The Second Time Around- BWWM

Chapter 10

Melanie kicked off her shoes the second she opened her front door. One of her shoes landed near the area where she lined up a few pair neatly near the door, but the other shoe landed between the sofa and coffee table. Melanie religiously lined up her shoes when she took them off, but after her exchange with Isaac's brother Grant, she let herself off the hook for the night.

She went straight into the kitchen and pulled open her refrigerator to scan it's contents. It was nearly bare, and Melanie flinched at the memory bursting back into her mind. She was supposed to go shopping before she came home. This fact was another black mark against Grant Porter. His kiss had made her forget about everything that she'd planned.

As if the kiss wasn't enough to throw her off kilter, Grant and Isaac had invited themselves to stay for dinner. Grant sat across from her staring at her with that "cat that ate the canary" grin on his face. Melanie was paranoid that everyone would know what they did; how he had her pinned against the buffet table kissing her until she was lost to the world, but everyone assumed his lingering gaze and goofy grin were just Grant's usual attempts to annoy her. At dinner she pushed around the food on her plate, but hardly any of the food made it into her mouth.

The light of the fridge cast its dim yellow glow over the scant few items it contained. There was a bottle of ketchup with only a few droplets clinging to the bottom of the plastic. One lonely egg sitting in the red porcelain crate built to hold a dozen, and a plastic container with orange and blue polka dots on the lid. She'd used it to take home some leftovers from the last time she'd ate dinner at Kiya's place. That was well over a week ago, and she shuddered to think of the state of the chicken and new potatoes she'd allowed to wither away in her fridge. Melanie pulled open the vegetable crisper drawer and in it was an unopened bottle of red wine.

The wine was a last minute addition to her grocery list two weeks previously. Just seeing the bottle made her face hot with embarrassment at her reasoning for it's purchase. She'd decided to jump back into the dating pool for the first time since she and Jerrold broke up, and she allowed one of her coworkers at the school to set her up on a date with her husband's friend. After arranging the date, she'd purchased the bottle with the thought that it would be good to have on hand. Optimistically, she figured at the end of the date she could offer up the wine as a nightcap if things were going well.

Her optimism quickly faded when the day of her date came around. The date had been a disaster from the moment that Wallace arrived; which was forty minutes late and reeking of cologne​ and faintly of body odor. She'd spent most of the afternoon styling her hair and doing her make up wanting to look her best. She'd even talked Kiya into letting her borrow a pair of her fancy designer shoes to wear with the navy skirt and expensive pink silk blouse she'd splurged on for her date. Wallace arrived in sneakers, jeans and a hoodie zipped up over a wrinkled button down shirt. Melanie didn't know what to make of his style, and she held her tongue. He was apologetic about his tardiness, and up until their meeting in person, he had been incredibly funny and sweet in the emails and texts they had exchanged so she let him off the hook for the time being. They had been getting along fine by email and text message, so she decided to give him a chance to salvage their evening.

The second the two of them pulled away from her home Melanie began to regret her decision. She wondered if Wallace was the same man she'd been talking with. She stared into the side mirror as he drove studying her face propped onto her fist, she allowed Wallace's voice to blend with the sound of the wind as they headed downtown. Melanie had given up quickly on holding up her end of the conversation. Even if she wanted to speak, there wasn't much of a chance for her to get a word in with Wallace talking nonstop about sports long after she'd told him it was a subject she knew nothing about. The more he went on about his weekly basketball game and his preference for the Clippers over the Lakers, the more certain she became that his love of basketball was the reason he was so late. His sports bag was still in the backseat of his car, half zipped like he hurried to shovel his belongings into the bag, and peaking out of the top of his blue jeans was the unmistakable mesh of a pair of basketball shorts.