A short romantic story featuring Mia James, a caterer who longs for a true love.
Games of Love
by Pam Osbey
I’m an independent woman of the millenium. I have my own catering business called, “Cakes and More” and even as I sit here preparing my latest cheesecake...a divine moist tasty Mango and Banana Cheesecake for a client, I just wonder what it is gonna take for me to find my soul mate. With my sassy nature and bubbling personality I attract all kinds of beautiful, virile intelligent men who sometimes get intimidated by me thus I find myself in single status mode. I’ve dated men with dread locks, low hair cut fads, or huge afros, from cabbies to elementary school teachers to out there hustling brothers...I date them all. And even with a vast pool of brothers in the general St. Louis, Missouri area, I still am not with a man that I can call my own.
My girls always say I should lie to the men, tell the brothers that I am an administrative assistant or something very simple but I like to keep it real. I mean, why should I lie about who I am to placate a man’s ego? I mean, to keep it real is what I’m all about and maybe that’s why I have ended up in some very sticky personal relations because most of the brothers I see are on an short basis. Most of the brothers I have tried to date are very insecure about a woman such as myself. They want a girl who’s gonna sit at the phone waiting for them. Not a woman who’s on the go. They want a girl who’s not gonna challenge them or speak her mind. Thus, I’m by myself because these are boys I’m dealing with not a real man. Because most of the men I try to get in relationships with can’t deal with a woman like me and I ended up playing games of love.
As I swirl my cinnamon-toned finger into the batch of the cheesecake, I dip a finger in and slowly sigh as I taste the mango flavored concoction. “Umm, good.” I urgently wipe my semi-dusty hands on my blue apron, angrily pull the thick spoon down and hear the irritating peal of my cordless telephone and nervously laugh as I glance at the caller id. My brown eyes soak in the number and shake my medium black twists which are covering my face.
The number that glows in a green color on the black caller id box has me totally in nervous motion and I cover my taunt mouth and ignore the call as it automatically goes to voice mail. The man that leaves this message is one of those brothers I should have never even dealt with. Let me tell you how it all started.
It was about six months ago that I posted an advertisement on Yahoo Personals, and being the woman of millenium, I was ready to meet a real man who could handle a woman such as myself. The advertisement was very simple with a one posted head shot of me smiling brightly. My requirements of the men I wanted to meet were a “man that is confident, comical, and interested in casual dating.” A few days later I received a lot of responses from men, deleted the “freaky ones” and ended up contacting a few brothers who seemed to be kind of on the ball.
Tonio was one of those brothers. An LAN administrator at one of the top corporations in Missouri and with a very nice advertisement of his own, I read his ad, then replied to his message immediately. I was initially attracted to his down to earth personality and the fact that he seemed to be focused on getting to know the person not just wanting a warm body to fill his bed at night. It was a few months before we actually met, and after months and months of emailing each other, we finally decided to meet downtown at the St. Louis Bread Company.
My girls all said “Mia, you crazy for meeting up with him”, but yelled back them “I just wanted to see the man in person and see what the vibe between us will be like”. So as I sat there in my low ride blue jeans and a tight fitting “I’m a Diva” black tee shirt on, I sipped on Banana Tea while waiting for him to appear. And when he I spotted him with his black jeans and black silk shirt hanging off his six foot two foot inch frame, I smiled widely with my brown cheeks stretched like a medium sized balloon. Don’t get me wrong, I like a man’s personality but this man’s physicality was nice to look at as well.
We spoke that night for about 2 hours before deciding to go hear some poetry at Legacy and then going to our perspective homes later that night around Midnight. The man was a gentleman and he didn’t even try to “go there” with me. I was pleased with his manners.
But that was all a mirage. A few weeks later, we started dating; every week doing something different. I spent a lot of time with him at his place and then it was always a dinner in my house or at his. And before you knew it we were in a physically draining situation. Mostly arguing about my schedule and the fact that he didn’t like me traveling and being on the grind. I mean, these are all the things I been doing since forever - and way before he entered the picture.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved spending time with him but he got it wrong - that just because we were sleeping together that we were in a relationship. We had fun, went bowling, to the movies, to other cultural events but I wasn’t trying to be in a relationship with him. One because he had some serious issues with himself as being a black man, and two, because he was trying to rush things to fast. The final reason was that I could see that he didn’t like dealing with my status as St. Louis’ rising caterer.
