The Real Deal
(Click Cover to Order)
By
Margaret Johnson-Hodge
Copyrighted by Margaret Johnson-Hodge. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 1
The morning after is a bitch. The morning after he says goodbye and means it.
You become aware that you knew he was leaving you for as long as he had. That the betrayal you sensed was real. You never finding the nerve to ask, and he the guts to say, “I’m leaving you” until it’s too late.
He tells you quickly, full of his concern and your hurt—nothing you can use. You realize that his heart and his dick belong to somebody else, anybody else but you. That he had been living without you for a long time.
Suddenly, like magic, there stood the answer as to why he no longer held you in the midnight hour or, come morning, nothing could make him stay.
Samone had loved Max because he possessed the things she thought she needed. Max was tall, handsome, hardworking, and moneymaking. Max was single, childless and had a place of his own. Max believed in love and had shared himself with her.
It was easy loving Max. Easy for Samone to give everything she had, holding nothing back. It was one of the reasons his leaving was so painful.
Samone might have survived it better if it hadn’t been a great love, if Max hadn’t been an almost perfect mate. It might not have hurt so much, dragged her down so low, if he hadn’t become an infinite part of her.
But he had, and now he was gone.
Their meeting hadn’t been accidental. Samone’s best friend, Pat, had insisted that they meet. Pat raved about Max, went on and on about his wonders…Max this, and Max that. “And he’s so fine, and he’s so tall. And he’s so intelligent and he works at a bank and he makes so much money, and girlfriend, did I tell you how fine he is? Did I tell you he’s the director or Mortgage down at Chase? You need to meet him. You really need to meet this man, Samone. You can meet here, at my place.”
Samone had been leery. With so much going on, why would he need a blind date? There must have been dozens of women in a five-block radius of Manhattan who were willing to get with him.
Still, the idea nagged at her. There had been no real man in her life at the time, and the fact that he was white-collar appeared to her ego. What did she really have to loose but some time? Pessimistic, Samone had gone to meet this Max.
After work on a Tuesday.
Samone had caught the uptown local, getting off at 181st Street and walking the one block to Pat’s apartment on Riverside Drive. She had walked up the brownstone steps, through the foyer, and up the stairs to the second floor apartment.
Nervous—Could he be all that?—Samone had rung Pat’s bell, watched her best friend trip over herself letting her in, and allowed Pat to push her towards the living room.
Hold her breath—Could he?—smoothing things, her dress, her hair, making herself ready for the first sight of him, Samone turned the corner and saw for herself.
Her answer came as she sought words to say, as his eyes found hers, one sentence numbing her brain. My God, yes, he is…
His presence made her own beauty seem irrelevant.
He was a smooth as a Hershey’s Bar without almonds, as dark as tree bark after a heavy rain. Max had Chinese eyes, a clipped mustache, and thick cinnamon-colored lips. He was tall, long limbed. And he was a Black Man.
Black Men had power.
In second into their meeting, Max had looked into Samone and had known all her secrets. Weeks later, after getting to know Max as Samone had known she would, she put it off as pure lust. But later she knew the real deal. Max jumped into all that she was and spun her, web tight. Samone, never stopping to consider, gave him her all.
And zoom, zoom, zoom, like a rocket heading for the sun, didn’t they burn?
Now into week three of his absence, Samone found herself late, and still painfully in love, which was kind of silly because Max hadn’t so much as picked up the phone to call her.
At thirty-four Samone ought to have known better. But that didn’t stop her from wondering as she grabbed her black saddle bag and headed towards the door, would today be the day that Max called to say he loved her still?