It's Only Love (The Matthews Family)

“You need to stop this Paul. You need to stop calling her.”

“I’m not. She calls me.”

“Then stop answering the phone when she calls.”

“She’ll just keep calling until I answer. Sometimes it’s better to just pacify her than to make her mad.”

“Change your number, something.”

Paul laughed a little. “I tried that once already and you see she got the number. You know she owns them car lots; I think the woman in finance gave her the new number.

“You need to find some way to shut this down before it gets out of hand again.”

After that, Paul and I went back to his house and had lunch with Vanessa. While eating, Vanessa grilled me about my friendship with Natasha. Vanessa told me what a special woman Natasha was and that she could tell how much I really like her and I couldn’t disagree. Paul was a part of the conversation, but I could tell that he was mad about Bria. He was trying his best not to show it, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was sitting there quietly plotting what he was going to do next. I’d seen Paul look that way too many times growing up not to be worried about what he was going to do.

When I left their house, I was thinking about Natasha. I wanted to talk to her, but I never called her on Sunday’s and I didn’t expect to hear from her so I went home. It was about ten o’clock when my phone rang and to my surprise, it was Natasha.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” I said when I answered the phone.

“Hi, Victor,” she said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“How are you tonight?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Doing much better now than I was a minute ago.”

“I’m not going to keep you long. I just wanted to hear your voice and make sure that we were still on for Stormy Weather tomorrow night?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Good,” Natasha said and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I gotta go, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I understand. Good night, Natasha.”

“Good night,” she said and ended the call.

I woke up Monday morning and went to work floating on a cloud. That day I would allow nothing and nobody to disturb the groove I was in.

I had been working with our implementation partners to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning system for the company. It’s business management software that the bank used to collect, store, manage and interpret data from its many business activities. That afternoon it was time to make the presentation to Jack and select members of upper management.

“The Enterprise Resource Planning,” I began. “or ERP system provides an integrated view of core business processes, often in real-time, using common databases maintained by a database management system.”

“Can the system share data across the various departments that provide data?” Jack asked.

“The ERP can facilitate information flow between all of our business functions.”

“Does the system provide an integrated view of our core business processes in real-time?”

“Th

e system is integrated so it operates in or near real time without relying on periodic updates the ERP systems can track business resources and the status of business commitments,” I explained. When I was done with my presentation, the word was given to proceed with the implementation.

“Excellent work, Victor,” Jack said.

“Thank you,” I replied and at that point I was ready to leave for the day so I could get ready to meet Natasha at the theater to see Stormy Weather. As I usually did, I arrived early to meet Natasha. I never wanted to be late for our encounters, and besides, I was always so anxious to see her that I couldn’t sit still. When I rounded the corner, I was thrilled to see Natasha standing outside the theater. She smiled that smile I can’t seem to get enough of and began waving as soon as she saw me.

As I approached, my eyes devoured Natasha’s form. She was wearing a black and white two-tone suit. Since it was hot that night, the blazer was draped over her arm which allowed me to see the white silk camisole top. The sight of her naked shoulders only proved to make me want her more.