One
“Milo, this is your most ridiculous idea yet, and that’s really saying something.”
“If by ridiculous you mean ridiculously brilliant, then you’re correct, peanut, it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“Don’t call me peanut.”
“Grow taller, and I’ll stop.”
At the sound of his laughter, Viola Rice puckered her lips as if she’d just tasted something sour. She tilted her head from across the table, still chewing the big bite of chow mein she’d just shoveled into her mouth. The rundown Chinese joint was sanitarily questionable, touting a solid B rating from the health department since its day of inception, but it was close to their Brooklyn apartment. The perfect place to stop for a cheap bite after a long night of partying. They also made the best chow mein in the city. So bountiful in flavor, most A establishments could only dream of matching it.
Ignoring his orange chicken, Milo Moore leaned over the wobbly table and scooped a helping of Viola’s chow mein onto his chopsticks.
She bristled. “We come here every week, dude. When are you going to stop ordering orange chicken, start ordering chow mein, and stop eating all of mine?”
“Tastes better off your plate.” He grinned, shoveling the flavorful noodles into his mouth.
A profanity tickled the tip of her tongue, but she found herself unable to unleash it on the dark haired, dark eyed, pale skinned Anglo Saxon across from her. The day she’d first met Milo, she’d thought he was Italian. The type of smooth talking Guido you’d find on the front lines of a ‘Grease Lightning’ formation. Except, instead of a leather jacket and hair gel, Milo had plaid shirts and soft hair that tousled and swooped naturally. Devastatingly handsome without even trying, he was one toothpick and squinted gaze away from transforming into an old school movie star.
It was well past midnight, but well-informed New Yorkers still filled the small restaurant to the hilt. Laughter and conversation ensued non-stop, B Grade and uncomfortable chairs be damned.
“Will you please do this for me?” Milo returned to the point. “I really need you on this. It’ll only be for Christmas break, and then I swear, I’ll set you free.”
“Only? Christmas break is three weeks long.”
“They just need to see me with a girl once. Then I’m free for another four years.”
“That’s weird math.”
He tapped his temple. “Trust me. I’m a math major.”
“You’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot. You’ve always been a realist. How are you able to lie to yourself so easily when it comes to this?”
“How am I lying to myself?”
She gave him a sharp shot of her deep brown eyes and tilted her head once more, deeper this time, causing her natural s-curls to tumble into her eyes. The thick black strands stretched all the way down to her belly button, a little straighter at the ends from heat damage, which allowed the curls to move more easily than the thicker, more luscious Afros that had never learned the torment of a flat iron.
“Your parents are hardcore Christians from Mormon Country who probably voted for Trump. Your grandmother is on a first name basis with every bishop in the state and can probably recite the Bible word for word, cover to cover.”
“You act like you weren’t born and raised in that same Mormon Country.”
“There’s a reason I got out on the first train moving. Your parents would hate me on sight.”
“As a black woman, you should know better than anyone that making this kind of sweeping generalization against an entire denomination of people is not only ignorant but utterly unfair. Frankly, I’m alarmed at this flagrant xenophobia.”
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”
“And I think you’re judging my family way too unfairly.”
“Who the hell are you kidding?” She had to laugh. “The only thing your folks would hate more than finding out you’re gay is finding out that your…” She threw up finger quotes. “Girlfriend, is black.”
Milo rolled his eyes with a scoff. “I disagree completely. You don’t know my parents. Sure, they wouldn’t exactly throw a Macy’s day parade, but they wouldn’t die if I brought a black girl home for the holidays. They definitely would die, though, if I brought a boyfriend, of any shade, home for the holidays. My grandmother would, literally, have a heart attack and die. My father would follow suit, dropping dead right at my feet in the midst of praying to Jesus to spare my wretched soul.”
“So dramatic.” She cut a look at him when he scooped up more of her noodles, his orange chicken still untouched. “Do you think I’ve forgotten all the stories you’ve told me about them? About the way they warned you when you told them the first friend you’d made in New York was black? The way they were only marginally relieved when they found out it was a black girl and not a black guy because apparently, that’s less threatening? How they spent most of your undergrad years trying to talk you out of your complete and utter adoration for me? I remember all of it, Milo, but you seem to have forgotten.”
