Part One

I know it started that Sunday night that he came over to visit.

My day had been kinda harsh; the car died on me on the highway on my way to work; when I got there, my boss blew up at me for being late, even after I told her why; I had to take over part of someone else's shift when they left-- just before I was supposed to leave for the day-- because they weren't feeling too hot; my ex met me at the door to my apartment and told me that he wasn't goin to pay anymore child support for Selina, our daughter; and I broke up with my latest boyfriend, Edward-- we had been together for nearly nine months.

I wasn't in the greatest of moods. Selina decided to occupy herself with the Sega, knowing somehow that now wasn't the time to bug mommy. My good friend Cynthia called, and we got started talking about our days. I listened to her more than I talked-- she's my girl, but, damn! can she talk. She'd talk your damned ear off if you let her. But, by now, I'd gotten used to listening to her for nearly an hour or so before I'd have to jump off the phone.

It had just started raining outside, and not the nice rain either-- it was the rain that you didn't wanna be out in if you didn't have to, the rain that got you soaking wet in less than a minute-- and there was a knock on the door.

"Selina, would you get that for me, honey?" I called from the bedroom, looking around for something while I was still talking to Cynthia-- whatever the hell it had been, I'd forgotten just that quick.

Apparently, she had jumped up get the door, since a moment later, she came back to me, and told me who it was.

"It's Marcus," she reported, a smile crossing her face.

I told her to tell him to hold on a minute, and I would be out to say hi. But, like I said, my girl would talk your ear off if you let her, and she started telling me a story that I had little choice else but to hear.

When I finally got off of the phone and came out into the living room, he was just finishing up a game of chess with Selina.

"How come you didn't take my king when you had the chance?" He was asking her as I came into the room.

"Cuz I wanted you to win," she said simply, smiling.

"Oh, yeah?"

"I coulda beat you earlier," she explained, showing him how she could have done it.

"Well, home come you didn't?" He asked again.

She shrugged her shoulders.

About then, they both noticed me. He got up from his seat, and stood, hishands moving into his pockets of their own volition.

Let me tell you a little bit about Marcus first. He was an intelligent brotha, I can say that easily. I'd met him nearly a year ago, when he and he then-girlfriend had come down from the nearby college to help Selina and me with our "new" computer. Selina had been one of a handful of kids to get a computer to use for a half-year from the school she went to. Anyway, she didn't have much stuff to go with the computer, and so I'd mentioned it to a friend of mine. Well, word got through the grapevine that someone needed a computer person to visit their house and give em a hand. So, Marcus and Trisha.

It was obvious that Marcus had had more experience with the computer than Trisha did, but he was trying to hold back, since it was Trisha who had heard that I needed some computer help. I don't know why, but I had kinda taken a liking to him even then, though it was more because he was a smart brotha than anything else. I lived in a neighborhood where smart brothas-- or, at least the ones smart enough to stay in school, since there were more than enough of em smart enough to know how to deal dope-- were about as common as sex to the Pope.

He was cute, but not blindingly so. It was the kind of baby-brother-growin-up cute. Not God-I-want-him cute, but the cute that makes you wanna know who he is cute. Anyway..... He was dark, almost darker than me, tall-- about six feet even, I think-- and in every other way, except for his intelligence, he was average. Average cute looks, an average-- okay, maybe not quite so average-- build, and average dress. That was it. His intelligence.....and his eyes. He had the darkest brown eyes I'd ever seen, and they were oh so pretty. He had nice, thick lips; they never looked overwet, but they never looked dry, either.

Okay, so maybe he wasn't exactly average. He wasn't a stallion, but he wasn't Steve Urkell, either.

That night, though, when he looked at me, I felt something stir within me, for just a moment. I stopped my thoughts, telling myself that it was just a stray thought about Eddie, who I'd just broken up with. Really, though, we hadn't been talking for nearly two weeks, after that argument where he'd defended his mother's blatant disrespect for me and I'd left his place with murder on the brain. The breakup, a couple of hours before, hadn't been anything more than the icing on the cake, both for our relationship, and the day I'd had.

