Shakira looked disgusted, “I don’t know if I could deal with a man old enough to be my daddy.”

  “Well, I’ve been with old guys before, and they’re not that bad, they just want somebody to make them feel young.” “I just don’t know if I could deal with looking at some old, rusty, drooping balls. That might be too much to handle.”

  Ava thought back to the times she had sex with Lucas. Most of the time, he couldn’t maintain his erection, and when he did, his heart would beat so fast, it scared her. She was sure that man was going to die on top of her one day. But the sex wasn’t the worst she’d had. She was certain that any sex that she and Ellis would have would be better. It had to be, because at least Ellis wasn’t ugly, and he was in shape.

  Ava’s eyes lit up. “But when those old men spend money on you, they sure know how to spoil you.”

  “I’m sure, but hey, I’m twenty-seven, I’ll have to pass on that.”

  “You don’t understand; it’s on a whole different level; they know they have to spend the money. You never have to ask, but with young boys, they try to louse it out, and when they give you something, they always want something back.”

  “When are you going to see him?” Shakira said. “We’re meeting for dinner on Friday.”

  “Where is he taking you?” “Nikko’s.”

  “Nikko’s is alright, but it’s nothing to brag about. I mean, I wouldn’t expect an old millionaire to be taking you to Nikko’s.”

  “I know, but that’s where he wanted to go, and I don’t mind.”

  “So it’s over for the young boys, huh?” “For right now.”

  Shakira smiled brightly and laughed. “I can’t believe you’re going to actually go out with a man old enough to be your daddy.”

  “Yeah, he’s my daddy alright, my Sugar Daddy. Besides, I’ve done this before.”

  The two women laughed.

  #

  Back to top.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was 2 a.m. in the morning when Ava heard a knock on her door. She rolled over and yawned, wondering who in the hell could be at her door at this time of morning. Her cell phone rang, and it was Donavan. She answered it.

  “Open the door.”

  She sat up. “Donavan, why are you at my house at this time of morning? What’s wrong?”

  “Can you please open the door? I just got robbed.” “And the first place you come is here?”

  “Listen, please open the door.”

  Ava got out of bed and tip-toed through the living room naked; that’s how she slept. Plus, she was comfortable around him. She opened the door.

  Donavan stood before her trembling, wearing muddy pants and a t-shirt.

  “What happened?”

  “My friend called me to the projects, said he wanted some coke, so I delivered it to him. While we were sitting in the car, two goons approached us, pointed guns, opened the door, yanked me out, and slapped me with the butt of the gun. I had to strike out running. They chased me a while before I ran through the woods.”

  “Damn.”

  He walked past her and headed to the bathroom to get a towel. He ran some water on it and nursed his eye.

  “Are you sure they didn’t follow you?” Donavan’s face hardened. “Nobody followed me.”

  “How do you know?” She wanted to help Donavan, but the last thing she needed was someone kicking down her door and executing them.

  He turned to her and said, “Look, Ava, I’ve been beaten up and robbed, and all you can think about is yourself?”

  She took a deep breath as she watched Donavan tend to his eye. He was surely right, and she kind of felt bad for the guy. Donavan wasn’t a bad person, and he had always been good to her.

  He ran the water in the sink and grabbed another towel to clean himself up.

  “Listen, Donavan. I’m very sorry about the way I acted, but I have to ask, why did you come here?”

  He removed his shirt and glanced in her direction. “Your place is closer than mine from where I came from.”

  “I see.” She grabbed some bandages from underneath the sink and applied some hydrogen peroxide to his cut.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She strolled back into her bedroom. She thought about Ellis and the date she had with him that night. She wondered how that situation would play out. She didn’t know what the future held, but she did know that Donavan was going to have to stop popping up at her place.

  She heard the shower running, and fifteen minutes later he came out, entered the bedroom, and slid underneath the covers. He held her for a while, and ten minutes later the motorcycle-like snoring began.

  Sometime later, in the middle of the night, he yelled, “Get that gun outta my face, please don’t kill me!”

  She shook him. “Hey, hey, what ya doing.” He woke up for a second, and then dozed again.

  It was eight o’clock when Donavan rolled out of bed. Ava was in the living room watching TV. She greeted him when he walked in. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Sunshine,” he said, smiling.

  “Seems like you’re in a good mood, considering what happened to you last night.”

  “Well, you can’t change the past. I mean, I wish that it hadn’t happened, but it did, so what can I say.”

  She turned the volume down on the TV. “You screamed in your sleep last night.”

  He shot her a look of disbelief. “I never talk in my sleep, so I know damn well I wasn’t screaming.”

  “You were telling somebody to ‘get that gun out of your face.’”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, you must have dreamed about the robbery.”

  He sat down on an armchair and turned away from her. “If you only knew the effect it had on me.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He turned and met her eyes. “I lost everything, babe, I ain’t got shit now.”

  “Huh? I don’t understand.”

  She knew he had left his car in the projects, but she knew he could easily go back and get it or report it stolen, and the cops would recover it.

  “The dope that I took to my friend was all that I had, and I don’t have any money left.”

