1.
Present Day
It’s for charity.
That’s what my friend Diedra said to get me to come out here at The Crescent Suites in University City – sitting in this ballroom watching men grace the stage one at a time while us ladies bid on them.
This bachelor auction will benefit kids and local food banks which are a safety net for most kids during summer break.
With no school breakfast and lunches to carry them throughout the day, many have to turn to community organizations for help.
This is what this charity is for.
I do not want to be involved in this bachelor nonsense, but I have a soft spot for children.
Growing up in a single-parent home, I know how it feels to go without, to be hungry – to wait until mom gets paid in order for us to get something decent to eat.
If I can do something to prevent anyone else from going through that, I’m going to do it – even if it doesn’t sit right with my soul to bid on handsome strangers in sort of a quid pro quo.
It’s for charity, Giada. It’s for the children.
If I win a bid with a bachelor, we have to have dinner shortly after at a five-star restaurant as part of the experience. We chop it up for a few and then go our separate ways. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Yeah, you can do that, Giada, but do you want to?
No, I don’t because, for one thing, this is so vain.
The only thing we know about these men is the little tidbit the announcer shares with us, which could all be lies for all we know.
And two, we’re basically bidding on men we find attractive as if the way a person looks takes precedence over any kind of personality or exceptional qualities they may have.
Ugh…
Yeah.
Vain.
So far, there have been five bachelors to walk out on stage – all suited, fixed up to the nines like that Justin Timberlake song and they definitely look like they can show us a few things with those fresh cuts, thick beards, and trimmed ‘staches. They didn’t come half-stepping.
They’re showing up and showing out for this cause, too – agreeing to have dinner with these women – most of whom are desperate and in great need of companionship from the male species, especially these kind of men – ones of such high caliber.
I don’t fall into that category of needing company .
In fact, I haven’t attempted to bid on anyone yet, and it’s not that something was wrong with the men who have come out so far, because there isn’t.
They were all handsome. I’m just having second thoughts about this whole ordeal.
I’m shy about these things, and that’s precisely why I’m twenty-eight and single.
Hanging out isn’t on the list of activities I enjoy, so doing something like going to dinner and engaging in forced conversations with a stranger doesn’t make the cut.
I’d rather be at home. In my bed. Rubbing my feet together.
No one has any expectations of me, and I have no expectations of anyone else.
Life’s simple that way. It’s stress-free and easy – just the way I like it.
Deidra wasn’t trying to hear that this time.
“Let’s give it up for bachelor number six,” the announcer, or whatever you call the lady who’s talking about and describing these men.
Hostess? DJ? Pimpette? I don’t know. She’s so skinny, she’s probably a size zero.
She has on a bright orangey-red skirt suit with matching lipstick and a forty-inch buss down that hangs a little past her waist. She might be thin as plywood and bad at color choices, but I gotta hand it to the broad – she’s good at working a room.
“Come on, ladies,” she says. “I know we can do better than that. Let’s give it up for bachelor number siiiiiiix!”
“Woo, woo! Yaaas, baby! Work it!” The women go so wild, I’m surprised nobody threw beads at them. Applause, cheers and catcalls erupt simultaneously and grow increasingly loud.
This all feels so wrong. What the heck am I doing with my life?
I sigh, yet I take a moment to watch bachelor number six – trying to read him to determine if he’s someone I can endure being stuck at a table with for the better part of an hour.
Maybe two. He’s cute – I’ll give him that, but does he have conversation?
And if he does, what kind? I’m not talking politics, finances, fitness, or business.
I don’t want to hear anything about elections, recessions, building muscle, protein, veganism, airplanes, government conspiracies, nightly news, celebrities, and absolutely nothing about exes.
I want to discuss normal things. Life things.
The good parts of it. I want to talk about food, restaurants and travel. Peace.
Ugh…
What am I thinking?
Truth be told, I’m not cut out for those discussions. I’ve been out of the dating game for so long, I don’t know what my conversation will be like.
Dating game? Ha! Who am I kidding? I haven’t joined the game at all.