I realized quickly, though, that no matter what I was thinking about Marcus, his coming over had brightened my day considerably, no small feat in light of the day I'd had. Selina sat down on the couch across from us, and asked Marcus if he had seen Jumanji. When he replied no, both Selina and I convinced him that now would be a good time to do so, and he did.

By the time the movie was over, Selina was asleep. That left me with Marcus all to myself. 'Did I just think that?' I thought to myself; I couldn't even entertain a thought of him and me..... It couldn't happen. Besides, he was 22; I was 34. Even if he still was attracted to me-- he had confessed that to me once-- it couldn't be anything more than a one-night stand. Was I actually thinking this out? Was I really considering going to bed with this boy-- excuse me-- young man, who was barely three times my daughter's age? 'But age doesn't matter,' I thought to myself, and right there I had to stop myself. I couldn't go on letting my imagination get away from me. And that's all it was, simply my imagination working overtime, making illusionary lies out of long-forgotten stray thoughts.

I turned back to the young man sitting next to me.

I asked him about how he was doing, and he told me, very briefly; then, in an eyeblink, he had turned the question around on me. Not that I minded, exactly; simply that I made a note of it-- that he had managed to answer my question quickly and nicely, but not really answer it at all, and then turn it back on me.

Even as I was making a note of that-- which I just as quickly forgot about until the next day-- I began telling him about my lousy day, explaining to him what happened, and how it had made me feel. I even talked to him about Eddie, even thought I felt a little funny talking about my boyfriend-- whether or not he was an "ex"-- to Marcus. But at the same time, I felt like I could talk to him about everything. I hardly noticed the difference in our ages-- except when the ocassional stray ?thought? ?daydream? would pop up in my mind; he was so much more mature than most of the other brothas I knew his age, and more than half of the ones even older than me, and I think he did his best to make me feel like we were equals.

"He is such a baby, sometimes. If he doesn't get his way, he whines and pouts like a little spoilt boy. Once, he wanted to be with me, and Selina wasn't feeling well, so he told me to call the babysitter to come watch her so we could go out and be alone. And when I told him that I wasn't going to leave my baby, that he'd have to understand that, he got upset and stormed out of the apartment! I dunno; it must be me. That's what he keeps telling me."

Marcus looked at me thoughtfully for a moment.

"Okay, then, let me ask you a question," he began, after listening to me talk for nearly twenty minutes, "do you think you're wrong to feel like you do?"

"You mean, being upset?" He nodded. I stretched out as much as I could on the shorter sofa we occupied. "No."

"Do you think you were overreacting?"

"No."

"Do you think you're sane?"

"Huh?" That one threw me. Was I sane? Sometimes, I didn't know.

"Well, you're sittin' here tellin' me what happened. You seem to be thinking clearly about it; are you?"

"Yeah," I answered back uncertainly.

"Well, I think that means that you're sane." He smiled. "Do you think you have a problem?"

"Yeah, I have a--"

"No," he said, cutting me off, "I mean, do you think you have a problem?"

"No," I answered immediately, "I don't have a problem."

"But you think there is a problem?"

"Yeah."

"So, what you're telling me," he replied, "is that you don't have a problem-- you yourself, that is, and that you don't think you're wrong to be upset, and that you're sane. But, you say that there is a problem, right?" I nodded. "So, if you're all okay upstairs, and you know you're right to feel like you do, and you don't have a problem, but there is a problem, then it has to be another person who has the problem, and just maybe they're seeing it wrong. Does that sound right?"

I thought about it for a moment, and it did sound right. I told him so.

"So see? You're not at fault here, for anything, and you don't have a problem. You're right for your feelings, and you're sane. And you know it, cuz you just told me that." He smiled again.

I opened up my mouth to protest, but I couldn't. He was right.

