That was what Gloria loved about Ley. She understood her. Her father was overbearing too. “That’s how it feels,” she said.
“But why? Just because you’re leaving Philly?”
“I’m leaving my family. If I take that lady up on her offer, and relocate to Florida, I’ll be leaving my whole family. I’ve never lived away from them before. It going to feel strange. It’s going to be so different.”
“But absolutely necessary,” said Leyla.
Gloria nodded. “Yes. That’s true too.”
“But will your father think so?”
“Hell no,” Gloria said, as a worried look appeared in her large, pretty eyes. “When he finds out what I’ve decided to do, he’s going to be so pissed. There’s no doubt about it.”
“You sound like you’ve signed a contract already.”
Gloria shook her head. “No. Not yet. I haven’t decided which offer to take yet. Do I take over that diner in Florida from that lady my Uncle Reno told me about? Or do I go clean across the country, to San Francisco, and take over that hair salon.”
“Girrl,” Leyla said with a smile, “you don’t know nothing about doing no hair!”
Gloria laughed.
“That’s why you’re always wearing ponytails everywhere we go! All that beautiful, thick hair, and you put it in a ponytail.”
“I don’t have it in a ponytail tonight, thank you very much.”
“Not tonight, but stay tuned. Before our girls’ trip to Vegas is over, you’ll have that tail wagging.”
Gloria laughed again, and they both sipped wine.
Then Myra, one of their other friends, hurried away from the dance floor and leaned over their table. “You see him?” she asked Gloria.
“See who?” Gloria asked as she and Leyla both began looking around.
“That white guy with the hair? He’s been assessing the shit out of you, Glo! And I’m telling you, he’s gorgeous-gorgeous-gorgeous. Gorgeous has got nothing on him, okay?”
“Where?” Leyla asked. She was even more curious than the object of the man’s attention.
“Don’t do it right now,” said Myra. “I have no desire to look like a snitch. But after I walk away, look to your left, all the way over, and then midway to the back of the dance floor, and you’ll see him.”
Leyla and Gloria immediately looked exactly where Myra suggested.
“I told y’all to wait until I left!” Myra protested, but the damage was already done.
“Wow,” said Leyla. “He is gorgeous!”
Gloria saw him too, dancing his ass off with not one, not two, but three women. And Oz was having a ball with all three of them too. But Gloria looked away. Every relationship she’d ever had with good looking guys always led to heartbreak. She wasn’t going down that road again. “Whatever,” she said just as Myra’s dance partner grabbed her and pulled her back onto the dance floor.
“What do you mean whatever?” Leyla asked Gloria. Before she could answer, two other guys came over and asked if they wanted to dance. Leyla said no for both of them.
“Lesbos,” said one of the rejected guys.
“Kiss our lesbo asses!” said Leyla back at him.
The guy, not expecting that kind of aggressive comeback, moved on.
“What do you mean whatever?” Leyla asked Gloria again.
“He’s aw’ight. But he’s dancing with three women already.”
“So?”
“So, I’m just not trying to do that right now. I have too much to deal with as it is. He can keep his trifling behind right where it is.”
“You don’t even know that man and already you’re judging him,” said Leyla.
Gloria was surprised. “How am I judging him?”
“You said he was trifling. How do you know that? He might be a perfectly fine gentleman.”
“Yeah, right,” said Gloria. “A perfectly fine rogue!”
Leyla smiled. “You’re probably right.” Then she looked at Oz again. “But he’s still fine, girl. That white boy is fine.”
“Besides,” Gloria said, “I don’t want a white boy. I plan to marry a brother.”
“Oh, really now? When since you started this white man boycott? Is it because your daddy is white?”
“No! Of course not.”
“Then why?”
“Black men know how to treat a woman,” said Gloria. “In and out of bed. The white guys I’ve dated? They don’t have a clue. It’s always all about them.”
“Well,” said Leyla, “my black ass has dated both, and there’s good and bad on both sides of that coin. Mostly bad on both sides of that coin,” she added, and Gloria laughed. “But that’s just my experience.”
“Mine too,” said Gloria, “to tell you the truth.”
“That’s why I call bullshit when you claim you’re all into black guys only and it has nothing to do with your father. It has everything to do with your father. You want to rid yourself of Mick Sinatra any way you can. Moving across the country if you decide to. Dating guys of a different hue than him. Starting a business where you can be financially independent of him. Yeah, girl, I know your ass. I know you.”
Gloria sipped her wine. She knew Leyla spoke the truth. But she wasn’t ready to acknowledge those hard, cold facts.
And she was too curious. When she looked back over at the guy with the hair again, he was still dancing with his three women, but he was also staring, unblinkingly, at Glo.
And as soon as Leyla, who had turned down mostly every white guy that asked her and finally accepted the offer to dance from a black hunk and left the table, Oz left too. Gloria saw when he left the dance floor, leaving his three women to dance amongst themselves, and made a beeline for her table.
She started to grab her clutch and head for the lady’s room. She wasn’t trying to deal with a guy like him tonight. But he was too quick. Before she could even reach for that clutch, he was coming up the few steps and standing in front of her. “May I?” he asked her as he motioned toward a chair at her table.
It took Gloria a moment to look up the length of him. He wore well-fitting jeans that highlighted the package between his legs, a package so thick and full that it looked as if it was a bundle of joy ready to spill out and make her happy. He wore a short-sleeve, button-down, tucked-in shirt that highlighted his flat stomach, his massive biceps, his muscular chest. By the time she looked up into his face and saw such beautiful eyes, she was already taken with his body alone. But she still said no.
But Oz, being Oz, sat down across from her anyway.
“I thought I said no, you may not have a seat,” Gloria said.
“Your mouth did say no,” Oz said with a grin. “But your eyes said yes.”
“Now that’s some freaky shit there. That’s some shit a rapist would say,” Gloria said.
Oz was mortified. “A rapist? Okay, I take that back,” he said quickly. “You’re right. You did say no.”
Gloria was inwardly smiling. It was good to see such a ladies man squirm.
“You said no,” Oz, being Oz, said. “But I said yes. Therefore, I sat down.”