  She looked confused. “How could this be? You’re a drug dealer; how could you be broke?”

  His eyes became serious. “You already know I’m not big time, that’s why you won’t date me in the first place, I’m just the typical nigga out here hustling, spending money as fast as I make it.”

  She knew what he was saying was true. Most drug dealers were the same way. Very few were big time, but most had at least something – there was no way she could respect that. “The robbers took ten thousand dollars worth of dope.”

  “That’s all you had?” Ava said, thinking he was much more of a small-time drug dealer than she had thought. She felt like a fool, dating an idiot with a less-than-ten-thousand-dollar net worth.

  “Yeah, that’s all I had after I paid my bills.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  Ava wondered why he was telling her about his financial affairs. Where was he going with this? He sure as hell wasn’t going to move his ass in with her.

  “I was just wondering if you could give me the Michelle watch back for a while, you know, I was going to pawn it to get back on my feet.”

  “You’re asking for my watch back?” Ava couldn’t believe it; this guy had to be the biggest bum she’d ever dated. There was no way a pawn shop was going to give him more than six hundred dollars for the watch.

  “So let me get this straight. You’re going to sell my watch and then buy drugs to sell.”

  “Well, not sell, but kind of like hock it until I can get myself together.” He flashed a dumb grin. “If I can get it back, I’ll get you one that costs twice as much.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but that watch ain’t worth shit.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you ain’t gonna get no more than five or six hundred dollars for it.”

  “I’m gonna hock it for drugs, flip the money, and get the watch back from the dealer I hocked it to.” “What do you think he’ll give you?”

  “An ounce, maybe.”

  “And that costs how much?” Ava asked. She really didn’t know the prices of drugs, except weed, which she smoked maybe three or four times a year, usually during celebrations.

  “An ounce of raw is about nine hundred dollars.” “So you’ve gone from ten thousand dollars worth of drugs to nine hundred dollars?”

  He shrugged, “Hey, you gotta start somewhere.”

  Ava actually felt sorry for the clown, and though Donavan got on her nerves, she wanted to help him. She thought about the Rolex watch that Lucas had bought her. It retailed for ten thousand dollars. She went to the back and returned with the watch, “What do you think you can get for this? It’s worth ten thousand.”

  Donavan held the watch and stared at the diamond-encrusted bezel. He smiled. “You’re gonna let me take this?”

  Ava looked away and then turned back to Donavan. “Even though you get on my fuckin’ nerves, you’ve always been helpful to me.”

  Donavan tried to give her the watch back, but she refused.

  “I can’t take your watch, that wouldn’t be right,” he said.

  She flashed a fake smile. “Take the watch, Donavan. Get on your feet and pay me back when you get a chance.”

  He hugged and pecked her on the cheek, and then he held her for a long time, until she said, “Now give me some dick.”

  She ran upstairs to the bedroom, and he trailed her.

  #

  Back to top.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ava was seated in the back of Nikko’s alone, eating miso soup. Ellis arrived fifteen minutes later.

  She stood and hugged him when he approached. He looked dashing, just as he had the first day she’d seen him. He was dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, a pink custom shirt, and a blue bow-tie that matched his suit perfectly.

  His Green Irish Tweed cologne by Creed drove her wild. She sat across from him, and the waitress took their orders.

  She ordered the Teriyaki chicken, but he didn’t order at all.

  “Not hungry, huh?”

  “No, there was nothing on the menu that I could eat; watching my blood pressure, you know.” “Sodium and stress will do it to you.”

  “I don’t eat salt and I try not to stress. Hypertension runs in my family.” He smiled, and she thought he was more handsome than she remembered.

  “Why did you pick this place?” she asked.

  “The ambience. Besides, it seems to be a pretty hip place. I may be old, but you will find I’m young in spirit.”

  She smiled. She was actually happy. She didn’t want to be with some old-ass man that looked like her father but acted like her grandfather.

  “But we could have gone somewhere else. Somewhere that served food that you like to eat. It’s not all about me.” He smiled again and said, “I just wanted to see you again; it really didn’t matter where we decided to go.” “Ahh, you’re so sweet,” Ava said. He was certainly charming.

  “It’s true, when I saw you in the office, the minute I laid eyes on you, I was like, ‘I have to see this fine-ass woman again, if it’s the last thing I ever do in life.’”

  She giggled. “You’re so damn flattering, and I love it.”

  He reached across the table and held her hand, and then said, “Come over here, get on my side of the booth.”

  As she stood, she saw him looking at her waist and her ass. She was glad she’d worn the tight, black, backless dress that hugged her body so wonderfully. She eased over to his side of the booth and sat in the seat beside him. When he placed his hands around her waist, she felt comfortable with him, almost as comfortable as she would feel if he was a younger guy.

  The waitress came back with the food and sat it on the table. When she left, Ellis looked her in the eye and said, “Okay, I have a wife, let me get that out of the way first.”

  “You lied.”

  Embarrassed, he glanced away for a second, but then he resumed eye contact. “Forgive me, but I just had to have you.”

