Mr.Carter

2

     I stand up to fix myself up and prep myself to engage in a conversation with her. "Here I go." I tell Eli.

   "This shall be fun." Eli smiles.

"It shall." I begin walking. Step by step, I look around and see women smiling and winking at me. I return the smile. A waitress passes me with seductive eyes. I would have love to bring her home, but she isn't my target right now.

"Is this seat reserved?" I ask.

   She looks up from her newspaper and looks around until her eyes lands on me. "Out of all the available seat around, you choose to sit here?" She asks.

   I sit down without her permission. I know she doesn't mind, she just wants to come off a bit hard.  "Yes," I flash her a smile.

She gets back to reading her newspaper. I look over at Eli who's observing us with a smile on his face. He's a slick one. "I'm Damien. Damien Carter." I introduce myself, trying to be as nice as I can be. "But the ladies call me Mr.Carter."

She lays the newspaper back down, knowing that I will not leave until she can propery engage in a decent conversation with her. "Alexis, but people call me Alex." She looks at me. "And I hope you don't expect me to call you what those other ladies' are calling you."

   I ignore that comment. Due to this predicament, I don't care about her calling me by my first name. "Nice name." I honestly don't mind people calling me by the first name. I only prefer Mr. Carter when we're in bed.

   "Not to be rude, but why are you here?" She asks. Actually that is rude. Her attitude kind of make her appearance not matter to me anymore.

   "I was..." I lean forward and bring my hands together, "Wondering if you'd let me take you out this Friday night?"

   Her big brown eyes are staring into mine. She's very beautiful. I want to remove that strand of hair hanging down in front of her face. Her phone starts to buzz. She quickly takes it and looks at the message. "I have to get going." She quickly gets up.

   "What about the date?" I get up also.

   "Here," She hands me her phone. "I'll give you a call." I punch them in and give it back to her. She walks out of the door quickly, disappearing before my eyes.  A smile creeps upon my face as I see a small frown on Eli's. Looks like he'll be losing after all.

I walk back to him. "You're still going to lose. Exchanging phone numbers doesn't  really mean anything."

"Yeah, that's not what you used to say."

The waitress  walks by the table once again and this time I stop her. "What time do you get out of here?"

She plays with her hair. "In about five minutes."

"I'll wait for you outside." I wink.

"Are you kidding me?" He looking over at the waitress and starts to shoo her away, "Go do your job."

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"You just got done speaking to Alexis and now you're here trying to get at someone else. It's bad enough that she's part of a bet. Come on, you can't sleep around with other girls." He explains.

"That wasn't part of the bet. How do you know her name? I never told you her name."

   "Still. You can't be fucking with other girls while pursuing one." His phone rings. "And I don't know what you're talking about.  Hold on, my girl is calling me." He answers the phone, "Sugar plums?"

   "Sugar plums?" I laugh.

   He sucks his teeth, "Don't hate."

   I literally sit here to listen to their whole conversation. Apparently, her parents are coming over. He doesn't want them coming over at all and when they do, he wants them to stay at a hotel, but she wants them sleeping in the big house they share.

   He bought.

   Karen's parents' isn't too fond of him, especially her mom. Her dad likes him a little because he plays in the NFL like me. Her mom can be a pain in his ass. She disagrees with everything he says or do. The only reason why she's probably allowing him to take her daughter's hand in marriage is because her daughter is happy with him.

   "Why are they flying down here? I proposed like a week ago. We won't start planning until a couple of months." He berates.

   "I'll pay for their hotel room. I don't care how much it costs. Just as long at they don't sleep in my house." He continues. "Hello." He removes his phone from his ear.

   "She hung up?" I ask.

   "Yeah." He gets up. "There's no way they're sleeping in my house." He leaves a tip and walks out.

   I follow him out of the exit. I didn't even get to eat because I was too busy trying to holla at someone. "She's going to win."

   "No the hell she won't." We reach to our car. "I'll see you another time." We do a handshake and drive off. Now I am going to get some actual food to eat.

****

••••
   Alex arrives at her torn down apartment, which is located in the dump side of the city. She drops her bag down on the floor and walks to the kitchen, filled with little food to no food. Her minimum wage job doesn't pay her enough to buy a place where the walls aren't torn.

   Her dreams of being famous choreographer was crushed due to  lack of money and support system. She walks into bathroom and sits down in front of the tub, which is located near the toilet and cries. She didn't want this life. She sticks her index finger down her throat to force herself to throw up the food she ate earlier.

   A small knock comes upon the door. She quickly wipes her mouth and slowly gets off the floor. She walks towards the front door and lets out  a sign of frustration once she sees her landlord. "Do you have it?" He asks.

   "Can I give it to you next week?"

   The owner sighs, "One week and if you don't have it by then you'll be living on the streets." He walks away with his gut hanging past his rectum and a smirk on his face.

The streets are way better than this dump. Alex says to herself as she slams the door.

The money she have is the money she has been saving for her own dance studio. Now that she has to use some of it, the dance studio she spotted one day while walking home, will be someone else property.

She didn't want this day off. She actually asked her boss for more hours because she needs the money. That's the reason why she left the cafe so early. She was told that was being evicted out of her apartment if she didn't make her way there.

Alex walks to her room to start preparing herself for work.