Take Her Man. Grace Octavia

was beginning to feel guilty for all the complaining I’d been doing about not seeing him enough lately. I even felt bad for making him come meet me for sushi. He’d been awake for three days straight. What was I thinking? He was a damn doctor. He didn’t have time for my drama. As one of my girls who had been married to a doctor for five years put it, if I wanted a man of that caliber, I had to find a way to live with him and his demanding job.

      I needed to calm down. I was pushing him away. Julian was a good man and he was out working hard for a good cause. He was worth waiting for. I just had to be patient and more creative. There’s nothing wrong with bringing the sushi and sake to the hospital.

      I reached under the table and patted his leg to assure him that I was ready and willing to change.

      “I love you, Dr. Julian James,” I said with all of my heart inside those words. “And I am not willing to lose you. I mean, just think”—I cracked an uneasy, well-intentioned smile—“we just exchanged keys to each other’s places. We’re official.” I batted my eyes like my grandmother taught me and blew him a kiss.

      Julian looked down at his lap and slid a little silver key onto the table. It was apparent that it had already been taken off of his key ring. Had he planned all of this?

      “What about my keys to your place?” I asked, realizing that I’d put my foot in my mouth as soon as the last word came out.

      “Hand them over.” He didn’t even pause. His voice was so cold and distant that I felt as if I didn’t even know him anymore, like he was someone else, a ghost of himself who had caught ebola or the bird flu during his last stint in the emergency room. The wall between us was growing.

      “What do you mean, hand them over?” I was in complete disbelief. I sat back in my seat and looked around the restaurant. Everyone seemed to be having such a great time. There was the couple in the corner cooing at each other, and the sister with long blond dreadlocks feeding her baby sticky rice. Everyone, even the damn waitress who couldn’t speak a word of English, seemed happy, except for me…and I was sitting across from the man I loved.

      “What did I do to deserve this?” I looked back at Julian, feeling as desperate as I sounded. I could feel my heartbeat change from fury and shock to just plain sadness. I was fighting a losing battle and I knew it. Even the waitress, who was now standing next to Julian with our bill, looked like she was about to bend down and give me one of those big church-mother hugs. “What did I do?”

      “See, I knew you would try to make this about you. Everything revolves around you, doesn’t it? No one else can dream or speak unless it fits into your little script of what life is supposed to be about.” He paused and handed the waitress his black AmEx card before she walked away. “I just can’t take it anymore. You’re just too spoiled.”

      “Why are you being so cold? How could you treat me like this?” I asked, wondering how the waitress got back to the table so fast with the card. Without answering me, Julian signed the check and handed it back to her. He leaned toward me, smiled sweetly, and reached across the table for my hand. Was he playing with me? Was he about to propose marriage? I wiped my tears and gave him my left hand. He squeezed it—clenched it like he was Dr. Phil and nodded his head in this therapy-ish way he could have learned only in medical school.

      “Look, just put the keys in the mail,” he said as coolly as if he was setting up our next date. He kissed me on the forehead and smiled. “I’ve really got to go, darling.”

      Just then, as he turned his back on me, the clock struck 3 p.m., his pager went off and my Prince Charming walked out of our favorite sushi bar and into the streets of New York—alone.

      So that’s how my sad situation started. Walking out of that restaurant that Wednesday afternoon with every eye fixed on me, I was sick and nearly suicidal. It’s funny how losing your man, more than any of the other things in your life, can make you like a woman on her deathbed. You feel like you’ll never see the sun rise over Manhattan again.

      I felt like I was on some silly candid-camera show. While Julian and I definitely went through our share of “I need space” drama, that didn’t separate me from any other woman who was dealing with any other man—especially a successful man. I never would’ve thought that he would really split up with me—not for real, for real. Inside, I couldn’t even believe he was serious this time. He was just as feisty and nervous about commitment as all of my other friends’ boyfriends-turned-husbands, and everyone had assured me that if I stuck it out, he’d come around and realize that he was supposed to be with me. So what the heck was happening? As I said, Julian was one of the good guys. The man visits his ailing grandmother every Thursday night. He’s no heartbreaker. Julian was just heaven-sent—at least that was the way it had seemed when we met just over a year ago at the bookstore at NYU.

      It was definitely an unlikely meeting. It was the beginning of my second semester at NYU Law and I was there to pick up a book…and maybe even a man if one crossed my path. I spotted Julian as soon as he walked in because he looked like a lost mountain man. His beard was completely overgrown, his shirt was all crooked and crumpled, and his hair was in desperate need of a cut. Before I got a good look at him, I thought that he’d just escaped from the city jail, but the closer he got, the more I knew this wasn’t the case. Even a lesbian had to admit that beneath the rough edges, there was a fine-ass black man.

      Looking at his calm hazel eyes and roasted-pecan skin, I just wanted to have his babies and play in his thick, jet black hair for the rest of my life. While I was sure he wasn’t a good fit for me socially (seeing as how he was an escaped convict), within the two seconds it took for me to squeeze past him in the doorway, I rationalized that we could live off of my salary after I graduated from law school and settle down in one of my father’s properties in downtown Brooklyn. I could clean him up a bit, show him the high-society ropes, and help him get back on his feet. Squeezing by only made my interest grow. My hazel-eyed, ex-con/future-husband smelled like a cloud and his stomach was completely solid when I stood on my tippy toes and brushed my bootie up against it—don’t be jealous, I said excuse me.

      When I turned to put my school bag in one of the free lockers, I decided to drop my book and prayed he would notice. He’d pick it up, I’d smile and say, “Thank you. Let’s go home now, fine-ass man.” I thought it was a pretty solid plan. I pulled my torts book from my bag and looked toward him to make sure he would notice the drop and have no choice but to acquiesce.

      That’s when I saw the scrubs. The blue freakin’ scrubs. My heart started racing. I felt sweat beads forming on my forehead. I reached for my compact; I needed to check my makeup. I reached for my two-way pager; I needed to text my girls. I reached for my phone; I needed to call my mother. A doctor, I thought, feeling my Gucci bag fall to the floor. He’s a doctor. Did I say that aloud?

      “Yes, I’m a doctor,” Hazel Eyes said, looking at me. “Can I help you?” He reached down and picked up my bag.

      Dumb ass, dumb ass, dumb ass. I silently cursed myself for letting “doctor” slip out. Now I was looking like a gold digger—thank God I don’t fall for that label. Seems like every time a sister reveals that she’s trying to have a successful man by her already successful side, folks start calling her a gold digger. I say it’s bull. I’m not a gold digger. I’m a gold sharer; I have mine and my man had better have his own.

      “Are you okay, sis?” Hazel Eyes asked. I couldn’t say anything. I was stunned. My future son’s father was a door-opening panhandler when I first walked into the store and now he was a doctor. I needed time to work it all out in my head. I needed a new plan.

      “I’m sorry. I was just trying to remember my professor’s name,” I managed to say. Good catch. Good catch.

      “Oh, I thought you were talking to me,” he said. “I was wondering how you knew I was a doctor.” He smiled and I do believe I witnessed the cutest white teeth I’d ever seen. I couldn’t help but to return the favor. By the time he handed me my purse, we were exchanging names and numbers. It’s amazing what a smile and a growing concern over the irregular heart palpitations I only experience