  She was stunned but happy, because that meant that his old ass would have to go home sometimes. There was no way he could be with her all day. But she also knew that powerful men expected her to be there whenever he called her, but he would not be there for her. He couldn’t be there for her; he had a wife and probably a set of kids to take care of.

  “Listen, when I saw you in the office, I took my ring off.”

  “How did you know I wasn’t trying to be with TayShawn?” “I didn’t know that, but I do know him, and I know he would never cheat on his wife.”

  “You sure as hell don’t have a problem cheating on yours.” She laughed.

  “Well, it’s not that I want to cheat on her, it’s just that I need a new perspective on life.”

  Ava ate a forkful of the teriyaki. “Men are so creative when it comes to cheating.”

  “But I wanted to put that out there first, so if you wanted to continue to see me, you could, but I had to let you know.”

  “So why should I want to see a married man?”

  “I don’t know why you’d want to see any married man, but I know why you would want to see me.”

  Ava sipped her water. “Why would I want to see you,

  Mister?”

  “Well, I’m not just any married man. I’m a multimillionaire. Don’t you want to quit your job?”

  Of course Ava didn’t have a job, but she would never let him know that she didn’t work. She didn’t want him to think she was lazy.

  “Of course, who wants to work?”

  “So what’s your annual salary, Ava?”

  Annual salary. He’d caught her off guard. She uttered, “Sixty-thousand.”

  “I’m gonna double that and give you a credit card with a five-thousand-dollar monthly limit.”

  This was the kind of arrangement Ava wanted. She hadn’t been taken care of that well since Lucas died. She was not going to let his wife or anybody stop her from getting paid. One hundred and twenty-thousand dollars just for looking pretty and being there for him. Of course she could do that for him, but she didn’t want to come across as too anxious. She remained calm.

  “How does that sound?”

  “I love my job; I’m not sure I want to give it up,” Ava lied, not wanting to seem gullible. She didn’t want him to think she could be bought.

  “What do you do?” “I work for Mac.”

  “Mac, like Apple Computers?” he asked.

  She giggled. “No, like Mac the makeup line.” He looked confused. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  It was clear to her that he was All Man, and she liked that. She had dealt with metrosexuals before. Men who were so prissy that they spent more time in the mirror than she did didn’t turn her on. They had too many feminine traits. She and Shakira called them hybrids – men who were between genders. Ellis was old as hell, but he was no hybrid.

  “Yeah, I do makeup,” she lied.

  “So you make sixty-thousand dollars doing makeup?” “Yeah, I work in the mall, plus I freelance.” “Okay, well, let’s compromise.”

  She dropped her fork on her plate and turned to him.

  “Okay, let’s talk.”

  “I will give you one hundred fifty-thousand dollars a year and move you into a new place, but you gotta quit the job.”

  She smiled and could hardly contain herself. “So what do I gotta do?”

  “Be available to me when I want you.”

  “Damn, this is so straightforward, almost like an arrangement. I almost feel like I’m being treated like a . . . ‘ho’.”

  He grabbed her hand and massaged it gently, “I’m sorry. It was never my intention to treat you like a ‘ho’.” He looked sincere, and she really believed him.

  “So this is an arrangement?”

  “Yeah, this is exactly what it is.” “Okay, what are the rules?”

  “I get access to your place, and you’re not to talk to any other guys.”

  Ava thought for a moment. Lucas never had put such restrictions on her, but Lucas wasn’t giving her this kind of money, either. But the way Ellis presented the offer, it was almost as if she would belong to him. He would own her.

  “So how would I get paid?” She took another bite. She was really curious now. After all, she didn’t have but twenty-six dollars in her account as of that morning, and she was short one Rolex watch.

  “I will transfer your money into your account each month.”

  “How much?”

  He looked up in the air as if he were trying to figure out the exact number. “Take one hundred and fifty-thousand dollars and divide it by twelve.”

  “That’s over twelve thousand dollars a month.”

  He looked at her seriously. “I don’t give a damn what I can pay, but can you do what I ask you to do?”

  “So I’m supposed to be your on-call sex kitten?” “Well, for me, it’s not all about sex. I’ve had a lot of sex in my day, so really, it’s not about that. Can you be my companion, travel partner, confidante?”

  “What about your wife?” Ava asked, not because she was concerned about his wife, but because it seemed like the right thing to do. Besides, she was always curious about why men did the things they did. “What about her?”

  “Why can’t she be all those things for you? I mean, you did marry her, didn’t you?”

  He grinned. “I don’t know, I guess I need some excitement in my life. It’s almost like the forbidden turns me on.”

  “I can certainly understand that.”

  He took hold of her waist again. She loved it when men did that. She was actually turned on by this old man’s straightforwardness. She didn’t know why, but she was.

  “So you’re going to give me your bank information, right?”

  She giggled and moved closer to him. “Now how do you know I want to do this?”

  “Because I know things like this. I didn’t get to be this age by being stupid.”

  Ava really wanted to know why he had propositioned her. This wasn’t the first time she’d been asked to be someone’s mistress. She wondered how men knew that she was a gold- digger. She had a nice, wholesome personality, but powerful men were drawn to her, and they usually wanted to spend money on her, so she’d grown accustomed to being treated well.