“I’ve already told them I’m bringing my girlfriend to town for the holidays. My mother was so happy, she cried. She actually cried.”
“And did you tell them your girlfriend is black?”
He hesitated.
She snapped a finger, motioning to him. “I knew it. You didn’t tell them.”
“Who has that kind of awkward conversation? If my pseudo girlfriend were white, I wouldn’t tell my parents that I’m bringing my white girlfriend home, or my Hispanic girlfriend home, or my Asian girlfriend home. People don’t talk to each other like that.”
“Maybe people should, to spare people like me a lot of uncomfortable dinners, tense meetings, and awkward conversations. Please excuse me if I’m not interested in being your big black surprise.”
He was silent for a while, putting most of his focus on eating off her plate. After several moments, he sighed. “I just hate leaving you alone in the city for the holidays.”
She dropped her chopsticks, laughing. “So that’s the angle you’re taking now? You just pivoted so quickly my head almost spun off my neck.”
He chuckled.
“Being alone for the holidays has always been the story of my life,” she said. “Since the day we enrolled. Since when has that ever pulled at your heartstrings? Some of us have parents who struggle to put food on the table every night, let alone shell out for an annual plane ticket from JFK to Salt Lake.”
“Mine can’t either. Barely anyway. My father worked doubles for a month to pay for our tickets. Notice I said our tickets — because he paid for yours too. Are you gonna let all that hard work and sacrifice go to waste? He’s a bus driver, you know. Do you have any idea the kind of people that ride the bus on graveyard? It’s a miracle he survived.”
“It’s out of the question.”
“I’m offering you a paid vacation. How long has it been since you’ve seen your family? Since you’ve hugged your mother? Held her in your arms?”
She faltered. Milo knew everything about her. Unfortunately, that also meant he knew all her greatest weaknesses. A momma’s girl, through and through, it nearly tore her apart that she hadn’t gotten a hug from her mother in almost three years. They talked on the phone every day, Skyped every week, but it simply wasn’t the same.
“I’m paying for it all. An entire week at home with the family you love. I think pretending to be my girlfriend to my prejudiced parents is a small price to pay.”
“So now they are prejudiced?”
“Of course they are, Viola, who the hell am I kidding? Who isn’t?”
She chuckled.
“So I take your sudden silence as a, very hesitant, yes?”
Her eyes lowered.
His own widened. “Say yes.”
After several moments of deep thought, she looked up at him from under her eyelashes. “No.”
He threw his head back with a groan just as her cell phone, which she had sitting on top of the table between their plates, dinged. His head fell forward at the sound—Viola too busy digging into her noodles—and he read the text message gleaming up from the screen.
Gleb: Would you put this eight-inch dick in your mouth?
“Would you put this eight inch…” Milo’s face curled as he finished reading the rest of the message in his head, flicking her phone towards her like it had suddenly become contagious.
Viola gasped as the phone went spinning, abandoning her chopsticks and catching it seconds before it fell off the edge of the table.
One look at the display and she smiled. “Oh, it’s Gleb!”
“Who the hell is Gleb?”
“A new guy I’m dating. Met him on the L last week. He’s Russian.” She rolled her tongue on the R.
“The new guy you’re dating? You mean the new guy you’re sexting.”
“We’re getting to know each other.”
“Has he taken you out on a real date, yet? Has he even offered? Do you even know his last name? Does he know yours?”
“He works two jobs and says we’ll go out when he finds the time. He says he’s gonna treat me like a queen.”
“Talk is cheap.”
“Who am I to rush him when he works so hard? He calls me every night, texts me all day long—he’s all over me. Says he really likes me. Says he wants to spoil me and cook me his signature dish.”
“Things that aren’t dates: talking on the phone, sexting, making out in a parked car, Netflix and chill, cooking dinner at his place…”
“You won’t rest until I die alone.”
“Let me ask you something… since you met him on the L, has he ever once asked you a question about yourself? A question that has nothing to do with sex?”
“Well…”
“Has he ever let the conversation go on for more than a minute without finding some way to steer it back to his dick?”
