.”

 
“Tell me you’re going to marry me,” she said with a forced, painful smile.
 
“Tell me you love me and you’re going to marry me.”
 

 
Robert, however, leaned back in his chair and began twirling around his food with his fork.
 
She must be out of her mind, he thought.
 
After what Gloria put
him
through he’d look like the biggest idiot this side of living going down that road again.
 
He’d marry a toad before he said ‘I do’ to another female, he didn’t care who she was.
 
And Tyler had to know it.

 
“Well?” Tyler said as if she didn’t know a thing.
 
“I need to know, Robert.
 
I’m almost forty years old.
 
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as somebody’s girlfriend.”
 
She paused again.
 
“Robert?”

 
Robert looked at his distressed girlfriend and frowned.
 
“Don’t play this game with me, Tyler.”

 
“A game?
 
You think this is a game.”

 
“What did I tell you before we ever got together?”

 
“I know what you told me.”

 
“Just answer the question.”

 
Tyler sighed.
 
“You said you
wasn’t
going to make any long-term commitment to me or anybody else.”

 
“And?”

 
“Robert—”

 
“And?”

 
“And if I can’t deal with that then I need to let you know right now because our relationship will never be more than casual and sexual.”

 
“And?”

 
Tyler looked angrily at Robert.
 
“And no matter how wonderful I think I am I will not be changing your mind.”

 
Robert nodded.
 
“Okay,” he said.

 
“But—”

 
“No buts, Ty.
 
No buts.”

 
Tyler shook her head.
 
If only he could feel half of what she felt.
 
“So what you’re saying then, what you’re actually telling me
tonight,
is that you’ll be willing to let me go back to Karl.
 
That you’ll be willing to lose me?”

 
Robert hesitated.
 
He was fond of Tyler, probably more so than any of his other females, she was certainly better in bed than the rest of them, and he really would prefer to keep her around.
 
But if Sadie was riding her that hard to where she was even considering going back to a class
A
jerk like Karl Stephens, then it would be better if she did go on.
 
“I can’t lose something I never owned,” he said to her.

 
“Don’t you think she’s punished you enough, Robert?” Tyler said seemingly out of the blue and Robert gave her a nervous, caught off guard look, as if one of his darkest secrets had just been revealed.
 
“What?” he said to her.

 
“Your ex-wife.
 
Hasn’t she done enough damage to you?
 
You’ve got to forget her and move on with your life.”

 
“I think that’s none of your business.”

 
“It is my business.
 
You’re
my business.”

 
“Forget about it, Ty, all right?”

 
“But look at you, Robert.
 
Marva Cox told me what kind of man you used to be, how open and caring and warm.
 
Now you’re hard as stone.”

 
“You need to leave that alone,” he warned.
 
“That is one matter that I am not discussing.”

 
“She left you two years ago.
 
Two years ago, Robert.
 
But you still haven’t even tried to get over it.”

 
“Didn’t I say I wasn’t discussing that?”
 
He said this in such a harsh tone that others in the restaurant looked at him.

 
Tyler stared at him.
 
How dare he talk to her that
way.
 
“Fine,” she said, tossing her napkin on the table.
  
“Don’t discuss it.”
 

 
She stood up without hesitation, and then hurriedly left the restaurant.
 
And Robert, so flustered with the unrelenting anguish of this so-called life, left too.

SIX

Carrie worked diligently, scrubbing down not only the sinks and toilets, but also the walls of the Dyson Corporation’s executive bathroom.
 
But when she grabbed the mop out of the mobile cleaning cart as if she was about to water down the floor, her co-worker Gail, who hadn’t done anything all night but read a romance novel and complain endlessly that Carrie was doing way too much, stopped her.
 
“Like, what do you think you’re doing?” she asked as if she could not believe what she was seeing.

 
Carrie looked at the mop,
then
looked at Gail.
 
“I thought I’d mop the floor,” she said.

 
“Mop the floor?” Gail practically yelled.
 
“Are you out of your country-behind mind?
 
Ain’t no floor moppin’ goin’ on up in here!
 
Slavery over.
 
That ain’t what this about.
 
Willie Charles told us to clean the sinks and the toilets, empty the trash, and go on to the next room.
 
He didn’t say nothin’ about moppin’ no floors and scrubbing down no walls!”