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Brandy

By Harry Banks

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 She has an even, light-brown complexion that is smooth as silk. Full lips that I can’t stop thinking about. Big brown eyes. Her body isn’t all that, but she is still lovely. An attractive black woman that I wish I would have met years ago, before I got married. She’s unhappily married too, and feels the same way I do. We could have made a good couple, but now it’s too late. Eleven days ago she told me that every time she hears “As We Lay”, an R&B song from the 1980s, she thinks of me. In that same conversation, she told me that the night we went to the West 39^th Street Coffee Shop, then went outside and kissed, was a very special night to her, a sweet night. My soul gets uplifted when she tells me things like that, and she has told me a lot of good things these past three months that we’ve been talking. It all began when she told me that she was very attracted to me. She told me that she liked my lips, my build, and my style of dress. Her successive compliments have done a lot for my ego the past three months. But two days ago when I called her, she didn’t seem too excited to hear from me.

    I’m on my lunch break at work when I dial her number, my heart beating fast, and butterflies in my stomach because it had been almost a week since we last spoke.

    After two rings, she picks up the phone. “Hello,” she says in a voice that sounds void of life.

    “Hey Brandy,” I say.

    “Hey,” she says. Her voice doesn’t get any livelier, although it is me, her friend that she’s talking to. I take that as rejection, and my feelings get hurt.

    “Dang, you sound busy,” I manage to say. Although I have a feeling that she doesn’t want to converse with me. 

    “Yeah, I’m talking to my auntie on the other end,” she says.

    After a few moments of silence, I say, “Well, I guess I’ll call you later then.”

    “Okay, bye.”

    “Goodbye,” I say. I hang up the phone, very disappointed that I didn’t get to talk to her. I head to the break room to have lunch, thinking of numerous other times I was blown off by girls on the phone who simply didn’t want to talk to me. To this day, it still hurts. It makes me wonder about myself.

    I decide that I’m going to give up on Brandy. She’s married and I am too. I can’t have her, so what’s the use in pursuing someone who lives only down the street, yet is out of reach.

    Now my depression is acting up again. Although four days ago some girls at work seemed to be flirting with me, asking me if I was married and telling me that I look 19 instead of 32, I’m still feeling bad about life in general. One of the girls, a light-skinned cutie, told me that she knew a girl who wants to talk to me. I’m sitting here, depressed, wondering who that girl is.