Last Friday night I told him that I didn’t want to see him anymore. I was brutally honest with him because I wanted to be real about the situation. I wasn’t going to be happy with him and he wasn’t going to be happy with me. He has been pressuring me to commit to the situation and I said no. Not because I didn’t like him, but I knew down the line it was going to be a mess with my schedule and the fact that I am so independent. And it’s been three days since I told him I didn’t want a relationship and he’s been calling ever since.
My girls shame me for allowing myself to be so selfish with him the last couple of months. But I liked being with him. And when a woman wants a man she’s gonna do it anyway. But like most independent women, I get a low period where I need a man to be beside me and give me what I need even though it’s not the ideal situation. I knew from jump that he was going to have issues with me being a successful woman who’s been interviewed by several catering organizations, featured in some magazines and hailed as “St. Louis’s rising pastry woman!”
And whenever we had gone out some of the other catering professionals always stopped by the table to say hi and for some reason that’s when his jealousy set in. Then I’m the bad woman. I’m the one with the problem. And he starts to grill in on my personality, tries to break me down, then doesn’t want to even admit that it’s his low self-esteem talking.
In the last few weeks, I must admit I wasn’t being real about the situation. When he started disrespecting me at home or when I received business calls at dinner time, I ignored his insensitive comments. I let them fester inside of me like nothing was bothering me. I didn’t say much and when he would leave I would cry rivers of tears inside holding my pillow at night or trying to comfort myself inside an Zane novel because I was needing a man who could accept me and fulfill me as a complete woman. I wasn’t being real when I told “Tonio, it’s cool, that you can’t make my catering event”, but I was lying. It wasn’t right when he started on his self-righteous bull crap about being busy. And I wasn’t being honest with myself about laying down with him every other weekend, thinking I could suffocate the part of me that is a woman who loves a man. Don’t get it twisted, once a woman shares herself with a man it’s a different game of love. It’s an internal game that can be hard to keep hold of. Women are emotional creatures and we often do let our emotions run us in regards to relationships. And I was no different.
I have allowed Marques to tramp on my peaceful soul which has now become rageful and I’m mad at myself for allowing him to cut so deep. Because I was no longer thinking with my focused mind - but my heart and most definitely my intimate body played a huge part in my confusion . Though at the beginning of the relationship, I was trying to play it light. Like I could actually just sleep with the man and not let him creep into my soul. Not be in love with him. Like I wasn’t a woman with feelings who was born to be a nurturer. Yes, I tried to play the game, but the love game became twisted.
Once Tonio could figure out how to mess with my mind, he started to break me down slowly and surely and that’s why I told him what I said on Friday. And now I’m back to square one, wondering, how and when will I meet my soul mate?
Was Tonio my soulmate and I was blind sided by my own insecurities? Or is Mia Stephanie James still a fool in the game of love? Never to receive it in my twenty-seven years of life on God’s earth? Even though I’m a smart, beautiful, focused woman of the millenium. Even though I’ve never used a man for wealth or social gain? Will I ever find the love that I’m seeking or will I forever be in the dark, holding soft pillows at night, whispering affirmations to myself? Will I have to continue on my path without a love of my own? Only God knows...
And as I think about Tonio and the drama of our situation, I am reminded of another game of love I failed at...a friend who fell in love with a three years ago. Before my catering days, I was an administrative assistant for one of the auto plant companies in Detroit, Mi. He was a friend of one of the managers at the plant and we met my manager’s housewarming party. Marques was drop dead fine and I knew from the moment my eyes soaked in his hazel ones, that I was hooked. I knew from the moment that he shook my hands and gave me a hug that I wanted more than a friendship. But like women do all the time, I ignored reality and tried to make it happen.