“Um…”
“Do you already know what his dick looks like because he went ahead and sent you a picture of it, probably unsolicited?”
“Totally solicited, actually…”
“Take it from the guy who’s done his fair share of sexting and has received enough dick pics to build a calendar every year for the rest of his life… stop talking to that guy. Dump him.”
“Dump him?”
“He’s not serious about you. If he were, he’d be asking about your hopes and dreams, not how snuggly his cock would fit inside your mouth.”
Viola stared down at the screen with a soft line between her eyebrows. “He was so sweet on the train… I thought—”
“Men are going to test you like this, peanut. And I’ll be damned if you don’t fail the test every time. Sick of seeing you play yourself like this. Are you aware you have a pussy? If I had a pussy and was as beautiful as you, I’d be rich.”
“It’s just a little flirting, Milo. I don’t want him to think I’m some prude.”
“Trust me. He doesn’t think you’re a prude. He’s placed you firmly in the casual sex box, and once you’re in that box, there’s no getting out.”
“I want him to like me, okay?” Viola shrugged her shoulders, voice rising. “What am I supposed to do when he brings up sex? Tell him I don’t want to talk about it?”
“Yes!” The table shook when Milo slammed his fists down on top of it. “Tell him you don’t want to talk about it. Say those exact words. ‘I don’t want to talk about sex.’ See how easy that was?”
“But what if it makes him run away?”
“Good. Then you’ll know for sure he’s an asshole who was just going to use you for your body. Fuck you and forget you. The good guys will stick around. Not only will they stick around, they’ll respect you more. They’ll realize you’re a woman with some standards and place you firmly into the ‘potential girlfriend’ box instead of the ‘good time only’ box that you seem to get stuck in with every guy you meet. And I’ll do you one better, a guy who’s really into you isn’t going to bring up sex at all. Not until you do. He’d never risk offending you or making you run away because he won’t want to lose you.”
“I’ve never met a guy who doesn’t talk about sex.”
He sighed. “You will, peanut. You just have to be true to yourself and stop trying to force it.”
Viola pouted down at the phone, where three more filthy texts from Gleb were already gleaming up at her. Whenever she didn’t return his smutty texts quickly enough for his liking, he continued texting more sexual innuendos until she finally responded. She’d just assumed it was direct evidence of his excitement over their budding courtship. The night before, when she’d been in the shower, she’d had ten raunchy messages in a row waiting for her once she’d gotten out.
“So he’s allowed to be a sexual being, and I’m not? He’s allowed to have a pulse, and I’m not?”
“PC Millennials have fooled everyone into believing that the world has righted itself and women are now free to embrace their sexuality without repercussion, but it’s a lie. Nothing’s changed. It’s a double standard, and it’s not fair.” Milo shrugged. “But it’s the way it is.”
“So he’s gone forever?”
“He’s gone. Should’ve been gone a long time ago for talking to you like that. You deserve better.”
“What if I text him right now, and say I don’t want to talk about sex anymore?”
“It’s too late. He’ll never see you differently. Love yourself and delete his number.”
Viola let her trembling thumb linger over the ‘delete contact’ button shining up at her from under Gleb’s contact information, her heart at her feet. Yet another relationship, crashing and burning before it’d even had a chance to start. She clenched her teeth.
“And come home with me,” Milo added, speaking around another mouthful of noodles he’d stolen from her plate. “I’ll take all of your Calc tests and the final for you next year. As long as it’s an online course.”
As she contemplated an entire Christmas break spent ignoring Gleb, who’d apparently already decided she was good for a roll in the hay and not much else, Viola hesitated. It was hard enough being alone in NYC at Christmas. Add in yet another handsome man who only saw her as a sexual plaything, and she worried it might be the year she finally wrapped a string of Christmas lights around her neck and ended it all. Besides, Milo had done so much for her. He hadn’t even attempted to use all the things he’d done for her as leverage to blackmail her into going against her will. He was still giving her the choice because that was who he was. It was who he’d always been.
Not only that, he was offering to do all the work for her least favorite subject come spring. A subject that had been solely responsible for her 4.0 GPA slipping to a 3.8.
She answered before she could stop herself. “I’m in.”