From there, we started talking about relationships; he was very adept at keeping the conversation farily neutral-- or at least, so far as I thought about it at the time, it was neutral as far as it concerned talking about the relationships he'd had.

I stretched out my legs.

"You can put your feet up, if you want to," he offered to me. And I did-- I wanted to, and I did, put my feet up in his lap. I was, at this point, half sitting, my lower back up against the armrest of the little sofa. He began caressing my legs almost immediately.

"How'd you do that?" he asked me. I looked at him, confused. "Your legs are so smooth."

I politely disagreed with him, but he insisted, still caressing my legs.

We chattedmore, winding our way through idle conversation; all the while, he continued stroking my skin. His hands were large and roughened, but his touch was gentle and soft. And it felt good-- both the rough/soft combination of his caresses, and the touch of his hands against me. I could feel small, electric thrills running through me.

As we continued to talk, he continued to caress my legs; suddenly-- at least it seemed to me, since I was very aware of his touch and knew that he hadn't changed his caresses-- his hands were caressing my entire lower legs, his touch stopping just below my knee. Then it was just above; then it was at my mid thigh. I realized two things-- three, actually; first of all, that his hands were verrrry slowly moving up my legs- his hands were moving, but so slowly that the sensation of suddenness as his hands touched me in new places was only in my thoughts. The second thought followed immediately after the first; I was moving, moving for him to be able to reach, whenever I felt him stretch to touch. I moved, extending my legs further and further onto his lap, my body moving closer to his, my head slowly ending up against the armrest, so he could touch me. No, not for him, but for me; that was the third thing I realized: I didn't want him to stop touching me.

As his hands moved up past my knees, I could feel his touch lighting small fires within me, shooting pulses of electricity through my body, concentrating at my center. With each stroke, as his hands slowly worked their way up my thighs, I could feel the energy inside me increasing.

"Is this okay, or am I getting too familiar?" He asked suddenly. Fortunately, he didn't stop his caresses.

"No. That's quite okay," I told him, a small smile playing on my face. 'You don't have to stop,' I almost added in, with the hope that he would understand. But, being the gentleman that he can be-- that, i found out during our many conversations-- he probably wouldn't have done anything without an engraved invitation. And, while I might be willing to let myself be seduced, I wasn't as bold as he would need me to be.

I stopped at that thought, letting it play around in my mind, and I realized, whatever I had been thinking about before, about not letting my imagination run away with me, that I definitely would not mind now if he did try to move on me. I almost welcomed it.

I could feel the brush of his fingertips, just below the cuff of my denim shorts, as short as they were. Then they were caressing the flesh just beneath the cuff. Each time, I could feel his fingertips just brush against the cloth which lay between my legs. So feathersoft, so whisperlike that I wasn't sure that he was really aware of just how far up he had travelled, how far up I wanted him still to travel. His touch, so soft, and yet each time it happened I was keenly aware of it, enraptured by the hint of sensations that it suggested, frustruated each time the suggestion went unfulfilled.

I could never say for certain, but I think that if it weren't for the fact that my daughter was sleeping on the opposite couch less than twenty feet away, and that whenever I went to bed she would inevitably follow me in and sleep with me-- I think if it weren't for that, he might have been a bit bolder: I might have been a bit bolder.

He glanced at his watch,and softly suggested that he should probably leave. I didn't want him to stop touching me, didn't want to move my legs to let him get up, but I did. My practical, mommy, I-have-to-get-up-in-the-morning-and-go-to-work self took over, for that moment, and I let him up. I walked him to the door.

We stopped at the door, where he pulled me against him in a hug. And I didn't want to let him go, not only because of the way I felt, but also because I knew how he felt, now, as he body lay against mine. We parted slightly, gently, his left hand still at my waist, his right coming up and stroking my cheek. I leaned into his touch, ever so slightly, and did the same to him. His face was only inches from mine, close enough that I believe that he was trying to work up the courage to kiss me; I know that's what I was doing.

And when I thought he would, finally, kiss me-- he smiled, turned, and walked out of the door.