Marques and I were a dynamic team. We often hung out going to Detroit’s best restaurants and spending a lot of time together. Even though I knew he was a bonafide player, I wanted to be the different one to make him love me. Even though most of the time he had been very real with me, telling me all the sordid details of his romantic affairs with other women. At the time we were friends I swore up and down we were platonic friends - and in reality we were. But in my heart feelings were growing and when I started to get emotional about the situation, Marques was like most men - clueless. He didn’t see the home cooked dinners and late night chats as anything else but us being friends. But once he started showing up at all my personal parties and other affairs family and friends saw the glow of my eyes towards his.
They saw that we were more than friends and I got caught up in what others had to say. I was okay when I wasn’t listening to my girlfriends and their comments about how they felt he treated me. Most of my girls - like me, got it wrong. They thought because he spent a lot of time with me that he was building up our relationship to be something else. Reality was a far different thing than the romantic comments all my girlfriends were saying. They said they thought he wanted me to be his girlfriend. My heart said different. In my delusion, I began to chant melodies of love to my soul. Heard heart songs fill me whenever he called me and then it hit me. I really wanted a relationship with him.
But how could I go from being the buddy to a girlfriend? I didn’t know but soon fate would provide a moment where I would be able to tell him how I felt. One night we went out to dinner and got to drinking like we always do. We drove down to the park and as we sat at one of the benches I blurted my confession out not even caring about his response.
‘I like you Marques. I really like you. And I want to know how you feel about me. I mean I would like for us to pursuit something more than a casual situation. I mean we have had so much fun together as friends I thought maybe we might want to take this to a higher level.”
I quickly paused my teetering statements and wasn’t sure of what the clouding beneath his eyes meant, but I listened to him drone on about how he would hurt me. Then I shut down. I felt shocked by his total rejection of me. I thought he liked me more than a friend. He always was nice and kind to me. He had my back more than any men I had foster relationships with before. He would openly flirt with me and touch some of my body parts lightly and in return I took that to be more of a man who wanted a woman and was attracted to her. I didn’t see his actions as a man who was hanging with a woman he totally respected and just loved as a good friend. I didn’t see him ignoring me because he didn’t know how to respond to my flirting.
So as a result, I put it out there and made Marques feel so uncomfortable that the remaining part of our relationship died quickly. Not just because of my statements and then he mentally added up the real reasons that I spent time with him - because I really was down for him and loved him unconditionally. And for a man who doesn’t necessary believe in God and didn’t really respect a lot of women he was in relationships with, Marques couldn’t make us fit no more. He began to be more honest about who he was and removed himself from me because it was for the best. He knew that deep inside he would end up hurting me beyond repair. And even though he knew I had deep feelings for him, he didn’t want to play the game with me anymore.
Because we had to keep it real about what we individually felt. I always wondered if I hadn’t listened to my friends if me and kept stuffing down my romantic feelings, if Marques and I would have still remained friends. I don’t know. I do know that my truth came out and Marques has much more respect for me now because I was honest with him and most importantly, myself. And even Tonio has to agree that I might have hurt his feelings but he knows that I can’t deal with the things he was throwing my way.
Love has a way of taking you and turning you inside out. Some times for good and sometimes for bad. But you play yourself if you are not honest about what you are seeking. I think folks sometimes go from relationship to relationship because they are scared to stay by themselves and work on who they are. Even with Tonio and Marques, I know there were parts of me that needed to be completed in full by me, not by these men. The game of love starts with you and only you. So even as I put my cheesecakes in the oven, I know I have got a lot of work to do on my soul and spirit before I can fully commit to any man, in any relationship. That in my life, I will need to take ownership of my happiness because in the end it’s me, that I have to look in the mirror and see if I am truly content with my existence on this earth. Before committing to a relationship with a brother, my soul must be worked on for me to be able to bond and find that soul mate who will fully love me.
Enjoy twists and surprising turns in this erotic collection of sexy love stories based on seven classic fairy tales. There are romantic interludes to touch your heart and plenty of scorching sex to warm your coldest nights.
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