I’ve been so busy working and making sure my mom is well taken care of that dating or anything else for that matter, has to take a back seat.
And besides the lack of time for it, there’s the fact that I’ve only loved one guy my whole life, and I haven’t seen him in fourteen years.
In those years, I always imagined he’d come back to me.
Like, if you love something, you’re supposed to let it go and if it comes back, that’s how you know.
Isn’t that what they used to say? Or was it all a crock of bull, instilling false hope in people by having them waiting like a bump on a log for someone we probably weren’t meant to be with in the first place?
Massaging my temples, I draw in a breath that does nothing to relieve the tension mounting in my frontal lobes and will myself back into this room.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah. Ogling bachelor six. Looking up at the stage, I watch him walk right up to the edge, front and center – all confident and maybe a little cocky. Okay, ain’t nothing wrong with a confident man, but he’s already fine. He doesn’t have to do the most.
Frowning, I lean in to take a closer look. Something about his eyes jogs something inside of me. Do I—do I know this guy from somewhere?
I sit up tall to take a closer look and—
Oh.
My.
God!
I know him.
My heart is slamming against my ribcage like the vibration of a loud speaker in a nightclub testing your eardrums for efficiency. I guess that fourteen-year stretch has come to a screeching halt because bachelor six is him – you know, the only guy I ever loved. My God, it’s really him.
Kasim Noble.
My mother worked as a housekeeper for his parents.
Many times, she’d bring me with her when she didn’t want to leave me home alone, and that’s how I first met Kasim.
We were both eight years old, and since day one, we became fast friends.
In fact, I looked forward to going with my mother simply so I could hang out with him and admire his collection of toys.
Admiring how, as a child, he lived in this huge mansion and had everything he ever wanted.
Every toy he wanted. Delicious food. All the nice brand-name clothes and shoes.
It was a life I dreamed of, but just to be close to it was enough to appease me, if only for a few hours.
“Do I hear four-hundred?” the announcer lady asks.
I blink out of my thoughts to return to the bidding.
To Kasim. It’s been years since we’ve seen each other.
We lost touch when we were fourteen at no fault of mine.
It was actually his—you know what? I’m not going to go there.
We were just two different people who lived very different lives in different cities.
He lived in Cornelius – the Lake Norman area while I grew up in Gastonia – the side of town where you’d hear sirens every night.
Kasim went to a prestigious private high school, or shall I say, academy , while I grew up in public school eating struggle lunches.
When he graduated, he went off to college because that was the plan.
In fact, his parents had his whole life planned out for him.
All the opportunities he wanted were at his fingertips.
Meanwhile, I had to apply for grants to a local community college because even though my mother worked like a mule, there still wasn’t enough money to pay for any kind of college for me.
I was elated when my grant was approved.
After two years of hard work and dedication, I earned an associate’s degree in computer science.
Not bad for a girl who never thought any kind of college was a possibility.
Kasim and I are from two different worlds, and just mentioning him all casually like this makes it seem like the period of time that pushed us apart never happened.
It’s like seeing an old friend and picking right back up where you left off, but we didn’t leave off on good terms, as I recall.
I was left backstabbed by the boy I trusted, but that was my bad because I shouldn’t trust fourteen-year-old boys anyway.
Let my mother tell it, and I shouldn’t trust any males. Period.
“Do I hear five hundred?”
The lady at the table beside me raises her paddle and wiggles in her seat like her panties are on fire. The thirst is real up in here.
I gnaw on my bottom lip trying to decide if I want to bid. Be in his company. Share a meal. Catch up on old times.
“Ooh, I see you debating,” Diedra says. “Go ‘head, girl. Place a bid. Do it.”
“I don’t know, Diedra.”
But I do know. Talking to Kasim would be better than talking to a stranger, I suppose. But on the flipside, doesn’t fourteen years of separation make him a stranger again?
“Do I hear five-fifty?”
“What you mean you don’t know?” Diedra asks. Ramping up her peer pressure, she says, “This the first time I done seen you bite your lip. You better raise that paddle and get that man. Stop playing.”
“I’m not playing. I’m—I’m at a quandary.”