Some Day One Day

19

"You gettin' off early today Beyonce?" I heard someone say in a strained voice and turned around to find Dreux thrashing a large trash bag into the dumpster. I was so set on going home that I hadn't even cared to notice that it was him who'd been standing there.
"Yeah," I said with a contrite smile, no longer in a hurry to get to my car as I'd been only seconds ago, "I was so tired and we didn't have that many rooms to do today."
That was one of the days when I worked as a housekeeper and not in the kitchen with Dreux.
I looked down at my watch, "Shouldn't you be leaving soon?"
"Yeah," his words were muffled because of the cigarette lodged in between his lips, "This was the last thing I had to do before getting off." He explained, chaffing his hands to dust away the dirt. The way he paused and regarded me made me stand there expectantly.
"Aye, you got a minute?" he asked me suddenly, blowing smoke through his nostrils after he spoke.
"Yeah." I told him.
"Iight. I'll be back out in a min." he said as he jogged back to the backdoor of our work place. A few minutes later, Dreux was back without the cigarette, wearing a simple black hoodie that reminded me so much of another's that I had to blink a couple of times and shake my head to discard the image from my mind. It was just a damn hoodie, I told myself.
"Something in your eye?" Dreux asked with a heckling smirk while shoving his hands into his pockets and I blushed at him embarrassedly.
"Nah. So what's up?" I said cordially as we walked over to our cars which were coincidentally parked beside each other's.
"Nothin' much. I got a little problem on my hands and I needed some advice." Dreux said and when I looked at him he was fighting to smile by furling his bottom lip. It was then that I truly noticed the deep dimples on his cheeks.
"What's your little problem Dreux?" I asked with a suspicious smile.
"Well, my brother has this girlfriend right." He began and by now we were standing on the space that divided the trunks of our cars.
"Mhmmm." I nodded, listening keenly and watching him just as.
"And she's been takin' up all his time. Now I don't mind that at all, but this is where the problem comes."
"Okay..." I laughed a little, still all the more surprised that Dreux was talking to me this way when I'd gone nearly three months merely acknowledging his existence and him doing the same with me.
"I love sports...and the Underdogs have a huge game coming up. And I had two tickets. And my dumbass of a brother was supposed to go with me so..."
"You need someone to go with huh?" I asked, my smile slightly tremulous. He must have picked up on it quickly because of what he said next.
"Come on, you told me in the kitchen you don't get out much. I don't get out much either. Maybe we should start."
My heart galloped and my face writhed like blazing flames. I kept my eyes averted, wondering why I couldn't just come out and say yes I would go with him. Something was steeling me and I couldn't understand why.
"...unless your man wouldn't want you to."
Dreux's words brought my eyes hastily up to his and I parted my lips, for a second unable to answer him instantly.
"I don't have a man." I finally told him, immensely flushed by his unexpected reproach.
"Ol' dude at the club." Dreux said with an indolent, easy-going smirk that showed he wasn't at all offended by my reluctance to answer him on the spot.
"What dude?" I asked in horrification, not wanting to remember any happenings of that night. I'd been angry at the world for an entire week just thinking about what had transpired.
"The one that had you shook." He said with another teasing smirk that made me want to burry my head in a hole.
"Who had me shook..." I asked self cautiously and Dreux simply smiled.
"That wasn't my man." I defied, trying not to use as much emphasis as I felt like using. But even with the mild way I said it, Dreux had a disbelieving look in his eyes.
"Pull out your phone." He suggested and when I all but stared at him, his smile widened and his dimples deepened as he looked down at my phone, "Pull out your phone lemme show you somethin'."
Wetting my lips nervously, I pulled out my phone from my purse and when I handed it to him, he shook his head.
"All I want you to do is put my number in there and we'll be straight."
Blushing profusely, I could barely punch the numbers into my phone as Dreux relayed them to me.
When I was done, he started backing up to his car.
"You got a week to decide iight?" Dreux called out and before I could answer he turned around to enter his car.
He left me standing there with a foolish, but wistful smile on my face.