One Woman Man

ARE YOU MY DADDY? "Are you my daddy?" a soft voice asked. Dallas Dupree felt someone standing over him. He popped up in the bed and looked around the strange room for the speaker. His naked body was covered with sweat. Where in the hell am I? Dallas felt someone stir beneath the covers. His heart raced. Joy and fear took over. "Yasmin," he said softly. Then he looked down at the naked woman beside him and jumped. He rubbed his eyes and his head throbbed. Things started slowly coming back into focus and he promised himself that he'd never take another shot of tequila for as long as he lived. Last night, he and his coworker Kenya went to Cafe Intermezzo in downtown Buckhead to have a few drinks. Dallas ordered a round and tried to keep the conversation from venturing too far into his personal life because he wasn't ready to go there. But he knew the inevitable question would come. Why is a man like you single? And when it came, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "Don't know." But he did know and that knowledge hurt like hell. He started throwing back shots of tequila right and left, and before long Kenya didn't exist. Every so often he'd nod his head or grunt, but his mind was on Yasmin. The more he thought about her, the more shots he threw back. The next thing he remembered was waking up buck naked to a child's voice. Dallas glanced back at Kenya, who was still sleeping peacefully. They'd met two weeks ago when she walked into the teacher's lounge at Alonzo Crim High School. He was sitting alone at the lunch table reading a book called The Pact, about three young men who made it out of the inner-city projects to become doctors, when Kenya walked in wearing a dress so tight he could see her heart beat. Dallas was convinced that she was a former stripper. He introduced himself and knew within the first thirty minutes of their conversation that she wasn't his cup of tea, but her body--now, that was another story. Dallas hated the dating scene. All of this bed-hopping and trying to get to know someone was supposed to be over when he found Mrs. Right, but now Mrs. Right was gone and he found himself right back where he'd started. He took a deep breath, stood up and walked into the bathroom. He quickly washed up and then looked around for a towel; when he couldn't find one, he dried himself with some hard toilet tissue, which he was sure she had stolen from the school. He put a pinch of toothpaste on his finger, ran it across his teeth, and rinsed. He looked around the bathroom and grimaced. She's a filthy li'l something, he thought, looking at urine stains on the floor around the toilet and the dirty bathtub. Dallas walked back into the bedroom and quickly jumped into his clothes. When he reached down to put on his sandals, he noticed a used condom on the floor beside the bed. "Aw, damn! Why the hell did I have sex with her?" he mumbled as he picked it up and checked for leaks. Strange things happen to unattended sperm, he thought, taking the piece of latex back in the bathroom to flush it down the toilet. After he made sure it disappeared down into the swirl of water, he prepared to leave. He was passing through the living room, which was also messy, when he noticed a little boy with big brown eyes sitting quietly on the sofa with his arms wrapped around his knees. He looked up when he saw Dallas and his eyes showed confusion. "Hey, li'l fella," Dallas said, surprising himself. He walked over to the little guy. "Hi," the little boy said cautiously. "Why are you sitting here in the dark all by yourself?" "I'm scared," the little boy said in a shaky voice. "Scared? What are you afraid of?" "I heHunter, Travis E. is the author of 'One Woman Man', published 2004 under ISBN 9780375508967 and ISBN 0375508961.